“Well, they weren’t, not during the shooting,” said Ned. He took a few big gulps of coffee, and then started using his index finger like a pointer on the table while he talked. “But a few of them were hanging out at the table just across the way from where me and the guys from the quarry had posted up. I remember noticing because Blake was with us, and for a minute I was worried we were gonna need to find a new place to sit if they decided to hassle us.”
Henry said, “I take it Blake is not a white man.”
Ned gave a big shake of his head, his expression sour. “And I ain’t seen any trouble like that at the roadhouse for a while, but you never know when those boys get drunk. Anyway, I kept an eye on them for a good little while, as you understand. A couple of pitchers go by, though, and I realize I’ve loosened up and stopped worrying about them for at least a few minutes, because when I look over again, the table’s empty. Two half-pitchers still sittin’ there, untouched, and I didn’t even notice them leave. In fact I’m pretty sure Johnny might have stolen them at some point for our table.”
The Rebel Cross was a white supremacist MC. Their chapters had been run out of LeBeau and Howlett a while ago, but they still held chapters on either side of the mountain pass and made frequent stops out of both towns. The Black Dogs made it very clear where they stood on the issue of having any Crosses in town, and most passed through quickly and quietly, submissive to the Black Dogs. The Crosses were not popular, and the Dogs outnumbered them in chapters and men.
“They could have just moved tables to get away from your friend,” said Beck.
“Maybe,” said Ned with a shrug. “Like I said, I didn’t see them again. The shooting happened maybe less than an hour after that.”
“Do you remember anything else significant?” asked Henry.
Ned shook his head. “No, not really. Sorry Henry, I don’t like this violence any more than you do. I wish I had more to give you.” He looked around the diner and then asked quietly. “Should- should I be worried about becoming a target?”
Henry lifted a hand to signal to their waitress and shook his head. “No, I don’t think so Ned. Just holler at us if you remember anything else, or if you see any strange out-of-towners around.”
“I will,” said Ned. Henry paid the bill and shook Ned’s hand. The MC left him to finish his breakfast.
As they exited, Jase lingered in the foyer behind to wait for Drake as he sweet-talked one of the waitresses near the pie cabinet, preferring to be the last one out. Drake came sauntering by him as he held open the door when he stopped and sniffed the air.
“Ha, I’d know that delightful musk anywhere,” said Drake. He poked two playful fingers into Jase’s chest. “You got yourself some pussy bro! Light me up.” He put up a hand waiting for a high-five.
Instead, Jase’s eyes went wide and he grabbed Drake by the collar, shoving him up against a novelty claw arcade machine in the corner of the lobby. Jase looked around to make sure no one from the MC was eyeballing them, but the rest of the men had grouped in the parking lot.
“What the fuck is your deal?” said Drake. He gave the hands around his collar a stinking expression.
“You wanna keep your goddamn voice down, Drake?” said Jase. He released Drake’s shirt with a huff. “I don’t need you spouting my business to everyone in this fucking town.”
“Spouting your business? Christ, man, we’re in a motorcycle club, since when is it news when we get pussy?” said Drake. “Unless…” His eyebrows went up, eyes behind his sunglasses wide. “Unless it’s secret pussy. Or forbidden pussy. Are you sticking it to Oliver Jr.?!” He poked fingers into Jase’s chest again and Jase swatted his hand away.
Jase got low and close to his face. “Drake, this is not a fucking joke,” he said. “If you say a word of this to Henry or anyone else, I will beat the shit out of you.”
“Dude, I’m just here to congratulate you on your victory,” said Drake with his hands up in surrender. He had that shit-eating grin on his face he always got when he talked his way out of a punch. “That is some prime beef on your grill.”
“Don’t fucking talk about her like that,” said Jase, stepping away from him. “Just keep your mouth shut, alright?”
“You have my word, brother. But you’re probably kidding yourself if you think Henry can’t smell that, too.” Drake laughed and straightened his sunglasses before he headed out into the parking lot. Jase took a few deep breaths to calm his anger, and then followed him.
The rest of the men waited by the bikes, and nearly finished with their post-coffee smoke. Jase lit his own and took a puff before he spoke. “So what is the feeling about this guy?”
* * *
“That he hasn’t had a hot meal in ten years,” said Drake with a chuckle from the seat of his bike.
“He’s the only person to mention seeing the Crosses at the roadhouse. I don’t know what to make of that,” said Beck.
“If I remember the map of the bar from the sheriff’s report, Ned’s table was somewhere near the back end of the roadhouse. If they weren’t being crazy, and they left early, I say they could have gone unnoticed on a busy night,” said Henry.
“And why did they leave early?” said Drake.
“Is it possible they knew about the shooting? Could they be in on it?” said Jase.
Henry and Beck exchanged glances. The younger generation of Black Dogs had little interaction with the Rebel Cross. “Sure, they could be involved in a shootout, but it still doesn’t explain why they were involved in this shootout, or what they were looking for,” said Henry.
“If they were looking for bikers, maybe they were trying to settle a score,” said Drake with a shrug.
“Haven’t heard about anything like that down the pipeline,” said Beck. “You’d think a club with beef that bad with the Crosses would have spoken up by now. And it wouldn’t explain the drive-by at Maggie’s unless the beef was with us, and I can’t find anybody who has heard of one.”
Something was nagging at Jase. “Ned said their table left a few half-empty pitchers of beer. Party night at the roadhouse, pitchers started, that sounds to me like they were planning on getting comfortable, and something changed the plan.”
The group was silent for a minute. Finally Jase continued, “If we had planned the shooting in a place we knew some Black Dogs might be hanging out, we would try to clear them out, right? Not just to keep them from getting hurt, mind you. But if what we were after was tied to an MC, and we mowed down members of every club except our own, we’d basically be solving the case for the cops.”
Henry said, “They’re looking mighty suspicious right now. We have to follow up on this, quietly. It seems very unlikely these two things are not related.”
Jase couldn’t believe how messy this entire thing was getting. A few days ago, his biggest concern was fine-tuning the angry speech he was going to give his ex-girlfriend who had just blown back into town. Now he was unraveling a criminal plot to murder her that was beginning to look bigger than any of them expected. He rubbed a tired hand over his face and hair.
Henry pulled up his phone and got on the line with Tommy back at the clubhouse. He had him go through some of the club’s paperwork to find an old contact Henry knew at one point who had a line with the Rebel Cross. It had been a few years since they had spoken, thanks to the Crosses being mostly non-existent in LeBeau’s world, but it seemed to be the only lead he could follow for the moment while still remaining under the radar.
“Until we have a better handle on this thing, I don’t want it getting out that we’re checking out the Rebel Cross,” said Henry as they loaded up.
“Gotcha, boss,” said Jase. He straddled his bike and pulled his phone out of his pocket to give it a last check before he put his gloves on. He had a text from a number he didn’t recognize.
It said simply: “Sorry.”
Jase stared at it as the bikes rumbled to life around him. For a few seconds, he contemplated a response to Maggie. Inst
ead he dropped the phone into his cut pocket and finished putting on his gloves.
13
All she could think about yesterday morning, before the drive-by, was getting as far away from Jase as possible. Now that she had her wish, Maggie wanted to take it back.
It wasn’t that she was ready to talk about walking out on him, quite the opposite, but the sudden vacancy created by his absence felt so much darker and absolute now. Maybe it was just stress-induced trauma making everything look bigger and meaner than it actually was. Maybe it was because the feelings she’d had for Jase had never been killed, but merely buried alive, and now they tore through the dirt of her mind, bent on reclamation. Even if he didn’t talk to her, even if he spent all day in a different room of the clubhouse, Maggie wished he had stayed.
Tommy and Ghost did their best to keep her cheered up and occupied. At first, she had hidden away in her room like a stubborn teenager, planning to tick away the day in isolation. A quiet knock on her door and an invitation to lunch had changed that. They let Maggie pick whatever she wanted and sent Ghost out to pick it up. To their delight, she felt like nothing more than a giant, greasy pizza and a bunch of beer. They kicked up their heels in the den as they ate, the jukebox playing softly against the wall.
“Now, this is my kind of assignment,” said Ghost as he lowered a line of dangling cheese into his mouth. “Think about those jerks out there in the hot sun, all beer-less.”
“Well, thinking about that just makes me feel like a lazy dickhead,” said Tommy. “Shouldn’t we be helping?”
“We are helping,” said Ghost. He gestured his beer bottle to Maggie. “We’re supposed to keep her alive, and eating is part of being alive.”
Maggie popped an olive into her mouth and raised an eyebrow. “He’s got you there, Tommy.”
“In that case,” said Tommy with a laugh as he uncapped another beer.
The three of them had a pleasant few hours doing a whole lot of nothing but eating pizza, drinking beer, and telling stories. Maggie didn’t know either one of them well, so she had the pleasure of hearing fresh tales from the exploits of the MC, instead of the rehashed greatest hits from the old timers. It didn’t completely distract her from thoughts of Jase. Like a sea monster in the ocean of her mind, he always lingered just beneath the surface of any thought.
Some mechanical problem interrupted the meeting, and Ghost went out to help one of the rookies with an engine on a bike. Maggie didn’t quite feel up to spending one-on-one time with anyone, even someone as nice as Tommy. A group tended to keep things light, but duos invited secrets. She just wanted to breathe for a while. She told Tommy she was going to take a nap in her room, and mostly did that. But first, she squirmed around a while trying to fight off the urge to contact Jase.
In a moment of weakness while Ghost was getting the pizza, Maggie had asked Tommy for Jase’s cell number as a precaution. Tommy had given it up without a second thought, for obvious reasons, but Maggie’s motives weren’t so pure. She was hurting. She couldn’t believe how badly she missed him. She hated thinking about him out around danger, alone, without her—as if some childish part of her heart thought she could protect him. And her guilt about the night before was crushing.
After four or five false starts, Maggie decided to keep her text message simple. “Sorry.”
She waited for him to reply for about an hour-- enough time that she knew, rationally, he had looked and decided to ignore it. The first fifteen minutes of waiting gave her chest pains so bad, she thought she was having a heart attack. But by the last fifteen minutes, it had melted and dulled to join the chronic mix of pain that had settled somewhere between her heart and stomach. She knew in her mind that she didn’t deserve a text back. Everything she was doing just displayed her cowardice. But she had hoped for one, anyway.
You don’t deserve a lot of the things you get.
The thought hurt her, but Maggie knew it to be true. Last night proved she wasn’t the only one with leftover feelings burning her world down. But she didn’t deserve whatever feelings Jase still had for her. Anyone could see she just brought trouble.
Maggie did fall into a light nap for a while before the rumble of approaching bikes woke her with a start. Her dreams had been tense, not quite nightmares, but still enough that she woke surprised by the sweat on her clothes. She took a shower and changed, but afterwards a quick glance at her phone on the nightstand confirmed there were still no new messages.
Maggie ran a brush through her curls and tried to get her head on straight. Jase would be back soon, and she still had no idea what she was going to say to him. She went into the den for a few minutes to check in with Tommy and steal a pack of smokes from Ghost. Some of the bikers on smaller tasks arrived back to the clubhouse first, and the den started to get crowded with loud, smoking dudes passing around beers. Maggie didn’t have the energy for it. She took a few beers and her fresh pack and told Tommy she was going to go out back.
“Do you need me to come with you?” said Tommy.
“I’ll be fine, I’ll stay close,” said Maggie. “Just poke your head out every once in a while, right?”
Tommy seemed settled with her answer. Truly, Maggie wasn’t in any hurry to put herself in danger, but the backyard of the clubhouse didn’t strike her as vulnerable. The huge space had once been used as a range before Rudy’s opened, but now it was just for barbeques and summer nights. It had a full privacy fence on its perimeter with motion sensor lighting. And then there was the clubhouse-full of heavily armed bikers just feet away to consider.
Maggie opened the back door. Twilight was already beginning to fall, the sky a swirling mix of pinks and blues that hung in the still air. The yard was empty. Maggie walked the extra feet out to the northern fence where a large picnic table had been set up and sat up on the tabletop, making herself comfortable before she tore into the beer and smokes.
Night had all but arrived before the clubhouse door opened again. She turned to wave at who she assumed would be Tommy checking up on her. But instead she saw Jase, hands in his pockets, hesitating under the porch light.
Maggie felt her chest tighten. The cigarette in her hand began to tremble.
“Fuck,” she whispered to herself. She looked away from him and took a good long drag. She heard his footsteps approaching in the grass and quickly stamped out the smoke.
“Not in the mood to party, or what?” said Jase from behind her.
Maggie didn’t turn. She took a drink of beer. “It’s too loud in there.”
“Yeah,” said Jase. “That kind of aversion happens a lot after trauma.”
“I’m fine,” said Maggie on impulse. She winced at the harsh edge on her tone that she hadn’t intended.
“I didn’t mean…” Jase’s voice trailed off in the dark. He let the misunderstanding die and just stood in silence for a few moments. Then he said, “We found some good leads today. Sounds like your ex had some connections to an MC around here that’s probably helping him out. I think this might be close to over.”
“That’s great news,” said Maggie, though she was barely processing what he told her. She realized she still hadn’t found the guts to turn and look at him. She did her best by offering him a beer, and giving him a pained smile when he accepted it. Even then, she could only look for a few seconds.
Jase opened his beer and tossed the cap carelessly at the picnic table. He took a long drink.
Maggie cleared her throat. “I sent you a text…”
“I got it,” said Jase.
Maggie nodded and stared at the beer in her lap until Jase came around the table to stand in front of her. He said, “Does that mean you want to tell me what the fuck happened last night?
Maggie looked up at him. Even in the low light from the porch, she could see the twisted expression on his face, the pain in his eyes. She uncrossed her legs and sat on the table’s edge. “I don’t know, Jase, I just...I got mixed up.”
As if to calm his nerves, he finish
ed his beer off while she talked and dropped the bottle to the grass. “So, what, you just fucked me because you were confused?” said Jase, a little louder than she would have liked. She looked back towards the clubhouse and saw nothing but empty light.
“No,” she said. “No, it’s not like that. I mean I didn’t….” Her thoughts rushed through her head, clogging the channels in their efforts to escape at the same time.
Jase seemed to take a step back. He looked off towards the horizon where stars had begun to bloom into view, and breathed deeply. “I’m not trying to stress you out, I’m sorry. After everything you’ve been through…”
“I want to be honest with you,” she said, grasping her hands together. “I just can’t get it out.”
“What if I go first?” said Jase. He watched the night sky.
“Okay…” She wasn’t sure if it was worse or better.
Jase swallowed and looked at the ground. “I’m sorry for what I did at the roadhouse. I shouldn’t have…I don’t know what came over me.” He shook his head. “I mean, yes, I do know. I know what came over me. I just… didn’t expect it.”
Maggie nodded, even though he wasn’t looking at her. “I didn’t expect it, either. I expected the anger… and the hate. But not jealousy.”
Jase cursed to himself and turned to look at her. “I’m sorry for all of that. I was being a child.” He shook his head. “When I sat there in that kitchen listening to your house get sprayed with bullets, all I could think about was how our last big interaction was going to be me hauling you out of the roadhouse like a typical jealous ex. I thought about how you were going to die afraid, and thinking I hated you. And I can’t…” He turned away and swallowed hard.
Tears ran down Maggie’s face before she could stop them. She sniffed and looked away, trying to wipe them from her face.
“I don’t hate you, Maggie. For a while there after you left, sure. Maybe I did. The pain was so bad. But I don’t hate you. I can’t hate you.”
PRIDE: A Bad Boy and Amish Girl Romance (The Brody Bunch#1) Page 29
