Chapter 22: Eureka

Bella POV

It felt good to be home. The kids definitely seemed happy to be home as well. The only thing that sucked was this morning I was helping Ope get ready for a charity run that they were going on. "When are you back?" I asked him as I packed his backpack.

"Tomorrow night I think. Long as everything goes okay." He said.

"It sucks. I just come home and now your leaving." I said pouting a little.

Ope grabbed my hand and pulled me so that I was standing between his legs. He put his hands on my hips. "I'll make it up to you." He said.

I leaned down and kissed him. "You will, will you?" I asked him. He nodded. "And how exactly do you plan on doing that?" I asked reaching to the back of his neck and pulling his hair so that he could look up at me.

"Hmm…I think I can think of a few things." He said.

"We'll see about that." I said letting him go.

I took a step back from him. "Pop will be here if you need anything." He said.

I nodded. "We'll be fine." I told him.

"Make sure that you steer clear of Zobelle. I don't trust him." Ope said.

"I know. If anything we'll stay at the clubhouse or with Gem. Okay?" I said.

"Thanks. I'll follow you to the clubhouse." He said.

When we pulled up at the clubhouse, I saw all the guys lined up. The Nomads were even there to ride with them. I walked over to my Dad, who was standing talking to Clay. "Hey Pop." I said, greeting my Dad.

"Hey! Your home." He said pulling me into a hug.

"Yeah, came in last night. Brought the kids home with me too. Ready for things to get back to normal." I said.

"Alright let's load up!" Clay yelled.

Dad kissed my cheek before I made my way over to Gemma. She put an arm around me. "They'll be fine." She told me as we watched the guys.

"I know. You mind picking the kids up for me. Got something I need to do." I told her.

"Sure. Everything okay baby?" She asked me.

"Yeah. Just something that I'm doing for Ope." I said with a smile.

"Alright. I'll take it. Come by for dinner tonight. Me, you, Tara and the kids." She said.

"Sure thing." I said, kissing her cheek. We watched all of the guys except for Piney pull out of the lot. Once they were gone I started walking towards my car.

"You're doing great you know?" Piney said to me.

I stopped next to my car and looked up at him. "Thanks. I'm doing my best." I said. "You know, when I first came here…I wasn't looking for love. I mean, I knew that it would happen at some point but I didn't think that it would happen as fast as it has. Let alone be pregnant. But I wouldn't trade it for anything." I told him.

"Well, I can honestly say that you're doing a great job. You take great care of Ope and my grandkids. I couldn't ask for more than that." Piney said.

"Thanks. I gotta run." I said.

Opie POV

As we headed out on our run, we stopped at the Military Surplus store. We killed the engines and made our way inside. "Military Surplus shop as cover. Wish we thought of that." Clay said.

"That's Edmond. Boy's a genius." Cameron said.

"Must take after his mother."

"Obviously."

"How do we carry?"

"Ten guns in each. Roll it up, strap it on." Cameron said.

"Just a biker with a bedroll."

"Six riders, five dozen. That's a good haul." Jax said.

"Runs are set up for the next three months. One every two weeks." Cameron said.

"We'll try to cover as many runs as we can with charity rides." Clay said.

"Cops never mess with us when we're serving humanity." I said.

"Rest of the time, travel in twos. Stay off the main roads." Jax said.

"Should be no problem." Cameron said. "The thirty-two, they're pleased with the way this worked out with SAMCRO."

"You tell the scabby fence boys, I'm all about the cause." Clay said.

"You can tell 'em yourself." Edmond muttered.

"Edmond." Cameron scolded. We all turned and looked at Cameron. "Jimmy O, some of the Falcarragh crew might be coming stateside. Time allows."

We all turned and looked at Chibs. We knew that this wouldn't be pretty if Jimmy came stateside. I mean after all Jimmy was the reason that Chibs had to leave Ireland.

"Tiocfaidh dr la." Chibs said. "Our day will come."

Once we were loaded up, we got back on the road. A little while later, Bobby's bike was spitting a bunch of black smoke out of the exhaust. "Shit!" I heard someone yell.

"Who's down?" Chibs asked me.

I looked around and saw Tig's bike go down over a hill. "Shit, Tig." I said and he nodded. We all got over to Tig as quick as we could.

We'd called an ambulance and they'd come and picked Tig up and taken him to the nearest hospital. Bobby, Sack and Hap stayed at the hospital with Tig. Jax had told them to call Piney. I was just hoping Pop didn't mention any of this to Bells.

Bella POV

When I left the Clubhouse I headed over to the hospital to meet Tara. She was going to do an ultrasound for me. I was hoping that she might be able to determine the sex of the baby this time. Then we I got done there I was heading over to LuAnn's. She was going to do a pregnancy photo shoot for me so that I could make a photo album for Ope. I'd kept everything completely quiet and had sworn Tara and Luann to secrecy.

After the ultrasound Tara was printing the pictures for me. "So, everything okay?" Tara asked me.

I nodded. "Yeah, just been working on something for Ope." I told her.

She nodded. "Have you been able to talk to Gemma yet?" She asked me.

I shook my head. "Nope. I figured that I'd do that later this afternoon. Maybe invite her to dinner, since Neeta is watching the kids." I told her.

"She's got all three?" Tara asked and I nodded.

I laughed. "Yeah. Ellie helps out with Abel so it's more like she's watching two." I told Tara. She nodded as she handed me the ultrasound pictures. "I should get going." I told her.

Jax POV

We'd stopped at a gas station when Clay's phone started ringing. Things had been off with him since Tara and Bella got into the accident and Donna had kidnapped Bells. Part of me felt like he blamed himself for not seeing how crazy Donna had actually been. Then Ma had gotten in a car accident, and I think that Clay was having a hard time dealing with the stress of it all.

When Clay got off the phone we all looked at him. "What?" I asked.

"Tig got picked up by bounty hunters." Clay said.

I ran a hand over my face. Bells was not going to be happy about this. I looked over at Ope. "Bells can't know." Ope said. "She worries about everyone enough as it is. No need to add to it, especially since she's pregnant."

I nodded. "I agree. I think we should go after Tig." I said.

"We got a delivery to make." Clay said.

"The bondsman have no jurisdiction. There's nothing to stop us taking him back." I said.

"What's stopping us is six bedrolls full of illegal handguns." Clay says.

"We go after him now, we got a chance." I said.

"He crosses state lines…" Clay trailed off. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I glared at Clay. "If Tig was here, he'd vote to deliver the guns." Clay continued.

Ope and I looked at each other. "Tig would want us to make sure that he gets back home safe…to his daughter, who's carrying his grandchild." I said. "I say we dump the bedrolls somewhere safe."

"Relay gets pushed by a few hours." Ope finished for me, nodding.

Clay wasn't happy. He looked pissed. "We're going." He said.

I glared at him again. "Maybe we should call a vote." Chibs said, pulling me from my staring contest with Clay.

"You vote all you want. I'm delivering the guns." Clay said.

Bella POV

As I was finishing up with Luann my cell rang. I pulled it out of my pocket. "Hello?"

"Bells, I need your help." Unser said.

"What's going on? Is Dad? Opie?" I asked, suddenly feeling a sense of worry.

"No, nothing like that. Gemma pulled a gun on someone this morning." He said.

"What? Damn it, Gemma. Okay, do you know where she is now?" I asked him.

"I left her on main street, but she took off." Unser said.

"Okay, I'll see if I can find her and talk to her. Can you go give Tara a heads up for me?" I asked.

"Sure thing." Unser said before he hung up.

Damn it Gem. What the hell are you thinking?

Tara POV

"I got your page." I said to Margaret when I found her at the nurse's station.

She turned to face me. "Chief Unser is looking for you." She said.

Great. The last thing I needed. "Is everything okay?" I asked her, trying to play it off.

"You tell me. You seem to get a lot of visitors. Both sides of the law." She said before she walked off.

I headed down the hall towards the Chapel where I was sure that I'd find Unser. Sure enough there he was. "Chief." I said, sitting down beside him.

"Didn't mean to pull you away from anything." He said, looking over at me.

"What is it? Something happen?" I asked him.

"She's out of sorts. Matter of time before she hurts someone. Herself. Not sure how to help her." Unser said.

I let out a sigh. Gemma of course. "She has to talk to somebody about what happened. I tried. Bella's tried." I said. I noticed a look on his face. Worry. Concern. "You care about her."

He nodded. "Known her since she was 12. Me and Emily Koza's the ones that tried to talk her out of running away. She split when she was 16. Came back ten years later with a baby and a motorcycle club. Sort of like you did, except without the baby and such." Unser said. Guess I really didn't know that much about Gemma's past. "You and Jax seem to be doing okay."

I shrugged. "We're trying to figure it out. What do you…make of us?" I asked him.

"The doctor and the biker? I've seen stranger pairings." He said.

I was pulled from my thoughts when a nurse tapped my shoulder. "Excuse me?" She said, causing me to look at her. "Cardiorespiratory Tech is looking for you." She said and I nodded.

I looked back at Unser and gave him an apologetic smile. "I'll talk to Bells see if we can't find a way to help Gemma." I told him and he nodded.

Tig POV

I couldn't believe these assholes. They'd scooped me up at a freaking hospital. It had to have been someone at the registration desk that had reported me. Bells wasn't going to be happy if I didn't come home. She had enough stress going on as it was. I knew that Clay was going to push the guys into making the drop, but I hoped that maybe Jax and Opie would push for them to come find me.

I knew that I had to try and figure out a way to distract these bounty hunters to give the guys some time but at the same time I knew that Bells was going to be pissed when she found out that I'd wrecked my bike. Then on top of it I'd finally found out that I had an outstanding bond in Oregon. Couldn't let Bells find out about that one.

Opie POV

We were still waiting on news from Sack who'd managed to follow the bounty hunters who'd picked up Tig, when Pop pulled up. Clay walked over to greet him. "Where are the bounty hunters?" Pop asked, as Sack pulled into the gas station.

"They got Tig maybe two miles down two miles down the road at a hotel." Sack said.

"You talk to Gemma?" Clay asked Pop.

"I tried to get a hold of her and let her know I was coming up here but nothing." Pop said.

"Where the hell is she?" Clay asked.

"I don't know. Your old lady doesn't take kindly to people prying into her shit." Pop said. "I had Dog and Clayton lock the place up in case she doesn't get back."

Clay nodded. "All right. Thanks old man." Clay said before walking over to where Jax and Sack were standing.

"What about Bells?" I asked, knowing that she would have been around to help at the garage.

"She said that she had something to do. Plus, I didn't think that you guys wanted her to know. Stress and all that." Pop said.

I nodded. "Yeah sure." I said. Where was she?

"I'm sure that she's fine, son. She seemed in a great mood when she left." Pop said. I nodded.

We walked over to where the rest of the guys were standing. "They got Tig in a motel about two miles down the road. Four of them." Sack said. "Sporting heavy hardware. First floor room 12."

"Why did they stop at a motel?" Jax asked.

"Don't know. They beat the shit out of Tig on the side of the road. The motel was the next stop." Sack said.

I started laughing. "That crazy prick must have provoked them. Can't bring him in beat up to a pulp." I said.

"So they're patching him up. He's trying to buy time." Jax said, looking over at me.

"All right lets go handle this." Pop said.

"If they hit a motel, they got a long ride ahead of 'em. They're going to be there for a while." Clay said. "Call up the run, tell the boys from Tacoma to get back down here."

"That's going to take hours. We got to do this now." Jax said.

"He's right." Pop added.

"We don't know how long they're…" Jax said, but Clay interrupted him.

"What, in broad daylight?" Clay said. "This is the way we stay off the radar, right? We're going to be doing runs up here every two weeks with a blanket full of guns. And bringing five more guys into the mix is going to make it low-profile?" Clay said. He was getting pissed off again, I could see it. "We wait until dark. Somebody goes out for food…"

"We don't know that." Jax said. "We don't know that they're going to be here after dark."

"We got eight on four." Bobby added.

We had to do something. If we let anything happen to Tig, Bells wouldn't let any of us live this down…and I had to live with her.

"You heard Bobby." I said.

"They're armed to the teeth. We have no idea what kind of firepower they're sitting on. We got handguns." Clay said, trying to calm down a little.

"We got surprise." I said. "You really wanna tell Bells that we let them take her Dad over state lines." I said, finally having enough.

Everything was getting out of control. Bobby shouted over everyone. "Okay enough! Have a smoke. Take a walk. All of you."

Bella POV

I'd finally managed to track Gemma down. I'd found her sitting at a park. Keeping in mind what Unser had told me and the phone call that I'd gotten from Tara while I was looking for Gemma, I had no idea what state she'd be in so I approached her slowly. "Gem?" I said.

She turned and looked at me briefly before looking ahead again. "What are you doing here?" She asked me.

I walked around the bench and I sat down beside her. "Gem, what's going on?" I asked her.

"I was working in the office when someone dropped off a package. They just stuck it in the mailbox. When I opened it, it was a mask." Gemma said. "It's what they wore."

"Oh Gem." I said, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and hugging her. "What can I do?" I asked her.

She looked over at me and gave me a small smile. "You're doing it." She said.

I wasn't sure how long Gemma and I had been sitting there, but we were pulled back to reality by my phone ringing. I pulled it out and saw it was Tara. "Hey Tara." I said.

"Bells…" She said.

I let out a sigh. "What is it?" I asked, looking at Gemma.

"Your gonna wanna come down to St. Thomas." Tara said.

"Why?" I asked. Suddenly the worry had set back in.

"Piney just brought your dad in." She said.

"I'm on my way." I said and hung up. Gemma had a confused look on her face. "Dad's at St. Thomas." I told her. She nodded.