Scrap sniffed and flicked a finger at his eye. “Sorry.”
Sabrina laughed as tears dripped down her face. “Not your fault.” She sat up straight and wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. “I’m a grown-ass woman. I have a successful career I love and can stand on my own two feet. I have a man who loves me and a badass biker family who accept me. There’s plenty of people who have it a lot worse than I do.”
“You got bigger balls than a lotta men I know,” Scrap told her as he set the letter on the side table. “For what it’s worth, if I did have a daughter, I would hope she’d be just like you.”
She felt that compliment deep in her soul. He might not share her DNA after all, but he sat solidly in her corner. That in itself was a great achievement. “Thank you.”
Scrap waved a dismissive hand in the air. “Go get that chess board and let’s have a game. Doesn’t matter who you are, I’ll still whip your ass.”
Sabrina laughed. “You’ll try.”
EPILOGUE
Denny enteredAttic in his civilian clothes. His general attitude was that when he had on his uniform, he was on duty. After work was a different story; he could just be himself.
At least that was his intent tonight. Whatever he heard in conversation would stay right here with all the other secrets he suspected the Knights had under their belts.
One of the girls danced with full enthusiasm on the stage. Fake tits, fake hair, and fake tan, but genuine moves. She’d had some training at one time in her life. Melter, Ratchet, Stalemate, and Crossman sat at the Knights’ normal spot at the round tables off in one corner. Their conversation carried over the music.
“Didja bang your Date Knight girl?” Ratchet took a big swallow of beer, spilling some over his chin.
Melter’s eyes bugged out. “No, dude, and get this: The woman won’t stop calling me!”’
“You should totally bang her.” Ratchet suddenly raised an eyebrow. “Wait, did you just call medude?”
“Yeah?”
“You high?”
Melter’s lopsided grin gave it away. “Yeah, I am.”
Stalemate took a drink of his beer. “Did you bang yours? Even though she outweighed you by a hundred pounds or more?”
Ratchet placed two fingers over his mouth and waggled his tongue between them. “What do you think?”
“Seriously, Ratch, I hope you showed her some respect on the date,” Crossman groused.
Ratchet laughed. “You, my friend, got the cream of the crop. What’s her name, the girl from the bookstore? Hot, my friend. Banging hot.”
Denny moved on through the club to find the president.
Wolf stood at his normal sentry post and jutted his chin at him. “Officer.”
Denny expected the cold greeting. For the last couple of weeks, he and the club had been at odds over the disappearance of the Sweet brothers. Then the investigation ended and the whole event became nothing more than a brief blip in the news cycle. Journalists had already moved on to the next story and the next crisis.
“Wolf. I’m just Denny tonight. Long day filling out a shit ton of paperwork and forms. The Sweet brothers are on their way to the crematorium. We found a distant cousin who’d vaguely heard of them. Once he found out there was no money, he signed off, and the state is paying to have them taken care of.”
Wolf let out an exaggerated sigh. “Too bad.”
Denny played along. “Not really. The system is so backed up it would have been years before they’d gone to trial. Feeding and housing them, costing the taxpayers money. Then people gotta deal with jury duty. It’s a pain in the ass, especially when everyone knows the outcome. Nah, it’s not a bad thing for those two to drown while making a run out of state on the river. Good thing those bodies washed up and we could make a positive ID.Seems they got pretty banged up on shore rocks. If we hadn’t, we’d still be investigating.”
Wolf nodded in agreement but stayed silent as the officer kept talking.
“Saves a lot of headaches. Paperwork is finished and filed. As far as I’m concerned, this case is over and done with, and we can all move on to better shit.”
Wolf’s face remained impassive. “Good to know. First beer is on the house.”
The phoneon the table buzzed impatiently. Cam paused with the lifted hammer in his hand. His arm ached from nonuse all these weeks, but getting back to work in the forge felt good. Real good.
