Crash (The Brazen Bulls MC Book 1)

by Susan Fanetti

  Self-analysis wasn’t something Rad engaged in regularly, but he was capable of it, and in the past couple of days he’d had cause to think about his impulses and behaviors a little differently. It had thus occurred to him once or twice that Dahlia might not be the iron-clad bitch he’d decided she was. He was probably tough to live with.

  Though there was still that fucking-half-of-Tulsa issue.

  Nah, she was an iron-clad bitch. But he’d been a solid-stone asshole, too.

  This time, he was going to do it right.

  To Simon, he said, “Yeah. She’s somethin’ else. You gonna be able to make it into church?”

  “Yeah. Hurts like a bitch, but I can walk. Mo’s keeping the pills coming.”

  “Good. Lemme know if you need a shoulder.”

  “Thanks, bro.” Simon closed his eyes. There was a bruised look about the skin there. Rad didn’t like it.

  Joanna, Dane’s old lady, came up with a tray holding a sandwich and a glass of milk. Rad took it from her and set it on the table next to Simon’s chair. Then he pulled her a few feet away.

  “He doin’ okay?”

  She tucked a lock of auburn hair behind her ear and considered Simon. “He’s weak, but no fever. I think he’ll be okay. It’d be good if your nurse came back to be sure. Mo’s been keeping watch. She took the day off to do it. But, you know, we’re mothers more than nurses.”

  There were three old ladies in the club: Delaney and Dane were both married, and Ox had been living with the same woman for nearly a decade. Maureen was a grade school teacher. Joanna ran a little clothes shop in Utica Square. Maddie, Ox’s woman, ran what was at the front a local modeling agency but was in fact an escort service.

  Maddie and Ox didn’t have, or want, kids. Dane and Joanna had two teenage girls. Delaney and Mo had no kids, after a long series of miscarriages and heartbreaks, so Mo had put all her maternal energies into her students and the club. Mothering the club meant learning a whole lot of first aid, but there was a limit to what Mo could do.

  “Willa’s comin’ back later to check in on them both. Where’s Gunner?”

  Joanna smirked. “He’s up in one of the rooms, moaning like a big baby. Got Tyra and Janine both fluffing him all kind of ways. He’s fine. Dane went up to get him for church.”

  The party room had filled up with patches waiting to meet. Rad checked his watch. Church in ten minutes. Just enough time to get in a shot and a beer first.

  ~oOo~

  Delaney sat at the head of the table and fumed. Simon and Gunner both sat in obvious discomfort, from their injuries and, in Gunner’s case, from the disgust shooting from the president’s glowering eyes like laser beams right into the idiot’s head.

  The rest of the table sat and waited. If they were feeling anything like Rad was feeling, they were enjoying Gunner’s pain. It took a whole lot to wipe the smirk off the crazy bastard’s face, but it was gone now.

  “We got plenty of going business to talk about, but first, we got to deal with the shit sundae Gunner’s shoved down our throat. Spent two hours with Terry today. His place is so fucked he can’t open, and it’ll be a week or more before he can. And it’s on us.” He leaned forward and drew his brows down even farther, glaring at Gunner.

  Delaney had started a club that was misfit more than outlaw, but when they’d turned to the dark side, he’d led them with fierce focus and keen strategy. In ‘Nam, he’d seen heavy combat, and he’d come out of it with a hard, thick shell. He wasn’t the biggest guy in the room, but he was not someone to cross. His evident anger at Gunner now made the air crackle and stilled the tongues of every other hardass around the table.

  “It’s on you, Gun. You. Thousands of dollars in damage, Terry shut down for days, all because you like getting your ass kicked.”

  “Prez…” Gunner attempted.

  Delaney cut him off. “Don’t you open that wise-ass trap of yours unless you can tell me true that you didn’t start that shit.”

  Gunner shut up.

  “To top the whole treat off with a bloody fucking cherry is Booker Howard. He’s all over Greenwood now, talking up the Hounds, yelling about the cracker bikers thinking they own Tulsa, saying Dyson bends over for us—we could end up fighting each other on home ground. Because you went looking for trouble. Well, brother, you fuckin’ found it. I oughta call a patch vote on your ass.”

  It wasn’t the first time since the fight that Delaney had made that threat, and it wasn’t a threat to be made lightly. The tension in the room ratcheted up a little more, and Gunner’s heavily bruised face lost some of its livid color.

  “Only reason I’m not is we got too much business to lose a man. But boy, you are gonna pay. Every goddamn penny we owe Terry is coming out of your take. You are living on your station wages for the foreseeable.” He leaned forward again. “And you are banned from going into any bar in the whole fucking United States without a brother at your side. The next time you go looking for trouble, brother, I will have your patch. I don’t give a fuck how much manpower we need. You have used up your chances.”

  Gunner stared dumbly, his swollen mouth agape.

  After a moment of stunned silence in the room, Delaney said, “Am I understood?”

  Gunner nodded. “I’m sorry, Prez.”

  “Fuck you,” Delaney sneered. “You weren’t sorry until just now.” Abruptly, he sighed, and the furious tautness eased from his face. “I know you got your demons, son. You gotta find a better way to work ‘em out. You need to take a beating, you got a house full of brothers happy to oblige. Use the ring. Keep it in the family.”

  Gunner was tight-lipped about his past, even among his brothers; only Delaney knew what it was that rode the kid so hard. Rad was sure that it had to be guilt, old and deep. Guilt and rage. A nasty, volatile concoction if ever there was one.

  “Yeah, D. I hear ya.”

  “I hope you do.” With another loaded sigh, Delaney widened his attention to the rest of the table. “Okay. We gotta front the money to Terry to get him back up. That’s gonna deplete the chest. So we need to get this second Russian route going. We also got a delivery to make to the Horde.”

  Becker scoffed. “We’re losing money on that deal. They’re getting those guns under cost.”

  “It’s voted, Beck,” Dane answered. “We need an ally to the east, and they need help.”

  “That little club ain’t much of an ally.”

  Delaney picked up the argument. “They hold the whole corridor through Missouri. They’re small, and they got trouble, but you know how far back I go with Ike. Horde’s a steady partner.”

  “Because we’re holding ‘em up.”

  “It’s voted, Becker,” Rad put in. “You said all this before the vote, and it went through. Let it go.” He’d had the same reservations, but once the vote was in, those reservations were moot. To the president, he said, “I’ll take point on the delivery, D.”

  “I want you there, but I’m riding that run, too. And Dane. Full leadership. Tomorrow—early start. I want to head there and back.”

  Tomorrow was Willa’s last day of vacation. Rad had entertained the notion of spending as much of that time with her as he could, but he nodded in agreement with his president. Club first.

  Besides, it was probably not a bad thing that she got a full day of actual rest.

  Delaney turned to Apollo. “When we get back, I want a plan in place for a recon run for the Russian route.”

  Apollo was some kind of computer genius and all-around science freak. Rad didn’t understand shit about those big beige boxes, but Apollo could type some gibberish on the screen and come up with information. Plus, his cousin was a uniform with Tulsa PD, and club-friendly, so he had some normal ways of getting information as well.

  “On it, Prez,” the kid answered.

  “Rad, I’m gonna want you on point for the recon run. Low pro. Just you and Eight.”

  Not surprised by that call, Rad nodded.

  “Okay,” Delaney
said, and picked up the gavel. “That’s about it.”

  Before he could hit the table and close the meeting, Rad cut in. “I got somethin’, D. Personal, but might have do with the club, too.” Smithers was a Dirty Rat. Anything Rad did for Willa could blow back on the Bulls. After the deluge of shit Gunner had just gotten buried in, Rad decided full disclosure was the best course.

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “Willa—”

  “That’s your nurse, right?” Delaney interrupted.

  “Yeah. Things’re…I like her. Leave it there. But she’s got some trouble I need to handle.”

  “Fuck, Rad.” This time it was Dane cutting in. “Not this again. What is it with you and needy women?”

  Rad ignored the blast of defensive ire he felt and answered calmly. “This ain’t Dahlia. This is nothin’ like Dahlia. Willa’s got an old boyfriend who don’t take no for an answer. Stalked her. Hurt her bad—real bad—twice. Did hard time for it, but not enough. Now he’s out. She moved outta state, and he’s not around yet, but I don’t want to wait for him to find her. Apollo, I need your help gettin’ his info. I know his name. I know where he’s from. And I know he’s a Dirty Rat. Lubbock charter.”

  Griffin whistled. “Those guys are scum.”

  “They are. I mean to kill this son of a bitch. That could start a beef with the Rats.”

  Delaney shook his head. “We do not have the time or attention for a war with those shits, Rad. You know damn well that’s true. If he hasn’t found her, maybe he won’t. Sit on this for now.”

  “I can’t let him get another go at her.”

  “You just met her. She’s not family. She’s not known. Her trouble is not our trouble. One patch running us headlong into another crew is enough for now. I’m sorry, brother. Let it be.”

  Willa’s trouble was Rad’s trouble. “I want to vote it.”

  With a lift of his eyebrows and a tilt of his head, Delaney conceded. “Do we sanction Rad to go after this Dirty Rat? Nay.” He turned to Rad.

  “Aye.”

  Simon and Ox voted with him, but they were the only who did. The final vote was seven to three against.

  He was disappointed, and he was frustrated, but it didn’t occur to him to go against the vote. Rad had been a Bull for twenty years. He was a Bull first; he was a Bull last. Acting against a vote was treason, and he was not a traitor.

  He couldn’t act first and get ahead of the problem.

  So he would have to be there when and if Jesse Smithers showed up.

  ~oOo~

  The very next morning, however, Rad rode east, with Delaney and Dane, and with Wally, their other prospect, driving the club van behind them. He was going hundreds of miles away from Tulsa, leaving Willa on her own.

  As bodyguards went, he was shit.

  She didn’t want anyone else hovering around, but he’d asked his brothers to do regular turns around her neighborhood, just to be sure. He took some solace from the fact that she was having her last day of vacation and had no plans but rest.

  The night before, he’d gone to the market for her and filled her fridge and cupboards. He’d bought tampons. He hadn’t even done shit like that for his wife.

  She had no reason at all to leave her house and all its locks. Or her pit bull. He’d instructed her to stay put, and he’d forced the point until she’d finally promised. He knew she’d been planning to take it easy anyway, so she’d been arguing with him about it just to argue, just to make sure he understood that it wasn’t his call. She seemed to enjoy that.

  Rad did not. But he’d gotten his way in the end, so he was content.

  The day was warm and sunny, and the ride east was smooth. Tulsa to Signal Bend was a near straight shot—I-44 all the way to the turn-off for the town, just about two-hundred-forty miles of smooth riding. Once they were out of Tulsa, there wasn’t much traffic beyond long-haul trucks, and the sun was high enough in the sky not to be weaponized, so Delaney, Dane, and Rad settled into their saddles, let the tension out of their legs, kept Wally and the van in their mirrors, and enjoyed the ride.

  On a run like this, just a few Bulls and an easy road, Rad let his thoughts spool out, as if they followed the ribbon of highway before him. This run was the first time since they’d returned from the Houston charity run that he’d had a chance to let his thoughts find their proper place in his head. Since that wreck, everything had been a jumble—all emotion and upheaval, nonstop.

  Willa had been coming home from the very same event in Houston. He liked the idea that she rode, and that she’d been riding as long as she’d been driving. Longer than that—her family all rode, and they started off on dirt bikes. Rad looked forward to getting her bike back on the road, and her leg back in shape, so they could ride together.

  With all the shit she had with Smithers, he was surprised she’d gone back into Texas to meet her family in Houston, but she’d told him she thought it was far enough from Duchy, and the event itself was big enough to be anonymous there.

  He had his doubts about that—on the other hand, for the past few years, the entire Dirty Rats club, all charters, had been banned from that event and most charity events Rad knew of, ever since they’d started a shootout at an event in Alabama. Fourteen people had been killed in that disaster, and it had brought a shit ton of heat down on MCs across the country. Now, other clubs were happy to help organizers and local law enforce that ban, and it wasn’t safe for a man in a Rat kutte to be seen in the same zip code as a sanctioned biker event.

  The Dirty Rats were filth, and everybody knew it.

  That wouldn’t preclude a psycho from leaving his kutte at home when he was looking for trouble. Just like Gunner, when he wanted a beating. Smithers had to know that Willa’s family was in Houston, and if he had two brain cells to rub together, he could make a good guess that she might meet them there.

  Rad wanted her safe, but part of him hoped Smithers had figured out where she was. He wanted a way to end him without breaking with the club, and that meant Smithers had to make the first move.

  He didn’t want that to happen until he was there with her to handle things, however.

  A little more than three hours after they left Tulsa, they pulled off I-44 and headed toward Signal Bend. This part of the world looked a lot like the part Rad had grown up in. Less flat, maybe. But Oklahoma wasn’t all that flat near Tulsa, anyway.

  Woodland and farmland, far as the eye could see. The houses and outbuildings were rundown, some barely standing. Too many fields had gone to seed, too many houses were leaning over. Hard times had come.

  They passed a faded sign, with a painted image of a big train pulled by a black steam engine coming around a bend. The paint had faded so markedly that the image was only faintly discernible, as was the greeting Welcome to Signal Bend! The sign was like a ghost of a welcome. A haunting.

  Not far past that old sign, Delaney led them to turn right onto a lane framed by dense weeds. A long, low building, hemmed in by tall chain link, was the only structure in sight. A rusted-out sign on the fence to one side of the open gate declared it Signal Bend Construction. On the other side of the gate was the symbol of the Night Horde—a horse with a flaming mane, which they’d nicknamed, inventively, the ‘Flaming Mane.’

  There were a few pieces of heavy construction equipment that had seen better days, some time ago, parked at the back of the lot. Otherwise, a van, a couple of pickups and a few Harleys made up the contents of the lot. The Bulls backed in at the end of the short line of Horde bikes.

  “Shit,” Dane said as they dismounted. “This place is dying fast.”

  “Don’t count it out,” Delaney answered. “Times are tough, but so are folk like these. Shit like this goes in cycles. They’ll hunker down and wait it out.”

  The door opened and two giants walked through: Little Ike Lunden and Showdown Ryan. Neither of them was an officer, though Little Ike was the president’s son—he was too young and too newly patched to have earned any pull.
>
  Rad turned to Delaney to see if he was taking offense at the lowly welcome. If so, he was hiding it well.

  Little Ike came forward first, and Delaney accepted the hug of warm greeting. “Hey, brothers. Expected you a little later. Big Ike and Reg are in town, meetin’ with the mayor.”

  As all the men took their turns in greeting, Delaney said, ‘Not a problem. We had a clear road, so we came right through. Wouldn’t mind a beer and a bite, if you got it.”

  “Sure do,” said Showdown. “Got the women putting together a spread right now. C’mon in.”

  Signal Bend had been first populated way back by a bunch of Swedes or Norwegians or folk like that. Somewhere Vikings came from. Most of the people in town were descended in some kind of way from those first folk. So the Horde had a highfalutin way of doing things. Every MC Rad knew called the room where they had their meetings their ‘chapel’ and called their meetings ‘church.’ Not the Horde, oh no. They met in the ‘Keep’—you could hear the fucking capital K in the way they said it—and they called their main room, which everybody else he knew called a party room or a bar room or just the main room, the Hall—capital H.