Through his grin, he muttered, “Bye, baby.”

He disconnected, turned and his body gave an involuntary start, a reaction he showed and couldn’t bury, an unusual occurrence.

This was because, first, he’d forgotten Silas Goodknight was even there.

And second, Silas Goodknight was smiling at him huge.

“Right!” Silas stated smartly and put his mug on the island with more force than needed. “That’s that. I’ll expect you and Faye over for dinner next Saturday night. Be there at six. Sondra likes flowers, pink ones. Just tell Holly, Holly’ll know what to do. Or tell Faye, she’ll know what to do too. Other than that, bring you and a big appetite. Sondra may bitch about me takin’ care of myself but that don’t mean when company comes, she don’t like to show off.”

As Chace processed going from Silas’s surprise visit the reason for which was to tell him he didn’t want Chace dating his daughter to Silas asking Chace and Faye to dinner, Silas moved toward the front door.

With no other choice, Chace followed him.

They were outside, Chace at the top of the steps opening his mouth to give his farewell or say something else altogether, Silas at the bottom when Silas turned, locked eyes with Chace and beat him to speaking.

“Don’t know the path you’re on to the man you want to be. Do know that in any man’s life, the journey includes dark places we find ourselves in where we don’t wanna be. I get that you were in a dark place. I get you were there for a good while. I also know you made your way out. I don’t understand why you don’t think you’ve found the light and I won’t ask. You already told me you won’t share. I get that too. I probably wouldn’t either. But I know from the way you spoke about my daughter, the look on her face when she was talkin’ to me and Sondra about you last weekend, what she told us you were doin’ for that boy she took to lookin’ after and what I heard just now on the phone, you’ve already found that man. You just haven’t realized it yet.”

As Chace stood in the cold in his jeans, shirt, sweater and socks staring down the stairs, Silas lifted a hand and finished, “See you next weekend.”

Then he sauntered down Chace’s walk to his Wrangler.

Chace watched him give another short wave through the windshield before he did a three-point turn and drove down Chace’s lane.

Chace continued to stare after him as the Wrangler turned left and motored toward Carnal.

Then he grinned and muttered, “Fuck me,” before he turned on his foot and walked back into his house.

* * *

As Chace drove up the drive to Tate Jackson’s house in the hills, he noted Tate had the company that Chace suggested he have. Deke’s beat up pickup truck. Wood’s Ford F-150. Ty’s Landcruiser. And a Cherokee Chace couldn’t place but he suspected it was Holden Maxwell’s considering Chace suggested Max get a call.

Deke Hightower was a drifter but he had a strict path that he drifted between. Carnal to Sturgis. He lived simple. Beat up pickup. Harley. Roof over his head. Jeans on his ass. Food in his belly. And beer at Bubba’s or the All American Roadhouse in Sturgis, whisky if he felt like living it up. He took odd jobs along the way in order to facilitate this life. The man was rough, monosyllabic and enormous in height and breadth. This hid the fact that he was smart as a whip. But he didn’t try to hide the fact that he was loyal. He had Tate’s back when Tate and Laurie were getting to know each other and all that went down with that. He had Ty’s back during his drama.

Coal “Wood” Blackwood owned a share of the family run garage in town. They specialized in Harleys. His father started it, built it up and now anyone that lived in a two hundred and fifty mile radius who had the funds to get their bike worked on at their garage brought it to Pop and Wood’s. Wood’s father, Pop, was a devoted Harley man who saddled Wood with a biker’s son biker name that surprisingly Wood, considering he was also a biker, refused to answer to and everyone called him Wood unless they wanted his fist in their groin. Rumor had it he’d spent his teenage years and early twenties spreading this message wide and now no one called him anything else. Not even “Mr. Blackwood”.

Chace parked, walked up the steps and down Tate’s deck to the door while taking in the conifers all around dusted with snow.

Tate was a mountain man to Chace’s plains man. Tate got his quiet and peace from being surrounded by nothing but trees.

Even before the shit that went down with him, Chace liked the openness of the plains, the vistas panoramic, the opportunities to make a surprise approach nonexistent.

Tate liked seclusion. You had to know where you were going to find Tate’s house. If you happened on it by accident or design, he had the firepower and willingness to use it in order to encourage you to explain why you’d wandered his way and get you to move on if he didn’t like your answers.

Chace hit the door and opened it without a knock because he saw the men sitting around the dining room table just inside. The owner of the Cherokee was who Chace expected, Holden Maxwell. Not a local, he owned a construction company in Gnaw Bone. However, he was a friend of Ty’s and his wife was an attorney. She was the attorney who acted as Ty’s attorney so he, like everyone, was not unaware of what had gone down. Although not intimately involved, he still had ties.

“Beer?” Tate asked as Chace closed the door.

“Yep,” Chace answered

Greetings were exchanged by chin, eyes or words as Chace took his seat at the table and Tate put a beer in front of him.

As Tate reseated himself, Chace asked, “The women?”

His eyes went to Ty who answered.

“Lexie and me moved into a huge-ass house last week. Furniture we got filled about a sixteenth of it. We also got a fuckload of money in the bank, courtesy of the State of California. This means Lexie, Laurie and Maggie are shoppin’ for furniture. It also means, by tonight, I’ll have to hire an architect to add onto my already huge-ass house because we’ll have more furniture than we can fit in the fuckin’ place.”

Chace felt his mouth twitch. Lexie definitely liked to shop, this was well-known. But what was funny was the fact that Ty was bitching when he didn’t give one shit Lexie was out dropping a load of cash. First, they had it. Second, he’d lasso the moon if it made his wife happy.

Chace muttered, “Right,” and took a sip of beer. Then his eyes went around the table and he started, “Got shit to do and got shit news. Wanna brief you, get the shit part done and then get on with the shit I gotta do.”

More chin lifts, Chace took another sip of beer and sat back in his chair before he went on.

“Got a visit from one of my father’s men. Man’s name is Clinton Bonar. You may know him,” Chace stated, his eyes not missing Tate’s flashing with recognition. “You might not. My advice, you get the chance, don’t. He introduces himself, walk away then five seconds later, call me. He’s an asshole and of all the varieties of asshole there are, he’s at the top of the scale of the worst there could be. Unfortunately, the last time I saw him, he was an asshole with a message.”

Chace took another sip of beer and continued, sharing what Bonar shared and as he did the alert but relaxed vibe in the room lost the relaxed part. This came especially from Ty when Chace mentioned his father’s tapes.

So when Chace finished, he did it eyes on Ty and he did it quietly.

“I do not give a fuck you have them. I also don’t give a fuck what you do with them. What I ask is that if you intend to use them, you give me a head’s up so I can do what I can to soften the blow for my mother. Me requesting you being here was not me doin’ what Bonar wanted. I do not intend to be the errand boy for those assholes. I’m outta that shit. No more. I’m just sayin’ this so all of you can keep your eyes and ears open, be aware, be cautious and report to me or Frank anything that concerns you. Frank and the Cap know all of this. Whatever happens, we agree, we deal with it openly, within protocol, as a matter of police business. Maybe they’ll see the wisdom of backing off and dealing with Newcomb quietly. Maybe a storm is brewing. We just need to be vigilant.”

“Not gonna use those tapes,” Ty declared when Chace stopped talking.

“Like I said, don’t care what you do with them,” Chace replied.

“Not gonna use ‘em, don’t even fuckin’ want ‘em. Got a kid comin’, don’t need shit like that in my house. I’ll collect ‘em, give ‘em to you. That way, at least you’re clear with your Dad and they think of doin’ somethin’ stupid, Lexie and I are outside their warpath,” Ty returned.

“You do not need to buckle to these men,” Chace told him quietly and Ty leaned across the table toward him.

“I’m not bucklin’ to those motherfuckers.” His deep voice rumbled firmly. “I do not want that shit in my house. I have no use for it. I got a wife who don’t need any more bullshit and handin’ over some sick-ass sex tapes is a small price to pay for keepin’ her clear of that shit. I have no intention of fuckin’ with your mother’s head. We both been forced down a murky road together, you and me, and as we moved down that road, we didn’t know we had company. When shit got extreme, you had my back. You also had my wife’s. So I’m also doin’ this for you. What I’m not doin’ it for is those motherfuckers. But they can think I am. I don’t give a fuck. They don’t factor in my life and once those tapes are out of it, the last nuance of them is too.”

Chace saw his point, seeing as it was hard to miss, and nodded.

“Am I the only one here that thinks that maybe a full frontal assault to teach a lesson that the town’s not gonna be fucked with anymore is the way to go?” Deke asked and this was not a surprise. Deke behaved himself in Bubba’s because if he didn’t, he’d get an ass full of buckshot from Krystal’s shotgun. But Carnal to Sturgis was paved with bars that saw Deke’s blood or, more often, blood he caused to flow hit the pavement in parking lots. He was not a man to sit on his hands or back down from a fight.

His question got two “Yeahs”, one from Wood, one from Chace with a, “Uh… yeah, Deke. It’s only you,” from Tate.

Ty just grinned at him. Max grinned at the table.

Then Max looked at Chace. “You need me to give Mick a head’s up about this?”

The Mick he was talking about was Mick Shaughnessy, the top guy at Gnaw Bone’s Police Department.

“You wanna do that, it’d save me time,” Chace answered. “He has questions, tell him he can give me a call.”

“Will this reach to Gnaw Bone?” Max went on and Chace kept his gaze.

Then he replied, “It happens. Yes. Two men vulnerable in Gnaw Bone. One sits on the City Council. One has an office down the hall from your wife.”

Chace watched Max’s face get hard then he whispered, “Fuck.”

“Don’t know what they got on him and don’t know who Darren’s squeezin’. Just know he’s made payoffs in the past and he’s provided free legal advice,” Chace informed him.

“This does not make me happy,” Max informed Chace.

“It wouldn’t make me happy either,” Chace agreed. “But my understanding is, Nina put out her shingle and shares office space with George but she didn’t partner with him. If Newcomb’s after George then he’s runnin’ scared. He’ll do all in his power to keep this from Nina. My guess only, she’s legally and financially clear, unless he’s outed and dishonored, she never has to know and there’s no need to drag her in. She’s your wife, your call. But you tell Mick. He’ll have her back.”

Max pulled in breath through his nose before he sighed and sat back and what Chace knew of Max, by that evening, both Mick Shaughnessy and Nina Maxwell would know. What Chace knew of Nina Maxwell, by Monday, George Nielson, a prominent attorney in the area, would have the side of her tongue, something feared widely since she knew how to use it, and possibly he’d be looking for new office space. She’d moved in with him when she’d moved to Gnaw Bone to marry Max. Still, she’d get the offices. Nina Maxwell was also not one to back down from a fight, she fought on the side that was right and she rarely lost.

“Right, so, our shit storm might not be over. Bad news but fuck it, we’ve been livin’ with worse,” Wood said at this point. “Now, what I wanna know is,” his eyes came to Chace and his lips surrounded by his goatee twitched, “are you seriously datin’ the town’s librarian?”

At this point, Chace sighed.

“Saw her with him and Bubba’s,” Deke confirmed then said with emphasis and a scary grin, “Tight.”