Lead (The Brazen Bulls MC, #8)

by Susan Fanetti

  “What exposure Volkov has, you mean,” Isaac shot back.

  Becker didn’t take the bait. He gestured at the picnic table he and Rad had been sitting on a few minutes ago. “We sit, and you talk, or the van goes back to Tulsa just like it is.”

  Isaac stood like massive statue and glared at Becker. Becker kept his eyes fixed and resolute.

  “Those are the terms, kid,” Rad snarled. “You better think where the need lays here.”

  “Isaac.” Showdown’s voice was low and calm.

  The young president’s resistance broke. “Fuck. Fine.” He stormed to the picnic table ahead of everyone else.

  Becker chuckled. Yeah, he was still a kid. Dangerous, but inexperienced. Despite his shorter tenure at the head of his own table, Becker saw that he was the wiser man between them. Maybe the better president, too.

  All six men sat together at the table, Bulls facing Horde. Becker held his eyes on Isaac and waited.

  “We got a meth problem in Signal Bend,” the kid finally muttered.

  Gunner scoffed. “Join the club. Everybody’s got a meth problem.”

  Becker didn’t dismiss it so quickly. The Volkovs were dabbling in meth, adding it to the extensive catalog of illicit drugs in Irina’s portfolio. “And why does that rate a case of Russian guns?”

  “Our town is hurting. Bad. There’s hardly anything left of us. If my people start tweaking, that’ll be it. Signal Bend will die. I tried to shut down the cookers, but I can’t offer them any better way to earn, and these are people I’ve known all my life. So I had an idea. The Horde will move it out of town, sell it in St. Louis, maybe KC.” His eyes sharpened. “Tulsa, if you want in.”

  “We don’t,” Rad cut in.

  Isaac tossed a glance Rad’s way and gave him a nod. “Okay. But the plan is to give the cookers somebody to sell it to who isn’t in town. We need the firepower so we can protect the transports.”

  “You want to keep your town alive by selling meth?” Gunner asked.

  Showdown picked up the answer. “Why not? Most of the farms are dead or bought out and churned up by corporations. The stores’ve mostly shut down. All we got’s two blocks of junk shops, a gas station, a market, and a couple little restaurants. There’s no work, no money. The Horde does what it can to earn and spread it around, but it’s not enough. This at least puts a little money in town.”

  “Don’t see how it’s much different from anything else we all do to earn,” Len said. “There’s a product, somebody’ll pay for it.”

  Last fall, Irina Volkov had destroyed a Texas MC and taken over their meth cooking operation, installing some hardcore Salvadoran bangers to run it. If she thought the Horde were intruding on her territory, she’d roll over them and not even notice the bump.

  Becker couldn’t tell the Horde what Irina had not yet put in motion. But he did know that she meant the meth to go west and north from Texas. The commercial landscape to the east was too dense and complicated for her tastes. If they stayed east, especially if they were only thinking to go as far as St. Louis, the Horde had some room for their little operation.

  Catching Rad’s eye first and not seeing outright contempt on his SAA’s face, Becker turned to Isaac. “Not KC. Nothing west of Springfield. You don’t want to tread on that turf.”

  Isaac coughed out one harsh syllable of a laugh. “The Russians are getting into that, too?”

  Becker didn’t answer the question. “You don’t go west. If you can’t sell in St. Louis, that’s not our problem. You don’t go west.”

  Isaac turned to Showdown, and they had a silent conversation with their eyes. Len watched, clearly an observer of that silent exchange and not a participant.

  “Okay,” Isaac said, without much grace or gratitude. But he held out his hand. “We don’t go west.”

  Becker shook it. “Then let’s ride to Dandy’s and do this deal.”

  ~oOo~

  Rad leaned over the bar and grabbed the bottle of Jack. They’d sent the prospect home, and the clubhouse was just about empty this close to dawn, so they were serving themselves. He sat back down beside Becker and refilled their glasses.

  “You say ‘we.’”

  “What?” Becker rubbed his eyes. He was getting old for all-nighters.

  So was Rad; he looked about seventy as he set his head on his hand. “When you were talkin’ to the Horde tonight. You say we—We need to know. It’s our interest. We’re sellin’ you these guns. You talk about the club as we.”

  They were a group of men. What was he supposed to say? “What’s your point?”

  “D never said we, not when he talked to people outside the club. He always said I.”

  Becker didn’t think he’d ever noticed that. “Did he?”

  “Yeah. He said to lead, a president had to have all the reins in his own hand, and to show strength, he had to show that there was only one voice that mattered.”

  A lash of defensiveness tightened Becker’s spine. Was Rad critiquing his leadership? Well, fuck him. But had he screwed up? Had he seemed weak? It hadn’t been a conscious choice to say we rather than I. He simply thought of the club as a group he was part of. Maybe he should have made a conscious choice. But it seemed wrong to say I when the Bulls were a democracy.

  Delaney had been a strong and respected president. There had never been any question that he captained the Bulls’ ship. But the club had run aground a few times with him at the helm.

  Again he asked, “What’s your point?”

  “No point. Just noticed the difference, thought it was worth sayin’.”

  ~oOo~

  Rad went home after they finished their drink, but the station was set to open in a couple of hours, so Becker stayed around and did some paperwork, setting work schedules and making sure the payables and billables were in order. Delaney still owned half the station, but he’d sold the other half to the club as part of his retirement, so Becker was managing that business as well as the club.

  It was close to ten o’clock, and the station was in full swing, when he rode off toward home and his own bed.

  He’d left the house only a few minutes after Sage had fired up her old Dodge and driven away. The engine in that beater sounded like shit and needed at least a tune-up; it occurred to him to offer to take a look, if she turned up again. Which she would. When she did, he should send her packing again. But he wasn’t sure he would.

  Their bottles—his empty, hers nearly full—were still on the mantel, and the lid to his turntable was up, with that bright red record sitting on the platter. It was a nice gift—his favorite band, a rare international release in excellent shape, something she’d put some thought into despite barely knowing him. It spoke, maybe, to a level of maturity greater than her years.

  Either that, or he was looking for ways to make it okay in his own head to fuck her. That girl had dug a burrow in his brain and settled in.

  That fucking kiss. Such a bad mistake. Her enthusiasm for it had struck him like a match on sandpaper. Soft, puffy lips shaped like a picture of a kiss. Pert, lithe little tongue with a pointed tip. That tight, tiny ass in his hands when he’d picked her up.

  He was getting hard again just thinking about it.

  Shoving those thoughts off the top shelf of his mind, Becker picked up the record and re-sleeved it. It was a seven-inch, 33 1/3 single, and his days of collecting singles were long past—Farrah Fawcett had been hanging on his bedroom wall in her red bathing suit and bright white teeth the last time he’d had a box of singles—but he filed it in with his Motörhead LPs and closed the lid on his turntable.

  She worked at The Spin Bin. He knew that place and had been in there once or twice, but not in a while. Housed in an old movie theater, it was one of those local-favorite type stores—quirky, on the seedy side, with an equally quirky and seedy staff who were knowledgeable but not necessarily friendly. No doubt Sage fit right in. The perfect career track for a girl who’d inked her face before she was old enough to drink legally
.

  It took a lot to surprise him, but those dainty little flowers on her temple had done the job.

  All of her ink was dainty, though it covered most of what he’d seen of her body. Delicate flowers and curlicue designs. Such a fascinating contrast of edgy and sweet. Which pretty much summed Sage up.

  He had to stop thinking about that little girl.

  Giving his head a good hard shake, Becker took the bottles from the mantel and dumped Sage’s warm beer in the kitchen sink. Tossing the empties in the trash, he went to the bathroom.

  He needed to rub one out in the shower and then get some goddamn sleep.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  New book day was Sage’s favorite day to work the library. Their shipments came from the main branch of the Tulsa City-County Library and were delivered once a week. For the most part, the acquisitions librarians at the main branch selected the books for each satellite, but library patrons could make requests at their own branch, and Mrs. Wilmett submitted those on a monthly basis.

  Once a week, a big box of brand-spanking new books arrived, and it was like Christmas four times a month. Sage would plop her butt on the floor behind the circulation desk, open the box, take the barcode sticker sheets and shipping manifest that always lay on top, and get to know each book as she affixed its barcode and set it on a library cart.

  New books smelled so great—crisp paper, fresh ink and glue—a perfectly inviting scent. Somebody should make a candle of it. Or perfume. Old books smelled great, too, but it was a different thing entirely. The aroma of an old book was history. A new book was promise.

  Today, Sage’s mind wasn’t as consumed by the book shipment as usual. As she worked, taking a book from the box, scanning the sticker sheets to find its barcodes, fixing them to title page and back cover, her mind kept leaping backward, to the night before, and reliving that kiss in high-resolution and THX sound. Like IMAX or something. She kept getting lost in the recalled sensory impact and getting all wet and tingly.

  Kiss? That had been no mere kiss. His tongue had totally fucked her mouth, was what had happened.

  His name was Becker Something. Or Something Becker. He was forty-four. That was pretty old, but it didn’t matter. Because goddamn! She’d thought he was hot just to look at, but to touch? Wowzers. And to be touched by him? The potent force of his hands and his mouth, his arms? Yeah, she didn’t give one single shit how old he was. She wanted to climb him like a redwood.

  And speaking of wood—that huge bulge in his jeans? He wanted her. Maybe he thought she was too young for him, but whatever. He wanted her, and she was going to make sure he got what he wanted.

  “Excuse me?” The voice had that sharp, barely polite tone that every person who’d ever worked in customer service for even a single shift had heard—the one where the words were socially acceptable but the tone was all I cannot BELIEVE you would make me, your obvious better, actually SPEAK to you. Before Sage turned around to see, she knew she’d find a Supermommy at the desk. Sigh.

  The library’s regular patrons could, for the most part, be sorted into a few groups:

  The Retired Gentlemen—white-haired old men who arrived early in the morning, usually having walked from home for their daily exercise. They sat at the tables and waited for Sage or Mrs. Wilmett or one of the other employees to put the day’s edition of The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal on rods. Sometimes, they’d check out a book on World War II or a founding father or something, but mainly, they read the paper and quietly lamented with each other how terrible the world was these days.

  The Retired Ladies—complements to the Retired Gentlemen, and sometimes their actual spouses, the old ladies went downstairs for quilting circles or knitting clubs, or one of the adult enrichment classes the library ran. Before they left, they checked out cozy mystery novels or sometimes bodice-ripper romances with Fabio on the cover. They always carried those to the counter face-down.

  The Downtrodden—homeless people, or people looking for work, or just down on their luck. They came in to use the computers to job search, or just to have a quiet, comfortable place to spend a day.

  The After-Schoolers—around three-thirty in the afternoon, during the school year, the library filled up with kids doing their homework or messing around in the children’s and young adult sections. Until about five o’clock, when they started wandering home, the library staff were de facto babysitters. They had a policy that no one under fifteen could be there without supervision, but they didn’t enforce it. Mrs. Wilmett was a pro at keeping kids in line, and she’d taught her staff some tricks. It got loud, but normally things didn’t get crazy. Sage actually enjoyed all the kids running around, having a good time. Like Mrs. Wilmett, she thought it was great PR for the library. A kid who saw the library as a fun place and a sanctuary would carry that feeling all through their lives.

  She sure had.

  The last group, and Sage’s least favorite, were the Supermommies—the stay-at-home moms with small children who came in with their little kids for story time or for the little arts and crafts workshops they ran downstairs, or just to check out books. There was nothing wrong at all with moms teaching their children the value of books, reading, and libraries, and yet those moms ... collectively, they had an enormous chip on their shoulder. Not all of them, of course—many, maybe most, were perfectly decent people—but enough to make Sage’s life difficult. A more judgmental group of human beings she’d never encountered, and that was saying something, seeing as Sage had spent her life being judged. It was like they lived their lives in defense mode and thus assumed that every single thing that didn’t go exactly as they wanted was a direct personal attack on them and their children.

  In the voice of the woman at the desk now, Sage heard that particular, grating tone that said she was already irritated that Sage hadn’t been standing at the desk waiting to serve her. She was one wrong word away from wanting to speak to the manager, and she’d only just now walked up to the desk.

  Sage stood and turned in a single move—and oh yeah, definitely a Supermommy with a chip. Everything about her, from her overdone hairstyle to her just-so makeup to her perfect manicure drumming on the counter said Customer Service Nightmare. Sigh.

  Manufacturing a friendly smile, Sage went to the desk. “Hi. What can I do for you?”

  Supermommy made a face at Sage like she’d smelled a fart, then looked down and turned on a big, warm smile. “Okay, Bentley, honey, what do you do?”

  Sage stepped onto the bottom shelf under the desk so she could lean over and see the little kid—oh, a cute little girl, about three years old, with perfect little blonde ponytails at the sides of her head, their ends curling at her shoulders. Her parents probably spelled her name Bentleigh. Supermommies loved to be ‘creative’ with the spellings of their kids’ unisex product-placement names. Not that she was one to talk about weird names.

  “Hey there, Bentleigh. What you got there?”

  “What do you have there?” The woman corrected pointedly. Sage didn’t need to look to know the woman was glaring at her for daring not to use perfect grammar around her perfect child. She simply grinned at the little girl, who grinned back.

  “Purple Purse,” Bentley/Bentleigh/maybe Bentlee said, offering up Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse.

  Sage took it. “Oh, I love this one. Would you like to check it out?”

  The girl nodded.

  “What do we say?” her mother prodded.

  “Yes, please.” Preschool voices were so cute.

  “Of course!”

  As Sage scooted back and picked up the barcode scanner and Supermommy’s library card, the girl put her little fingers on the edge of the desk and rose up on her toes. “That’s pretty.”

  Sage smiled at her. “What is?”

  “You have pretty pictures. Can I see?”

  She was pointing at Sage’s hand—her tattoos. “Sure, you can!”

  But as she offered her hand for the girl to examine, her mother
sliced the air between them, very nearly hitting Sage as she swatted her hand away. “Tattoos are dirty, Bentleigh. People who have tattoos are dirty, too.”

  Right in front of Sage, she said that.

  “Actually,” Sage stepped onto the shelf and leaned over the desk again. She grinned at the confused little girl. “I’m not dirty, and neither are my pictures. I wash every day. Tattoos are just pretty pictures I wear on my skin, just like you said. When I was little, I used to make them with marker. When I got big, I got to keep them forever.”

  The girl smiled, but her mother yanked her behind her wide ass like she expected the ink to leap off Sage and land on her perfect little darling. “Just do your job and don’t talk to my child.”

  The book was already checked out. Sage set the library card on top and pushed them to the edge of the desk. “There ya go.”

  The woman snatched the book and card off the counter and grabbed her daughter’s hand. As she dragged her to the front door, Sage threw up double birds at the woman’s back and called, “Bye, Bentleigh! Good luck!”

  “Sage.”

  At Mrs. Wilmett’s single-syllable lecture, Sage sighed and turned around. “I know. I’m sorry. But she was—”

  “I know. I heard. She was dreadful. I don’t take issue with anything you said to that woman. In fact, I think you should have refused to check her out. But that little display as she was leaving, you can’t do that.”

  “I know. I just ... she was ... ARGH!” Sage stomped her foot. “I hate people like that.”

  “You know I love you, dear, and I think you’re lovely. But you know quite well that the way you look is off-putting to many. I think that’s a reason you look the way you do.”

  “I just like the way I look.”

  “And you like that you think you can know who people are by the way they react to how you look.”