Jagger held up a warning hand. “I know how many times he’s been here. And every time I have the same need as you to hunt him down, but we made a deal with Wolf and I’m not about to break my word. You agreed to this, Cade. We all did.”
Gunner, silent until now, along with the rest of the brothers at the table, exhaled a breath. “Wolf broke the deal when he sent us up north for weapons that weren’t there.”
“He says he doesn’t know what happened to the weapons. He’s looking into it.”
“And you fucking believe him?” Cade stood abruptly, no longer able to contain his anger.
“Of course not. Dax is going to interrogate Matchstick today about what he knows, and you and Zane can do some investigating when you take a team up to Whitefish to deal with the Demon Spawn betrayal. But the Jacks are clearly stronger than we thought if they could launch the kind of attack they did last night. We have to retaliate but we have to be smart.”
“I’ll start asking questions about where the Jacks are drumming up their new supporters,” Zane said. “I didn’t recognize some of the patches on the guys who were in the raid last night.”
“How about we just tell the Brethren where to fucking go?”
Jagger regarded Cade with a damn irritating calm, implacable expression. “Do you really want to risk sending the Brethren running into their arms? Wolf has another weapons shipment coming in and he’s arranged for it to be delivered straight to us. We can use those weapons in a new offensive. The election is coming up in three weeks. After Wolf’s presidency is secure, we patch the Brethren in and the deal no longer stands. That’s when we tell them where to fucking go. Mad Dog dies that day, and no other.”
“I can’t sit by and let him harass her.” Cade shoved his chair against the table. “I can’t be with her every minute of the day, and he always shows up when I’m not there. And does anyone wonder how he knew to break into her house when we were all busy with the Jacks? I think he knew about the raid.”
“He’s the one pushing to join the Jacks,” Zane said. “Maybe he has a connection. Maybe he’s made the same kind of deal with Viper that Wolf has made with us: If he wins the election, he’ll patch the club over to the Jacks.”
Jagger shook his head. “Wolf says he doesn’t have that kind of support, and from what I’ve heard from other clubs, that’s true. He’d have to win over the senior patch or buy up a lot of votes to beat a ten-year president who rebuilt the club. And as Cade said, Mad Dog doesn’t want a patch-over. He’s young. He wants to lead. At best, he’ll have made a deal to be a support club. We’ll deal with that problem when the time comes, but for now, we don’t touch him.”
“Fuck.” Cade wanted nothing more than to yank open the door and leave the goddamn board behind, but Jagger hadn’t adjourned the meeting and he didn’t want to put his good friend Gunner in the position of having to deal with his breach of the rules. “How can I protect her if my hands are tied? I shoulda voted to off him that very first day.”
“Then we would be having a very different conversation right now,” Jagger said. “The Brethren would have been part of the attack last night. We barely fought off the Jacks as it was.”
“Why are you so damn riled?” Gunner’s forehead creased with a frown. “It’s not like she’s your old lady. You never cared this much about the other women you took to bed…”
“What if she was?” He felt the rightness of the idea the moment he spoke the words. “She would be entitled to Sinner protection as my old lady.”
Jagger quirked an appreciative eyebrow. “Mad Dog would no longer suffer under the illusion that Dawn belonged to him. And if he did harass her, you could act to defend your old lady, regardless of the agreement we made with the Brethren.”
“No fucking way.” Gunner shot out of his seat. “You can’t take an old lady. You’re you. You got a rep to protect. And who am I gonna go drinking with? We got parties lined up every weekend for the next couple of months. And the twins with the biggest—”
“It wouldn’t be permanent,” Cade said quickly. “Just until Mad Dog is no longer a threat.”
“I’m good with that,” Jagger settled back in his chair. “Dawn’s got herself in a bad situation and Arianne has been harassing me about our decision not to touch Mad Dog for the last few weeks.”
“What does Dawn think of this idea?” Zane voiced the question on everyone’s lips.
“I haven’t asked her.” Cade inhaled and released a long breath. “Might take a lot of convincing because she’s made it pretty damn clear she isn’t interested in being anyone’s old lady.”
“I got faith in you, brother.” Jagger gave him a wicked smile. “If anyone can convince a woman to do anything, it’s you.”
*
“Dawn. Wake up.”
Half asleep in Cade’s bed, his warm, naked body tucked around her, Dawn wasn’t inclined to climb out of her cave of oblivion. “Sleeping,” she mumbled.