Page 46 of Rough Patch

Autumn shrugged. “Not my day to keep track.” She walked to the other end of the bar and smiled at Hamilton. Hamilton smiled back, as much as Hamilton ever smiled, anyway, and Sage sat beside Grier.

“So what’s the plan?”

He didn’t have one. “Kind of hoping you had one.”

Sage twisted his chair and leaned back against the bar, his elbow dangerously close to Grier’s bottle. And with nothing else to do but sit there and think and drink, Grier took a long pull from his beer.

“We need to figure out the end game and work our way backward.” As if Grier wouldn’t understand his thinking, he continued. “You know, what’s he getting in the end?” To hurt Grier was the obvious answer. Obvious to Grier, anyway. But Sage went on. “Wouldn’t be the club. These guys are loyal as hell to Fiona… and to you as long as you’re married to her.” He bobbed his head from one side to the other. “So, that’s good and bad. If he kills her, there’ll be moves against you. But why would he keep her alive otherwise?” Grier glared and Sage held up his hands. “Sorry. Just spitballing here. What if it’s about our, um… clientele? He wants the business Fiona controls.” Sage nodded, his smile pleased. “Yeah. That’s gotta be it. He wants her for the business.”

“Maybe.”

Sage turned back to the bar, signaled for a beer from Amber then turned to Grier. “No, it has to be. And he was going to take your baby to make her give him the information.”

It was plausible. Reasonable, even if Sedotal turned out to be the brother Grier had never had. “Yeah.”

“Although the Thug didn’t say ‘take the baby’. He said, ‘kill the baby’. And Fiona would bleed him if he hurt your kid.” Sage drilled his fingers on the bar. “Shit.”

Grier sighed. “Jez is my mom.”

Sage nodded. “I know. She mentioned it.”

“Willy Carr is my dad.” The rest, Carr being Tyler Sedotal’s father, was common knowledge.

It took a couple of seconds but Sage’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. “Sedotal is your brother?” When Grier nodded, Sage puffed his cheeks and blew out slowly. “Holy shit.”

Grier nodded. “Yeah. That was pretty much how it hit me, too. Except my drunk wife told me.”

Sage whistled under his breath. “No wonder.”

Not that he really cared, but it was a conversation. He probably needed to take some part in it lest it lose its status. “No wonder what?”

“The way she watches you. Jez, not Fiona. I mean Fiona watches you, but different. She undresses you with her eyes.”

And just like that, Grier missed his wife even more. “Seriously. Move on.”

“Jez watches you like she wants to follow you around and make sure you don’t scratch up your knees or bump your head. Like a mom would watch her kid.” He shrugged. “But lately, since this shit started, she’s been a wreck. Door opens, she’s reaching for her gun. She knows you’re in danger.”

And never said anything? “Where’s she at?”

“I haven’t seen her all day.”

Jez had her own house, but she spent more time behind the bar at the club than the total of the guys spent on the other side. “Come on.” Grier hopped off the stool and stood. “Hey, Hamilton.” When Hamilton looked up, Grier waved him over. “Come on. We have to go. Now.”

If not the wife, the mother? Fuck.

The wheels made that slick hard brake sound as it touched down and Fiona looked out of the window. Woah. This was one small airport they’d landed at. She admired Sage’s planning. Quite the little mastermind, not flying her into a commercial airport where… where she would be surrounded by security personnel, the ATF, probably ICE agents, cops, people in general.

She looked out of the window again. This was a hangar in the middle of a group of fields. She reached for her cell and remembered that Grier had made her leave it in Pine Hill. She pulled the inflight phone from the wall that connected her to the cockpit.

“Sit back and relax for a few minutes, Mrs. Owen, and we’ll get you situated.”

They’d been in the air less than three hours. And what the actual fuck did he mean by situated? She unbuckled her seat belt and stood, saw a pair of ugly blue pumps in the rear of the plane. The fact they were attached to a pair of legs prone and motionless made Fiona’s breaths come fast and hard, a pant.

“What’s going on?” Her demand into the receiver was met by silence, but the cockpit door opened and a man dressed, not as a pilot but as a biker, complete with leather and a gun in a hip holster, walked out and down the aisle. He was older, beaten by the years, but she would have guessed him about fifty maybe a little older, but their lifestyle didn’t age men well.

And with danger imminent, she didn’t have time to consider his looks for another second. She fell back into her seat, putting her body between this asshole and her baby. He really would have to kill her to get to London. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Oh don’t worry, beautiful. We’re gonna get to know each other really well. Now. You do as I say, and you and your little bundle of joy get to walk off the plane. You try me, and you’re walking off alone because I’m going to shoot her, right in her pretty little face.” When Fiona didn’t move, he pulled the pistol from its spot and aimed it at London.