Lane

by Trent Jordan

  Or, at least, they weren’t the ones to put Shannon in position to be murdered.

  And even if so, there weren’t any official arrests or warrants out.

  “I know that you are a smart woman, you blew us all away in your interviews with us,” Beth continued. “However, we have three months’ probationary period for a reason, and it is that the person who shines in the interview is not always the person who can do the job to the highest levels.”

  I’ve been focusing on the wrong MC this whole time. Even if the Reapers are at fault for Shannon’s death, no harm would come from bringing down the Saints and working on them. Instead, I’ve put myself in a position where I’m about to get fired.

  “I need to be blunt, Angela. This isn’t an easy job. You deal with a lot of hell in this job, you deal with a lot of stress, and you deal with a lot of high-pressure situations. You have to answer to the public, your clients, and the state. This is not a job that we can just sit idly by and hope you get right. We need to see that you get it right. So let me make it clear. Bring some evidence or some proof of work to me by the end of next week, or you’re gone.”

  My eyes went wide and my chest tightened. She wasn’t kidding. She seemed deadly serious.

  Fired... because I wanted to help my friend... I’m letting my own selfish desires get in the way.

  “Do you understand me, Angela?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, my mouth dry and my voice weak.

  “We hired you because you seem passionate and dedicated to a cause,” she said. “But that cause needs to align with what the city needs from you. Don’t let your own personal desires and wishes get in the way of doing your job. Not even when you believe it aligns with what the city needs—because you’re new and don’t know what that is.”

  I gulped as Beth rose from the chair. She wished me a good evening and then left without another word.

  I had never felt so... so stupid and so low in my life. Beth’s last few words were perhaps the strongest thing said yet that indicated I needed to back off the Black Reapers. Beth was smart enough to not come out and accuse me of using the position for personal need. We lawyers were too good at distorting the truth for our own personal interests.

  But this wasn’t a courtroom, this was an employer-employee relationship. I had to do it right. I had to do it better. I couldn’t help Shannon if I couldn’t help myself because I was unemployed.

  For now, though, I could only think of two things that would help me. First, some time spent only looking at Fallen Saints’ profiles.

  And then, I needed a goddamn drink.

  Lane

  On a typical night, even on a weekday, Brewskis usually had at least someone roaming around.

  Aside from the fact that it operated as a sort of demarcation zone between the Saints and us, the kind of clientele that it attracted did not exactly keep regular weekday hours. Even I, someone who had fought for the last year to remain detached and above it all, didn’t really keep regular hours. It wasn’t at all unusual for Patriot and I to come here on around eight at night, play some pool, and have some beers well past “happy hour.” It also wasn’t unusual to stare at some Saints in the interim, with only an odd mutual understanding preventing war from happening at this place.

  But tonight, somehow, aside from Jess behind the bar, there was no one else here.

  I kind of liked it this way, to be honest. The silence and the complete isolation were much needed after the rush that had come from being in the middle of a firefight. I was so amped from what had happened, I knew if I didn’t do something to calm myself down, I would be up until a week later. A good beer and some quiet time alone would hopefully do the trick.

  At first, I just ordered a Yuengling and quietly watched sports on the TV. There was some talk about early season baseball and some basketball and hockey playoffs, but I wasn’t much of a sports guy. The highlights were more of a way to kill time and try and get my mind out of what had transpired than they were something I kept up with closely.

  I managed to make it all the way through the first beer without even thinking too much about the shot to my shoulder that still needed some real treatment. A couple of Reapers who had experience in the medical field had done some quick work to remove the bullet. Then a doctor who was a friend of the club had come by and given me some stitches, though he swore he would stop coming if we kept putting ourselves in harm’s way like this. Perks of being in an MC, I suppose, but all in all, it wasn’t something I worried about that much. And if we needed to get someone new, well, I’d just send Patriot to the hospital and tell him to charm his way with some nurses.

  But when I raised my arm—not even to a high level, just out in front of me to give Jess the empty bottle—a dull ache struck, and I grimaced as I did nothing but pull my arm back. I rubbed my shoulder gently, and it brought back the memory of what had happened.

  Patriot was right. Once the fight had begun, I had just gotten engulfed in the action. In fact, I had gotten a little too involved. Patriot had to pull my ass down before someone planted a bullet in my skull and ended my life.

  Now that I had the reminder of what happened, and I had a beer in me to quell the adrenalin, I couldn’t really say if I was happy to have gotten involved.

  No, that wasn’t quite it. I wasn’t really happy that we, as a club, had to get involved with violence in the first place. What the hell was it all for?

  Was this level of violence really that necessary? We could get along just fine at Brewskis, and yet… if we went out into the streets, it would seem like the kind of thing Axle or Patriot would have seen in Iraq. What all were we trying to fight for, anyway? At least when the U.S. fought overseas, it fought for freedom and justice. But for us?

  The more I thought about it, the more I began to wonder what the hell was the entire point of the club. My father had established it as a brotherhood, but right now, even though I was literally a son of the club, I felt more like the adopted outsider. Axle, Butch, Father Marcellus, Red Raven, Patriot, prospects, members—they all had a real brotherhood with each other.

  Me? I had Patriot, and that was pretty much it. It was a path I had given myself with my actions, sure, but...

  Admittedly, Axle and the rest of the crew had been much more attentive to my wounds and to my needs when the battle had ended. It seemed apparent that they appreciated I had taken a more active role. I knew I would need to be more involved if that were to remain the case, though. I couldn’t expect them to just like me or respect me because of the patch on my cut.

  But damnit, finding that balance was going to be hard. There was no glory in murder and violence and shootouts. This wasn’t Hollywood, no matter how close geographically we might have been. This was real life, and real life saw my father and my eventual wife murdered.

  By Cole.

  But was it really Cole? You’ve always wanted a scapegoat, and...

  A man who I knew was a Fallen Saint walked in. He was alone, seemingly a man who had come here after a long shift at work—he had on his cut, but he also had on jeans that suggested he had done some serious work at his shop. He gave me a glare, and I gave him a glare as well. He appeared to move to me, and I reached for my gun, preparing for the worst.

  Brewskis had never seen violence—that was a huge testament to the work of the bartending staff and bar ownership. But it felt like someday, at some point, someone was going to crack. The only question was who would do so, and it seemed equally likely that one of us would.

  The man, though, settled on the far end of the bar. He mumbled something under his breath, but I no longer felt the need to have my gun cradled in my hand. I let my hand come back up to the bar and waited for Jess to finish talking to the Fallen Saint.

  Then the door opened a second time.

  “Motherfucker,” I mumbled.

  One of our rules, especially at night, was to never come alone to this bar. We always went in pairs as a means of preventing us from getting ganged up on.
Hell, it was as simple as making sure someone didn’t follow you into the bathroom.

  And now I was going to—

  Not pay the price?

  Because that Deputy DA who had bugged the hell out of us had walked in?

  Yep. That’s her.

  Angela stepped inside, nervously glancing around. Her eyes looked haggard, her walk was not a confident one, and her face hung low. There weren’t a lot of options for drinking on a weekday, but I was still surprised to see that she had come here. She doesn’t know what it is yet. She’ll run like hell if anything happens.

  And if anything does happen, that’ll give Beth all the reason to stop looking the other way.

  I couldn’t believe I was thinking it, but I knew I had to make nice with Angela. I daresay I even had to be friendly and warm to her, if for no other reason than to make it clear to the Fallen Saint that she was not someone to be fucked with.

  She made eye contact with me and gulped. I smiled and motioned with my hand to sit by me. She hesitated for a second, looked back at the door, glanced at me, and then walked away.

  “Ah, hell,” I said.

  I was pretty close to just letting her leave and forgetting about the fact that she’d even come by. When I thought about the benefits of getting to know her better, though—most notably getting her off our asses—I realized there might yet be a utilitarian benefit to engaging her. Telling Jess I’d be right back, I hurried out the door and saw her returning to her car.

  “Am I that bad on the eyes?” I said.

  Angela turned around, a bit startled that I had called out to her.

  “What do you want, Lane?” she said, the annoyance and anger in her voice palpable.

  “Someone to talk to,” I said. “I’ve had a rough day, and you look like you have too. Seems like we got started off on the wrong foot before. Why not try again?”

  It was obvious this wasn’t an easy decision for Angela. And who could blame her? She probably thought I had killed Shannon, a thought that was enough to make my neck tense. Still, I did well enough not showing it that she didn’t just run off in fear.

  “If you think I’m going to talk to you and get off your ass... ”

  She didn’t finish the thought.

  “Fuck it, one drink.”

  I smiled as she walked back over. Her eyes were still downcast, more likely from a bad day than from a lack of confidence, but I’d gotten what I wanted, so the rest would come. The very fact that she knew my angle made it all the better, honestly.

  “Don’t get any funny ideas, Lane,” she said. “I’ve had a shitty day, and I’m only doing this because if I don’t drink, I’ll go crazy.”

  “You and me both,” I said with a smirk, though my tone softened as I followed her, and I noticed that she wasn’t kidding about how bad of a day it was. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “With you? Not really.”

  “Then why are you still here?”

  The question seemed to catch Angela off-guard, who hesitated and stared into space for a few seconds. I leaned forward on my barstool, patiently waiting to hear her answer. This was really one of genuine curiosity.

  “I’m wondering the same thing,” Angela said. “I suppose it has something to do with the fact that there’s not a lot of people I can talk to about my work. I shouldn’t with you, you’re someone I want to have arrested.”

  I laughed. I mean, really, how could I not? I’d said some pretty bold things in my life, but that had to take the cake for one of the boldest things I had ever heard in my life.

  “That’s awfully direct of you,” I said. “But you don’t have anything to arrest me on.”

  Angela rolled her eyes.

  “Stop,” I said, knowing what she was referring to. “Just... stop. Please? I know this isn’t the jury room or your office, but I know what you mean. And... no, I didn’t do it.”

  I sighed as we both stared straight ahead at the screen, our eyes directed at the sports highlights, but neither of us really watching it. I wasn’t really sure what to think at that moment. Why was she still there if she distrusted me to the point of not wanting to share things? Why—

  “My boss yelled at me for not working hard enough to remove the Fallen Saints,” she said.

  I peered around her. The Saint nearby hadn’t heard her. I motioned for her to keep her voice down. She didn’t react to my gesture, but she seemed to catch the hint by how her voice dropped a bit.

  “One of the first assignments she gave me was to clean up the drug trading going on in this city. Much of it, apparently, is because of the Saints. It seems like a worthy cause, but... ”

  “It’s not why you’re here,” I said.

  She nodded, taking a sip of the martini that Jess made her. She still wasn’t looking at me, but I was getting a strange feeling that she was starting to open up just a bit. Not a lot, and probably not enough for us to suddenly trust each other, but enough to have both of us stay in the same space for right now.

  “I know you think we’re all savages and outlaws and a bunch of thugs, and there are absolutely some members in my own club that are that way, I won’t lie. And, not coincidentally, those are the ones who never get leadership roles.”

  Angela still didn’t look at me.

  “We do some stupid shit, absolutely. But you have to understand, we would never, ever, ever murder a woman. Ever. Well, those who are in the club today wouldn’t.”

  And that’s why Cole is gone. Even if...

  “That’s just so antithetical to what we do, it’s incredulous to think we would do it. You want to know how I know? A couple of years ago, my father had us go on a run to a town several miles away to help a group in their fight to protect a woman against some predatory assholes in a rival club. I wasn’t keen on it. I hated the idea of getting involved in someone else’s violence. But we know justice when we see it. Killing a woman, that isn’t it.”

  I just didn’t know what more to say that could defend us.

  And then I got an idea.

  “How did you know her?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  “Shannon Burns.”

  For the first time since Angela had walked in, she actually looked up to face me. The look was one of anger and frustration at first, but it surprisingly began to melt in favor of nostalgic yearning. It wasn’t a warm look, but it didn’t have the chilliness that her previous expressions had had.

  “Childhood friend,” she said. “I thought you would know that. Since, you know, you were her boyfriend and all.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I know some about you. But that doesn’t mean I know everything.”

  Angela nodded, looked at me, and then shook her head. She turned back to the highlights, and figuring I had lost this potential train of conversation, I also looked back to the television.

  “We met literally in preschool,” she said. “We were like sisters for the longest time. We only separated when we went to college. I went up north to Berkley. She stayed here at USC. I believe that’s around the time you two met.”

  “Yep,” I said. “Probably why I didn’t know you well, you were up north with the hippies.”

  Angela almost—almost—smirked.

  But there was also something about the moment that was profoundly unexpected. When I looked at her, whether it was because of the lighting or because of the way her lips started to curl up... she almost looked…

  Beautiful.

  I had to stop the thought there before it went any further. The idea of considering one of Shannon’s best friends as anything other than objectively attractive, to put emotions on it, was a dangerous and disrespectful move.

  Still, the thought had come, and it was not something I had had to force.

  “I came back down for UCLA law school about three years ago, but we were both so busy that we almost never hung out,” Angela said. “I knew of you, but I was never a fan. Shannon had trouble saying no.”

  “I did my best to never give he
r a reason to have to,” I retorted. “I treated her with respect and learned her boundaries, even when she was too nice to say what they were.”

  Angela turned her head slightly to me, allowing me to see her left eye look me up and down. There was a certain feeling of being evaluated for my trustworthiness.

  “Damnit, Lane,” she said, putting her head in her hands. “I came here to clean you guys out of town. I held you responsible for her death, I really did. But when I went over to your clubhouse a week ago... call me crazy, but the way you spoke about her made me doubt it for the first time. I still think you should never have brought her over—”

  “I’m well aware,” I snapped.

  But this was different than a week ago. Angela wasn’t criticizing me to humiliate me or try to make me confess something—she was just stating her personal beliefs, not a legal one.

  “Sorry,” I said, a word I never thought I would utter to her. “I didn’t kill her, but I blame myself for her death. If I had just been smart enough to keep her the hell away from my father’s house... she didn’t want me to be alone. How fucked up is that? I was the one who couldn’t say no when I most needed to.”

  “That’s how she was, though,” Angela said wistfully. “She knew you were in pain with your father’s passing and so she didn’t want you to be alone. No matter how much of a risk that put her in.”

  This was never an easy topic to revisit, and I didn’t think it would be for the rest of my life. Yet there was something oddly calming about having such a talk with someone who knew her as well as I did, perhaps even more so. Most of Shannon’s friends had shunned me in the aftermath, and even her father more or less refused to face me. For the most part, if I was being really honest, no one but Patriot supported me.

  I deserved it, though. I held Cole in such contempt and such anger that no one in the club could reasonably approach me, and my arrogant demeanor outside the club ensured that no one would be interested in helping me.