“Then you can tell us how this shit will end?” I said with a half-grin.
“If only that were fucking true,” Spawn said.
He sighed.
“You good, though?”
I nodded.
“I can focus on what I need to and think about it later. I’m fine.”
Spawn looked at me for a few seconds with one eyebrow raised before he shrugged.
“Long as we can dispatch King or at least start that process, you can bullshit me as much as you want,” he said. “At the end of the day, you can do whatever the fuck you want with Leigh. You’ll lie to yourself, the club members will think you’re whipped, I’ll give you shit, but trust me when I say, it’s a good thing to have someone like that around. If she is someone like her.”
Spawn was fucking telling me this?
Our club’s sergeant-at-arms, the man most responsible for inflicting death and violence, was telling me it was a good thing to find a woman like this?
“Anyway, I have a meeting with Lane you assigned me to,” he said, “but don’t let the thoughts of pussy overwhelm you too much. Just let it whelm you enough.”
“Is that even a fucking word?” I cracked.
Spawn shrugged, headed back inside, and shut the door. I looked back out on the Arizona air, sighed, and looked at my drink.
Spawn was overestimating my chances with Leigh. For one, it was not me that had the commitment issue, but her. So even if I could compartmentalize and wanted her back, there were no guarantees. For another, he assumed we’d all live through this.
But hey, there was something enormous to be said for your own sergeant-at-arms telling you to not give a fuck about what others thought like that. It was probably the closest thing to Satan saying I was doing things the right way.
My father.
I tossed the double shot back all at once. No longer was it medicine, but just something I needed to get done with.
After all, only a sick person needs medicine, and I felt perfectly fine now with how things were going—or at least, the direction they were most likely to go.
I stood up to head inside when I heard the sound of a motorcycle approaching.
Like all such sounds, this put me on edge. Either it was a friend who probably had some fucking bad news, or it was the fucking enemy trying to send a message.
But fortunately, as the biker approached, his mammoth size gave him away immediately. It was Butch, or Mountain Man, as my father had preferred to call him pre-coma. Butch always rode with such ease, his back up and his body motionless, as if not even the wind could move him.
But right now, it was different. He was hunched forward. He was going far faster than normal. And when he pulled into the lot, he didn’t park so much as he slid to a stop.
“Butch?”
“I know where they are.”
I tensed.
“I know where the fucking King’s Men are staying.”
