by Nicole Fox
“Your friend doing okay?” he asked, his voice gruff and a little distant.
“Yeah,” I said. “She'll be fine.”
“So our vet tech did okay?”
I almost laughed, but I kept it bottled in. Instead, I just nodded curtly. “Yep. He did fine.”
We went into the meeting room, where Fed and Happy were already waiting for us.
“Alright men,” he said as we took our seats at the table. “Where do we go from here?”
He seemed at first glance like he was open to negotiation, and input from his men. But, from what I'd learned with just my short time here, his mind was made up. This was all a formality to him.
“We need to lay off Volkov,” Fed said. “That much is obvious.”
“Why's it obvious?” Koen asked, settling back into his chair. “He doesn't know it's us.”
Fed laughed and shook his head. “You mean last night wasn't a tip off that he did?”
Koen dismissed Fed's concerns with a wave of his hand. “Look, if Aleksey knew it was us, we'd have guys kicking in our doors, wouldn't we? I, for one, didn't have any goons whispering in Russian outside my bedroom door last night. Did you, Happy?”
Happy shook his head, smiling a little.
“I think he knows it's one group ripping him off. But, I bet last night was just their new security. And, besides, no one got a good look at us. Least, not anyone that could say anything.”
A somber moment descended on the room as the two other men recalled what Koen had done the night before, the two bodies they'd tossed out into the bayou to be either discovered by the cops, or eaten by gators.
“Still say it's risky,” Fed replied. “Happy?”
“Well,” Happy said, dragging the word out, “everything's pretty damn risky, when you get down to it, don'tcha think? I mean, we're ripping people off and shit, no matter which way you look at it. Back when we was doing electronics knock-overs with Koen's Pa, you still was worried about some trucker going all Shotgun Willie on you. Personally, if you might get shot either way, I'd rather get a fat payday for my troubles.”
Fed grumbled a little at Happy's support of Koen's plan, but he seemed to resign himself to it. The club was with their president, even if it was a bad idea.
But, strange thing was, I didn't think Fed was trying to wrench control away from Koen. At least not on purpose. He just seemed like he was cautious, and was trying to think of the safest way to keep the cash flowing in. No one wants to die, right?
Koen turned his attention to Fed. “How about we give it a month?” he asked. “Let things cool down, see if Aleksey picks up our trail or not.”
Fed grumbled a little as he considered his buddy's words. “Fine,” he said after a while, “a month. I'll agree to a month.”
Personally, a month was probably prudent. It would make Aleksey focus on other gangs, maybe, convince him to lower his guard a little. More importantly, though, I thought it would give me a chance to come up with another plan while I laid low and looked at my options. Of course, I had to make sure I didn't spend that month mooning over Koen's rugged face and hard body. Or, well, other hard things.
I had to remember to keep it all business from here on out.
“A month, then,” Koen said. “Jace, you got anything?”
I slowly shook my head. “A month seems reasonable,” I said. “Perfect, in fact.”
Just one more month, Tommy. Just one more month.
“Alright,” Koen said, nodding emphatically. “One month. And, we'll need it. I got a plan, and it might take a while to cook up. This time, though, we're gonna pull it off without a hitch.”
# # #
Koen
“Come on, Fed,” I said to my best friend as he rolled his eyes, “let's have a little optimism in the room here.”
Fed sighed and Happy grinned. Happy and I might not have been buddies, not the way Fed and I were, but he was at least always down for a good heist.
I'd come up with the plan on the ride into Club Hellfire, and I immediately felt ridiculous for not coming up with something like it sooner.
“Alright,” I began. “This one's easy. Doesn't involve the girls as bait, so we ain't got any innocents in the mix. The plan was good before, but it wasn't flexible enough to deal with any unexpected twists. This time, we're going to go straight for the source. We take out a guard at the port, and the driver, and we just drive that whole goddamn thing out of there. Knock 'em out, no killing, nothing like that.”
“Shit,” Fed and Jace both said at the same time. They both looked at each other and shook their heads.
I glanced over at them, one eyebrow raised. “Problem?”
Before they could answer, though, there was a knock at the meeting room door.
“Happy?” I asked, gesturing to the door with a nod.
Happy got up and answered the door while Fed started to detail his objections to the idea. “Dude, the Port Authority ain't someone to fuck around with. Ain't we getting into Federal shit on that?”
“Koen?” Happy asked. “Your grandpa's on the line for the club.”
That was strange. Grandpa Xavier never called here looking for me. Normally, I guess, he would have just called my cell phone, but I had to leave that out in the hallway so we could keep the room free of anything that could be a risk of being bugged.
“Dunno what he wants,” Happy said, “but Slash is saying he sounds fucking pissed.”
I got up from the table and went to leave the room. “Alright,” I said. “I'll talk to him. Just a minute, guys.”
I grabbed the phone from Slash, one of the lower guys in the club, and stepped away from the meeting room as Happy closed the door behind me.
“Grandpa?” I asked as I took the phone. “What's up?”
“Get your ass out to the house right fucking now,” he said, his voice hard and brittle, the words clipped and devoid of any of the belly-laughing chuckle it normally had. “We need to talk, and I know your phone probably isn't safe.”
Then, he just hung up on me without waiting for my response.
I pulled the handset away from my ear and looked disbelievingly at the phone. Grandpa had just cussed at me like I was a naughty teenage boy that had been busted skipping school. He'd never spoken to me like that before, not in my life. I knew it was bad, then. Real bad.
I gingerly hung up the phone and went back into the meeting room. “Jace,” I said, “we gotta go. Now.”
I told the guys I'd explain later and rushed Jace out of the room. We hopped on my bike and sped out to Grandpa Xavier's house. Jace was smart enough to keep her questions to herself as I wove through traffic at a breakneck speed, my hands so tight on the grips I was amazed I didn't end up with diamonds in my palms when I came to a halt in the driveway.
“What is this about?” Jace asked as we got off the bike.
“Dunno,” I said. “Grandpa's got something to tell me, and he couldn't do it on the phone. And, he sounds pretty pissed, too.”
“Great,” Jace said. Clearly, she didn't feel like getting yelled at today, either.
I led her inside as we entered the house without knocking. “Grandpa?” I called out.
“In the kitchen, Koen,” he shouted back, his voice just as angry as when we'd spoken on the phone earlier.
Jace and I exchanged a glance, one that said she'd cover me if I wanted to make a run for it. I shook my head a little bit, frowned, and we headed into the kitchen to join Xavier.
“Sit,” Xavier said as we entered the kitchen, his voice tightly wound. “Now.”
We both silently took a seat, the stools scraping on the tile like wretched claws on a gravestone. All you could hear was the air-conditioning blowing in the other room, and the slight wobble of a ceiling fan as it shook in its mounting.
“Got a call from someone I still knowing in the Bureau. There's footage of you at the Hilton the other night, the night Sven Morokov was shot to death. Front and center.”
I opened my
mouth to reply, but he just hushed me like a child.
“Don't you fucking say a word to me,” he said, his voice low and filled with unspoken threat, “unless it's to explain how in the goddamned fuck you got mixed up with the Wolf.”
I sighed, my mind already trying to figure out a way to explain this and keep Jace's hands clean in the whole affair. There wasn't any sense in her getting yelled at, or worse, so much worse, over this whole thing. “Okay,” I started. “I was there, with Fed, that much is true. But it's not what you think.”
Chapter Sixteen
Jace
I had to give credit where credit was due. Koen could hem and haw with the best of them.
“And, yeah,” he said, “we were on that floor. But, I've never like, you know, gotten myself wrapped up in something with the Wolf. That guy sounds too intense for me-”
I sighed loud enough to cut Koen off, then rolled my eyes. “Koen, stop fucking lying to your Pee-paw. He ain't gonna buy this shit.”
“What?” Koen asked. “I'm just telling him-”
“Look,” I said, rest a hand on his arm, “I appreciate it. I get what you're trying to do, what with keeping me out of this and all, but you need to tell him the truth.” My eyes swung back to Xavier Baldwin.
“The truth?” Xavier asked, crossing his arms over that big, happy belly of his.
“I killed Sven. Xavier, I was a prostitute, and Sven was my pimp. My brother Tomlin found me at the hotel somehow, showed up at my room. Sven found Tommy after I tried to hide him in the bathroom, and shot him. He dropped the gun, I picked it up and killed him with it.”
Xavier appraised me and my words, slowly and carefully, taking the measure of what I was saying.
“And no,” I said, beating him to the bunch, “I don't regret killing him. He would have killed me if I didn't get him first, especially after he found who Tomlin was.”
Xavier's lips were pinched shut, tight. He sucked in a deep breath and puffed out his upper and bottom lips, the air escaping in a sputtering wheeze. “It was you then?” he asked, nodding as if I'd already answered him.
“Yes,” I said. “It was self-defense, but I ran because I was scared. You're the first cop I ever met that I actually liked, Xavier. And when I ran, I bumped into your grandson out in the hallway, and he took me with him. That's how he got involved in this.”
The old, retired FBI agent kept nodding as if all the bricks were falling into place on this big wall of a case. “Still doesn't explain why my grandson's been lying to me about leading his daddy's old MC. Does it, Koen?”
Koen's face dropped and he sighed. “You know?”
“Know what? That you ain't just a goddamned bartender at Hellfire? That you're running the whole show?” He leaned forward, his eyes drilling into Koen's face. “Yeah. I fucking know.”
Koen sighed and looked away, his shoulders slumping a little bit under the admonishment. “Fine, yeah, you're right. Okay? I took over for Gator when he died.”
Xavier shook his head at his grandson. “And, I know you actually are tied up with Volkov Arms, but that you've been ripping them off for guns. FBI suspects it, at least, but I know it's true. Ain't it?”
Koen didn't say anything, just kept his stony silence.
My chest tightened a little as I watched the exchange unfold.
“Ain't it?” Xavier asked again, pressing him harder. More silence from Koen, and Xavier just sighed. “Well, since you ain't gonna deny it, guess I'll take it as truth then. I really wished you wouldn't follow after your father, Koen. Thought we'd done right by you, and got you raised right. Thought you knew no one ever got ahead by stealing from anyone.”
Koen sighed and looked away. Silence settled in over the kitchen.
I realized my shoulders were bunched up tight at the confrontation, my nerves wound and running thin.
“But,” Xavier said after a while, “the same person who told me about the video, they're looking at the Wolf right now.”
I perked up a little and leaned forward. “Looking at him?” I asked. “What do you mean?”
The retired FBI agent turned his attention back to me. “They're trying to take Aleksey Volkov down, knock him down a few pegs and bring him up on charges. Like they should've back when he first came into the country. But they need some help.”
“And?” Koen asked. “So what if they need help?”
“Well, you seem like you're in a unique position, son, to help this Agent McKesson out. She needs someone to help nail this guy to the wall.”
Koen barked out a dry laugh, clearly not amused by the whole situation, or his Grandpappy's idea about helping the FBI take Volkov down.
I sure as hell was, though. I'd do anything if it meant getting close to the man and having my shot at him. Or, barring that, making sure he’d rot in a deep, dark hole somewhere.
“Wait, lemme get this straight,” Koen said, shaking his head and grinning in disbelief. “You want me to willingly incriminate myself to the FBI? To go in and help them take this guy down?”
“Son,” Xavier said, leaning back against the kitchen counter just like he had the last time we'd visited, “you're already on their radar as a person of interest. I told Agent McKesson I'd talk to you, give you a chance to cooperate.”
“Or what?” Koen asked. He and I both knew there was always a consequence.
“Or, they realize your connection to Fire and Brimstone and start investigating the whole thing,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “Ain't much I can do about it. You blipped up on their radar, son, and you look like an easy shakedown.”
Koen ground his teeth, his jaws working hard as his mouth clenched. “So, I'm fucked either way.”
“You ain't fucked, son. You just gotta go along to get along.”
I closed my eyes for a moment, thought about it. I didn't know what the right choice was for Koen, but I knew what the right choice would be for me. I'd do anything I could to get close to Aleksey.
Just so I could put a bullet between his eyes. FBI be damned.
# # #
Koen
I called Fed and told him to meet me at the house just before I hopped on the bike to head home. Jace climbed up behind me, and we took off for my place.
On the way there, I considered what my grandpa had told me. He'd known the whole time, and he knew what was going on inside my organization. I'd tried to keep it from him, but I guess I couldn't keep anything from the old man. He was good, even after he'd retired all those years ago.
The question now was, did I want to cooperate with Agent McKesson, and the FBI? Snitches got stitches, that was the rule. There was no way I could turncoat like that, and start working for the government as an informant.
Not only would it put me in danger, it would start raising questions about the whole club if it got out. That would put Fed, Happy, Slash, and all the rest in the firing line. And then, on top of that, no one would ever do business with us again.
But, if I didn't do anything, the Feds would come for me, and my crew. The moment they started poking around because of this Volkov Arms deal, they'd figure out just what kind of ant hill they'd kicked over. And then all the guys would be spending time in the pen. But, at least they'd be alive. That was something.
As things were laid out, there was just too much damned risk no matter which way I turned. On the one hand, I risked death. On the other, prosecution. There just wasn't a clear way forward.
Fed arrived at the house soon after me and Jace. He'd brought Benji along, despite her wounded shoulder. The four of us settled in around the dining room table, Jace at my side and Fed next to Benji.
Jace grabbed us all some beers and we settled in for the big talk. I laid everything out for my buddy and our newest confidante. Both asked questions at various points, asking for elaboration on certain points here and there.
Finally, my story was done, along with my first beer.
The words that came out of Fed's mouth next made me want to grab another.
>
“Koen,” he began, his eyes wide and fearful, “I got a confession to make, brother.”
I groaned, not even wanting to consider what it was about. I hoped it was like weird porn fetishes or some shit. That I could deal with.
“I didn't get the name Fed from being in the penitentiary like I tell everyone,” he said with a sigh. “Your grandfather put me here two years ago, when your daddy died and you took over. I'm actually an ex-agent, myself, one that was under deep cover.”
“Fuck you,” I said, not believing him. “I mean, seriously, fuck you.”