Page 13 of Striker

Adjusting Josie on my hip, I nod. “We did. The mattress was very comfortable.” I pull my thumb back over my shoulder towards the dining room. “What do you call that tangled mess?”

He glances from me to Josie and back again. “I think of it as my command center, one of them, anyway.”

I slide into a chair with Josie on my lap. “Is there ever a situation where you actually need five monitors?”

He shrugs and turns a pancake over in the pan. “I don’t know if it’s necessary, but it sure helps.” Josie starts getting fussy, so I reach out and snag her a piece of bacon. While she munches on it happily, I listen to Striker talk about all his equipment and how he uses it to run his business. I’ve heard this little speech before. It doesn’t make any more sense this time than it did the last time. So, I just nod and make agreeable sounds.

When he takes a breath, I change the subject. “I thought you said you had to order food?”

He brings the plate of pancakes to the table and sits down on the opposite side. “I made out a grocery list last night and had prospects deliver it.”

It’s pretty clear that he’s been awake for hours. I can tell because he has searches running on all his screens and has had time to make an elaborate breakfast.

I fork a pancake onto our plate, and before I can get a bite, Josie grabs it with both hands and begins eating it like it’s some kind of floppy cookie. She grins up at me. “It’s good, Mama. You eat?”

“Yes. Of course,” I tell her with a smile.

I grab another pancake and put it on my plate, along with more bacon.

“Since when did you become a gourmet cook? You used to be the guy who forgot to feed himself.”

When his face lights up, I realize that rather than maintaining a professional relationship, I’m already drifting into joking around with him again.

“I figure we need to be more conscientious because we have a kid around.” He slides a strawberry Greek yogurt in our direction. “I went a little heavy on the kid-friendly food.”

Striker is easygoing, right up until he isn’t. I learned that the hard way. It’s a lesson I don’t need to relearn, so I get busy feeding myself and my daughter. To his credit, Striker maintains a professional distance and makes polite conversation.

I’m not used to him being so reserved. He’s not even cursing. It feels like he’s turned over a new leaf, but I know better than to take him at face value. I don’t fully trust anyone anymore, and he’s the reason for it.

When the conversation dies down, he mentions, “We need to go to the clubhouse this mornin’. Jasper and the club officers need to hear what’s goin’ on for themselves. They’ll talk it over and let us know if the club can lend a hand.”

My head snaps up in an instant. “No. That wasn’t our deal.”

The clubhouse is filled with Striker’s club brothers, old ladies, and club girls. I don’t have anything against them. They all seemed nice enough when we were together three years ago. But it’s easy to get sucked right back into being his woman when I’m around them. They are men with a certain kind of groupthink. They’re into leather, claiming women as their old ladies, and riding motorcycles with throaty engines that you hear coming a mile away. I always avoided going there in the past.

“We can handle this ourselves,” I say. “You never said anything about involving your club.”

“I know you don’t like to rely on me, much less me and my club,” he says bluntly. “The thing is, me and my club brothers are stronger together than we are separately. I’m willing to work around the clock to figure out who your stalker is, but it would be quicker and safer with help from my club.”

“I thought this would mostly be you finding him online and us confronting him in order to figure out why he’s following me.”

“I might get a lucky hit online. But more than likely, we’ll need to run him down in person. If he’s a professional, like I suspect, he’s not gonna give up, ‘cause they don’t get paid until they do whatever they were hired to do. The Sons have more manpower, connections, and pull in this town than I can manage on my own. I’d rather have the whole club at your back than risk not being able to find him with my equipment. Truth be told, he’s probably already ditched that gray truck for some other kind of vehicle.”

I reluctantly agree. “Okay, we’ll do what you think is best here. I just want this taken care of as soon as possible because I don’t want to risk whoever this is following us when we leave town.”

We take my vehicle because it’s just easier. Josie needs her car seat, and we need to talk this out on the way. We compare my sightings of the gray truck with the times his security cameras caught it. There are twenty sightings in all, many more than either of us thought.

When it comes time to get out of her car seat, Josie reaches for Striker with one hand and tugs at her safety harness with the other. “You do it,” she says clear as a bell.

It’s strange because she doesn’t usually take to new people, especially men she doesn’t know. There haven’t been many men in our world, and she’s not used to them.

Striker turns his head to look at me first. His expression asks if it’s okay. For some reason, I can’t get out the word no. I don’t like it, but I also don’t object when he leans into the back seat and unbuckles the chest clip. He carefully lifts her out of her car seat, and that’s when she does it. She reaches out one little hand and runs it over his beard. Her expression is nothing short of awestruck. “Furry,” she says.

I freeze because my daughter is saying he’s furry like an animal.

Striker either doesn’t understand the implication or doesn’t care, because he just chuckles. Relieved that he doesn’t get mad, I stay close to his side as we quickly make our way towards the front door of the clubhouse.

The clubhouse hasn’t changed much in the three years since I last saw it. It’s a huge, squat cement building with a seven-foot wall around it. It’s filled with bikers and the women who like spending time with them. Men look up when we come in, and their gazes rake over me from head to toe. Their expressions are more admiring than creepy, but it still makes me feel uncomfortable. I move closer to Striker instinctively.