That sort of thing didn’t work with Jamie. I had to rethink a lot of things. She didn’t care about me being the head of a club—she hated me for it, I could tell. She would rather have been anywhere else in the world than with us. Even though she seemed to get along okay with the girls, which was good. I didn’t want any cat fights in the clubhouse.
“How’s it going?” Flash muttered over a mouthful of food. I shrugged. “Is she staying?”
“Yeah, she’s staying.”
“You gonna let her take Gigi?”
“No way.” I didn’t take my eyes off the two of them.
“What are you gonna do when she wants to leave?”
“I don’t know. I have to find Rae. That’s it.”
“How are you gonna do that?”
I shrugged. “No idea.”
***
After dinner, I got together with Flash and a couple of my most trusted guys. Jax and Slate sat around my office, waiting for me to give instructions.
“We need to find Rae,” I said.
“We’ve been trying all week,” Jax pointed out.
“Yeah, she disappeared.” Slate shrugged.
“Nobody just disappears.” I stood up, pacing back and forth. My fists were clenched in the pockets of my jeans. “She has to be around somewhere, and if not, somebody’s gotta know something about where she went or why she’s gone. If she’s dead, I wanna know. If she’s holed up somewhere, I wanna know. And we haven’t been looking as hard as we could.” I stared at my men, even Flash, and they all looked at the floor. “Right?”
“There’s other stuff going on, too,” Slate reminded me.
“Yeah, no shit. But here’s the thing. We’ve gotta get this kid outta here one way or another. I want it to be under my terms. That teacher out there thinks she’s taking her. I can’t let that happen. But the whole thing is pointless if Rae walks back in, wanting her back. See what I mean? Do you wanna hand her over to a junkie who deserts her like that?”
“You know we don’t,” Jax muttered. “She’s a sweet kid.”
“Yeah, she is. I had a junkie mother of my own. I know what a bitch it is growing up in a house like that.” I didn’t wanna think about it, but the memories flooded in anyway. The way she was always stoned, always far away. When she wasn’t stoned, she was sick, shaking, looking for the next fix. She stole my toys, sold them. Sold my school books. I never had clothes or food. Then, she OD’d. I was sent to foster care. That was where the real fun started.
“Where do we go, then? We already talked to all the dealers we know,” Flash explained. “Where next?”
I thought about it. “What about the clubs? She used to like clubbing.”
“There are a million clubs downtown,” Jax reminded me.
“I think there are a few we can rule out. Like the gay clubs, the leather clubs. She wasn’t into that sorta thing.”
“How do you know? You didn’t even know she had your kid.” Jax smirked.
“That’s true. Maybe she went gay after she knew it would never get better than me.” We all snickered. “Seriously, though. I think if we all split up, we can find out something. Was she with anybody? Maybe he would know something. It’s a start.”
Flash nodded. “Okay. Why don’t we split it up into blocks?” We decided to do that, and we each took a three-block radius. Somebody had to find something in that amount of space.
Otherwise, I was screwed.
We left the office, wanting to leave right away. It was only around eight o’clock, so we had plenty of time. The lounge was full, everybody gathering around the coffee table in the center.
“What’s going on?” Then I saw what was happening in the middle of the room. A few of the guys were teaching Gigi how to play poker.
“Seriously?” I looked around for Jamie, but she was nowhere. “Where’s Jamie?”
“She went home to get some clothes. She said she’d be right back.”
“So you teach my kid poker while she’s gone?” I couldn’t help but laugh. “Okay, as long as you don’t start betting.”
“She’s doing really good,” I heard.
“Yeah, she’s kicking…butt.” Erica blushed, but caught herself before she used the word she wanted to use. It was still funny to me, all of them keeping their language clean for a kid.
“Don’t let Jamie see her doing this. She’ll have her outta here in a heartbeat.” I signaled for the guys to follow me, and we went out to our bikes before splitting up.