Whiskey Neat (The Uncertain Saints MC Book 1)

by Lani Lynn Vale

  I’d yet to see why this little stretch of highway even needed a Texas Ranger, seeing as the area had about five hundred people total, and not a single city hall among the four towns that I covered.

  Uncertain was the quietest of the four towns, which was why I’d chosen it over the larger ones.

  My soul needed time to heal after the divorce from hell.

  Then I needed it even more, six months later, after going to the crime scene where Tanner’s body had been discovered.

  The peace here was like none other.

  Seeing Tanner like that, broken and so damn cold had marked me in a way that I knew I’d never recover from.

  God, I could still remember the way his cold skin felt in my hands, how it felt like ice.

  I viciously shut that line of thought down.

  There would be no going down that path tonight.

  “That was something,” an amused male voice said from behind me.

  I looked up to find three men dressed in leather at my back.

  I’d heard them walk up, but I didn’t think they’d bother me while I was taking care of the other asshole.

  “Yeah,” I said, hauling the man up and shoving him back into his car.

  He was knocked out cold and probably wouldn’t remember this in the morning.

  Not that I cared if he remembered or not.

  The fucker deserved to know what would happen to him if I caught him giving it to a woman who kept saying no.

  A woman, who I noticed, was no longer there.

  A woman who looked quite a bit like the red head from the sex store yesterday.

  “We haven’t seen you lately,” the closest man said.

  I raised a brow at him, getting back on my bike.

  “Yeah?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” the man closest said. “We want you to come to church today. We have a few decisions we need to make.”

  I laughed.

  It wasn’t a nice laugh, either.

  “Yeah, I’ll see what I can do about that,” I said, walking away from them.

  I hadn’t been back to the Saints clubhouse in months…since Tanner’s death.

  Which was, if I had to admit, why I was hesitating to go back.

  Tanner had loved the Uncertain Saints clubhouse.

  He’d loved watching the bikes.

  Loved the boys.

  Loved the water only a few hundred yards away.

  He loved everything about Uncertain, Texas, and hated living with his mom, my ex-wife, Noreen.

  But in the State of Texas, it was standard protocol for all children under the age of seven to stay with their mothers, even if their mothers were cheating pieces of shit who would do absolutely anything to stick it to their fathers.

  I knew the boys were hurting, just like I was.

  Knew they missed my boy nearly as much as I did.

  Which was why I finally grew a pair and went to the clubhouse, even though it nearly tore me in half to do so.

  Everybody there had a story.

  A piece of their life that fucked them up so bad that they wanted to retreat into the darkness.

  Which was what our club had grown into.

  A group of men who all had their own sob stories.

  Each of us had something in common.

  Grief, anger and sorrow.

  We were all tired of our lot in life…tired of the way the law handled things, or in some cases, didn’t handle things.

  It was why the six of us had formed the club.

  We were a team, bound together by grief and loss.

  Mine story hadn’t been so bad when I’d started. Just a pissed off man that lost his wife to a piece of shit. Now, though…well let’s just say my life was definitely darker after Tanner’s death.

  The first person I saw as I entered into what the men had started calling ‘Church’ was Peek, our unofficial ‘president’ of The Uncertain Saints.

  He was the owner of three tattoo shops in our area, he was forty-four and a big pain in my ass.

  He never let me spend a night alone, and was always there, even when I didn’t want him to be.

  The second person I saw was Wolf.

  His story was just as bad as mine.

  His wife and unborn son were killed by a serial killer who preyed on cops and their families.

  His best friend had succumbed to the same serial killer, and now Wolf was raising the best friend’s son, whom he’d adopted just a few short months ago.

  The last person in the room was Mig.

  His real name was Vitaly, but when he was in the Navy and flying, he’d been nicknamed ‘Mig’ because he was half Russian and a mean motherfucker.

  A mig was an enemy aircraft-one that nobody liked to see. Since he wasn’t nice to anybody, he was deemed Mig by his colleagues shortly after arriving.

  Mig found it funny, not that he’d admit it, though.

  Mig wasn’t much of a talker.

  He was a man who knew what needed to be done and just did it….and sometimes showed you how to accomplish it.

  Which was what I liked about the man.

  He didn’t waste my time with niceties, only got the job done and got out.

  “We’re waiting for Casten, and Ridley, then we can start,” Peek said, kicking back in his chair and taking a sip of his beer.

  I nodded, taking a seat beside Mig and reaching into the cooler that was built into the middle of the table, and grabbing my own beer.

  I’d not had one in a long time, and as I took a sip of the cold brew, I realized just how much I missed it.

  I’d been going for the harder stuff lately…the stuff that would take my mind off of the gaping hole in my chest quicker than a beer would.

  “Okay,” I said, crossing my arms and looking at the wood grained walls of the room.

  I counted the planks of wood as I waited for them to start, not really in the mood to do much more than enjoy my beer.

  “Booked your arrest today,” Ridley said as he came into the room, shaking his blonde hair out of his face as he did.

  His eyes were on me, and they were shining with barely contained laughter.

  “He told us that you helped him,” Ridley laughed. “It was the greatest thing in the world.”

  Ridley was a Sheriff’s deputy for Harrison County, the same county I was assigned to.

  He was how I’d met the rest of them, and a large part of the reason that I’d joined up with The Uncertain Saints.

  Before I’d loved the hell out of my bike, but I drove it out of necessity now since my wife was given my truck in the divorce settlement.

  She’d also taken all of my money and left me with barely a dollar to my name.

  I’d had to apply for a job as a Texas Ranger not only to get the fuck away from Noreen, but also to earn some extra cash since I was still expected to pay her a whack in child support.

  Child support that I no longer had to pay.

  “What happened?” Peek asked.

  I sighed. “Pulled him over for erratic driving. He was trying to force the girl in the car to give him head while he drove. She said no, so he hit her, which made him swerve so hard he nearly hit me.”

  “You saw the whole thing, didn’t you?” Peek asked.

  I nodded. “Every damn thing.”

  “Stupid fucker should’ve looked beside him before he did that. That’s what I would’ve done,” Ridley said.

  I tossed him a look, which he laughed at.

  “I meant if she was giving me head,” he amended. “I wouldn’t be having anybody watch my woman do that.”

  Ridley was married, and happily in love with his wife.

  His dead wife.

  He’d met her right out of high school and they’d married about a year later.

  She’d died during a home invasion, and Ridley still acted as though she were alive.

  He didn’t date.

  D
idn’t go out willingly.

  Didn’t stay out late on the rare occasion that he did happen to go out.

  “Yeah, well I pulled the little fucker over and beat the shit out of him…accidentally. And his woman took off,” I explained. “Told the guy I knew where he lived if he wanted to file a complaint.”

  I wasn’t a good guy.

  I was a cop…but I was pretty sick and tired of our supposed justice system.

  The justice system was flawed.

  Cops are held back by rules that don’t apply to the criminals, good guys go down for crimes they didn’t commit, and bad guys walk away from crimes they did commit on bullshit technicalities because the prosecution can’t make the charges stick. Which was what was going on with my son’s murderer.

  My wife’s new husband had gotten tangled up in a bunch of shit and my son had paid for it.

  And what did Dick get?

  A slap on the fucking wrist.

  A reprimand.

  Why?

  Because Dick had money, and a lot of it.

  Dick was an ‘upstanding businessman’ and he didn’t do anything ‘wrong.’

  I called bullshit, and I was now taking it upon myself to dole out retribution to the men and women that I knew wouldn’t get into the system.

  And with the help of some of the men in my MC, we’d actually done quite a good job at it.

  We solved and tried the cases that the fucking system wouldn’t take care of.

  Lack of evidence didn’t matter to us.

  What mattered to us was guilt and innocence.

  I didn’t give a flying fuck if there was no evidence to tie a rapist to the rape scene.

  “Speaking of which,” Casten said as he strolled in, a large rectangular box in his hands. “I found some shit you need to see. Shit that I think you’ll be interested in.”

  Casten sat the box on the table and flipped it open, revealing two AR-15’s that had the serial numbers filed off them.

  “Where’d you find those?” Wolf asked.

  “Bought them,” Casten said. “Off of one of those garage sale sites. Look familiar?”

  It took me a while to see it, but the moment I did I came right out of my chair…then nearly lost my lunch.

  They were the guns that had taken down my son in the drive by shooting.

  I’d studied the school surveillance video feed of my son’s death…of his murder…hundreds of times.

  I knew the bodies of the men who’d shot my baby. Knew the guns that they used.

  Knew the area directly surrounding where my child was murdered.

  Knew everything I could from just a video.

  And these guns were the ones that had been used to shoot my boy.

  “Who sold it to you?” I asked roughly.

  “Some kid, all of eighteen,” he answered. “She had no clue about what they even were. Said her father asked her to drop off what was in the box and to make sure she got eighteen hundred dollars for it,” he answered.

  “Got her address?” I asked carefully.

  Casten smiled. “Of course,” he said.

  My eyes closed, and by the time I opened them again, after counting to a hundred, the box was closed and moved to the side of the table.

  “You’re not giving that to the cops,” I said.

  Casten gave me a look. “No. I’m not.”

  We’d all lost our way from the justice system under different circumstances. What bound us together, though, was inherently good men we all saw in each other, the good men we knew each other to be.

  We were men at the end of our ropes, pushed too far by an unfair, flawed justice system. We only wanted those who did wrong to be punished for their crimes.

  And I’m not talking petty theft or getting caught speeding.

  I’m talking about the types of crimes that guarantee the perpetrator a spot in hell.

  Drug dealing.

  Murder.

  Rape.

  Those were the crimes we were trying to fix.

  “I need the address,” I said hoarsely.

  Casten slid a piece of paper at me.

  “We’ll go when he gets home. The girl says he works in Jefferson as a mechanic,” Casten said. “Doesn’t get home until after eight in the evening.”

  I nodded.

  “You’ve got a date.”

  Before I could get up to leave, though, Peek stopped me with a raised hand.

  “You won’t go without us,” he ordered.

  My jaw clenched.

  “I won’t go without you,” I assured him.

  I was lying.

  I was going to go now. I was going to figure out any and all connections this man had to my ex-fucking wife and her douche of a husband, and I was going to make them all pay for what had happened to my son.

  One broken bone at a goddamned time if I had to.

  Chapter 3

  The beard made me do it.

  -Lenore’s last words

  Lenore

  I took walks at night when I couldn’t sleep.

  This night was no different.

  Working nearly every night, until a minimum of two in the morning, meant I had an unusual sleep pattern.

  Uncertain was a small town. Population five hundred.

  Although very beautiful, the town had a certain ‘feel’ to it.

  It wasn’t often that I could tell you just what that feel was, but tonight, I could almost taste the danger in the air.

  I had my dog, Doogan, with me.

  That didn’t help, though.

  There was something going on in my neighborhood, and I just knew I shouldn’t have come out tonight.

  “Come on, Doogan. Let’s go home,” I whispered, too afraid to make too much noise.

  Doogan suddenly stopped at my side, and I stopped with him.

  Doogan was my baby, even if he didn’t look much like a baby anymore at eighty pounds.

  He was as smart as a whip and beautiful to boot.

  He just wasn’t very fast, and when he didn’t want to go somewhere…he didn’t.

  Doogan is a Neapolitan Mastiff. He was already a good eighty pounds, and according to the vet, he wasn’t finished growing yet.

  I’d found him on the side of the road when he was just a newly born pup.

  These lonely highways were a popular place to abandon dogs, and I spent the majority of my time looking for them when I wasn’t working at my shop.

  I volunteered at the shelter two towns over, crossing over into Louisiana to do it.

  And it wasn’t unheard of for me to bring dogs with me when I went.

  Sadly, I couldn’t keep them all.

  I just couldn’t afford it.

  Doogan was bad enough when he required a fifty-pound bag of dog food a week.

  “Come on, Doogan,” I urged, giving his collar a tug.

  Doogan didn’t budge, which was why I had a front row seat as a man sailed over the railing of Mr. Marshall’s porch, and landed about ten feet away from where I was standing.

  “Oh, my God,” I breathed.

  I didn’t move, though, because the man was suddenly surrounded.

  Men in leather were everywhere…but the one man that held my attention was stomping down the porch steps and heading straight to the man on the ground.

  Griffin, the man who’d bought batteries from me just two days ago, was well and truly pissed.

  When his eyes swung to me, I didn’t know what to do.

  Should I run?

  Stay where I was?

  Question after question barreled through my mind, leaving me shaking in fear…and something else I wasn’t ready to admit to just yet.

  “Go home,” he ordered.

  I blinked, looking to my left and right to be sure he was talking to me.

  Since I didn’t see anyone else around me, I decided he was talking to me, but I just couldn’t get my legs to cooperate
out of fear.

  Not to mention that I would have to walk through the lot of them to get to my house.

  When I didn’t move fast enough, he issued the order again, only this time it was biting.

  “Go. Home,” he snapped.

  I turned on my heel and started walking, coming to a sudden stop when Doogan still refused to move.

  “Mother of God,” I whispered. “Come on Doog,” I whispered frantically. “Let’s go.”

  He did move, just not in the correct direction.

  No, he walked straight up to Griffin and licked his hand, a hand that was stuck out, not in invitation to approach, but instead to stop the dog from getting too close to him.

  “Can’t you control your fuckin’ dog?” He grated out angrily.

  Tears were stinging my eyes, because, by that point, I had the attention of not just Griffin, but the whole freakin’ lot of them.

  My heart was beating frantically in my chest as they watched me, and I just knew that if I didn’t get the hell out of there I’d get the hell beaten out of me…or worse.

  “Where do you live?” Griffin asked, taking a hold of Doogan’s leash.

  It slipped from my hands, and I watched in helpless horror as it did.

  And what did Doogan do?

  He freakin’ followed him!

  “Umm,” I whispered. “Three duplexes down from here.”

  “Be back,” Griffin said as he took my hand in his free one and started to walk me back to my house.

  The men returned their stares on the man they were circling, and I glanced over my shoulder just in time to see one of the big ones kick the poor guy on the ground next to his feet.

  He didn’t say a word, and neither did I.

  I was too scared.

  What if he beat the shit out of me?

  Raped me?

  What if…

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” Griffin growled, interrupting my inner diatribe.

  “I know,” I lied.

  He snorted. “Stop shaking. I said I wouldn’t harm you. I’m a cop.”

  Yeah, but good cops didn’t beat the shit out of people in the dark of night.

  So what did that make him?