Lane

by Trent Jordan

  But when I got home, though, he still hadn’t replied. I couldn’t help but get in my head a little bit as I wondered if this meant anything. Had the time apart allowed him to realize sleeping with me was a bad idea? Had his thoughts about Shannon changed his mind?

  I tried to just put it to the side and start preparing myself dinner. It would have been nice to have dinner with Lane, but I supposed I needed to recognize the need to move slow.

  Then my phone buzzed. I hurriedly grabbed it, hoping it was a text alert. It wasn’t, but it was something that made me gasp all the same.

  It was the worst kind of news I could have received.

  Lane

  There was one thing about last night that I hadn’t told Angela.

  If she hadn’t come into my room around two a.m. and hooked up with me, I might have gone out to her and initiated the same thing. I just could not sleep, and I knew I was just trying to avoid the moment. It was just like my issues with the Black Reapers—I let myself drift above the issue and try and pass it.

  Thankfully, by that time, I was too tired to put up much of a fight, and it was a real good thing that Angela just made sex happen. It was an even better thing that when I woke up and saw her naked by my side, I truly didn’t regret a thing about what had happened.

  If I was going to have a feeling like this, a feeling of genuinely liking someone, I had never wanted it to be with one of the club’s bunnies, or one of the girls passed around all the time. I had never thought I was going to have the feelings I did, but to have it with a woman like Angela—determined, strong, fierce—made me feel much better about myself. In any case, I was going to have to move on from Shannon at some point, and who better than the person who most embodied her spirit?

  Admittedly, it was still a little weird to think that it was one of her best friends I was dating, but it was helped in part by the fact that Angela never really was on the scene when Shannon and I dated. If she had been or if it was a cousin of Shannon’s, then that might have been insurmountable.

  As it was, throughout the rest of the day, just before our evening church meeting, I was feeling mighty good about my life. Shannon’s name didn’t even pop to mind that much, which was arguably the best sign of all. I only saw things through the prism of Angela and me, not through anyone else. We had hope.

  When I drove up to the shop on my bike, I literally felt the happiest I had since before we had learned my father was dying. The club members nodded at me, my shoulder was feeling better, I was on a sort of cloud nine with Angela, we had an effective plan for taking out the Fallen Saints—or at least a skeleton of one. I mean, what more could I ask for?

  Really, what more could I ask for? A new bike? I didn’t need one. The Saints fully eradicated? That would be taken care of soon enough.

  My brother to return and us to forgive each other?

  I was surprised by that thought bubbling in my head. For now, though, I told myself to focus on the Saints and Angela first and then that question—if it was even worth a conversation.

  I saw Patriot just outside the entrance to the hallway and went for a hug.

  “Damn, man, you’re in good spirits today, huh?”

  “I’ll tell you more when we get to Brewskis,” I said with a smirk. “But let’s just say it’s the happiest I’ve felt in over a year.”

  “Holy shit, man! Someone got laid last night, huh?”

  “It goes well beyond that,” I said, patting his arm with my lame arm as if to prove a point.

  When I walked inside, as usual, the men entered in their usual order. Butch and Axle nodded to me upon entry, a rare sight in the past but hopefully a common one going forward in the future. Father Marcellus and Red Raven came next, and Patriot entered last, taking a seat.

  “Good afternoon,” I said.

  Ironically, now I had to control my happy mood at this church meeting. Too much excitement, the opposite problem from before, would draw questions about how serious I was. In other words, it would draw the same doubts as when I was arrogant and aloof, just from a different end of the spectrum.

  “Last we talked, I wanted us to come up with some ambush ideas.”

  Left unsaid was that I had hoped for an ambush opportunity in between the meetings, but then again, it had only been a day. Maybe I was letting my eagerness and excitement get in the way, but there were worst things to deal with, I suppose.

  “What thoughts do we have? Anyone?”

  Axle cleared his throat.

  “What if we get the Hovas involved somehow?” he said. “They’re not afraid to get involved with the Saints. They’ll want revenge for what happened.”

  “True,” I said.

  The more I pondered the idea, the more I liked it. There was just something rich about things coming full circle like that, and I could easily see the Saints not realizing we could play games like that. I also liked the idea of getting the Hovas involved for political purposes—if they felt like they had a chance to enact revenge, then we could form tighter bonds with them, perhaps even sever their business ties to the Saints for good.

  “I dunno, man.”

  Patriot?

  “I keep wondering if they actually will want revenge, man,” he said. “Hovas aren’t exactly known for valuing their lower members. Jerome would slice the throats of ten of his prospects and recruits if it meant making an extra buck for himself.”

  “That’s Jerome, though,” Axle said. “The Hovas aren’t some dictatorship. It’s not fucking North Korea. They’ll make a decision, and they’ll make the right one.”

  “Even if so, do we really want to pin our hopes of retaliation on another club?” Patriot said. “We never outsourced military operations to militias. Why would we do something similar here?”

  That was a much better question than the question of the Hovas being able to help us. Double and triple crossing in the world of clubs wasn’t that uncommon, and it was very possible that if the Hovas had, in fact, been the ones to set us up on the ambush, they could do so again.

  “What other ideas do we have?” I said.

  I didn’t necessarily think we needed to kill the Hovas idea, but there was no reason to put that plan into play if we had something much better.

  “Make a fake peace offering,” Butch said. “And bring them in for eradication. Kill them all on scene.”

  It was typical Butch—go for the most violent, most gruesome idea possible. And for what the Saints had done to us over the past couple of years? I was all for it. I didn’t mind in the slightest the idea of getting revenge in that way.

  But Father Marcellus shook his head and muttered no.

  “The whole point of this plan is to eventually end the violence, correct?” he asked, something everyone in the room nodded to. “The whole point of all of this fighting is that eventually, we will emerge victorious, the Saints will stop fighting or die out, and we can all live in peace. A strategy like that will ensure that we will never live in peace.”

  “How?” Butch said. “You kill them all, there’s no war left to be fought.”

  “Wrong,” Father Marcellus said. “You can kill out men, but that kind of action will ensure the Saints’ ideology will never die out. You’ll just turn them into martyrs that other would-be members will rally around. It’s one thing to slay an enemy. It’s another to do something so callously evil.”

  “You say it like the Saints are a religion.”

  “How else do you think Lucius and the others in that club get their members to operate?”

  Tensions were rising, but to my surprise, I found myself erring on the side of Marcellus here. We’d be creating a whole sect of fanatics if we didn’t do this right—as weird as it sounded, it was almost like there was an uneasy truce between the Saints and the Reapers that we wouldn’t resort to truly sacrilegious means to kill the other. It’s why we had Brewskis as a mutual hangout spot and why, for now, we could go out in public with our families or loved ones and not suffer consequences. Shannon
aside…

  But to bring them in for an apparent peace and then ambush them would violate all the unspoken rules of our combat and make things just so much worse. I was not quite as fearful of dying as before, but I still had and likely would have for some time a very healthy fear of dying stupidly.

  “If such a strategy fails,” Father Marcellus said. “Actually, even if it succeeds, war will go on forever until everyone dies. And by everyone, I mean everyone in this shop.”

  When Father Marcellus spoke, we listened. And when he made strong proclamations like this, we at least took it into consideration.

  “Lane?” Butch said.

  “I—”

  But before I got a single word out, I heard a massive explosion go off outside.

  “What the fuck?!?” Butch yelled.

  We hurried out the doors of the church, but not before we heard gunshots erupting. We quickly grabbed rifles from just outside the church door and made our way outside, only to find about a dozen Saints firing upon the clubhouse, shooting through the doorway and windows. We spread out to take out the targets.

  “What the hell, how’d they get here?” Axle yelled.

  Someone told them we were planning something. Someone told them they had better hurry up whatever they were trying to do so they could get their attacks in because we had something planned.

  And I’m pretty sure it’s not Butch or Axle. Those reactions are way too strong and way too real.

  Could it really be...

  Could it really be—

  “Shit!”

  I snapped out of my thoughts as I saw Axle take a bullet to the chest. No one else was near him. No one else could help him out. Only I was in a position to help.

  I laid down some cover fire and sprinted at full speed toward Axle, sliding down behind cover.

  “You alright?” I said as I looked at the wound, bleeding pretty profusely.

  “What the fuck you think, Lane?”

  I didn’t have time to discuss this. I didn’t have time to freeze up on the spot and question myself. I just hurried to remove my shirt before using it to apply pressure to the wound to slow the bleeding down. Axle groaned loudly in pain as the gunshots above continued.

  “Fuck!”

  I looked over and saw Butch hit as well. He tried to move, but it was clear he was struggling. We were getting our asses handed to us, and me trying to help Axle, unfortunately, was taking away from my ability to shoot at the enemy.

  I would’ve liked to say that I had felt some heroic sense of duty at that moment that compelled me to act in such a magnificent way. I would’ve liked to say that I had some revelation that changed who I was and made me a stronger person. I would’ve liked to have said many things.

  But really, at that moment, I wasn’t thinking. I was going purely off of instinct and drive— the instinct and the drive to kill the people trying to kill me.

  When a lull in the battle came, I grabbed Axle’s rifle and my own and laid down fire upon the Saints. I managed to hit two targets immediately, including one in the head that dropped dead on the spot. A couple of bullets came dangerously close to hitting me, which dragged me back to reality, but I regained that focus and continued to make life hell for the Saints who had dared to attack us.

  Slowly, it felt like we had returned the pressure to them. Their fire did not come as frequently, and cries from the other side continued as well. Eventually, I heard the revving of bikes as about nine of the dozen Saints who had shown up sped away, the rest of them killed or too injured to make it out alive.

  As soon as the last of the Saints pulled off, I looked at Axle.

  “Get us to a hospital,” he groaned, clenching and squinting his eyes in pain.

  “Hey, everybody, listen up!” I shouted over the collective murmuring and groans. “Let’s get the wounded to a hospital now! If you can carry one and support one on your bike, you take them now, otherwise, let’s get them to the vans and head over!”

  I immediately motioned for Patriot to grab Axle, knowing that he had the strength to handle Axle. Butch was going to be too big for the bike, so Father Marcellus and I threw his arms over our shoulders and carried him to a van. He grunted and squirmed in pain, but for the most part, he just gritted his teeth and didn’t cry out in pain.

  Now that the adrenaline was starting to come down from the unexpected attack, my thinking was coming back, and I started to realize that this bullshit had to stop. Someone in the club had to have sold us out—it was too much of a coincidence that just when we were planning a surprise attack, we’d gotten attacked on club grounds. And for it to happen during church, when there was zero chance that the officers would be ready...

  I looked at all of the officers as I moved around. Father Marcellus remained by Butch’s side, trying to help him with his wounds. Patriot had gotten Axle on the bike, and the two had already started making headway for the hospital. Red Raven was tending to an injured prospect. Nothing about any of them seemed out of the ordinary, and frankly, on an individual basis, I didn’t have anything to suspect about them.

  But as a collective group, someone was selling us out.

  Satisfied that we had mostly gotten things in order, I had Father Marcellus jump in the front seat with me, while two club members, Brick and Carl, got Butch into the back row. They also kept him awake and alert as I revved the engine and sped down the road toward the hospital.

  It was a little past sunset, about half-past seven o’clock. Though some people going to dinner were still on the roads, for the most part, I had a clear path. I didn’t give two shits about the speed limit—whether I was a biker or a civilian, I had a man who needed medical care and needed it badly, and I had to do whatever it took to help him.

  “Lane.”

  “Hmm?” I said to Father Marcellus, still keeping my eyes on the road.

  “I just want you to know that though what happened just now is tragic and must be met with retaliation,” he said. “I want you to know that what you’ve done today has proved that you are a worthy leader. Let that be the silver lining in everything that transpires from here on out—you have grown from a boy who was too afraid to get involved into a man willing to protect your allies at the risk of your own blood.”

  I turned to Father Marcellus for just a second. He stared straight ahead as well, his hands folded, his eyes long. The attack, it seemed, had taken a toll on him as well. His facial expressions were well worn, and his hands were shaking.

  There’s no way he’s the rat. He cares too much about this club. There’s just no way.

  “I’ll worry about that when Butch and Axle survive,” I said. “But—”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, I’ll live,” Butch said from the back just before mumbling a few swears. “Axle should be fine too. Father is right, though.”

  I looked in the rearview mirror. If Butch said he was going to survive, well, damnit, I had no choice but to believe Butch.

  I finally allowed myself to smile. Maybe I really was becoming a leader.

  But if that actually was happening, then I had one final task to affirm myself.

  I had to initiate a run into the line of fire for what had just happened.

  Angela

  I gaped in horror at the Breaking News alert.

  “Shootout at Carter’s Auto Repair, casualties unknown.”

  I began to fear the worst, even if I had no idea what had actually happened. What if Lane had gotten killed? He wasn’t responding to my text messages. I tried to call him, but it went to voice mail. At least no one else has answered for him. Then I’d know he really was dead. But still...

  There was only one place where I knew I’d find Lane or at least would find other members of the Black Reapers. I knew I ran some serious risks being seen at the hospital, and I knew that in my current panic, there was no way I was going to be able to formulate an effective cover story, but making sure Lane was okay mattered first. Besides, I told myself to get over it—I wasn’t the mayor of t
his town, I was a dime-a-dozen government official. To think that people would just know me was a bit presumptuous.

  I hadn’t even changed out of my work clothes as I sped back into town toward the hospital, constantly praying that Lane would be alright. It felt like it would be a mighty cruel fate if life had given me an extension of my best friend in the shape of her former lover, only for life to immediately take him away. It would be the ultimate cruel twist of fate. I couldn’t call him my boyfriend, let alone say that I felt any way more beyond really liking him, but he wasn’t just some casual encounter. He wasn’t just some hot guy I had slept with. He wasn’t just a rugged man who had an opposite career as me.

  The fact that he had been with Shannon made me feel like I knew him already, even if I had only just met him within the past month. Furthermore, I knew he was a good man from what I knew of his past. I felt justified in caring about him so much, and if anyone wanted to question it, I really wasn’t in a mood to care.

  I parked at the hospital and noticed two bikes and a couple of black vans parked at the entrance, along with several other bikes scattered in the parking deck. I wished I had taken the time to know what Lane’s bike looked like, but it was too late to try and play that guessing game. There was just no way that among the dozens of bikes there, I could peg that one bike for being his.

  I tried to sprint into the emergency room, but my heels prevented me from running too fast. Telling myself that broken ankles would not help, I reduced my movement to a very fast walk, hoping that if Lane was one of the victims, he didn’t go under before it was too late. I breezed past the receptionist and the waiting area, following the scent of oil and gasoline that identified the trail of the Black Reapers.