I walked up to the shorter one and asked, “Is Luke working tonight?”
“Don’t know any Luke.”
“He’s tall with shaggy hair. He’s with Fury… they call him Goose.”
That got a reaction. Not surprise exactly. More like amusement. He cocked a brow as he announced, “He doesn’t work here anymore.”
“Oh? Did something happen? Was he fired?”
The man laughed. “No, ma’am. Not a chance. You don’t tell anyone from Satan’s Fury what to do, and you sure as hell don’t fire ‘em.”
“Got it. Thanks.”
Heat crept up my neck as I turned and headed out the front door. By the time I reached the parking lot, my stomach was completely in knots. Something was going on. Something big, and I was more determined than ever to figure out what it was.
21
GOOSE
“You look like shit.”
“Right back at ya, brother.”
“Yeah, well, at least, I’m up and moving. Still hurts like hell, but I’m moving.” Memphis motioned his head toward my hand. “Looks like it’s swelling again.”
He was right. It was twice the size it was earlier. I tightened the strap on the brace and flexed my fingers like I wasn’t pissed that I had to wear the damn thing in the first place. “It’s fine.”
“You sure about that?” Memphis leaned against the table with a smirk. “It’s looking a little angry, like maybe you missed a dude’s face and hit a brick wall.”
“He was a slimy fucker who moved faster than I expected him to, but I got him in the end.”
“You can say that again,” Ghost scoffed as he lifted his arm, rolling his shoulder with a grimace. “Dude’s balls had to be the size of his head by the time you were done.”
We’d gone to the bar to make those assholes pay for what they did to Smitty, Rusty, and Skid, and we did just that. But they didn’t go down without a fight. Hell, every one of us had our battle wounds. Some were worse than others.
Ghost was doing his best to hide it, but we all knew taking a hit to the side with a tabletop hurt like a bitch. And both Memphis and Grim took a few hard punches with brass knuckles, and that’s just what I happened to witness between throws.
I glanced over at Memphis as I grumbled, “He deserved worse. They all did.”
My wrist throbbed, making it difficult to ignore. I clenched my jaw and pushed through. It was just a fucking sprain, which was nothing compared to what Smitty was dealing with.
It had been almost a week, and he was still laid up in the infirmary. His broken ribs had made it tough for him to breathe, much less move, which brought on a pretty bad case of pneumonia.
Blade had been hovering over him, shoving antibiotics and pain meds down his throat, hoping it would be enough to get him back on his feet. Like he could read my mind, Ghost glanced over at us and asked, “Have either of you been in to check on Smitty?”
“I went earlier this morning, and he was still out of it.” I shook my head. “Blade said he’s better but not out of the woods yet.”
“He’s still got some fight left in him.”
“He’s gonna need it.”
We could handle busted knuckles, sprained wrists, and cracked ribs. We could laugh off bruises and cuts, no matter how deep, but lungs filling up wasn’t the kind of thing you could just muscle through.
I leaned my head back and closed my eyes as I thought about church, which we held right after the fight. Emotions were high, and we were all still carrying the taste for revenge. But it wasn’t the time for that. This was the time to face some hard truths.
They started with Creed.
Our VP didn’t sound angry. It was more like disgusted as he said, “We shouldn’t have been caught by surprise. We should’ve known their names. Who was in charge. How many they have patched in. We should’ve known it all. It’s our job to know. It’s my job to know.”
