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to
her.
    Markham town limits welcomed them home just
as the rain started, but it was just a light shower. The streets
were barely damp as the club assembled their bikes in an orderly
line in front of Buck and Gertie’s house. For all his devotion to
his wife, Fritter knew Buck felt no guilt for the club handing her
old man over to mobsters who obviously intended to kill him.
    And Fritter didn’t feel one way or the other
about it. Okay, that wasn’t true. He was fucking glad the prick was
dead. Anyone who left his daughter to what Dénise had ... Well,
that was a shit father. Fritter didn’t need one of his own to know
that.
    Fritter hung out at the back of the group as
they moved to the front door. Buck’s long legs and determination
got him there first, and as the door opened Gertie was in his arms,
pressing her face into the side of his neck. Ah, shit. She was
crying. He couldn’t handle crying women.
    Under the overhang of the house they were out
of the rain. Buck wrangled Gertie back inside, Tank and Mickey
right behind them. Knuckles and Tiny stayed outside with him,
Knuckles lighting up a cigarette.
    There was a blue Ford Escape outside the
house, which meant Jolene was here. And a low-riding Impala was at
the curb on the opposite side of the street, and Fritter was pretty
sure it belonged to the tattooist the club used, Brady-something.
Gertie was well supported.
    “Any reason to stick around?” Fritter
asked.
    “Not really.” That came from Tiny.
    “I’ll go in and see her after this,” Knuckles
said, holding up his smoke. Right, he was Gertie’s sponsor or
something like that. Yeah, he was necessary. The rest of them, not
so much.
    “I’m heading back to Ma’s then,” he decided.
“Grab some sleep. If anything happens—”
    “We’ll find you,” Knuckles finished.
    “I’ll get back to the clubhouse,” Tiny
mumbled with his deep voice, clasping fists with Knuckles as a
farewell.
    With similar goodbyes Fritter and Tiny parted
ways at the curb, his bikes rumbling to life as Tiny gave the semi
horn a blow, then they peeled off in different directions down the
quiet Markham street. His Ma lived outside of the town limits on
the side closest to Hazeldale, so before long he could open up the
throttle and throw the wind and rain in his hair. It was still a
light rain, but it paid to be somewhat careful. For example, he
obeyed the posted speed limit.
    The two-bed, two-bath bungalow sat quiet, not
a sign of life. She must have had a shift at the hospital where she
did laundry. That guaranteed him a good nap for a couple hours,
assuming she hadn’t left a list of chores to do. He may have been
overpaying the mortgage for her, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t
still running the household.
    He pulled his bike all the way up to the back
of the detached garage, wiped the raindrops from it, and shut the
door before heading around to the backdoor off the porch. Inside on
the kitchen table he found a tented note reading, Mow the lawn
if you’re home before it rains.
    He smiled, moving past the instruction. “Just
made it in time,” he mumbled, shedding his kutte and pulling the
T-shirt off over his head. The shirt he threw in the laundry basket
at the end of the hall, his jeans and socks joining it. The kutte
was placed on its own hook in his room behind the door. He took a
long hot shower, then returned to his room while toweling the water
from his hair. His phone was chirping away that someone had left
him a message, so he dug it out of his kutte. Man, he hoped
everything with Gertie was okay—
    Markham Manor. 210. 6pm.
    He checked his alarm clock. It was two-thirty
now, plenty of time to get some rest. Fritter had never mastered
texting, so his reply was a lame OK.
    Then he set the phone on his nightstand and
crawled into fresh sheets, smiling.

Chapter Three
     
    A day off spent on paperwork was no day off.
Even if the paperwork was to save your job.
    Sharon had spent the entire day filling out
her