Strength & Courage (The Night Horde SoCal Book 1) (27 page)

Showdown took a step forward and put his hand on Nolan’s shoulder. “It’s your call, brother. ‘Long as you get home safe.”

Hoosier nodded. “Then you two vote, too.” He looked back at the remaining Missouri Horde. “If you don’t mind, brothers, we’ll close this vote. We’ll meet you at the bar in a few, and make sure we send you home in the morning good and hung over.”

Muse was surprised, and he could tell that he wasn’t the only one. Though the SoCal Horde hadn’t been in this situation before, in their previous club, it had not been unusual to have guest patches from other charters in the clubhouse for meetings—what they’d then called “Church.” Patches were always invited to Church, and, though they didn’t vote unless it affected their own charter, they were allowed to stay in the room. Hoosier was making a strong statement asking the Missouri officers to step out.

And Showdown knew it. He took a beat or two before he nodded and led Badger, Tommy, and Dom out of the Keep.

Hoosier made no comment on the matter. He simply got back to business. “Depending on the first vote, there might be a second. So let’s start with this: All those in favor of asking to sit down with Dora Vega and make a deal. Aye.”

Hoosier only voted first when he thought he was voting with the will of the table. He turned to Bart, who voted likewise—their rift seemed to have been mended. All around the table, only two members voted ‘nay’: Ronin and Demon.

When the table had been circled and only Connor was left, he paused long enough for the table to grow tense. Finally, he said, “Aye.”

And again, everything had changed.

CHAPTER TWENTY

“Sid. Got a minute?” Harry loomed over the flimsy wall of her cubicle.

Buried in files and reports, Sid didn’t bother to look up from her laptop. “Not really, Harry. I’ve got to catch up on these reports today. I’m crazy behind.”

“I know you are. That’s one of the things we need to talk about. Now.” He walked away without another word. Sid, finally looking up, watched him walk back to his office. When he got to his door, he stood in the doorway and turned, looking straight at her.

Apparently, he’d expected her to follow right behind him. Sighing, she closed her laptop. She really was behind. From Carrie’s death and funeral, to the stuff going on at the clubhouse, to the way her caseload kept growing, to her summonses to appear in court, to her extracurricular work helping Dem—Michael, she was losing control of her schedule. So far, she’d been able to keep up with home visits, and she was putting any files with concerns on top of the heap, but a month’s worth of reports were unfiled. That was how kids fell through cracks, and she knew it.

When she got to Harry’s office, he was still standing near the door. “What’s up, Harry?”

He closed the door. “Have a seat, Sid.”

She sat, and he sat on the desk in front of her. She hated when he did that. Though the most inappropriate he’d ever been with her was the day he’d put his hand on her knee, when he sat on the desk like this, he was too high, too close, and too casual. The creepy vibe was nearly tangible.

But today, he looked angry, so she was pretty sure he wasn’t going to make a pass.

She asked again, “What’s up?”

He reached back, picked up a paper from his desk, and handed it to her. “This was in my morning interoffice mail. Would you like to explain?”

Reading over the document, Sid’s heart began to race, and she had to fight back a grin—and the urge to run back to her desk and call Michael. It was a notice that Jerome and Bedelia Elliott had been approved as foster parents, with a notation that Tucker Van Buren was recommended to their care. The document had been filed by Harry’s boss, because Sid had sent it up the chain when Harry had taken a couple of days off a while back to attend a family wedding.

She set the paper on her lap and looked up at her boss. “You were out of town, so I sent it up to Allison.”

He snatched the document from her and reached back again, pulling forward a manila folder. “By ‘it,’ I assume you mean this?” He handed her the folder, but he hadn’t needed to. It was her report, and she’d assumed as much. All she did was open it to make sure.

“Yes.” She handed it back.

“I told you that case was resolved. I told you to step back. That was an order, not a suggestion.”

“I didn’t agree. We had a chance to put Tucker with people he knows and to open a slot at the Alberts’. Allison agrees with me, apparently.”

Harry’s look became a sneer. “Allison doesn’t know you’re sleeping with one of the bikers, though, does she?”

Sid blinked. She hadn’t known that Harry was aware. She and Muse had given up real discretion pretty quickly, in lieu of protection for her, but they weren’t flaunting their relationship. Harry lived in Madrone, too, but Madrone itself, though not hugely populated, wasn’t really a small town. It was part of the vast community of Southern California. It didn’t have the everybody-knows-everybody’s-business dynamic of a real small town. There was no reason Harry should have been so sure she was with Muse. Unless he was trying to know.

Thinking of no way she could answer him without sounding defensive or guilty, Sid only stared back.

After a few tense seconds, Harry sighed. “Sidonie. You’ve only been here a few months. You’ve gotten in over your head quickly. That’s my fault—I should have given you a stronger hand. So I’m going to do that now. I’ve prepared this. I need you to sign it.” Again, he picked up a document from his desk and handed it to her.

It was a written reprimand and a ‘plan of remediation.’ Before she’d read more than the subject heading, she looked back up. “You’re putting me on paper?”

Harry crossed his arms. “You’re a month behind on filing. You’ve shown repeated resistance to the chain of command, including disobeying a direct order. You’re still in your probationary period, Sid. You’re lucky you’re not holding a letter of termination.”

Stunned, she looked back down at the paper and tried to read. “You…you’re going to partner with me on my home visits? And cosign my reports?” She read on. “You can’t do this—you can’t put my personal life on a remediation plan!” He’d actually written that she couldn’t have a relationship with any member of the Night Horde MC.

“That biker is a clear conflict of interest. So yes, I can.”

Her brain speeding in circles inside her skull, Sid stared at that paper and tried to think. More than anything else, she wanted to tell Harry to shove his remediation plan right up his ass. But Tucker wasn’t placed with Hoosier and Bibi yet, and if she bailed, Harry would figure out a way to fuck it up, even though all the paperwork was filed. She had to figure that out. And then,
then
she was out of there. Fuck this job.

But for now, she needed space. She wished he’d done something more than put his hand on her knee. She wished he’d been really, obviously over the line so she could use that as leverage in some way. After a half-second spent contemplating trying to get him to cross the line, she discarded that idea, mainly because it grossed her out. So, instead, she looked up at Harry and put on her best chastised look.

“I’ll sign.” She made her voice sound as dejected as she could.

His demeanor changed drastically. “Good girl, Sid. I knew you’d make the right call.” He handed her a pen. “You have it in you to be a good caseworker. But you have to understand the way things work. I’ll help you. I should have helped you more from the start.”

His hand landed on her knee again. If she could appear a little receptive, maybe he’d do something. All she’d need to do would be shift her leg a little, open up…

She couldn’t. What she wanted to do was stab that pale, flabby hand with the pen she’d just used to sign his fucking reprimand.

“Can I go back and work on my reports now?”

“Of course, hon. You go ahead. Send them to me when you’re done, and I’ll check them.” He patted her leg and let her go.

Calling her ‘hon’ almost got him stabbed anyway.

~oOo~

When she got back out to the cubicles, she checked something on her laptop and then went to Dina. They weren’t exactly best buds, but they were friendly, and they approached their work with a similar philosophy. Dina was more of a ‘cover your ass’ kind of worker, so what Sid was about to ask was probably futile, but she didn’t know anyone else in the office well enough even to try.

“Hey, Dina.”

“Hi, Sid—I saw you go in with Harry. Everything okay?”

She might as well say. She’d be out of here before she could become much of a scandal. “He wrote me up. Says I lack focus.”

“What? But you’ve had a string of successes. All your cases are solid right now, aren’t they—on track or removed?”

“Yeah.” She didn’t want to get into specifics. “Do you have some time to help me with something?”
 

Dina lifted out of her chair enough to scan the room over her cubicle walls. “Shoot.”

“Allison recommended Tucker Van Buren for placement with the Elliotts.”

“You’re still on that? Sid!” She shook her head. “That’s why he wrote you up, isn’t it?”

Sid cut that off with a sharp wave of her hand. “I did a complete report and sent it to Allison. It’s the right thing to do. She agrees. It’s filed and ready to go. I’m going to handle the transition myself today. I need to know if there’s anything he can do to fuck it up.”

Dina considered her. “What are you doing, Sid?”

“What’s right.”

“And you’re sure?”

“Positive.”

Dina sighed. “Once the Elliotts sign the paperwork taking responsibility for him, he can only be removed for cause, unless the fosters agree. Even if Harry wanted to invent cause, he doesn’t have his own caseload, so he’d have to get one of the caseworkers to do it, too, and he doesn’t have that kind of juice. Are Tucker’s current fosters on board with all this? He’s with the Alberts, right?”

“Yeah. And yeah, they are.”

“Then get moving before Harry gums up the works. If he’s going to, it would be now. I’ll keep an eye on him.” She paused. “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

“As soon as I get this done.”

~oOo~

Three hours later, she pulled up in her state-issued Ford and parked at the curb in front of Bibi and Hoosier’s neat upper-middle-class home in the very same development Harry and Carole Rucker lived in.

She had a hangaround named Dinny trailing her today, because all three Prospects had club things to do. It wasn’t the first time Dinny had guarded her. He didn’t bother talking to her, and he tended to trail farther behind than the Prospects did. Every now and then, she’d hear him roaring up behind her as he caught up from whatever light or jam or distraction had held him up. But she thought, overall, he did okay. She wasn’t about to say something to Muse and get him in trouble.

Catching up now, he parked his bike on the street and sat back, knowing he wasn’t a part of what was happening here.

She got out, but before she could get around to the back door on the side facing the lawn, Demon came trotting out of the house, Bibi and Hoosier both trailing behind. Demon opened the back door.

“Hey, Motor Man! How’s my boy!” He unfastened the car seat restraints and lifted his son out.

“Pa,” Tucker said, as Demon held him close. Though he was past two, the little boy didn’t talk, or even vocalize, much, yet that word was clear and brought tears to Sid’s eyes.

Demon had seen his son for a few hours every Sunday, but there was something obviously, fundamentally different about their bonding now. Now, even though he didn’t yet have custody and was in for a long, pitched fight to get it, now he wouldn’t have to leave his son behind with strangers when he went back to his house. If he went back to his house. Bibi had suggested that Demon move in with them for a while.

Demon—Sid was just going to give up the effort to remember to call him Michael; it didn’t matter anymore—was a big, brawny guy, both of his arms fully sleeved in ink, and with his fierce, dark blue eyes and nearly-shaved head, he looked beyond intimidating. But right now, with his toddler son in his arms, his big head tucked against Tucker’s small one, he looked like nothing but a father overwhelmed by love and relief.

She was right to do this. This was right.

Bibi and Hoosier had reached their little group, and Tucker held out the toy he’d been holding—a little green wooden train engine—to Bibi. “Bee.”

Bibi smiled. “Hey, Tuckster. Who’s that?” She gasped dramatically. “Is that Percy?”

Tucker shook the train in his hand. “Bee.”

“You want Granny Beebs to hold it for you?”

“Bee.”

She took the offered toy. “Well, thank you, honey. I’ll keep him safe for you.”

With his hands free, Tucker circled his arms around his father’s neck and laid his head on that broad shoulder.

Demon turned so he could look Sid in the eye. His eyes were brimming. “Thank you. I don’t know how…just thank you.”

She could only nod.

“And in time for Thanksgivin’, too! Sid, honey, you are an angel.” Bibi wiped at her eyes. “Well, y’all come on into the house. We’ll take care of the paperwork and have a treat.” She grabbed Tucker’s sneakered foot. “Granny Beebs made you cupcakes, Tuck!”