“Why’s that?” I ask, opting out of bullshitting with her and just being direct.
“I just don’t like it,” she says, her voice even nearer now. She sounds so serious with her words not so much clipped as they are decided.
“Wine?” I ask. My mother keeps wine on-hand with the excuse that Chey and I are too much of a handful not to imbibe once in a while. Holly shakes her head no.
“I don’t drink,” she says in a small voice.
When I hit Gonzales up for a profile on her, she practically shit her pants. Didn’t want to give it up, and didn’t want to even look into her. Miss Holly Mercer is the favorite niece of Harry Mercer, a half-genius sergeant for the Fort Bragg P.D., who happens to be Angel Gonzales’s supervising officer. Angel’s done a lot of shit for the club over the years, and she’s never complained about it, but this favor cost me more than I’d like to admit.
Despite the cost, when Gonzales got me the intel I needed on Holly, it told me everything from her GPA upon graduation from high school—3.1 average—to her brief stint at Humboldt State, her subsequent departure, and then her relocation to San Francisco. Somehow Gonzales even managed to find out innocuous things like Holly’s preference for vanilla over chocolate and her fear of butterflies. I can’t even process what the butterfly thing is about, but every little piece of information in that report did more than just give me a snapshot of who I’m dealing with. It told me a story of a woman who is neither a goody two shoes nor a hard ass. In the short time I’ve known her, she’s shown herself to be neither fearful nor particularly brave. By now I’d normally know everything I need to about a person of interest, but with Holly, the more I know the more I realize I don’t know. Like how she apparently doesn’t like to drink—at all.
“That a court-ordered deal?” I ask. She comes around and sits down with her legs crossed beside me. Her proximity practically suffocates me. She’s all soap and sweet smells. Not over-powering like my mother and Chey, but just right. Inviting. It’s a welcome change from all the body odor and oil and cigarette smells I get from my brothers. It serves as one more reminder that even an asshole like me could use a little sweet in his life.
She looks down at the fuel line insulator and pile of bolts and washers I have set aside to build the carburetor. Horror fills my gut as she reaches out and picks up a bolt and a washer. It’s not the end of the world, but I like to lay out my work area with all clean parts before I get started.
“I asked you a question.”
“And I didn’t answer,” she says. She slips the washer over the bolt and watches as it slides down catches on the head. She’s got a quarter-inch bolt with a three-quarter-inch washer that is far too large to fit properly.
“There a reason you won’t cooperate?” I ask, set down the part I’m holding, and grab my beer. I should be angry with her, flat-out angry that she is being difficult. From the moment she came to in my guest room, she’s been a pain in my ass. I’ve tried to bully her into submission, and it didn’t work. I tried to threaten her, and that didn’t work. She doesn’t lash out, and she doesn’t cower. Gentle didn’t work and neither did mean, so all I have left to work with is being real and hope she responds to that.
“Is there a reason you haven’t asked me what I want?” she says, clutching the bolt and washer in a closed fist. With a shake of her head and a heavy breath, she turns her body toward mine. It’s a simple gesture, the turn of her body, but it’s enough. She’s talking. I can work with that.
“How much do you know about my club?”
“I know enough,” she says. Only, with that kind of answer, it’s clear that she doesn’t.
“I know you don’t like my methods, and you don’t understand our ways, but you need to understand this—what we do as Forsaken is always in the best interest of the club. We’re no different than your Uncle Harry and his boys. I will always protect my brothers.”
“I guess that makes me collateral damage then,” she says, nodding. Her shoulders slump in resignation, and she hunches forward just slightly.
“Yeah,” I say. “I got a job to do, and you’re making shit difficult at a really bad time.”
“I’ll take the money then,” she says without taking her brown eyes off of mine.
“Good,” I say and toss back half of my beer. I should leave it be, but I don’t. It’s that niggling desire to figure her out that forces the next words from my lips. “Why don’t you want it? Someone in your position should be clawing at the chance to get their hands on that kind of money.”