“But as far as we know, she’s not been made, Rush. She’s an employee. She can just quit.”

He’d never known anyone who “just quit” Valenzuela.

“You think it’ll be that easy?” he asked.

“Valenzuela’s a criminal and a sick fuck, but he’s also a businessman. This isn’t about dope and it isn’t about whores. This is a legit business. He whacks a director because she wants to bail, he’ll find it hard to hire another director. Far as he knows, she’s got nothin’ on him to give to a competitor or the cops that might make him wanna keep her under his thumb or take her out to keep himself safe. It’s a professional relationship that can be severed.” He shrugged. “She gives notice, plays that part, it’ll suck she’ll have to work out that notice and stay close before she’s fully out.” Another twitch of his goatee. “But I reckon you’ll have her covered.”

He’d have that.

“So just resign,” Rush said.

“Might not be that easy, but she can start with that. We’ll keep watch. That goes south for some reason, we’ll have her back.”

Rush nodded.

They’d start with that.

“Talked with Shy,” Tack noted. “He said she’s a spitfire.”

Rush quit rubbing his hands on the rag and tossed it on the fender. “She’s a spitfire all right.”

“I read Hawk’s file too, Rush,” his father said quietly. “It’ll take a certain kind of man to take on a woman like that.”

He looked into his dad’s eyes. “Wanna explain that?”

Tack did because he didn’t hesitate.

“Went balls to the wall for a dead friend. Drew a line in the sand with her family to take her brother’s back. This is a woman who goes all in, son. Those situations are extreme, and for her, I hope she never has to face somethin’ like them again. But a woman like that, it could be anything. A kid she meets who isn’t bein’ treated right. A dog on the street foraging for food.”

Tack slid closer to his son and kept talking.

“A woman who can love that deep, who’s got that kinda steel in her spine, the man who gets it, it’ll feel good to earn that love, keep it and have it. But he’ll have to understand what makes her and that he’ll have a lifetime of puttin’ out fires, dealin’ with emotional fallout, and proppin’ her up when the loads she takes on get too heavy.”

“You warnin’ me off a woman I haven’t even taken out yet?”

“You gonna take her out?”

“Makin’ her dinner at my place tonight.”

Tack nodded. “Just wanna make sure you know what you’re gettin’ into.”

“She’s funny.”

“Good to know she’s got that as well as bein’ easy to look at.”

“And she’s more.”

Tack stared in his eyes. “I know, Rush. She’s a lot more.”

“Right. So what I wanna know, Dad, is would you want me to have anything less?”

“Absolutely not.”

At the clarity of his father’s response, Rush’s back straightened.

Tack kept talking.

“You got years on you, son, and you got experience. But you’re still young. And it wouldn’t take a father who loves and knows his son to see this one is different. Straight up, if I could plan out your life, both you and your sister, I would want you to have more time and more experience before you settled in. That way did not happen for your sister. She knew what she wanted, landed it, and she’s all kinds of happy. So I’m good. But I see where this is goin’, Rush, and I just want you to be prepared.”

“We haven’t even had a date yet, Dad.”

His father’s head snapped to the side. “Am I readin’ this wrong?”

He never read anything wrong.

“No,” Rush told him.

Tack righted his neck. “Not tellin’ you what to do. Just wanna make sure your eyes are open.”

“I want a handful.”

Tack said nothing.

“It’s just the way, and it’s a good way, and you know what I mean, Dad. I want a handful,” Rush went on. “I wanna wake up and not know what the day is gonna bring, mostly because she’s gonna make it an adventure. I want kids, and I want the woman I choose to make them with to be about them. To have all the love in the world for them. To make it so they know that and never doubt it. And you know why I want that.”

“Yeah,” Tack whispered, and Rush knew he knew all about making babies with a woman who did not give that to her children.

“And I want her to have more. I want her to have kids and me and a life. Drinks with her girls or making movies, or I don’t know and I don’t give a fuck, just as long as she’s the kind of woman who needs it and goes after it and gets it. I wanna get pissed and I wanna be challenged and I wanna be surprised and I want my balls busted and I want my mind blown and I wanna laugh a lot. I want it all, Dad. I want what you got, but I want it my way and I want it to be all mine.”

“Not thinkin’ Rebel Stapleton’s not gonna be an adventure,” Tack murmured.

“Exactly,” Rush replied.

Tack got intense.

And even though Rush was used to it, he braced.

“Your stepmother got kidnapped, twice. Once gettin’ stabbed nearly to death, lookin’ after her friend and hookin’ her star to me.”

“I haven’t forgotten that, Dad. And I’d erase that for you and Tyra if I could, but I can’t. That said, bottom line with that, if she washed her hands of Lanie when Lanie made stupid choices, or you because what she felt for you couldn’t survive the life you lead, you wouldn’t have wanted her and obviously you wouldn’t have gone on to build the life you have with her. In other words, you wouldn’t have it any other way and you went in knowin’ just that. I don’t know what’s gonna go down with Rebel. We haven’t even had a date yet. But just so you know, I’m goin’ in knowin’ what I’m getting into. And if the promise of her is real, heads up. Because I already know I want just that.”

Tack studied him for a few beats.

Then he nodded.

Right.

Rush knew his father.

His father knew him.

It had been Tack who’d nicknamed him Rush in the first place.

That was done.

Time to move on.

“She’s givin’ money to Harrietta Turnbull, seein’ as Harrietta told her she could get Chew to confess to her friend’s murder.”

Tack’s mouth tightened.

Yeah.

That had been his reaction.

“She knows she’s bein’ played now and that’s gonna stop. But she says Harrietta is also in with Valenzuela,” Rush continued.

That made his father’s eyebrows rise. “Seriously?”

Rush nodded. “Rebel thinks it’s also because Valenzuela wants Chew, and Harrietta is dangling him at them both.”

“Just when you think this shit can’t get more fucked up, it does,” Tack muttered.

“And there’s another suspect in Diane Ragowski’s murder. It’s Digger Benson of Bounty.”

“Shit, fuck,” Tack growled.

“Yeah. That’s not a coincidence, Digger and Chew both goin’ at that woman.”

Tack shook his head. “Bad blood between those two, Rush. Back in the day, Chew was taken on by Chaos, Digger was a huge pass. They were tight. Chew scraped him off for his new Club. Digger wasn’t a fan of that.”

“Stands to reason they’d make amends after Chew renounced the Club, wanted to see us hurt and set about doin’ that.”

Tack lifted his chin but said, “Doesn’t jive, Rush. Wouldn’t put it past Chew not to mind sharing. But the reason Digger was a pass for Chaos was that even back then, with Crank in charge, he was not Chaos material. Man’s a deviant. I had to call it, straight-up pedophile. Saw pictures of her. Diane Ragowski would not be his thing. She was beaten down by drugs, but she was very much a woman.”

“She was dressed in a school uniform when she died, Dad,” Rush reminded him.