more.
They’d stayed up all night talking. They both had an avid love for hiking, vintage airplanes, and good food. He’d ordered them a massive dinner and they watched old action films and talked about absolutely everything.
He learned that she had left Cliff because she had been afraid that if she stayed, one or the other of them would eventually come to resent the other. Tattooing was a competitive trade, and she was one of few women in it. That meant she had to deal with shit she should not have had to, most of which she hid from Cliff. Cliff didn’t have to deal with it, and he never would have understood it either.
He talked about his ex. She’d been fast and shiny, with just enough innocence in her to make him sure that fast shininess was just an outer thing. He’d learned early and fast that he didn’t love her, but he hadn’t wanted to be just another divorced Hollywood type.
In fact, he hadn’t wanted to be in Hollywood at all. He had wanted to be back home in Nashville, doing what he did best, but the money he was making kept him there. Or had. He had decided it was not worth it anymore, not at all.
That he had ever put money ahead of his heart made him sad. That was not the man he’d set out to be, and now that he’d faced that he had become that kind of man and fixed his course, he felt far better.
She’d gotten that in a way nobody else, except Roger and a few old friends, had.
They’d just clicked. They’d clicked so hard it was like something had fallen into place with a loud and audible noise that he had been unable to ignore.
Which was why he had been determined to take her out again. Only she’d bolted from L.A. the day after that first meeting, and now it seemed she had bolted from Memphis too.
Only this time, she had run not from an old flame but from a pissed off motorcycle gang.
She certainly liked to live dangerously.
Where the hell could she be?
He said, “Roger—is your sister still working as a P.I.?”
“Yeah, why? You want Dani to track her down?”
Mitch looked out the window. “I do.” He managed to keep the dryness in his voice to a minimum.
Roger chuckled, “Yeah, sure. No problem. You want to call her or should I?”
Mitch snorted. “I’ll call her if you give me her number.”
Roger rattled it off and added, “That’s her private friends-and-family-only number, so don’t go handing it out or anything.”
Mitch nodded. That Roger would give him Dani’s personal number said volumes about how he felt about that video that Bobby had shown them.
Fear rolled over Mitch. The motorcycle club was small, in its way. It hadn’t even made it out of Memphis, and likely they preferred it that way. A club that stayed in one place and steamrolled its way into the kind of fear that people in Memphis obviously had for them was something to reckon with.
And their reach might very well extend past Memphis.
At the very least they might be only too happy to ride wherever Cara was and kill her for the sheer hell of it, and to get revenge for that bastard who had tried to get her to give him a blow job and a free tat.
Dani answered the phone and he said, “Hey Dani, it’s Mitch.”
Worry crept across her voice and through the line, “Did something happen to Roger?”
“No. Shit, sorry, should have considered you would naturally think that if I called your personal line.”
Her voice, a rich contralto, came across the line again, “Oh, no problem. I mean that he’s okay…anyway, sorry. You caught me by surprise, is all. What can I do for you?”
“I need to find someone.”
“Anyone I might know?”
“Maybe; you do like tattoos, after all.”
Dani’s next words came behind a gust of laughter, “Now this is true, and intriguing to boot. Spill it already.”
Mitch tried to keep the frustration out of his voice. “I need to find Cara Van Tear. Only I don’t think she’s tattooing right now. In fact, I’m pretty sure she isn’t.”
Dani asked,