“How’s this?” Dix asked, tossing her suitcase onto the bed. It was inexpensive place near where he lived. He knew the owners and knew the rooms were clean and well maintained.
“It’s fine,” Daisy said, stepping into the room behind him. The room was small but clean, decorated with pictures of fishing trawlers and other nautical items. “Thank you so much for doing this.”
“I guess it’s the least we can do since you have given us the heads up.”
“You help me get Riley back and we’ll call it even.”
He smiled. “I’m sure we’ll do what we can. As Cale said, though, we’re going to have to be careful. Nobody is going to want to go to jail for kidnapping.”
“I understand. If you, the Cutthroats I mean, can just help me find him, I’ll take it from there.” She paused for a moment. “Is there someplace around here to eat? I haven’t eaten since breakfast and I’m starving.”
“I know a couple of places. Want to join me for dinner?”
“I don’t want to be a bother,” she said, mentally crossing her fingers he wouldn’t take the out she’d given him.
He was simply stunning and seemed very kind. He had, despite lying to her at the beginning, gotten her one step closer to finding Riley. He was about the same height as Leo, perhaps six one or two, but that’s where the similarities ended. Where Leo was loud, Dixon was quiet. He said little as she gave them her story, but watched her intently as he took it all in.
Leo was good looking in his own way, a carefully crafted bad boy look he worked hard to maintain, but Dixon, with his dark hair, kind eyes and square jaw, looked like he should be a model. Where Leo checked his look every time he passed a mirror, Dixon didn’t seem to notice or care. Where Leo rarely smiled, playing the brooding bad boy shtick to the hilt, Dixon smiled easily and often.
“No bother. I have to eat, too. I would enjoy the company.”
She smiled. “I would love to, then, if you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
He led her back out and offered her his helmet. She plopped it on her head and expertly adjusted the strap before climbing on his bike behind him. They motored for a while before he pulled into his standby. He didn’t cook or eat at home, and when he wanted something quick and close, Billbe’s was the place.
“Dix!” the hostess cried as he walked in. She kissed him on the cheek. “We haven’t seen you in almost a week. I thought you were mad at us or something.”
“No. You heard about Kevin Murphy?”
“Yeah. I’m really sorry. I know you two were close.”
“Yeah. I’ve been trying to help Vicki.” He shrugged.
“Let us know if we can do anything to help, okay?”
“Thanks, Kate. I will.”
Kate led them to a table and placed two menus of the table. “Sarah will be right out. Enjoy.”
Dix watched Kate until she was out of earshot. “Kate’s family owns the place.”
“You obviously come here often.”
“Two or three times a week.”
Daisy picked up the menu, breathing a sigh of relief. Billbe’s wasn’t too expensive. “What’s good?”
“Everything.” When she looked over the top of her menu he smiled at her. “No really. The meatloaf and chicken fried steak are really good. The salmon is decent. If you don’t mind having to wash up afterwards, the fried chicken is great.”
She nodded, then closed the menu. “Why don’t you order for me, then. I like all that stuff.”
“Hey, Dix,” a pretty young waitress said as she arrived. “I’m sorry about Kevin.”
“Thanks, Sarah.”
“The usual for you tonight?”
“Yeah. For Daisy, she’ll have the fried chicken, white or dark?” he asked looking to her.
“White, please.”
“All white. For her sides, she’ll have mac and cheese, new potatoes and, let’s see…she looks like a green bean person to me. What do you think?”
Sarah grinned. “Definitely.”
Daisy shuddered dramatically. “No green beans. Yuck!”
“No green beans, huh? Lemon carrots?” She shook her head. “Hmmm, last guess. White beans with onion?”
“That works,” she said.
“And a basket of rolls, please.”
“What would you like to drink?” Sarah asked as she looked at Daisy.
“Do you have beer on tap?”
Sarah shook her head. “We don’t serve alcohol.”
“Oh. A pop, then. Do you have Sprite?”
“Yes.”
“That’ll be fine.”
Sarah finished scribbling and picked up the menus. “I’ll have the bread right out.”
Dix and Daisy sat in uncomfortable silence for a moment. “If you don’t mind my asking, what happened to Kevin?”
“I don’t mind. Killed in a motorcycle crash about a week ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah. Actually, you showing up has helped clear up a question. It looks like what caused the crash was somebody taking a shot at him. He went off the road and hit a tree. I wonder if it’s the Firechrome.”
“Why would they do that?”
He shrugged. “Doesn’t make sense to me either, but it’s the closest thing it a reason I can think of.” He paused as Sarah set their drinks and a basket of rolls on the table. “That’s honey butter,” he said as he hot fingered a roll to his plate.
She took one and carefully opened the steaming roll, buttered it, and took a bite. “That’s really good.”
“Told you. So tell me, how did you end up in this mess? You told us how Leo had taken Riley, but you didn’t say how you ended up arrested, or why.”
Daisy looked at her plate. “Are you sure you want to hear that? It’s a long story.”
Dix shrugged then grinned. “You have somewhere else to be?”
She sighed. “I married Leo when I was nineteen. My parents tried to tell me but I was young and stupid and wouldn’t listen. I knew he was in the Firechrome, but I was into bad boys then and he said he was next in line for the VP position in the Eugene chapter. He promised me all these things, how I wouldn’t have to work and he’d take care of me.” She paused as she took a sip of her pop. “Turned out he was a lying sack of shit. He was a nobody, just another person in the club. All those great plans? Nothing. I didn’t mind working, but I got pretty tired of working while he was goofing off with his pals in the club. Anyway, I got fed up and filed for divorce and slapped a restraining order on him to boot because he was slapping me around.”
She noticed h face turn hard when she mentioned Leo hitting her, but he said nothing. Another thing to like about him…he doesn’t approve of hitting women.
“So he wanted to meet me for lunch one day, said he wanted to try to work something out so he could see Riley. I was stupid and I went to meet him. I have no proof, of course, but I think he stole my driver’s license. I’m not sure how he managed that because I never left the table, but I still think he did it.
“Anyway, a couple of days later the cops show up at work and ask to see my license. I didn’t have it, which surprised the hell out of me. The reason I didn’t have it is because the night before my license was found outside a convenience store immediately after a robbery. The man was seen driving away with a woman with brown hair.” She flicked her ponytail. “They arrested me on the spot.
“I called my parents and they picked Riley up from daycare then bailed me out. A few weeks later, the charges were dropped because at the time of the robbery Riley and I were having pizza at a birthday party for one of his friends.”
“The cops couldn’t figure that out before they arrested you?”
She snorted. “I don’t think they even tried. I kept telling them I didn’t do it, but they didn’t listen. The judge lectured the prosecutor about that when they dropped the charges.”
“And you think Leo planted the license so he could get custody of Riley?”
“That’s what I think. While I was waiting for the arraignment, I moved back home to Prineville to get away from Leo and try to put my life back together, but it’s hard. I was still looking for a job, but when you didn’t know if you’re going to prison, it makes finding something tough.”
The sadness of her smile touched him. She had a lot of shit dumped on her and it didn’t seem right. A deadbeat husband, soon to be single mother, and now this? “If Leo is in town, we’ll find him and I’ll help you get Riley back.”
“Thank you, Dixon,” she said as their food arrived.
“Call me Dix. Everyone else does.”
“Okay, Dix. This looks wonderful.”
She watched his hands as he unwrapped his utensils. They were calloused and scraped, the hands of a man who wasn’t afraid of work. It was hard to tell under his shirt and leather jacket, but he appeared to be well-built in a way of a man who did honest work, not someone who spent hours working out in a gym. In short, he was everything Leo wasn’t, and that was appealing in the extreme.
He cut off a bite-sized portion of his meatloaf and placed it on her plate. “Try that. Best meatloaf I’ve ever had. What kind of work do you do?”
“In Eugene I worked for a construction company, in the office, scheduling the crews, contractors and deliveries. In Prineville, I was looking for whatever I could find. What do you do?”
Dix snorted. “I work in a recycling yard.”
“Where trash goes?”
“No, where crashed cars go. We break the cars down and sell the pieces off to body shops and the like. What’s left we can’t sell, we crush and sell for the scrap metal.”
“Been there long?” She knew it was none of her business, but Dixon was fascinating. She wanted to find out if there was a Mrs. Montague, or someone he was close to, but didn’t know how to ask. If not, she couldn’t understand why someone hadn’t snapped him up because having just met him, he seemed like the perfect man.
“Twenty years.”
“Twenty? How can that be? You can’t be a day over thirty.”
“Twenty-seven. My dad worked there and I have been there in one way or another since I was seven or eight years old.”
She could sense there was more to the story but didn’t press. It was none of her business and she didn’t want to piss off her benefactor. “So what else do you do? You work in a scrapyard—”
“Recycling yard,” he corrected with a grin.
“Excuse me. A recycling yard, and you ride with the Cutthroats. What else do you do? Have a family?”
“Just Old James.”
“Old James?”
“James McGhee. He owns the scrapyard.”
She put her fork down and grinned at him. “Okay, which is it? Recycling yard or scrapyard?”
He chuckled that she’d picked up he’d used her term. “Recycling yard is the,” he made tick marks in the air with his fingers, “politically correct term. But we call it a scrapyard because it’s easier to say.”
“What about your dad?”
He was quiet a moment. “He’s around but we don’t see each other much,” he said softly.
“This was really good,” she said, leaning back and backpedaling away from an obviously touchy subject.
He smiled, thankful she didn’t press. He didn’t mind talking about his life, long since having accepted it was what it was, but it wasn’t a subject he enjoyed. “This is my go-to place, if you couldn’t tell.”
“I can see why.”
“Sarah, Daisy would like a slice of your apple pie, warmed, with a scoop of ice cream,” he said as their waitress arrived to collect their plates.
“I can’t! I’m stuffed!”
“Bring two spoons, then,” he continued when Sarah hesitated.
“You’re going to have to eat most of it,” she groaned.
“We’ll see.”
The pie arrived, steaming hot, with a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. The pie was unlike any apple pie she’d ever seen. It was creamy smooth and appeared to be made from apple sauce, not apples. She cut off the end, added a dollop of ice cream, and after blowing it cool, popped it into her mouth.
Dix grinned as her face lit up.
“I’m impressed,” she said as she cut off another bite.
“Everyone has the same reaction. I wish you could have seen your face. You were like, ‘What’s this? This isn’t apple pie.’”
“It’s not like any I have had, but it is certainly good.” Even though she didn’t think she could eat another bite, she ate more than half of the slice. “Ugh…I hate you,” she groaned as she tossed her spoon into the bowl.
“I didn’t make you eat it,” he replied with a grin.
“Doesn’t matter. I still hate you.” She turned to her purse, pulling her wallet out. She hoped she’d enough cash on her to pay for her part of the meal.
“I’ve got this,” he said as he picked up the ticket.
“Dix, I can pay for my meal. You don’t have to do that.”
“I invited you to dinner, I’m paying.”
She watched his eyes a moment. Letting him pay would help stretch her meager funds. “Thank you.”
He paid the ticket then escorted her outside. She heard the distant rumble of thunder as she donned the helmet, but they were only fifteen minutes from the motel and they should make it easily before it began to rain.
He stopped beside her Bug and killed the rumbling bike as she dismounted. “Thank you for dinner, and for helping me get Riley back,” she said softly as she handed his helmet to him.
He nodded. “We’ll start looking in the morning, say about eight?”
“Eight is perfect.”
“Okay, I’ll pick you up then,” he said as he put on the helmet. “We’ll have breakfast, then we’ll see if we can track down Leo.”
“Thank you, again. It won’t cause you problems at work, will it?”
He chuckled. “There’s nothing there that can’t wait a day or two.” He thumbed the bike to life. “See you at eight.”