by Dusty Sharp
Tillman broke eye contact momentarily to glance over at Sunny. Though Sunny was out of my field of view, I could tell from Tillman’s gaze that he hadn’t moved yet. I kept my eyes on Tillman as he looked back at me and said, “well, it just ain’t that easy. You know how it works Austin. Blood in, blood out. You can’t just up and leave the Rattlers. This ain’t the fucking Boy Scouts.”
“Then you’ve got a choice,” I said, my eyes still on him. “Either re-write the rules, or get some people hurt or killed trying to enforce the ones you’ve got. Either way,” I said as I stood up straight, “I’m out.”
I could feel Sunny’s presence behind me even before I saw Tillman’s signal. God damn if that guy ain’t stealthy. But something about the air current in the room, the subtle reduction of airflow from the swamp cooler across the room behind me, signaled his presence. And then I saw the confirmation in Tillman’s eyes, as they suddenly broke contact with my own, and shifted focus above and behind me. I saw him give an almost imperceptible nod. Then I moved.
I unbuckled my knees, letting gravity pull my bulk down like a sack of flour. As I dropped I felt the wind of an errant blow sweep across the void directly above my head, where it had been a split second ago. Before I had achieved a full crouch I started twisting around to my right, curled my hand into a fist, and pulled my right arm in close for an uppercut. As I turned, Sunny’s midsection was now directly in front of me, slightly twisted away due to the follow-through of his missed punch. I saw his belt buckle, and the bulge below it. My uppercut was ready. It didn’t have a lot of leverage behind it due to my crouched position, but where it was going, it wouldn’t need much.
Now, I’ve been accused of taking the cheap shot before. But I had a football coach in high school that taught us “if you ain’t cheatin’ you ain’t tryin’”. I don’t fully subscribe to that motto but I’ll admit, sometimes when that’s the best tactical option, I’ll do it. I try to adhere to gentlemen’s rules when fighting. And believe me, I’d rather not punch a guy in the balls. It’s just not cool. But when the son of a bitch has just taken an un-warned shot at the back of my head with a fully-loaded roundhouse, well, those rules are temporarily put on hold.
So yeah, I punched him in the balls. As hard as I could.
I could hear the air escaping through his mouth even as his body was doubling over in pain. I stood up from my crouch as Sunny went down, moaning on the floor, curled up like a baby in the womb. I looked over at Tillman, who hadn’t moved an inch. “Should I put him out? Or do you care if he hears this?”
Tillman spread his hands as if blessing a meal. “I’ve got no secrets from him.”
“OK,” I said. I reached down, grabbed Sunny’s .380 from where I knew he kept it in his waistband. I ejected the magazine and pitched it across the room, then tossed the gun in the opposite direction. Sunny was still writhing on the floor, moaning. That was OK. This wouldn’t take long. I looked at Tillman.
“I know about your fucking side business, boss. What you and the rest of the 601 have been up to with the coyotes.”
Tillman shook his head, then looked up at me. “I don’t know what you think you know, son, but you’ve made a mistake. The Rattlers business with the coyotes is going along just fine. You know that! You set most of it up!”
“I’m talking about your little slave trafficking operation down in Fallbrook. Don’t try to deny it. I know everything.”
He looked at me, and for the first time I saw real hate in his eyes, directed at me, adding to the anger that was already there.
“That’s just a pilot program, Austin,” he said, making no effort to hide the bitterness in his voice, “We’re working out the kinks and when its all running smoothly, we’ll be cutting the whole club in on it. You too, son.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. I didn’t know whether he was telling the truth, but to me it didn’t matter.
“I don’t want any fucking part of it, asshole. It’s one thing to bring in a few wetbacks looking for work. I was all for that, everything’s consensual. But slaves? Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Now hold on a minute!” Tillman yelled. “You’ve got it all wrong! I don’t know what you think you’ve heard or seen, but it’s nothing like that! Those are willing immigrants too. Just like the others! They just have to…well…work off the cost of their trip here. We ain’t selling people, for christ’s sake! Whoever we turn them over to simply pays us off and assumes that debt.”
I couldn’t stand any more bullshit. “Tell yourself whatever you have to, in order to sleep at night. But I want no part of it. I’m done. With you, the Rattlers, the coyotes, the fucking 601 Posse. Everything. I’m going to walk out that fucking door and hope I never see your face or this place again.”
I turned toward the door, saw that Sunny was still on the floor, only just now recovering from that shot to the balls. Spit was hanging from his mouth and his eyes had that “I’m going to kill you” look. I cocked my boot and gave him a short, quick kick to the stomach, just to knock the air back out of him for a bit longer. I looked back at Tillman.
“And as for ‘blood in, blood out,’ you can shove that right up your ass. But as much as you and this whole outfit disgust me right now, I ain’t no fucking snitch. And I’ll stay that way unless you or anyone else from the club tries to fuck with me.” I looked at him for a moment. “Agreed?”
Tillman said nothing for almost a minute. I could see the hate burning within him. Maybe he was weighing his options. Figuring out the odds on different courses of action. Running the variables through his head over what would happen if he tried to pull a piece and put a bullet in me. Or holler out into the social quarters to have the guys out there take me out or block my exit.
Finally he gave a small nod, and looked away. “Get the fuck out of here,” he said.
As I walked out, Metallica had given way to the driving beat of Slayer’s “Raining Blood.” The guys out in the bar didn’t act like they’d known anything had happened. A couple of them lifted their glasses to me. I turned toward the exit and headed straight through the door without acknowledging them.
Twenty-One
The sun was still bright as I climbed onto my bike, fired it up and pulled out of the ready-mix plant. Adrenaline was pumping through my veins, so I took a few turns and found a gas station parking lot to pull over and cool down for a few minutes. I figured I was far enough away from the clubhouse in case Tillman sent some guys after me. But I didn’t think he would. He had nothing to gain by fucking with me.
And everything to lose.
I pulled my phone out and took it out of airplane mode, which I’d put it into to avoid any distractions during my visit with Tillman.
No messages, but there was a missed call from a number I recognized. I pulled up Gmail and looked in the draft email folder, saw an unfinished message in there and opened it up. “ASAFP - NOW!” it said, with a set of coordinates. I went through Marucs’ rigamarole for figuring out the location and saw that it was a city park only a few blocks away. I deleted the message and headed that way.
I pulled into a parking lot on the east side of Fairmount Park and scanned the densely treed landscape. Acres of green grass were cut through here and there by pedestrian pathways, and dotted here and there with homeless people dozing in the shade of the trees. Late afternoon sunlight glinted off the surface of Lake Evans in the distance.
On a bench a short distance from the parking area I spied a lone figure, sitting with his back to me, a dark colored hoodie pulled up over his head despite the afternoon heat.
“What’s up Trayvon,” I said as I swung around the end of the bench and sat down a discreet distance away from Marcus.
“Man that’s fucked up,” he said. After a moment he cleared his throat and added, “not as fucked up as what your homies is up to though. Them boys into some shit, y’all.” He wasn’t looking at me, just staring out at some kids playing tag among the trees, trying to dodge the slumbering homeless.
Not wanting to call him out on his spy bullshit, I just sat there, also facing forward, talking out the side of my mouth in hushed tones. “Yeah?” I asked. “I kind of already knew that. What did you need to tell me?”
“We done hit the jackpot, if y’all wanna burn these niggas down.” I ignored the epithet, pausing only momentarily to savor the irony.
“How so?”
“That thumb drive you gave me? I went ahead and done what you axed, with all the video files on there. Took a look at a couple, so I know what’s up—I know, you said not to, but you gotta admit that’s an invitation to look! And yeah, that some fucked up shit bro.”
I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. He was shaking his head. “I already knew that,” I said again. “So what else?”
“Well, after I copied the files off the thumb drive, I wondered what else might be hiding on there. You know, deleted files.”
“Deleted files?”
“Yeah, you know, old files that had been put on the thumb drive to transfer them somewhere, then deleted when they’re no longer needed.”
“You can recover those?”
“Of course! It ain’t even hard. You can download an app to do it. Deleted files ain’t actually scrubbed from the drive. They’re just deleted from the directory listing. The data is still there, it’s only overwritten when new data is put on the drive. The only way to truly erase a drive like that is to reformat it. Turns out your homies either didn’t know that or didn’t bother.”
Yeah, this was something I’d heard about. I needed to pay more attention to it myself, actually. “So what did you glean from the drive?”
“Quite a bit!” Marcus said. “Them fucked up video files you put on there only used up about a third of the drive’s capacity. The rest of it was still in there, ‘deleted’ from prior use but not actually gone. And it was mostly Excel and Word files. You know, records, accounts, ledgers an’ shit.”
I turned and looked directly at him, tradecraft be damned. “No shit? We have all of their records?”
I could see his excitement as he too dropped the spy bullshit and turned toward me, eyes bright. “Well, maybe not all of their records, some of them are fragments of files, some are encrypted, others probably not relevant. And I didn’t spend too much time studying the data. But they’s dates, inventories, names—code names prob’ly—you know. Enough to figure it out wassup and burn somebody’s shit down!”
I leaned back against the bench and watched the kids playing among the trees across the way, thinking. My thoughts drifted to three scrawny girls in ragged clothes, one of them with JOY printed across her shirt in faded letters. The one who had been looking in my direction.
Marcus grew impatient. “So whatcha want me do with it, man?”
I pushed the girls out of my mind. “Add it to the archive for the deadman switch,” I replied. “All of it. Then delete it from your own hard drives—scrub it, actually—and forget all about it.”
“Ain’t no problem. I kept it sandboxed on an offline machine. Ain’t no thang to reformat that drive.”
“Good. Do it. Do you still have the thumb drive?”
He pulled it from his shirt pocket and held it out to me. I grabbed it and slipped it into my vest pocket.
“Lay low for a while, Marcus,” I said as I got up from the bench to leave. “It might be dangerous to be associated with me. At least for a little while.”
The sun was starting to set when I pulled away from the park and got on the 60 freeway heading east, away from Riverside. I wanted to go for a ride—needed it, actually. I needed the barren roads and open spaces of the wide desert to clear my head and figure out what to do next.
But as I leaned into the curves through the Badlands east of Moreno Valley, I realized I couldn’t go home anyhow. Tillman had indicated we had an armistice. He had always been true to his word, since I’d known him. But I’d just hit him with something that threatened to bring down his whole world, jeopardize the entire club, and most likely land him in prison. No, I couldn’t trust him on this one. His survival instincts would prevail.
And my little house there on Burlwood was too soft a target.
I needed to get to Vegas. I had more resources up there, that weren’t tied to the club. I’d already told Frankie I’d be making my way op there in the morning. But I’d be safer heading straight up to Sin City rather than hanging around Riverside until morning. Besides, the desert is nicer at night, in the dog days of summer. So I transitioned onto Interstate 10 at Beaumont, figuring I’d grab Highway 62 up toward Twentynine Palms and cut through Amboy. I always liked that ride, especially at night. It was peaceful. I’d stop along the way for some chow and maybe a cold beer, then arrive in Vegas by morning with a clear head.
I could use a couple days of peace and quiet.
Author’s Notes
Many of you have come to Blood Brothers having already read No Time To Bleed. If that is the case, I hope Blood Brothers helped to answer some of the questions you may have had regarding Austin’s background. And if this is your first foray into Austin’s world, buckle up and hang on. Shit’s about to get real in No Time To Bleed.
I enjoy setting my stories in familiar places, and presenting them to you with the sights, smells and textures that really bring them to life. Most of Blood Brothers is set among the less glamorous areas of Southern California than you may have already been familiar with.
Rural Southern California is home to several sprawling Indian reservations, whose casinos have helped lift their residents out of poverty in recent decades. I don’t specify which reservation the story opens at, but I had a specific one in mind as I was writing it. Several of them are situated, as described, among the rugged chaparral covered hills and ravines along the Interstate 15 corridor between San Diego and Riverside. And the border patrol checkpoint alluded to in the story is real. As are the avocado-studded hillsides and remote ravines.
Riverside is a good town full of great people, which I’m proud to have called my home for several years. Austin’s house is based on actual homes in Riverside’s quaint “Wood Streets” neighborhood, with its early 20th century Craftsman homes. However Burlwood Street is my own invention, so as to not call out any specific real addresses. Manny’s childhood neighborhood of Casa Blanca is also real.
The 601 Posse is named after real vigilante “committees” that actually existed in the wild and unruly mining camps of the late 1800’s. These groups would mete out swift “justice” when townsfolk became impatient with official lawmen or courts. They were especially active in places like Bodie and Truckee, California and Virginia City, Nevada. Historical records do not agree on what the “601” stands for, but one account claims it means “six feet under, no witnesses, one problem solved.” My fictitious “601 Posse” of the Rattlers MC bears little resemblance to the actual historical vigilante committees. But I loved the name when I came across it in reading about the old west, and decided to use it in my story.
The next chapter in Austin’s story, No Time To Bleed, takes place out in the desert. But we’ll be returning to some of these locations later in the series, when either Austin or those opposed to him will learn the hard meaning of blood in, Blood Out.
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About The Author
I live in Southern California with my wife, Stephanie, and four English Mastiffs. I enjoys exploring the back-country of the desert southwest, and driving or tinkering on our Early Ford Broncos. I prefer good cigars, better food, and great beer. I’ve had a lifelong interest in the history of California and the west, and I’m a proud brother of E Clampus Vitus, Billy Holcomb Chapter 1069. My professional background is in marketing, having worked for many years in the RV and off-road vehicle industries.
Books by Dusty Sharp:
Blood Brothers (Austin Conrad #1)
No Time To Bleed (Austin Conrad #2)
Blood Out (Austin Conrad #3)
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Also By Dusty Sharp
BLOOD BROTHERS
An Austin Conrad Novella
Austin Conrad Series, #1
A hardened criminal. A gut-wrenching revelation. Loyalty, brotherhood, and honor will be tested to the breaking point.
Austin Conrad is a study in contradictions. A decorated war hero turned jaded enforcer for a ruthless outlaw motorcycle club, the honor he once had is jolted back to the surface with a devastating discovery about the club he called home. Can this hardened criminal look the other way, or will honor drive a wedge between him and the brotherhood that embraced him?