Tack
It was dark.
There was only one light lit in the room.
Tack sat at the head of Chaos’s table.
Hound was standing, his back to the wall opposite the door.
But Tack had his gaze on the Chaos flag under the Plexiglas in the middle of the table.
“High told us what Millie said,” Tack told the table.
“Yup,” Hound replied.
Tack stared at the flag.
But his mind was filled with hearing High’s voice over the phone earlier that day when he’d first gotten the call.
He felt deep what he heard in High’s voice. The anger that hid the fear.
He knew how that felt. He knew how it felt to know your woman was in the hands of a madman. He knew how it felt not to know where she was or how to find her. He knew how it felt to know you’d give anything to get her back safe.
Even if it meant giving your life.
Even if it meant that would take you away from her, your kids.
You’d do it.
Without a thought.
He knew exactly how that felt.
And hearing it in his brother’s voice, remembering it in a way that cut like a blade, knowing he had to do everything he could to stop High from giving everything he was, after years of that feeling being gone, it again haunted him.
He looked from the flag to Hound.
“You’re on this,” he ordered.
Slowly, Hound grinned.
“Alone, Hound. You got that?” Tack asked.
The grin didn’t waver. “I got it.”
“No blowback, brother,” Tack ordered.
Hound lifted his chin.
The door opened and both men looked to it.
Tack straightened in his chair and felt the alert coming off Hound when they saw who walked in.
Keely Black.
Every time Tack saw her, the wound of losing his brother, a wound that never closed, opened wider.
And every time he saw her, he thought the waste of the end of Black’s life carried on.
The woman was beautiful. Years had passed and that beauty matured along with her. Throw in her being sweet as candy and funny as hell, the way her life ended when her man’s did was a tragedy. She had a lot to give in ways that goodness couldn’t be given just to her sons.
Tack thought, over the years, all that goodness bottled up, it’d explode and she’d find her way out from under the blanket of grief that was smothering her.
She never did.
And with eyes that were dead even if they were shining with anger, Tack reckoned it never would.
“Keely, darlin’, you know, the doors are closed, this room—” he started.
“Fuck what I know,” she bit out.
As asked, earlier that day, she’d hightailed it to Millie’s to look after High’s girls.
But the minute Pete got there, she took off.
It wasn’t his first choice to ask her to step in. Fuck, he’d never ask her to step in unless the situation was what it was and High needed his brothers around, and fast, to contain him.
Clearly, she hadn’t liked it.
“What we asked today, honey, we won’t ask again,” Tack told her quietly.
“Damn straight, Tack,” she returned, moving into the room and slamming the door behind her. “ ’Cause, in case you didn’t get it the last time shit went south. And then the time before that and the time before that. You should get it now. For God’s sake, they took Millie.”
“You shoulda stuck around to see she was good,” Hound told her, and her eyes shot to him.
“I didn’t because I know Millie. Happy for High she’s back. Took forever and it’s good that shit is over. But if she sees me, she’ll be all up in my shit to heal me. I had enough of that from Pete. From Beverly. From all you all,” she returned. “Only reason Bev’s still around is because she stopped that shit.”
Bev was Boz’s ex. She and Keely remained tight.
And it wasn’t lost on Tack that was the reason.
“Keely—” he began.
Her eyes snapped to him and she ordered, “Pull back.”
“Woman—” Hound tried.
Keely didn’t look from Tack. “Whatever it is you boys are stuck in this time, pull back.”
He shook his head. “That’s not possible.”
She crossed her arms on her chest. “It’s not possible because your pride is at stake. The Club’s pride is at stake. But other, more important shit is at stake, too, Tack, and you’re far from dumb. You know it. Whatever this lunatic wants from Chaos that’s making him get into it with old ladies, give it to him and pull back.”
“Babe, you’ve got a place deep in my soul, straight up,” Hound said, and Keely looked to him. “But bottom line, you don’t know what the fuck you’re talkin’ about.”
“I know why you two are here,” she returned, lifting a hand, finger pointed, to indicate him and Tack. She dropped her hand. “I know you, Hound. I know when you’re called in.”
“And you know I get the job done,” Hound replied, his voice soft, even tender, and Tack narrowed his gaze on his brother’s face when he saw the same reflected there.
Fuck.
That was a look in all their years as brothers Tack had never seen from Hound.
And that was not a look a man was giving the widow of his dead brother.
Fuck.
“It gives me no joy to say that at least when this asshole takes you out, Hound, you’re not leavin’ anyone who loves you more than the breath they take behind,” Keely shot back.
Tack watched the nearly imperceptible flinch strike Hound’s face.
Fuck.