Chapter 2
Almost every hand you’ve ever shaken has had a dick in it at some point.
-Proven Fact
Mig
“Can you repeat that? I don’t think I heard you quite right,” I said into the mic I had in my hand.
I was working a case with the local Sheriff’s Department, and I was currently about five minutes away from the only diner in town to get food.
Something I’d told to about three sheriff’s deputies, one of those being my good friend, and MC brother, Ridley.
Ridley was a member of the Uncertain Saints with me. He’d also been one of the men that’d recruited me for the club.
“I said there’s a man wielding a chain saw at the diner. I’m asking you to be cautious when you go,” Ridley replied seriously.
I pinched the bridge of my nose with my forefinger and thumb, and sighed.
“Got it,” I said, pulling into the driveway that would lead me down to the diner.
The diner was located on Uncertain’s claim to fame, The Caddo River.
I dropped the mic into its holder and got out of my company issued truck.
I was a DEA agent stationed in Uncertain, Texas.
The Caddo River was also the reason I was here as an agent.
Caddo was a hotbed of drug and firearm transport activity.
After about four major busts within two weeks of each other, the DEA opened a satellite office in the little town of Uncertain.
The DEA and the Texas Rangers were on a joint task force that was commissioned to combat the drug and firearm trade that was taking over this small town. Although it’d slowed down since we’d started it, there was still a lot of work to do.
Movement in my peripheral vision had me turning in time to see Griffin, a fellow member of the Uncertain Saints, as well as one of the Texas Rangers on the joint taskforce, walking toward me.
“See you’re in that cage instead of on your bike,” Griffin said, swinging his leg over his bike to dismount.
“My boss got upset with me that I had a ‘perfectly good company vehicle’ that I wasn’t using,” I answered as we both walked around to the back of the diner.
“You know about the chainsaw wielder?” I asked.
Griffin nodded. “Heard it on my scanner,” he said, indicating the portable radio on his belt.
When he was on his bike, he had to take the portable radio since it didn’t have a scanner like his company-issued vehicle did.
Something I did as well when I was on my bike.
I took the issued vehicle every couple of days to make my boss think I was using it.
Mostly I hated it, and usually tried to take my bike since riding in a cage made me feel closed in and claustrophobic.
See, I was an adrenaline junkie, and nothing gave me more of a rush than flying a F-16 through the sky at Mach 2.
The closest I could get to that feeling was riding my bike at over a hundred miles an hour. Sure, it wasn’t fifteen hundred miles an hour like I could do in the air, but it was nothing to sneeze at either.
I nodded, and we both made our way into the back door of the diner that led into the kitchen.
“You’re gonna go get him, right?” Elton, the cook for the diner, asked.
I nodded and pushed the kitchen door open slightly to see what was going on, and froze.
A familiar woman with dark brown hair, a very distinctive tattoo on her shoulder, from collarbone to elbow, of a peacock, and a look of death in her eyes, reared back and slammed the napkin holder over the man wielding the chainsaw’s head.
The chainsaw dropped to the floor with a clatter, sputtering for a short time before the engine finally died.
The diner was completely silent as the man who’d had the chainsaw in his hands turned around with a look of rage in his eyes.
“Freeze,” I said to the man as he reared back his hand to strike out at Annie.
Annie didn’t look scared in the least as she backed away from the man whose fist was still raised.
And then even further until her back was against the counter
I wanted to reach out and touch her.
My hands practically burned with the urge, but I didn’t.
Instead, I moved around the counter and placed my body in front of hers, protecting her from another man that wanted to do her harm for the second time in less than twenty-four hours.
“Put your hands behind your head,” I ordered.
I sounded like a fuckin’ broken record.
First this morning, then this afternoon.
The chainsaw wielder raised his hands part of the way up, albeit very reluctantly.
“Turn the fuck around and put your hands on your fuckin’ head!”
Obviously, he wasn’t moving fast enough for Griffin’s liking, because at Griffin’s shouted order, the man jumped, turned and placed his hands all the way on top of his head.
Griffin had him cuffed in seconds, and I finally replaced my weapon in the holster under my arm.
“Nice swing,” I said, tossing that comment over my shoulder at Annie.
Annie’s brilliant smile lit up the fuckin’ room.
“My father taught me everything I know,” she responded cheekily.
I winked at her and turned around, addressing Francine behind the counter.
“Can you make me and Griffin a burger and fries to go?” I asked her.
She blinked, then nodded slowly.
She was one of the oldest waitresses I’d ever seen, but she was damn fine at her job.
She reminded me a lot of my grandmother, and I couldn’t wait to introduce my Nonnie to her.
They’d get along famously.
I’d been stationed in Uncertain, Texas for a while now, and not once had I convinced her to come down.
“As soon as you get yourself a fine woman, I’ll come,” was always my Nonnie’s answer.
My Nonnie had yet to meet my wife, and I hoped she never had to.
I planned on taking our child up to visit Nonnie and my mother the week he or she was born.
What I didn’t plan on doing was taking Jennifer with me.
I knew it’d be a fight, but I didn’t really care at this point.
Even the thought of my Nonnie being in Jennifer’s presence made my stomach churn.
My Nonnie was what you would call softhearted.
She loved everyone and everything.
I had no doubt that Jennifer would get my Nonnie to love her.
Jennifer was a manipulative bitch, and she’d use absolutely anything to get closer to me.
To sink her claws in further.
“You should go into the protection business or something,” Annie supplied as I turned to survey the room.
I looked down at her twinkling eyes, and snorted.
“You do know I’m a DEA agent, right?” I asked.
She nodded.
“I guessed you were by the shirts I see you wearing on your way to work,” she teased.
She was out in her yard every morning watering; I saw her every morning as I left.
It wasn’t a surprise that she knew what I wore to work.
“Here you are,” Francine said from behind me.
“What the hell?” I asked.
It took them less than three minutes to get it done.
“It’s on the house, too. I snagged another order so you wouldn’t have to wait any longer,” Francine explained.
I nodded.
“Oh, okay. Thank you,” I acknowledged.
Francine smiled a little wobbly.
“You deserve that and so much more,” she said emphatically.