Helpless (Steel Demons MC #5) - Crystal Ash Page 0,38
I?!”
“Okay, okay.” Jandro wedged his way between the two of them, who looked moments away from literally tearing into each other. “Let’s all take a breath. Reap, you need to chill.”
“I would chill if people would get the fuck off my back.”
“She means something to someone,” Mari muttered, still glaring daggers at him. “She’s a human being. That should be reason enough.”
“Okay, sugar, that’s fair. But I can only be stretched so thin.”
“It doesn’t have to be you. You have an entire club—”
“Who I am still responsible for. It’s on me if something happens to them. Jesus, fuck, I don’t want to go in circles like this.”
“Come here.” I wrapped a hug around Mari from behind, partially to comfort her, partially to hold her back from lunging at Reaper, which she still looked eager to do.
“If I can say something...” Jandro looked between the two of them, still poised in the middle. “Gunner mentioned we might need the governor in the future, Reap. Refusing to do this doesn’t swing anything in our favor.”
“He also mentioned his army,” I reminded them. “Which we’ll need if we’re taking on Tash directly.”
“Who knows if he’ll stick to that?” Reaper argued. “Politicians lie. He’s a delirious old man offering up whatever he can think of. But once we do our part, who’s to say he’ll do his?”
“Rescuing his daughter will give us leverage,” I reminded him. “He’ll owe us. When it comes down to brass tacks, I’ll remind him of that. I’m sure there’s more we can bring to the table once we get a better lay of the land.”
“Fuck.” Reaper turned and started back down the hill to the rest of our people at the bottom.
“Talk, Reap.” Jandro moved to his side while Mari and I followed, my arms still around her. “What’s on your mind?”
“What’s on my mind is that we’re basically homeless, with no defenses, and the most vulnerable we’ve ever been,” the president growled with a glance over his shoulder at Mari. “We have more to lose now than ever before. I just think we should take care of ourselves now, before others.”
“I hear you,” Jandro nodded at his side.
Gripping my forearms wrapped around her chest, Mari leaned her head back on my shoulder. “What do you think? We can’t ignore the fact that this girl needs help, right?”
“I don’t like it, but I get what Reaper’s saying.” I took a nip at her earlobe at her disappointed groan. “Go easy on him, baby girl. He’s not being heartless. It’s a hard decision for him, even if it doesn’t look like it. He’s choosing what’s most important to him.”
Mari grumbled, her anger now at a more adorable level, all the way to where our vehicles and people waited for us.
“Meeting go well?” Slick asked with a jovial grin, which quickly faded at a closer look at Reaper and Mari’s faces.
“Let’s find some place to fuckin’ eat and spend the night,” Reaper said in a non-answer. “No one goes alone, pairs or groups only. They probably can’t accommodate all of us in one place, so we’ll have to split up. Prospect!”
Larkan straightened up, but his hand clamped tighter around Noelle’s waist. “Yes, president?”
“Come with us. When we’ve found a place, go around and tell everyone where we are in case someone needs us.”
I closed my eyelids, slipping into Horus for a brief moment. He was perched on a tree with a clear view of us and half the town. He’d be able to track everyone, plus our vehicles, until it got dark. Then we’d need someone with better night vision to take over.
Something bumped my shin. Freyja. The black cat seemed to read my mind as she wound herself around my boots with a calming ease.
You’re safe here, I thought I heard her say.
“Shadow.” Jandro nodded at his tall, silent friend. “Come with us.”
With that, club members began splitting off into the town on foot. Reaper and Jandro led our small group, followed by Mari and me, Noelle and Larkan, and Shadow bringing up the rear.
Exploring on foot proved to be the wisest option, despite wishing I could roll through on my bike. Streets and sidewalks were narrow, with tons of blocked areas for construction zones, even off of the main roads.
“They’re really rebuilding from the ground up,” Mari observed as a crane slowly lowered some kind of pipe into a hole in the street.
“Makes you wonder how badly this place got fucked over,” I said.