Beginning of the Reckoning

by Vera Quinn

  “You are not going to be with any of the club girls or any other gash hanging around the clubhouse?” I see Joy is considering what I said. “That’s exactly what I am saying and you will be with no other man.” I walk over to her and pull her to me. “This may not last but I want to try for now. I will not touch another woman before I let you know we are done.”

  “What if I decide it is not working for me?” Joy is close to agreeing. “All I am saying is to try. I’m not into being with unwilling women. I don’t need to force anyone,” I tell Joy. She brings her arms up and puts them around my neck. “I’m going to take you at your word Hacksaw bu t I promise you if I find you with your dick in another woman I will cut it off and shove it up your ass.” She moves in and kisses my cheek and then moves back and looks at me. “I think this is going to blow up in our faces but I can’t ignore our physical attraction and there is something about you that draws me to you. Devil is not going to let me leave and I am tired of arguing until I am blue in the face with you. If nothing else we have physical chemistry.”

  “I knew you couldn’t resist me. Sugar, we are going to figure this out,” I tell Joy trying to reassure her.

  “More likely we are going to blow up and hate each other. I don’t need that negativity in my life,” Joy comes back. “Sugar, we are going to blow up from sexual combustion. Now give me that mouth so I can shut you up.” Joy smiles at me and I take her mouth like a man starved for my last meal.

  “I feel guilty for feeling this way when people around us are in mourning and the devastation that they are feeling.” I can hear the conflict of emotions in Joy’s voice. “There is nothing wrong with finding comfort in each other Joy. Tito is full of regret when it comes to Sarah and that will never be me or at least I don’t want it to be. I take what I want and that way there is no room for regret. I don’t have the flowery words to express this in a way to comfort you sugar but what’s happening between us is a good thing so let’s enjoy it.” I am a man that says what I mean but I have never had to worry how anyone takes it. I am trying but it does not come easy for me. I wouldn’t be me if I tried it any other way and I am too old to be changing now.

  “If we do this I need you to give me your word that you will have a conversation with me when you are done.” I give Joy a look to let her know I don’t want to have this conversation again before I must leave her. “Just listen to me one more time so I know we are both clear on this. When you are ready to end whatever this is, just give me a few minutes to tell me so we can have closure. I will give you my word that I will do the same. Then we can relax and just enjoy this while we have it. If we agree to that one thing then I will let it go.”

  “Sugar, I can do that but I’m not relaxing until we have these assholes that have put a target on your back.” I pull Joy closer to me. “I don’t make promises but I will give you my word that we will have a conversation when it comes time for us to part ways so you can have peace of mind. I’m letting you know that I don’t think that will be anytime soon. I also don’t know how you think two people who have never been in a serious relationship can find a way to make us work if you have one foot out the door all the time. Just enjoy this. You were screaming my name last night.” I kiss the top of her head. “I have to hit the shower and meet with Devil and the brothers. Either Rome or I will be here later to take you over to the house. Stay in the house and do what you are told. That’s the only way we can keep you safe.”

  “I feel guilty for this still.” I look at Joy.

  “Why? We deserve some good and we have already been over this and I don’t like repeating myself so just go with it for now,” I tell Joy. “Not because we are together but there is so much pain in the clubhouse and we are trying to start something new. I mean Sarah and Becky are gone and I feel the loss but when you kiss me my brain shuts off and I just feel guilty for it,” Joy says, and I get it, but I don’t agree.

  “You are my woman and I am your man and when that door is closed whatever happens in here is us. We close the rest of the world out and just maybe when we leave this room we will have clearer heads to help everyone. Did you ever think of that?” Joy looks up at me and I look down at her and I kiss her lightly and I cut it off way too soon for my likings but I am needed somewhere else. “I’ve got to shower.”

  “I could join you.” I smile at Joy. “Not happening or it’ll be another hour before I get out of here and aren’t you supposed to be helping with dinner?” I would like nothing better than another round after last night but I never want to hurry with Joy.

  “You’re right.” I get off the bed and walk to my dresser and grab some boxers and a t-shirt. Then I walk to my closet and grab a pair of jeans. “I’ll be fifteen minutes and then you can have the shower. I’ll bring a bag o f clothes with me when I come to the house later.” I shut the closet door and head to the shower without looking back at Joy. I don’t want to tempt myself to climb back in that bed with her. Joy may think that we are short term and that may be so but I’m going to enjoy the hell out of her in the meantime.

  One week later…

  I walk into the common room and it is full of brothers with Gertie sitting beside Slick and the club girls back in the corner table. I see Rye at the bar with a beer in his hand at nine in the morning. A few weeks ago, that would have been me. Most everyone here has a solemn look on their faces. The service that they had for Sarah took its toll. It doesn’t help that we have had very few leads. There has been no word from whoever did the murders. No nothing and this fact is driving me crazy. We have gone over every piece of evidence that the PD has. Every crime scene picture. The threats that the BlackPath MC received after Em was attacked were from a burner phone with no way to trace it. It was probably dumped after its use. Our security has been tight but we can’t do this for a long period of time. Our businesses are suffering and something needs to break soon for us not to lose some of our financial stability. We have worked hard to get where we are today and no one is taking that from us so we are going to need to make something happen. I make my way to the bar and motion for Joey, one of our new prospects, to bring me some coffee. We voted in Joey, Ranse and Trance as prospects right after the memorial. Soon we will be taking a vote on giving Possum and Bo their cuts, but we have shelved that subject until this is over.

  “Possum and Trance , take the club girls in the game room and keep them there until I say so. They don’t get out to even take a piss. Gertie, can you go to my office and stay until someone knocks on the door,” Devil directs everyone. “Since it is going to be more than just us we are doing this meeting right here.” I move over by the bar and sit beside Thrasher but look at Devil. Our President is looking tired. I feel a hand run up my back and turn to see who it is and Indigo is standing there. I haven’t been around the clubhouse a lot in the last week but I know Indigo knows I have an ol’ lady.

  “Hacksaw, Teal and I have missed you being around. We heard you have an ol’ lady until this lockdown is over but we thought that after the meeting since she isn’t here that we could have some fun. If she is temporary then surely it won’t matter if we still have a little fun.” I turn completely around and look at Indigo.

  “That won’t be happening anytime soon. You go on with the others into the game room. Devil is not going to have patience with anyone not following orders today.” I see the disappointment in Indigo’s face but there is something else there that I can’t figure out. “I’m sure Thrasher or Bowie will be glad to have your company when they have a spare minute.” Indigo pokes her lip out and puts her hand on her hips and pokes it out.

  “I swear that all the brothers have become boy scouts the last week. None of you are ever around and I did not sign up to be someone’s maid. All we do anymore is clean and cook. I might as well be married,” Indigo spits out. This woman is throwing attitude. I stare her down. I stand up and look down at her.

  “You can leave anytime, just don’t bother coming back.” I am intimidating this woman but it
needs to be done. Teal walks up behind Indigo.

  “You two get your shit and get out. You’ve been whining all week and if you want gone so bad hit rocks,” Devil yells. He looks over at Possum.

  “Take these two back to get their stuff and get them gone. Don’t come back.” Possum walks up to the two women. Devil is barely holding on to his temper. “We didn’t say we wanted to leave. We’re just horny,” Teal says. “Too late! Out! I swear we need to start screening the damn whores around here better. Take them both out the back door.” Devil has lost what he had left of his patience. We wait until the room has cleared of everyone and Devil makes his way to the front of the room away from the bar so he has everyone’s attention. Tito and Oz come in from the hall that leads to their office. Oz is carrying his laptop. He stops at the closest table and sits down and sets his laptop up. Bourbon walks through the front door and makes his way in. It is eerily quiet. No one is saying anything to each other. The lockdown is taking its toll on everyone. “Let’s get this started. Oz, you have the floor.”

  “I have been reaching out to anyone who might have heard anything. There’s no talking going on. By now it would seem like someone would have heard something but it is a deadend road. Tito and I started from the beginning with Becky’s killing. Tito is going through everything we have from it and I am taking Sarah’s crime scene. We’ve come up with something, but we are not sure it is anything,” Oz informs us. Oz looks to Tito and Tito nods his head yes, so Oz will go on. “Lisa, Becky’s partner, was not where she said she was on a shoot. We checked it out. She was in Canada at one time for work but not exactly when she said. She had flown back to the States three days before Becky’s death. The company that she worked for has her back in the States three days earlier in their work log but when we called to ask they gave us the same information that they gave the PD. Someone is covering her ass.” Oz waits for us to take that in and then goes on. “I also got into Lisa’s work emails and found another email address for Lisa and things weren’t as happy between Lisa and Becky as Lisa let on. It seems that Lisa was cheating on Becky. This may not have any relevance at all but it is something that Lisa was not willing to share. If she was hiding this what else can she be hiding? Lisa also has left Florida. She left a few hours after the funeral but she hasn’t showed back up here and she has taken bereavement time at work.”

  “Being a cheater does not make you a killer and taking time off seems normal to me,” I speak up. “Maybe not a killer but it is the first thing we have found out of the normal and it seems like she would need to come home to take care of things here before she takes off somewhere,” Tito says. Tito is looking rough. I don’t think he has been sleeping and he still has the same clothes on he wore yesterday.

  “I don’t think that a woman could do the things that were done to those two bodies. Besides that, wasn’t Lisa in Florida when things went down with Sarah and Em?” Devil asks.

  “She was on her w ay to Florida when we found Sarah, that has been established but there is no way all this was done by one person.” Oz looks at Tito before he says the next part. “When Sarah was tortured, Em was being hit in Texas so we already knew that this was a group of people. I’m not saying Lisa is guilty. I’m just saying the woman has some things she is hiding. Right now, we have nothing so it at least gives us a place to look. It may just be a cheating bitch but we are leaving no information that looks suspicious unanswered.”

  “Did you do another background check on Lisa?” I ask.

  “We have but she has some sealed documents and we are trying to get into them without being detected,” Tito answers

  “Have the BlackPath MC come up with anything?” Slick asks. “They have had no more problems and are coming up wit h dead ends. Chief called me a little while ago and Micah is missing,” Bourbon tells us. Micah is one of Callie’s twin half-sisters and this is not good.

  “Where is Maddie?” Devil asks about the other twin. “Chief has her and her daughter at t he BlackPath clubhouse. He has them locked down tight but Maddie is climbing the walls with worry over her sister.” Bourbon has more to say but when he looks at Rye there is something that stops him. Everyone can see it.

  “If you two have more to say now is the time or you can get the hell out!” Tito is close to losing it. “We think this goes deeper than some cheating woman that has no connections to either of the clubs involved. We had a look at those crime scene photos and this is personal. If this had anything to do with cut and dry business, then whoever is doing the murders would still leave a damn dead body and it may be bloodier than hell, but both murders are brutal, and they reek of retaliation for some payback.” Rye says slowly like he is thinking it through in his head. “Never put these heinous acts past a woman. A woman scorned or fighting for her family can do a hell of a lot of damage.” Everyone is quiet for a minute.

  “When you are digging you need to look at someone who has ties to both clubs. Someone who would want to hurt both clubs,” Bourbon says looking at Devil straight in the eye. “Any way you cut it, the one target they are going for is Callie. She is the bond and every person that has that damn tattoo is tied to Callie in some way. The way we see it, they are going to try and take out the people Callie cares about first so it will destroy her and then they will come after her.” Bourbon laughs at that. “We don’t intend to let any of that happen.”

  “If you got it all figured out then why can’t you figure out who is doing it, so we can kill the fuckers,” Tito spits out. “Maybe Callie is the bond but so is Devil ,” I say as I am thinking it through. “I mean, it is because the two are together that the two clubs are linked. Maybe it is someone in Devil’s past. With the way Bourbon is setting it up then Callie watches her friends and family get hurt and then they come after her but look at it from the angle of Devil. He is made to watch his woman suffer while still trying to keep her and their children safe. He’s also become friends with all the ones with the tattoo. I would bet Devil has made more enemies in his lifetime than his ol’ lady.” Devil wipes his hand down in his face like he does when he is fixing to lose his last grip of being a reasonable man.

  “I think both scenarios could take some considering but I wouldn’t give up on the background on that Lisa woman either,” Slick reminds us to keep an open mind. “I’ll look into any people in Devil and Callie’s background. I can’ t keep on seeing the murder scene photos and reading over the investigation reports without losing my shit,” Tito speaks up.

  “Oz, you stay on the background check and stay on that angle. We need to talk about the loss of profits from some of the businesses we have open. The bar and the restaurant we opened are both in the red this week. We can’t afford to keep the doors open until this is handled. We live in small town Oklahoma and the people of this town have decided we have something to do with these two murders. The gym revenues have slowed down but it isn’t in the red yet.” Devil gives us the financial news. This is Tito’s area as our treasurer but I guess Devil has been handling it.

  “The strip club, garage, and apartment complex are still thriving,” Tito speaks up. “Since we just bought the race strip and it is not operating on a set schedule yet that has put our finances in a strain already,” Devil puts in. “We are stretched in the manpower to keep things operating and I will not leave anyone unprotected at this point so we are going to need to make adjustments that may leave our money tight for a while until the people of this town realize we had nothing to do with the murders.”

  “Don’t we still have money in our improvement and expansion account?” Bowie asks. “What’s your point brother? That money was set aside to improve the properties we own and if we use it to keep us afloat we defeat the purpose of keeping everything separate,” Devil tells Bowie.

  “Not what I meant at all. Just hear me out ,” Bowie goes on. “The building that the bar is in is fairly new and it has plenty of room with it being a two-story. We have always used the upper floor for storage and an office space. The
bar has a fully updated kitchen. Why don’t we take this time to make the bar into a dinner club? The bar has a basement we could use for storage and we could set up tables on the second floor. I have been thinking about it for a while.”

  “Why would we do that? We need a place to drink besides the clubhouse,” Thrasher says. Bowie looks him like he is crazy. “ Thrasher we still have the strip club. The restaurant has only been making marginal income.” Bowie looks at Tito for confirmation and Tito nods his head yes. “There’s the diner that Bud runs for people to grab a quick lunch or dinner but there are no nice places for men to take their women to eat and dance. It’s something this small town has been needing.”

  “You take a lot of women out to dinner and then dancing Bowie?” Creole asks laughing. Bowie stares him down. “No, I don’t asshole but some of the men in town might like to and it may be somewhere that the women drag their men to.” Bowie has a point. “I even have some floor plans that I drew up that I was going to bring to the table but the time was never right. Now is not the right time but if the two places are making us lose money it’s time to try something new. There’s no place like this in town. The people of this town are going other places instead of ours when there are options with this place. There would be no other options unless they drive an extra forty-five minutes to the next town.”

  “If the two places are closed then what do we do with the restaurant property?” Slick asks. “It’s in the perfect spot for a laundromat. Close to the middle of town for access and there is only one in town and it is always full. It takes only a few employees and we can contract out the maintenance. We’d just need to do security patrols,” Thrasher speaks up. We all look at the brother who very seldom shares an idea. “What? I’m always hearing the hang arounds complaining about the time it takes in the laundromat.”

  “ Alright, Tito you delve into the people in Callie’s and my past for any leads. Bowie get me some numbers and Thrasher do the same. I don’t want to start any new business endeavors right now but if we lose more money we will vote on shutting the doors on the restaurant and bar. Oz, you keep on the Lisa thing and follow the case. Bourbon, what can we do to help find Micah?” Devil gives directions.