Page 7 of Tanner (Dirty Misfits MC 5)
“We need to find Summer’s address,” I said.
Porter shrugged. “Shouldn’t be too hard.”
Cole sipped his beer. “I said it once and I’ll say it again: any information we get from those guys might be tainted. For all we know, this is exactly what Chops had planned and they’re feeding us bad intel.”
I snickered. “Well, the alternative is to take a step back and wait for them to strike, and I’m not willing to sacrifice Summer or our daughter in order to let that happen.”
Finn pointed at me. “Let’s walk through as if it is a trap, though. So, we get her address out of those guys and we get there. Then, what?”
I shrugged. “If it’s a trap, I’m killing whoever I have to in order to get to Summer.”
Brooks pointed at me. “I’m with him on that.”
Porter sighed. “Or they could be waiting for Tanner to break off and show up alone, then they take him hostage like we’ve taken their guys hostage.”
I crumbled a beer can in my left hand. “They could also be waiting in the darkness, ready to take Summer and our daughter at a moment’s fucking notice. That’s why we need to get there sooner rather than later.”
“Archer!” Finn exclaimed. “What would you do!?”
He had been eerily silent since we all got back, so I turned in his general direction and genuinely waited for his answer.
And honestly? It shouldn’t have shocked me as much as it did.
“If it were my child at stake? I’d go around, sit in wait, and pluck every one of those Black Flag bastards off until someone came to find me with a truce. And if they never came to me with a truce because they’re too stupid to figure it out? Then, I’d take pleasure in killing every single one of them if it meant getting my child back.”
Brooks whistled lowly to himself and Porter tried not to laugh. But me? I found myself sympathizing more with Archer than I ever had during the duration of our brotherhood. Archer looked over at me and nodded his head, as if he were giving me his silent approval if I did just that. And if I were being bluntly honest with myself, I would have done just that.
If I thought for one second these ruthless jagoffs wouldn’t kill Summer for my actions.
“Consider it my back-up plan,” I said.
The guys chuckled as Archer held his beer up in the air, then he turned himself back toward the ocean. In fact, after the laughter died down, we all drank in how beautiful the ocean looked with the sun hanging heavily in the sky. We were about an hour away from sunset, and with our sunglasses on we could see the perfectly round sun slowly approaching the shimmering edge of the watery horizon.
I wasn’t usually one to be poetic about fucking sunsets, but this one felt different.
For this sunset, I knew I had a daughter out there. One that might want to share these sunsets with me one day.
And I wanted to show her that men had softer sides if they trusted you enough to show it.
“You should go after her, you know,” Archer said.
“That’s enough,” Porter shot back.
I drew in a deep breath. “You think so?”
Archer nodded. “Yeah, I do. I think that you still love her, and I think that whatever made you leave her will be inconsequential when you meet your daughter for the first time. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that she’s still in the same sort of area you two grew up in, and I definitely don’t think it’s a coincidence that she didn’t tell you that you had a child while we worked undercover at The Body Shop.”
I swallowed hard. “You think she’s still looking for me.”
His eyes met mine. “I think the heart wants what it wants, no matter where it goes in life.”
And after I soaked in his words, I stood to my feet. “Whoever wants to come with me, you’re more than welcome. But tonight? I’m finding Summer.”
I marched back inside, not bothering to wait and see who would join me. Why? Well, because I knew I could do it without them. I wasn’t a stranger to the kind of life Summer led. I knew how ultra-conservatives her parents had been. I knew how much they hated everything Summer and her sister ever did. To this day, I could still hear Summer crying against my shoulder; one of the numerous times she did so while we were still young and still together.
Every time I found her crying, it was because of them. And every time she was saddened, threatened, or scared, an army of electricity swept through my body. It heightened my senses, my control, and my abilities. Almost as if I were Superman or some shit.
