Page 44 of Making His Bones

It sure sounded like Lytton was “allowing” me to make this trek, and I smiled sideways at Unity. She shrugged.

Santiago held his cell on high. “My woman has come through! Look, she has even given me the GPS coordinates. This is a back way that will allow us to bypass the hillbilly guard at the main entrance.”

“We’re taking my fuckin’ truck,” Wolf proclaimed. “It’s the best vehicle for offroading.”

I sniffed. “Not that thing.”

Wolf tossed his head at Santiago. “It’s better than his twenty year old Volvo. And I’ve got GPS.”

It was a very motley crew that climbed up into Wolf’s monster truck. I was right—he’d blocked about four motorcycles from leaving the narrow parking lot. Santiago sat up front, and I understood that. He knew the land, having “administered” something there before. I wondered what? Had he been some kind of realtor, albeit a famous one, before becoming an actor? What could be his connection to The Bare Bones MC?

I showed him a photo of Gray on my phone, so he knew who to look for.

“Gray Whaley?” he shouted. “I have admired him for years since he was a bit player in Over the Edge.” That was a very corny soap opera-cum-reality show where everyone either fought or fucked. I never would’ve known that unless I’d peeked into Gray’s IMDb page. “I particular admire his work in Untamed and Unchained. I love the part where they are surfing in the Gulf of Mexico and a humpback saved him from a killer whale.”

“How did it do that?” asked Lytton, in the back with me, as Wolf began to roar down Bargain Boulevard at ten miles per hour.

Santiago said, “The humpback kept bumping him back to shore. It didn’t bump anyone else, just Gray Whaley. It did that time and time again. Only later did they find out some fishermen were tipped over a little farther out by a killer whale. They think the humpback was trying to save Gray.”

“Maybe because his last name is Whaley,” said Wolf.

Leave it up to me, in love with a man saved by a humpback.

In love. More and more often I’d been thinking of Gray in those terms, though of course I’d never said it aloud to anyone. I realized I was not making this quest just for Delilah.

I was doing it for the love of Gray.

“Wolf Glaser,” Santiago Slayer was saying. “If you play that Ed Sheeran again, I am going to officially vomit.”

Wolf Glaser’s hand paused before he touched the dial. “But he’s doing a duet with Justin Bieber.”

Santiago drew himself up, nostrils flaring. “I would rather let OJ Simpson show me his knife collection than listen to Ed Sheeran. I would rather listen to Nickelback.”

“Nickelback it is,” said Wolf.

In the back seat, Lytton gave me some amused side eye. I smiled back.

I