“Do you have to go?” I asked.

 

“I do. I have to find out what is going on. This is the only way,” Cain replied. “Garrett is going to watch after you.” He kissed me and I warmed, pulling him into the kiss. “Watch out for her. She’s feisty,” Cain said as he pulled back from the kiss and softly stroked my face.

 

“Yeah, looks like it,” Garrett said without emotion, but then grinned.

 

“When will you be back?” I asked.

 

“Late tonight or early in the morning. Don’t worry. The Bulls won’t even know I’m there. I’m just going to collect a couple of samples. New Jersey has given me safe passage.”

 

“I still worry.”

 

“Don’t. I’ll be fine. If you need anything, tell Garrett or one of the girls, okay?” He kissed me once more and then turned to go.

 

I watched him step out of the clubhouse and then, a moment later, I heard his Harley start. It had been three days since we made up, and the days had been as happy as any I could remember. I didn’t know how I knew, but I knew it was going to work out between us.

 

“So, tell me how you did it,” Garrett said as I turned away from the door.

 

“Did what?”

 

“Bag him.”

 

I giggled. “Why does everyone ask me that?”

 

“Because nobody can believe it. Come on, you can tell me. I won’t tell a soul.” I could tell by the gleam in his eye that if I told him, the entire club would know in ten minutes.

 

“As I told Cherie and Toni, it was his idea. I didn’t really do anything.”

 

“Well, some guys have all the luck,” he said with a mischievous grin. “Is he really as good in bed as all girls say?”

 

“Better,” I teased, dropping my voice down and drawing the word out. “He’s insatiable. He can go all night. That first night, we did go all night. I was hoarse the next morning from him making me scream.” That last little bit was a bald faced lie, but it served to elevate Cain, so I didn’t mind telling it. Besides, if I were a screamer, I would have been hoarse.

 

Garrett stared at me and I had to turn away before I lost my straight face. “I hate that fucker,” he muttered and I snickered to myself. He meandered in the direction of the bar. “Would you like anything?” he asked as he walked.

 

I followed and cut him off as I moved behind the bar. “No. Still a little early for me. But what would you like?”

 

He looked at me a moment. “Ever heard of a Mind Fuck?”

 

“Vodka, Coffee Liqueur, and Club Soda?”

 

“That’s it.”

 

“Coming up.” The Hellhounds’ bar wasn’t very well organized, and it took a little digging to find the Coffee Liqueur, but once I found it, I was set. I didn’t really go for the razzle-dazzle, but a couple of simple spins later, I parked his shot in front of him.

 

“What?” I asked with a grin.

 

He was staring at me with his mouth slightly agape. “That was some shit. What was that? Hey, Macole! Come watch this shit!”

 

A good looking guy that I had been introduced to before wandered up. Garrett giving me his last name was enough for me to remember the rest. “Clyde. Can I get you something?”

 

“Sure. Just a beer.”

 

“Nuh-uh,” Garrett said before I could even move. “Order a drink.”

 

Clyde looked at the other man. “Okay. Jim Beam, straight up.”

 

“Show him,” Garrett said with a grin. “Watch this shit.”

 

I had to look again for proper bottle. “Your bar isn’t very well organized,” I teased when I finally located the bottle. “Why aren’t all the drinks grouped by type so you can find them?”

 

Clyde shrugged. “We each bring in what we like and just stick the bottle where we can find an open spot.”

 

I sat the shot glass in front of him and poured a splash.

 

“Impressive,” Clyde said as he took the drink.

 

“Give me that,” Garrett growled playfully as he pulled the drink from Clyde’s hand, popped the pour spout out of the bottle, and dumped the contents of the glass back into the container. He then grinned at me. “Now, sweetheart, show him.”

 

I sighed. “Nothing to show really,” I said as I flipped the bottle up behind my back and caught it. “I’m just a bartender,” I continued as I gave the bottle a hard spin, the bottle becoming a spinning blur as it arced into the air. I caught it behind my back, and flipped it up again to give it an elbow bump. “Nothing out of the ordinary,” I added as I stalled the bottle on the back of my hand. “Shit!” I snapped as I dropped the bottle, caught it on my toe, and then kicked it back up into another stall. “Whew…that was close!” I gave the bottle an easy spinning toss, caught it my other hand, gave it another spin to catch in my pouring hand and finished by poured the splash back into his glass.

 

“Fuck me running…” Clyde said quietly, not moving to pick up the glass.

 

Garrett burst into laughter. “Ho-ly… shit! How the fuck do you do that?”

 

I grinned. Damned it felt good to do that. “It just takes practice.”

 

“Has Cain seen you do that?”

 

My grin widened. “Yeah. I took him for two hundred dollars in tips.”

 

Garrett tossed his drink back and slammed the glass on the bar as he snarled. “Fuck!” he roared then shook his head. “Whooo! Hit me again!”

 

***

 

Two hours later I had the bar organized and was strutting my stuff to a significant portion of the club as I ran though my routines while they tried to play stump the bartender. They were losing, stumping me only on an Anus Burner, but that didn’t count because they didn’t have any jalapeño peppers anyway.

 

About ten o’clock, Thad stepped behind the bar with me. “It’s not nice to get my club totally shit-faced just so you can show off.”

 

I felt a rush of fear. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

 

He grinned at me. “Relax. I’m not going to feel sorry for their asses in the morning.”

 

“I thought I was in trouble,” I admitted.

 

“Nah. They’re big boys and girls. I noticed you’re not drinking. They won’t mind sharing.”

 

“It’s not that. I can’t do this if I’m not sharp,” I said. That much was true, but there was another, more important reason, I was not imbibing.

 

Thad chuckled. “I can see that.”

 

“Thad, can I ask you a question?”

 

“Sure.”

 

“About twenty years ago, my parents were killed in a car wreck in Dallas. My Dad was a cop and he was…”

 

“Investigating the Hounds for running guns?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Cain asked me about this. I wondered why the hell he was asking, and now I know. What did he tell you?”

 

“That nobody knew anything about it.”

 

“That’s the truth. Cain shouldn’t have told you about what we do —”

 

“Don’t be mad at him,” I interrupted. “I promised him I wouldn’t tell a soul, and I have kept my word.”

 

“I’ll overlook it since you’re his old lady, but he needs to watch his tongue. Loose lips and all that. Anyway, the Hounds have been around since the sixties. We started our little business in the late seventies. Before that, we were muscle for hire, but then the President at the time, the founder of the club, decided to take the club in a different direction. I was in the club when your parents were killed, but we had cleaned up our act by then. I think your information is wrong. As far as I know, we haven’t done more than kick a few asses in thirty years. Maybe more.”

 

“But my Dad said —”

 

“I didn’t say he wasn’t investigating us. Maybe he was. Dallas gets a new chief who wants to come in and prove how big his dick is, and we go through the same sort of shit each time. But we run a tight ship. The cops probably know we’re running guns. But we don’t sell local and being able to prove it is whole different matter. There is no reason to kill a cop. That just brings on a lot of heat that we don’t need. I’m sorry that you lost your parents. But really, Alex, I don’t think we had anything to do with it. I think it was just a terrible accident.”

 

“Okay,” I mumbled. I wanted to believe him, but my grandparents had seemed so sure.

 

“Alex, listen to me,” Thad said kindly. “We’re not like you think. We provide a service, that’s all. We have contacts that were developed years ago and we provide… merchandise… that is difficult to obtain. That’s all we do. We don’t go riding around town gunning down innocent people. It’s bad for business.”

 

“And the Bulls?”

 

“The Bulls are nothing but a pile of shit. Rejects and dregs that can’t find homes somewhere else. When someone can’t join one of the other clubs, they usually end up in the Bulls. We had a few of our rejects join them.”

 

“So why the bad blood with the Hellhounds?”

 

“I wish I knew, Alex. I wish I knew.”

 

 

 

I spent another two hours serving drinks and entertaining the club. This was the first time I had ever really interacted with them, and I found that they were a lot like Cain, and nothing at all like I imagined them being.

 

As the club began to pair off and leave, Cherie escorted me to my room. I would be bunking in the clubhouse tonight for my protection.

 

“Bath is here,” she said as she opened the door. “Towels are in the cabinet. The linens are fresh so you should be good. If you need anything, I will be just across the hall tonight.”

 

“Will you be alone?” I asked. “I don’t want to interrupt anything.”

 

Cherie smiled. “No. But that’s okay. Just wait until the bed stops squeaking. You’re still new.” She grinned at me. “I think you are going to fit in just fine and I want your stay at Hellhound Resort to be comfortable. Like I told you, we take care of our own.”

 

“Thanks, Cherie. I mean that.”

 

She gave me a smile then she slipped out and shut the door. I heard a man’s voice then she giggled. A moment later a door banged shut and I felt a longing for Cain. We hadn’t made love since before the first attempt on my life and I wanted him. A few days ago he hadn’t been in any shape for bedroom calisthenics and I was hoping that would change, and soon.

 

I got myself ready for bed and, as I tucked in, I heard the faint moan of a woman in pleasure. Yes…I hoped that Cain would be ready soon.

 

***

 

I was eating a banana that I found in the kitchen for breakfast when Cain came into the Clubhouse. He looked haggard as he toted a canvas bag in each hand.

 

I rose and went to him, molding myself to him and holding him warmly as he sat the bags down. “I missed you,” I whispered before I kissed him softly.

 

He smiled down at me. “I missed you, too. Where is everyone?”

 

“Still sleeping.”

 

“The lazy shits,” he growled. “It’s almost nine.”

 

“They had a hard night last night.”

 

His face hardened. “Oh? What happened?”

 

“Nothing to worry about. I tended the bar for them last night and they got a little carried away.”

 

He snickered. “Oh. Now I see. Well, in that case, I’m going to grab a couple hours of shuteye before I figure out what game the Bulls are up to.”

 

“That’s what’s in the bag?”

 

“Yeah. Samples from their shipment. New Jersey let me choose three of each. At first glance it looks to be on the up and up, but something isn’t right here. I’m supposed to give New Jersey a call in a couple of days and let them know what I find. New Jersey is keeping their options open, but if I can’t find something, we’re in a world of shit.”

 

“Go get some sleep and then do what you have to to fuck the Bulls.”

 

Cain blinked at me. “Where did that come from?”

 

“I’ve been talking to the club. Thad gave me the story on the club and the Bulls. I was wrong about the Hellhounds. I’ve been wrong all along.” I looked at my feet. “I’m sorry.”

 

Cain wrapped me in his embrace and held me like I was the most important thing in the world, and I was content to stand there for as long as he wanted to hold me. Finally, he let me go. “Let me get some sleep,” he murmured before he kissed me. “Wake me up in a couple of hours so I can get to work. I want to get this done so I can think about other things tonight.”

 

“What things?”

 

He smiled at me in a way that made my toes tingle. “Use your imagination.”

 

***

 

I woke Cain at lunch when I took a tray of food to the room we had slept in. We ate together, talking quietly, reconnecting and letting the threads that bound us grow stronger. Our relationship had been a long series of hard knocks, but we were making it through and each time we gave them a chance, our bond became stronger and more resilient.

 

After his shower, he joined me in the large open room and began to pull large, dangerous-looking weapons from the bags. He had six weapons, three samples of two different types of guns.

 

“What are those?” I asked from my chair. They didn’t look like any gun I had seen outside of a movie.

 

“This is the M4A1 Carbine, 5.56x45, with the full auto trigger group,” he said as he skillfully began to disassemble the weapon. “There are several variants, but these are made by Armalite.”

 

I said nothing, as most of what he said went right over my head. All I knew is that it looked incredibly deadly. “And the other one?”

 

“That’s an AW50F, fifty-cal.”

 

“Big gun,” I murmured.

 

“Yeah. You can really reach out and touch someone with that one. It’s an anti-material rifle from Great Britain, designed to punch big holes in other people’s shit.”

 

I said nothing else as I watched him break the first gun down into all its various pieces. I could tell he didn’t like what he saw as he sat it aside and repeated the procedure for the second and then the third.”

 

“Fuck…” he muttered as he finished taking the third gun apart.

 

“What?”

 

“I don’t see anything wrong. These look like first run, unused weapons.”

 

“But there has to be something, right?”

 

“That’s what I thought, but I don’t know what it is.”

 

He quickly reassembled the three guns and put them back in the bag, picking up the first of the larger guns. He repeated the procedure on the three guns and then reassembled them. He didn’t look at all happy.

 

“Nothing?”

 

“No,” he murmured. “This is not good.”

 

“But there has to be something, right?”

 

“I don’t know anymore. I don’t know how they can do it.”

 

“Look again,” I encouraged. “There has to be something, something you missed.”

 

He stared at the weapons with a look of defeat. “I didn’t miss anything.”

 

“You must have. If the deal is too good to be true, then it is. You said yourself that the Bulls probably had everything they had tied up in this deal. So they can’t take the loss. The answer is there, Cain. You know it is. You just have to find it.”

 

“I didn’t miss anything!” he insisted.

 

I rose out of my chair and sat down on the couch beside him. “Do it again,” I said softly. “Show me how you take it apart and tell me what each part does. How it works.”

 

He sighed and I could tell he was humoring me. He pulled one of the smaller guns out of the bag. “Okay. First, you open the bolt like this…”

 

As he broke the gun down, he handed me each piece to look at as he told me what it was for and what it did. “You want to try to take the next one apart?” he asked softly.

 

“Can you show me one more time?”

 

He picked up the next weapon and slowly went through the breakdown procedure again.
“Now you do this one,” he said as he handed me the last weapon.

 

“The M4A1 Carbine. What did you say carbine meant again?” I asked.

 

“Shorter than normal.”

 

“Oh yeah. That’s right,” I muttered as I began to take the gun apart. I got stuck a few times and Cain had to help me, and at no time did I move with the practiced assurance that he did, but I finally had the weapon in pieces.

 

“You’re not going to set any speed records, but good job. You want to put it back together? You just do everything in reverse.”

 

I started working on it. Cain sometimes had to point at the next piece to go in, but I was slowly getting it back together. Then I couldn’t get one of the little parts installed no matter how I tried. “I can’t get this doohickey in,” I complained as I struggled with the part.

 

“That’s the Charging Handle latch and spring. Here let me show you,” he said as he picked up the same two parts from one from the other guns. “The handle pin goes through this little hole, then the spring attaches there,” he said demonstrating with the parts in his hands. “No. You need to push the pin in first, like that, then….” He trailed off. He looked at the part in his hand and then looked again the part that was giving me such trouble. He picked up the other part from the table, and compared it to the one in his hand. “Son of a bitch!”

 

“What?” I asked, afraid that I had done something wrong.

 

He handed me one of the parts. “Read that number to me, slowly.”

 

I did.

 

“Let me see that,” he said as he took the partially assembled gun from me and quickly took it apart again. He then made little piles of like parts.

 

“What are you doing?”

 

“Checking something,” he said as he sorted. Parts sorted, he began to carefully look each of them over and I saw a slow smile form on his lips.

 

“What?”

 

“I’ve got them, the sneaky bastards. I’ve got them. Look! See how some of these parts have the same numbers stamped on them? Those are serial numbers. There shouldn’t be any duplicates. None!” He jumped to his feet and started pumping his hips and arms, grunting like he was fucking someone hard. “Thad!” he bellowed as he stopped.

 

“What?” Thad asked as he appeared.

 

“We’ve got them! The Bulls, they’re selling clones! Cheap clones. Look at this.” He carefully explained to Thad what he found, showing him the parts.

 

“What about those?” Thad asked pointing at the bigger guns.

 

“I haven’t checked those yet, but I bet they are the same. I wanted to let you know as soon as I discovered this.”

 

“Check those out and, if they are the same, let me know. Then give New Jersey a call. It’s time to drive a stake into the heart of those fucking Bulls. Good job, Cain. I mean that. You have really saved our ass this time.”

 

“Give me ten minutes,” he said with a grin.