You used to be a Marine.
How can you just let yourself go?
I"d heard it from myself. It didn"t matter. There was no turning around once you were headed on the path I was on. This is who I was.
A knock on the door shook me out of my thoughts. I screwed the top on the bottle and shoved it under the pillow on the bed. "Come in," I said, steeling myself. I knew it would be my father.
He stood in the doorway. "I brought you a blanket for the bed in case you need it. You know how the temperature drops overnight here, even in the summer."
"Thanks, Pop."
He paused, the silence awkward. Years of unspoken words just hung there in the s.p.a.ce between us. "So your friends," he said. "Are they okay out there? Is everything still working all right at the old bunkhouse?"
The bunkhouse was part of the original homestead, and the only remaining remnant still standing after almost a hundred years. Tucked away from sight in a hidden gulch surrounded by tall pines, it was a good idea to place the family there, strictly from a security perspective. I knew Crunch and his family would be safer there, isolated; of course, Crunch was carrying a piece, just in case.
It used to be my fort back when I was a kid, but in middle school, my dad and I had made it into a real house, gutting the interior, laying new wooden flooring, and putting in plumbing. We"d spent weeks together, him and I, working on the project until the place was habitable. Afterward, I"d disappear for a weekend and my mom would have to hike through the woods to drag me home. And then, in high school, it was the place where I went with June.
Going up to the bunkhouse to get them settled had d.a.m.n near ripped me in two. The place was haunted with ghosts from my past, filled with memories of her.
"Yeah," I said. "You kept it up really well."
Dad grunted. "Well, you never know when something might happen. I figured it could come in handy one day."
He meant that he never knew whether I might return, the prodigal son coming home. He"d been keeping up with the repairs on the bunkhouse this entire time. For me.
I didn"t know whether to be glad he thought I"d come home eventually, or upset that he hadn"t written me off entirely.
"Thanks dad. I appreciate it."
He nodded. "You going to tell me what kind of trouble they"re in?"
He was referring to Crunch"s family, but of course I was in just as much trouble. I had no idea when Mad Dog might discover we hadn"t actually been killed in the fire, and that April and Mac weren"t really in Puerto Rico. I figured we were safe for a while, at least. But who knew how long it would last?
"I can"t exactly, dad, not right now," I said. "But we are in trouble."
"With the bike club?"
"Yes."
He was silent. "Ok, then. Are they armed out there in the bunkhouse?"
"Yeah, Crunch is carrying."
"Well, you know where the weapons are inside the house. Should I buy ammo tomorrow in town?"
"It might be a good idea."
"Ok then." He turned to leave, then paused. "Son?"
"Yeah, Pop."
"I"m thinking you did right by the family out there. Am I right to think that?"
"Yeah, dad."
"Good. Glad to have you back, son."
"Goodnight, dad."
As the door closed behind him, my heart sank. He had the impression that this was a lot more clear cut than it was, that I was some kind of hero, rescuing Crunch and his family from the MC and coming back home.
The truth was a lot more grey.
Two days earlier Las Vegas, Nevada Axe I stood perfectly still, the sound of my breathing amplified in the quiet of the warehouse, my nine millimeter trained on Crunch"s head. I nodded toward Tank, who kept his own weapon drawn as he disarmed our brother.
"s.h.i.t, man." Crunch raised his hands slowly while Tank pulled his weapon and stepped away from him. "What the f.u.c.k is going on? You know me. The s.h.i.t that"s going down here, it"s not right."
"I know you? f.u.c.k right, I know you. And I should have known not to vouch for you with the club from the very beginning." Tank was angry, his face red, and he waved his weapon carelessly. It was probably a good idea that I was here. Tank was much too close to Crunch to just do a clean hit.
h.e.l.l, I was close to Crunch too, but I had a lot more experience with killing.
That"s why Mad Dog had sent me here.
"What you think I did, I didn"t do it." Crunch looked back and forth at us, eyes pleading, but still defiant.
"f.u.c.king steal money from the club? You"re gonna say you weren"t?" I let Tank rant. It probably would have been better to just get it done with, and that"s what a good Sergeant-at-Arms would do, but I wasn"t exactly a good Sergeant-at-Arms. Not anymore. I had a nagging feeling something about this wasn"t right, and I wanted to hear Crunch"s side of things before I made a decision. It was my conscience I had to be concerned about, and I had way too much s.h.i.t weighing on my conscience already to just kill a brother and walk away.
"You know me, Tank. I wouldn"t steal from the club. Mad Dog"s the one who"s taking from the club. I"ve got evidence. He"s pinning it on me."
Tank laughed. "Sure, the club President is the one who"s stealing, when you"re the one who was in the lock-up for it." Crunch was the one with the numbers experience; the one who had access to all the money; and the one who"d been in the federal pen way back when for computer hacking and embezzlement. The guy was a f.u.c.king genius when it came to computers. It was a no brainer for the club to make the decision that Crunch was a traitor, when Mad Dog brought this s.h.i.t to us.
"f.u.c.k you guys. I did not do this. That motherf.u.c.ker is setting me up," Crunch protested, shaking his head, resigned to his fate. "You can kill me if you want, but you"re going to find out I"m right. I"m the one who found out Mad Dog"s been stealing from the club, from Benicio."
"Can you see Mad Dog as some kind of money genius?"
Tank had a point. On the face of it, Mad Dog wasn"t exactly a brain surgeon. He had business sense, sure, otherwise he wouldn"t have gotten by as Club President for this long. But he wasn"t the brightest.
Would he steal from the club? Yeah, I could see that. He was reckless, greedy, narcissistic. But steal from Benicio? He couldn"t be that stupid. Mad Dog had done some underhanded things. h.e.l.l, I was his f.u.c.king right hand man - I"d done some f.u.c.king underhanded things. And he"d just tried to get the club to buy off on a plan to get us out from under Benicio. To get us aligned with a f.u.c.king Mexican cartel. Crazy Mexican motherf.u.c.kers. The club didn"t buy off on it, but the vote was close.
In fact, I was the deciding vote.
No hard feelings, Mad Dog had said. I would be stupid to believe that. Coming out here to kill Crunch was a test of loyalty, I knew that much. I just wasn"t sure how loyal I was to Mad Dog anymore.
I didn"t understand the drive to get into bed with the Mexicans. Money wasn"t bad for us right now, and at least Benicio wasn"t insane.
Our Panamanian employer wasn"t exactly someone you wanted to try to steal from, though. Just like his brother Guillermo, whom we"d provided protection for before, Benicio had a reputation for being ruthless if you crossed him.
Of course, Crunch didn"t strike me as being particularly reckless.
Not like Mad Dog.
"You believe this s.h.i.thead?" Tank asked, turning toward me. I kept my eyes on Crunch, although Tank was making me nervous. He was a hothead and I didn"t need to get shot.
"Quit waving that thing around," I said.
"The evidence," Crunch said. "It"s all online. I"ve got everything, the paper trail that shows it"s Mad Dog who"s been stealing from the club. April knows. He"ll kill her and MacKenzie. I was going to bring it to the club. I was just waiting until I had everything. I confronted him about it."
"April and Mac will be fine," I said.
I shouldn"t be making promises I couldn"t keep, I thought. If Crunch had stolen from the club, April was about to be in a world of hurt. It wasn"t going to be fine, not for her or MacKenzie.
If Crunch had stolen from the club.
Was I sure? Sure enough to take him out?
I knew Crunch. At least, I thought I did.
"Look," Crunch said. "The bank statement- there"s a copy in my pocket. Take it out. You"ll see I"m telling the truth. I"ve kept it on me since I confronted Mad Dog."
"You believe this s.h.i.t? This is p.i.s.sing me off. I should shoot you right now," Tank said. "I can"t f.u.c.king believe I vouched for you to get you into the club."
"Get it out of his pocket," I said, then when Tank just stared at me stupidly, "Do it. I"m not going to f.u.c.king shoot him if he"s telling the truth." I was loyal to a fault, but Mad Dog had more and more faults lately.
Tank reached in Crunch"s pocket, still talking. "Why the f.u.c.k would Mad Dog want to get out from under Benicio and set us up with the Mexicans if he"s taking money from Benicio? It makes no f.u.c.king sense." He pulled out the paper and handed it to me.
I looked at the numbers, feeling tightness in my chest as I tried to make sense of it. "Jesus Christ. Over eight hundred grand."
"What?" Tank asked. "Let me see that. f.u.c.king A. Where did Mad Dog get that kind of cash?"
"Where"d you get the statement?" I asked.
Crunch looked at me like I was an idiot. "I"m a hacker," he said. "I can get anything. It"s not me. It"s Mad Dog. He"s the one stealing from the club. All the evidence - I"ve got it. I just need internet access and I can show you."
"s.h.i.t, man," Tank said. "You feel right about this? Taking him out this way?"
"I -" I didn"t have time to answer, as the rumbling of motorcycles outside interrupted us. "What the h.e.l.l is that?"
Then everything went crazy. Automatic gunfire erupted from somewhere out front, and I saw Tank go down, right before a flash-bang grenade came rolling inside.
"Jesus, get down!" I yelled, taking cover behind a large metal canister that began spewing out a fog of something when it took a hit. I couldn"t see s.h.i.t through the haze, but I felt Crunch beside me. "Tank!" I screamed.
No response. I could barely make out his figure, lying motionless on the ground. I handed Crunch my second piece, as if our handguns were going to be any match against automatic weapons. There was another burst of gunfire, and then the unmistakable "whoompf" sound of a barrel of something igniting.
Crunch followed close to me as we ran for the nearest cover, a vehicle service pit in the floor. Tank"s body lay a few feet away, and I stopped, feeling for a pulse. Nothing. I bent down to drag him with us, but then I saw an explosion from the corner of my eye.
I left him behind.
All around us, the building crackled and burned, loud even over the din of the fire alarm.
"f.u.c.k, man, we"re going to die in here," Crunch said.
"Shut up. Get your bandanna around your face. The smoke is going to get you before anything else. We need to get to the back exit."
"You mean, where whoever"s out there is waiting for us?"
"Better than being burned alive in here. But we need to go now."
Then we climbed out of the pit and ran, chaos reigning down around us. Just like it had when I was in Ramadi. The adrenaline took over.
There was no way I"d survived Iraq just to die in a s.h.i.thole warehouse.
When by some miracle we got out of the building, I yanked the handkerchief away from my mouth, sucking in deep breaths of air and choking on the smoke, my lungs aching. Crunch was doubled over, coughing. There was no sign of anyone back here, so whoever had been shooting at us sure weren"t professionals, or anyone with military experience. They fired on us, set the place ablaze, but didn"t bother to cover the back exit?
So they were novices or sloppy.
"s.h.i.t, man," Crunch said, coughing. "We need to get out of here before the cops and the fire department show up."
I nodded. We followed close to the side of the building, Crunch behind me, weapons drawn. I could feel the heat from the interior as the place burned, and silently prayed the whole place wouldn"t blow until after we got out of there. When I reached the front, I stood motionless, watching three guys ride off on bikes.
Three guys wearing Inferno Motorcycle Club patches.
"I f.u.c.king told you," Crunch said.
I didn"t say anything until we were in the parking lot, away from the building. Then I screamed incoherently, the anger I felt toward the club coloring everything. "f.u.c.king motherf.u.c.ker s.h.i.t!"
"We need to get out of here now," Crunch said.
A few miles away, we stopped to call Crunch"s wife. I"d never seen Crunch so terrified as he was when he made the call to tell his wife to get out of town. I stood there while he gave her instructions, my mind turning over what had happened.
"s.h.i.t"s gone down," he said. "Get the paperwork and your weapon from the safe, just like we planned. The bags are in the car, right? Good girl." He paused. "Don"t take anything else. Leave the note on the kitchen counter. I"m staying with you until you"re on the road. Get out of town and call me. We"ll give you a place to meet us." He hung out on the phone with her for a few minutes, then turned to me, exhaling loudly.
"She and MacKenzie are on their way."
"They"re going to know something"s up when she and Mac are gone, Crunch," I said. I was trying to work out what we were going to do next, but I was flying by the seat of my pants here.
Crunch shook his head. "She"ll leave a note for me, saying she finally left me, that she went back to her mother"s in Puerto Rico. Her mother will cover for her, and there"s no way the club is going there to verify it."
"You thought this through," I said. At least he had some semblance of a plan.
"I confronted Mad Dog about the discrepancies in the accounts a couple months ago. It was stupid, obviously. I know that now. But I was doing the books, and it was just a discrepancy- that"s all it was. No big deal. I thought Benicio was ripping us off, at first. Mad Dog brushed it off, said he"d take care of it with Benicio. But then the vote with the cartel thing came up. My curiosity got the better of me."
"And you started poking around online," I said.
"Yeah," Crunch said. "The past couple weeks. I was getting together enough evidence. Figured to accuse the club President of something like that, it would have to be ironclad. I wanted to make sure it was."
"He accused you," I said. "Brought it to the officers for vote. Sent me here to make sure me and Tank took you out."
"I thought I was pretty safe after I let it go and backed off," Crunch said. "I made a plan with April, but still. I didn"t really expect this, not now."