Ice (Thor Book 2), page 22
Chapter Eighteen
Knives
Ice
He asked Reena to go to his parents’ place where she’d be safe, and she raised her brows but didn’t ask any questions.
“Be careful,” she said instead and waited for his nod before she gave him a tense smile and walked away with Tom at her side.
“That animal still scares the bejeezus out of me, but I have to say, he looks good now that he’s clean,” Downer said, and added, “He’ll keep her safe, Ice.”
“Yeah,” Ice said with a sigh.
“Any word, Brooks?” Black muttered.
“We talked to everyone with homes close by. No one drove down to the compound, and all of them are at home except for the Davidsons. They're in Arizona visiting their son, and rented the house to some guy for a month.”
“Name.”
“James Smith.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah.” Brooks snorted out a short chuckle, and went on, “I asked them if the name might be fake, and he said he had no clue but that the guy looked like a James Smith, whatever that means.”
“Right. Let’s go.”
They walked through the late afternoon dusk following the trail leading them straight to the Davidsons’ house. Then they spread out around it, closing in from all angles, and two men crept closer to look through the windows. Black followed the hedge until he reached the car standing outside the house and came back with a grin on his face.
“Must be an idiot. He left the keys in the car, so I took them and a few other parts. He’s not going anywhere.”
Ice and Brooks were right behind Black when they got the signal that there was only one man inside.
“Let’s go,” Black murmured and raised his leg to kick the door open.
The man was eating what looked like a fucking omelet, and he dropped his fork on the plate when they marched inside.
“What?” he asked in a high-pitched squeak. “This is –”
“I recognize you,” Black growled.
Ice knew who it was too and kept walking until he reached the young man he had last seen sitting on the floor of a cabin in Colorado. He’d heard from one of his sister’s friends that the asshat had changed his statement about the accident that broke Toby’s back. He now claimed that there had been ice on the road, and Ice hadn’t cared that he’d lied again as long as it was clear that Toby was in no way responsible for what had happened.
That situation had changed, though, and anger built in him when he realized that the little weasel in front of him very likely was responsible for the strange things that had happened.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked.
“I’m renting a cabin to do some hiking.”
“Try again.”
“Okay, yes. Sorry. I was just going to apologize for what I did, but –”
The fist Ice put in the moron’s face felt good, so he punched the man again, just for the fuck of it.
“You messed with my woman’s car. Poured water on my son’s deck so he’d slip and hurt his back. Put drugs in –”
“Yes,” the man wailed. “Yes. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, and it won’t happen again.”
I’m sorry?
It won’t happen again?
Fuck, no, it wasn’t going to happen again.
When blood flowed from the man’s nose, and one of his eyes started to swell up, Black pulled him back.
“We’ll bring him back to the compound.”
“Gonna kill the fucker,” Ice growled and tried to pull his arm loose from the firm grip Black had on it.
“Want to know why first,” Black said. “We’ll bring him back. It's a better place for cleanup, so you can kill him there when we’ve talked some more.”
The man sobbed, and Ice did not care one bit.
“Right,” he grunted. “Let’s go.”
***
Toby and Dagger were laughing about something but stopped abruptly when they hauled the man into the barn and over to the part which wasn't filled with training equipment.
“The fuck?” Toby growled angrily.
“Followed the tracks, found him. He is –”
“I know who he is,” Toby cut Ice off.
“Beanie?” Michaela said at the same time, and everyone stopped moving.
Ice blinked slowly, trying to process that they knew the asshat.
“I’m sorry,” the man mumbled. “I never meant to... you know.”
No one said a word for a few beats, and then Toby walked up to him.
“I don't know,” he said. “I think it's safe to assume you did shit you shouldn't have done, and that this was bad shit.” He leaned forward and added, “Care to share... Beanie?”
“I didn’t –”
“Yes, you did,” Toby said calmly. “My dad wouldn’t mess you up this bad if you didn’t.”
Ice glanced at Black and saw how his eyes narrowed with a small smile of approval.
“He was the one who was in the car that broke your back.”
Michaela gasped, but Toby raised a hand.
“What else?”
“Messed with your mother’s car a couple of times, planted a bag of oxy in it, poured water on your front porch. Don’t know what else.”
Toby turned to look at him and nodded slowly.
“Right,” he said. “Probably took out the lights in the stairs to my condo, cut halfway through a few of my rescue ropes, and loosened a few screws on the ski bindings on my favorite pair.”
“What? Why?” Michaela asked, seemed to realize that she was looking at Toby, and turned toward the man who looked like he was about to faint. “Beanie?”
“Michaela,” he said quietly. “Please. We’re cousins.”
“My father and your mother were cousins,” Michaela said with a sneer, and ordered angrily, “Tell us why you want Toby to hurt himself. And his mother? What has she done to you?”
“Nothing. They weren’t supposed to be seriously hurt.”
“You broke my fucking back,” Toby snapped.
“That was an accident. I was on my way up to A-basin to talk to you. Thought I could get you to understand...”
He looked nervously from Toby to Michaela and back again.
“Understand what?” Ice barked, and the man whimpered. “Jesus,” he added. “What a pathetic little fool you are.”
“Beanie,” Michaela said quietly. “Why?”
“I had to make you see,” Beanie shouted. “You needed to see that he was no good for you. He got into all these dangerous situations, climbing all the fuck over, and the crazy things he did with the kayak... And the horses, Michaela, don’t you remember when he rode out with a couple of friends and didn’t show up again for a couple of weeks?”
“But that was –”
“I thought that if you saw how bad he was... If the family saw what he’d always be. And then he got you pregnant, so I had to try harder to get him out of the way.”
Toby made an angry sound, but the other man was staring wide-eyed at Michaela and didn’t seem to hear it.
“I’d help you raise the kid,” Beanie said pleadingly. “I would be good for you. He wasn’t, Michaela. He was in an accident and didn’t call you, even when he could. I heard you crying, and knew I had to try to make you see.”
“You’d help me raise... the kid?”
“I always thought it’d be us.”
“Us?” Michaela waved her hand back and forth between them, looking completely stunned. “As in you and me?”
“Why not?” Beanie mumbled. “The family would have approved. I would have been let into the club then so we could have –”
“The club?” Toby rumbled. “Is that what this is about? You wanted to join the Wolves, and Doug said no.”
“He didn’t –”
“Yes, he did,” Michaela cut in with a tired sigh. “Of course, he did.”
“Michaela,” Beanie said quietly. “You know I’m –”
“It would never have been us, Beanie. If it hadn’t been Toby it would have been someone else, but it would not have been you.” Michaela’s voice had hardened, and she leaned forward slightly. “I can’t believe you thought I’d be your way into the club because that would never have happened either,” she snarled.
“Did he talk to you?”
“No. But there’s no way Uncle Doug would let you in, and he’s right. You’ll have a better life outside that world.”
“Fuck you!” Beanie yelled. “And fuck him too for telling me that. I am not soft. I might not be a tracker, and I’m not a big brawny fighter like your fucking brothers, but I would be good for the club. I got into the Thor compound, didn’t I?” He turned and looked straight at Black. “Snuck right into your place, and you didn’t even know.”
Oh-oh. That had not been the right thing to say to the President of Thor MC, so Beanie might be sneaky, but Ice wondered if he wasn’t also just a little bit stupid.
Black had started moving when a knife whizzed through the air and hit Beanie in his thigh.
“Back off, he’s mine,” Black snarled.
“Apparently not,” Toby mumbled, and Ice heard a low chuckle from the side.
“Mom,” Black growled.
“Wasn’t me,” Gee said airily and with a dainty shrug.
“Dagger,” Black barked.
“Not me, either.”
That was surprising because Gee could kill a fly on the wall with her knives, and Dag had inherited her talent. Everyone else had learned the basics, but Ice knew that like himself, they wouldn’t be able to place a knife in a man’s thigh that skillfully, so he looked around the room, wondering who the –
“Yeah, that was me,” Toby said and looked at his grandmother. “Fuck it if you weren’t right after all. I do have a tendency to aim a little to the left.”
“We’ll work on that,” Gee said. “If you’d aimed a little more to the right instead, you would have hit him straight in his dick. That would have hurt more.”
Ice couldn’t hold back a short laugh.
God, sometimes he loved his mother so much.
“You put a knife in my leg,” Beanie cried out and clutched his thigh.
“Yeah,” Toby said, crouched down stiffly, pulled the knife out in a swift movement, and leaned in closer to the crying man’s face. “You entered the Thor compound uninvited, and you might have been lucky enough to sneak in, but you should know...” He raised a hand and wiggled the knife. “Consequences,” he said calmly.
“Are you fucking crazy?” Beanie wailed.
“You don’t know just how crazy I am, Beanie,” Toby said and stood again.
“What?”
“I’m just like my family. Look around the room, and you’ll see it.”
“What?”
“Look around the fucking room, Beanie,” Toby snarled. “And you’ll see exactly who I am.”
***
Reena
I had never heard my son sound so hard and unforgiving before, but since I wanted to slap some sense into the stupid cousin of Michaela’s myself, I did not mind at all.
Beanie looked at Toby, and then he glanced at Ice and blanched. Black took a step forward, and everyone else moved slightly, creating a circle around the young man on the floor.
“Ice,” Black said in his deep gravelly voice.
“Yeah,” Ice said.
“We should have killed the fucker when we had the chance down in Colorado.”
“Yeah,” Ice repeated, and kept his glare on the man when he asked, “Toby?”
I swallowed because it occurred to me that he might be asking our son if they should perhaps do something which would require someone digging a not so shallow grave.
This was not good.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Michaela muttered and pulled out her phone. She was tapping her foot impatiently while she waited for someone to pick up, and then she snapped, “Uncle Doug. Got a situation you need to handle.” A few sentences later, she had informed her uncle of what Beanie had done. Then she listened for a few seconds but snarled, “You will send someone here to pick him up, and you will handle him, or swear to God I’ll not hold Toby back.” She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “No. Knives.” There was another eye-roll and then a smug, “His grandmother taught him.” To my surprise, she suddenly chuckled. “Yes, Uncle Doug, the grandmother who is Gee Hagen.” The man she spoke to must have confirmed that someone from the Wolves MC would indeed show up at the Thor compound to pick Beanie up because she nodded and said, “Exactly. We’ll hogtie the moron and put him in a closet somewhere.”
I blinked because it didn’t sound as if she was joking, but then she closed the call without saying goodbye, and turned toward Black.
“Uncle Doug says he’ll call you. There will be apologies, and a couple of men will be here tomorrow to pick him up.”
“Good,” Black muttered.
“A couple of men who also are your brothers?” Toby asked.
“Probably.”
“Okay,” Toby said. “I’ll wash off the knife.”
I pushed out a hoarse sound and decided that enough was goddamned enough.
“Tobias,” I said.
“Mom –”
“You can put as many knives you wish into the weasel on the floor, but I can’t let you maim Michaela’s brothers.”
“I –”
“Is that understood?” I asked, using my best mom-voice.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Wasn’t going to.”
“It sounded like it,” I said.
“My bad,” he said, and I saw humor bleed into his eyes. “I said it was okay her brothers came here. And then I shared that I would not leave bloody knives lying around on the kitchen counter. Completely unrelated statements.”
His face was blank, but I knew my boy.
“Are you being a smartass?” I asked suspiciously.
“Of course, he is,” Black said with a sigh, and looked at Ice.
“Yeah,” Ice said with a smile that turned into a mean grin when he looked down on the man on the floor. “I’ll tie this one up.”
“Not yet. Someone give me a knife,” I muttered and nodded at Dagger when he offered his. The man on the floor who was stupid enough to try to crawl away when I crouched next to him. “Stay,” I ordered, and sliced his pants open over his thigh so I could poke at the wound. He wailed loudly, and I sighed. “Jeez, you’re quite a Mr. Whinypants, aren’t you?” I asked and followed up with a stern, “Consequences.” Then I straightened, and declared, “He’ll live, you can tie him up now.”
Ice was laughing the whole time he worked to secure the rope, and then Brooks and Downer hauled Beanie off somewhere.
A police cruiser rolled into the compound just as we walked out of the barn, and Bodean stepped out. Dagger and one of the older men casually moved in front of Toby, who used their shield to put the knife into his back pocket and pull his shirt out of his pants to cover it. Dagger stepped to the side, grinned at Toby, who wiggled his brows, and then they moved up to stand next to their fathers.
The move was so fluid there was no way Bodean would have noticed anything, and I wondered if they’d practiced it, or if it was somehow genetic.
“We traced the plates on the car that’s been cruising around here, and the owner –”
“We know who it is,” Black said with a shrug.
“Yes,” Michaela chimed in sweetly. “It’s a relative of mine who has some personal issues.”
“Issues?”
“It’s a very sad story,” she said and tilted her head a little to the side. “He’s leaving tomorrow and won’t be back. The family is taking care of him.”
To my surprise, there were suddenly tears in her eyes. She blinked slowly, and one of them ran down her cheek.
“Your family?” Bodean asked.
“Of course.”
The poor man had shown up hoping to impress Black with his investigative excellence, and now it looked like his parade was soundly rained upon, so I almost felt sorry for him when he mumbled something about how good that was, and how he should head home.
“Hey, Bodean,” Ice called out when Bodean was about to start up his car. “Get your kid out. Stop fucking your ex. Grow a pair and be a man.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“What’s it to you, Ice?”
“It’s the right thing to do, and you know it.”
They glared at each other for a few seconds, but then Bodean sighed.
“Shit. Okay, I’ll see what I can –”
Ice raised his brows, and said calmly, “Get your kid out of the shitty situation he’s in. Stop fucking your ex. Simple.”
“Right,” Bodean muttered and slammed the door shut with a little more force than necessary.
“Nicely done, Petter,” Gee said softly. “You bought yourself extra helpings of dessert for a very long time with that move.”
“Thank you, Mommy,” Ice said super-sweetly, and put a hand in the small of my back to move us toward his home.
“Fucking smartass,” Roddy muttered, but the grin he gave his son was full of approval.
***
Ice
Okay, then. That had been interesting, but it was a relief to know that shit swirling around them would swirl no more.
Now all he had to do was convince Reena that she should stay in Rogan.
Or possibly move to Boise, which he really didn't want to do.
But he would if he had to.
They walked inside, and he decided that convincing her to stay would start with him making love to her. If he made her come repeatedly for the next forty years or so, she might not notice that she wasn’t leaving.
He grinned because it wasn’t much of a plan, but it was an enjoyable one, so he’d go with it while he tried to figure something better out.
“That was interesting,” Reena murmured when she closed the door, and Ice burst out laughing.
“My thoughts exactly.”
“What a fool,” Reena said with a sneer. “As if Michaela would ever let someone like him raise her child.”
“You really like her,” Ice stated, and since it wasn’t a question, he added, “I do too. She’ll be a great mother.”
