by BT Urruela
“Come on over here, Hale,” Luka ordered.
Senator Hale, in the process of closing the door, grumbled under his breath.
“Faster, Hale!”
“I’m moving goddammit! You give me a fucking minute,” he snapped, brushing them off with his hands, but walking toward them regardless.
“That’s it.” Luka grabbed one of his wrists as he approached, pulling him along just a little toward Samson and Greyson. “Now, let my boys here have a look at you while I check the car.”
“Fucking street rats, every last one of you,” the senator said, his hands halfway in the air as Samson and Grey started their invasive search.
Luka turned back with a smile. “Street rats a million dollars richer,” he said, his smirk still present, though his focus shifted back toward the car.
He searched it meticulously, from top to bottom, inside and out.
“Everything check out?” Luka asked sometime later, as he approached them.
“We’re good here,” Samson replied, one of his hands still gripping the crook of Hale’s elbow.
Luka pointed to the free hand sticking in the air. “Your watch, Senator. Give it to me.”
Hale looked perplexed, his wrinkled brows and curious eyes moving from Luka to his wrist. “Wh-Why? My watch has nothing to do with this.”
Luka simply waited, one hand out, palm up, the other hanging on his holster, tapping the sidearm with one finger purposefully.
Greyson let go of his arm, and Ronald reluctantly took his watch off. “This is bullshit, you know. Absolute bullshit! You can’t treat me like this. I am a goddamn senator of the United States of America!” The watch dangled from one of his hands, the other balled up and shaking as he took two steps toward them, his shoulders high. His face red.
Luka pulled his gun from the holster but kept it aimed on the ground.
Ronald froze, but his anger remained. “Now, I’ll give this to you, but I’ll tell you what. You all are gonna pay for this.” He shook his head in disgust before dropping the watch into Luka’s open hand.
Luka grinned, re-holstered his weapon, and then put the watch on. Checking it out, he said, “Oh, I like it. Looks much better on me, Ronald,” as he passed the senator a wide smile. Looking toward the others, he said, “Put the money in the Blazer and let’s check it out and make the switch.”
After running through the cash, one stack of hundreds at a time, for both authenticity and to ensure there were no trackers, ink, or, better yet, explosives, the cash was put into separate bags that Alpha Team had brought with them. Ronald remained relatively still, though mouthy, while the others searched and transferred the cash, first into their own bags, and then back into the trunk of the sedan.
Luka slapped the senator’s chest and the crinkle of paper could be heard. “Here’s your next coordinates, Ronnie. If you wanna see your daughter alive, and get the coordinates to her location, you’ll play nice and deliver this money without any bullshit, got it?”
The senator smirked. “Hasn’t every last bit of this been bullshit, you baboon?” He passed Luka a condescending scowl, before shuffling back to the sedan, plenty of expletives following him, and then he opened the door and hopped in.
As he drove away, Samson came up beside Luka, running a hand through his thick red hair, and asked, “So, which ground team are we supposed to link up with, Dimitri’s or Robbie’s.”
Luka arched an eyebrow, his eyes still on the road for a moment longer before he cocked his head toward Samson with a crooked smile. “Grey and I will be linking up with Robbie.”
Samson’s brows drew close, his lips scrunched. “And what about me?”
Luka smirked. “You, my friend, are gonna meet up with Beverly.”
Samson passed a confused glance at Luka. “I thought he was out sick.”
Luka shook his head. “Nah, I killed him last night while he slept.” His lips curled up into a wide smile.
“What the fu—” Samson’s voice cut out and he gagged as Greyson grabbed a fistful of his hair with one hand and ran a knife across his throat with the other. The wound gaped, and with each struggled breath, blood spurted from it. Samson’s eyes bulged and his hands met the wound, the blood dousing them. Along with his gargles came the harsh sucking sound his slit throat made as he fought to breathe.
Greyson grinned, taking a fascinating look at the dying man’s face before he released his grip on Samson’s hair, allowing him to fall to the ground and writhe in the dirt.
Luka looked over the man as if he were a cockroach he had just squashed. A little proud. A little larger than life. He hacked a wad of spit to the dirt and said, “Let him bleed out a little more, and then get him wrapped up and in the SUV. We got shit to do.”
Twenty-One
Preach sat in the passenger seat of an Explorer, breathing a sigh of relief as Luka confirmed over the radio that the senator made it through the first meet site with no issue. Bravo Team was situated on the banks of Crooked Creek, the Explorer facing the road in which the senator would be taking to meet them. He looked to Riker, his longtime driver and something of a bodyguard, in the driver’s seat, and nodded. “One step closer.”
“One step closer,” Riker repeated him, and then took a big yawn.
Preach welcomed the yawn, as well as Riker’s usual early morning “vigor.” The silence tensed Preach, made him nervous, though he reminded himself that quiet was good in those types of situations. With no radio traffic, that meant the roads were clear and nothing was amiss, which also meant Senator Hale likely didn’t bring the cavalry with him to kill or arrest every last one of them. He wondered if Hale would even have it in him to give up his career, his name, in order to take the Sinners out. Likely not. He needed this mess to go away quietly as much as they did.
The senator finally arrived on schedule moments later, his sedan backing in next to them with his window down. Preach lowered his own window and hooked an elbow out, taking in Hale’s glare as his car came to a halt.
“You had to take it this far, didn’t you, old buddy?” Hale asked and blew out an exasperated breath.
“You stopped answerin’ the phone, Ronald. I felt rejected. You can’t take me out, get me all worked up, and then just not answer my calls the next day. Not very gentlemanly of you, Senator,” Preach replied with a grin.
“We’ve done good business for years, Preach. Years. There was no need to take it this far. No need to demand money. I didn’t make that deal with the Madera Cartel. That’s your skin, not mine. You think I didn’t know about that?”
Preach scoffed. “What’s it matter to you? You still owe us, fair and square. The cartel deal has nothin’ to do with you. The money you owe us does.”
“I owe you jack shit, Preach. Nothing, you hear me?”
“Then what’s in the trunk, Senator?” He smirked.
“Don’t think I won’t get it back, somehow, some way.”
“Is that a threat, Ronald? You know how much dirt we have on you? Remember that, next time you feel a threat cross your mind.”
Hale looked up at the sky, letting out an ahhh as a smile crossed his lips. “You’ve always wanted this, haven’t you, Preach. You were just waiting for the day Daddy Jame-O died and you could rake me over the coals.”
“You used him! You used his alcoholism. You used the Sinners. How quickly you forget.” Preach could feel the anger envelop him. He remembered clearly the closed-door meetings the senator took with a drunk and strung out Jameson, making deals that chipped away at the club, one pound of flesh at a time.
“I gave you everything.”
“You tore us down!” Preach’s hand gripped the truck’s window frame as he fought the urge to fling the door open and teach the senator a thing or two about respect.
“You better settle your nerves there, Preach. You’re looking rather old these days. Wouldn’t want you dropping dead out here from a heart attack or something.”
Preach shook his head. “Not before I get
my hands on your money. Not before I watch you drive away a million dollars lighter.” He motioned toward Bronson in the back seat, and Riker next to him. “Go ahead and grab the bags, guys.”
“Not today, boss,” Bronson responded.
Preach felt the muzzle of a gun meet the back of his head. “What the fuck, Bronson?” he said, startled.
Riker was startled as well, his eyes on Bronson’s other hand, a nine-millimeter pointed straight at him.
“You see, Preach,” Senator Hale said, getting out of the sedan casually. There was the distinct rumble of motorcycle engines in the distance, growing louder. Hale smiled, shutting the door behind him, and glanced off toward the road. “I wasn’t going to leave here today knowing you were making off with my money. Not a chance. So, I made some deals of my own.”
“What the fuck are you doin’, Bronson?” Preach demanded, and the gun was pushed harder into his head in response.
“Money talks, boss,” he responded with a shrug.
“Who else?!” Preach asked, his voice hoarse. “Who the fuck else?”
“You’ll see,” Hale answered for Bronson. “You’ll see, old buddy.”
Preach didn’t have to look to know who was on the incoming motorcycles, didn’t take long at all to figure out he had been played the whole time.
The toothy grins on Robbie and Honey Bear’s faces could be seen from the road as they rode into the clearing and turned toward the riverbank.
Hale stepped up to Preach’s door and pouted. “Oh, poor Preach, that look is to die for. Like you’ve just seen a ghost.” The senator grabbed Preach’s chin as a grandmother would a grandson, and Preach slapped his hand away.
Bronson slammed the butt of the pistol against Preach’s head, leaving a wide bloody gash behind. Preach groaned, grabbing at the wound, but Bronson smacked his hand with the pistol as well, though softer that time. Didn’t make much difference to Preach. The barrel caught his pinky and ring finger and he felt a pop as the small bones splintered. He cradled his hand, careful not to touch the throbbing fingers.
Hale smiled wider then, looking over Preach as he winced in pain, as a kid would his ribboned science fair project—proud, boastful, giddy. “You won’t ever touch my money, you won’t ever lead this club again, and you won’t ever find yourself a man …” He let man linger in the air, and Preach immediately looked toward Robbie, who approached the senator, along with Honey Bear, from behind. Hale noticed their approach too and said, “Oh, you didn’t think Robbie would tell me what he had on you? Come on now. He told me you were a fairy the minute we contacted him. I saw the pictures too. Tell me, Preach, what goes on at those bathhouses in Chicago? I’ve been told a thing or two and”—Hale shuddered—“I just worry what your men would think.”
Preach closed his eyes, but he knew Riker’s perplexed eyes were on him.
“I’ll tell you, Preach. I would’ve never pegged you as a queer. Now, are you the top or the bottom?”
“Fuck off,” Preach spit back, his eyes open again. “All of you can fuck right off. You got business to do, you know it, and I know it. Just get her over with and be done with it.” He glared at Robbie and Honey Bear, and then Luka and Greyson as they joined them. “Fucking wolves in the hen house,” he muttered, shaking his head.
“Lots of wolves sick of being led by a fucking hen,” Robbie said with a smirk. “You knew this day was coming, Preach.”
“No, I thought this patch, this club, our code, meant something to you people.”
“It does, Preach,” Robbie said, “and that’s exactly why we’re here.”
Preach looked at Honey Bear, distressed. “HB, I welcomed you into this club. I gave you something when you had nothing. This is how you repay me?”
HB shrugged, his demeanor placid. “I don’t work for no homos, don’t owe them nothing either. Now, you go gracefully, and I hope God don’t make you burn too long,” he hissed, spitting to the dirt.
“Hey, Preach,” Riker said, a look of understanding crossing his features and an air of acceptance about him that comforted Preach just a little. “I don’t give a shit who you’re fucking,” he continued. “I would’ve served you regardless. And it’s been a true pleasure.” Riker nodded toward his mentor, letting the moment sink in, and then he abruptly grabbed the radio mic that connected everyone involved in the operation. Pressing the button, he yelled, “Traitors. Robbie and Ho—” The first round caught him in the side and took his breath away. He leaned back as far as he could go between the window and steering wheel, a hand up defensively, the other still clutching the mic. He took a calming breath and pressed the button. “Robbie and Honey Bear. Run.”
The next shot hit his arm, and he dropped the mic and cradled the bleeding limb into himself, only to leave his head exposed. Bronson put one more round into Riker’s skull, and bone fragments and flesh painted the windshield. Every muscle in his body relaxed, leaving him slouched awkwardly over the steering wheel.
Riker’s dead eyes were still open and they stared at Preach. He felt like he could almost see the point where his soul left his body. A tear cascaded down Preach’s cheek, his chest tightening. He wanted to fight, just didn’t think he had the strength, and accepted what had come to be. He closed his eyes and muttered a prayer.
“Open your eyes, you sonofabitch,” Hale yelled, nodding toward Bronson. Bronson clubbed Preach over the head again. Another gash split wide, and Preach grunted and winced as Hale taunted, “I want my face to be the last thing you fucking see.”
Preach opened his eyes, stared at Hale with deep resolve, and he leaned his head back against the muzzle. He took a slow breath through a half-smile, and he said, “You know, Hale. One day, your time is gonna come, and I just know it’s gonna be ugly. You don’t do business with scum like Robbie Savage and make it out unscathed.”
Robbie chuckled. “Not in this case, at least.” He locked eyes with Bronson through the back window and nodded. “It’s been a pleasure, Preach,” Robbie said dryly.
“Suck my d—” Bronson pulled the trigger point-blank and Preach’s face splattered against the dashboard in fleshy mounds, his body slouched in the seat, his words left unsaid.
Hale wiped his hands feverishly down the front of his shirt in disgust. “Fuck, I think you got him on me.”
“Grow a pair,” Robbie sneered, patting the senator on the back. “Death is ugly business.” He made his way to the opening door.
Bronson chuckled, wiping the bits of flesh from his pistol barrels onto his pants before holstering both guns and climbing out of the vehicle. He grinned, doing a little squat, and he said, “That was fun. Can I do it again?”
Robbie eyed the two dead in the front seat, and the mess on the windshield, and shook his head. “I told you we should’ve went with knives on this one too. This bitch is gonna be hard to drive like it is.”
Honey Bear snapped his fingers toward Bronson. “Hey, you get yourself in there and move the bodies to the back. And then clean the mess enough for y’all to drive that sumbitch.”
“Clean it with what?” Bronson asked, a little snark to his tone.
HB froze, his eyes shifting slowly to Bronson, and he calmly said, “I don’t give a good goddamn if you have to clean it with your fuckin’ tongue, just get ’er done, ya hear me?”
Bronson nodded, frustrated.
After he dragged the bodies to the back of the Explorer, he removed Preach’s pants, and used them to begin the “cleaning” process.
Robbie walked toward the senator slowly. He nodded his head toward the sedan, his stare sharp and unrelenting. “Five hundred K of that is mine.”
Hale shrugged. “Deal’s a deal. If you have what I asked for.”
“I do. Every bit of it. All the dirty little shit we’ve collected on you over the years.” Robbie grinned. “And your daughter?”
The sound of incoming traffic startled Hale, and he looked to the road, then back at Robbie.
The others played it cool. They knew everyth
ing was running as scheduled.
“Nothing to be frightened of, Hale. Just my other guys,” Robbie said with a grin.
The vehicle pulled in beside the others and skidded to a stop. Greyson and Luka got out.
Hale sucked in a breath, his face going red, eyes wide with rage. “These are your fucking idiots?”
Robbie nodded and let out a chuckle. “Yeah, they give you problems? They’re just old Marines like me, man. Hard to get along.”
Hale shook his head, pointing toward Luka. “No, that motherfucker stole my watch.”
Robbie laughed loudly, two hands to his stomach. “No shit?”
Luka stopped in front of them and shrugged, and then he glanced at the watch on his wrist proudly. “I considered it like a tax or something.”
The vein in Ronald’s head could’ve burst. It throbbed along with his overtaxed heart. He wanted to scream at them, at the top of his lungs, “Do you know who I am?” Wanted to force-feed them their own cocks, if he was being honest with himself. But he’d play nice … because playing nice worked for the time being. But only toward those with which he made the deal.
He pointed toward Luka. “Another one hundred thousand if you kill him where he stands,” Hale said, his words like fire.
Robbie looked at Luka, who had lost all the color in his face, and then toward Hale. He did that for a moment or two before Luka took off running. Robbie pulled the gun from his holster just as fast and put two rounds into Luka’s back.
Luka collapsed to the ground in a spasm, a salted slug against the earth, before he eventually stopped writhing, and he shivered and muttered quietly instead.
Greyson stopped in his tracks, his eyes wide, his mouth agape. He looked like he wanted to run too, but didn’t. Instead, he put his hands up in a panic.
“He all right?” Robbie asked, eyeing the senator.
Ronald nodded. “Yeah, he’s fine … if you like him. I’m not paying you for him at least.”