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  “I know,” Knuckles snapped, steel-grey eyes on Buck. “Same way I know Gertie’s on the road to sobriety. She’s just there. You can tell, all right?”

  That backed Buck off, and they all stood silent as Knuckles helped Neenie out of the kitchen. Wendy was standing next to Tiny, staring at the ground, her hands fidgeting in front of her.

  “You got something to say, Wendy?” Jayce asked after a moment.

  “What?” Her head came up, eyes wide. “Me? No.”

  “Then scram,” Tiny barked and she jumped, scurrying out of the room as well.

  “Fucking Sunshine, back in Markham,” Buck muttered, properly pissed off.

  “Maybe she got it at home, brought her own shit in,” Tank said.

  Fritter shook his head. “Nah. She didn’t have that. Wasn’t hers. Someone gave that to her, snuck it into her drink or something.”

  “How do you know?”

  Fritter stared Tiny down. “Her voice. Her body was slack. And why the hell would she lie? She didn’t get tense or twitchy. She’s been clean for two years, you heard Knuckles.”

  “I’m not sure I buy that,” Jayce said, rubbing the back of his neck. “People fall off the wagon all the time. All respect to Knuckles, but I don’t think he’s a mind reader. I’ll take his word for it for now, but she’s on notice. The last thing I need is bitches dropping dead around here.”

  As the guys turned to leave, Fritter had a thought so intense it stopped him in his tracks. He grabbed the Sunshine tablets from Jayce and held them up.

  “What the fuck—”

  “Thebaine,” Fritter breathed, heart starting to pound.

  “What?” That was Tank.

  “The Thebaine. The shit we’ve been sitting on for two years, stolen from the Gypsys.” Fritter was trying to organize his words but they were tumbling out.

  “What about it?” Jayce asked, eyes going from the Sunshine to Fritter.

  “It’s at Mickey’s shop.”

  “Yeah, we know,” Tiny said slowly. “We unloaded it there.”

  “That’s what they were after!” Fritter basically shouted. “Downey said they didn’t steal anything, but they searched everywhere. Every cupboard and drawer. They were looking for the fucking Thebaine!”

  There were four hoists at the Grainger garage. Underneath two of them the sand pits had been dug up one night and roughly fifty pounds of Thebaine, the synthetic medicinal ingredient in Oxycodone, were buried below the sand in large zipper-lock bags. It was still there, waiting for the Red Rebels to decide what the fuck to do with it. They didn’t like the heavy narcotics. Sure they’d sell pot, but homemade Oxy pressed in Canada by unreliable chemists was a far cry from weed.

  “Mazaris are flesh peddlers,” Tank added. “They didn’t do Mickey.”

  “It was the Dirty Rats,” Jayce finished, face closing down. “Markham Sheriff’s took their clubhouse, shut down their storage arrangement with the Mazaris, they killed Mickey.”

  “And they assumed we put the cops onto them,” Tiny concluded the fucking frustrating plot. “And now they’ll really think we’re feeding the Sheriffs intel.”

  “They could be a target,” Fritter added. “They might see every Markham cop as a Rebel with a badge.”

  “Easy,” Jayce said calmly, holding a hand out to Fritter’s chest and taking the baggie with the other. “Sharon’s leaving town. Right? She’ll be okay. I’ll get hold of that Troy prick, or that Martin kid. Give them a heads’ up. Not telling them about the Thebaine, of course.”

  Fritter let Jayce take back the little orange pills. He was still reeling, his worry for Sharon making his chest tight.

  “She’s okay,” Jayce assured him, hand on his shoulder. “We’ll get word to her about this, it’s the least we can do so she’s on alert. Yeah?”

  Fritter nodded. “Yeah. Yeah. She can handle herself. She just needs a heads’ up.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “Mom? You okay?”

  Sharon flopped onto her back, pushing her hair out of her face and opening her eyes. The ceiling overhead was marked with slanted, orangey stripes of light and she frowned, discombobulated.

  “Mom?”

  “What?”

  “You okay?”

  She rubbed her face, groaning. Fuck, she was so exhausted. “I’m fine Bray. Just taking a nap, like I told you.”

  “Yeah. That was two hours ago, Mom.”

  She uncovered her face and sat up to peer at the travel alarm clock on the minimalist side table of the Templeton Motor Lodge. The door joining her room with Brayden’s was closed, hence him yelling through it.

  And he was right. Two hours had passed since she’d collapsed onto the bed, exhausted from another visit with her parents that afternoon. It was the end of August, she’d been hiding in this motel with Brayden for nearly two weeks, and she had to take him home to Bakersfield today because school was starting in a few days. It wasn’t a bad place, and her room had a kitchenette as well as the attached room so it felt like they were small-apartment-living.

  Brayden had gone to work for her father’s friend in a hardware store, so that was good. He’d found something to do that would earn some more cash and he seemed to like the people working there with him.

  As for her, she’d been permanently attached to the internet connection, scouring the web for all the news from Markham while her election campaign fell apart.

  Yes, her campaign was apparently still going on. Troy, that wonderful bastard, had refused to pull her out of the running and was telling reporters she was on “personal leave” since someone had seen fit to video tape her without her knowledge and consent. He added no more than that to his official sound bites and written replies.

  Apparently the paper had written an apology online, and it had printed shortly after the big exposé on her love life had printed. She hadn’t seen it.

  She tried to keep busy by staying abreast of everything back home, assuming she wasn’t slumped over the toilet throwing up like mad. She told Brayden and her parents it had to be the stress of everything going on back home.

  Her mother informed her she was disappointed, but she was also appropriately shocked that someone would be so brazen. Her father, God love him, actually found it funny once he got over the rage for someone peeping on his daughter. “Of all the things people could judge you for, Sharon, getting fucked on the kitchen table seems pretty unimportant.”

  She loved her father. A lot.

  Her mother kept her company in the afternoons, understanding her need to settle her nerves in the morning from all this “trauma.”

  It wasn’t stress, it wasn’t the trauma. It wasn’t fear. She knew what it was, but she was still hoping against hope she was wrong.

  She was exhausted all the time. Even after eleven hours sleep it felt as though she was dragging her ass around way past bedtime. And the nausea? Only in the mornings, thank you very much.

  She was terrified to go to the doctor. She’d do it once Brayden was back in Bakersfield, just quietly slip back to Markham to see her doctor then get the fuck out again. She had two weeks paid on the motel room still, minus Brayden’s room. She was talking her clothes home; she needed her own laundry pair. The one at the motel was shit. Other than that, she’d happily sit around on her ass after scurrying back to this refuge, wondering what the fuck she was going to do about this.

  Because she knew. She knew without a doubt she was knocked up.

  Who could guess how it happened? They were careful, but the best methods were still only 99% effective at best. She wasn’t on the pill anymore; once she’d hit 40 she was still smoking so her doctor urged her to give it up. So she did, then promptly quit smoking anyway. But she never went back on it again, due to her age. Her lifestyle was stressful enough, no need to add another cause of heart problems.

  So a condom broke somewhere along the way. She didn’t know if she was two or three months late. She hadn’t thought she was late until she started getting
sick, then she realized it had been quite a while since she’d gotten her period. She’d been so fucking busy it hadn’t even occurred to her to wonder.

  There was the idea of sticking around, having the baby then going back to Markham to officially move away without telling anyone anything. As attractive as that option was, she couldn’t imagine doing that to Fritter.

  He was goofy. He was incorrigible. He was impulsive, young, and aggressive. And every part of her thought he’d make an amazing dad. She didn’t know why, she just thought he would. Or those could be her hormones clouding her judgment.

  There was also the possibility that it wasn’t Fritter’s baby. She and Hogan had only been together once, and maybe it was his condom supply that was shit. There was another thing that made her cringe to have anyone know about this; adding on the fact there had been this one other guy that one time ... But no. She preferred to tell herself it was Fritter’s. Not sure why a felon being the father of her unborn eased her mind more than a high-level law enforcement official but ... hormones again. Probably.

  She didn’t want to do all this again. She’d been young the first time—young and very naive. And even then she’d still had Steven. He’d actually been a great pregnancy partner; very involved, took all the classes with her, and they’d read the books out loud to each other. He’d been what kept her from completely losing her mind with panic.

  Sticking around her to have a baby by herself? Another terrifying thought. She needed to see her doctor, find out for sure, reassure herself that conception would have occurred before she’d gotten in bed with Hogan, and then everything would be fine. After all, that was just under a month ago. She knew this was further along than that.

  Maybe. Hopefully. Who the fuck knew?

  Now she groaned as she pulled herself to her feet and approached the door, opening it and mustering up her best smile for Brayden. But her son was a very intuitive type, and he’d been guessing something was up and not just the election and the video scandal. He didn’t exactly pester, he just kept asking “Are you sure nothing’s wrong?”

  Like now. His face told her he was about done with her bullshit insistence that everything was hunky dory. He put his hands on his slim hips and sighed as soon as he saw her. “Mom, what the hell?”

  “I didn’t sleep well. I just needed a rest. You got the car packed up?”

  He nodded, his brows still huddled up in worry. “You won’t be able to drive back. You’ll fall asleep behind the wheel.”

  “It’s fine,” she assured him, running a hand through her hair and looking around for her purse. “You have the keys? You can drive us there.”

  “Okay,” he muttered, turning from the door and heading for the bed to grab one last bag. “I can come back next weekend for the rest of my stuff from the house, right?”

  She nodded. “Yep. We can take the trip back to the house and get it all then.”

  “‘Kay.”

  They bundled themselves into the Cobalt. Sure enough, it was 11am and she’d wanted to be on the road by 10 at the very latest. That damn nap had gotten away from her, and her sweet son had let her sleep.

  The drive was a quiet one as she again was dozing in the passenger seat. It was a warm sunny day, perfect for sleeping. Brayden stayed quiet, asking every now and then if she needed to visit a restroom or get a snack.

  Not yet. She wasn’t eating everything in sight yet, she was still too queasy.

  By the time she’d have to drive to Markham she’d be over this round of sickness. Then it would be a debate over whether to sleep one night in Markham, deal with being sick again in the morning and then driving to Templeton or just toughing it out into the night and driving straight through.

  That would mean no doctor’s visit, of course. Maybe it would be better to just find a doctor in Templeton for this.

  These were her worries as they drove. When they arrived in Bakersfield Sharon begged off going up to Steven and Jasmine’s condo, watching her son carry his stuff through the lobby doors after a long, tight hug.

  She’d really liked having him around. Maybe she’d been a little lonelier than she really thought.

  Sure enough her stomach had settled in time for the drive to Markham. It was only twenty minutes but it still made her sleepy so she knew she was resigned to one night in her own home. Then she’d find a doctor that could test her the next morning.

  Still, she stopped at the grocery store to pick up something for supper. The clerk was incredibly uninterested in what was being rung through, so Sharon relaxed and waited. The teenage girl’s lack of focus was fortuitous; Sharon had grabbed a home pregnancy test kit. Two, actually. Different brands. It was killing her not knowing. If they were negative, she could chill out and assign her body’s whacked out cycle a level of stress that made her uncharacteristically irregular.

  Another fantastic dream.

  She pulled into her driveway in early evening, climbed out and picked her purse off the seat then circled to collect her full reusable grocery bag from the back. As she walked up her pathway she had to pause, frowning at her yard.

  She’d assumed her plants would be dead. It had been hot, and while she planted desert-zone species they still did much better with the odd shot of moisture. And she also expected the grass to either be dead or a foot tall. But she saw none of those things.

  Her lawn was not lush, but it was still green and neatly shortened. She knew keeping it this length meant it needed less water and grew a lot tougher, and it looked like it had just been done. Plus, her bedding plants were actually flowering. A little droopy from the hot day but not sad, wilted brown clumps.

  She knew who had done it and her stomach tightened.

  The keys were slipping out of her hand and she was cursing as she heard the straight pipes roaring down the block. They hit the stoop and she cursed, bending to scoop them up. Maybe she could be inside before he got close and he wouldn’t know—

  Except her car was on the drive, not in the garage. She really should park it in the garage so no one would know she was here again.

  Fuck. Fucking pregnancy brain.

  She got the key fitted into the lock and hurried inside, telling herself there was always the chance it was someone out for a ride on a lovely afternoon. Not every motorcycle in town was owned by a Red Rebel.

  Sharon was setting her bags on the kitchen counter when there was a heavy knock on her front door. With a deep breath she squared her shoulders and answered, her reaction to seeing Fritter on her doorstep overwhelming and unexpected.

  She’d missed him. She’d really missed him, and if she was the light-hearted, fun-loving sort she would have thrown herself into his arms like she wanted to. Instead the clung to the edge of the door and met his eyes, willing her face to stay calm.

  But she really wanted him to hold her.

  “Hey,” she said, trying for casual.

  “Sharon. What’re you doing back?”

  That’s when she saw the bruises fading under his eyes. “What happened to your face?”

  He touched his cheekbone, then smiled sheepishly. “The club had to remind me that I put us in danger with you. So … they all got a free shot. It’s almost healed now. It’s been over a week.”

  Never in her lifetime did she expect to understand men.

  “But … what are you doin’ back?”

  She shrugged a shoulder. “Needed clothes. And Brayden had to get back to the city for school so I’m just stopping over.”

  He nodded, one hand hooked on a belt loop. He used the other one to rub the back of his neck, and his look was sheepish as his lip curled into a half grin. “Can I come in or—”

  “Shit,” she cut in, stepping back. “Of course. Sorry, come in.”

  “How you been?” he asked as he shut the door behind himself.

  “Good,” she replied absently, trying to keep this conversation away from the personal. “What are you doing here?”

  “I ride by every night, make sure no one’
s fuckin’ with the house. First week I’d randomly camp out on your stoop, makin’ sure no one got any bright ideas. Couple kids came by one time, saw me. No one’s stopped since.”

  Her heart did a sappy flip-flop at that. “You were watching my house?”

  “Don’t want people fuckin’ around with your stuff. Everyone knew you left town. People think they’re clever ‘round here. Didn’t want any dumbasses wreckin’ your shit.” He moved past her into the kitchen. “Can I get a drink of somethin’?”

  “Umm, sure,” she scurried after him. “I think there’s beer in the fridge.”

  “So you’re stoppin’ in for an overnight break,” he said over his shoulder, head ducking into the fridge. “You not sleepin’ well?”

  Damn it. “No, not really.”

  “Go ahead and grab some sleep then. I’ll put your stuff away.”

  “No, Fritter, really—”

  “I can think I can figure out where your groceries should go.”

  She was diving for the bag but the law of averages said he’d find the smallest box in the lot first, and as he pulled the pink cube free of the paper bag she froze, heart jumping up into the middle of her throat.

  Then she could only watch him stare at it.

  Chapter Thirty

  He had no idea what the fuck was in his hand.

  Okay, he had some idea, but it was a confusing moment to be standing in Downey’s kitchen, relieved as fuck to see her, wanting to wrap her up in his arms despite her fuck off body language, and then to be pulling a home pregnancy test out of her groceries? Nah, he was good and confused.

  Maybe the kid knocked up some chick?

  “Fritter—”

  “Is this…” He turned to her, box held up, tilting his head. “Is it yours?”

  Her arms crossed over her stomach and she looked down and to her right, mouth moving to find something to say.

  Then it hit him. Like a gale force, Mach 5, Grade-A tropical storm.

  “Fuck,” he muttered, setting the beer down and staring at the box like it could sting him. He didn’t drop it, though. He was thinking.