by Emma Slate
“When did you get on a motorcycle for the first time?” I asked.
“Twelve.”
“That seems young.”
“I was big for my age.”
I laughed. “Yeah, I bet you were.”
He grinned. “Why do you think my road name is Colt?”
“Then you really are nicknamed after a young male horse?”
“No, it’s not a nickname, but a road name. Road names are given by your brothers.”
“So how did you get your name?” I queried.
He scratched the stubble on his jaw. “When I was fourteen, I went with my dad to visit another club. The meeting place was a strip joint.” He shot me an amused look. “While my dad was taking care of business, I was told to sit at the bar, enjoy a cherry coke, and wait. Well, I heard a noise coming from one of the dressing rooms, so I went to investigate.”
His jaw clenched at the memory. “One of the bouncers had a stripper on her knees and he was forcing her to give him a blow job. She was choking on his dick and not enjoying it. Her eyes shot to mine, tears streaming mascara down her face, and before I could even think, I had my dad’s old Samuel Colt revolver out from my back pocket, and I was pistol whipping the shit out of him. I put that fucker in the hospital.”
“Holy shit, are you serious?” I asked, my mouth agape.
“Completely. Told you I’m protector of women.”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “You really are.”
“Does that story change how you view me?”
“I saw what you did to that shithead the night we met, remember? I—the world needs more men like you, Colt.”
His grinned. “So… do you have any nicknames?”
“No. None that I’d like to remember, anyway.”
“Guess I’ll have to come up with a nickname for you then.”
“I guess so.”
He started the ignition and then we drove away. Colt turned on the radio to a classic rock station, almost like he knew I didn’t want to talk and needed time to think. The papers on my lap drew my attention, but I made no move to study them.
Acid and the other prospects let us through the gate. Colt took the papers from me as we walked into the clubhouse. Cam, Lily, and Silas were eating grilled cheese sandwiches at the breakfast bar. Lily jumped off her stool and ran to me and embraced my legs. I swept her up into a hug, closing my eyes and breathing in the smell of little girl and sunshine. She was exactly what I needed after the morning I’d had.
Darcy was sitting with Gray in the living room and Rachel was drinking a bottle of Pepto Bismol.
“Still hungover?” I asked after setting Lily down. She ran to her mother and crawled up next to her.
Rachel nodded. “It’s awful. I’ve only been able to suck down coffee and eat a piece of toast.”
“I haven’t even eaten today,” I said.
“You can have half my sandwich,” Cam said, offering the mangled shred to me, complete with sticky child’s handprints in the bread.
“Thanks, but you should finish it.” I smiled and then looked at Darcy. “Where is everyone?
“Joni had a shift at the hospital,” Darcy said. “Zip went with her, much to her consternation. They got into a big argument in front of everyone.”
“I didn’t want her out there on her own,” Colt said. “Not with all this sh—”
“Colt,” I interrupted, widening my eyes and gesturing with my chin to the kids.
He grinned suddenly. “Stuff. All this stuff going on.”
“I agree with you,” Darcy said. “But clearly Joni had some other ideas about how it was supposed to go down. Allison—last I knew—was suffering from a bout of morning sickness and Torque has been looking after her. Cheese is conked out after being on watch last night. Reap and Boxer are at the garage and Acid and the prospects are out front—which you saw when you came in.”
She pinned me with her eyes. “You guys get done what you needed to get done?”
I shrugged. Colt had told Boxer where we were headed and apparently Boxer had relayed it to everyone. It was difficult to keep a secret from any of them. They were a close-knit family, all up in each other’s business. It was still a foreign concept to me, but I was slowly coming around to the new dynamic.
“Let’s go to the office,” he said.
I followed him down the hall. He closed the door once we were both in private. It was a small room with a desk and laptop, a file cabinet in the corner, and two chairs in front of the desk. It wasn’t a place for all the Blue Angels to congregate, but Zip and Colt often disappeared into the room to discuss things privately between them before taking it to their brothers.
Colt set down the stack of papers on his desk and waved me toward them. “Have a seat.”
I took the swivel leather chair and started pawing my way through the papers. “Why?” I asked, my hands stilling.
“Why did Richie give you the bar?”
I nodded. “It doesn’t make any sense. I was his employee. I mean, he knew me. He knew I had no one except Shelly. Besides, he told me to leave town for a while. Why would he tell me that and then give me his bar?”
“Maybe he was giving you a new chance at life if you decided to come back to Waco,” Colt said.
“But you don’t just give someone a profitable business. Richie owed nothing on the building. You know?”
“Wait a minute. Think about what you just said. Richie left you the bar, with no clear reason, right? And Dev is looking for a shipment, yes?”
“Yeah, so?”
“So Richie gets in bed with the Iron Horsemen, but it proves to be too much. So how do you wipe out your enemy? The Art of War. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
“Richie stole a shipment from Dev thinking someone else was going to get rid of Dev for him. He left you the bar because he didn’t expect Dev to be around to cause you problems. And he certainly didn’t expect Dev to catch up with him. If Dev was gone and Richie had gotten away with the shipment, he wouldn’t give a fuck about the bar; he’d be loaded.”
It was a sobering pronouncement and I nodded. Neither of us mentioned that my fate would be similar to Richie’s if Dev had his way.
We both fell silent for a moment and then he asked, “The night you dropped Richie at the bus depot, did he tell you anything? Say anything that stuck out?”
“He told me to get out of town for a few weeks. That’s all.”
I stood up and began to pace across the office and then suddenly ground to a halt. “We made a stop. Before I dropped him off at the bus depot.” I looked at Colt. “I took him to a storage unit in town. He was only in it for a few minutes and then he was back in the truck. I didn’t see what he did when he was in there, though. And he came back empty handed. I thought maybe he was dropping something off for safe keeping, but come to think of it I don’t remember him bringing anything into the unit either.”
“Do you remember which storage unit?” Colt asked.
I thought for a moment and shook my head. “No. I was too caught up in my own thoughts and wasn’t paying attention.”
“But you didn’t leave Waco to get to the unit…”
“No, we didn’t leave Waco.”
“Come on,” he said, heading for the door of the office.
“Where are we going?” I demanded, as I trailed after him.
“We’re looking in your truck to see if Richie left you any information or clues.”
We walked through the clubhouse and out the front door. My truck had been moved from Charlie’s to the clubhouse parking lot.
I dug through my purse for my keys and went to the driver’s side door to unlock it. Grasping the handle, I dragged it open and then leaned across the flat bench seat to unlatch the passenger door.
I roved my hands over the floor of the truck, encountering loose change, but nothing of true value. I lifted myself up, trying to stem the feeling of disappointment. “Did you find anything?”
Colt didn’t reply; he
merely arched an eyebrow and held up a silver key—a silver key that no doubt fit into the lock on Richie’s storage unit.
“Colt Weston, you might be my good luck charm.”
We met Reap at a roadside diner on the outskirts of Waco. Reap and Colt sipped watered-down coffee while I consumed a hamburger and fries. I hadn’t eaten anything all day and my stomach had been gnawing itself.
“You want me to do what?” Reap demanded.
“Distract the Iron Horsemen so Mia and I can move through Waco without anyone following us,” Colt repeated.
“A diversion,” I piped up between bites, feeling like a mix between the Hamburglar and a criminal mastermind.
He glared at me but said to Colt, “You don’t want me to go with you?”
“We need to stay under the radar.”
Reap ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “You think whatever Richie stole from the Iron Horsemen is in that storage unit.”
“Yup,” Colt said. “But we don’t know which unit.”
“I don’t like you doing this without having someone covering your back,” Reap said.
“I’m covering his back,” I piped up. “I’ve got a pistol.”
“Yeah, so I’ve heard.” A slow smile spread across his face.
“Brother,” Colt said softly. “I know you have my back. I need you to handle protecting the clubhouse right now, and to arrange for a diversion.”
Reap’s eyes glittered with intention and the heaviness of the situation. Finally, he nodded. “I’ll protect them—and I’ll get Boxer on the diversion. He’s good at starting shit.”
“Yeah,” Colt said with a dry chuckle. “He is.”
Reap turned to me. “Darlin’, even though you know how to shoot, I hope like hell you don’t have to.”
Wiping a glob of ketchup from the side of my mouth, I replied, “That makes two of us, dude.”
Chapter 20
It was eleven p.m. I was exhausted, discouraged, and pissed-the-hell-off. I wanted to curse Richie, but he was dead and that seemed like bad juju.
“Who the hell would’ve thought Waco had so many storage companies?” I grumbled.
Colt pulled me into his side as we walked across the parking lot. “Eighth time’s a charm.”
“Let’s hope.”
We rounded the corner and headed down the long walkway to the second to last unit in the row. I pulled out the key from my back pocket and slid it into the lock.
“Well, this is a good sign.” I looked at Colt in excitement as I turned the key. The lock snapped open. Colt reached down to the gate handle and lifted it just enough so we could duck under. He slid the gate shut, bathing us in darkness.
“Where’s the light?” I asked as I felt along one wall.
“I think I found it. Hold on.”
The room brightened. In the center of the storage unit was a mound covered in a blue tarp. Colt moved toward it, picked up the edge, and pulled it back.
“Shit. Mother fucking fuck shit,” he cursed.
“What is it?” I demanded, inching closer in curiosity and trepidation. “Meth? Like you thought?”
Instead of answering, Colt swept back the rest of the tarp revealing stacks and stacks of white powder in plastic bags. He picked one up, ripped open the edge, and sniffed.
“Not meth. Coke. Millions of dollars’ worth of coke.”
“Richie stole coke from Dev?”
“No,” he said, his tone bleak. “Richie stole coke from a cartel by way of Dev. This just went from bad to holy fuck. Dev we can deal with, but nobody fucks with the cartels. Nobody.”
I started. “How do you know this is cartel coke?”
“You remember what I told you before? You can’t make this shit in a lab. Stuff like this has a country of origin, sweetheart, and it isn’t the USA. Besides, I talked to the Jackals a while back. They said they’d been seeing an uptick in coke on the streets. It’s like the nineteen eighties are back.”
“Well, that’s new information.” I wrinkled my nose. “So Richie got into bed with the Iron Horsemen, who got into bed with a cartel?”
“Yup.”
“And Dev will do anything to get this shipment back.”
“Yup.”
“This is awful. This is really awful.”
He sighed. “You have no idea. The cartels make ISIS look like amateurs.”
I closed my eyes and something clicked and I said, “That’s why you haven’t launched a full on attack on the Iron Horsemen. You were worried this was bigger than Dev and you’re trying to find out who’s involved, aren’t you?”
He nodded and sighed, suddenly looking like the weight of the world was resting on his impressive shoulders.
“What do we do with this?” I asked, gesturing to the packages of coke.
“For the time being, we leave it. I’m not moving this shit to the club. Somehow Richie managed to get it here and Dev still isn’t the wiser. Last thing I wanna do is bring it back right under Dev’s nose. We’re going to leave it here. We’re going to make a plan, and then we go from there.”
Before pulling the tarp back over the stack, Colt took a small package and stuck it in his vest pocket, close to his chest.
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
“I gotta friend who can trace this shit. Country of origin, remember?”
I knew he wouldn’t tell me anything more. He covered the product, and when he was sure it was concealed, we went to the gate and I turned off the light. Colt lifted the gate and went out first. He kept watch while I closed up. We kept our pace steady and calm, not wanting to appear like we were rushing. The storage lot was deserted this time of night, but we made sure to stay to the shadows and away from cameras. No one was getting our faces on security feeds.
I didn’t breathe a sigh of relief until the doors of the truck were locked and the engine was running. There was something sinister about the storage unit. Who knew how many others were slinking around the dark, just like us.
“Are we going to go visit your friend?” I asked in exhaustion.
“We aren’t headed anywhere,” he said. “I’m dropping you off at the clubhouse and then Zip and I will—”
“Nope. Not happening.”
He took his eyes off the road to glance at me. “You’re not going, Mia.”
“Why? Is your friend dangerous?”
“She’s not my friend.”
“Ugh. Fine. Your colleague.”
“She’s not that either.”
“Colt,” I warned.
“Mia,” he said in the same tone.
“Why don’t you want me to go? This involves me and Richie left this in my lap. I’m not going to let you clean it up without me.”
“It’s dangerous.”
“I came with you tonight,” I said in exasperation. “I can’t just sit at home like a good little woman and wait for her man. Unless that’s what you’re expecting of me?”
Colt’s lips twitched in humor. “How do I answer that so I don’t get smacked?”
I smacked him.
“Guess that answers that.”
I looked out the window. “You don’t think I have the right to be there? I’m in this as much as you. Maybe more.”
“What is it you want?”
“Control. Over what I learn. Over my involvement. I’m the one Dev is harassing.”
“Hate to break it to you, darlin’, but if it’s control you’re after, you’re not going to get it.”
“Don’t patronize me.
“I’m not,” he said, still rational, still calm. “But this shit is bad. We are talking ultra-dangerous—and I’d never forgive myself if something happened to you because of the life I dragged you into. I’m trying to protect you, darlin’. Don’t you see that?”
I was quiet a moment and then, “You didn’t drag me. I came running to you.”
“Yeah, I guess you did.”
We drove in silence for a few exits before he said, “You can come
. But you will stay in the motel with Boxer. I’ll take Zip as backup.”
“Zip? But he’s guarding Joni.”
“I need my VP for this. I’ll get Cheese to take over Joni’s watch.”
“But he’s so young. Is he…experienced?”
“Yup. I trusted him enough to let him guard you, didn’t I?”
I thought for a moment. “Okay. I’ll stay with Boxer.”
“No fight?”
I settled down in the seat, feeling sleepy, my eyes closing. “Nope. You were completely reasonable. Thank you. Where are we headed? Back to the clubhouse?”
He didn’t answer as he fished his phone out of his vest pocket, flipped it open, and pressed a button. A moment later he said, “I need you and Boxer in Odessa by tomorrow at ten a.m. Get Cheese to cover you. It’s worse than we thought. Come ready for a fight. I’ll explain later.” He hung up and set his phone in the center console.
“You didn’t ask them about the distraction they caused.”
“Didn’t need to,” Colt said. “Mia?”
“Yeah, Colt?”
“I’m sorry.”
I opened one eye and looked at him as a pit of worry dropped into my belly. “For what?”
He glanced at me with a devilish grin. “For having the boys torch Dive Bar.”
My mouth dropped open. “What is it with you guys and arson? First Dev sets fire to my home. And now the bar, my bar, had an arson problem?”
“It’s not really your bar. Deed only. Dive Bar has been crawling with Iron Horsemen,” he pointed out. “None of that matters at the moment anyway. We needed a distraction, right? That was perfect. It’ll keep everyone busy for a while. And besides, you heard the lawyer, it’s insured and the paperwork is up to date.”
“I—you—seriously?” I glared at him.
He had the audacity to smile. “You should get some sleep.”
“How the hell am I supposed to sleep now? Arson. Coke. A cartel. This is freakin’ nuts.”
“That’s putting it mildly.”
I swallowed. “I’m terrified, Colt. I mean, it was one thing to worry when I thought it was just the Iron Horsemen, you know? But a cartel? They take violence to an entirely new level and they don’t give a shit about your moral code of not touching families or Old Ladies.”