Shelter From The Storm (The Bare Bones MC Book 6) (5 page)

“But a good man to have in a hard place,” Slayer pointed out.

“Anyway,” said Lytton, “my wife June is going back up the mountain shortly if you want to follow her. She can show you some turnouts, some dirt roads that no one uses, if it’s solitude and quiet you want.”

That did sound fucking good, actually, but it didn’t fit in with my game plan. “I think I’ll check out the vortexes if you don’t mind.” One of them probably led me past the tux rental shop.

I nearly ate my words, though, when the side door opened and a bosomy, down-to-earth girl entered. Man, she was banging hot. My cock even started to plump, watching her boobs jiggle in their underwire encasings. She had some biker ink, but her Birkenstocks betrayed her as a sensible gal. Then she kissed Lytton, and I had to look away. Getting caught up with women was
never
part of
any
game plan, anyway.

Lytton introduced her as his wife, June. I took my Coke from Sock Monkey as Lytton told me, “June’s going back up to our plantation. She basically runs it for me, so I can be more hands-on in the dispensary.”

“But the new girl’s working out real well,” said June. “I want Lytton to take some time off, maybe even a vacation with me.”

“As if that’ll happen.” Lytton grinned.

“It will. This gal’s got a degree from Davis in plant biology, so she knows her shit. In fact, I’m bringing her up there now, if you don’t mind, baby. She has some ideas for new CBD hybrids that are blowing my mind, and she wants to see the grow.”

Biochemistry
. My mind instantly went to the test tubes and chemistry-type stuff in the background of Flavia Brooks’ photo. Slayer had told me the Pure and Easy tux rental was owned by The Bare Bones MC. It was entirely possible that—

Bingo.

The side door opened to reveal a rectangle of light. I knew before even seeing her features that this short but curvy silhouette belonged to Flavia Brooks.

My destiny.

“June, can I get a bottle of water to go here?”

My mark.

PIPPA

“S
ure, just ask Sock Monkey. He’s the bartender,” June told me.

Leaning on the bar, I lifted my chin at the Prospect. “’Sup?” I’d developed a casual way of speaking while being held with the Joneses. Since being freed, I’d enjoyed the sun and wind, bicycling, Krav Maga, and even snowboarding again. But I still talked like a thug. My bar order, however, wasn’t. I had to follow June in my own cage so I could come back later to my tiny apartment and—well, lately I’d taken up knitting. That was something Flavia Brooks had never done. Flavia was a tomboy. A gritty, tough-as-nails scientist. But Pippa Lofting had to keep a low profile. “Bottle of water. Unopened.”

Behind me, I heard June tell some men, “Pippa has been experimenting with developing a hybrid that has lots of CBD and very little THC. This, obviously, could be very attractive to people who are allergic to the properties of THC.”

“Obviously,” said Lytton as I walked over to their pool table. “That would be great to offer a purer form.”

Two unknown guys were with Lytton. I’d grown used to assessing people at a glance. Believe you me, being held captive by the Joneses, every assessment turned out to be “he’s a worthless bone-headed moronic criminal.” These guys were different, though. Maybe they weren’t even Boners. The tall, dashing Latin guy had wavy, highly glossy salt and pepper hair. His ingratiating smile revealed capped teeth. And his white belt and shoes placed him firmly in the 70s, maybe his fondest glory days. But he seemed nice, and I shook his hand first.

“Pippa Lofting,” I said. I’d chosen my last name because I used to love Dr. Doolittle books. And I was hoping to eventually, some day, regain a sense of wonder and childhood.

“Santiago Slayer,” he said smoothly, with a very thick Mexican accent.

Boy, if that wasn’t a cartel name, my name wasn’t Pippa Lofting. I remembered Randy Blankenship’s warning to stay away from known felons.

So now I had to shake the other guy’s hand. A pointless ordeal, since I’d probably never see him again.

“Fox Isherwood.”

Now this guy stunned me to the core. Why, I had to figure out. It was his ice blue eyes, assessing me. He looked at me skeptically, the way people do when they’ve heard something about you, and it’s not quite jibing with what they’re looking at. He had a fine nose, and the very pale skin of the Irish or Scots. Didn’t seem to fit in a biker club.

Fox’s hand gripped mine a fraction of a second longer than was necessary. “You’re some kind of scientist then?”

What?
“What?”

He released my hand, and the warmth lingered. “June said you were experimenting with CBD and THC.”

“Oh. Yes.” Pippa Lofting had that plant biology degree. “Right. Plant biology.”

June bubbled. “Can you imagine she was working at our tux rental store? Someone with a plant biology degree is right up our alley!”

Fox dug his fists deeper into his jeans pockets and said, “Yeah, you know what? Maybe I
will
take you up on that offer, Lytton. Let these gals show me some Mormon Lake sights. Sounds relaxing.”

We were supposed to take this paleface sightseeing? I had no idea how he was connected to the club—he didn’t wear a cut—but I didn’t need any lookie-loo getting in my way. I wanted to impress June with my pot knowledge. It actually wasn’t that extensive, just what I’d found time to study in the Corpus Christi cook house in between making batches of meth. But my science background was solid. I could fake it.

I was saved from playing tour guide when June said, “Well, we’re sort of in a rush, that’s the situation. I wanted to get up there to show her the CBD grow house before it gets dark.”

Fox frowned. “Isn’t there lighting inside it?”

“Well yes, but…”

Lytton stepped in to help his wife. “I get it. You girls are eager to talk shop. That’s June. Once she gets started—”

“Oh, but I
love
talking shop!” I said. I was just desperate to keep my new job. Blankenship had tentatively approved it, and it was ten times better than the evening wear rental place. And I really did have a great idea about CBD plants. I’d grown a few with an earthy aftertaste and a fruity aroma that was highly effective in masking the pain of a fractured rib from the day I was thrown into that awful warehouse. As a side effect, the burning and tingling in my feet from neuropathy almost vanished when I smoked it. I even had a name for it. Dabba Doo. That’s what I called my dog Monstro who I missed with a passion. The Department of Justice had given her to my sister Shelda, and I wasn’t allowed to know where
they
were, and so on.

“Yes,” agreed June, her eyes all lit up. “Let’s get going. You got your water? Good. Follow me.”

On the way out the side door, I bumped into a guy who fairly
reeked
of marijuana. This was going to be a good town for a dispensary, I could tell.

“Well,
hello, gorgeous
,” said the asswad.

I frowned at him. He was kind of a pudgy guy with frizzy hair cut into a clumsy pompadour. You could tell if he didn’t get it cut all the time, it would bloom into a ’fro. He looked like one of those high school losers who were a member of the student council and the chess club and tried to be cool by wearing Ray-Bans and smoking weed. Well, some things never changed.

“We’re in a rush, Wolf,” called June.

“Say hi to Tracy for me!” Wolf called.

Within ten minutes, we were snaking through a gloriously flaming canyon. The steeply banked walls and narrow road gave the appearance of shooting through an Egyptian temple, where brilliant sandstone obelisks towered above. I could’ve gone on and on there forever, but soon we popped out onto a plateau studded with gnarled Ponderosa pine. As if on a gentle roller coaster, I followed June over softly undulating fields of black-eyed susans.

It was starting to feel pretty good, living in Arizona. As long as I didn’t somehow blow it with this dispensary job, which paid about five bucks an hour more than the tuxedo job, I could see having a decent life. For the first time since the warehouse raid in Corpus Christi, things seemed to be on track. As long as I avoided all known felons and kept my head down, things would proceed apace.

I could even see finding a boyfriend. That fucker Russ had been the last one I’d banged, at least voluntarily. The past hundred men I’d been in contact with hadn’t made a good impression on me. There was one Jones affiliate who dropped stuff off at the warehouse. He always looked at me with the pity one reserved for that poor elephant in the zoo, stuck in a cramped enclosure, doomed to roam the same rocks and clumps of grass for all eternity. That guy had probably been decent. We held conversations in rudimentary Spanish. I knew he couldn’t handle coffee, it gave him the jitters. He was single. And he liked
chalupas.
He brought me some from a roach coach a few times. Then one day I heard rumors of a hijacking of a Jones truck, some couriers murdered. I never saw the guy again.

But I was lonely, and I was straight. I wasn’t about to bitterly turn to women in my rage. My mother had been like that, claiming that all men were worthless idiots, and I was determined
not
to be like her. Every time I found myself enjoying classical music, eating tofu, or gardening, I had to mentally slap myself.
Stop it, stop it
. She’d been such a violent, unpredictable, cold bitch. I’d forged a good career for myself just to get away from her. I’d still been paying back student loans when the Joneses nabbed me. Hah. The joke was on them.

Three times in my life, everything had been yanked from under me, my life thrown topsy-turvy on its head. The years when my witch of a mother ruled with an iron, erratic, and crazy fist. I’d gotten out of there age fifteen. The second, when Russ sold me out to the Joneses in exchange for wiping out a drug debt. Yeah, they’d wiped it out all right. A few months after taking me captive, they couldn’t
wait
to come gloating to me about how they’d popped off Russell, while he was sitting primly in his dress uniform, no less, watching a parade. But they still kept me captive to churn out meth.

The last and most recent upheaval was when the ATF turned me over to the DOJ, who in turn, gave me to the US Marshals Office. I’d had enough turmoil. If I could just keep my head down and not draw any attention to myself, I could hold onto this job and maybe even get a better apartment than the tiny thing over The Bum Steer.

Was
that
the lake? That puny little pond?
Huh
. Made me wonder what that alabaster-skinned guy had been so eager to see up here. Having nothing else to think about—the cassette tape deck in the Corolla had been broken when I bought it—I thought of Fox Isherwood. He had very unusually handsome features. A pointed nose, a sly mouth, like he knew something no one else did. Arching eyebrows that told everyone how skeptical he was of them.

He wasn’t dark, but he was tall, with a very arrogant bearing that intrigued me. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so quick to dismiss him…

What? I was wrenched out of my reverie by the whine of a cop alarm, the flashing of its cherry in my rearview mirror.
Good gracious, Ignatius
. Of course WITSEC had provided me with all fresh documentation carrying Pippa’s new identity. It was just a major drag to get pulled over. June didn’t even seem to notice and kept on going.

“Shitpickle.” I muttered to myself, but pasted on a smile when the motorcycle cop came to my window.

“License and registration,” he commanded, without telling me what he thought I was doing. Even before my Jones ordeal, I’d had a massive loathing for cops.

Like an asshole, he took my paperwork back to his bike without giving me any more information. I blew a raspberry of exasperation and grabbed my phone to text June.

PIPPA:
Just got pulled over, probably for speeding. Don’t worry. I’ll catch up with you.

For lack of anything else to do, I checked other texts. But who other than Emily at the tuxedo store and Madison Illuminati knew my number? I sure did miss getting texts. I had a very active social life back in Corpus Christi. The hours at the Coast Guard base were long as we worked on a very important jet fuel remediation project, so we partied hearty the rest of the time. Pure and Easy was as quiet as a last breath compared to Texas, as I struggled to get a grip on my new identity.

What was taking him so god damned long? I looked in my side view mirror and noticed that another motorcycle had pulled over.
Great. Two cops now.

But the new guy wasn’t a cop. He was a tall, lanky guy wearing one of those slouch beanies and a black leather jacket, and…
Shit on a shingle. It’s Fox Isherwood.

I still didn’t dare get out—cops and their itchy trigger fingers had been all over the news lately—so I watched the scene play out in the mirror.

Fox looked like a hood, but he seemed to be reasoning with the cop. That, or discussing some stupid ballgame. They were laughing and chatting, and Fox even seemed to be handing the cop a business card! What the hell? Was Fox someone important? I knew so little about the outlaw motorcycle club I had inadvertently become entwined with. In fact, if I was Randy Blankenship, I wouldn’t have let me work at the dispensary.