by KJ Dahlen
Pappy shook his head as he listened. “What a mess.”
Jackal nodded his agreement. “Well then with Harvey being a cop, they had free rein to take over this town. I heard for a while when Harvey got his cop job, he told everyone his last name was Prentiss. He went by that name until he took Blane out to the swamps. I also heard rumors that Harvey was coming back with his MC and he was willing to team up with Caulder and his gang if they had taken over the Kings. When that didn’t happen, he stayed away but kept his eyes on the city.”
Pappy spoke as he looked around. “Trudy found out that when Harvey left Baton Rouge he began collecting the worse sort of people he could find and formed his own MC. They took George’s MC’s name and began again, became mercenaries, willing to do whatever they had to do for a price.”
“Did that family ever really stand a chance?” Jackal asked. “I mean with the type of upbringing they had, I have to wonder if they ever did.”
“That may be something we’ll never know but I do know one thing.” Pappy replied. “They brought their fucked up world into ours and they lost today and will lose again tomorrow. They won’t stop coming after us now. They think they have something to prove, if only to themselves. This isn’t going to be over until they are all dead or we are.”
“That’s bullshit and you all know it.” Beast joined them. “Every man or woman has choices to make. Good or bad, they make their own destiny. People want to blame the way they were raised, say they never had a chance, but that’s just a cop out. Yeah, it’s easier to go with what you know but each person has to choose to do right or wrong. It’s easier to do things the wrong way for some but that just shows their own fucking laziness. It might not be easy to step out of your comfort zone but you’ll never know until you do it.”
“Some families regard that as betrayal,” Jackal pointed out.
Beast shrugged. “It’s a choice isn’t it? They can man up or cave in and that’s another choice.”
“Not all choices are black and white.” Pappy looked over at Beast. “Sometimes, it’s hard to see you even have a choice and sometimes the choices are taken away from you.”
Jackal shook his head. “Lord help you Beast, if you ever fall in love and you ever find yourself in a situation where you have no choice at all.”
Beast snorted. “That, my friend, will never happen.”
Pappy threw his head back and laughed out loud. “Never say never my friend, that might come back and bite you in the ass, big time.”
“Whatever.” Beast growled as he turned and stomped away.
Jackal shook his head. “He may be a full grown man but he has no clue about life sometimes.”
Pappy glanced outside and saw a beat-up pickup truck heading for the gates. His eyes narrowed as he saw the driver slow down and drive through the broken gate.
When Silas stopped the truck, he and George got out.
Pappy and Jackal could hear someone yelling and kicking from the back of the truck.
A couple of Jackal’s men came running and lifted a beaten man from the back and carried him into the clubhouse.
Jackal and Pappy waited until Silas and George joined them.
“Who the hell was that?” Jackal stared at Silas
“That is your Dane Williams,” Silas told them both. “As you can guess, he isn’t happy to be here.”
“Too frickin bad.” George spat on the ground. “He’s the one that set this in motion, he should be here to reap his rewards.”
Jackal turned his head and glared at Dane while his men were tying him to a chair. This was the cretin who tortured Noelle all her life. His blackened eyes and bloody nose and mouth gave a clue as to what he’d been through but Jackal knew the man would get bloodier before this was over. He deserved that and so much more for what he’d done to his own sister for the last ten years.
“Before we get into the problem of what to do with Dane Williams we need to know what you guys know about this clubhouse,” Jackal informed them. “Venom hinted that a fresh coat of paint could hide a multitude of sins and we want to know if maybe they had a secret way to get past our defenses.”
Silas nodded. “We figured that’s what you wanted to know. And yeah, they might just have a way to do that. This old place was a farm at one point in its history but that was a long time ago. That was about the time old George Norris came to live here. You see the owner of the farm, Edward Shay was a good friend of mine. He and his family lived here. That was until George Norris killed him.”
“Maybe we should take this discussion inside so everyone can hear it,” Pappy suggested.
Jackal and the others moved inside the clubhouse.
Seeing Dane sitting there made Jackal mad, so he motioned for a couple of his men to move Dane to another room. “Take him out of here. Make sure he can’t get loose and put a man to watch him.”
Three men picked him up chair and all then dragged him down the hall to one of the bedrooms and took him into the room. They heard some muffled screaming and cursing but they paid no attention to it. Instead, everyone gathered around and looked at the two older men.
“Edward Shay owned this farm for a very long time. He came here as a young man and began working the soil. He got himself a wife and together they had four sons. They had one son that was lost during the war, another son they lost to a farming accident when he was a kid. He had two sons left when he had his stroke about twenty years back. But Edward always knew the farm might not provide what his family needed so shortly after they moved here, Edward began moonshining. That was something his daddy taught him to do along with his granddaddy. Course, back then that wasn’t exactly legal but the people around here liked to drink. Part of the county was dry, so they had to travel a long way to get what they liked. When Edward started selling his shine, people bought it.”
George nodded as he took up the telling, “Edward knew he could flash that kind of money around this town so he began burying it. People began rumors that he kept a lot of money here on the farm and that rumor began circulating. About that same time, his third son left the farm to try and find a job. He left behind his three year old daughter Cinnamon. He hoped to find something that would earn him a good living so he could raise his motherless daughter in a safe place. He was murdered for the money in his pocket one night when he stopped for a drink after finding a job. The man that killed him got a whole three dollars and fifty four cents. All because he stopped in to celebrate the fact that he found a job and ended up dying because some guy thought he had a pocket full of money.”
Silas shook his head as he added more, “Then ole man Norris heard the rumors about Edward’s money and he thought he’d come get him some. Ole George’s dad was a mean son of a bitch. His real name was Denver but he went by his road name Boss. When he moved here, George and Harvey were just kids but he was a mean one even back then. About the time he got his ole lady’s sister pregnant, things really went to hell. Edward and his family stayed pretty close to home they prayed Boss wouldn’t notice them. After a number of years passed, ole George took over after Boss was killed and as soon as he heard about what Edward Shay had out here, he came looking for it.
“Me and Silas,” George jumped in again. “We was on our way out here to warn Edward but we come too late. Norris was here already. We stayed hid in the woods but we could hear everything they said.”
“What happened?” Pappy wanted to know.
George shook his head. “Norris told Edward that he knew they had money and he thought Edward should pay him a tax on it. Edward told him to take his friends and get off his land. His only son Gabriel came out holding a rifle but he wasn’t holding it on them. He was just holding it in the crook of his arm. Norris must have motioned to one of his men, we didn’t see that part but one of his men shot Gabriel. Norris asked if his son’s life had been worth his refusal and Edward told him again and again, there was no money on the farm.”
Silas rubbed his face with his hand. “One of Norris�
��s men brought out a rope. He wound it around Edward’s neck and then got back on his bike. Norris himself took the end of the rope and pulled away from the porch. He dragged Edward around the yard a couple of times. Katie was screaming at them to stop and poor Cinnamon was bawling but that didn’t mean nothing to them old boys. Edward was unconscious by the time he stopped and Norris was laughing when he pulled him over to the huge tree in the side yard. They hung him from that fuckin tree right there in front of his wife and granddaughter. Then if that wasn’t enough, they cut off his head and stuck it on a pike in front of the dammed house.”
George nodded. “Then Norris told Katie he’d be back and if she didn’t have the money ready she would be next.”
Silas shook his head. “After they left, me and George helped Katie bury her husband and son. She told us she was taking Cinnamon and leaving. And before night fall, she did just that. She took only what they needed to survive and her and Cinnamon left the farm. That was fourteen years ago. No one has seen either of them since then. When Norris and his gang came back and found Katie missing, he tore this place apart. I don’t think he ever found any of the money he thought was here but then he never would have.”
“Why is that?” Jackal wanted to know.
Silas and George snickered. “Edward was a crafty old fox. I don’t know how many times the ATF came here looking for his still but they never found it, they never found his inventory either. Norris and his group lived here for four years and never found anything.” Silas ended his story and just stared at Jackal and Pappy.
After a moment Jackal asked with narrowed eyes, “What aren’t you telling us old man? I know there’s more.”
“Was the money or the booze ever here at all?” Pappy wanted to know.
George cackled as he sat down in a chair at the table next to where everyone was standing. “Oh yeah, it’s been here all this time, only Norris and his fuckin bunch never found a penny or a bottle. And believe us, they looked. They damn near tore the farmhouse down to the ground but never found anything.” He looked around the room at all the bikers. “This farm is one the few in this area that has caves and hollows on the land. The soil here is good and rich because of the run off from the swamps and the irrigation system Edward put in when he first bought the place. That was how he found the caves and the secret hollows. He drew a map at one point but the lord only knows where that ended up.”
“Then you guys showed up.” Silas added. “You took out Norris and the Devils but you never bothered to look for the money or the booze.”
Jackal snorted. “We never bothered to look because we didn’t know about either. Not that it would have made a difference to us.”
“This place belongs to you folks,” Silas told him.
“No, it doesn’t,” Jackal stated. “We didn’t pay for the land...except with the blood of our leader” Then he paused and changed the course in the conversation, “We took over the place but we don’t own it. Everything here still belongs to Edward Shay’s family.” He shrugged. “We paid the taxes every year we lived here but the land and everything on it belongs to him or his survivors.”
Silas sighed. “This place used to be a pretty good place to live and raise a family. Then Denver Norris moved into the area and things went downhill after that. But it wasn’t until George took over that things went to hell in a hand-basket.”
George nodded. “We figure the way things went down today, you pretty much own this town.”
“We don’t want to own it,” Jackal stated firmly. “We want a safe place to live just like you folks do. All we did today was take out the trash.”
Silas grinned. “Yeah, you did a good job of that today. But you ain’t done yet. You gotta finish what you started.”
“Yeah, that we do.” Jackal looked over at Pappy and when the other man nodded, he turned back to Silas and George. “Do you know if the clubhouse has any hidden secrets? Tunnels or escape routes? Venom came in here and looked around and said something about a fresh coat of paint hiding a multitude of sins. Do you have any idea what he was talking about?”
Silas swallowed hard before looking at George then back at the men. “It might. You see when George moved in here there was a second story to this place. He began tearing things apart looking for something that wasn’t his. He tore the upstairs off then he was starting down here but he didn’t tear this section of the house down. Instead, he added to it. He wanted enough room for his club you see.”
“What did they find?” Pappy asked.
“They found one of the underground tunnels,” Silas replied. “That got them real excited, thinking they would finally find ole Edwards money or hooch. They never did but they used the tunnel to come and go from, figuring that way no one could tell when they were here or not.”
“Do you know where the tunnel is or where it comes out at?” Beast asked.
Silas nodded. He walked over to the bar at the back of the room. Standing at the end of the doublewide bar, he turned putting his back to the wall he began kicking the wood in on the bar. The men protested but soon the boards gave in and he opened up a hole in the wood.
Jackal, Pappy and the men looked at what he’d uncovered as Silas continued to remove the wood, revealing a hole the size of a man and a set of stairs leading down.
“What the hell?” Beast exclaimed. He looked at the others. “Why did we never notice this before?”
“Because the bar has been there for a while and we had no reason to think it was anything other than a bar,” Jackal concluded.
“Where does it come out?” Beast growled. “And how would anyone coming through it not be making enough noise to wake the whole house up getting in here?”
“I’m pretty sure there’s a lock on the other side,” George told them. “All they would need is a key to get in.”
Silas nor George ever said where it came out to, so Jackal had about 4 men grab flashlights and head down to see where it went, about 30 minutes later, they came back and announced that it forked into two other tunnels.
“Well fucking hell,” Beast swore. “That doesn’t sound good. Venom or Harvey could have come in here anytime and murdered us in our dammed sleep.”
“I think that’s exactly what they planned to do the whole time,” Jackal agreed.
The men all looked troubled.
Again, Beast let out a growl that he was so well known for.
Chapter Thirteen
After Silas and George left to head back to town, Jackal ordered Dane to be brought back out to the main room so everyone could hear what the man had to say. When they brought him back out, they slammed the chair down hard.
Dane glared at the men around him. Then his eyes landed on Noelle and his gaze filled with hatred of another kind.
Jackal ripped off the duct tape that covered his mouth.
Dane screamed out, “You motherfucker!”
Jackal leaned over him and coldly said, “You got some questions to answer bitch.”
“I ain’t telling you pussies anything.” Dane snarled.
“Oh, you’ll tell us what we want to know.” Pappy smiled wickedly using a very sharp looking knife as he patted Dane’s cheek.
“Fuck off old man. I’m not afraid of you or anyone else,” Dane spat out.
“What about me?” Noelle asked quietly.
Dane slowly turned his head and glared at her. “You, you shouldn’t even be alive.”
“And why is that?” Jackal wanted to know. “What is she to you other than a half sister?”
“She’s no sister of mine.” He growled out loud. “She is however, the only thing standing between me and five million dollars. Venom was supposed to kill you, so I could collect on your father’s life insurance. That’s all, just a means to an end and he fucked that up.”
“What do you mean my father? Isn’t he your father too?” Noelle asked as tears formed in her eyes. She knew Dane hated her but not the reason why.
“Fuck no, Derek Williams was no fa
ther to me.” He snapped. “I carry his last name but he didn’t father me. He was just the sap that married that bitch of a crazy ass mother I had.”
“What do you mean he didn’t father you?” Noelle looked stunned.
Dane didn’t answer her right away but he took a few deep breaths while he made up his mind to finally give her the reason he’d hated her all these years. He wanted her to finally know everything he’d done and why. “Shortly after my mom was married to your father, she met this biker bastard. They had a weekend together and then he left her. He rode off into the sunset so to speak. She made him sound like a knight in shining armor but he was nothing more than a bastard. When she found out I was on the way, she shut Derek out of our lives thinking she could get her biker back. The way she tells it, he’d just laughed in her face. He told her he already had three sons what the hell did he need with another kid. She told him she would ruin him and he said go ahead, he had nothing to lose that she would want anyway.” He paused then glared at her. “She let Derek think I was his kid but she always told me that I was a bastard any way, I looked at it.”
Noelle shook her head sadly.
Jackal glared at the man. He was a piece of shit, any way he looked at it.
“She treated me like shit from day one until the day she died. But she kept your dad as long as she could, waiting in the wings. She never loved him, he never loved her but she wouldn’t let him go either. Then you came along and she hated you with a passion. She told me if you lived, you would take everything that belonged to me. I might not have been Derek’s kid but only she knew that. I stood to lose everything she fought so hard to keep. His name, his company and his money. When she died, I took what little she had left and I wanted to show them both I could run her company. But by the time I had that option, I found there was nothing left of it to run, I was in too deep.” He shook his head. “I didn’t even know Derek wasn’t my real father until after she was dead. She left me a written account of who my father was only to be opened after she was gone. She never told me any of this while she was alive.” He glared at Noelle and then told her, “I needed Derek’s money and the only way I could get that was if he was dead.”