But all of my anger is useless right now. And even worse, I know better than to say any of what I’m thinking right now when I confront him with this. Because as bad as this is, what would be worse is if he just disappeared. And even though I barely know Jude now — barely get a glimpse into whatever is going on in that thick head of his — I somehow sense that it wouldn’t take much to push him to skip town. With my car, probably. Which would mean that to get it back, I’d have to call the police. I can’t send the law after my brother. I just can’t.
Wearily, I slump against the wall in my entryway, but my fear of being late for work again kicks in and I straighten up and start to pace. What am I going to do? There’s no way I can walk to the clubhouse — It would take me over an hour at least. I don’t have a bicycle. And I’d rather die than call Angel and ask him for the day off. For one thing, I need the money. And for another, that would be even worse than being late.
Suddenly, an idea comes to me. It’s an idea born of desperation, but at this point it’s all I have.
Olga.
I absolutely hate asking people for help. Always have. My parents, always suspicious of outsiders, brought me up that way. But right now, I don’t have many other options. I open my door and walk down the hall to my neighbor’s apartment. Rapping softly on the wood, I almost find myself hoping she won’t be here — even though if she doesn’t answer, I’m not sure what I’m going to do. Thankfully, a couple of seconds later, I hear footsteps inside, and then the knob turns.
Olga’s face appears in the crack between the door and the jamb. “Jewel?” she asks, opening wider when she recognizes me. “Is everything okay?”
“Hi,” I reply, inwardly cringing. “I was wondering if maybe I could ask you a huge favor.”
Ten minutes later, we’re in Olga’s car, driving toward the clubhouse. “It is good thing today is my day off,” she murmurs in her Ukrainian-accented English. “Is your car broken?”
“No,” I sigh, shaking my head. “It’s just… well, my brother is here staying with me for a little while.” Thinking quickly, I edit what I plan to say next. “He… um… borrowed my car, but I think we must have got our wires crossed.”
Olga grunts and keeps driving, her eyes on the road. “Your brother. Yes. I have seen him.” She clucks once. “I wondered who he is.”
“You’ve seen him?” I ask.
“Yes. And I have heard him.” Olga is a very sweet woman, and a good neighbor, but she has a real issue with noise. She shakes her head and cuts her glance at me. “He is up to no good.”
“Wait, what?” This is news to me. “What do you mean?”
“He is having people to your apartment. Did you know this?”
What? Jude doesn’t have any friends yet. At least, not that I know of. He’s been having people over when I’m not there? I look over at Olga. Her face registers disapproval. I know she must be telling the truth. I’m torn between not telling her more about my personal life and asking her for more information. In the end, finding out what’s going on with Jude wins.
“No, I didn’t,” I admit softly. “What kind of people?”
“Boys. Like him. Young men. They are playing music loud.” She gives me a sour look. “I ask him to stop, but he tells me, ‘fuck off’.”
“Oh, Olga. I’m sorry,” I say in consternation. “I had no idea.” I feel terrible. If Olga has been hearing all of this, I wonder how many of my other neighbors have been complaining? And here I am, begging a ride from her, when she’s probably been cursing me in her head for days.
But instead of being angry, Olga nods, as though she’s relieved. Her brown ponytail, flecked with gray, bobs. “I’m sorry to tell you this. You are a nice girl, Jewel. You play your music loud sometimes, but you are a nice girl.”
We’ve arrived at the clubhouse now, so I tell Olga where to turn in and park. I get out of her car, thanking her again, and tell her not to worry when she asks me if I’ll need a ride home later. I watch her drive away, waving, and then hurry into the clubhouse — thankfully, only a handful of minutes late.
It’s just past noon, and the main room of the clubhouse is deserted when I get inside. There’s evidence of some heavy partying from the night before. The bottles and other trash haven’t been picked up yet, so that’s the first order of business. With a sigh of relief that no one’s here to notice I’m late, I slip behind the bar and grab my apron, then walk around and start cleaning and picking up all detritus that’s strewn around the space.
About half an hour later, a couple of the Lords walk through and lift a finger at me in greeting. A few minutes after that, two of the club girls come stumbling down the stairs from one of the apartments. Giggle and chatting, they adjust the clothing that looks like they’ve been wearing since the night before. One of them, Rachel, glances over at me. She tosses her teased blond hair haughtily, and whispers something to the girl next to her. The second one laughs, throwing her head back. Club girls are notoriously catty, and I’m used to them snubbing me. They have no status in the club, and most of them have fantasies of catching one of the Lords and being an old lady one day. What they don’t realize is, bikers only fuck club girls. They don’t claim them. In the outlaw biker universe, these girls are plankton. They pretend to be better than me because they know, deep down, how disposable they are.
I’d almost feel sorry for them if most of them weren’t such idiots.
Soon after, Bullet comes down from the same apartment, looking hung over. “Hey, Jewel,” he greets me with a wolfish grin, pulling up a stool. “You got any hair of the dog for me?”
I chuckle. “Sure thing. Late night last night?”
“Always.” Bullet waits patiently, running a hand over his closely-shaven head. I make him a red beer and splash a little Tabasco in it, just the way he likes it. When I slide the glass toward him, he nods approvingly.
“What would I do without you, Jewel?”
I lift my head toward the two club girls, who are now sitting on one of the low couches, checking their phones and cackling with each other. “Looks like you do just fine, Bullet,” I smirk.
“Eh, those two aren’t good for much other than fuckin’,” he shrugs dismissively. “And not even so much for that. They don’t even have a whole brain between them, I don’t think.”
I refrain from asking him what the attraction to them is, in that case. I mean, it’s not hard to notice the appeal of a set of double D’s to your average biker. My own measly B-cups don’t even rate when compared to their surgically-enhanced splendor. So I just let the comment pass, and wait as he takes a long, slow swig of his red beer.
“Damn,” he growls with satisfaction. “That’s better already.”
Just then, Angel comes around the corner with Ghost, Hawk, and Beast. They’re deep in conversation, and from the looks on their faces, whatever they’re talking about is serious. One by one, the men lift their chins at Bullet and me. All their expressions look normal, unconcerned, except for one: Angel’s. His eyes bore into mine, a quick frown furrowing his brow. My face grows hot, wondering if he knows I came in late this morning.
In all the years I’ve worked for the Lords, I’ve never once been late until three weeks ago. Today marks the fourth time this month. Even if he didn’t notice I was late today, I know he saw the other times. Angel hasn’t said anything specific to me about any of them. He never mentioned anything at Noah’s party about how out of sorts I was, either. But when his eyes follow me, as they have been a lot the last couple of weeks, I can tell he knows something is up.
Reflexively, I reach up and wind my fingers in a stray strand of hair. I see something flicker in Angel’s eyes that looks like a decision, and my heart starts to thud nervously. I’ve been working at the clubhouse long enough that I’m not really worried he’s about to fire me. It’s almost worse than that, actually.
I’m worried he’ll corner me and demand to know what the hell is wrong with me, and why my performance has been so shitty lat
ely. And that is a conversation I do not want to have. Not at all.
Yes, part of me is dreading it because I don’t want to tell him the reason. I’ve always tried to keep my personal life — what little there is of it — far away from the club. It’s not professional to bring my problems to work.
But that’s not the biggest part of what I’m scared of.
What terrifies me is that he’ll pull me aside and ask me to come back into his office with him, away from everyone else. Because as hard-edged and rough as Angel is, he can also be very kind. At least with me. He wouldn’t want to confront me in front of other people if he sensed that there was really something wrong. Which means that I’d have to be alone with him for that conversation.
And being alone with Angel is something that I try to avoid at all costs.
In the years that I’ve been working for the club, I think I’ve managed to do a decent job of hiding what Angel does to me. How when his gaze locks on mine across a room, my skin burns with a heat I can barely stand. Between my legs, an ache begins that’s just for him — an ache so ferocious, it frightens me sometimes. Angel’s eyes are the color of molten steel, gray-blue and hard. Sometimes when he looks at me, they soften, just a little, and it gives me thoughts. Thoughts I’ve got no business having at all.
It was bad enough when he was VP of the club. I tried to think of him as just one of the Lords. Tried to tell myself that the only reason he had the effect on me that he did was that he was objectively built like a blond god. Muscles cover every inch of his body, tattoos enhancing the look of steely hardness, of raw strength and power. I knew that he could easily overpower me — do anything he wanted to me, if he had a mind to. I told myself that I tried to stay out of his way because I didn’t want him to get any ideas.
But the reality was exactly the opposite. As ashamed of it as I was, I wanted him to get all the ideas. I wanted him to see inside my brain — see all the filthy thoughts I had, all the white-hot dreams that tortured me late at night. I wanted him to force me to act out every single one of them. Yes, I wanted to be forced. forced by him. So afterwards I could tell myself that it wasn’t my fault — that even though I wanted the VP of the Lords of Carnage so badly I often could barely think straight when I was around him, I wasn’t the one who broke down and begged him. That I wasn’t the one who ruined the best job I ever had, and the only source of stability I had found in my adult life, because I couldn’t keep myself from wanting him so badly I could barely function when he was present.
If he forced me, I wouldn’t have to grapple with the only thought that keeps me from throwing myself at him: I know — without even questioning it — that if anything ever happened between Angel and me, it would be a one-time thing.
Angel isn’t the kind of man who gets tied down with women. I’ve watched him take his pleasure with any number of hangers-on and club girls over the years. As torturous as it is to see, the one thing that makes it bearable is that it’s obvious none of them mean anything to him. He barely notices their names, and afterwards he barely acknowledges they’re still there. No matter what they do to try and catch his attention.
And they do try to catch his attention. Especially now that he’s the president. Every unattached girl in here — and a few of the attached ones — dreams of being Angel Abbott’s old lady. I can see it in their eyes.
I know if anything ever happened between Angel and me — after he gave me everything my stupid, traitorous body ever wanted — I wouldn’t be able to stay here any longer. I’d have to quit my job as bartender, and go find work somewhere else. Because how could I ever stand to be around Angel after our bodies had taken what they wanted from each other, knowing how little it meant to him, and how much it would mean to me? How would I ever manage to just go back to the way things were before?
So, really, I’m no different from any of the other women who sniff after Angel and get crazy ideas about him. I’m just a pathetic hanger-on, with a massive crush on the president of the club I work for. The only difference is, I try as hard as I can not to let him see it.
“Jewel!” Angel barks suddenly. The harshness of his voice jolts me from my thoughts. He’s pissed about something — his jaw working furiously — and my stomach drops as I think it has to do with me being late. But then I look at Ghost, Beast, and Hawk, and I realize they’re angry, too. They continue to talk in clipped, short tones as they sit down at one of the far tables and Angel yells for me to bring a bottle of whiskey and some shot glasses.
“It’s a bit early, isn’t it?” I murmur to myself, as relief floods my system.
“Hey, it’s after noon,” Bullet shrugs. “They’re probably talking about the garage fire,” he mutters, downing the last of his red beer. “I guess the police report came back, and the source of the explosion was a device planted on the gas tank of one of the cars in the shop.”
I turn and look at him in wonder. “You’re kidding,” I breathe, horrified.
Bullet seems to realize after the fact that maybe he shouldn’t have said anything to me. “That’s what I heard, anyway,” he growls, getting up from his stool. “Thanks, doll. I’m gonna go join them.”
I watch Bullet cross the room and take his place at the table with Angel and the others. “My God… A bomb?” I whisper to myself in wonder as I grab a bottle of Jack in one hand and a stack of shot glasses in the other.
I don’t know what’s happening behind the scenes — the Lords keep their business private and away from their families, and from me. But if one of their rivals managed to set off a bomb inside the garage, what does that mean for the safety of the club?
And what could be next?
7
Angel
After the explosion and fire at Twisted Pipes, I order guards to be posted at all the entrances to the Lords of Carnage clubhouse, twenty-four seven. I make sure Tweak installs enhanced security cameras at points all around the perimeter, monitoring every entrance point, and other cameras to monitor the road in front of the clubhouse for half a mile in either direction. Tweak sets up a surveillance station in one of the back offices, and we have that manned twenty-four hours a day, too.
Since the explosion resulted in a fire, and since the fire killed a civilian, the club has no choice but to let the cops come in to file a report and do an investigation. I hate like hell to do it, but there ain’t no way to prevent it. It ends up being Officer Pete Myers who brings us the news about what started the explosion. Myers is a recent hire to the Tanner Springs PD. He, along with a bunch of other people, got hired on after a human trafficking scandal was uncovered involving the former mayor, Jarred Holloway, and his police chief, Brandt Crup. Crup, Holloway, and another officer named Rob Johannsen are all in prison now. And fuckin’ good riddance, too. A bunch of other cops were removed from the PD after that trafficking ring was uncovered, since Crup had hired most of them. They were replaced with mostly new people, from out of town.
There’s never been any love lost between our club and the local cops, that’s for sure. But this Myers guy seems more or less okay. He’s professional, by the book. It’s a welcome fucking change after Crup and his cronies.
“The report came back that there was a bomb planted on a gas tank on the car that exploded,” Myers tells me when I go down to the station to get the report. He rubs his close-cropped ginger hair with a freckled hand. “It was designed to go off when the ignition was turned.”
It’s no surprise to me that this wasn’t an accident. I could smell the work of the fuckin’ Outlaw Sons a mile away. As much damage as the blast and fire did, we were lucky it wasn’t worse. Hawk’s fucking pissed about Smitty’s death, and I can’t blame him. The Sons are gonna pay for this. And soon.
The day after I meet with Myers at the PD, I’m at the clubhouse, talkin’ with Ghost, Hawk, and Beast about the blast. I ask about the guy who brought the rigged-up car in.
“Would you recognize the guy if you saw him?” I ask. But Hawk shakes his head.
“I wasn’t there when he brought it in. Brick was, though. He checked the car in, and filled out the paperwork.”
“Okay. You talk to him about it yet?”
Hawk nods. “Didn’t ask him if he’d be able to describe the guy, though.”
“We gotta call church,” I conclude, leaning forward in my chair. “This is the Outlaw Sons, no doubt about it. We have to move fast, and strike hard.” My jaw sets. “We’re gonna make them regret this for the rest of their fucking lives.” I pause. “Which, in the case of their new prez, ain’t gonna be that much longer.”
The Sons have been on the move since our war started. Far as we’ve been able to tell, they don’t have a permanent clubhouse right now. Instead, they’ve been relocating from place to place, squatting in abandoned warehouses and deserted factories. But we’re gonna get the jump on them. And when we do, we’ll strike. God help any of them who ends up in our path. Especially the ones who don’t die right away.
And I’m gonna make sure Razor doesn’t die right away.
We leave my office and go out into the main part of the clubhouse to talk about calling church. Jewel’s out at the bar. I notice with satisfaction that she’s cleaned up the main room from the party last night. Bullet’s sitting across from her, nursing what looks like a tomato beer.
Jewel looks flustered today. She’s been looking like that a lot the past few weeks. Bullet doesn’t seem to notice, though. He’s chatting her up, in his usual style. A lot of the brothers flirt with Jewel — after all, she’s the hottest bartender any of them are ever likely to see — but there’s something about the way Bullet does it that gets under my skin. He seems pretty fuckin’ interested to get into her pants. And even though Jewel just banters back and forth with him like she would any of the other Lords, I find myself watching the two of them, just to be sure nothing’s going on. Which is fucked up. Jewel’s a big girl, and I know she can handle herself.
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