that hair so it didn’t look bad, it just looked… different.
He probably had the right idea though. With the blistering fucking heat wave they were experiencing, Torch had considered cutting off his own mop to help make the worst of it more bearable. But his woman loved getting her hands all up in that shit when they were going at it, and he loved it when she did, so why ruin a good thing just to avoid a little sweat? After all, more sweat meant more showers, and he really loved what went on in those when she joined him.
“Morning, sunshine,” Buddha greeted with a mocking grin. “I see you still got those twinkly eyes and pretty glow about you.”
Torch smirked and leaned on the table. “Make all the jokes you want, man, you’d be lit up like a fucking Christmas tree too. You alright? You look kinda beat.”
“You’re a lucky bastard, I’ll give you that. I’m fine, son, just haven’t been sleeping much.”
Torch wasn’t entirely convinced, something in his tone sounded off. “Is something worrying you?”
“Nah, just getting fucking old.”
Before he could keep prying, Mace came tearing into the parking lot.
He jumped off his bike and headed straight for them. “We’ve got a problem.” Handing Buddha a folded-up piece of paper, he explained, “Just came from the Nest, our liquor license got revoked.”
“What the… Let me see that shit.” Buddha snatched the paper and read it over, then handed it to Torch and fished out his phone. “Mr. Gellar, you and I need to have a discussion. Call me back,” he said into it. He immediately dialed another number and walked off.
Torch scanned the official notice, which specified that the bar’s license was being suspended pending an investigation over the incident the night before, the violation being public endangerment. “Shit,” he muttered under his breath. He looked up at Mace. “Did somebody come by with this or was it posted when you got there?”
“A process server brought it by about twenty minutes ago.”
Torch checked his phone. It was barely ten in the morning. “When the fuck has city hall ever worked this fast?” he wondered out loud.
Just then, Liv walked out and joined them. “Hey. What’s going on?”
He handed her the notice. “We lost our liquor license.”
She frowned. “Over a bar fight? That’s a little extreme.”
“Yeah, well, I’m sure they’ll drag up all the past ones too. We’ve had one or two.”
“How many is that in biker math?”
Smart ass. “Alright, it’s a regular occurrence,” he conceded. “But this is the first one that’s spilled out into the street.”
“Huh.” She raised a brow. “Somebody jumped on it pretty quick this morning, don’t you think?”
“Nobody knows shit,” Buddha huffed as he walked back over. “The asshat who started it wants to press charges on Jet, but the PD doesn’t know we have hidden cameras in there and nobody’s talking so they don’t have a case. This just doesn’t make sense, Gellar’s on payroll. Why the hell would he do this? Business is already down, we can’t afford to close for who knows how long it takes them to investigate. Fuck.”
“Who’s Gellar?” Liv asked.
“The City Manager,” Torch explained. “He would’ve had to sign off.”
She pursed her lips and took another look at the notice. “Is the guy who started it a local?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Buddha replied. “The chief said his name’s Alex Mitchell, he works at the bowling alley.”
She nodded, the wheels in her head clearly spinning. “So he should’ve known the risks of walking into your bar and pestering the wrong woman, even before Elf warned him. I don’t know guys, between that and how quick this suspension was issued, I think there’s a lot more to it.”
“Oh, what fresh fuckery is this?” Buddha groaned.
Torch followed his line of sight to a red Cadillac pulling in through the gates. “Great.”
“I get the feeling this day’s on a downhill slide,” Mace grumbled.
Liv touched his arm. “You go deal with whatever that’s about, I’ll pull the video from last night and see what I can find out about this license bullshit.”
“You don’t have to do that, we’ll get to the bottom of it.”
She smiled and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “I need something to do, I don’t have any hacking jobs lined up and boredom breeds trouble. I think this is more of a diplomatic mission than the knee-breaking kind anyway. Let me see what I can find out and maybe we can fix it quietly.”