Not Constructive: Red Eyes MC Series Book #6 Page 14

  I very nearly swore out loud. Of course that was what Braxton would do. Getting the local businesses to listen to him was one of his specialties. He knew most of those business owners personally, having been one of the main enforcers for Red Eyes for years now. He was used to liaising with these guys, and it would be easy enough to get them to agree to follow him instead of Grant.

  And that meant that he had money coming into his branch of the club, and we were losing money on our end.

  The trouble was Lex. If we started this fight with Braxton now, if we tried to reclaim our territory from Braxton, then Lex would be sure to find out that there was division in our ranks. He would realize that the new leader of Red Eyes wasn’t someone strong enough to hold the whole club, and he would strike quickly while there was still chaos and uncertainty.

  But if we didn’t confront Braxton or try to win back our businesses, then we’d lose the whole town, and Grant would have nothing to be leader of. It was a no-win situation.

  Everyone else knew it too. Looking around the room, I was starting to see doubts on their faces. They were probably wondering if they were in the right MC. If maybe they should have followed Braxton instead. And those doubts only became more noticeable as the silence stretched on, as Grant struggled to think of something to say to them.

  He had no way to assure them that they were in the right MC. He had no way to assure them that this MC would still exist by the end of the month, let alone by the end of the year.

  “We’re working with Braxton to find a solution,” Grant finally said. “I know that it seems like things are a bit uncertain at the moment, but trust me when I say that we will fix this.”

  That was the best that he could do, but I had to wonder whether it was good enough. What would happen at our next meeting? Would it just be the two of us?

  No, we had to fix things. Ray would have wanted us to fix things, one way or the other. “We need to set up a meeting with Braxton,” I told Grant in an undertone as everyone else filed out.

  “No shit,” Grant said, rolling his eyes at me. Then, he grimaced and appeared embarrassed. “Sorry, I know I shouldn’t snap at you when you’re just trying to help,” he said. “But we both know that Braxton isn’t going to go for that. He doesn’t want to meet with me. As far as he’s concerned, Red Eyes is his.”

  “Well, you can’t just give up,” I said sternly. “Ray put you in charge for a reason. And you’re doing better than any of us could have imagined.”

  Grant gave me a wry look. “Except for the fact that I’m losing all my members and all my businesses?” he asked.

  “We’re going to fix this,” I told him, not for the first time. “We just need to talk to Braxton. Somehow.”

  “You’re right. We have to try.” Grant sighed. “But it’s not like he’s going to answer my calls.”

  “Leave it to me,” I said, with a confidence that I didn’t exactly feel. I knew that Braxton thought I was a traitor for being on Grant’s side. Why couldn’t he see that he was really the traitor here? That he was going against everything that his father had worked so hard for? Braxton was tearing apart the whole club.

  But he couldn’t see that, and if I told him that, in those words, he would only get angrier.

  I tried to give Braxton a call, but just like before, it went straight to his voice mail. I frowned and glanced at my watch. I hated having to search him out each time I wanted to see him, especially since something inside me kept insisting that it should be Grant who was doing the searching here.

  I had other things that I wanted to take care of. I’d love to see Tara again, for example. But I knew where my priorities lay. And that meant going to track down Braxton.

  He wasn’t at his house when I got there, though, and I couldn’t find him around town either. I was at a loss. How did you set up a meeting with someone who didn’t even want to give you the time of day? With someone that you couldn’t even find? I didn’t know. I just knew that we needed to have this meeting. Braxton, Grant, and I. Now, before anything else could happen around town.

  As though on cue, my phone started ringing, and when I answered it, it was Lex.

  “I just wanted to remind you about Friday,” he said, his voice sounding all too cheerful.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I grumbled, hoping that he couldn’t hear how worried I was.

  If we couldn’t get Braxton and Grant to put aside their differences prior to Friday, what sort of stunt would Lex pull? I didn’t know, but I really didn’t want to find out either.

  24

  Tara

  I drummed my fingers against the dashboard of the car as I waited for Sam to get out of school on Monday. It was strange to have to wait for him, but I assumed it was just that they had been working on some project and it had run late. I didn’t see many of the other kids rushing out of the after-school program yet either.

  I tried not to let it worry me. I tried not to think about all the things that might have happened. But I could feel my heart start to race and my palms start to sweat. I wished that I could blame all my worries on the media. You read so many terrible stories in the news these days, about things that should never happen at schools.

  But no, my worry wasn’t about those vague threats from the news stories. My worries were much more tangible than that. What if Lex or someone else had found out about Sam? What if they had gotten to the school before me and … And what? Kidnapped him? He wouldn’t have been out of the sight of his teachers, I was sure of that, and they would have called me if something had happened.

  No, I was just being ridiculous.

  Sure enough, Sam came bounding out of the school soon afterward, and just like normal, I waved to his teacher as he ran over to the car.

  “Hey, buddy,” I said, helping him get strapped into his car seat.

  “Look, I painted a picture!” Sam said, waving around the piece of paper in his hand so that it was hard for me to really look at it.

  I laughed and caught his wrist, taking the paper carefully from him so that I could see it better. From the two black swabs, wheels I was guessing, I had a feeling that it was a motorcycle. Sure enough: “Do you think Cameron will like it?” Sam asked. “I made it for him. It’s him and me on his motorcycle!”

  “I’m sure he’ll love it,” I said, trying to quell the pang in my heart. It was one thing for me to be getting attached to Cameron. But it was another thing entirely to hear that Sam was forming some kind of attachment to the man as well. I knew that it was probably more that Sam was forming an attachment to Cameron’s bike, but all the same, it had me worried.

  What was I thinking, bringing Cameron into our lives? What had I been thinking, bringing him to the house and introducing him to my son? Why couldn’t I have just left it at the abstract, and told Cameron that there were other ways to make a family for yourself? No, I had to invite him right into the middle of my own family.

  I shook my head, but I handed Sam back his picture. “Did you do anything else fun in school today?” I asked, trying to forget my thoughts about Cameron for now and focus on Sam. Sam had always been the center of my universe ever since I had found out that I was pregnant, but lately I was starting to find that someone else was creeping right up there in my attention span as well. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Sam shouldn’t need to compete with anyone, least of all a guy that I barely knew.

  “In gym, we got to play hockey,” Sam told me. “And in science class, we blew up rockets!”

  “You blew up rockets?” I asked in surprise. It wasn’t something that I expected for kindergarten, but I knew that Sam had been learning about the planets lately, and I also knew that rockets were probably a surefire way to keep the kids interested.

  Sam babbled on and on about the rockets as I drove. I smiled, listening with half an ear while I thought about what we could have for dinner. The truth was, I sort of wanted to do something special, just Sam and me. I knew it was silly to feel guilty about spending time away from him
since we still saw each other every day and for hours at a time. But it felt like I had been leaving him with Maddie more and more frequently lately, and I felt like maybe I wasn’t giving him as much attention as I should be.

  Maybe the best way to get my mind off Cameron was to ensure that my mind stayed focused on Sam. On keeping him safe, on keeping him as the center of my universe.

  “Hey, buddy, how about we go to the diner for dinner?” I suggested when Sam finally paused in his recitation of some song they had learned about the planets.

  “Can I get chicken nuggets?” Sam asked hopefully.

  “Sure you can,” I said, smiling at him in the rearview mirror.

  “Yes!” Sam said, doing a little fist pump in the back seat that made me chuckle. What a cute kid.

  We played tic-tac-toe on the back of Sam’s menu while we waited for our food to come. Suddenly, Sam looked up. “Motorcycles!” he said, pointing excitedly out the window.

  I froze, staring out at the bikes. For a second, I thought that it might be Cameron. That maybe he was keeping tabs on me, for the sake of keeping me safe or whatever, and that he had found out that I was here. It would be kind of creepy but also kind of cute for him just to show up like this. Maybe we could take Sam for another quick motorcycle ride after dinner.

  But Cameron wasn’t part of the group that was swinging off their bikes out in the parking lot. I wondered if these were other Red Eyes members, and I realized that at least one of them had to be: I could see that same patch that Cameron had given to Sam, emblazoned on the jacket of one of the guys.

  I frowned, hoping that Sam wouldn’t notice that. The last thing I needed was for him to start thinking that all Red Eyes club members were his friends. The last thing I needed was for him to try and ask these guys if he could take a ride with them.

  Because they certainly looked a lot meaner than Cameron did. They certainly looked a lot more like what I would expect biker guys to look like.

  I swallowed hard as they entered the diner. They couldn’t possibly be here because I was here, could they? But I remembered that Cameron had had people stationed outside the funeral home, watching and making sure that Maddie and I were safe. Maybe this wasn’t a coincidence. Maybe they were following me, just to make sure I was safe.

  Suddenly, though, I felt a chill go through me, realizing that I recognized one of them. That guy at the back, he was the same guy from the funeral home. The one that Cameron had thrown out of Ray’s funeral; the one who had wanted to know what my relationship to Red Eyes was. Lex. He was here.

  My first thought was to get up and run right out of there. Grab Sam and go, never look back. But I didn’t want to scare Sam, and anyway, these guys were between me and the door. What was I going to do, drag Sam out back through the kitchen, like this was a real getaway? Not only would that terrify him, probably for no reason, but I knew that the people who ran the diner would probably stop us.

  They weren’t going to do anything to us here; I felt sure of that. We were in public, and there were plenty of other people around. I hadn’t known about Red Eyes before Maddie told me all those stories. I had to believe that they didn’t do anything stupid enough to warrant the front page of the newspaper. They wouldn’t just kill us now. They wouldn’t do anything to us.

  It turned out that I wasn’t exactly right on that last front.

  Lex paused next to our table, flashing me a smile, a glint in his eyes. “Cute son,” he commented.

  That was it; then he walked off. But it left me feeling sick to my stomach. Even though I felt certain that they weren’t going to hurt us, not right here and not right now, I didn’t want to linger. Not with Sam there. My fingers were itching to dial Cameron right now, but I knew I couldn’t do that. If Lex caught wind of the fact that there was something more between Cameron and me, that might just be enough to make him do something to hurt us.

  But I didn’t want Sam anywhere near these guys, as they loudly took a booth near the back of the restaurant.

  “Hey, buddy, I’m not feeling so good,” I told Sam. “Why don’t we take our food to go?”

  Sam seemed like he wanted to protest, a frown on his face, but then he shrugged. “Okay,” he said. From the way his eyes slid toward the bikes outside the window, I could tell that he was probably wishing that he could stay and maybe hang out with the bikers. Not a chance in hell that I was going to let that happen.

  Fortunately, he was a great kid. He held my hand as we walked outside, our food in boxes in my other arm. “I’ll make you a card when we get home,” Sam promised me. “Is Maddie going to come make sure you’re okay? She brings juice when I’m sick.”

  I smiled a little at that. “I don’t think this is something we need to call Maddie about,” I told him. It would be nice to tell someone about this. Had Lex shown up there on purpose? Was he threatening me? And who were the rest of the guys?

  How was it that he was going around with someone from Red Eyes? Cameron had led me to believe that the guy wasn’t Red Eyes and that Red Eyes wanted nothing to do with him. Had Cameron been lying to me all along?

  I didn’t want to think that he was lying. I wanted to trust him. To believe that he was just trying to protect me. But I also knew that he was the reason I was in this mess in the first place. He was the reason I had to watch out for my life and Sam’s like this. He was the reason we couldn’t enjoy just a simple meal together.

  And in the back of my mind, I kept thinking about what Maddie had told me about Red Eyes. Kept thinking about the fact that I barely knew Cameron, when you really got down to it. Who knew which side he was really on? Maybe he was just trying to lull me into a false sense of security.

  I really did feel sick by the time Sam and I got home, my stomach knotted with worry. I couldn’t let anything happen to Sam. But I didn’t dare call Cameron. And I knew better than to call Maddie. I didn’t want her any more involved in this than she had to be, and besides, what was she going to do to help? She had warned me not to get involved with Cameron, and I hadn’t listened. And she was no match for Lex or any of the other guys, no more than I was.

  The police? Should I go to the police? Maddie had suggested it before when Lex had first bothered me. But I didn’t think you could get a restraining order on someone like Lex just because they were “creepy.” And besides, that just might make him angry. That might make him come after us even sooner.

  No, there was nothing that I could do. No way that I could think of to keep us safe. And the knowledge of that just about killed me.

  25

  Cameron

  I spent the whole week trying to come up with some sort of solution to all of Red Eyes’ problems. But I couldn’t come up with anything.

  I was a numbers guy, not the main schemer. That’s what I tried to tell myself. But that fell flat. I knew that Ray had been counting on me to be something more. To help Grant somehow. If Ray were still alive, what would he do in this situation? I couldn’t think of the answer.

  Mainly because if Ray were still alive, we wouldn’t be in this position to begin with.

  About the only thing that I could think of was for Grant to renounce his presidency, and for him to hand the reins over to Braxton. That was the only way we were going to make Lex believe that there were no problems in the club right now, if we could somehow find a way to mend our internal differences.

  The trouble was, that wasn’t what Ray had wanted, and I still didn’t believe that Braxton would make the best president. And I knew that once Grant handed over the title to Braxton, there was no fighting to get it back. No one would ever follow Grant again after that, even if Braxton proved to be exactly the kind of leader that I was afraid he would be.

  No, Grant couldn’t give up the presidency. But that left us in a sticky situation to meet with Lex on Friday.

  I still just wished that we could sit down and talk all of this through. But Braxton wasn’t the kind of guy to fight with words. He had disappeared at the start of the week
, and I hadn’t been able to track him down since. I’d left messages on his phone, and I’d swung by his house multiple times, but I couldn’t find him to set up this meeting.

  Typical. I had to admit that I wasn’t really surprised. Just frustrated.

  Not least of which because other people seemed to be having no problem finding Braxton. The new recruits kept us informed of all the businesses that he visited, all the people who vowed to pay their dues to him rather than to Grant. But every time they called, and I headed over to a place, Braxton was gone before I arrived. He moved too quickly.

  This meeting with Lex wasn’t the only thing clouding my mind that week. I still hadn’t heard from Tara since our dinner date. I kept replaying the night over in my mind, wondering just what had gone wrong. It had to be something with the sex. I had seen the way that she got quiet afterward. She had curled toward me, but there had been something in her gaze warning me that she didn’t want to talk. I’d tried to respect that, but maybe I hadn’t done a good enough job.

  Maybe I’d been too rough with her, or maybe things were moving too quickly. I couldn’t help that things were moving fast. I liked her more than I could have expected. But I knew exactly what kind of drama I was tied up in at the moment, and what kind of drama she would be tied up in by proxy. I could understand if things were too complicated.

  I guess I’d just expected that she would talk to me as well. That she would tell me what was going on in her head and that she would give me a chance to explain exactly what I was going to do to make sure that she, Sam, her business, Maddie, and everything else that she held dear was safe.

  She hadn’t given me that chance. In a way, she was acting just like Braxton. And that was infuriating.

  And sad. To be honest, as much as I wanted to be frustrated with her, there was a deep pit of sadness that welled up inside of me whenever I thought that I might never hear from Tara again. I had to respect her decision there, but that didn’t mean that I liked it. Not in the slightest.