Chapter 18: Patched Out

Dani's POV

Nobody raised a hand.

For the length of one long breath, I thought that was the answer, and my stomach dropped to the floor.

Then a gray-bearded man at the middle of the table, one of my father's crew, stood up with his chair scraping.

"I paid a hundred and fifty a month," he said. "I'd like it back."

He put his hand in the air.

The man beside him stood and did the same.

Then there were hands everywhere, rough and scarred and thick-knuckled.

Only two stayed down.

They were the men who had stood in my drive with the gas cans, and they sat looking at the table with their faces gone slack.

Hoyt looked at the hands.

He had been president of the Sawtooth Sons for nineteen years.

"You're going to do this over a girl," he said. "Over a girl and a bartender."

"Over sixty-one thousand dollars," said the gray-bearded man. "And a fire in a man's garage."

"I didn't touch any garage."

"Your boys did," said Marla. "I heard their trucks leave your house at one."

The two seated men flinched.

Hoyt came around the end of the table with his hands loose.

For one terrible second I thought he would hit someone.

Jesse stepped between us.

He was bareheaded, with no patch on his back and his gauzed hands open at his sides.

"Don't," he said.

"Out of my way."

"The club voted. You don't have a seat here anymore."

"You're not even wearing your cut."

"Then I'll put it on." Jesse turned to the table. "Does anybody object to that?"

The gray-bearded man picked up the leather from beside the ham and held it out.