Children of Fire (Complete)

twenty

Gideon

I knew the moment I saw Emerson's eyes grow wide in her apartment that she was afraid of me, and damnit if that wasn't a gut-wrenching feeling. I never wanted another woman to be afraid of me, especially a woman like Emerson. I know I had fucked up when I blew up on her in the bar the other day, I had accepted that. What I hadn't known was that it had scarred her the way it did. Certainly I hadn't been that harsh towards her? Unless she had some underlying issues that I didn't know about.

When I had done the background check on her, I saw several things about her that caught my attention. For instance, there were a few encrypted documents that not even Butters could open, which was saying a lot -- Butters was our IT specialist, anything technological that we needed, he took care of. There were three documents he found that had nothing on them but dates. One from 2007, one from two years ago, and another one that had a date two months from now. Initially, I had been suspicious, but upon further inspection-- she had no known ties to Callahan or the FBI, so I allowed myself to not think the worst and give her the benefit of a doubt. She hadn't asked any questions that set off alarms in my head, so I decided that being cynical wasn't the best move in this situation. Not to mention, a large part of me refused to believe that she had anything but my best interest in mind.

Anyone who had more than one encrypted file while running a background check had to have gone through some rough shit, and I didn't take that into consideration until tonight when I saw her eyes grow wide at the mention of the background check. She was deathly afraid of men who showed aggression, and suddenly I found myself gripping the handlebars of my 2003 Harley Dyna as my blood boiled in my veins. I hoped I was wrong, but deep down I knew I wasn't. Emerson wasn't a timid little thing, she was strong-willed, with an evil temper to match, and I knew that wasn't something that she just used as a front-- it was something she had to have all of her life. It was an exterior that people couldn't use frequently unless it was necessary, and I felt my heart ache for her. May God help the men that wronged her, because if I ever get my hands on them I'll make them beg for forgiveness.

After a bit, I pulled into the clubhouse-- my mind had been on autopilot as I made my way here, numbly making the turns and twists on the road out of reflex. I lined my bike up at the front, taking my helmet off and placing it on the seat before making my way inside. I pulled the heavy door open and found that there was already some kind of party in full swing, hangarounds and wanna-be old ladies littered the common area. There was classic rock spilling loudly out of the jukebox, and a few of the hangarounds had women clinging to them, some men even had two or three women on their arms. I chuckled at the sight and made my way into the chapel, where the club was meeting to discuss some business that needed to be handled.

"Gideon, come here first!" A womans voice called from the kitchen located off to one end of the long hallway that led to the bedrooms and chapel. I followed her voice and smiled kindly, dropping a gentle kiss on her cheek.

"Yes ma'am?" I asked, reaching into the refrigerator behind her and pulling out a beer. I popped the cap off of it and turned the bottle back, suddenly remembering the thoughts I had on my way here.

"You look perturbed, baby. What's on your mind?" My mother asked me, putting a hand on her hip. I offered her a soft smile before shrugging.

"Nothing, ma. Just club stuff. You know how it is." I told her, I didn't want her knowing about Emerson yet, I didn't need to scare her off before the gala and my mother was definitely a scary woman.

"I know baby, I know. I talked to Linda earlier and she told me about a blood drive they're doing over in Santa Fe in two weeks. I told her I'd mention it to you or Ray, maybe you could discuss it with the club?" She asked, wiping down the counter in front of her. We traveled a lot of the Southwest for business, and Santa Fe was one of our more prosperous towns, we needed to pick up an order from there soon and the blood drive would be the perfect cover up.