Low Sided by A.J. Downey (best detective novels of all time txt) 📕

so secretly, that this was just the beginning to a long life together. After everything… damnit, I deserved to be happy.

“Hey, you!” I called out to Sauley as he stepped into my bar.

“Hey!” he called back. “You are cordially invited.” He gave a sweeping bow and handed over an envelope and I smiled.

“What’s this?” I asked, as he shook his hair out of his eyes. The guys had decided a few weeks back that he didn’t need to cut his hair anymore, and it was in that awful in-between phase of growing out, where it was too short to pull back and too long to keep it out of his face.

It was driving him nuts. I could tell.

“A little something something from Mace,” he said, slipping up onto a vacant bar stool. I got him a beer.

“Let’s see here,” I said, tearing open the card.

It was smaller than a greeting card and was indeed an invitation. Golden no less. I laughed.

You’re invited! was emblazoned on the front.

I opened the card, and the pertinent info was filled out on the form.

Time: Tonight

Place: The Club

Dress: Casual

On the three lines meant for the personalized details, Mace had written, Come Party With Us!

I smiled and said, “I would love to.”

“Yeah?” Sauley grinned.

“Absolutely!”

He chugged the rest of his beer and set it down. After a belch that could only be described as adorable, he said, “Rock on, we’ll see you then.”

“Alright, be safe!” I called after him and he waved over his shoulder.

The invitation was some sort of wicked curse. By delivering it, Sauley had unleashed it onto my world, and it made the clock positively drag. The needle scooting arduously around the clockface until the appointed hour when I could get the fuck up out of here. When I waved and called out my goodbye to Manuk and turned for the door, there was my Mace, waiting for me just outside, his phone to his ear and his bike at the curb.

He swiftly got off the line when he saw me coming, shoving his phone away in a pocket.

“Hey, there’s my girl,” he called out when I shoved out the front entrance to the bar. God, he looked delicious in all that rugged denim and leather. I smiled and went to him and he pulled me close. His lips were cold against mine and he smelled of wind and the outdoors – beneath it all like clean man and there was nothing better.

“Hey, you,” I said softly, and he grinned. “You ready?”

“Absolutely.”

He led me to his bike, and we took the short ride to the club. It was loud, the music blaring from inside, out the open back door as he had me jump off so he could back the bike into the line of them outside the club’s motorcycle junkyard.

He came to me, waiting on the sidewalk, and took my hand in his, swinging our arms between us happily as we made our way across the street to the back door of the club. There were a few of his brothers on the small square landing, smoking, beers in hand, laughing and talking.

“Heeeeeey, there she is!” Sauley crowed, more than a little sauced by this point, saluting us with his beer as we made our way across the worn and sad blacktop of 15th Ave SW in his direction.

I nodded politely at the brothers on the landing with him and one of them, a tall ebony man with dreadlocks, nodded back as he blew out a cloud of fragrant smoke of what was probably some of the highest quality green the Pacific Northwest had to offer.

Damn, I kind of wanted a hit. It would go a long way toward mellowing me out with all of the meeting and greeting I probably had ahead of me. I wasn’t always so shy and on edge, I just really wanted to make a good impression, you know? I didn’t exactly know how to do that with this particular crowd. It wasn’t exactly my niche.

I think the dude toking up caught me looking because he held it out to me. “I’m Major. Welcome to the party.”

“Hi, Major. I’m Raven.” I introduced myself and availed myself of the spliff, taking a decent hit off it.

Major grinned at me and gave a lift of his chin to Mace. “She’s alright!” he said, and I laughed without letting go of any of the smoke as I held it in for as long as possible to let it do its thing.

The other dude on the back porch I’d already sort of met, a guy by the name of Squatch – which it wasn’t hard to imagine where he’d come by that name. Dude was hairy and looked like a straight-up neanderthal out of a children’s book, except, you know, clothed.

Inside, we found Maverick, Glassjaw, and Fenris- those were the ones I knew. The rest consisted of a giant of a man that went by Dump Truck, which he was certainly as big as one, but I don’t think that’s where he got the name. Then there was Nine, Cipher, Derry, and the rest were sort of a blur after that. I think that had more to do with the combination of whatever weed Major had going on – it was some good shit – and the shots the guys lined up for me to catch up on the bar.

The bartender happened to be a woman. A bigger lady in an animal print kaftan, the boys all called Ms. Momma Kat with a sort of strange deference in their tone. She didn’t appear to be with any of them which I know it sounds judgy but that would have been slightly awkward given she seemed significantly older than most of the guys, but they rather treated her almost like a surrogate mother figure or something.

Then there were the women… what can I say about those? Well, other than they were most definitely divided into two camps. The respected and revered