Handsome had woken Angel up, banging on the bedroom door. Dax was awake now too and she was cursing herself for having gone to sleep after they had sex—before she’d taken photographs of the papers she’d taken out of the meeting room, and put them, and Dax’s keys, back where they went.

“Yeah, Hand, hang on a sec,” Dax said. He swung his long legs over the edge of the bed and reached for his pants. Angel sat in an almost frozen state as he did, waiting for him to notice that his keys were no longer in his pocket. He stood up to pull them up and turned around and grinned and winked at her. She wondered if that would be the last time. After he talked to Handsome, would he ever smile at her again?

She threw back the covers and got up too. “I’ll get dressed and go out to the great room so the two of you can talk,” she said.

He pulled on his t-shirt. “Thanks, babe. See if you can find me some coffee while you’re out there, will you?”

She smiled at him as she pulled on her shirt and reached down for her jeans. “I won’t come back without it,” she said. She danced around, pulling up her tight jeans, once again without underwear, as Dax went over to open the door. As soon as he did, Angel squatted down and quietly left his keys on the carpeted floor. He’d think they fell out of his pocket…hopefully. She had no idea how she would get the plans back in the meeting room if Handsome happened to be there to blow her cover wide open, but she could only worry about one thing at a time. When Dax pulled open the door and Handsome walked in, she was pulling on her boots. Handsome looked at her with his dark brown eyes. They were almost black, which gave him a hard, almost sinister look. They were made even odder-looking by the fact that his hair was white-blond like a Swede’s. He’d always been nice to Angel, but she got the feeling he was not a person you’d want to cross. Today he had a deep frown creased into his face.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he said, looking at Angel.

“It’s fine, we were just sleeping,” she said. “I’m going to use the restroom and then I’ll go get us some coffee.” She went into the bathroom and locked the door behind her before reaching underneath the cabinet and fishing under the towels for the plans she’d stolen. She sat down on the toilet and rolled up her pant leg. Then she rolled her knee sock down and curled the plans around her calf before pulling the sock back up. She stood up and prayed that this would work, if she weren’t sunk already. She flushed the toilet, washed her hands, and with a deep breath in and out, she stepped back into the bedroom. Dax and Handsome were gone. Her eyes dropped down to the carpet. The keys were gone. Fuck. Now she had to figure out how to get them again and get back into that room without anyone seeing her, if it turned out that there was even any point. Shit.

She willed herself not to panic. Until she knew for sure it was over, she was going to move forward as if it wasn’t. She grabbed her purse, fished out her phone, and went back into the bathroom. Taking out the papers, she spread them on the counter and took pictures of each one of them. She put them and the phone back down in her sock and zipped her boot up around them. She opened the bathroom door cautiously and was glad to see that at least Dax and Handsome hadn’t come back yet.

Angel left the room and went down the hall and out into the great room. There were a few people milling about but Dax and Handsome weren’t among them. She glanced over at the door to the meeting room. It was closed. She had no way of knowing if they were in there or not. Even if she had the keys still, she wouldn’t be able to risk slipping inside. She went into the kitchen to get some coffee and see if Dax was there. Instead, she found Callie Vickers, the veterinary assistant/club girl, sitting on the floor near a little mangy-looking dog.

“Hey, Callie. Who’s your friend?”

Callie looked up at her and smiled. “His name is Punky. He’s Michael Granger’s dog. He hasn’t been eating or drinking and he’s throwing up. I’m afraid maybe he has parvo. I’m waiting for Handsome to finish up some business. He was going to take us into town to my vet’s office.”

“Oh, the poor thing. Who’s Michael Granger?”

“Oh, he’s this kid the club kind of looks after. His dad was our vice president before Max.” She looked sad and said, “He died a few years ago and Michael doesn’t really have anyone.”

“Oh yeah, I met him at Beezy’s coming-home party, I think.”

Callie laughed. “I heard Dax ran him and his friends off. I don’t know why that kid keeps trying to act out. Dax either kicks his ass or threatens to every time.”

Angel went over and sat down next to Callie. She petted the little dog on the head. His eyes were open, but they looked lifeless. “What happened to his dad?”

“He was murdered,” Callie said, angrily.

“Yeah, Dax told me that, but how?” A few days after that party Angel had gone into the police database and looked up all the deaths of the Skulls that they had documented in the past few years. Benny Granger, or “Banger” as he was called, was found dead in an alleyway downtown with a needle in his arm. The coroner ruled it an accidental opiate overdose, but Dax and now Callie both said it was murder, so it intrigued her.

“He died of a heroin overdose.”

“Hmm…well then, wouldn’t that be accidental…or suicide?”

“No. Benny didn’t use drugs. I went to school with him my whole life. I grew up with him and Dax. Benny got his high school sweetheart pregnant when they were only sixteen, but he stepped up. All he ever wanted was to do right by his family. She was my friend back then…” Callie’s eyes had a faraway look for a few seconds before she went on. “Anyways, there were some rumors about three years ago that Benny’s old lady, Sophie, was seeing some guy from Hartford. Benny wouldn’t believe it, but one night he got home early after he and Dax had been out of town and he caught her with this guy. He beat the guy almost to death. He probably shoulda killed him, because the guy ended up in the hospital and the staff there called the cops and Benny got arrested. He spent a year in County. While he was locked up, Dax and the guys kept an eye on Sophie for him. They never caught her seeing that guy or anyone else, then. But two days after he got out, Dax got the call that he was dead. The police just wrote him off as an overdose even though Dax kept telling them he didn’t use drugs. It only cemented his hate for the cops.”

“That’s sad,” Angel said. “So they never found out who did it?”

“The cops didn’t even look, but…well, the guy Benny beat up was the younger brother of an OG from a badass street gang in New Haven. Dax had it in his head that it was them. The rest of the guys kind of thought if it was the street gang, they would have just put a bullet in Benny’s head…you know? They’d want to take credit for it. That’s usually how they did things.”

“So did the rest of them believe Benny overdosed?”

“No, but Handsome and Mad Max and some of the other guys thought it was Hawk and them, the Sinners.”

“Why wouldn’t they have taken credit for it?”

“Trying to start trouble between the Skulls and the street gangs was Handsome’s theory.”

“So did it? Stir up trouble?”

She shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. The guy Benny beat up never recovered completely. He was kind of a vegetable. Then after Benny died, the brother disappeared. After not doing anything about Benny’s death, the cops had the nerve to come looking for Dax when that loser disappeared…but they never found a body or even any evidence a crime was committed. Then not long after that, Hawk started trying to bring his business into the Skulls’ territory and all that trouble started, and it’s just been one thing after the other with them since. Sometimes I don’t envy Dax. He’s had to make some hard decisions.”

“Hey!” Handsome was suddenly standing in the door. Angel almost cringed, but he looked at her and smiled. His smile still looked sad, but he didn’t look angry, or suspicious. He looked at Callie then and the dog and said, “You two ready? I have to just drop you off and get right back. Dax is calling a meeting.” Something was up, for sure. Angel was glad that it wasn’t about her taking the papers, but it would be soon if she didn’t get them back where they went.

Callie picked up the little dog and tucked it under her arm. It was limp and looked miserable. “We are. I’ll see you later, Angel.”

“Yeah, I hope the puppy is okay.”

“Me too. Thanks.”

Handsome said, “Dax is out back if you’re looking for him.”

“Thanks.”

She got up off the floor and once Handsome and Callie were gone, she poured two mugs of coffee and went to look for Dax. She found him sitting on top of the picnic table out back, smoking a joint and staring off into space. Angel forgot her own predicament momentarily when she saw his face. He looked so sad. She went over and sat down next to him, sitting one of the steaming mugs down next to him before she softly said, “Hey. You okay?”

Dax held the joint out to her without answering her question. She took a hit off it. She was getting better at holding the smoke in her lungs without choking. She handed it back to him and they sat there in silence for several minutes. Angel was dying to know what was going on, but she knew better than to ask. Dax told her what he wanted her to know when he was ready, and she didn’t think he’d like her questioning him. Being patient had paid off for her before and eventually it did this time too. He finally broke the silence by saying,

“Handsome got a call from Scar’s brother early this morning. Scar was stabbed in his cell last night.”

“Oh no! Is he okay?”

Dax put his face in his hands. That was all the answer she needed.