Biker’s Collar: Property of Scrap (Rebel Barbarians MC #6)

Chapter 16 – Owen

Sixteen

Owen

V ickie is strangely compliant for our drive across the country. We stop overnight once and I get separate motel rooms, mostly because I need the night to myself to call my brothers and get our shit together. I don’t need Vickie distracting or tempting me when I need proper sleep. Since we stay in Barbarian territory, I don’t have to worry about her running off. Even if she were to get away… it wouldn’t take long to get her back.

I bought Kaylee-Marie’s house, so the only thing that surprises me when I pull the bike into the driveway is the condition of the place. Her lawn looks a couple months overgrown. The Volvo I bought her a couple years ago has a dent in the side…

Paint peels on the outside of the house and the steps have bullet holes through them. Plus, the second one is basically hanging off. Waverly could hurt herself on that.

Vickie hands me her helmet. She gives me a worried look. I have masterfully avoided the subject of Kaylee-Marie and Vickie meeting throughout our brief interactions with each other. The collar around Vickie’s neck won’t make this comfortable.

I’m just surprised Kaylee-Marie hasn’t come running out of the house brandishing something yet. I call her while Vickie stares at me. Curious. Confused. Concerned. I don’t have answers for how this shit is all supposed to go. I’m just here because of an alleged emergency and I thought my brothers were going to get here first…

“Where are you?” I growl into the phone impatiently.

“Your brothers drove me to the place where they took Waverly,” she says. “If you had fixed your ass to get here sooner, I would have been home. That’s where you are, aren’t you?”

“Yes. Have you made any progress? Hand the phone to Wyatt…”

I’m hoping Wyatt is the one there and not Ethan. I breathe a sigh of relief when it really is my brother.

“Hello, Owen,” he says, his voice dripping with frustration.

“I swear, Wyatt. This is bullshit. I never lost fifty grand in a dice game. I would remember that.”

“Do you have some other explanation for what’s going on that makes sense?” Wyatt asks. It’s reasonable but… I don’t.

“It’s a plot against us.”

“They want us to send Kaylee-Marie in alone with fifty-grand. Ethan has the money, but we’re not going to do that.”

“Did she tell you anything about who took Waverly?”

“She said two white guys with guns took her and she starts screaming her head off if I ask her more questions than that. She’s grief stricken.”

She might be grief-stricken, but her total lack of control isn’t helping our situation in the slightest.

“I can’t wrap my head around this.”

“It’s an important reminder not to foolishly lose custody of your children,” Wyatt says unsympathetically. “The next time you convince a woman to get near you… be more strategic.”

“I just need to know where my daughter is.”

“We’ll find out tonight. We have the money, we have a plan… I’ll bring Kaylee-Marie back and mediate things.”

“Thanks.”

Wyatt grunts and hangs up. I look over at Vickie. Fuck. Wyatt doesn’t know she’s here and I didn’t mention it. He volunteered to mediate, but Vickie’s presence will send Kaylee-Marie through the roof. I look over at her sympathetically.

“I’m in way over my head.”

“You usually are.”

“They’re gonna be here soon. We’d better go inside.”

“What? We’re just going to walk up into your ex-wife’s house?”

“We never got married,” I say to her quickly. “We had Waverly and… shit got fucked up pretty quickly after that.”

“Kaylee’s side of things sound interesting,” Vickie says. I can tell she’s trying to get a rise out of me, but it’s nothing compared to the ways Kaylee-Marie can push and needle at my sensitivities.

“Yeah, well. I bought her this house so… hopefully that makes up for things a little bit.”

“You bought her this?”

“Why else do you think I have a key?”

“I can think of a few reasons,” Vickie says. And I let her slightly sassy tone slide because if there’s a hint of jealousy in that tone, that brings me far more satisfaction than it should. It’s just the slightest suggestion that she might feel more for me than she lets on. That she wouldn’t just drug me again and escape given the chance.

“I’m not screwing her. Haven’t screwed her in years.”

“Men never let go of their baby mama,” Vickie says.

“No. Men never let go of their property.”

I grab her by the collar, pulling her against my chest and kissing her. There’s an intense surge of emotion, like what I might feel betting all my chips on a hand I’m sure I’ll lose unless I run across statistically improbable luck.

My face is serious. Intense. I mean what I say.

“I’m here for my daughter, Vickie. Not Kaylee-Marie. Once Waverly is safe… You and I have unfinished business.”

“You can always let me go,” she says. “Any point in time.”

She doesn’t betray a hint of enthusiasm about the potential future between us. Rage burns through me. She can’t deny what she feels for me. I’m sick of her denial. Her feigned reluctance. It pisses me off. She didn’t go with me that night for money. I don’t know why the hell she drugged me and ran off. I just know that I won’t let it happen again.

“That won’t be happening,” I tell her. “Get through the next hour or so with Kaylee-Marie, get Waverly back tonight and then… I’m going to tattoo your ass and take you to my place.”

“Back to that damp ass cabin?” Vickie says, incapable of hiding her disgust, even if she had the nicest guest room and the only one to never have a rattlesnake infestation.

“No. To my real house,” I tell her. “I want you somewhere private where I can ensure your obedience and get the answers I want without… outside trouble.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I want to know the truth. What prompted you to drug me and run off like that and why the fuck do you still pretend I don’t get your pussy wet.”

Vickie glares. “Someone kidnapped your daughter. You need to focus on something other than my pussy.”

“Trust me, Vickie, I can balance multiple thoughts at once. Before the sun comes up tomorrow, everyone involved with laying a finger on my daughter will be dead. That’s how the Shaws handle things.”

She shivers, but I sense this strange sense of yearning from her when I say something that would scare most women off. Vickie has a problematic attraction to my dark side. Her efforts to deny that attraction do absolutely nothing to curb the intensity of her sensitivity towards me. I can feel it when I touch her. When I look at her.

If she really didn’t want me to collar her… she would have found a way out of it. It takes everything not to wrap my hands around her throat now and reaffirm my control over her.

“How are you going to explain my presence to… everyone?”

I scowl. “Obviously… I’ll tell them that you’re Waverly’s new… nanny.”

“The daughter you don’t have custody of?”

“I have Thanksgiving and Easter.”

“Wow. You must have acted like a complete asshole in court.”

“I don’t need you judging me,” I snap at her, the smirk playing across Vickie’s lips revealing this was a direct effort to get under my skin. I hate giving her even an inch of victory over me. “I need you inside and quiet or I’ll bend you over the couch and fuck you until they get here.”

“Don’t be disgusting.”

“Door.”

Vickie walks ahead of me, giving me a rare view of her ass. She’s right. I shouldn’t think about her ass right now. My daughter is missing. My ex-girlfriend wants to kill me (which is normal), and after we get Waverly back, Wyatt won’t be able to help himself. He’ll rip me a new one for being a “degenerate gambler”, even if I know this doesn’t have a damn thing to do with my gambling.

Just because I don’t make a big deal of things doesn’t mean I haven’t — at least partly — changed my ways. I know that I’ll need to be a better person if I want my daughter to give a crap about me. I haven’t done anything reckless enough to get her kidnapped. Sure, I bet on a hockey game here and there, but never like what happened in Vegas.

I unlock the door and walk inside Kaylee-Marie’s house, mortified by the scene in front of us when the door opens. Trash. Everywhere. Clothes. Food. Two roaches scuttle across the floor, causing Vickie to shriek and stomp on them hard. My stomach sinks.

Is this where Waverly has been living?

What the fuck?

“The last time I came here, it didn’t look like this.”

“There has to be a reasonable explanation,” Vickie says. “Being a single mom is tough.”

“She doesn’t have to be a single mom,” I remind her, but I take her hand and pull her close to me. “Come on… I’ll get you a glass of water if I can find a clean cup and see what I can get done before my brothers bring her back.”

“Do you want me to help you clean?”

“I want you to sit your ass down,” I tell her, my eyes softening once I look directly at her. “I’m not having you clean my baby mama’s house. We’re here for Waverly and honestly… once I get her… I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Looking around, I don’t know that I can leave my daughter here in good conscience. But legally… I might have to do that. I try not to let the shame knock me off balance as I lead Vickie to a seat at the small round kitchen table, which only has a small mess on it. There are dishes in the sink and the rest of the place is still a mess.

Vickie looks over at me with more sympathy than I’ve seen from her.

“Are you sure you don’t need help?”

“I didn’t need you to clean up my mess the first time you met me.”

She pipes down after that. I try not to let all my emotions get the better of me. I told myself that with my mom checking in once in a while, my brothers within driving distance, and Kaylee-Marie fighting tooth and nail in court for our daughter that she would be safe. She would be happy.

This place isn’t even fucking clean. When Kaylee-Marie walks through that door without our daughter in her arms, I’ll have to do everything in my power not to snap her fucking neck. I might not be perfect, but I would never keep Waverly under these conditions. I couldn’t stomach it.

I expected my brothers to get back with Kaylee-Marie before I got the kitchen done, but I get the place cleaned up and mopped, plus all the carpeted areas on the ground floor picked up and vacuumed. Vickie stares at me like an alien when I pick up the vacuum cleaner.

“What? I bought this Dyson for her. It’s sexist to think a man can’t vacuum.”

“It’s not sexist. It’s just something I’ve never seen before,” Vickie says. “And you look like an ex-con or something. It’s not every day you see that.”

“I look like an ex-con?”

“Tall, evil looking eyes, bearded, covered in tattoos.”

“More like your fantasy of an ex-con,” I grunt before powering on the vacuum and drowning out more of Vickie’s potential commentary until the floor looks partially cleaned. Once I’m done with that noise, Vickie offers me another sympathetic look. She seems embarrassed when I catch it on her, but before I can accuse her of having romantic feelings towards me, her face screws right up and I hear the sound of Ethan’s ghetto ass bike coming up the driveway. He refuses to fix the knocking sound from the crankshaft on that thing.

Crazy motherfucker. I walk over to Vickie, trying not to look too closely at her collar because I can’t afford an erection right now.

“The less you say, the better. I’ll handle this and get us out of here. Don’t let Kaylee-Marie get under your skin.”

“I’ve never met a white girl whose ass I couldn’t beat,” Vickie says calmly.

I’ll take her word for it, but I once got my nose broken for attacking someone who called Kaylee-Marie a pit bull with lipstick. Got my ribs broken the second time someone called her that. The third time somebody called her that, I started to think maybe I had a blind spot for her.

Blind spot didn’t matter. She still left me. Took my kid. I fought so hard for a woman who didn’t love me, and who I treated like dirt right back. Waverly was the only good thing to come out of that relationship.

The front door opens up and when I hear Kaylee-Marie’s heels, the hairs on the back of my neck instantly stand up. I got into a couple bar fights over some names Kaylee-Marie was called over those high heels. I myself wondered how she got herself to balance in them but… here she comes. I stand defensively in front of Vickie, like that has a shot at making the situation better.

Ethan and Wyatt enter the room on either side of her like bodyguards or hopefully more like prison guards. Kaylee-Marie has neon eyes that can see straight through me, I swear.

“Why the fuck did you bring a hooker into my house when your daughter is kidnapped?!”