Mav took the bundle into his arms and peered down at the little wet head. This was not an attractive creature by any stretch of the imagination, but now he found that to be part of her appeal. Lucy was kinda like the Ravens—rough-looking on the outside but full of awesome. He grinned at the thought.
“What is that smile for?” Alexa asked as she swiped Q-tips through Lucy’s giant ears and, one by one, clipped the cat’s nails.
“Was just thinking that Lucy could totally be the club’s mascot. You need a biker name, though,” he said, hugging Lucy a little tighter to his chest as she tensed at the clipping. “‘Lucy’ is cute and all but it doesn’t really fit our vibe. Or the sweater I bought you. Maybe Lucky or Bones or . . . Slugger. Right?” The cat purred and stared at him. “You like that idea, don’t you? Yes, you do, kittykitty.”
“You are totally cooing at my cat right now.”
“Am not.”
“It’s turning me on.”
“I’m totally cooing at your cat.”
Alexa laughed, peering up at him with so much affection. “When you take care of something I care about, you take care of me. It means a lot, Mav.”
He handed the cat back and watched as Alexa gave her a rub with the towel and finally set her free. Lucy curled against his leg before wandering out of the bathroom.
He hiked Alexa up to sit on the counter. “It’s easy when I care about you so fucking much,” he said in a low voice.
“Then I’m the lucky one.”
Her words heated his blood and set off a warm, expansive pressure in his chest. His hand cupped her neck as he fit himself in tighter between her thighs. His phone buzzed in his back pocket, but Maverick ignored the fuck out of it as he leaned in and claimed her mouth. Once, twice. “Enjoyed washing your kitty.”
She grinned into the kiss, her arms coming around him. “I enjoyed having my kitty washed.”
He couldn’t help smiling, too. His tongue traced her lips and slipped inside. Guiding her head, he took more, went deeper.
His phone buzzed again.
“Should you check that?” she asked, pulling back, her face so alive with happiness that he just wanted to hide from the world and hold them in this moment. And smash the phone into a million pieces.
“Probably.” On a sigh, he pulled the cell from his back pocket to find two missed calls from Caine. Which meant something was up, because the guy never called anyone to shoot the shit. “It was Caine. Better see what—”
The phone rang in his hand, Caine’s name on the screen.
“Caine, man. What’s—”
“Cops are here. Arresting Dare and Jagger. Come now.”
“On my way,” Maverick said, anger and outrage welling up inside him. What the actual fuck?
“What’s the matter?” Alexa said, all that happiness bleeding out of her expression.
“Dare and Jagger are being arrested,” he said, already moving from the bathroom toward the kitchen table, where his cut hung over the back of a chair. “Don’t know why. But I’m sure as hell going to find out because this is fucking bullshit.”
“I’ll be thirty seconds,” Alexa said, running to her room.
Mav jammed his feet into his boots, his thoughts racing. What the hell could they be accused of? For being a Raven, Jagger tended to go out of the way to keep his nose clean because so much of the business at the track rode on his shoulders. And Dare was just a little over a week out of the hospital and had hardly left the clubhouse except for the ride to Baltimore . . .
Ice crawled through Mav’s blood. Could that be it? But, if so, something didn’t add up, because if the attack on the Iron Cross was at the bottom of this, Dare and Jagger wouldn’t be the only ones getting hauled in. Maverick couldn’t begin to figure it out, except his gut screamed that something wasn’t right.
Alexa was good to her word, rushing back in a little navy blue cotton dress and a pair of sandals, no makeup, her hair in a messy knot. Beautiful, especially for the concern she wore on her face. For his brothers.
They jogged out to his bike, and she slipped her hand into his. “I’m sorry.”
He gave a tight nod, glad to have her at his side. He drove more aggressively than he otherwise might’ve, but made it in time to see that goddamned motherfucker Davis shoving a cuffed Jagger into the back of his squad car. Sheriff Martin was there, too, clearly trying to keep Phoenix, Caine, and a few others from losing their shit and earning some one-way tickets to a holding cell.
“I’ll be right behind you, D,” Caine called out just as Davis grabbed his cousin’s injured shoulder and shoved him toward the car. Dare grimaced, and Maverick saw red.
Mav charged, Martin catching him about the shoulders. “He’s injured, you fucking asshole,” Mav yelled. Davis smirked and pushed Dare into the backseat.
“Don’t give him the satisfaction, Maverick. I need you to take care of shit here.” Dare nailed him with a hard stare just before the door shut between them.
“What the hell happened?” Mav looked to Caine and the others, stepping back from the car as Davis started it up.
Caine’s expression was set in a lethal scowl that was all rage and hard angles. “Someone dumped a shit-ton of tires and oil out by the drag strip. And then Davis supposedly got an anonymous tip reporting it. Now Dare and Jagger have been charged with multiple counts of illegal dumping.”
Head spinning, Mav watched as Davis drove away. The Raven Riders hadn’t used the quarter-mile strip where they did occasional car and bike drag races since last summer. This made no goddamned sense. He looked from Caine to Sheriff Martin and back again. “You know Jagger Locke. You know this is bullshit. We’ve got a fucking licensing inspection tomorrow, and the drag strip is part of that. If we’d dumped the shit, why would we leave it where the inspector might find it? And Dare’s been laid up for over a week. Jesus Christ, Martin, you were the one who responded to his shooting. You know he hasn’t been hauling anything around.”
Martin held up his hands, already nodding. Mav and Dare went way back with Henry Martin, all the way back to high school. Though he’d been a hotshot football player and they were pretty much the same miscreants they were now. “I hear you, Maverick. But it’s out of my hands. I’ll help where I can but what Dare and Jagger need most now is a lawyer.”
“And a private detective,” Caine said, his voice like ice.
“Yeah,” Maverick said. “Because someone knows who was behind this trumped-up bullshit.”
“I’m sorry,” Haven said. “But why would illegal dumping cause . . . all this anyway?”
Martin gave her a sympathetic look. “It carries big penalties in Maryland. Fines and jail time.” Haven paled.
Maverick looked back to Martin. “Can you find anything out about this supposed anonymous tipper?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Martin said, covering his short, wavy brown hair with a sheriff’s office baseball cap. “It’s odd that Davis didn’t call for backup in investigating the tip until after he’d found the dump site. He wouldn’t normally risk coming on to your property by himself.”