by Trent Jordan
And then my mouse hovered over the tab for Lane and Cole Carter.
I didn’t know why there were free, considering they had murdered my best friend, but perhaps this would give me the answer I needed.
Deciding to save the “best” for last, I clicked on Cole’s profile.
“Missing.”
That’s odd. I knew of Cole, although not very well. I knew more of the fact that Lane had a brother than I did his name was Cole or anything else. It noted he had been missing since April 3rd, 2018.
The night Shannon was murdered.
That set off all sorts of alarm bells in my head—but so did the fact that it said he was “Missing” and not “Wanted.” Perhaps that was because it was Lane’s profile that would reveal who was wanted, but why would Cole have just disappeared off the face of the Earth if he was innocent? Was he scared of being labeled an accomplice?
Same group. Same guilt. Yeah, I’d be running too, Cole. I’d be running too if you knew someone like me was coming for your club.
Then I opened the tab for Lane’s profile.
There was nothing about the murder.
“What the fuck... ”
Thank goodness the door to my office was shut right now. If someone had walked by and seen or heard that on my first day? Talk about unprofessional.
I reread the profile, desperately trying to see if I had missed anything. Maybe the charge had been reduced, or maybe a deal had been struck to erase it from public records.
But no.
Disturbed, I pulled up the case file for the actual murder and began reading.
What had seemed clear and what aligned with my own knowledge was that on the night, the founder of the Black Reapers, the father of Lane and Cole, died from natural causes. A shootout had taken place at the founder’s home between the Black Reapers and a rival club, the Fallen Saints. Shannon was there, and she had died.
No one, however, had testified about the crime. No one had said anything that suggested who had done it. The few quotes from the case said the same thing—“tragic that it had happened, but if a citizen crosses between us, that’s what can happen.” The type of bullet didn’t help, either, as everyone had used the same gun save for a couple of people, who used different bullets than the one that had killed Shannon anyway.
And on top of that, whoever had chambered the bullet had done so with a glove on, as there were no fingerprints.
So not only had Shannon gotten involved with what I considered a flat-out gangster, she had gotten involved with the most violent kind—who was also the smartest kind. If it wasn’t so tragic, I would have given her some serious grief for sticking with him.
As far as I was now concerned, the only thing I knew for sure was there was no good reason for Lane to have brought Shannon to his father’s place that night. That just felt like asking for the death wish that was granted by the Fallen Saints. Maybe I could not technically accuse him of murder as a Deputy District Attorney.
As a friend of Shannon’s, though, he was the guiltiest person in all of this. And I was going to make his life hell.
But how?
The most obvious way was to put political and police pressure on them by monitoring the club members as much as I could. Ideally, Cole could have been a good target given the family connections, but seeing as how he had vanished, that was out the door. So instead, I’d have to resort to the club in general.
I knew going to their shop might do some good. That carried its own risks, but I didn’t think the Reapers were dumb enough to attack me or threaten me if I visited in broad daylight. It sure carried a lot of potential rewards—I would get to see who might crack, who might realize a crime had occurred that night, who wanted to help out.
It would also get me the chance to see Lane and interrogate him in a way that had felt inappropriate at the graveyard.
The only problem, I remembered as I read the report on him, was how the file suggested he was often absent and distant from the club. It said his detachment made it difficult to prosecute him, as he would not have had a hand in a lot of the goings-on of the club. In typical gangster fashion, the small fry would take the heat for the big guns.
But that just means there’s a whole host of opportunities to get the small fries to turn on him.
And then I’ll have my vengeance for Shannon for what happened to her.
A knock came at my door. I jumped, having immersed myself so much into the personal issues that I’d forgotten I had an actual job to do. I felt like this wasn’t the greatest start to my job, but at least it was the first day when I wasn’t expected to have the perfect work ethic and get everything done.
“Ms. Sanders?” a young man on the other side said, wearing a policeman’s uniform. “Beth wants to see you in her office whenever you get the chance.”
The boss wants to talk. I suppose this will be our welcome to the team moment.
“Okay, thank you,” I said. “Let her know I’ll be there in five minutes. Just wrapping up some paperwork here.”
“You got it, ma’am.”
Ma’am? Oh, heavens, I’m not even thirty yet.
But I guess this is the reward I get for law school?
I sat back in my chair for two more minutes, trying to stay focused on how I would handle this personal case. The answer felt so obvious as soon as it came to me that I felt stupid for not thinking of it before.
I had the entire district attorney’s office at my disposal. How could I not use it? Obviously, the DA would not give me literally every single resource on hand— that would constitute poor management on her part.
Still... why should I make it a one-person show when I could make it a one-department show?
I stood up with a pep in my step, gathered all of the necessary paperwork, and made my way to the DA’s office. The door was already open, and Mrs. Bethany Johnson invited me in before I had even knocked on the door.
“Welcome,” she said warmly. “How are you enjoying all of the paperwork?”
“It’s like college all over again,” I said with a smile. “Except maybe a little less digital.”
“Yes, well, the government has a way of doing that,” Beth replied with a smirk. “We have to thank it for our job, but it will do us some good to acknowledge its limitations.”
“For sure,” I said, keeping the small talk going. “I like it more than the corporate world, though. I feel like I can make more of a difference here.”
“That’s the best attitude you can have,” she said. “Now, then, to business. As you know, your job is to help me prosecute the major crime in Springsville and what is in our area. Now, we aren’t quite the city of Los Angeles, but we do have our fair share of crime here that we need to look into.”
Like the Black Reapers. Bring it up if she doesn’t mention it. But I don’t know why she wouldn’t mention it. There’s no reason not to.
“For right now, Angela, I would like you to focus on any drug trade crimes going on.”
That... might have been connected to the Black Reapers? That wasn’t something they were well known for, though. That was more of a Fallen Saints deal. And while the Saints definitely needed some heat on them...
“Are you comfortable with that?”
“Of course,” I said, feeling like there was no other acceptable answer. “I came here to help clean up the city.”
No, this is for Shannon. You took this job for Shannon. If you aren’t doing it for her, then you aren’t doing it for any other reason than the security of a government job.
“If I may, though,” I said, thankfully not drawing an adverse reaction from Beth. “There is a motorcycle club in town called the Black Reapers. I think they are a nuisance and a menace to our town, and I think it would do us good to focus on them, no? And not just on the drug aspect of things?”
“Oh, them,” Beth said with troubling ease. “They do cause trouble here and there, but they really aren’t anything more than men who can’t let go of their teenage re
bel years. I wouldn’t worry about them.”
Seriously?
Seriously...
“But, that can’t be it, right? There’s more to it than just that?”
“Don’t worry about it, Angela,” Beth said. “I have been in this position for several years now, and I’ve seen some serious criminals and some eras of prosperity and peace. The Black Reapers are not churchgoers, no, but they aren’t going to do anything worse than scream too loudly at two in the morning after a long party. Just focus on the drug trade here.”
That wasn’t accurate at all.
That wasn’t even close to accurate.
It was accurate only in that the Black Reapers had certainly been known to party at odd hours and at very loud levels. But it was not accurate to say that was where things had ended.
They had fucking murdered my best friend!
But I didn’t want my first day on the job to be questioning the opinion of the district attorney. Maybe in a few months, but not today.
That is, if she’s open to questioning.
If she’s not in the pocket of the Reapers.
Much as the thought disturbed me, it disturbed me even more that it might have been right. Perhaps the corruption in this town extended to my own pocket.
That was a hell of a leap to take, but if the leap proved accurate, then I would have to go even higher up the government ladder to give Shannon the justice she deserved.
“I understand,” I said, keeping a straight face.
“Good,” Beth said. “Do you have any other questions today?”
“Nope,” I said. None that I’m willing to ask right now.
“Very good. I’ll let you get back to the rest of your paperwork and your job. You can come knock on my door at any time.”
Unless it’s to ask questions about the Black Reapers, right?
But I didn’t do anything to suggest that question was guiding me. I merely stood, nodded, and headed out of her large office.
There were too many ways for her to track my work while I was on the clock. I might get away with the occasional browsing of personal interest, but I couldn’t devote entire days to it.
I would have to take on this interest of mine on my own time.
It was just as well. It wasn’t like I wasn’t used to being on my own throughout my life.
Lane
The few hours that passed between when I finally left church and five o’clock did nothing to clarify my thoughts.
On the one hand, we had grown the club so much in the past year, and no one had said anything to me. Sure, I’d heard grumblings, but no one had actually confronted me on anything.
On the other hand, I had never gotten called out so publicly in church like that. Axle had never been a friend by any stretch of the imagination, but to have undermined me so hard... and possibly so justifiably… it was brutal, I wasn’t going to lie.
Maybe I have been a little bit too arrogant.
But to reveal to them the amount of fear I had, the paralyzing notion that I could actually get killed like Shannon and my father?
That would have truly ended me. At least my arrogance could be dismissed as being young and stupid, something I could grow out of. Being fearful and being afraid was something that would not only get me tossed out as President in a heartbeat, it would also get me out of the Black Reapers faster than I could say the name.
And so, for the foreseeable future, at least, there was not going to be any changing my demeanor around the rest of the club. I would do my best to remain more active, but I needed to figure out how I could become braver or just not be so arrogant while maintaining my cool.
I had no idea how the fuck to do that, though.
Which is why the next few hours until five o’clock rolled around were beyond stressful and tense. I had all these ideas in my head for how I could work and operate, and they all had the effectiveness of beating my own brains in with a baseball bat covered in spikes and fire. Everything I thought of— from just operating totally at a distance to having a real church confessional type of meeting— all just seemed too stupid to work. I tried to tell myself that I was just exaggerating the problem, that when the time came to reveal something, I could just act my way through it, but that felt like a way of avoiding the issue.
Finally, Patriot emerged from the garage, wiping some oil from his hands. When he saw me, having to raise a hand to his forehead to block the setting sun, he started laughing. I was sitting on my bike, just waiting for him like a man waiting for his date.
“Geez, desperate to meet me, huh?” Patriot said.
“More like I’m just as ready as anyone to grab a beer,” I said with a smile, just in case anyone was watching. “I know you military folks. You can’t say no to a drink when work ends.”
“Damn you, it’s almost like you’re an armchair psychologist, man.”
“Little known fact. I know my people.”
Patriot laughed harder than I had expected, perhaps on the heels of our very own conversation. He headed to his bike, kicked it on, and nodded to me to move ahead. I took the opportunity to rev my engine as loud as it would go— my little way of announcing to the club that I was in the “office,” that I had made an appearance, and that I was hanging with club members. Then I peeled out of Carter’s Auto Repairs and blazed down the busy Springsville street.
Well, busy in the relative sense. It was nothing like the highways of Los Angeles, which I made a strong point of avoiding as much as possible. Not because of the bad traffic—I could just go through the cars and around them with ease. It was because the assholes in L.A. seemed more and more hellbent on opening doors, sideswiping bikers, and doing anything passive-aggressive that they could to cause accidents. Whether envy or just annoyance, I really didn’t give a fuck.
Again, I just didn’t want to die.
I wanted to stay alive for quite some time, and while dying at the bullet of a Fallen Saint might have been one thing, dying because soccer mom Emily was upset at me getting a bead on her in traffic was not exactly the way I wanted to go. “Here Lies Lane Carter, a man who thought he was tough... until a Honda Civic killed him.”
Yeah, my reputation didn’t need that stamped onto it.
Here in Springsville, though, we had none of that. The residents all knew who we were, and while maybe I had a blind spot to the locals, I believed they all liked us. We did our part to keep the city clean, we kept the negative outside influence away as best as we could, and if things had to get bloody, we kept it out of the public eye.
Not every club operated in such a professional manner. The Saints, for one. We had also helped a club in a distant neighborhood, the Blood Knights, a couple of years ago in a very public squabble with their rivals, but thankfully, my father had ensured that we suffered no casualties and only helped at the very end of their confrontation.
Because of these good relations that we had, I felt like I could rev and speed across the city—within limits, of course. I’d heard a few comments about being a pussy for not hitting triple digits on the roads—again, self-preservation was a goal of mine—but compared to the grandma going to the pharmacy for her meds, I knew how to let loose.
And the feeling of doing so on my chopper, with its added horsepower and sleek black look—the Reaper with a scythe and a pointed finger emblazoned on both sides—was unlike anything else I could ever have. We got into the MC world for the brotherhood, but we stayed in it for the bikes.
We arrived at our destination, Brewskis, an absolute dump of a place—but our dump of a place. It was a place for groups society considered the dregs and losers of the world. Prostitutes hung out on the corners, drug deals went on behind, and sex was had in the bathrooms on the regular.
It was a weird place, though, because it was about the only place where the Saints and the Reapers had a sort of unspoken agreement not to attack each other. Almost all of the hookers were in the employment of the Saints, and many of the drug deals which went down had the
ir fingerprints all over them. But because what happened at Brewskis stayed at Brewskis, we never really pushed to get them out. The locals knew full well what went down and never went, not even in desperation at a late hour. In return, we could go there and drink without worrying about keeping the peace in the town.
The Saints and Reapers would have the occasional death glare, sure, but it was the equivalent of the DMZ between the two Koreas. Neither side trusted each other, and there was always the risk of the bad guys pulling some stupid bullshit, but by and large, there was an uneasy truce to it. Both sides understood the consequences for breaking this truce would be fatal.
I put my kickstand down on the close side of the building, the better to make a getaway in case anything happened, just as Patriot pulled up and parked behind me. I made it obvious I was packing heat in my back pocket, just so Patriot would have the assurance I’d brought something, but I was much more interested in seeing if he had something. When he confirmed that he had, I felt much more at ease.
The one time you felt brave was when Shannon was in danger.
Maybe that’s why I’m so scared of battle. Because the one time I was brave and fearless of the enemy, the woman I loved got killed. Who would die next in a battle?
Me?
“We really gotta open up our own shop,” I joked. “I’m tired of going to the neutral land to have drinks.”
“Yeah, because Bottle Revolution will really take us in, man,” Patriot said with an eye roll. “If you want to hang with the families and have fancy beer while you talk literature with them, be my guest.”
“Eww, no,” I said with a snort. “I’d rather go to the other side of this bar and ask Lucius’ daughter to suck my dick.”
“Really?”
I chuckled. His daughter, Lilly, was quite attractive, and she was close to our age... but there were so many reasons that was a stupid idea, it wasn’t even worth listing them.
“Of course not, you think I’m that fucking dumb?” I said. “But for real, we’re never leaving Brewskis. We can go to Bottle Revolution when this place burns down.”