by Paula Cox
“Fuck me running…” Clyde said quietly, not moving to pick up the glass.
Garrett burst into laughter. “Ho-ly… shit! How the fuck do you do that?”
I grinned. Damned it felt good to do that. “It just takes practice.”
“Has Cain seen you do that?”
My grin widened. “Yeah. I took him for two hundred dollars in tips.”
Garrett tossed his drink back and slammed the glass on the bar as he snarled. “Fuck!” he roared then shook his head. “Whooo! Hit me again!”
***
Two hours later I had the bar organized and was strutting my stuff to a significant portion of the club as I ran though my routines while they tried to play stump the bartender. They were losing, stumping me only on an Anus Burner, but that didn’t count because they didn’t have any jalapeño peppers anyway.
About ten o’clock, Thad stepped behind the bar with me. “It’s not nice to get my club totally shit-faced just so you can show off.”
I felt a rush of fear. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
He grinned at me. “Relax. I’m not going to feel sorry for their asses in the morning.”
“I thought I was in trouble,” I admitted.
“Nah. They’re big boys and girls. I noticed you’re not drinking. They won’t mind sharing.”
“It’s not that. I can’t do this if I’m not sharp,” I said. That much was true, but there was another, more important reason, I was not imbibing.
Thad chuckled. “I can see that.”
“Thad, can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“About twenty years ago, my parents were killed in a car wreck in Dallas. My Dad was a cop and he was…”
“Investigating the Hounds for running guns?”
“Yeah.”
“Cain asked me about this. I wondered why the hell he was asking, and now I know. What did he tell you?”
“That nobody knew anything about it.”
“That’s the truth. Cain shouldn’t have told you about what we do —”
“Don’t be mad at him,” I interrupted. “I promised him I wouldn’t tell a soul, and I have kept my word.”
“I’ll overlook it since you’re his old lady, but he needs to watch his tongue. Loose lips and all that. Anyway, the Hounds have been around since the sixties. We started our little business in the late seventies. Before that, we were muscle for hire, but then the President at the time, the founder of the club, decided to take the club in a different direction. I was in the club when your parents were killed, but we had cleaned up our act by then. I think your information is wrong. As far as I know, we haven’t done more than kick a few asses in thirty years. Maybe more.”
“But my Dad said —”
“I didn’t say he wasn’t investigating us. Maybe he was. Dallas gets a new chief who wants to come in and prove how big his dick is, and we go through the same sort of shit each time. But we run a tight ship. The cops probably know we’re running guns. But we don’t sell local and being able to prove it is whole different matter. There is no reason to kill a cop. That just brings on a lot of heat that we don’t need. I’m sorry that you lost your parents. But really, Alex, I don’t think we had anything to do with it. I think it was just a terrible accident.”
“Okay,” I mumbled. I wanted to believe him, but my grandparents had seemed so sure.
“Alex, listen to me,” Thad said kindly. “We’re not like you think. We provide a service, that’s all. We have contacts that were developed years ago and we provide… merchandise… that is difficult to obtain. That’s all we do. We don’t go riding around town gunning down innocent people. It’s bad for business.”
“And the Bulls?”
“The Bulls are nothing but a pile of shit. Rejects and dregs that can’t find homes somewhere else. When someone can’t join one of the other clubs, they usually end up in the Bulls. We had a few of our rejects join them.”
“So why the bad blood with the Hellhounds?”
“I wish I knew, Alex. I wish I knew.”
I spent another two hours serving drinks and entertaining the club. This was the first time I had ever really interacted with them, and I found that they were a lot like Cain, and nothing at all like I imagined them being.
As the club began to pair off and leave, Cherie escorted me to my room. I would be bunking in the clubhouse tonight for my protection.
“Bath is here,” she said as she opened the door. “Towels are in the cabinet. The linens are fresh so you should be good. If you need anything, I will be just across the hall tonight.”
“Will you be alone?” I asked. “I don’t want to interrupt anything.”
Cherie smiled. “No. But that’s okay. Just wait until the bed stops squeaking. You’re still new.” She grinned at me. “I think you are going to fit in just fine and I want your stay at Hellhound Resort to be comfortable. Like I told you, we take care of our own.”
“Thanks, Cherie. I mean that.”
She gave me a smile then she slipped out and shut the door. I heard a man’s voice then she giggled. A moment later a door banged shut and I felt a longing for Cain. We hadn’t made love since before the first attempt on my life and I wanted him. A few days ago he hadn’t been in any shape for bedroom calisthenics and I was hoping that would change, and soon.
I got myself ready for bed and, as I tucked in, I heard the faint moan of a woman in pleasure. Yes…I hoped that Cain would be ready soon.
***
I was eating a banana that I found in the kitchen for breakfast when Cain came into the Clubhouse. He looked haggard as he toted a canvas bag in each hand.
I rose and went to him, molding myself to him and holding him warmly as he sat the bags down. “I missed you,” I whispered before I kissed him softly.
He smiled down at me. “I missed you, too. Where is everyone?”
“Still sleeping.”
“The lazy shits,” he growled. “It’s almost nine.”
“They had a hard night last night.”
His face hardened. “Oh? What happened?”
“Nothing to worry about. I tended the bar for them last night and they got a little carried away.”
He snickered. “Oh. Now I see. Well, in that case, I’m going to grab a couple hours of shuteye before I figure out what game the Bulls are up to.”
“That’s what’s in the bag?”
“Yeah. Samples from their shipment. New Jersey let me choose three of each. At first glance it looks to be on the up and up, but something isn’t right here. I’m supposed to give New Jersey a call in a couple of days and let them know what I find. New Jersey is keeping their options open, but if I can’t find something, we’re in a world of shit.”
“Go get some sleep and then do what you have to to fuck the Bulls.”
Cain blinked at me. “Where did that come from?”
“I’ve been talking to the club. Thad gave me the story on the club and the Bulls. I was wrong about the Hellhounds. I’ve been wrong all along.” I looked at my feet. “I’m sorry.”
Cain wrapped me in his embrace and held me like I was the most important thing in the world, and I was content to stand there for as long as he wanted to hold me. Finally, he let me go. “Let me get some sleep,” he murmured before he kissed me. “Wake me up in a couple of hours so I can get to work. I want to get this done so I can think about other things tonight.”
“What things?”
He smiled at me in a way that made my toes tingle. “Use your imagination.”
***
I woke Cain at lunch when I took a tray of food to the room we had slept in. We ate together, talking quietly, reconnecting and letting the threads that bound us grow stronger. Our relationship had been a long series of hard knocks, but we were making it through and each time we gave them a chance, our bond became stronger and more resilient.
After his shower, he joined me in the large open room and began to pull large, dangerous-looking
weapons from the bags. He had six weapons, three samples of two different types of guns.
“What are those?” I asked from my chair. They didn’t look like any gun I had seen outside of a movie.
“This is the M4A1 Carbine, 5.56x45, with the full auto trigger group,” he said as he skillfully began to disassemble the weapon. “There are several variants, but these are made by Armalite.”
I said nothing, as most of what he said went right over my head. All I knew is that it looked incredibly deadly. “And the other one?”
“That’s an AW50F, fifty-cal.”
“Big gun,” I murmured.
“Yeah. You can really reach out and touch someone with that one. It’s an anti-material rifle from Great Britain, designed to punch big holes in other people’s shit.”
I said nothing else as I watched him break the first gun down into all its various pieces. I could tell he didn’t like what he saw as he sat it aside and repeated the procedure for the second and then the third.”
“Fuck…” he muttered as he finished taking the third gun apart.
“What?”
“I don’t see anything wrong. These look like first run, unused weapons.”
“But there has to be something, right?”
“That’s what I thought, but I don’t know what it is.”
He quickly reassembled the three guns and put them back in the bag, picking up the first of the larger guns. He repeated the procedure on the three guns and then reassembled them. He didn’t look at all happy.
“Nothing?”
“No,” he murmured. “This is not good.”
“But there has to be something, right?”
“I don’t know anymore. I don’t know how they can do it.”
“Look again,” I encouraged. “There has to be something, something you missed.”
He stared at the weapons with a look of defeat. “I didn’t miss anything.”
“You must have. If the deal is too good to be true, then it is. You said yourself that the Bulls probably had everything they had tied up in this deal. So they can’t take the loss. The answer is there, Cain. You know it is. You just have to find it.”
“I didn’t miss anything!” he insisted.
I rose out of my chair and sat down on the couch beside him. “Do it again,” I said softly. “Show me how you take it apart and tell me what each part does. How it works.”
He sighed and I could tell he was humoring me. He pulled one of the smaller guns out of the bag. “Okay. First, you open the bolt like this…”
As he broke the gun down, he handed me each piece to look at as he told me what it was for and what it did. “You want to try to take the next one apart?” he asked softly.
“Can you show me one more time?”
He picked up the next weapon and slowly went through the breakdown procedure again.
“Now you do this one,” he said as he handed me the last weapon.
“The M4A1 Carbine. What did you say carbine meant again?” I asked.
“Shorter than normal.”
“Oh yeah. That’s right,” I muttered as I began to take the gun apart. I got stuck a few times and Cain had to help me, and at no time did I move with the practiced assurance that he did, but I finally had the weapon in pieces.
“You’re not going to set any speed records, but good job. You want to put it back together? You just do everything in reverse.”
I started working on it. Cain sometimes had to point at the next piece to go in, but I was slowly getting it back together. Then I couldn’t get one of the little parts installed no matter how I tried. “I can’t get this doohickey in,” I complained as I struggled with the part.
“That’s the Charging Handle latch and spring. Here let me show you,” he said as he picked up the same two parts from one from the other guns. “The handle pin goes through this little hole, then the spring attaches there,” he said demonstrating with the parts in his hands. “No. You need to push the pin in first, like that, then….” He trailed off. He looked at the part in his hand and then looked again the part that was giving me such trouble. He picked up the other part from the table, and compared it to the one in his hand. “Son of a bitch!”
“What?” I asked, afraid that I had done something wrong.
He handed me one of the parts. “Read that number to me, slowly.”
I did.
“Let me see that,” he said as he took the partially assembled gun from me and quickly took it apart again. He then made little piles of like parts.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking something,” he said as he sorted. Parts sorted, he began to carefully look each of them over and I saw a slow smile form on his lips.
“What?”
“I’ve got them, the sneaky bastards. I’ve got them. Look! See how some of these parts have the same numbers stamped on them? Those are serial numbers. There shouldn’t be any duplicates. None!” He jumped to his feet and started pumping his hips and arms, grunting like he was fucking someone hard. “Thad!” he bellowed as he stopped.
“What?” Thad asked as he appeared.
“We’ve got them! The Bulls, they’re selling clones! Cheap clones. Look at this.” He carefully explained to Thad what he found, showing him the parts.
“What about those?” Thad asked pointing at the bigger guns.
“I haven’t checked those yet, but I bet they are the same. I wanted to let you know as soon as I discovered this.”
“Check those out and, if they are the same, let me know. Then give New Jersey a call. It’s time to drive a stake into the heart of those fucking Bulls. Good job, Cain. I mean that. You have really saved our ass this time.”
“Give me ten minutes,” he said with a grin.
Chapter 27
I had never seen so many guns in my life. Gianni Castellino had just arrived with eight goons dressed in suits and the cache of weapons they had purchased from the Bulls. It had taken them almost four hours to turn around and get back to Dallas after Cain made his call.
“Here are the six weapons I kept from your last shipment,” Cain explained to some guy while Gianni looked on impassively. “As you can see, some of the serial numbers of the internals match. Not all, which makes me think they have a mixture of parts they are building them from, but, in any case, that raises some red flags.”
“You found that in the Aws as well?” the man asked.
“Yes. Let me show you something else.” Cain picked up a piece. “I hit that with a hammer,” he said as he handed the piece to the man, who inspected it closely.
Earlier I had seen Cain smash the piece with a hammer. I didn’t understand what he was doing until he explained to me that the part shouldn’t break. Bend, yes, but not fracture like that. I saw the man’s lips thin. He obviously understood what he was looking at.
“Yeah. You better check them all, but I bet you will find they are all made from the same shitty metal.”
The men started pulling the guns out of bags and breaking them down. It took almost an hour for Cain and two others from New Jersey to do the entire cache, but they found out that there were five sets of serial numbers on the internal parts for the M4A1s, and three sets on the Aws, but no duplicates on the frames. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but it appeared to piss off the guys from New Jersey no end.
“Do you have the samples?” Cain asked.
Two guns, one of each type, were handed over. Those were likewise broken down. None of the serial numbers matched any of the others.
“May I?” Cain asked.
The guy that I had determined was New Jersey’s weapons guy gave a nod. Cain set the piece on a hunk of steel he had obtained and gave it a solid whack with the hammer. He picked it up and handed it to the man. I could see it was bent, but not broken.
Gianni made a face that would have scared the shit out of me if he had directed it toward me. “Thank you, Cain. You have saved us from a potentially embarrassing situation. I should hav
e trusted you.”
“You’re welcome, Mr. Castellino. This whole deal smelled from the beginning.”
“Rest assured, we will deal with the Blacktop Bulls.”
“Gianni,” Thad said stepping forward. “Let us take care of them, if you don’t mind. We know the lay of the land down here better than you do. And we owe them something for killing three of our guys. It’s time we pay that debt.”