Homecoming

by Tara Lynn

  “And that makes this whole thing all the more impressive,” Baxter said. “Even Reggie can’t deny your methods now.”

  “Reggie?” I asked.

  “You know Reggie well?” Baxter asked.

  “He’s way into Christina,” Torrance said. “Come on, he talks about her all the time.”

  “Is he still bothering you?” Damon asked.

  “No, not since that night.”

  “What night?”

  I opened my mouth, but Damon gave a subtle shake. Some machismo beef between him and Reggie apparently. Just another secret for me to keep.

  “Just one night a while back,” I said. “He got drunk and made a fool of himself.”

  “Well, he can’t do anything too bad,” Baxter said. “Not with Lorne being who he is. Definitely not with Damon back.”

  “I don’t know,” Torrance said, picking his teeth with a toothpick. “Does this guy even know how to fight anymore?”

  “Fight?” Damon gave a low chuckle. “Son, you want to hear a war story. Is that why you’re trying to get me riled up?”

  “First thing I asked from you man.”

  Damon launched into a story about a fight he had gotten into with his drill instructor. Our food showed up and he was still going at it strong, with the men rapt. It was a great way to sidestep the mishmash of secrets and crime on the table. I’d known he had a way with words, but this was the first time I’d ever seen him take charge outside the bedroom

  I smiled. He really did have a chance to change things.

  By the time he finished, and the Q&A had ended, most of our plates lay empty. Torrance sank back and blew out a content sigh.

  “Damn, man, this food must be good,” he said. “Coming from army and all.”

  “I got discharged a while ago. I’ve been wandering as a civilian since.”

  “Well, you sure scarfed it down.”

  Damon stared at the syrup ooze where pancakes had towered before. He had eaten a lot. I must have really worn him out. I smiled and ran a foot up his ankle. I thought I saw his eyes crease a bit

  “I’d need to smoke up to put away that much food,” Torrance said. “Hey, that’s not such a bad idea.”

  “It’s Monday, man.” Baxter tagged his shoulder. “We should be at the garage already.”

  “Ahh,” Torrance straightened. “Sometimes, the money don’t seem worth it. Being partner’s hard work.”

  “I believe it,” Damon said. “Too bad it’s like that now.”

  “Things change,” Baxter said.

  He and Damon exchanged a solemn look. I wondered if he was talking about the past or the future.

  Baxter and Torrance rose and each dropped a twenty on the table. It basically covered our portions, but for the tip. Damon just nodded, but I said, “Thanks.”

  “It’s nothing,” Baxter said. “Thanks for eating with us.”

  “Yeah, nice talking to you,” Torrance said. I doubt we’d exchanged three lines, but I still smiled and waved as they trudged off.

  “They’re not bad,” I said.

  “No, they’re allies,” Damon said. “And friends.”

  “They support your reform plan?” I asked. I had the urge to go squeeze in next to him, but that was way too intimate.

  “There’s no reform plan yet.” His hard edges softened a bit. “I’ve still got to get in the club’s graces.”

  I remembered the beginning of the conversation. “What exactly did you do?” I asked. “If we’re together, you have to be open about the biker stuff.”

  He nodded vigorously. “I know. I was thinking of you the whole time in Redding anyway. It kept me from doing anything stupid.”

  “Like what?”

  “They wanted me to kill people in a false flag attack to start a gang war. I didn’t. I just fired a few shots to get their attention.” He warded off my protest. “It was nowhere in public.”

  I tried to imagine where that could be. The more I thought, the more dangerous it seemed. “Was that safe?”

  He started laughing, just full on laughing. “Honey, the best way to stay safe is not to fire a gun at hardened criminals.”

  “Well, can you do that?”

  “Soon,” he said. “Once this probate business is done, I’ll have more freedom.”

  My heart had been pounding, I noticed. I gulped some OJ and sat back. “When will that be?”

  He looked suddenly sad.

  “What?” I said.

  “Nothing. It’ll be soon. For the club, at least.”

  “For the club?” I didn’t understand.

  He licked his lips, took a long draw of coffee, all the while staring at me. His seemed elsewhere though.

  “You need to know the truth,” he said, finally. “I don’t want to keep anything from you.”

  My chest went still. “More about my dad?”

  “No, not about why I left. About why I’m here now.”

  I nodded, but still eased up a bit. He couldn’t have murdered a guy or anything, right?

  “Ok. Tell me.”

  “I’m on parole.”

  “Parole? What does that mean other than for prison?”

  “This is about prison. I just got out a couple weeks ago.”

  A couple weeks ago. That was basically a day before I saw him at the bar. “I don’t get it. You were in prison?”

  “I was. Minimum Security, but still prison.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why. I started before I left the Army. I learned how to acquire things that were banned and just kept going from there.”

  “Smuggling?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I joined up with a crew after I got discharged. From China to California and vice versa. One day, we got busted. I’m just lucky it happened stateside or I’d be rotting in some Chinese prison.

  That didn’t seem so awful at all. Smuggling was a whole lot better than dealing drugs.

  But I still had this sinking feeling in my stomach. Something about how this happened was all wrong. He had been in prison for most of the past few years. He got out and then showed up in town the day after?

  It hit me.

  “You told them you were going to go back home,” I said. “That’s why you came to Freemont.”

  “It was why I came back when I did,” he said. “I’ve always had plans to, but this kind of tipped things that way.”

  “Your plans that didn’t matter till the state forced you to come back.”

  “They didn’t force me. I just needed to give them an address.”

  My head seemed to spinning. Everything he had told me was based on him being a free man, if not outside, then at least on the inside. He had come back here to shake things up. That was his choice.

  Now it was all just a fluke due to bad luck? What if things turned the other way? What if opportunity knocked elsewhere?

  “You’re here for yourself,” I said. “You’re just blowing with the wind.”

  He raised a palm. “Alright, that’s a bit theatrical.”

  “You started a war, Damon,” I hissed. “I was your muse for that apparently. You said that was all for some big purpose, and ok, maybe I can accept that. But there is no big purpose.”

  “There is,” Damon said. “And if I cared about my parole so much, then I shouldn’t be risking anything to get back in the Liberated.”

  I shook my head. This was all wrong. He wasn’t free. He wasn’t different. He was trapped here the same as me.

  “I need to go study,” I said, getting up.

  “I thought we were heading back,” he said.

  “You go back,” I said. “You got your place to make plans right? Well, I need to make my own plans. Otherwise, I might as well be trapped at home, too.”

  Before he could say anything more, I turned and left the diner.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Damon

  The ride thundered between my legs as I roared down the country road. You couldn’t really duck behind the visor o
n a chopper. You had to sit upright, surveying the land. The design had come from army days.

  It reminded me of going on patrol in Afghanistan, perched in a gunner seat. I definitely had that same tension in my chest.

  I was riding in convoy, just as I did then. In front of me, rode Torrance, and behind came Reggie. I had no doubt his gaze lay squarely on me, watching my every twitch. I could handle the attention. What I didn’t like was what we were setting out to do.

  “Your new friends want to meet us,” Reggie had said when I’d been working on my bike back at the shop.

  I didn’t have a clue what that could mean, so I just stayed quiet and let him speak up.

  “The Alacrans Cartel wants to team up with us.”

  “Alacrans?” That got me to wipe the grease off my hands. “I thought they’re in Redding. Why aren’t they talking to Cavil?”

  “This isn’t about that. They want a general partnership. They know we have better distribution on the west coast than they do and they’re ready to make a deal.”

  “It’s gotta have something to do with Redding,” I said. “Has Cavil mentioned anything?”

  “I told you. Cavil’s got shit to do with this. Redding’s settled down. The chapter’s reported nothing new.”

  So we’d scared the cartel out of the field? Redding wasn’t big enough for that, but maybe it was the last straw. Moving goods was the least profitable and most risky part of any illegal business. I should know. It was perverse, but it made some business sense for them to reach out to what they saw as a third party.

  “Well if Cavil’s not relevant, then neither am I,” I said, returning back to the bike.

  “That’s where you’re wrong. You’re coming with me to the meet as muscle.”

  He had a big dopey grin on his face. I didn’t take him for an idiot, but he was setting his ego ahead of sense with this.

  “It’s dumb sending me in front of bees I just stirred up.”

  “Maybe you should have squished the ones who could make you.”

  “No one made me. It’s still not smart.”

  “Doesn’t really matter. As long as you’re on probation, you do what we tell you.” His smile turned lean and hungry and he bent in real close. “That’s how probation works everywhere.”

  I eyed him a bit long until I was sure he knew what he meant. He did. Great.

  “You’re not referring to my patch, I take it?” I said.

  “No, but I fucking love the irony. You’re not Mr. Do-Good after all, huh? You were just out trying to make a buck like the rest of us. Except you weren’t even good enough to not get caught.”

  “It won’t affect the chapter. I know how to appear clean.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe you should have just not gotten dirty to begin with. You could have jumped overboard.”

  The bust had happened miles offshore, and it had been the Coast Guard who took us in. I wasn’t going to go over and try my luck with the Pacific tides, not in water known for holding great whites. I had no desire to make excuses in front of Reggie though.

  “Maybe,” was all I said.

  “Anyway,” Reggie said. “Don’t think you’re bringing any of that smuggler shit into the group. We have our own way of doing things here. You listen and you learn and maybe you’ll get in. Got it?”

  I stared him down a few moments. He was proving to be a bigger thorn in my paw than I’d ever imagined. He might have even been the one who told Lorne about my probation. If he ever found out about Christina and me, things would go south fast. I’d have to suck this up until I had a hand to play.

  “Got it,” I said.

  So here I was, riding with my fingers crossed. Maybe a camera had spotted me somewhere. Maybe the Cartel had really come here looking for me.

  The only regret I had was leaving this world without a last embrace from Christina.

  But the girl hadn’t dropped by in two days. My texts to her got short ambiguous responses, like ‘busy’ and ‘we’ll see.’

  Her words still rang in my mind: You’re blowing with the wind.

  I hadn’t expected the news my probation to be worse than the truth about her father, but she had taken it as a betrayal. As if it negated every word that I had said to her prior.

  Maybe she was right. Maybe I’d be in too deep before I knew it, tossing all my hopes to the wind. Cause here I was, helping to form a partnership to expand the damn network I wanted to destroy.

  She was the one person who could give me absolution. The one person who could say I was making the right calls, even more than me.

  It’s just as well that she never saw this. I had no right to drag her into this world, even as my muse. I might need her, but she was better off if I didn’t exist.

  Well, the Cartel might be able to arrange that.

  Our entourage broke through the outskirts of downtown and then whipped on down another road. There were no houses along this one, just large plots of mostly unused warehouse space. Freemont had once made stuff. Now, even our meth was produced somewhere else.

  The Alacrans were here to show off a smaller facility. According to Reggie, they planned to distribute from there. We turned in one by one up the short, wide road, and through the wide open space on the rusting fence. A couple gleaming blue sedans were parked by one of the two loading docks. Reggie and Torrance pulled in by the other one, but I wheeled my chopper around and aimed it back towards the exit.

  “Hey, that’s smart, man,” Torrance said, eyeing his bike sadly.

  “It’s a waste of time,” Reggie said.

  “It took five seconds,” I said.

  Reggie said something more, but I was more interested in the building. The place looked like it had been made in the dust bowl, with corrugated metal siding and no windows all around. It could be reinforced to conceal heat signatures from DEA choppers, but my main concern was our current safety.

  None of the sedan’s occupants were in sight. The building was just above a couple stories high, much smaller than the other storage areas around us. I scanned those. None of the roofs held anyone, but the buildings themselves weren’t in use either. This whole area was isolated.

  Why would anyone hold an intro meeting with their competition here? In the middle of their hometown? All the pieces fit together wrong.

  “We should change venues,” I said.

  Reggie was already up on the concrete siding, walking towards the door at the corner. He frowned and looked around. “No, this is good. We won’t be spotted.”

  “That shouldn’t matter. We own the police.”

  “The cartel doesn’t know that,” Reggie said. “Come on.”

  My alarms were blaring now, but I wasn’t going to get Reggie back without dragging him down. I was up for it, but a scuffle would put us in even more danger.

  I followed on a wide berth. As I passed the parked sedans, I tried to glance inside. It was useless - the windows were tinted.

  I was just about to move past the second car, when I noticed something on the rear fender. Just outside the trunk, a dab of mud or something had smeared across the exterior.

  I drew in and touched it. My fingerprints came back up painted crimson. I’d seen plenty of blood spilled to know it by color. This was heartbeat red, not yet oxidized brown. Someone must have been dragged out of the trunk recently.

  Reggie drew closer to the door, but my chest went steady. This world, I knew. The trick was to accept your death. That made it easier to operate.

  Who would they bring us bloodied to show up?

  I didn’t have to think hard.

  “Hey, Reggie,” I yelled. “What’d you say about Cavil?”

  That got him to stop. “Cavil?” he asked. Torrance looked like I’d spoken some other language.

  “You said things were quiet in Redding. That they hadn’t reported anything new. Have they said anything at all in the past couple of days?”

  His brow crunched and I thought he might get pissed, but he wasn’t an idiot. He w
hipped out his phone and punched in a number. We sat there listening to the wind rustle past metal for a couple moments. Eventually, he shook his head.

  “What’s happened?” he asked.

  I raised my bloody fingertips.

  The two men reached for their guns, but I sensed other motion. Shadows were forming where they shouldn’t be: from the guardhouse in the lot across the street, in a foreman’s tower in the place across from us. I assumed they knew how to wield the scoped rifles they carried.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Reggie said.

  “No,” I said. “We could be dead if they wanted us dead. They’re here to send a message.”

  Torrance’s head wobbled like a doll, “I don’t wanna hear noooo fucking message man. “

  “It’s fine,” I said. “They just need one person. You two wait in that nook over there.” I pointed at the other side of the loading dock wall. “The snipers won’t have a shot on you. If you hear any gunfire, you just get on your bikes and gun it. But not before, ok? I’d prefer to join you.”

  Reggie didn’t move. “I’m the VP. I should be the one to take this.”

  “Well, right now, you’re the VIP. I started this. I’ll handle it.”

  Reggie’s eyes burned icy one me, but he nodded and started backing away. I turned and waved my hands at the snipers, like they were animals to attract. Still waving, I backed towards the warehouse door. It had been cracked open, but there was just darkness inside.

  I felt no fear, just a vague sadness. This really could be it. There was so much I’d come here to do, and even more I’d found once I got here.

  At least, I’d had her. At least, I’d come home.

  I took a deep breath and pushed in.

  Two men waited just by the door. I heard them before I saw them. They were short and small, but metal gleamed off their chest. As my eyes adjusted, I quickly made out the Uzis.

  The light was coming from a single overhead tray, lit bright and empty at the center of the warehouse. It wasn’t even larger than a basketball court, but there were four other men, spread out across it. In the center, under the swishing light, a man with slick hair and an office shirt, stood patiently.

  I strode directly towards him. He might have prepared some speech, but I didn’t give him a chance.