Big Dog (15 page)

It was almost midnight when she called to tell him what happened. She did her best to keep the rising panic from choking her as she spoke. “They acted like I was the one that buried the damn bodies in concrete.”

He snapped at her, “What the fuck, Future, why didn’t you call Hall and Early? They would be right there, and you never go back into that place without an attorney with you again. You call them in the morning, or I will if you need me to.” She began to feel better. A bit dumbassed for not remembering the law firm’s name the Bastards used when they needed representation.

“Hugh, I have had it up to my eyeballs in bullshit here. Now I have three days to clean the house out before they begin to tear it down. You’ve been here, the place is filled with antiques from the last hundred years or more. Detective Bellows told me to take what I needed if I couldn’t get everything out in the three days. They handed me a court order on my way out of the police station.

“So unless the lawyers have a house for me to furnish with Italian vases and massive pieces of furniture like my bed, they can’t help me with that. I have racked my brain to try to figure out why Mr. Brennbury left all of this stuff behind. He told me that he didn’t need it, and that it was mine to deal with now on the night he came and showed me the tunnel.

“The truth is that I have no idea if I should call an antiques dealer, or a moving company. I don’t know many people around here, I’ve been too damn busy for morning coffee with the neighbors. Sorry to be unloading all of my shit on you like this, I guess I just needed to vent, to tell someone who might give a damn, you know? Since you’ve been here I mean.” She had to get her head on straight or she was going to break down and beg him to come and help her. She wasn’t sure either of them was ready for that. He hadn’t seemed to have any problem riding off and away from her, and she wasn’t wired to beg him to stay if he didn’t want to be there.

His, “Alright, this is what I think you should do. In the morning at nine o’clock, call Hall and Early, I’ll text you their number. Start packing up what you can, and I’ll send a few people to help move the heavy stuff. You can store it at the farmhouse, there’s almost no furniture in it yet, and the place is massive, so you can stay there too. It will give you time to decide what you want to do, without a specific timetable.”

He promised to talk to her mother, “Although Merlin has been pretty scarce lately. He was telling Georgie that he was thinking about heading to Colorado. They’ve legalized weed there and anyone that knows him knows he would be all over that. So she might not have to leave the cabin if she doesn’t want to. She’s been a big help to me with Kevin, he told me she said he could call her Nana, like a real grandma, without all the messy family stuff.”

They said goodnight, with him promising to push the guys out the door at first light, and she promised to try to remain calm and call the Suits.

The very idea that her fluffy brained mother was essentially adopting a grandkid was mind blowing. To allow the kid to call her Nana, that was even more of a surprise. All of her life, she’d been instructed to call her parents by their first names. Maybe the old girl was finally accepting her age. She didn’t want to think about it, but she put the information in a small corner of her mind for later examination. Right now, she needed to get her ass in gear and her head where it belonged. Her pity party was over with, and she was ready for tomorrow.

Chapter Thirteen

Matthew Douglas and Larry Watson left the compound wearing their colors and in a couple of days, they’d take them off until they were in neutral territory again. They couldn’t fly the Bastards logo in another group’s territory without starting an incident and a matter of respect the men understood. Big D refused to allow Show to go on his own. If he was going to sanction the hunt, he wanted a witness, and someone to have his back. Since Larry had appeared to attach himself at the hip to Show, they were now partners in the hunt.

*****

When Big Dog got to the farm, it was a matter of dodging kids and scooters. He found his usual go-to guys and began to explain what Future had gotten herself into. Knight and Demon walked into the conversation a few minutes after he’d begun to tell the men the story, and they got caught up quick. Big Dog waited for the laughter to calm down as it rolled through the men, who’d already heard about the cement fillers in the tunnel.

Demon didn’t laugh. He was still pissed that Knight had gotten a piece of that ass of hers. Big Dog didn’t even think about him when he called for backup. What kind of friendship was that? They’d shared bitches before with no one getting hurt.

The thought the woman was a walking disaster made him wonder how she could walk and chew gum at the same time without falling into a sinkhole. “That woman could have spent her life in one room with no windows and only a jailer, and trouble would find her. If she has this ESP stuff, why can’t she know what’s going to happen and stop it then?”

Big Dog didn’t like the attitude or the tone, but he let it slide for now, and explained the problem with people like Future. “The way it was explained to me is that most people with her talent can’t see their own future. Many of them can’t see a loved one’s future either, emotion gets in the way and they want to impose their own feelings in the mix or some such shit. I know she has a form of sight, and if you doubt her abilities, I suggest you shake her hand one time to put your mind at rest. Just remember, if you ask her, she will tell you what she sees. So I would be careful to do it privately if I were you. The Chiefs old leader was called the Medicine Man, not for his heritage, more from his love of pills and smoke. He had the same talent, but I think it was stronger in him than what she has.”

“Okay, she can’t see her own future, and she can only see certain people, it seems kind of convenient to me, but who am I to say right? Okay, what do we need to do for her now? The psychotic bitch has your cock stuck in her cunt, and you want us all to come to her defense. It’s not like the rest of us get to fuck her, but even with nothing in it for us we’re going to—” His words were cut short when Knight belted him in the jaw with his fist, and the fight was on.

Knight was an inch shorter than Demon, but he was meaner. The man was normally very easy going, but this wasn’t a normal type of thing. They’d been in a few fistfights before, but the fights were almost always for personal reasons. Strangely enough, this one was different. There were no grins and verbal taunts between the best friends. The combat was strictly intent to damage each other.

This fight would have epic results if something wasn’t done to stop it before one of them seriously hurt the other one. Big Dog weighed in on the fun. He was four inches taller than Demon and when the President stepped in front of Knight to take the punch that had already been thrown, it landed on the big man’s shoulder, skimming it, and the momentum behind the punch that didn’t connect properly, caused Demon to tilt too far forward to avoid the sledgehammer fist to his gut. The open hand swat to the side of his face, as he was bent over, landed his ass in the dirt.

Knight did not get away easy either. His feet were swept out from under him as he headed for Demon. The hammer fist connected to his jaw, and it was lights out for him.

Demon should have stayed down, Big Dog grabbed the redheaded brawler, and punched him in the gut hard enough to double the big man over, and his fists slugged one side of his jaw and then the other before he allowed Demon to drop to his knees, gasping for breath and gave him a shove backwards into the dirt. He stayed down this time. It was probably the smartest thing he’d done all day.

“The next time you got something to say about Future, be a fucking man and say it to me, don’t try to make her out to be the trouble here in front of the rest of the men. I’m pretty sure I know what started this and you two son-of-a-bitches are on my shit list. Get his ass out of here before I kill you both.” Big Dog was so mad he wanted to kick their asses over the entire field. He picked up a heavy rock and threw it at another one to vent his ire on. The resulting shrapnel of small quartz stones made everyone hold their arms up to protect their faces, as it shot over the circle they all sat in.

“If anyone else has something to say about Future, now is the time to say it. Speak up now, because the next time a motherfucker starts making accusations, he’d better be spewing facts, not jealous shit out of his pie hole. The woman has done nothing to harm any of us as far as I have seen or heard. Without her we would still be snipping ground with the Breed instead of talking affiliation. If it’s any of your business, yes I have fucked her, more than once, and I plan to again as soon as I can get her to stand still for a few minutes so I can get my prick in her. If you object to it, fuck you.” He waited, looking around the circle of amused faces. “While you’re laughing, I plan to offer her a more permanent position, so if you have any objections, now is the time.” No one spoke up, the grins remained. It seemed that Demon and Knight hadn’t been the only assholes making a fool of themselves. That damn woman had gotten under all their skin.

“I asked for volunteers, it was a request, not an order.”

Kevin came running around the building with his toy gun and several girls were chasing him, he was out of sponge bullets and he saw Big Dog and made a beeline toward his safety net. “Quick, hide me, they want blood.” He went behind the tall man’s legs and held on, dropping his gun in the dirt so he could wrap his bony little arms around one of his thighs. “I didn’t do nuthin’, they just started chasing me.”

Two of the bolder girls in the pack of five kept coming for him and Big Dog held up his hand when they were about four feet from their intended goal. “Okay, girls, I’m all for women’s lib and all, but he is five, and it looks like you’ve already smacked him a few times. What has you all ready to smack him again?”

A cute little girl with brown curls and narrowed blue eyes huffed and folded her arms across her chest. The little blonde with straight hair to her butt, and snapping blue eyes, scowled at him, and pointed at Kevin. “He took our fashion dolls and shot them. He lined them up on the rail where they drain the coolers, and he shot them with his gun, and they landed in the mud.” The little pissed off female took a long-suffering deep breath and continued her prosecution. “Jasper Wright’s dogs thought it was fun to grab our dolls and chew them into pieces when they fought over them.”

The little brunette was nodding her head and piped up with, “We got Jasper, he is in the mud, and he better stay there until we get back with Kevin.” By then, the other three girls had moved forward, and they were all bobbing their heads.

He had a choice here, he could be the kid’s hero, and save his little ass from the physical wrath of the herd of girls, or he could give in to the impulse and turn him over to take his just deserts. He pulled Kevin lose from his leg and squatted down to talk to him closer to his level. “Did you take the dolls?” Kevin nodded and hung his head. “Okay, this is what you will do.” He turned to the girls and made Kevin face them too.

“On Friday, you ladies meet Kevin and Jasper in front of the house here, and I will drive you to the store. Kevin and Jasper will accompany you as you each find a doll to replace the ones that have been ruined. Kevin will pay for them from his birthday money. Jasper will buy leashes for his dogs and begin training them or he won’t be able to bring them here again. And since Kevin is my son, I might find time to take you to the place with the mouse thing and all of the games.” He looked from girl to girl and they were staring at him open mouthed at first. The head bobbing started again, and he told them to go let Jasper get out of the mud.

They took off running, and he pulled an unhappy Kevin around to stand in front of him. “What you did was funny for you right? But what you did affected other people too, and since you are the only one who didn’t get hurt from what you started, you get to pay your share of the hurt, with your money. Our actions always have to be thought out before we do something to other people, or we pay for it. You are also going to start doing more chores, like taking the trash out and I’m taking your gun until you can be more responsible. Go put it in the garage on the workbench, and leave the girls alone. If you do something like this again, I’ll have to let them take you, those two girls scared me.”

He hated to face the men, it seemed it was his day to deal with badly behaving males that were close to him. He turned to go back to face the laughs, and stopped in surprise to see Charlie with his arm around Ms. Prissy Pants, the child advocate, staring at him. Only this wasn’t the uptight prune lipped female he remembered. This woman had a bit of make-up on, and wore jeans and a tank top with a hog depicted in caricature.

She had to have seen Kevin and his fan club. Why not? The only reason he wasn’t on his bike right this minute headed to Future was that woman. He had to show up in court in the morning to defend his parenting skills and now she saw what a fuck up he was up close and personal. What the hell was Charlie thinking to bring her here? He was gonna have to call Early and disturb his Sunday with this.
Fuck, just fuck
.

Seth and Tarzan came up to him and promised to help Future move her things. “She’s a decent sort, and it’ll piss off Demon, that’s good enough for me.” Seth was being wordy in that sentence. He liked to grunt and nod instead of talk to communicate. Tiny and his woman, Lila, offered to take the box truck and help too.

*****

She stood in the middle of the attic, and had no idea where to start on all of the boxes and trunks. She had the largest rental van they would rent to her without a CDL license, sitting in her driveway. She decided to pack it all in the truck and hopefully Hugh had a lot of room in his house and maybe if she was lucky, he had an outbuilding. She opened a trunk that looked like it had been all around the world with all of the stickers decorating the thing. She found vintage dresses and small rolls of cloth with a pearl necklace and earrings in the rolled cloth, shoes to match and long white gloves to complete the outfit. The jewelry was stuffed in the shoes; Emeralds, Amethysts, and Jade stones to color coordinate with each outfit, blew her mind. For the first time in her life, she wanted to wear a dress.