Page 89 of Vandal Unbound

Her small body presses against me, and I gently put my hand on top of her head. “Are those pastries?” she asks, pointing in the direction of the food setup.

Havoc nods. “I could take you to get one, but you’d have to let go of Vandal for half a heartbeat.”

“Fine.” Elsie wiggles in my hold, her feet clicking out for the floor. Then she glances to Sunny. “That isn’t straight.”

Sunny looks down at the border he’s been digging. “Jesus, everyone’s a critic.”

“Fruit first,” Daisy shouts. “Pastry after.”

Havoc places his hands over Elsie’s ears. “She can’t hear you.”

And then the two of them chuckle as they hurry to the table.

“Careful, Havoc,” North shouts. “She smells weakness.”

For the next few moments, the house and yard seem to move around me.

Katie and Maren disappear inside with Daisy after I reassure her that I’ll keep an eye on Elsie. Rainbow and Ridge bicker about the best way to treat some broken patio furniture. And Havoc and Elsie debate the pastry options.

Knox tips his chin in the direction of the side of the house, and barefoot, I follow him, presumably so we can talk without the whole club hearing us. The noise drops. From here, I can still see Elsie, but I know my best friend won’t just walk away and leave her without handing her back to me.

“Cristian woke up,” he says.

All the warmth that built in my chest cools fast. “Yeah?”

“I slept on it, and I’ve decided I’m going to hand him back.”

“As bait?”

“As leverage. I’ll use his phone to broker a deal. I want peace. Alvarez had no business starting trouble with us. But I want to use Christian to end it.”

“Alvarez so far hasn’t shown any willingness to make deals.”

Knox nods. “I know. But we stripped Cristian’s phone. We know every detail about them. So the alternative is going to cost them a lot more. I spoke to Cristian this morning. He’s important to Alvarez. This, trying to get intelligence by pretending to be a hangaround interested in becoming a prospect, was the equivalent of him patching in for life. He’s been hanging around since Alvarez got the drop on you. Butadmitted that because we’re tight as a club, he barely learned a thing. Kid’s convinced we’re gonna kill him.”

“You feel sorry for him?” I ask.

Knox shakes his head. “Wouldn’t go that far. But I think we’ve all done things to become members of the clubs we wanted to that hurt someone else. I’m gonna hold him for another day or two, just so they know what it feels like to think he’s been harmed. Left Sidewinder and Grit on him this morning, but he’s secured.”

“Think? Wehaveharmed him. I broke his fingers.”

Knox shrugs. “More than harmed, then.” And then he laughs.

“SUNNY!” North yells, and Knox rolls his eyes. “We don’t need to worry about someone killing Sunny because we’re more likely to do it ourselves.”

I laugh at that as I see an utterly drenched North chasing Sunny through the yard.

Havoc walks over to us with some masks and two electrical sanders. “Elsie has been handed back to Daisy. You said you wanted to refinish your deck. Let’s go.”

Knox nods and then heads off to separate Sunny and the usually stoic North.

I can’t imagine a better way to spend the day. Being physical, shirt off in the sun, with my best friend. We laugh at shit jokes, Sunny getting harassed by a hornet, and how Reaper thinks no one notices when he takes Cindy Lynn into the trees for thirty minutes.

The applause that follows when he returns is everything I feel I’d been missing.

Elsie periodically comes to sit with me and Havoc while we’re sanding. She calls out things I sometimes forget to pay attention to like a spider making a cobweb. And she asks questions about everything, like why are clouds white when the rain is clear? We had to look up an answer to that, and even then we didn’t fullyunderstand it. Something to do with wavelengths scattering the rainbow of colors equally to make clouds white and raindrops being too small to scatter anything hence they’re clear.

At least, that’s what I think it meant, because Havoc and I barely made it through school.