by Davida Lynn
After an hour, all three men were talked out. Raven didn’t have anything to add. Politics wasn’t her thing. She hadn’t worked with many people outside of her brother, and when she did, she tended to take the lead.
Since no one had come up with a better plan, Trask offered, “Let’s just wait until we hear what bail is and go from there.”
Tanner and Gunner nodded. Raven’s thoughts on loyalty hit home now. Their president was behind bars because of something she had done. If ever there was a time to prove her loyalty and dedication to the group, it was then.
The idea hit her hard, but she managed to keep it to herself. The last thing she wanted to do was offer a solution only to have it pulled out from under her. It sounded like a surefire way to get the entire club to hate her, but if it worked, she’d be golden.
The four bikers closed up the bar and rode off in separate directions. Tanner was tasked with holding onto the cash that they'd need to spring Bear. Trask was riding to his mother's. Gunner was going back to bed, and Raven needed to do some thinking.
Instead of heading back into town, she rode south. At the rate she was going, she expected never to be voted into full membership. With little traffic, she let the bike take her away from her problems, as it often did. It gave her moments of peace, and sometimes moments of clarity.
Her French braid bounced against her back as she headed toward Allan’s place. Sometimes the wind carried it up to her shoulders before changing its mind and throwing it back again. As usual, the throaty exhaust was more calming to her than the waves of the ocean or a scented candle.
After filling up her tank in downing an ice-cold Coke, Raven headed back in the town. She hoped the trip would be long enough so that when she got back to Bakersfield, the club would have some news. She was well back into the city limits when she realized she wasn't driving to her house. Some part of her subconscious was taking her to Allan's.
It was a long shot, and she knew it. She knew it would test her fragile relationship with Allan, and it would put her in debt to a powerful man on the opposite side of the law. He wanted something she wasn’t willing to give. Regardless, there was no other option. Raven hated owing people, but sometimes to solve an immediate problem, you had to schedule another one for down the road.
When Raven killed the engine in Allan's driveway, she could hear him working in the backyard. The rising and falling revs of a weed eater led her back and through a gate.
Allan wore only athletic shorts as the midday sun coded his well-tanned skin. With his back to Raven, she guessed he hadn't heard her pull up. She savored her last few moments of peace, taking in the hot police officer’s body.
She watched the muscles of his back twist and contort as he worked the yard. Just a year older than her, Allan looked like he was in his mid-thirties. Already a hint of gray at the temples, he passed for an older man. When she chose to let her guard down with him, she poked fun about that.
As he trimmed around a tree, he saw her and throttled down the small motor. Giving her a nod, he sat down the weed eater with the engine idling. He walked toward her and wiped sweat from his forehead.
"You ran off in a hurry this morning," he said. "What's up?"
She let out an exasperated sigh. Raven’s pride was screaming inside her, but practicality screamed back. There was no other option. "Allan, I hate to do this. I need a favor."
They didn't have a “trade favors” type of relationship, so Allan motioned toward the house with a curious eye. "Sure, sure. Tell me what's going on."
"How in the hell would I do that?"
Raven took a drink of iced tea. "I have no idea. That's your area of expertise, not mine." She tried to keep the poison out of her words, but she was fired up. Allan was the only idea she had, and she knew that she had to play her cards right.
"I can't just let someone go. He's probably already been before the judge, got his bail decided, and they've scheduled pre-trial."
"I don't just need you to let him go, Allan. I need the charges dropped. No bail, no pre-trial, no trial at all. I need it erased." It was a huge ask. Raven knew it. She also knew she didn’t have much to offer him. She didn’t know if sex would be enough to get this done.
“There’s a lot of people involved in this. It’s not as simple as hitting a delete key.” Allan hated mixing his personal life with his work life. Raven was already problematic enough, running with a club that was known to be corrupt, violent, and filled with scum. The co-workers that knew about Allan and Raven’s friendship had warned him often. He heard them, but he did nothing. There was something about her that he couldn’t resist. She was magnetic, and he wanted what he couldn’t have.
She smiled. It was in his voice. His argument was faltering already. “What do you need from me? What do you need in return?”
“Fuck, Raven. I don’t know.” She could hear his gears turning. “I could make this all disappear without anything pointing back to me right away, but I’d need something big to make it worthwhile. Something to make all of this worthwhile.” He mused for a moment as Raven watched.
She knew what he meant. She knew it, and it ate her up inside. Raven swallowed hard, “Get it done, and then we’ll talk.”
Trask was at his parents’ house. His mother, Faith, had made tea for them, but it was sitting in the kettle between them untouched and cooling in a hurry.
Over the years, Faith had done a great deal to keep the aging process at bay. She looked ten years younger than her age anytime she stepped out the front door. As she sat with her son in the dining room, however, it was as if the years caught up to her. Crow’s feet and lines on her forehead seemed to have grown overnight. Her roots were showing, and she hadn't run a brush through her hair.
For more than twenty years, Faith remembered Bear’s time in prison with vivid clarity. She remembered the empty feeling, the empty bed, everything about her life done solo.
When the sheriff's department burst through the door into their bedroom to pick Bear up, she had screamed. They had been in a deep sleep, and she thought at first it was a nightmare.
Bear had lain a hand on her cheek and with a gentle voice calmed her down. Tears streamed down her face, but her expression turned to stone. They were taking her man. That was the only thing running through her mind. She would stay by his side forever; against the police or anyone else that came between them.
As Trask watched her, his phone chimed. He pulled it out and checked the message. "Fifty grand. What a fuckin’ joke.”
He slammed his hand down onto the table, rattling the tea kettle. His mother seemed to take no notice, so he reached across the table and took one of her hands. "Faith, it's all right. We've got the cash. We'll get him out as soon as we head to the courthouse. Gunner and Tanner are already looking for a better lawyer, and will get this all cleared up. Bear’s not gonna serve time. He’s gonna be home tonight. Trust me.”
She looked up at him, but there was nothing in her eyes. It was like he was speaking a foreign language.
Trask had to be drastic. He needed his mother’s attention, so he used a word that he hated. “Mom?”
“Hm?”
“Did you hear me? We’re gonna get this shit all cleared up. I’ll get Bear out today. I promise.”
She managed a polite smile. “I heard you. Why don’t you head back to the club? I’ll be all right.”
“Are you sure?”
Faith nodded. “The Sons need you more than I do right now. I’m sure.”
Trask kissed his mother. She gave him a loving look that he rarely saw. They both resented the fact that it took major problems to bring the family together.
Trask rode back toward Los Bandoleros, too focused on the problem at hand to worry about safety. He was on the phone with Gunner.
“Technically, we only need ten percent of bail, but then we’d have to go through a bondsman.”
“What’s the advantage there?”
Trask recited what he had quickly skimmed and
memorized from his phone. “Basically, the bondsman promises Bear will show up to court. If he doesn’t, they send a bounty hunter. I know it’s shitty to open this up and get more people involved, but I don’t think it’s a great idea just letting California know that the Sons can pull fifty grand out of a hat at a moment’s notice.”
Gunner agreed. “Makes sense. All right. I’ll get on the phone and come up with some bondsmen. We can have Bear sprung by tonight.”
“Rock on, brother. I’ll be back at the clubhouse in fifteen.”
Trask ended the call and reached behind him, sliding the phone into his saddlebag. As he rode, he missed the text from Raven. Leave Bear where he is. I’ve got this.
Trask saw the text when he arrived at the bar. He stared at it, wondering what in the hell that girl was up to. How the hell was she planning on getting Pops out of jail?
He felt like texting back and reminding her that this wasn’t a problem that could be solved with violence. They weren’t going to put chains around his barred window and pull the cell wall off. They weren’t going in guns blazing to free Bear. Trask decided to do something he rarely did, especially with prospects: he decided to trust Raven. If she could get Bear out, that’d be a fuckload of brownie points for her. If she didn’t, it would be a fuckload easier to give her the steel-toed boot.
He found Gunner in the back office. He was leaning over the desk on the phone with someone. “…All right. If we came down right now, how long do you think all the paperwork would take?”
Gunner looked up, hearing Trask sink into a chair opposite him. Gunner raised a finger implying he was nearly done. Trask dragged his thumb across his throat. Gunner nodded.
The secretary on the other end was still talking, but Gunner cut her off. “Gotcha. Well, we’ll figure out what we’re gonna do and get back with you. Thanks, sweetheart. You’ve been a helluva help.” He killed the call and turned to Trask. “Changed our minds?”
Trask looked bewildered. “Raven said to leave him where he was.”
“And why the fuck are we listening to that prospect bitch? I’m sick of her walking in like she owns the place, Trask.”
Trask was as hard on Raven as any of the Sons, but not in that moment. He understood Gunner’s point of view just the same. Most of the bikers in the club thought she was trying to take over.
“I get it. I really do. For a prospect, she’s reaching way over her paygrade.”
“Fuckin’-A.”
Gunner was a hothead, but he understood reason. If something was explained to him just right, he’d go for it hook, line, and sinker. Trask was listening to Raven because he believed in her. He saw something in her that most of his brethren lacked. Gunner was one of them, so Trask lied. “If she fails, we bail him tomorrow and kick her out at the same time. If she succeeds, we save five grand. Win-win. What’s your deal with her? Aren’t you the only one with money on her passing the tests?”
Gunner nodded. “I live dangerously. I’m the only one betting on her to win. It’s a longshot, but I’m the only one making it.”
Trask read Gunner’s face. Anyone could have read it: pure joy.
Fifty thousand dollars. In some ways, Bear was proud of that number. He was furious in other ways, but he decided to focus on the pride. He had made himself into a powerful man in Southern California, and the price of his bail was proof of that.
He had worked hard for more than twenty years at making a good life for himself and Faith. He’d worked hard to fulfill the promises that he’d made to her when he got out of prison. The first few years were rough, and there were more than a few occasions when they thought the club would collapse in on itself.
Bear knew with a good lawyer, the charges could get dropped before it even went to court. He was already planning to countersue. He knew enough about the legal system to exploit it. The Rising Sons had the money to wait out someone like Earl McFadden. Six months of fees to the courts and lawyers would have him dropping his case in a heartbeat. The Sons were worth something in the range of three million dollars, and if need be, Bear could get access to nearly half of that in cash.
He leaned back against the cinder block cell wall and waited for the Rising Sons to bail him out. And waited. And waited.
The guard brought him a simple grilled cheese and a Coke at six that evening. Bear had sat and listened to the sounds of the drunk in the cell next to him get released, and someone had posted bail for the wife-beater next to the guard’s station. He slept in the afternoon, but it was restless, and he felt worse upon waking up.
He’d been offered his phone call, but he declined. Bear saw it as a weakness. He knew they’d come, but it could have been sooner. Trask had access to Bear’s personal wealth through Faith. There was far more than five grand in cash at home, and way more than that at the club. That thought got to Bear, until he realized that they may have been playing a game for show.
If the club took a few days to get the money together, no one would bat an eye, but if they showed up ready to pay the full amount, Kern County and California might start digging. It wouldn't be the end of the world, but it would distract Bear and the club from the real problem: Earl McFadden. He had to be dealt with, and if the Sons kept out of the public light, that would make things easier.
He ate his bland dinner in silence. He watched the sun trace its arc across the sky, and soon the shadow turned the deep orange of the security lights on outside his narrow window.
Twenty two years since he’d last slept on a bunk. Bear wasn’t looking forward to it. He decided that if they didn’t come to bail him out by noon, he’d have to make a few calls.
He lay awake long into the night. The guard had changed three times that day, but the TV never turned off. The sounds of movies and annoying commercials droned on as he struggled to get comfortable. It was hard enough on his soft mattress at home, but the cot was making him feel every ache and hurt he’d acquired over the years.
Sometime after three in the morning exhaustion took over, and Bear drifted into a bleak, colorless sleep.
“Rivers. Get up!”
Bear shot straight up in bed, his muscles reminding him that he wasn't a young man anymore. He laid a firm hand on his lower back and tried to ease his heart down from its rocket pace.
“Christ, you tryna kill me before I can stand trial? Fuck off, pig.” Bear tried to live a life separate from the police altogether, but being dragged kicking and screaming from sleep didn’t have him thinking clearly. He regretted his words the second they left his mouth. He rubbed his eyes and spoke without facing the guard. “Sorry. Thought I was still dreaming.”
“Mmhm. I’d love to turn that dream into a nightmare, you piece of shit, but you’re not my problem anymore. You’re outta here.” The guard leaned back against the wall, waiting for Bear to stand up and get his shit together.
“Who posted bail? Nah, it doesn’t matter who posted, so long as I sleep on a real bed tonight.” Bear stood up, freezing halfway when his back found an extra sore position.
“No one posted bail. The charges were dropped.”
Bear grunted a reply. “Even better.” He forced his body to straighten up. “Goddamn. Point me to the nearest Asian massage parlor.”
“Stop wasting my goddamn time, Rivers.”
The guard unlocked the door and escorted Bear back to processing. He collected his belt, shoelaces, wallet, cell, and cut. He gave them a wave that all parties knew meant “fuck you” and he walked outside.
Shielding his eyes from the sun, Bear looked around. It was a Monday morning, and traffic was light. He pulled up Trask in his phone and hit send.
His son answered. “Yeah?”
“Someone coming to get me, or what?”