Needing Me, Wanting You(53)

“But you really do like this bitch?” Mireya asks, pouting her dark lips and running her tongue over the glossy lipstick she's wearing. Gaine watches her and shifts uncomfortably in his seat. Got to admit, it is kind of hot.

“I do, so I asked for a few more days, alright? Is that what you want to hear?”

“I was wondering,” Austin says, coming up from behind me and putting a hand on my shoulder. Amy and Christy aren't with him, so I'm assuming he got someone else to watch them for once. I don't need anybody to watch Tease. I'll know if someone tries to go up there. Trust me, I'll know. “Makes sense, I suppose. No more or less than me taking Amy in, but … ” He trails off and looks both excited and nervous at the same time. Dumb shit.

“So now everybody knows. I kidnapped this girl yesterday and today, I don't like the thought of sending her back where she damn came from. Congratulations, y'all figured it out. You want a damn ribbon?” More folks start staring at us, but they can fuck off to their fancy party.

“I'm goin' to make another phone call to Seventy-seven Brothers and discuss the arrangement,” Austin says, ignoring me and taking up the stool next to Kimmi. “I found a plaza not too far from here. It's public, surrounded by shops and is supposedly pretty fuckin' busy on a Monday.” He raises his blonde brows and gives me a look that I return with the finger. “Let's get this taken care of first, and then we'll deal with this all this other shit.” He wipes his hands down his face. “Can you even fucking believe Broken Dallas?”

“I knew it from the first second I laid eyes on them,” Gaine says, squeezing his beer bottle with rigid fingers. He looks over at Mireya, but her expression is blank. I imagine she's tired of dealing with all this gender bullshit. I know all she cares about is riding and pimping out bikes. I actually feel bad that she has to deal with all this useless crap. “They're obviously being fed information, too. We still have a rat, and it wasn't Kent. It wasn't Melissa. How the fuck else would anyone have been able to find that house? It was the perfect hiding place.”

“Broken Dallas is full of hot air. We stay away from them long enough and make sure not to cross paths in the future, and they'll go away. They are a Goddamn symptom, not the fuckin' disease. Gaine is right. We need to snuff out our rat before we plan this exchange.” I punctuate my statement with a swig of beer.

Austin twirls his cell around in his fingers and crinkles his brows together.

“How do we do that?” he asks, more to himself than to the rest of us. “We don't have a massive fucking group, but it's also not a walk in the park to investigate everybody.” He leans back and sets his phone down on the bar, tapping his fingers against the dark wooden countertop. I let my eyes trail across the wall of mirrors in front of us, covered in glass shelves and filled to capacity with liquor. It's hog heaven in here, that's for sure. I order another round. A moment later, Austin stops tapping his fingers and I watch as his spine gets stiff.

“What?” Kimmi asks, turning to face him with a raised brow. “You come up with something?” We all pause in our drinking to stare at Austin and wait.

“What if they're not just feedin' information?” he asks, his brown eyes darkening. “Do y'all remember who you actually saw at the shoot-out?”

“I think we could all name names,” Gaine says, running his hand through his dark hair. “But not everybody was there anyway. What are you getting at? You think it really was one of us that shot Melissa?”

“Could be our rat,” Austin says, spinning his phone around in a circle. “Think about it. Somebody's mad about Kent, doesn't like where we're going as a group. They stay in and start feeding information to Bested, to Broken Dallas. That confrontation with Seventy-seven Brothers was like icing on the fucking cake. The more I think about it, the more sense it makes.”

“Only problem is, we didn't know they were coming until they showed up. Somebody had to have time to get up on the roof like that.” Kimmi makes a good point, but Mireya makes an even better one.

“When Beck came back into the restaurant, we were the only people from the club still in there.” She pauses, dark eyes twinkling. I stand up from my seat because I can tell this shit is going to get ugly tonight. Mireya has an idea brewing up top. She lifts her face and smiles wickedly. “Except for one other person.”





Beck

Chapter 19

Margot Tempe has a room on the third floor, almost directly across from mine. Just because I'm a paranoid motherfucker, I have to open my door and check in on Tease before we get down to business. When I look in on her, she's still fast asleep. I close my room door behind me and give Austin a nod.