Jase

by MariaLisa deMora

  On the stage, Bear stood near Chase, talking him through something, and then he turned to look across the room, catching Mason’s eye and giving him a chin lift. Returning the gesture, Mason’s gaze swept the room, noting Bear’s adopted daughter sitting near the stage. She was watching Benny, but Chase was watching her. That could be a cluster, he thought, shaking his head. Triangles suck ass; I should know. Might need to say something to Bear.

  Within a couple of minutes, guitars in hand, the three people on the stage began playing, and Mason was startled at how good they sounded. Chase didn’t look comfortable at first, but both Ben and Bear appeared confident in his abilities, and as Mason watched, he slowly relaxed, settling into his playing. They started out with one of Occupy Yourself’s songs, Feeling You, and even after they finished and moved on to the next song, all he could think about was Willa. The words from the last stanza of the chorus kept repeating in Mason’s head. ‘Loving you is possible, Giving you my heart. Love, it bears repeating, Our lives together start.’

  Rude awakening

  Slate asked curtly, “Have you seen Birdy lately?”

  Jase frowned at the odd question, pausing for a beat to sit down before responding. He had come in to tell Slate something, but the man had hit him with the question before he could even begin. “Before tonight?” He shrugged. “Until tonight? Not for a while, certainly not since Bear’s been back. What’s up, man?”

  Slate sighed, reaching out to slap the door separating the office from the main room of the clubhouse closed. “Shit’s not right, man. You say you saw him tonight?”

  Jase frowned at the closed door, nodded, and waited a minute for him to continue, and when he didn’t, asked, “What kind of shit?”

  “Shit that doesn’t wash off, man. I’ve heard rumblings that he’s been tucking his boots under Manzino’s sister’s bed.” Jase sucked in a shocked breath. Manzino was a drug dealer the club had problems with off and on again for a couple years. If Birdy were sleeping with the man’s sister, that could be bad for him. “I was going to talk to Mason last night after church, but then Gunny gave him the Vincent, sidetracked me.”

  “I thought the dealer had left town. Didn’t he go out west to try his luck there?” Jase hadn’t been part of the club when that all went down, but he heard about it afterwards as part of the story about how Slate’s brother had come to Fort Wayne. “What the hell is Birdy thinking?”

  “Thinking with his dick, most likely,” Slate said, pulling at the back of his neck with a rough hand. “If he’s fucking her, he’s fucking himself. Brother has to know that.”

  "What will you do if it's true, if he's tangled up in something like that?" Jase wasn’t sure what the reaction of the club would be, but he knew there had to be one. Birdy’s association with drug dealers would be breaking one of Mason’s key rules.

  "If he's lucky, we'll cut his patches…drum him out of the club, cut his rockers." Slate ran his hand across his jaw, clenching his teeth so tightly Jase could hear them gritting together. "If he's lucky."

  Hesitantly, Jase said, "I came here…I needed to talk to you anyway, Prez. I...uh...I saw him earlier tonight out back of Marie's. He was whaling on someone pretty good. I figured it’s not my business, so I got what I was after in my bags and headed back inside. But he looked up, saw me, and booked it." He looked up at Slate, taking the measure of his mood. "It made me wonder why he ran, so I walked over to see who he had been smacking on. Prez, it was one of DeeDee's girls, and she was high as a kite."

  "Fuuuck," Slate ground out the word. "How long ago?"

  "About thirty minutes," he said. "I tried calling, but when you didn't answer, I talked to Goose and DeeDee. They're taking care of her now. I took a chance you'd be here, came on over."

  Slate stood still and silent for a long time, and Jase thought that this was more nerve-racking than the final two minutes of any game. He had to get everything out there, though. "There's more, Prez." Slate was moving towards the door, but Jase's words stopped him in his tracks. "Gunny was supposed to work at Slinky's, but he didn't show. He wasn’t picking up his phone either, so Hoss went to the house and found it buttoned up tight. He said the dogs didn't raise a ruckus, and you know how loud those dogs are when someone’s around, so he made his way inside. He found several bodies in the bedroom, all shot at close range. Brother…one was Elkins, Sharon's ex. It looks like Gunny and Shar are gone."

  "Are you fucking kidding me?" Slate snarled, whirling and stalking back to the desk. He stood for another moment, and Jase could nearly hear the gears turning in his mind. "Lockdown. Get ahold of DeeDee; tell her to bring the girl here." He pulled out his phone at the same time Slate did, and as he called DeeDee, he heard him tell Ruby to bring the babies to the clubhouse.

  Pulling the office door open, Slate yelled out into the room as he made another call, "Church, right the fuck now, brothers… Yeah, Mason," this was said into the phone, "got some kind of shit going down. I'm putting the Fort on fucking lockdown. Yeah, we’re going to need some trash taken out at Gunny's. I’m getting some brothers on that right now. Looks like Manzino's lifted his head, gonna find out... Yeah, he’s right here.” Slate looked at him as Mason spoke on the phone. “Yeah…I'll call. You too, Prez."

  Turning to look at Jase, Slate’s gaze was considering, eyes narrowing in response to some emotion Jase didn’t recognize. “You’ve had an easy run, brother. Now’s when the grit hits the grindstone and we get to figure out what kind of men we are. Right now, you have one priority: find Birdy.”

  He stood, already shaking his head. “No way, Prez. My baby sister—”

  “That’s exactly why you aren’t gonna be the one looking for her and Gunny. I need you to be the planner and plotter I know you can be, not an emotional fuckup. Find Birdy and bring him in, but we assume the best until shit lands on his head. Need you to explain to the club what’s going down. Birdy, Gunny and Sharon, Gunny’s house—that’s three fucking fronts we have to clear, and you’re point on the Birdy/Manzino one.” He motioned to the door. “Let’s sit for church. Then we’ll sort what’s needed.”

  Yelling into the main room as he walked out of the office, Slate pulled the eyes of every man to him. “We got shit, motherfuckers. Captain has the floor.” Backing up a step, he nodded at Jase once, encouraging him.

  Nodding back, he looked around the room at the faces of the men he had grown to know and trust. He knew every one of these men would have his back, would help him through anything…would die for him. This was what he had been looking for, this brotherhood. For them, he could do the captain’s speech, but it meant so much more here. Taking a deep breath, he began.

  “Gunny’s in the wind. His old lady, my sister, is with him. He left some bodies behind.” At this announcement, there was a shifting in the room as the men turned and looked at each other, then back at him. “Right now, we think it’s not voluntary, that they’ve been taken. One of the bodies was Elkins.”

  At this, the prospect who'd been blindsided by the man uttered a low, hate-filled, “Fucker.”

  Jase nodded at Piebald. “Yeah, exactly. We don’t know much more than that.” The men’s voices rose as they talked among themselves, and he had to raise his voice to be heard over the swelling sound. “Hey. Listen up brothers, there’s more. Birdy’s in the wind too, but for a different reason. I caught him fucking up one of the girls from Slinky’s earlier tonight, and there’s rumor he’s been bagging Manzino’s sister. Our brother ran—that’s not good—and we need to find him and figure out what’s going down. Prez talked to Mason; he’s put the club on lockdown. Call your families and get them in here. There’s too much we don’t know, brothers. Let’s keep the folks we love safe.”

  Turning to look at Slate, he said, “Manzino and Birdy detail is led by me. I’ll need four or five brothers who know Birdy well, know his hidey-holes. Slate, did you decide who you want to head over to Gunny’s and meet Hoss there?”

  Nodding, Slate said, “Tequila, PBJ—
you boys pick four more, we’ll do six plus Hoss. Take a cage; you’ll need to take the trash out while you’re there.”

  Captain turned back to the room of men, nodding. “Get your families moving. Talk to me about Birdy. I want us off the lot in fifteen.”

  ***

  Mason rubbed his forehead with the fingers of one hand, the other thumping out an irregular rhythm against the desktop. His cell rang and he picked it up immediately, answering with a flip of his thumb across the screen. “Talk to me.”

  “Prez,” Slate said, “got you on speaker. Cap’n and Bear are here with me. We wanted to update you.” Grunting noncommittally, he waited for them to continue. “Gunny’s house is clean; we found the dogs locked in a crate in the basement, but still no sign of him or Sharon. None of his bikes are gone, and his truck is in the drive, so we’re pretty sure they didn’t go willingly.” There was exhaustion in Slate’s voice, and he hated how events like this turned the man deep inside himself. Shit like this was hard for everybody, but it seemed to hit brothers like Slate hardest.

  “Myron can’t get a fix on either of their phones. He said it looked like they were being jammed, which might mean LEO…or might mean something else. We had better luck with Birdy’s phone, and Cap’n dispatched a cage. They picked him up about an hour ago. They’re on the way here now, with both him and Manzino’s sister. Fucker was sitting in her operation center, watching her toothless bitches cook that meth shit up. I can’t see my way past anything he did, Prez. I’ll hold my final word until I talk to the motherfucker, but as far as I can see right now, he’s done.” Slate took a deep breath before saying, “Not sure what we’ll do with the woman.”

  Mason shook his head, knowing the men couldn’t see him. Shit was hard. He sighed and asked, “If it was Manzino, what would you do?”

  “End him. He’s hung himself a dozen times over.” Slate spoke immediately, saying exactly what Mason had been thinking, but before he could respond, Captain’s voice filled the void.

  “Slate…brother. There isn’t any way she’s innocent. She had to know coming into her brother’s old, outlawed territory and pulling this shit would rile the club. It was a calculated move on her part, possibly driven by Manzino in some way. I say talk to her, but we have to be willing to turn the same judgment on her that we would her brother.” He could tell saying this had a cost for Jase, but was pleased he didn’t have to be the one to state the obvious.

  “Cap’n has the right of it, Slate. You know it.” Mason paused a minute before continuing. “Talk to Birdy; talk to the woman. I’m on my way down soon, brother. Wait for me if you need to, but Slate…” He paused again, waiting until an affirmative noise came through the phone. “You have full authority. Your voice is my voice.”

  ***

  “Fuck you.” This was said in a voice thick with pain and filled with what had to be false bravado, because surely Birdy knew he was fucked six ways from Sunday. “I ain’t talking to you. Fucking prospect’s got no reason to ask me shit. Get a fucking officer in here. I might have a word or two to say.”

  Jase blew out an angry breath, grinding his teeth. They had been hearing the same kind of statements off and on all afternoon, wavering between threats of death and pleading. This hadn’t been an easy interrogation to watch, knowing the man as he did. Harder still to take part in, but Slate had put him in as lead, so he had to step up.

  He remembered the battered face of the dancer from last night and fury welled up inside him at the way Birdy had treated Mercy. Jase found himself enraged at the memory of how the man had left the unconscious woman vulnerable, running to save his own cowardly ass. In his mind, Sharon’s face overlaid the woman’s, and in a rage, he leaned over to cuff Birdy hard on the side of the head, splattering fresh blood up and across Jase’s face and neck.

  “Fucktard, if you don’t talk to me, you don’t get to talk, period. Don’t you get it? There aren’t any officers who care enough to try to make you see sense, man. I’m all you’ve got.” He reached up to wipe his face, and seeing the blood covering his swollen knuckles, thought better of the motion. “Last chance, Birdy. What ambition does Manzino have in the Fort? Why did he send his sister in to fuck with us?”

  Shaking his head, Birdy snarled at him again, “Fuck you.”

  Jase looked up at Hoss and Pinto as they stood leaning against the wall where they were out of sight from Birdy. He shook his head, acknowledging they wouldn’t get anything else out of the man, and they both nodded in agreement. He watched as Hoss reached over and pounded softly on the door, muttering to the member who opened it, sending him back out. Three standing and one tied to a chair, the four men in the room waited in silence, each isolated in their own thoughts.

  The door opened and Slate strode in, his gaze sweeping the room and taking in the scene before him. He held his position and nodded curtly at the floor by the chair, watching as Jase leaned over to pick up the dark cloth bag he dropped there earlier. Jase stared Birdy in the eyes as he pulled it over the man’s head, holding his gaze until the blood-soaked material covered his face.

  Lifting his head, he looked at Slate and glanced over to where Bear was standing in the doorway behind him. “It’s gotta go down this way?” He startled at the question, sure for a moment it had come from his lips, but he saw Slate and Bear turn to look at Pinto, who was shaking his head. “Never mind, I know. It’s a fucking shame. Birdy coulda been a good brother.” With that, he and Hoss turned and walked out of the room, shutting the door behind them.

  Struggling wildly, rocking the chair side-to-side on its legs, Birdy’s shaking voice came from underneath the hood. “Wait. Wait. I can tell you routes and schedules. Manzino has plans. I know his plans, his routines, who his lieutenants are. Hold on.”

  “He tell you anything up to now?” Slate’s voice was flat and cold, and Jase shivered as it lashed through the air in the room directed at him.

  “Nothing. I don’t think he has anything, Prez.” Jase shook his head, knowing he probably had sentenced the man to death.

  “All right.” Bear stepped forward, pulling a gun from the back waistband of his pants. “Cutting isn’t enough, Prez.” His voice was as cold as Slate’s, and Jase watched his eyes as he stepped up behind Birdy, reaching out a hand to grasp the hood. “Betrayal of a brother, a chapter, is treachery that can’t be set aside.” He looked into Jase’s face searchingly. “He brought shit back to town, shit that cost us brothers in order to run it out the first time. Good men, Rebels all. That sets him against the club.”

  Jase nodded and stepped to the side. Bear continued, eyes still on his face. “He knew the score.” Jase nodded again, but then took a single step closer.

  “Let me try once more,” he said softly, leaning close to Bear. The big man looked at him carefully, then nodded slowly. Jase glanced down as his arm flexed, his hand tightening on the hood and pulling it up and off Birdy’s head, uncovering his face. There was a look of stark fear embedded there, but then he focused on Jase and it shifted quickly to fury and loathing. Jase shivered; he had never been the recipient of so much hatred, and he couldn’t figure out what he had done to earn it.

  “Talk about Manzino,” he prompted, and was surprised with the vehement shake of the head from Birdy that met his request.

  “No, dammit. Just no. Fuck you. Fuck you and your goddamned club. Goddamn Mason lets bitches run his club now. I don’t want no fucking part of it anyway. Knew that shit years ago when I met that motherfucker Slate for the first time, him and Tug. Fucking lesbo bitches were on the Rebel lot, and they protected them. Beat me and my brothers to protect fucking lesbo bitches.” He drew in a ragged breath and laughed harshly.

  “Ain’t no mistaking you bought my fucking bike,” he spat at Jase, who sidestepped the blood-flecked phlegm, staring at him in confusion.

  “I didn’t buy your bike, Birdy,” he said, stopping when the man laughed again.

  “Fucking bitch with her head all up in my business all the time. Hands o
ff the fucking girls decreed by her, then she wouldn’t sell me the fucking bike. Put it up for goddamn auction, where a fucking citizen bought it,” he spat at Jase again. “Fucking waxer.” He sneered. “Fucking weak-ass prospects, can’t keep a fucking prisoner secure, never shoulda let me in the fucking room.”

  “Winger’s bike?” There were a dozen revelations that needed attention, but Jase was focusing and slowly putting things together on just one of them, remembering conversations with Tug and Mason about DeeDee’s position being somewhat precarious at times.

  “Shoulda killed the fucking bitch when I had the chance. Had plenty of chances, you’re always leaving her the fuck alone. Kill the bitch, take the bike, fucking go back home to Mor—my real brothers.” Birdy tipped his head back, blood trailing down his cheek and neck. “If I killed the bitch, you wouldn’t be standing here right fucking now.”

  Jase looked at the man now sitting silent, and his blood ran cold as he finally put a name to what he had been seeing all along. Hatred. Birdy held an unmitigated hatred for the Rebel club, because his loyalties lay elsewhere. That hatred bled through from the club to DeeDee, and then to him. He was a threat to everything Jase held dear; there was no coming back for him. He never had ties with the club, with them. If they let Birdy go, there was no doubt in his mind that he would circle back around…come find him—find DeeDee—and take revenge for every slight, real or imagined. His stomach clenched as the realization of what had to happen here became apparent.

  As he stared wordlessly at the man tied to the chair, face twisted into an ugly mask of impotent rage and disgust…in hatred, something Mason had told him once rose to the surface of his mind. Mason had said that as people, we are hardwired to protect the ones we love, our families. His family had expanded over the past few months to include DeeDee, and further, to pull the Rebel club into the circle that he wanted to protect. The club meant everything to him. He would die for them…he would kill to keep them safe.