by Grey, Blair
“Sheriff still snooping around?” I asked. “Did he try to raid the place for drugs again?”
“No, but he’s been checking in. He’s been by the clubhouse every day since last Monday.”
“Shit,” I said, shaking my head. “What trumped-up charges has he had now?”
“I don’t think he’s looking for anything in particular,” Ray said, shrugging. “I think he’s just making sure we can’t do anything for the time being. As soon as we start pulling money in there, for any reason, he’s going to start asking questions. I think as soon as he gets a group of us in there again, he’ll find some reason to arrest us all.”
“So what are we going to do?” I asked. “If we do anything physical to the sheriff himself, it’s going to put a huge target on our backs. Might even draw the attention of some of the higher-ups, from outside Las Cruces.”
“It would,” Ray agreed, nodding his head. “And unfortunately, I haven’t figured out any way to buy him out. He must have some sort of price, but whatever it is, he’s making sure I don’t know it.” He paused. “But if he were distracted by something else, he wouldn’t have as much time to come sniffing around our clubhouse.”
I frowned, thinking that over. “So you’re asking us not to attack the sheriff directly but to make some other trouble in the city? Trouble that can’t be traced back to us?” It would be a risky move, and it didn’t seem like one that Ray would normally suggest.
“No, you misunderstand me,” Ray said, shaking his head and leaning forward. “We don’t need to make more trouble; we just need to make sure that the sheriff is aware of all the trouble that currently exists here. We need to make sure he’s more interested in what the Unknowns are up to than what we’re up to.”
I paused and then sighed. “I don’t know, from the way the sheriff has been coming after us, it almost seems like he’s in with the Unknowns,” I said slowly. “That anonymous tip that we might have drugs in the clubhouse? Where else would that have come from except the Unknowns? We know that they want to take us down; what easier way to do that than to pay off the sheriff and get him to lock us all up?”
“I don’t think so,” Ray said, shaking his head. “I started gathering information about the sheriff when he first came to town, remember? He really does seem to care what the voters think of him. I think the local businesses are playing into his pockets more than anyone else.”
“It could be that,” I agreed, thinking it over. And getting the sheriff on our side would be a nice way to solve our problem with the Unknowns. Imagine if we didn’t have to mess around with them at all, if we could just get law enforcement to go after them.
“Have you heard anything from the Unknowns?” Ray asked. “Any new information?”
I shook my head. “I’ve been laying low,” I told him. It wasn’t a lie. I just wasn’t about to tell him why.
Ray nodded approvingly, though. “Good,” he said. “The last thing I need is you getting on the wrong side of the sheriff right as we’re about to make a move.”
“How are we going to get the sheriff to go after them, though?” I asked, munching on a couple of chips. “We can’t exactly tell him that they’re doing something wrong around town, or else he’ll consider it to be an admission of our own guilt, won’t he?”
“I’m working with some of the shopkeepers who are on our side,” Ray told me. “Eric Venler, in particular.” Eric had been a not-quite member of Red Eyes for at least as long as I’d been in the club. He was a little older than me and owned one of the local businesses. A tough guy, and a good mechanic. We did a lot of business with him, and it was in his best interest to help Ray out, even if he hadn’t been a close personal friend of his.
“What are they going to do?” I asked, still not understanding. It seemed like, again, we weren’t doing anything.
But Ray’s eyes gleamed. “Well, it turns out the Unknowns have been pretty indiscriminate in who they’ve been putting pressure on,” he said. “My hope is that if some of the local businesses start going to the sheriff complaining about the pressure they’re getting from the Unknowns, pressure that’s worse than anything we’ve ever put on them, then the sheriff will have no choice but to listen to their complaints and go after the other club.”
“Makes sense,” I said, seeing the brilliance in that plan. It just might work.
Unless the sheriff really was in thick with the Unknowns. Then he might just use it to further fuel his crusade to push Red Eyes out of town. I supposed only time would tell.
Suddenly, I looked over Ray’s shoulder, my eyes narrowing. “Is that Lex?” I hissed. “No, it can’t be.” Surely the leader of the Unknowns wouldn’t just happen to drop by the same place that Ray and I were having lunch, would he? And he wouldn’t be stupid enough to come there on purpose, either.
Would he?
But sure enough, Lex swaggered over to our table, looking like he didn’t care who in the world saw him talking to us.
For the leader of a biker gang—one that was trying to take over Las Cruces especially—Lex wasn’t much. He wasn’t a very big man, and I couldn’t help thinking that his pinched features and pointed nose just made him look like a rat. He had tattoos all along his arms, but he wasn’t particularly muscular. And as Will and Ray had found out when they’d gone to their first “meeting” with him and his buddies, Lex not only didn’t believe in fighting fair, but he wasn’t willing to lift a finger to help out the members of his club when they were losing the fight.
Ray was the only brand of leader I’d ever seen, and even though his high-and-mighty principles of fair fighting tended to get on my nerves sometimes, I just couldn’t imagine following someone like Lex. At least I knew Ray would always have my back until he drew his last breath.
“Look who we have here,” Lex said sweetly, leaning against the wall next to our booth. “Hey, Ray, how have things been going for you lately? How’s business?”
Ray’s lips tightened fractionally, but it was more with annoyance, I could tell, rather than actual anger. He sat back, looking utterly relaxed. Obviously, the two of them weren’t going to fight right there, not in the middle of the restaurant, but fuck, I just wished there were something I could do to wipe that stupid smirk off Lex’s face.
“Things have been good for us. Less good for you, from what I’ve heard,” Ray said, his voice sugary-sweet.
Lex raised an eyebrow at him, though. “Business has been good? Really?” He narrowed his eyes. “I heard that you guys were taking some time off. But I guess a little vacation is good for everyone, isn’t it?”
Ray rolled his eyes. “At least we have some business to take time off from,” he said, a pointed jab.
Lex snickered. “Don’t let the sheriff hear you say that,” he said. “He’ll want to know exactly what sort of business you’re involved in. Except that—oh wait—he already knows that, doesn’t he? I hear he’s been checking out the clubhouse all week, making sure that you’re not bringing in drugs.”
“You know very well that we’re not involved in that sort of thing,” I said frostily, no longer able to sit back and just watch the exchange. Lex’s eyes flickered over to me, and I saw real anger flash in them for the first time. I wondered if he knew that I was the one who had gone by their hideout, that I was the one who had knocked his guy unconscious. If so, good. I wanted him to know a threat when he saw one.
“You probably sent the sheriff yourself, didn’t you?” I continued. “Couldn’t root us out yourself, so you had to get him to do your dirty work.”
“Marcus,” Ray said in a low, warning tone. I hated it, but I obediently fell silent. As much as I hated to admit it, I knew that Lex was right; the last thing we needed was to be too vocal about our business. You never knew who was listening.
Lex shook his head. “Anyway, business is better for us than you might think. I know you haven’t had a chance to check in with any of your businesses lately since you’re too worried about what the sheriff will thi
nk.” He smirked. “But we’re taking good care of them all. And in return, your old businesses are taking good care of us. It seems that plenty of them were ready to pay their monthly dues to us instead, especially once we gave them a little bit of a cut. You were charging pretty exorbitant rates, given the amount of protection you… weren’t offering them.”
“Bullshit,” Ray snapped, anger finally getting the better of him. Even though our business here in Las Cruces was just that, business, Ray had been doing business around the city for long enough that he viewed most of the business owners more like extended family than as actual customers. He’d be pissed to hear that the Unknowns were messing with them.
But what were we going to do about it? The sheriff would be on our asses in a second if we tried to fight it. Our best bet was to do what Ray had suggested: get the sheriff looking at the Unknowns instead of us. The problem was that was going to take time.
And besides, there was no guarantee that it would work. The longer Lex talked, the surer I was that the sheriff was in cahoots with them.
Had the whole election somehow been rigged, or had the Unknowns managed to pay the sheriff off before we had gotten to him? Neither seemed very likely, but I just didn’t know anymore.
“You’re not going to get away with all of this,” Ray said confidently, folding his arms across his chest. “There will be retribution.”
Lex laughed. “Big words for someone who’s shown he doesn’t have a spine left in him,” he taunted. He leaned against the end of our table, both palms flat on the smooth surface as he leaned in close to Ray. “Face it, Ray Thompson. We’re going to bury you. Literally.” He glanced over at me, a threat in his gaze, and then straightened up. “Anyway, it was nice catching up with you. Don’t wait too long before you get back in the game.”
With that, he turned and strode from the restaurant, all the other patrons carefully looking away from him.
“Fuck,” Ray muttered under his breath.
“We’ve got to do the rounds,” I said firmly, shaking my head. “Someone’s got to go around to all of our businesses and see which ones have gone off and paid their dues to the Unknowns.”
“You know we can’t do that,” Ray said, scowling out the window as we watched Lex disappear down the street.
“Why the fuck not?” I asked. “Because the sheriff might find out? Tch. At this rate, there won’t be anything left of Red Eyes even if the sheriff doesn’t find out. We can’t just sit back and do nothing.”
“We’re not going to do nothing,” Ray said peevishly. He finally looked back at me, his gaze sharp and commanding. "We’re going to figure out how to get the sheriff off our backs. And then we’re going to deal with the mess that the Unknowns have created.”
I wanted to shake him. To point out that his plan wasn’t going to work. We didn’t have the time to sit around waiting for the local businesses to complain so that the sheriff would turn his gaze away from us. We needed to act now.
But the only thing I could think of, the only course of action, was to go after the Unknowns with our fists, and that would only get us all locked up in the slammer. No, I needed a better plan than that first.
I just wished that I could think of one.
28
Leila
2 weeks later
Monday
Things were slow at the ER that day, as they often were on Mondays. I took my time filling out the paperwork from each visitor, but there still wasn’t much to do. Fortunately, that was when Rachel showed up. “Hey, I was thinking maybe you could sneak away and we could get some lunch together,” she said. “Gavin’s with his dad today, having ‘guy time’ apparently, so I’m all on my own.” Rachel rolled her eyes at that, but she looked amused.
I laughed. “How’s that going, having him back?” I asked.
“Gosh, it’s great,” Rachel said, but I could tell there was something she wasn’t telling me. When I raised an eyebrow at her, she finally sighed. “We still haven’t talked about him staying home more often,” she admitted. “I want to just enjoy him being home for a little bit first.”
I shook my head. “You know, if you don’t talk to him about it soon, he’s going to have all his trips planned for the next six months and you’re not going to have a chance to argue,” I pointed out.
“I know,” Rachel said quietly. “Can we not talk about it? Can we go for lunch?”
“I already took my lunch break,” I told her. “But there’s nothing going on at the moment, so I could do coffee in the break room if that works for you.”
“Sounds good,” Rachel said. “I just needed to get out of the house, you know? It feels so quiet whenever I don’t have Gavin around.”
I laughed. “I think what that means is you need to find a hobby.”
“But as soon as I find a hobby, I’m going to have to take care of Gavin all the time again,” she sighed.
I hated how down she got about her husband being gone for business all the time. I really wished I could say something, but it needed to come from Rachel herself. And she was too nervous about having that conversation, for whatever reason.
I tried to take her mind off it. “You know, I got my implant taken out so I could get artificially inseminated, and we’re almost done with the final round of bloodwork,” I told her. “I’ve got another meeting with the clinic tomorrow, and I could be inseminated and well on my way to becoming a mother in, like, a week!”
“Oh wow, that’s crazy,” Rachel said, and sure enough, she perked up a little. “So you’ve picked the father and everything by this point?”
“Yeah,” I told her. “Remember that one that I sent you, that Irish guy?”
“Dark curly hair and blue eyes, ooh mama,” Rachel said, smirking at me.
“I’d love for my little angel to have blue eyes,” I said, smiling just thinking about it. “Wouldn’t that be so cute?”
“It would,” Rachel agreed. She shook her head. “I know I was super against the idea of it originally, but I’m glad to see how happy it’s all making you.”
“Yeah, I really am happy. Excited,” I told her. “The thing is, this just feels right. Like, I’m the right age to be doing this, and this is the way that I want to do it. Even if I got married to someone eventually, I wouldn’t want to have to deal with what might happen in the relationship goes south, you know? Call me selfish, but this means my little baby will be mine forever. Or at least until they hit puberty.”
Rachel laughed. “Yeah, I get that,” she said. She shook her head. “I still hope you find the perfect man someday so that you don’t have to worry about any of that stuff anyway, but I’m glad you’re excited about this. And you’re going to make a great mom.”
“I’ve had some good practice,” I joked. “What with Gavin and everything.”
“Hey, anytime you want to take him off my hands and get a little more practice to yourself, you’re welcome to him,” Rachel said.
“But then you would definitely have to have some sort of hobby because you couldn’t just come bother me at work!” I pointed out.
We both laughed. But Rachel still looked serious about something. “How does Marcus feel about all of this?” she finally asked.
I sighed and looked away from her. “We’re not really at that point in our relationship.”
Rachel frowned. “What do you mean? I thought things were going well between the two of you.”
“They are,” I told her. It had been just over two weeks since the fundraiser that he’d helped out at. Three weeks since we had been on our first date. We’d hung out a few more times, and we’d continued sleeping together. I hadn’t brought up the topic of children again, though. It just didn’t seem right.
The problem was, I could tell Marcus wasn’t interested in having children. It wasn’t the way he had pictured his life going; I had to respect that. He had left open the possibility that maybe someday he would want to have children, but I wanted to have children now. I felt like I had be
en waiting ages already, focusing on my career. It was time to make some changes. To start that next chapter. If he wasn’t ready for his own next chapter, I couldn’t force it on him.
“So if things are going well between the two of you, don’t you think that this is something that you need to talk to him about?” Rachel prodded. “It’s not exactly going to be something that he can ignore. And what if he’s not on board with it? What if he wants to break up with you over this?”
“Then he wasn’t the right guy for me,” I said, shrugging one shoulder. I paused. “I am going to talk to him about it. But I wanted to make sure I knew what I wanted to do first. I didn’t want him to talk me out of it. As much as I like him, I’m not ready to start planning my future based on what he wants.”
“Why not?” Rachel asked.
“We don’t know one another well enough, first of all,” I pointed out. “We’ve only been dating for a couple weeks now, and it’s been strictly casual. I like him, a lot actually, but I don’t know what kinds of things he’s got going on in his real life.”
“And you’re not going to find out about those things unless you guys start trusting each other and maybe making some sort of commitment to one another. Have you even had the conversation yet about whether you’re boyfriend and girlfriend or whatever?”
“Do we really have to have that conversation?” I groaned. “I thought that was something that only high schoolers, or maybe college students, did.”
Rachel shook her head sadly. “If you haven’t defined your relationship yet, then it’s not going to ever be a real relationship.”
I wanted to get angry with the way that she said that as if she was the wisest sage in the universe. But deep down, I knew she was right.