I take a long drink, splutter at the neat vodka, and then put down my glass. Staring at the table, unable to look at anyone, I ask shakily, unable to stop trembling, “What about Hank and Peg?” I’m so worried about those we left behind.
At that moment Wraith’s phone rings, and he holds up his hand before taking the call. “Talk to me,” he says simply.
“Ah, huh. Thank Christ for that!”
“Fuck it.” This comment is accompanied by him slamming his fist on the table, making me jump.
“Shit. Got it. I’ll wait here for you.”
“Nah, she’s okay. Fuckin’ shaken up.”
“Yeah. I’ll get Doc here.”
He finishes the call. Dollar, Heart, and I all look up at him expectantly. Leaning over to me he pulls me into him and rests his chin on my head. Holding me tight, he speaks over me to the others, “Hank’s dead.” I gasp loudly and fasten my hands in his shirt as he continues, “Peg’s took a fuckin’ hit but not before he took a couple of them out as they rode off after us.”
I can’t believe it. Hank, who had such hopes of joining the MC; Hank, that lovely man who’d been so friendly to me. And Peg? He’s already been through too much. How badly is he injured? Is he going to die too? The gruff, scary sergeant-at-arms who’d done so much to help me come to terms with my disability. The thought that any of us had been killed tonight is horrifying. A huge sob escapes from me, quickly followed by another as my adrenaline rush fades and everything hits me. It could have been any one of us. Or all of us.
Wraith is nodding at someone as he smooths his hand over my hair, and Dollar gets out his phone. I can’t think of anything but the near miss we’ve all had―or that Hank had lost his life. It doesn’t seem real. Once they start, I can’t stop the tears, they keep falling. My glass is refilled and put into my hand, and then I hear another familiar voice in the room.
“What the fuck’s happened?” Horse is on my other side, his hand on my shoulder, his fingers tightening until they’re almost digging into my skin as the men explain.
“Horse, can you take her back to her room and stay with her until I get there? I need to wait for Drum.” Wraith’s voice rumbles over me.
I try to shake my head, wanting to hear the details myself when the others get back. “I want to stay here.”
“Shush, darlin’. There’s nothing you can do tonight. Let me find out what’s going on and I’ll come to tell you, okay? Go with Horse now. He’ll stay with you ‘til I get there. Hush now, it’ll be alright.”
It can’t be alright. Hank’s dead. Still trying to get my head around that fact, I protest again, “I need to know how Peg is. How bad is it? Will he be okay?”
“Soon as I know I’ll come tell you.” After a kiss on my brow, Wraith gently removes my hands from his shirt and eases away, giving Horse room to reach down and pick me up.
Cradled in Horse’s strong arms, I try once more to object but Horse stops me. “They know what they’re doing, babe. Just let them do what needs to be done.”
“But Hank… and Peg?” I protest once more.
“Hank’s gone,” Horse tells me softly, repeating what I already know but can’t quite accept. “He’s gone. And we’ll just have to wait on news on Peg.”
Chapter Nineteen
Wraith…
Throwing back another shot of Jack, I hear the main door to the clubroom loudly bang open. It interrupts my dark thoughts and, having checked who’s entering, my eyes close briefly in relief as Drummer comes in, his arm around and supporting Peg, who’s at least on his feet. Doc, the ex-Army medic who we pay a fucking enormous retainer to for these very circumstances, and who’d arrived only moments before, rushes over to help.
In his usual fashion, the sergeant-at-arms brushes him off.
“Church first.” Peg’s in pain but doesn’t want to delay club business.
But this time he doesn’t get his way as his president overrules him. “You’re fuckin’ bleeding all over the place, man. Let Doc have a look at you.”
Grumbling, Peg lets himself be led off to the room we reserve for medical emergencies but don’t, thank fuck, often have to use. Last time it was when Slick cut his hand open doing some shit on his bike.
Drum’s eyes follow the Doc and his patient until they’re out of sight. He stands in the centre of the clubroom, his hands tunneling through his hair and then his palms wipe down over his cheeks. Now his gaze, full of fury, lands. “Where’s Wheels?”
“I sent her off with Horse. There is nothing she can add to this. Fuck, she’s a mess.”
Slowly he nods. “Wouldn’t expect her to be anything else. At least you got her back here okay.” He rolls his head on his shoulders and breathes deeply. “We’ll give it a minute and see what’s going on with Peg, and then it’s church.” He glances around the room as he mentally adds up the number of bodies, and his slow nod of satisfaction shows he sees almost all the brothers are present. We’re a tight-knit community, the majority of us normally bunking down on-site, with only Heart, Viper, and Bullet, the members with old ladies, regularly living separate. But even they’ve come from their beds tonight. The sweet butts have been sent packing. Mouse is the only one missing, but that’s as per the norm. We’ll drag him out of his bat cave when we need him.
I raise my chin toward Drum, but the quick shake of dismissal makes me curb my impatience. He’ll want to think this through for himself before updating all of us at once.
By the time the prez has helped himself to a couple of shots of his top-shelf whisky, Peg’s come out with Doc, the former’s arm is in a sling, and I wince knowing how much he’ll hate that. But at least he’s alive and walking.
Mumbled conversations around the room cease as Peg stands in the middle, all brothers questioning him with their eyes. He gives a nod to Doc. “Doc sewed me up. Bullet went straight through. Will just have a wing clipped for a while. Now let’s get to church.”
Doc flinches and glares a little. “Now what did I tell you, Peg? You should be resting. You’ve lost a lot of blood.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Peg tosses him a scowl of his own. “I’ll get my head down later, got things to do now.”
“Thanks, Doc.” Drum goes over to both men, and I know he’ll realise it would be a lost cause to try to argue with his sergeant-at-arms. “We’ll get him sorted after church.” His warning stare suggests that Peg will be given space to be brought up-to-date, but after that will be following doctor’s orders. Then he turns to Doc again. “D’ya mind popping up and taking a look at the girl, Wheels? Wraith brought her in fast and she was pretty shaken.” Then, after Doc agrees, without wasting any more time, Prez shouts out to the rest of us, “Right, Brothers, church. Now! Let’s get this over with so Peg can get his fuckin’ head down.”
Relieved Drum was looking out for my girl―I’d have asked Doc to pay her a visit if he hadn’t―I follow my brothers into the large meeting room, having shot off a quick text to Mouse summoning him in. His office is only a couple of doors down, so he enters almost immediately. I notice that on his way in, Prez has indicated that the prospects are to join us. Unusual, but totally understandable, as one of their own has gone. The brothers all find their seats. Marsh and Spider stand at the far end of the table, casting anxious glances at each other.
Without preamble, Drum gets down to the first order of business, his face bleak as he looks around the room. “Our prospect, Hank, gave his life for the club tonight. He’d been with us almost a year and this vote would have come to the table shortly in any event. Now, I’m fuckin’ proposing we posthumously give him the patch, bury him as a full member. Let’s vote.”
There are overwhelming shouts of ‘Aye’ accompanied by the sound of fists banging on the table as brothers don’t even bother to vote in turn.
Drum bangs the gavel hard on the wooden table top. “Motion carried.”
His stern face gentles as his gaze falls on Marsh and Spider. Spider’s the same age as Hank, Marsh just a couple of
years older. “Your brother died a fuckin’ hero,” he tells them, his voice sombre. “He died a true Satan’s Devil.”
More thumps on the wood and a general murmuring of agreement.
Drum gives us all a moment to digest his words then instructs, “Prospects, you’re dismissed now.” They might be called on to join the fight, but as they’ve not yet proved their loyalty to the club, club business and the decisions we’ll make here tonight are not for their ears. I watch them leave, knowing while they want to stay to hear the discussions, they understand their place and will accept being left out. It’s something we’ve all been through.
The prez waits until the door shuts behind them. Then he looks at each of us in turn before announcing, “Rock Demons.”
“Fuck it!” I slam my hand on the table. The reason he’s named the ruthless rival MC club based in Phoenix can only be that it was them responsible for killing Hank and injuring Peg tonight. I’d been too much in the thick of it all to see their cuts. The Devils and the Demons have had an uneasy peace for years, and I can’t immediately think why they would turn on us all of a sudden.
Mouse is busy tapping on his ever-present laptop. We ignore him, it’s what he always does.
Peg raises his good arm, and Drum throws a chin jerk, his way of giving him permission to speak.
“It’s my fuckin’ fault, Prez, I’m sorry, I should’ve fuckin’ known better.”
“You fuckin’ what?” It’s not only me who throws out the question as various echoes with slightly different phrasing go around the room.
Peg’s looking downcast. “You should take my patch for this. It’s my fuckin’ job to watch out for the club. I’ve gotten sloppy—we should never have been using the same fuckin’ place to stop and put on our cuts.”
Slick is shaking his head. “But we’ve stopped there for years.”
“Precisely!” Peg looks white, but his cheeks blaze red. “Fuck knows why they wanted us, but they knew exactly which rest area we’d be using. All they had to do was wait and then follow.”
“It isn’t all your fault, Peg,” Mouse interrupts, causing a hush to come over us all. “It was like looking for a needle in a haystack before we got a lead, but now I know who I’m searching for and I can tell you that the Demons got a nice sum put into their bank account recently. Looks like they’re the ones who picked up on that fuckin’ contract for the woman. They wanted the girl.”
Talk bursts out again; Drum calls us to order. “Makes sense, a fuckin’ Phoenix chapter when she would have been traced to landing at Sky Harbor. They could have spotted Dart and Slick picking her up.”
I shake my head. “If they had, they’d have been on us long before now. She’s been here nearly three fuckin’ months. How the fuck they found it out now, I don’t know.”
“Did you have a tail up to Utah, VP?”
I’m already going back over everything in my mind. “I was checking out for that, but no, Prez, I’m pretty fuckin’ sure we didn’t. How could someone follow us seven hundred miles and neither me nor Peg spot them? Nah, somehow they knew enough to lie in wait until we were on our way back.”
Peg’s head is in his hands. “I shouldn’t have stopped there…”
“Brother, this isn’t on you. We’ve learned the lesson now, but haven’t had trouble with the Demons since I got in this fuckin’ chair, so I’d have made the same call.”
“I was there,” I back up the prez. “Peg, I was there to fuckin’ keep her safe, and I didn’t give it a second thought.”
Other brothers back us up. Stopping there was a habit for us all when we’d been out of state—one we’ll change now. Yeah, a sloppy schoolboy error, but one any of us would have made. And one I had made. It wasn’t all on Peg.
The sergeant-at-arms is still shaking his head, but Drum’s moving on. “Right,” the prez starts. “What I still can’t understand is how the fuck they knew you’d be on the road tonight? The VP’s got enough experience to know if he’s picked up a fuckin’ tail, and he’s right, he and Peg would have had to be blind not to spot one all the way to Utah and back. Anyone got any fuckin’ ideas?”
Beef’s shifting in his seat, Drum’s sharp and narrowed eyes don’t miss it, settling on him. “You got something to say, Brother?”
His fingers tapping on the table, Beef looks up, his face looking drawn as he starts to speak. “Hate to say this, but that bitch Chrissy was mouthing off at the Running Horse a couple of nights ago. The day you went to Utah, Wraith.” He’s referring to one of the bars we often frequent in town. It’s near the strip club and brothers often stop by there. “Heard her mention Wraith’s name, but she shut that shit down pretty quickly when she saw me.”
Fuck that bitch! If she let anything out about Wheels being here, she was sharing club business. “Who the fuck was she blabbing to?”
“No idea. Didn’t recognise the motherfuckers. But the biker type. Didn’t think too much of it at the time, and as I said, she got a glare from me and moved away from them quickly.”
The prez’s face grows as dark as a thundercloud as the implications sink in. He brings his fist down hard on the table. “Right, first thing tomorrow I’ll be talking to that fuckin’ whore. You’ll want to be with me, VP,” Drummer growls out menacingly.
Too fucking right I’ll want to be in on that conversation. If she betrayed my girl…
“She’s targeted you for a while, Wraith. Would suit her to get the woman out of the way.” Slick’s only telling me what I’m already thinking.
Fuck. If she betrayed me, she betrayed the club.
With no other suggestions how our whereabouts had been discovered, our suspicions of where the leak that led to Hank being killed had come from seem to be confirmed.
With a glance at Peg, who’s clutching at his shoulder, Drum wants to move things along. “So it looks like the Demons have taken the fuckin’ contract you found on the web.” He throws a nod at Mouse as if to confirm where the information came from. “I said we’d give our protection to her as long as there was no blowback on us.”
For a second, I’m unsure where he’s going with this. My heart speeds up. He's not going to suggest throwing her to the wolves, is he? If he is, there’s only one thing I can do.
I start opening my mouth to claim her publicly, so they won’t have the choice of removing the protection of the club due to her relationship with me, when he continues, “Now they’ve killed one of our own, this fight’s at our fuckin’ door. That changes things.”
“Too right it fuckin’ does.” Rock glares, his gun out on the table in front of him, his fingers spinning it. “No one kills a fuckin’ Devil and gets away with it.” There are general grunts of agreement.
“It’s our war now, Prez,” Slick butts in. “We’re not backing away from this.”
Drummer’s face is set. “I hear yah all, but we need a fuckin’ vote. All those in favour?”
After we’d gone around the table, there was no need for a vote to count any against, all were prepared to fight, and that meant Wheels would continue to be safeguarded. I can only hope we make a better job of it than we have so far. Slowly I let out the breath I didn’t know I’d been holding, as I realised if the vote had gone the other way, I’d have found some way to protect her myself. No fuckin’ way would I have allowed her to be taken by the Demons and then placed into the clutches of a man who’d end up hurting and killing her. Just no fuckin’ way.
“Right, we’re on lockdown as of now. Bring the ol’ ladies in―Heart, you’ll have to have Amy here, okay? Which means the rest of you fuckers mind what you do around the little squirt.”
Drum’s a hard bastard, but sometimes he shows his softer side. Heart throws him a grateful look.
“Peg, Mouse,” the prez continues, “we all secure?”
The man who looks after our security systems, as well as being the go-to computer guy, nods. “As long as the front gates are locked, a fly couldn’t get into the compound without me knowing about i
t.”
“I’d like to get Spider working with Mouse. He’s got an interest in security and seems to know his stuff. We need eyes on it at all times.” Peg looks drawn and tired, but he’s contributing just the same.
“Agreed. And I want two men on the gate every fuckin’ minute, a prospect and a fully patched brother. Need someone sharp to make sure no fucker gets in.”
“What about the businesses?” Dollar has an eye to the money.
“Business as usual until we know what’s in their heads. Can’t see them directing a hit on our earners right now. Have to assume they want the woman, not an all-out war.
“I think that’s right,” Peg interrupts. “They didn’t stop to finish me off, just tore after Wraith and Wheels.”
“So we keep open for now, but keep our ears to the fuckin’ ground.” Drum pauses and wipes his hand over his chin. “What do we know about their club numbers?”
“I think they’re a bit smaller than us,” Peg replies. “But that’s old info, and things could have changed.”
We’ve got fifteen full members and now only two prospects.
We spend a short while tossing around what we know of the Demons, which isn’t a lot since we’ve kept to ourselves for a few years now. But know thy enemy is something we need to get a handle on, so we come up with a few ideas about how to do that. Peg’s noticeably looking worse for wear now, as are we all. The adrenalin rush of getting Wheels back in one piece while knowing I was leaving my brothers behind is starting to fade now, and I’m coming down with a bang. Tonight’s been hard on us all. We might be an outlaw club, but we’ve not had a member killed by another club for a very long time. Tonight’s action is the start of something all of us will be prepared to fight for, and we’re going into it knowing Hank may not be the last to give his life.
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