Page 2 of Maverick
My pen dropped. “Wait. You’re saying he was fine three days ago, but now he thinks he’s on a farm and is no longer able to live by himself?” I was no doctor, but that didn’t seem right. Atlantic Shores was a small town; they probably struggled to find good help. “Can I get a second opinion? Maybe transfer him over to Duke?”
“You could, but given the fact that he attacked one of our orderlies, we can’t risk transferring him unless there’s a medical emergency.”
“He did what?” My dad was no brawler. I couldn’t imagine him attacking anyone, let alone some poor hospital worker.
“Perhaps if you could come here in person to see him, you’d have a better understanding of the situation.”
“And if I can’t?” I mean, I wasn’t a total bitch who would leave my dad stuck in a hospital. But it was a four-hour drive and I hadto meet with my CEO tomorrow to go over my initial numbers. We were due to present to the board in a few weeks.
Okay, maybe I was a total bitch. My parents divorced when I was seven. My mom never looked back and was living her best life with husband number four in a retirement community in Florida. Dad never remarried. I wasn’t even sure if he’d dated. He didn’t have anyone. Except me, I guess. And I loved him; we just weren’t that close anymore.
“There’s also the matter of his medication. You may find that once he’s away from the hospital environment, his mental state clears up. We see that a lot with our older patients. But he’s on eight different prescriptions that have specific dosage instructions. I suspect he hasn’t been taking those properly, which is how he ended up here in the first place. Without his heart medication, he will go into cardiac arrest. It’s just a matter of time.”
Cardiac arrest? As in a heart attack? What the actual fuck was going on down there? I shook my head and took a deep breath.
“Let me settle up a few things, and I’ll be there in the morning.”
2
Maverick
“Did the rogue give you any intel on the threat?” I turned toward my enforcer, Bear.
He shook his head, scratching his dark beard. “Not much. Just the same ol’ shit, ‘he’s gonna get you,’ blah, blah, blah.”
I shrugged. It wasn’t a surprise. Another MC recently moved into our territory. At first, it seemed as though they were attempting a takeover. Once we stopped that fantasy, their ‘president’ made out like there was more to the story. Like someone else was calling the shots and the Diablos MC were pawns. But who this silent leader was, we hadn’t been able to find out. Nor had we figured out what the plan was. Other than selling drugs that killed their clientele. Which seemed like a pretty shitty business plan. Unless that first wave was proof of concept—dipping their toe in the water to see if the customer base was there. And if it was, maybe they’d come in with a bigger operation. But we were just guessing. Until this mystery man played his next card, there wasn’t much we could do.
“Has he been evicted from his room?” I asked.
We were in church, our meeting space within the Exiled Reapers MC clubhouse. We should be able to talk freely, but you could never be too certain. Especially when we had an open video feed to Central Prison. Baller assured me they could only hear us when we actually logged in and set up the feed to talk to Sinner, our incarcerated club president, but who’s to say they didn’t install some virus thing into our camera so they could always listen in?
I should probably lay off the spy novels.
“Yeah, he moved out.” The corner of Bear’s mouth twitched beneath his dark beard. “And we’ve got some scraps for Old Larry’s pigs.”
Now it was my turn to grin. “I’ll take them. Any other business? Blade, how’s the bar this month?”
Our treasurer flipped open his notebook. “We’re finally turning a profit on the bar. Pixie’s done an amazing job as manager. She streamlined the menu and cut back on a lot of the waste. So far, her ideas for bringing in paying customers have been spot on. If she keeps this up, she may get the bar revenue to exceed some of our other businesses.”
Bear beamed at the praise for his old lady. “Damn right she will.”
“But for the moment,” Blade continued, “it’s enough to clean the laundry.”
I took a deep breath, a weight lifting from my shoulders. We had a couple of very lucrative, but very illegal, side ventures. A few months ago, no one in their right mind would have believed the bar generated the revenue that we claimed it did. “I gotta admit, I was a little skeptical of her Senior Thursdays idea. I mean, why the hell would a bunch of senior citizens want to come to a biker bar? But it’s honestly become a highlight of myweek. Although, someone needs to keep a closer eye on Baller around all those cougars.”
The men snickered and Baller groaned.
“Come on, man, my gran’s in that group.”
I raised an eyebrow. “And you’ve never banged one of your granny’s friends?”
A blush filled the man’s face. “I mean…”
The room erupted in peals of laughter.
Baller closed his laptop and shook his head, accepting the good-natured ribbing. “It was a while ago. And it was with one of her interns, not a member of the bridge brigade.”
“Speaking of cards, how are we doing with the casino idea?” Several months ago, Stitch, our medic, was passing through a town and found an underground casino attached to a popular bar. He brought the idea back here and, while we liked it, at the time the bar wasn’t popular enough to hide the action the casino would get. But now, we were in a position to revisit the idea.
