“He’s been spending a lot of time outside Daddy’s suite lately,” Noose said.

  Bulldog nodded. “That he has.”

  “Talk to us, Vice,” someone called. “What’s going on?”

  Bulldog wasn’t surprised that they didn’t know, especially the newer patches or those looking to patch up.

  “I have physical evidence that Daddy’s been stealing money from us,” he said. “He’s been hiding club funds, and as we all know, that’s money that could be going to us, the upkeep of this building, or our charitable causes.”

  As a club, they had to declare something they were raising money for. Daddy signed a check once a year to the Boys and Girls Club of Northern Michigan, and on the books, all of the club’s proceeds went to that organization.

  “Evidence?” Crawler asked. “What evidence?”

  “He’s been employing runners,” Bulldog said, making sure to talk loud enough so everyone could hear. “To move drugs and people outside of club procedures. The delivery yesterday that was scheduled for today? That was an outside job, with a company he simply calls the Runners. He gets all the proceeds. Not the club. Not us. Not our charity.”

  Murmurs started moving through the crowd, and Bulldog gave them time to talk. Just because they wore leather and could handle a huge motorcycle didn’t mean they didn’t need to talk through some things.

  “Not only that,” he said. “But I have proof that Derrick Lydell came to Daddy and wanted to be released from his contract. Daddy took back all the money we’d paid him, then he put a bullet through his chest and dumped him on a boat. That was not an accident.”

  “You have proof of that?” Rooster asked.

  “The medical examiner said Derrick had a hole in his chest. He thought it might be from a piece of shrapnel from when the engine exploded. But it’s a bullet hole.”

  “How can you prove that?” someone asked.

  “I have the autopsy report,” Bulldog said. “It lists another possibility as a gunshot wound, most likely a thirty-eight.”

  And everyone knew Daddy preferred his thirty-eight caliber pistol to any other gun. He owned three of them, actually, and he sometimes carried one around in the waistband of his jeans if he was feeling particularly punchy.

  “I’m calling the contest vote tomorrow night at church,” he said. “I’m willing to talk to anyone who wants to know more. All patched members get a vote, and we need complete unanimity to remove Daddy as president of this club.”

  Satisfied and honestly scared, Bulldog nodded. He glanced over to the door, where he caught sight of Redheart leaning in the doorway, his arms folded and a frown on his face. He nodded once and slipped away again.

  Bulldog’s heart ricocheted around inside his chest. But words couldn’t be recalled. Everything had been laid open. And whatever came had been coming for a long time anyway.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Dani didn’t leave the hotel on Saturday. She took Jonas to the pool, and she told Jodi she’d had to leave her house because of some “unusual activity” next door.

  Her sister called in the next moment, and Dani once again felt like her skin was stitched on wrong.

  “Hey,” she said wearily, because if she didn’t answer, Jodi would hound her until she did. Or worse, track her phone and show up with both kids in tow.

  “Unusual activity? Explain.”

  “Okay, Mom,” Dani said, sighing.

  “Sorry,” Jodi said quickly. “That was harsh. I’m just worried about you. This new boyfriend of yours—”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” Dani said, though she’d been kissing him pretty passionately to just label him a friend.

  Jodi started laughing. “Come on, Dani. He so is, and we both know it.”

  Dani smiled, because she rather liked the idea of having a bad boy biker boyfriend. In the very next moment, guilt flooded her.

  “You went quiet,” Jodi said.

  “I can’t have a boyfriend,” Dani said. “I’m married.”

  “No, honey, you’re not,” Jodi said slowly. “And really, Dani, this will sound harsh too, but it’s time to move on. Jonas is only five. You’re only thirty-eight. You have plenty of time to spend your whole life with someone.”

  When her sister said it, Dani believed her. But a war still waged in her heart.

  “What was the unusual activity?” Jodi asked, and Dani couldn’t keep secrets from her sister. She told her about the rocks and her neighbor, the middle-of-the-night escape to the hotel, and how Tyson wanted her to lay low until things blew over at the club.

  “Are you going to keep seeing him?” Jodi asked. “How can you go back to that place?”

  Dani thought about the money she needed. For a few days, it sure had been nice to go to bed without worrying about how she was going to pay for breakfast in the morning.

  “I don’t know,” she finally said. Jonas lay on the other bed, his chest rising and falling evenly as he napped. He’d woken up very early—hours ago—and she wasn’t surprised he’d fallen back asleep before breakfast.

  She couldn’t put him in any danger, and she had a tough decision to make. Since Reid’s death, she’d gotten very good at making hard decisions, sometimes in the very moment something happened.

  But with this, she couldn’t. Tyson had become an anchor in her life, which was strange after only a few days. But he’d protected her, helped her, provided her exactly the handhold she’d needed, precisely when she’d needed it.

  “Well, I don’t think you should,” Jodi said. “There are other jobs out there.”

  “Not in Grand Central,” Dani said, her mind automatically moving down the highway to Forbidden Lake. There seemed to be plenty of jobs there, with more coming all the time. It was a bigger town, with more resources, better beachfront, and closer proximity to the State Parks. The thriving cherry capital of the world had always been shinier than Grand Central, and Dani had once imagined herself living there.

  But Reid was buried here, in Grand Central, and she didn’t want to erase him completely from her life. From her son’s life.

  She’d grown up here, and though she and Jodi had sold their parents’ house, she still visited them at the cemetery. Her whole life was here.

  “Maybe it’s time for a change,” Jodi said, and Dani nodded though her sister couldn’t see her.

  “Maybe.”

  “So what are you doing today?” Jodi asked.

  “Nothing,” Dani said. “Well, maybe something if Tyson calls.”

  Jodi sighed, and Dani decided it was time to get off the phone. She said good-bye to her sister and hung up, sighing as she looked over at her boy again. She couldn’t help her attraction to Tyson Pike. The man was pure muscle but also made with flaws and human emotions.

  She may have only known him for a short time, but they’d spent a lot of hours together, cooped up in that office. And on the beach yesterday….

  Dani had to fan herself just thinking about him in those board shorts, that ink snaking all over his torso.

  She pulled out her phone and sent him a quick text, but he didn’t respond. She hoped he was safe. She hoped she’d have a house to return to. She hoped she was making the right decision by not breaking up with him right that second.

  The next morning, she hadn’t heard back from Tyson. She texted him again. Can Jonas and I go home?

  He still didn’t answer. She called down to the front desk to find out how many nights Tyson had paid for, and they could stay until tomorrow morning.

  Jonas sat in the tub, singing his heart out as he splashed his toys in the water. Dani sat on the closed toilet and played with her phone, flipping it over and over in her hand, willing Tyson to call or text. He’d said he’d check in with her that day, and her frustration continued to grow with every passing minute.

  Jonas whined for breakfast, and Dani decided they could leave the hotel. “Get your backpack, bud. Let’s walk over to the diner.” He cheered, and even Dani had forgotten that it was summer and sunny outside. She squinted into the bright light outside and held her son’s hand as they walked down the block.

  Normal Sunday morning traffic drove up and down the streets of Grand Central, and Dani looked around at the familiar buildings and places. She’d loved this town, and she’d never wanted to leave.

  The sound of a motorcycle engine rumbled behind her, and she turned to see if it was Tyson, her pulse spiking.

  But it wasn’t him. The man riding the motorcycle didn’t even look at her, and a blip of foolishness moved through her. She held her head high and didn’t look at any more traffic as she continued toward the diner.

  Sweat streamed down her back, between her shoulder blades, and she blessed whoever had invented the air conditioner when she walked into the diner.

  “Two?” the hostess asked, already collecting two menus and walking away from the station.

  “Yes,” Dani said anyway, moving to follow her. She settled into the booth with Jonas, unwrapping his crayons for him and handing him both of them. He started scribbling on his paper menu, and she read upside down to tell him his options from the kid’s list.

  “Chocolate chip pancakes,” he said, and Dani started looking at her own menu. She decided on the strawberry French toast and set her menu aside. With only a five-year-old for conversation, Dani’s options were limited. She glanced around the diner, which didn’t seem to be at peak operating capacity. It was the end of the breakfast rush, and she saw several people she knew from around town.

  And several she didn’t, including a man wearing a denim jacket with the sleeves cut off. She pulled in a breath and held it. She’d seen several of the bikers at the Hawks’ clubhouse wearing a jacket like that, and she quickly looked away.

  She pulled her hair out of the ponytail she’d put it into and let it fall between her face the biker’s. Who was he? Had he followed her here or had he already been here?

  She couldn’t see the back of his jacket to see if he wore a big hawk like the ones she’d seen at the clubhouse. But he was facing her, a couple of rows over, at a table. He had a book on the table in front of him, and he didn’t lift his eyes from it no matter how much she stared at him.

  Her waitress arrived, blocking her view of the biker. “Do you guys know what you want?”

  Dani ordered for both of them, and the woman walked away.

  The biker was gone. Book and all. Dani scanned the diner, hoping to see him. It was always better to have eyes on an enemy than not know where they were.

  Her heart wouldn’t settle down, and she wanted to fly far away. As it was, she didn’t even have a car, and she couldn’t make a very fast escape on foot. With a five-year-old.

  She looked at her phone, wondering if she should make a call right now. Maybe she wouldn’t even have to say anything to Tyson. Maybe he already knew where all of his players were, just like he’d known about the disturbance on her block.

  Her quick decision-making skills came into play, and she tapped out a quick text to Tyson. I’m at the diner for breakfast. There was a biker here. Do I go? Stay? Coincidence?

  The message flew across cyberspace, and Dani started to settle.

  But Tyson didn’t answer.

  Their food came, and he didn’t answer.

  She couldn’t leave now without causing a scene when Jonas didn’t get his chocolate pancakes, so she stayed.

  He didn’t answer.

  She cut her son’s pancakes and poured syrup on them. She couldn’t quite get herself to take a bite of her breakfast, though the French toast looked amazing and the strawberries perfectly ripe.

  Outside the window, three motorcyclists pulled up, and a gasp flew from Dani’s mouth. She didn’t recognize any of the men, though, and someone seemed to have poured cement down her back, because she couldn’t move.

  The three men came in, but they didn’t look toward her at all. The hostess seated them in the same row of booths she sat in, on the other side of the diner. They didn’t care that she was there, and Dani told herself that she was over-reacting.

  Still, the moment Jonas said he was finished with his pancakes, Dani threw down a twenty and stood up. “Come on, bud,” she said, reaching for him. She kept a tight hold on her son’s hand as she left the diner, her eyes still watching the bikers. They didn’t glance at her.

  No one was waiting in the parking lot, and Dani walked away from the diner without an issue. But her heart pounded strangely, and she didn’t feel one bit safe until she was upstairs in the hotel, the deadbolt locked and the latch secured.

  “Can we go swimming?” Jonas asked, but Dani paced over to the window and pushed back the curtain just an inch. Her window overlooked the street, but no motorcycles drove by.

  “Mom,” Jonas whined, and Dani turned toward him.

  “Let’s get a movie on,” she said.

  “I don’t want to watch a movie,” he said. “I’ll just play with my dinosaurs.” He looked around. “Where’s my backpack?”

  “You took it to the diner,” she said, realizing they’d left it in the booth. Fear filled her and gripped her heart with icy fingers.

  “Can we go get it?”

  “Not right now,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  Dani couldn’t come up with a reason why not, other than she didn’t trust a single person beyond the walls of this hotel room. And the one person she thought she did wouldn’t text her back.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Bulldog slept for a few hours in the wee hours of Sunday morning, waking to a knock on his door sometime around seven. “Yeah, come in,” he said, groaning as he sat up in bed.

  Redheart appeared in the doorway, and Bulldog pulled in a slow breath. The other biker bent and picked up Bulldog’s shirt, tossing it to him. Bulldog pulled the shirt over his head and kept the bed between them.

  “What’s the word?” Bulldog finally asked.

  “Razor is never going to be on-board,” he said evenly, delivering the words without emotion.

  “Anyone else?”

  “With Tick gone, not really.” Redheart shrugged. “Jerome doesn’t really want to do this, but he wants to preserve the club, and he’s smart enough to know Daddy isn’t doing the right thing.”

  “Razor’s that smart too,” Bulldog said. “Any chance he won’t attend church?”

  Redheart laughed, but it wasn’t filled with happiness. That was Bulldog’s answer, and he sighed. Dani had texted and called yesterday, but Bulldog had been extraordinarily busy. He had eyes in town, and she was okay.

  She’d stayed in the hotel, and he knew today would bring her more challenges. He wasn’t an expert on five-year-olds, but even he knew a three-hundred square-foot room wasn’t going to hold Jonas.

  He wished he’d had more time to get to know the boy. More time with Dani. He realized he was thinking fatalistically, but he’d played his whole hand, and he wasn’t sure he was going to win.

  And if Redheart was to be believed, he wouldn’t win. He needed every voting member of the club to vote for Daddy’s removal if it was to happen.

  “How do we get Razor?” he asked, meeting Redheart’s eyes. He’d only been in the club for about six years, and Bulldog had liked him from the beginning. He didn’t speak a lot, and when he did, it was something important. He stayed out of the nasty stuff, and he could get information because no one really noticed when he was in the room.

  Bulldog always had though, because he was a lot like Redheart in that regard. He knew when to talk and when to listen, and maybe if he could just talk to Razor, he could get through to him.

  “The man has the name Razor for a reason,” Redheart said. “He’s dangerous, and no one really knows which way he’ll cut.”

  “I want to talk to him.” Bulldog pulled on a pair of jeans from the floor. “Do you think he’ll talk to me?”

  “He just went to bed,” Redheart said. “And that’s where I’m going too.”

  Bulldog shook his head. “No, we have work to do.”

  “I’ve been working all night,” Redheart said. “Give me a few hours. I gave you four.” He turned to leave, and Bulldog couldn’t argue with him. He’d been up late talking to everyone who wanted to talk, and Rooster had finally ended the discussion so they could all get some rest.

  “Four hours,” he called after Redheart, sighing. He showered and dressed again before heading out to the rec room. Daddy’s party had lasted most of the night, and Bulldog had a keen sense of déjà vu as he scanned the dishes, the plastic cups, the trash, the sleeping women on the couches.

  He wondered what it would take to get Daddy to leave this place. He’d thought about burning it to the ground before, but he’d spoken true when he’d told Maverick that he couldn’t kill another person. Not even Daddy.

  Bulldog just wanted out.

  He had never been so antsy waiting for church to begin. He felt like he’d been out in the bay for an hour, but it had really only been ten minutes. Everyone had been there for a while, but Bulldog had deliberately stayed away. He wanted the men to have time to talk among themselves, as they each got a vote and each held the same power.

  “Is he going to show?” someone asked, but Bulldog didn’t try to listen for the answer. He sat in a chair in front of everyone else, Canine beside him as the Enforcement Officer, along with Tug, who was the club’s secretary. If Daddy came to church, he’d sit up there too, along with anyone Bulldog had asked to lead out at the meeting.

  Tonight, though, he would be leading out. He’d had eyes on him for months, even years, and he’d never been comfortable with them. He watched the door as the clock clicked closer and closer to ten. If Daddy didn’t show, it would be much easier to speak about his crimes against the club.

  If he showed up high or drunk, even better. If he showed up lucid, with that cold edge in his eye…. Bulldog didn’t know what he would do then.

  The clock moved to ten, and Bulldog stood up. Before he could say a word, Razor entered the room, his fingers already fisted. From the way his shirt and cuts fell, he had a gun in his waistband.