His father’s mouth twisted as he said, “School uniform and schoolgirl are two different things, Rush.”

“Can’t say I know how a degenerate’s mind works, but maybe he took what he could get. But bottom line, there’s the link between Bounty and Valenzuela and Chew. It’s Digger, and they got more in common than twisting Digger’s club up in this shit.”

Tack drew in breath and replied, “I’ll tell Mitch and Slim.”

“When Rebel’s out, we need to hand all of this shit over to them.”

“Rush,” Tack sighed.

“Valenzuela is off Chaos. We can retreat from the ten-mile radius back to the five-mile radius we claim as ours and hand criminal shit off to people who get paid to deal with criminals. Then when it’s all done, we can quit with that vigilante gig altogether and just run Ride.”

“How ’bout we table this until we see the end of it by finding Chew?”

“How ’bout we let Slim and Mitch or Hank and Eddie find Chew, we get Rebel out, and see the end of it?” Rush returned.

“Son—”

“Dead bodies on our picnic table, Dad?” Rush pushed.

Tack leaned back and aimed a staredown at his son.

Rush was no longer eleven.

His father’s staredowns didn’t work anymore.

So he kept at him.

“Natalie dead?”

“Not our doing,” Tack growled.

“Valenzuela’s got the bones of two men Chaos took out. Every brother who was a brother back then is on the line for that. Especially Hound.”

“It’s been nearly twenty years and those bones have been moved, Rush. They won’t have the crime scenes. They don’t have the weapons. They have no witnesses. Fuck, son, they haven’t even identified those skulls.”

“One of those skulls being Crank, they find that out, they’ll look to Chaos. And Chew knows who they are, where they were done, and they’ll eventually have him.”

“He wasn’t there. He doesn’t know dick. And even if he leads them to the scenes, they’ve been scrubbed. There’ll be nothing to find.”

“We’re vulnerable.”

Tack uncrossed his arms, straightened from the car and put his hands to his hips. “As much as this sucks, Rush, it’s a fact and you gotta learn it. You can be tough. You can be badass. You can be armed to your teeth. You can be trained. You can be vigilant. But in one way or another, you’ll always be vulnerable. It’d take a goddamned abacus to count all the ways I’m vulnerable. But I’ll share five right now. Tyra. Tab. Ride. Cut. And you. Only choice you got is to protect your vulnerabilities and still get the fuckin’ job done. You could pull back, do nothin’, let someone else take care of it, but that way you couldn’t know the job got done and done right. We are not pullin’ back, doin’ nothin’, and lettin’ someone else deal with our problem. We’re gonna make sure the job gets done.”

“At what price?” Rush clipped.

Tack leaned back. “I can’t see the future. I can only do what I can do. Protect my vulnerabilities and get the fuckin’ job done.”

They stared at each other.

This was not the first time they’d had this chat.

It probably would not be the last.

His dad’s voice lowered when he said, “You were a kid. You had no stake in this. No say when it all went down. I can see you needin’ to pull out and lettin’ the men—”

Oh . . .

Fuck no.

“I’m Chaos,” Rush bit. “It’s all in or not at all. This is the way the Club goes, I go with it. But I don’t have to like it and I don’t have to keep my mouth shut about not likin’ it.”

Another lip quirk before, “Nope. You don’t have to do that.”

Rush was finished with this conversation.

“Right, I gotta get on what I wanted to get done on this car today and then get to the market to get food for Rebel. We done?”

“We’re done.”

Rush turned back to the car.

He felt his father didn’t leave so he looked to him.

“Best thing I’ve ever done,” Tack muttered when he did.

“What?” Rush asked.

“Or one of the best, but it’s in the top five.”

“What?” Rush repeated.

“Give that to me. Tyra. Tabby. Your brothers. All of ’em, blood or patch.”

Rush turned fully to him and bit off, “What?”

Tack stared at him a beat before he said, “I made you selfless and unrelenting.”

And on that, his father turned on his boot walked away.

Rebel

Lunch break from the porn set with Amy and Paul at their house.

Why had I agreed to this?

Probably because Amy had sounded desperate.

And when I showed, what I feared was proved to be true.

She was desperate.

It was noon and Paul was drunk.

So she was that kind of desperate.

I sat at their kitchen table with the delicious-looking turkey, jack and roasted chile panini in front of me and stared at Paul.

“I got this panini maker and we’ve been having such fun with it,” Amy babbled. “Haven’t we, Paul?”

Paul stood at the kitchen sink, staring out the window over it, his face totally blank.

God, he killed me.

He just freaking killed me.

“Haven’t we, Paul?” Amy asked louder.

“Yep,” he said, and I knew he had no idea what he was agreeing to.

The panini maker was the excuse behind why I just had to come over for lunch.

Why I really had to come over for lunch was because Paul was wasted, it was noon, and Amy only had a part-time job, but Paul had a full-time one and he was not at his job. He was at home. Wasted. At noon.

“Paul?” I called.

It was my voice he turned to.

And his face got soft when his eyes semi-focused on me.

“What, honey?”

I wondered if he saw me.

Or if he saw his daughter.

“You good?” I asked.

You good?

Lame!

“Yeah, Rebel.” His eyes listed to his wife. “The bird feeder needs filling. I’m gonna go do that.”

And then he moved unsteadily to the back door.

“But your lunch is right here,” Amy said to his back. “And Rebel is right here.”

“Later,” he muttered. “I’ll be right back.”

He disappeared out the door.

He so totally would not be right back.

And Amy’s gambit of asking me to lunch did not sober up her husband.

I gave it a moment before I said, “He looks like he’s losing weight.”

“Yeah, well, there’s a lot of calories in booze but apparently, if that’s your sole caloric intake, you lose weight,” Amy snapped, staring down at her panini.

I watched her, a little stunned she put it out there when she’d been not talking about it for months, but totally at a loss as to what to do about it now that she had.

Before I could come up with anything, her attention came to me.

“They have to find who did that to Diane,” she bit out.

“Amy,” I said softly.

“What are those two detectives doing?” she spat. “Probably out at donut shops or diners, flirting with the waitresses.”

“They’re both married, Amy. Happily,” I told her.

“So? Men who look like those two do? They probably step out on them.”

Boy, she did not know Hank and Eddie.

“You know, I’ve kept in touch with them,” I thought it safe to share. “And they have not lost interest in Diane’s case. They just need to, you know, track down one of the suspects so they can interview him. The thing is, frustratingly but not surprisingly, he’s not feeling like being found.”

“Well, get this,” she demanded. “Lieutenant Nightingale has a brother who’s a private investigator and from his listing on Yelp, he’s really good at it. I bet Hank Nightingale will light a fire under himself if I hire his brother to do his job for him.”

Hmm . . .