Lane

by Trent Jordan

  I almost name-dropped Shannon in there but decided holding the biggest bullet for last was best. If I could somehow uncover something incriminating right now without having to pull that out, then it would work even greater when I first used it in court and got him to react in such a way as to seal his conviction.

  Admittedly, it was a long shot, given the number of things that had to go right to get him there. But I certainly hoped for the possibility of it. I hoped for anything that would give my best friend peace.

  “I can’t control what my club members do,” he said. “And if I could, I’d still give them the freedom of choice. You know why? Because I’m a good leader, and that’s what good leaders do.”

  The idea was so laughable, even the guy who had rode in with him—whom I recognized as Michael Giordano, Patriot, if memory served me right—rolled his eyes.

  “Oh yeah, Abe Lincoln and Winston Churchill are looking at you right now with approval,” I said, shaking my head. “Tell me, Lane, if this is just a car shop, why don’t you show me around? Show me your little base of operations.”

  “Do you have a warrant?”

  All the dark humor, all the dramatic sayings, all of that went out the window. The one question that could have stopped me in my tracks had come up. The Reapers had clearly had experience with the law and knew what they were doing.

  “It’s only a matter of time before I get one for something you guys do,” I said, admitting defeat for the moment. “I know how you operate. You think you’re some group of noble outlaws, the gritty antiheroes of Springsville. The good guys with a dash of rebel. But I know what you guys are. You’re just a bunch of crooks who hide behind blue-collar jobs. I’ll give it to you, most people like that work desk jobs and pretend to not know anything. At least with your jackets and your patches and your runs, you make it easy for us.”

  Lane looked at Butch and Patriot, shrugged, and then looked at me, that damn smirk returning.

  “Is that so?” he said. “Let me ask something, Angela. Are you... afraid of these crooks? Or maybe you secretly think it’s... exciting what we do?”

  I didn’t want to use the word that came to mind, but I was so floored—and frankly, embarrassed—that I blurted it out.

  “Are you fucking flirting with me?” I said, getting up in his face, the temptation to smack the shit out of him rising faster than I could control it. “Do you think this is some sort of fucking game?”

  “Duh.”

  I had to clench and unclench my fist to avoid smacking the little prick. God, what a fucking arrogant son of a bitch.

  “Let me tell you something in case you have not picked up on it, or you’re too dense to realize, Lane. I am a state official. I am not some skanky whorish piece of ass that you and your little club picked up along the way. You are going to treat me with respect, and I assure you that if you don’t, you’ll have no choice but to when you’re behind prison bars.”

  Lane stared at me, his eyes wide. I stared back, determined not to break first.

  And then Lane started laughing.

  He thinks it’s a goddamn game.

  Okay. Okay, fine. Two can play that game. But I’m going to play it much better than he is.

  Perhaps this was some manipulative effort on his part to get me to crack so that he could report me. There was definitely something to be said for trying to discredit me to make me act in a very unprofessional manner.

  That was the curse of working for the office, though. I couldn’t take things into my own hands like the Black Reapers or the Fallen Saints. I wasn’t an outlaw, I was a pro-law. I wasn’t going to be able to fight fire with fire. I’d have to fight fire with water and hope we had a large enough bucket.

  “Look,” Lane finally said after his exaggerated laughter died down. “Whatever you think we are? Whatever idea you have in your head from the media or from tall tales or whatever? We’re not, okay. We’re not thieves. We’re not criminals. We’re not drug lords. We’re not murderers. We’re—”

  “You killed my best friend a year ago,” I growled. “I saw you weep and act all sorrowful at her goddamn funeral, but I know the truth, Lane. You fucking killed Shannon Burns.”

  Even Patriot and Butch took two steps back as Lane’s smile faded and he got so close to me he actually bumped me backward. But I wasn’t the least bit intimidated. Lane was too much of a coward to actually hit me.

  He was, ironically, being smart for once.

  “Are you this fucking stupid?” he snarled. “I loved Shannon. Say what you want about me, say all the stupid lies and whatever, but don’t you dare make up a fucking lie about us. I fucking loved her. I was going to marry her. Do you think I would kill her?”

  “I don’t give a shit what you would and would not do, Lane, I care about what you did. You took her to your father’s house that night. She never saw another house or another day again. And am I supposed to believe that you didn’t know she would die? That you didn’t kill her?”

  “Shut the fuck up!” he snarled.

  He had to turn away, walk over to a wooden wall, and slam his fist through it, withdrawing a bloody knuckle seconds later.

  “I would never, even fucking kill her,” he said. “Of all people. I’d sooner… I made a mistake bringing her that night. I had to go to my father’s house for club business. I brought her because I needed her by my side. And then the Fallen Saints attacked us. I told her to get down. But when it all finished, I saw my brother standing over her, gun in hand, safety off.”

  He whirled back to me. His voice was very emotional right now. I didn’t say a word, not while Lane was more or less confessing what I needed to know.

  “If you want to know what happened to Shannon,” he said, biting his lip and shaking his head. “You go find my brother and talk to him. Although, don’t expect him to talk—assuming you can even fucking find him. He’s run like the fucking coward he is.”

  “And none of you have seen him since then,” I said.

  “No,” Lane said. “Which is just the way I like it. If he ever shows his fucking face here again, I’ll run over his goddamn mug with every goddamn chopper in this goddamn yard.”

  I suppose that in all the times I had interacted with Lane or thought of Lane, I had always held him responsible for the death of Shannon, though I had never really clarified if he was the one to have pulled the trigger. While I wasn’t one to just believe a person’s confession at face value, most especially someone as arrogant and haughty as Lane... something about the way he spoke led me to believe that he was telling the truth, or at least there was an element of truth to what he was saying.

  But just because he had not been the one to fire the bullet into her heart did not mean he was free of responsibility. Far, fucking far from it.

  “You would do well to let me know if you have any knowledge on the whereabouts of Cole, Lane, or if you get anything in the coming weeks and months,” I warned. “I am going to bring Shannon the justice she deserves. It’s been a full year and no one, absolutely no one, has gotten arrested. There haven’t even been any warrants made yet. That is absolutely insane and absolutely a sign someone is not facing their day in court.”

  “You realize I’m on the same team as you on this one, right?” he said. “I don’t know you, Angela, and I don’t like you for this little stunt you tried to pull. You got some fucking nerve. But I can tell you this. When Cole killed Shannon, that instantly made him my worst enemy. He was the Cain to my Abel, except instead of killing me, he killed my woman, which was almost worst, because at least if he’d killed me, I wouldn’t fucking be in this much pain.”

  He let out a prolonged sigh.

  “I would forget everything, every little stunt that you and your department have pulled here today, if you find Cole,” he said. “You’d be the first to see him in a full year.”

  That would be nice, I thought.

  The only fear, though, was that we weren’t state or federal officials. We were relegated to the
Springsville area and a little outside the town for the entirety of the county. If anything transpired beyond, we had no jurisdiction over it. We’d have to pull in state resources, and the last thing I wanted was more bureaucracy getting involved.

  “Either way,” I warned. “The Reapers were the ones responsible for the murder of my best friend. Whether you’re lying or Cole did it or— ”

  “Get out,” Lane snarled, and I knew this was a very different level he had than before. “Get the fuck out of here before I do something very illegal that puts me in a prison cell and you in a hospital.”

  I didn’t show my fear, but for the first time all visit, I felt it. I stared at Lane as I walked by him. When I was out of striking range, I warned, “I will be back!”

  I needed to be back because right now, I just felt so fucking pissed off. I hadn’t uncovered anything, I was now confused as to how much I should hold Lane versus Cole accountable, and if word got back to Beth, I was in some real major shit.

  I needed a warrant. I desperately needed one. Maybe if I could find a way to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the Reapers were dealing in drugs...

  But given how things had gone with Beth so far, that wasn’t likely.

  More likely than not, I was going to have to do some work on my own. I was going to have to break some boundaries to bring Shannon justice.

  I was, quite literally, going to have to become an out-law.

  Lane

  The nerve of that woman.

  I had seen a lot of people stand up to us who thought they were tough or could beat us in a fistfight. I saw a few women come by who were upset that the man they had slept with, shockingly, had decided not to contact them again. I saw a few men whose wives or girlfriends had cheated on them with a club member and who thought they could stand up to us, only to realize we didn’t posture, we just punched.

  But I had not seen a member of the government come here and act with such audacity as to threaten to shut us down... and I had most especially not seen any of them invoke the name of the woman I loved the most.

  “Did any of you know she was coming?” I growled.

  I glared at Patriot and Butch. No one said a word. It was typical for Butch to not say anything, but for Patriot to be silent... someone had to have seen this coming, right? Surely, someone in the club would be on top of government officials who felt like they could waltz into the club, make their presence known, and then try and intimidate me with the mention of Shannon, right?

  “Butch?” I said. “Did we have any warning from Beth about some new hotshot in her office coming to threaten us?”

  “No.”

  At that moment, Axle walked out, looking like he thought he was just going to go home for a few beers and a quiet night. But when he saw my expression, he thought better of that quite fast.

  “Axle,” I said. “We just had a goddamn official come and threaten to shut us down. Said she’d clean us up for what I did to… her best friend.”

  To Shannon...

  “Do you have any knowledge from anyone about some new big shot in the government of Springsville promising to sweep us out of town?”

  “No, Lane. None of us who work here know it.”

  I was beyond frustrated. It was bad enough to know I couldn’t protect Shannon and bad enough to know the Fallen Saints were still roaming around the other side of Springsville, just beyond Brewskis. But now I had to deal with some government bitch who thought she could get promotions from the DA by acting tough on us?

  “We need to make sure whoever this girl is, she knows her place,” I growled. “Axle.”

  Axle crossed his arms, almost in defiance. I remembered what Patriot had told me about being more involved, more active in the club... but this was just too frustrating for me to do anything productive. If I decided to get involved in this, I was going to do something regrettable.

  And besides, he and Butch had the best relationships with the DA. What good would it do if I suddenly showed up and made a list of demands? That was a good way to get her to roll her eyes and tell her our favors were off.

  Still, I needed to do everything I could in my power to not sound like a boss lazily waving his hands from his throne, drawing resentment from the crowd while I lorded back and relaxed.

  “Can you please reach out to Beth and remind her that we have a deal with her?” I said. “I’m wondering if this new girl is acting outside the scope of her work. Some harsh words from Beth might set her straight.”

  “You got it, boss,” Axle said without any snark.

  I guess being polite pays off, who knew.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I... fuck, I need to get out of here. I’m going to punch a wall and break something if I have to stay here thinking about what the bitch said. I’ll see you guys later.”

  I turned around and hurried to my bike, ignoring the eye roll and the pleading look that Patriot had on his face. I understood what he had said before, but goddamnit, everyone knew the topic of Shannon was the one thing that would really piss me off. I could be a “true” leader—whatever that meant—one minute, and then hearing Shannon’s name would drive me up the fucking wall.

  “Lane,” Patriot said, but I was already on my bike. “Just don’t do anything stupid, okay? No Brewskis.”

  I nodded. I had no intention of going back there. I needed to take out my frustration, not give the Fallen Saints a window the size of a skyscraper to take me out.

  I revved the engine and roared onto the roads leading to my apartment. I went against my typical nature of being overly cautious and sped fifteen, twenty, even thirty miles above the speed limit. I didn’t hit triple digits—that was still a barrier I didn’t think I’d ever hit anywhere except maybe the highway—but damn if I didn’t blaze by everyone else on the roads. My anger was pushing me, the fire from what that woman had done.

  The best friend.

  Wouldn’t you feel the same way in her spot?

  I ignored the surprising, bubbling thought of empathy as I pressed back to my apartment—an apartment I had intended to have Shannon move into. I killed the ignition, set the kickstand down, and moved with declining emotion to my room. The bike rides were always good for clearing my head, and while that had not happened, I had managed to exhaust my emotional supply. It was hard to remain passionately angry at Angela and the situation with the Reapers when I just didn’t have the energy to do such a thing.

  I opened the door inside, made my way to the couch on the right, and collapsed into it. I kicked off my boots and let my feet dangle off the side of the armrest. I inhaled gently a few times before my eyes settled to the right, on the little sill separating the living room from the kitchen.

  On it, my eyes then focused on the photo that, all this time later, I had still not managed to remove.

  It was the last photo that Shannon and I ever took together.

  It was a photo right outside my father’s mansion, taken on the footsteps leading up to it, perhaps a week before he had died. It was a selfie, which made me feel a little silly and ridiculous, but it was a great photo—her smile shined brightly, her white teeth glistening with the setting sun on the other side of the camera’s view, and her eyes as cheerful and genuine as I had ever seen them. I knew that if I ever wanted to move forward, if I ever wanted to just live life, I needed to remove that photo and put it into storage.

  But I wasn’t really in a rush to move on. She still needed to be brought to justice. Cole needed...

  God, fuck my brother.

  And Angela now, too.

  Except... if she really was Shannon’s best friend, I should have known her somehow. Maybe I wouldn’t have known her like I knew Shannon’s father or her friends who lived in Springsville, but surely, the name Angela Sanders would have at least rung a bell, right? Shannon did have a ton of friends, most of whom I never bothered to engage or learn more about, but someone with Angela’s personality felt like someone I should have remembered.

  The more I thought
of it, the more guilty I felt. My aloofness and inability to listen didn’t just happen in the confines of the Black Reapers’ headquarters. It was something that, apparently, had stretched out to our relationship. Shannon had never said anything about it, but the greatest flaw Shannon had was her discomfort with rocking the boat. It was rare that she would mention something that bothered her, and when she did, it had often built up for so long that it felt like a tidal wave of complaints.

  Maybe I hadn’t been a great listener. Maybe I hadn’t bothered to really get to know Shannon’s friend group, something that could have made me a better human being. Maybe… maybe some people I didn’t want to give any weight to had made some decent points.

  Damnit.

  If she was her best friend, wouldn’t you understand her acting as strongly as she has?

  I was starting to feel guilty, not so much for saying what I did to Angela, but for disrespecting Shannon as a person who had friends I should have gotten to known better. I wished I could have gone back and done a better job of not just getting to know the individual but getting to know the world around her. If I had done a little bit better, well... it wouldn’t have changed anything, but it would have made me a better boyfriend to her.

  It was too late to do anything tonight, but I decided right then and there to do something unexpected to help my feelings about Shannon.

  I would call Angela in the morning and tell her everything I knew about Cole and the Fallen Saints. If she wanted justice for Shannon?

  She was going to get it.

  And in doing so, I was going to finally get it.

  Angela

  I didn’t sleep more than two, maybe three hours that night.

  Despite all of the tough talk with myself about having to break boundaries for the sake of justice for Shannon, I found that actually acting upon that desire was a hell of a lot harder than I had anticipated. I had grown up following the rules and the law to every letter of every book, and to expect I could just throw the switch and become some sort of vigilante for her cause was more than a little ridiculous.