“Fuck. Shit. Caroline, you do not want to piss me off, woman.” Long, angry strides carried Darrie around the end of the fence and took him to the edge of the pool where he picked up her wet swimsuit. Balling it in one fist, he threw it at her where she stood, the water lapping around her hips. The fabric hit the water right in front of her, and she didn’t even flinch, just reached out and snagged the fabric pieces, redressing herself with casual movements. Watcher turned his attention back to the Southern Soldiers’ member, the bike engine dying as Spider stood, straddling his bike. Watcher motioned a question with one hand towards the barn and received a nod in response.
“You need to ditch the bitch, bro,” Watcher said quietly as he walked side-by-side with Darrie towards Spider, already standing in the barn’s doorway, eyes to the pool behind them. “You deserve respect, and a good woman who respects you wouldn’t be pulling that kind of shit.”
“I know.” Darrie sighed, and his steps slowed so Watcher shortened stride to match him. “She’s history, as of today. I’ll deal with her when we see what Spidey needs.” Watcher heard him give a heavy sigh. “Caroline was hot, brother.”
“Yeah, hotheaded. She also brings drama and stupid with her ass. Tits and ass can be had nearly anywhere, bro, and pussy comes with it. You need sweet and clean along with that, with a serving of smarts.” He lifted his chin, acknowledging Spider’s greeting. “Pussy ain’t anything without smarts.”
“Yeah, yeah. Like you’d know,” Darrie said in a long-suffering tone, and then called out, “Spidey, man. Whatcha got for me?”
“Debrief inside,” Spider said, jerking his head to the darkness inside the barn, waiting in the doorway until they stepped through. Then, he gave a visible scan of the yard, pausing with his eyes towards the pool as he yanked the door closed, shrouding them in dimness until Darrie hit a switch, flipping the lights on over the workbench.
Darrie had sent Spider to scope out the Machos, a rival club that had recently started encroaching on their territory. Previously content with their own power base, isolated across the river in Mexico where they worked hand in hand with the cartel to control trade and bring in dinero, things had recently changed. Now, the club was reaching across the bridge, tagging business and deals out of the hands of the Soldiers. Spider had connections in the cartel from a series of events in his past he referred to as his “shit days,” and the hope was he would be able to leverage those contacts to move this club off the Soldiers’ territory in a permanent way.
“Machos are restless, blaming us for a variety of ills assailing their sick-as-fuck carcass of a club.” Spider launched into his report without any preliminaries. “Me and Opie had a convo with the second in command. According to their looey, the Machos are hugely solvent, highly organized, and significantly motivated to keep things the way they are.” He shook his head, leaning one hip against the workbench. “I don’t buy it. They’re tagging our bang-bangs because on their own they can’t locate the same or better merch, which means they are all over our shit, because we have the hot-as-shit good shit. But, brother—” His neck twisted, and he sucked in air through his nose, face twisting with anger and disgust. “—one thing they have in ample supply is pussy. All ages, all kinds. They got Thai pussy, Mexican pussy, Canadian pussy. I ain’t never been offered so much pussy in my life. It was enough to—”
He stopped talking as their heads all turned towards the barn door, hearing engine noise from another bike coming up the drive. “Boss?” Spider’s one word was a question, and Darrie grunted a negative response. They were not expecting anyone else tonight.
Watcher whistled a soft single note, and once he had Spider’s attention, he jerked his head towards the back of the barn, waiting for an acknowledging nod before he moved in that direction. Fading into the shadows at the wall, he took up position beside the back door, waiting, listening to the quiet settle around the house and barn after the bike engine cut off. Spider moved to the front door, reaching out to kill the inside lights before throwing it open. Immediately his posture changed, relaxing as he must have recognized friend, not foe. “Devil,” he called the name of another member and Watcher relaxed, too. Extending his arm, Spider twitched his finger to flick the light back on and stepped to one side, letting a big man walk through the doorway.
When Watcher had first rolled into town, the Southern Soldiers had numbered four plus his brother, all of them working day jobs, and the club didn’t run any businesses. Out of necessity, riding was more of a hobby than a life for them because there wasn’t a line of income to support the club other than the token dues the few members paid. No clubhouse, they had no gathering spot other than a local bar, and no financial cushion to fall back on if anything went sideways with any of the members.
After Watcher had joined, Darrie’s little band grew significantly, and the Soldiers soon boasted nearly three dozen members. They also had three businesses with paper in various men’s names, giving them a decent flow of green coming into the joint coffers. Seeing those accounts grow gave everyone confidence, building a solid foundation for the kind of club they all wanted…needed.
That kind of shift was good for morale in the club, but unfortunately, the profitability they found brought more than just good feelings. It had swung eyes and attention their direction the club hadn’t experienced previously, and while Watcher had expected the challenge, it wasn’t long before he knew he hadn’t prepared Darrie for it well enough.
As hot as Watcher’s head ran, Darrie’s temper was much worse. So, the first time one of their runs got hit and Watcher wasn’t close enough to talk Darrie down, it meant his brother’s reaction was extreme. The Soldiers hit back, and hard, torching two buildings full of cartel product. This meant the club’s subsequent lesson was painful.
In the normal world, the Soldiers’ response would have been expected; tit for tat, you take my shit, I torch yours. But, the cartel didn’t appreciate taking a hit from a group they saw as upstarts. Men the cartel didn’t have one lick of respect for. From the cartel’s perspective, the Soldiers were a little snot-nosed club, playing out of their depth in the big boys’ games. Just another club needing a lesson in the way the world worked, a la cartel. So when the mob responded, they rained pain down on the club. This cost the Soldiers members…and blood. A man to one ambush, then two more to another. In the process, the Soldiers took down a dozen of the cartel’s men, but that was no consolation when their own wounds gaped wide.
With Watcher’s influence, Darrie began to strategize and plan, developing more long-term goals. That’s when Watch went to work in earnest, taking on the veep role in the club as he took on more men. He put in time talking to people he knew through his Outriders associations, through his stint in the army, and through the family he had built around himself over the years. He recruited, always with an eye towards getting ready for a conflict he couldn’t even begin to effectively predict. Looking for and finding men tired of the bullshit found in many clubs, they’d built a cohesive one filled with men who would be ready to go the distance for a worthy club.
He had picked up individuals from a dozen different clubs; long-time members who voluntarily dropped their center and walked out in good standing, or as good a standing as they could, given they had surrendered their patch. It killed, but he had also picked up men from Mason’s club in Chicago, one he knew was struggling against dying.
Rebel Fiends had so many men patch out and go gypsy, they could hardly roll any strength. After the most recent conversation between Watcher and Mason, when Mason had once again loyally opted to remain a Fiend, Watch knew seeing the club die had to be stripping Mason’s soul. The man desperately wanted what Darrie and Watcher were building, and Watch knew every conversation with his friend thrust the knife deeper, twisted it further, and ripped the wound open a little more.
Through all this, Watcher and Darrie had differed in their approach and strategy. Out of respect, Watcher had continued to publicly bow to his president, but in p
rivate, the brothers far too often argued viciously. Every encounter meant Darrie wanted to go in guns blazing and take down what he saw as the source of the problem, the President of the Machos, Carlos Estavez. Watcher tried to keep the Soldiers working the edges of things, cutting one after the other of the cartel’s supply routes for the Machos. His intent to starve them, but not to the point of collapse. He wanted to leave them with a limited base, something the Soldiers could police and control, because he believed the Machos as a controlled influence would be better than whatever unknown factors might fill the void. Since the brothers didn’t…couldn’t agree, the club was tracing the path Darrie routed for them, but Watch reserved the right to argue as often as he could find space and breath.
Spider was the club’s road captain and one of Darrie’s originals, proudly wearing a founder’s patch on his vest. Devil was one of Watcher’s, had moved up to an officer fast, now their sergeant at arms, so for this conversation, whatever it was, the two factions within their club would be evenly matched.
“Prez,” Devil said in greeting. He shut the door firmly behind him, gaze sweeping across the men standing in the barn, coming to rest on Watcher. That gaze didn’t move when Devil spoke, and it wasn’t lost on Watcher that Devil may have given token respect to Darrie, but expected the decision to come from the veep instead of the president. Fuck, he thought, then jolted as what Devil said registered. “Machos are rolling 200 across the bridge right the fuck now.”
“Fuck. Shit,” Darrie breathed, and then, tellingly, his gaze swung to Watcher.
Fuck.
Watcher took in a hard breath, blew it out, rolling his muscles and deliberately releasing tension in his shoulders, feeling them lower and move back so the next breath wasn’t as hard. And the next after that, easier still. “Any chatter?” He frowned, tipping his head to one side, waiting. “Any contact at all?”
“No chatter, no contact. Just got a call from one of my men in immigration. He said the bridge detail was panicking.” Devil shook his head. “Bad mojo, brother.”
“No doubt,” Watcher said, leaning to one side and spitting into the dirt of the barn floor. Deliberate confidence would help everyone maintain their control. “Don’t fucking care. We got firepower and the high ground. We’re way past ready for this shit. You already roll our brothers?”
“Nope. Your call, man.” Devil stepped closer, hand out at waist level, palm extended to Watcher. Devil’s hand was shaking, pupils wide. He was riding the edge of freaked out. “What do you want me to do?”
Watcher knew it didn’t matter which direction they jumped; men would die. The win was choosing the leap that had the least cost in lives. Please, God, let me get it right. “We unass and fuckin’ move. Make the call, get every man here at Soldiers’ base. Put the families at NHF,” he said, referencing a church compound in town. “It’s near the mall, embedded in a dense population, and we got friends there. Tell them to talk to Terri. She’ll handle everything.” Terri was an old lady to one of their members. She would make sure the families had a place to hole up while things were coming down on the club. She was solid, organized and steady, precisely the kind of thing nervous wives and mothers needed to see.
Watcher reached out, gripping Devil’s forearm hard, pulling him close, mouth to his ear. “Settle yourself, brother. We’re in time. We got this covered.”
If Machos were rolling across the bridge between Mexico and the US, it meant they were still in El Paso. Watcher wasn’t lying to Devil. There was time. El Paso was far enough away the Soldiers could get everything placed just how Watcher saw it in his head, as long as they remained focused and fucking moved. Devil nodded, the movement jerky but it was there. Watcher was stepping back when a noise came from the front of the barn. Twisting in place, he looked to see Caroline coming into the barn, and what he focused on was what she carried.
“Caroline, what the fu—” That was all Darrie got out before the rattle of semi-automatic rifle fire filled the barn. Watcher, Devil, and Spider dived to the side, rolling behind the workbench and boxes near the walls.
From where he lay, Watcher saw Darrie still stood in the center of the barn, staring dumbstruck at the nearly naked woman staggering sideways from the recoil of the gun in her hands.
Watcher stared as red began to roll down his brother’s arm, blood covering the skin and tattoos. Caroline had righted herself, holding the gun with both hands, carefully angling it away from her body. He could see her mouth moving, but with ears still deafened from the gunfire, any words were lost to him. Darrie still stood in the open, unguarded in his shock. Unlike the rest of the club, he had never been in combat, serving instead as a liaison between forward troops and the supply camps, so his gut reactions were different, more civilized. “Darrie, get the fuck down,” Watcher shouted and saw Darren’s head turn and dip, knew his gaze was on the wound in his shoulder where one of her bullets had grazed across his skin. “Get the fuck down.”
Caroline’s face was distorted by a grimace, bitter with anger, and Watcher saw the gun was lining up on her target. He twisted, looking at Spider and Devil. They stared wordlessly at him. “Machos,” he heard through the ringing in his ears and jolted, swinging back to look at Caroline. Spanish phrases flowed from her mouth like velvet, and with that, his mind settled, bringing instincts forth with the threat.
Pushing to his feet, he drew his gun from the waistband of his jeans and in a single smooth motion, brought the weapon up and fired, seeing the small hole appear as if by magic in Caroline’s forehead. A spray of blood and bone erupted behind her, fanning out over the oil-darkened dirt of the barn. Her knees gave way, joints unhinged as she crumpled to the ground, upper torso flung back by the velocity of the bullet that ended her life. The firearm fell beside her, an inert object no longer posing a threat.
“You shot her.” That thin shout came from Darrie, and Watcher dragged his gaze from where she lay—a fallen soldier, because that was her role, in truth—to look at his brother. Darrie had clamped a hand over his shoulder, blood trickling between his fingers. “You fucking shot Caroline.”
“Uh…yeah, brother.” Watcher slipped the gun into the back waistband of his pants. “She shot you.” Footsteps from behind him, then Devil and Spider strode into view, headed towards the body. “With a semi, Darrie.” Watcher shook his head, not believing he had to explain his actions. “Shot at all of us.” Devil glanced back at him then bent over, avoiding the messy dirt as he slid his hands into Caroline’s armpits. “You were standin’ there, target on your chest. Just…standin’.” Backing towards the door, Devil dragged the limp body across the floor, the heels of her bare feet making the slightest furrows in the dirt. “I’m partial to ya. So yeah, I fuckin’ shot her.”
Spider picked up the gun, cleared and ejected the magazine, glancing at it before slapping it back into place. “Not one of ours,” he snapped, turning to stare at Darrie. “Means she got it elsewhere, Prez.” His eyes cut to Watcher on an angry glare, then back to Darrie. “Machos, brother.”
Darrie’s mouth opened and closed, then his chin dipped to his chest, and Watcher saw his fingers clamp tightly on the still bleeding wound. He muttered something, but with his mouth aimed at his feet, Watcher didn’t catch what he said. Any confusion was erased a moment later when Darrie’s head tipped backwards, and he howled at the rafters, “In my bed.”
***
Opie called a soft “Clear,” from down the hallway and Watcher’s gaze swept the room he had entered. So far today they’d found precisely nothing at any of the properties where the Machos were known to store product. After being informed the Soldiers were ready and waiting for them in Las Cruces, the other club had pulled back into Mexico, impotent fury swirling in their wake. No meeting, no fighting, no war. In fact, the only casualty that entire day had been Caroline, and it had taken a week of digging to find out where she had come from. Sister to one of the Machos’ women, they still weren’t sure what her motivation was, but at least her body had
been returned to her family.
Now deep into Mexico, Darrie, Watcher, and two dozen of the Soldiers had embarked on a campaign to clear away some of the support Machos had in place. With diesel fuel and some well-placed explosives, they’d utilized the diverse skills they’d learned in the military to blow the Machos’ way the fuck off-kilter. Day four, they were on the tail end of the op, and today’s efforts were looking like a big fat goose egg.
Backing out of the empty room one quiet footstep at a time, Watcher paused at a noise. What the hell? Tilting his head, he tried to separate what was going on outside from the sound he’d heard in the room. There had been a cry, or at least he thought he had heard something. Sweeping the room again, he paused, his gaze halting on the rug in the middle of the floor. It was an anomaly. The room held no furniture, except old, broken slat chairs, and those were tossed along the walls. Why would they leave a rug in the middle of the space? Whistling a single tone, low, he called one of his team members back as he took a careful step forward, squatting down to grip the edge of the material.
Watcher eyeballed the circumference, tracing it with his eyes. No threads, no strings, no wires. No lumps along the perimeter, but near the midpoint, off to one side, there was a slight rise in the surface. Not much, only a fraction of an inch. If he hadn’t been studying the floor covering so closely, he would have never seen it. Fingers under the rug, he slipped them first one direction, then the other, encountering no resistance. Nothing holding it down, no traps so far.
Rolling the rug backwards, he duckwalked sideways, pulling the braided fabric back and over itself, folding it in half when he saw the side of the trapdoor hidden underneath. From the door came Opie’s soft voice. “What you got there, Watch?”
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