by Trent Jordan
But on the other hand, really?
It just went to show that I didn’t actually know Michael that well. As much as I thought I had a sense of him, it was obvious I’d only seen one dimension of him, the good side. And while being divorced wasn’t necessarily indicative of him being a bad person or anything like that, it was clear that he had seen some dark days that were not just from his time in the military.
“And I know for some people, that’s a deal-breaker. So, I want to put it right out there, as if you are looking at me in an online profile. I’ve danced around how I feel about you to this point, Kaitlyn, but that’s not going to happen anymore. I think you feel the same way, but I’ll leave that up to you.”
My immediate reaction?
Well, it wasn’t exactly in line with the intent that I had given this moment. It was almost like him saying he thought I felt the same way made me, in fact, feel kind of the same way.
“I know you’ll need time figuring out if you’ll ever be a nurse for us, and I’m not overly concerned if you are or aren’t,” he said. “At least, that’s not my most pressing personal concern. What does matter to me is that I want to get to know you better. I want to understand you better. And I want to see where this will go.”
Wow.
I had to hand it to Michael. Most men were too afraid or beat around the bush too much. It took a real man to be as straightforward as he was, and that was something that I utterly admired about him.
I wasn’t ready to go all in. That would have been silly. He wasn’t asking me to be his girlfriend. But I did have to remind myself that I had felt the complete opposite just seconds before he had called.
“I know I’m rambling, but this is the last thing I’ll say,” Michael said with a short laugh. “I’m still working on myself. I’m still dealing with some shit. I may reach a point where the personal shit that I’m dealing with is too much for me to keep trying anything with you. But I’ll always be honest, and I’ll come into this with fully good intentions.”
Damnit, Michael, why do you have to speak so well?
He was flawed, self-admittedly so, but the fact that he had the awareness to walk away if needed and to not cling to me if I said no... well, damnit, it kind of worked. It kind of made me want to see what would happen.
“Your honesty was needed, and it’s much appreciated,” I said. “Yeah… yeah, you know what? Let’s see where it goes. No promises and no guarantees. But we’ll see.”
What the hell did you just do, Kaitlyn?
“Good enough,” Michael said. “How does Thursday evening work? I should be free around nine or so.”
It was a little late, but since Friday was the start of my time off, it was basically like doing a Friday or Saturday night date.
“Works for me,” I said.
“Perfect, I’ll text you details then,” he said. “I’ll let you go. I’m sure you’re happy to get home and relax after a shift.”
The thought flashed to mind that I needed to tell him about Devon working for the Fallen Saints, but it didn’t feel like the right time. He’d unloaded a lot on me, a lot of good things, and I didn’t think it was fair to throw back at him some bad news.
Besides, if Devon had been working for the Saints for any length of time, it wasn’t like an extra day, or two would make a difference.
“Sounds good, I will see you Thursday.”
And with that, Michael hung up.
Damn, I failed miserably in my attempts to cut things off.
And somehow, I felt perfectly okay with that.
Patriot
Thursday Evening
The warm feelings that came from getting my feelings off my chest for Kaitlyn, while delightful and nice, were short-lived.
The shitty nightmares, the shitty PTSD, and the shitty suspicions that were filling my life were starting to become stronger by the day. While things seemed to be getting better with Kaitlyn, the world around me seemed to be decaying by the second. It was like constantly wondering if there was a spy within the Reapers’ organization was poisoning my mind.
It certainly was a callback to Ramadi from nearly a decade earlier.
At least then, we had been right. However, that probably made it even worse, given I had my suspicions and had been unable to prevent chaos from erupting into its worse form. In the present, there was no telling if we were right.
I did, however, make it to our church meeting on Thursday, our weekly discussion about club events. Lane came in determined to make a statement, and I could see by the look in his eye that he was about to make something happen. It was probably just as well, then, that I had my date scheduled with Kaitlyn for later in the night. I needed something good after what was bound to be a heavy meeting.
“We’ve laid low since Patriot’s tires got slashed,” Lane said. “But as has been pointed out to me, a passive approach will never work. I think that was pretty evident during my year of being a pussy, and it’s evident now. So, tonight, we need to take action.”
Tonight?
“As soon as this meeting adjourns, we are going to split into two units that will launch quick strikes on the Fallen Saints’ headquarters. The first group will be led by me and will include Red Raven and Father Marcellus. The second group will be led by Axle, and will include Patriot and Butch. Each group will have some veteran club members as well.”
Wait, we’re putting the supposed spy in charge of a group? What the actual fuck is going on?
“I do not want this strike to include any casualties, as I do not want us to escalate this to any further point than we have gone so far,” he said. “However, I do want us to strike at their stockpile, ideally their motorcycles. Shoot out some engines, some gas tanks, make them unusable. We need to make it clear that what they did cannot happen, and we need to do it now.”
“Now?” Axle asked.
“Yes, now,” Lane said. “I don’t want them to have any time to prepare for anything.”
That was dangerously close to announcing that Lane knew there was a rat in our midst, but it was said just vaguely enough that it didn’t necessarily guarantee there was one. Still, Lane was dancing on thin ice, and I was sure by the way he looked that he knew it.
“Unless anyone else has anyone else to say, let’s roll out.”
No one did. Lane slammed the gavel. It was time to go.
But just because Lane had decreed it was time for battle didn’t mean that I didn’t have my doubts about the veracity of this mission. Selfishly, Kaitlyn and I were supposed to hang out, and it was going to make things really difficult if I had to devote a good portion of my evening to attacking the Fallen Saints’ HQ. Second, even if the club had a rat in our midst, there were much better ways to minimize their damage than impromptu strikes.
And yet, like the soldier that I was, I was not about to say anything publicly against Lane. He was the president of the club, he had made his decision, and that was final. Just as soldiers on the battlefield did not question the President of the United States once orders had been handed down, I wasn’t about to do anything.
We all rose, including Lane, who made a show of following the rest of the officers out. Taking the hint that this was not to be a moment where Lane would hang back, I followed him out, my body starting to get revved up with the potential violence that was to follow. Just before we reached the garage where our bikes were—including mine, which had since been repaired—Lane leaned over and whispered to me.
“Whatever you do,” he said. “Do not let Axle out of your sight. If you see him do anything suspicious, you let me know. I need to know if he does anything.”
This is as much about catching the spy as it is anything else.
I didn’t respond with anything other than a nod. Lane patted me on the back, walked over to Red Raven and Father Marcellus, and said something to them. He then did the same with Axle, seemingly trying to make it look like he was making the rounds with all of the members.
We’d officially
crossed over from the boundary of having suspicious thoughts to testing out those suspicious thoughts. That was a far scarier proposition than I ever could have thought—we were officially at the point where lives were now being put at risk.
On the ride over with Axle, I stayed on his right but hung back about a dozen feet, just enough that I could see if Axle pulled out his phone or pressed a pager or did anything that would have looked like he was providing outside communication. To me, no action was too small for me to analyze.
But in the twenty minutes it took us to get from our headquarters over to the region of town controlled by the Fallen Saints, I didn’t notice anything unusual. Of course, just because there was a spy in our midst didn’t mean that they were going to do something to expose themselves in a stupid, haphazard fashion. The Fallen Saints were, in my mind, evil, but they weren’t insane. Like ISIS, we had to have an odd sort of appreciation for the enemy’s intelligence—we could hate their guts and wish them expunged from the world while acknowledging that they had awareness and agency in the battle.
I also kept my head on a swivel, looking back at the other club members to see if anyone else might be doing something, though I did not fear this as much as I did Axle. A mere club member or prospect would not have knowledge of the things we were doing well enough to sabotage us to the extent we’d been over the past year or so. But it was still reassuring to see that, for example, Pink Raven and other members were not displaying suspicious activities.
About a mile outside of the Fallen Saints’ quarters, Axle had us pull over to the side of the road. I looked at him to get a sense of his mood, but the only thing I saw was anger and determination—not exactly the kind of thing that instilled suspicion of being a potential rat.
“Everyone ready?” he asked.
We all nodded. Axle looked at us and gave a curt nod. If we were heading into a trap, it was a mighty well-disguised trap. But at this point, I wasn’t convinced there would be a trap—said rat had too many eyes on him to do anything.
But then again, that hadn’t stopped Ramadi from happening...
I shook my mind free of the negative thoughts, knowing full well a bogged mental space would only make my physical actions less effective. I followed Axle closely, keeping the same distance as before. In just a minute, we had arrived at the Fallen Saints’ HQ.
Tonight, the place looked relatively unguarded, and with decent enough reason. The Saints had no reason to expect us to attack on a Thursday, much less without the benefit of forewarning from someone, and even more less with an entire unit of men. They probably figured we were going to launch an attack the following weekend.
We took advantage of it as we found a cluster of bikes just inside the gate to their compound. Axle and I got there before Lane’s crew, so we quickly hurdled our bikes, pulled out some knives, and slashed the tires to their bikes. We got through about four bikes apiece before the sound of a bullet filled the air, missing us.
“Shit!” Axle yelled.
“We made our point,” I said. “Let’s go.”
“No, we finish the job.”
Under fire here, and he still wants to stay?
Shit, maybe we were wrong about him. A rat’s not this altruistic.
I went through about three more bikes before Axle waved us away. On the other side of the compound, some of the Black Reapers were taking potshots at the building, not really hitting anyone but providing enough cover fire to prevent the Saints from retaliating.
Seconds later, at Axle’s command, we all rode off without any casualties other than the feeling of having been fired upon.
Fortunately for us, there was no one in the club better equipped to handle gunfire on them than Axle and I. We were far from the only veterans, but we were the only veterans who were also officers. Such a position meant we had the experience to control our fear and the respect to inspire others to follow us into the valley of fire.
And Axle just earned my respect tonight. He could have easily bailed. Either he’s really committed to playing the part of Reaper officer while he’s working for the Saints.
Or we were wrong about him.
When we returned to the shop a short while later, there were shouts for celebratory drinks. Lane nodded to me and asked me to join him in a private room, away from the chaotic cheering and twisting off bottle caps. He looked pleased, but not satisfied.
“Did you see anything?” he said.
“Not at all, man,” I said. “In fact, I gotta be honest, I wanted to bail when the gunfire started. Didn’t seem like it was worth the risk of getting killed, you know? But Axle said we had to finish the job. So maybe we were wrong about it. Maybe he’s not the spy.”
“Could be.”
Lane didn’t exactly sound convinced, although he didn’t sound dismissive either. He mostly just sounded confused, like he was having his entire hypothesis thrown for a loop that he couldn’t quite get back under control.
“That doesn’t explain why he was the way he was on Monday night.”
“I don’t think it’s anything, man.”
Lane wasn’t happy to hear that. But Lane also knew more than anyone else in the club, I could be trusted to give him inconvenient truths. Call it the perks of friendship.
“I still think there’s a spy in the club, of that I have no doubt. But after tonight, man, I have a hard time believing that it could be Axle.”
“Alright, alright.”
He almost sounded disappointed that it wasn’t Axle.
“Do you have beef with him besides this?”
Lane shook his head vigorously.
“I have beef with there being a fucking rat, period,” he said. “If it’s not him, then I suppose that should make me happy we’ve narrowed it down, but instead, all it makes me is frustrated that we haven’t caught said spy.”
He kicked the ground and sighed.
“We can’t assume that Axle is totally clean, but I’ll admit that tonight gives him some major points,” Lane said. “That would leave Father Marcellus, Butch, and Red Raven. I didn’t see anything from them tonight. I had Marc and Red Raven flank me on the drive over, and nothing happened. Couldn’t tell in battle, either, because we only covered for you before we pulled back. It’s just... fuck.”
“I know, man. I didn’t see Butch do anything either.”
Then a thought dawned on me.
“The Saints will probably do something to the rat because of this,” I said. “You have to think that they’re not going to take too kindly to being genuinely ambushed like so.”
“Which means we need to be on high alert.”
But I wasn’t about to get locked down for a situation that, honestly, was barely worse today than it was yesterday. The Saints were certainly likely to strike back at us... at some point. Even if they worked around the clock to get their tires repaired, it would be tomorrow before that happened, and when the Saints struck, they liked to do so with aggression, not with small groups.
And even if they attacked within twelve hours, I didn’t like my life being lived on the basis of “potential danger.”
“That’s good, but I do have plans tonight,” I said. “I’m already going to be a little late. Do I have—”
“With the nurse?”
Lane’s eyes finally lit up a bit. I think he was just happy to have something to discuss that wasn’t as heavy as the Reapers’ rat.
“What if it is, man?”
Lane smirked.
“If it is, I hope it works out great,” he said.
I smiled back... for a moment.
“Works out that she starts working out for us, or starts working out for me and her?”
Lane just shrugged and started laughing. I laughed too, even though I knew his non-answer gave me his honest reply.
“Just be careful, brother,” Lane said. “If they slashed your tires at Brewskis, after our little stunt, they’re going to be a lot more aggressive. I wouldn’t go there without another member of the
Black Reapers for a spell.”
“You think that they’ll really turn that bar into a war zone, man?”
We all hated the idea. I think even the Fallen Saints hated the idea. I didn’t want to overstate its importance or make it sound like it was holy ground, but there was something genuinely important about having a shared space in which neither attacked the other. Call me crazy for a soldier, but...
Well, maybe I wanted to believe that there might finally be peace at some point.
Did I actually think it would happen? No, never. Lucius hated our guts too much. We hated his too much.
But the hope for a belief could go a long way. At some point, at some time... maybe there’d be peace. Just.
Maybe.
“After tonight, I’m not going to assume anything,” Lane said. “If you were going by yourself... well, look, think of it like this. You’ve got a civilian with you. Don’t do anything that’s going to imperil her. We don’t need the bad PR, and I don’t want that on my conscience.”
“I know, man, I know, same here.”
We exchanged a quick hug after that. On the way out, I saw Axle on his cell phone. He and I briefly shared a glance on the way out, followed by a curt nod.
The moment shouldn’t have meant anything. Axle could have just as easily been calling a family member or a potential romantic interest as anything else.
But unfortunately, associations and possibilities were a real difficult thing to shake, even in the face of some obvious evidence.
By the time I was back on the road, though, a lone soldier riding on his motorcycle, I had put the thoughts about Axle to the back of my mind. For now, I was headed to something that I believed would have a much more positive experience for me, something that would warm my heart. Something that didn’t have hidden layers to it.
Kaitlyn.
I had texted her just before leaving to apologize and explain that club business had gotten in the way. Her text message, flat and without emotion, was difficult to gauge, in part because she texted the same time every way—in a straightforward fashion, without emojis, and without many exclamation points, “lol” phrases, or other such signs that she was feeling giddy. In short, her text messages were often devoid of context.
