Think of something different. Mona’s face, when we found her. Think over the mission. What had gone well, what we could do different next time. How we only knew what was happening in the house through Road’s bravery and his quick thinking.
Damn. Stop thinking of the man.
Bikes. Mine could do with an oil change. Yes, think about that.
Eventually, I manage to get my mind off the man who’s probably snoring beside me. My mind quiets, and I drop off.
I’m woken when the mattress dips and then rises. Opening my eyes, I see Road standing, but looking back over his shoulder at me. He mimes washing his face.
“I’ll be fine.” I start sitting up, reaching for my hearing aids, and out of the corner of my eye, catch him bending to pick his jeans up off the floor. When he straightens, I get the glimpse of some impressive looking morning wood.
Mm mmm.
Then I mentally slap myself. Didn’t I just explain to myself what a bad idea sampling Road’s wood would be?
I thought I had, but it hadn’t worked. A girl can dream though. It wouldn’t hurt Road if he didn’t know I was using the thought of him while enjoying myself later with my vibrator.
By the time Road’s back, I’m dressed and ready to hit the bathroom myself. I give him a rise of my chin, then disappear to do what’s necessary. After that, I meet him downstairs with the others, then get caught up in the flurry of morning activity as we get ready to hit the road.
Breakfast is a quick pit stop at a convenience store, then we arrive at the airfield. Preacher goes to do his pre-flight checks on the plane.
I always find flying home anti-climactic. Heading out on a mission, we’re full of anticipation, knowing we’re walking into the unknown. However much information those left back at base will feed us, there’s always a chance something will go wrong. Always a chance of not all of us making it back. All our affairs are in order, Pip insists on that, though on my part it was just a formality and a matter of updating what was already there. Soldiers have to be ready for anything, and I hadn’t lost that habit.
Returning is always to the known, to the familiar. Welcome at first, then I begin to get an itch inside me, willing the time to pass before we’re sent out again.
I live for these missions, and love that, despite my disability, I’ve found a way to make my mark on the world, albeit anonymously. Then that’s not much different to if I had joined the SAS, where no credit is given, and participants aren’t named.
As normal, I turn down my hearing aids and zone out on the plane until I feel it start to descend and the vibration of the engine changing. I open my eyes and watch until the wheels touch down. Then I turn my hearing aids back up and join the world again.
We wait while Preacher talks to the man who makes sure our plane’s able to fly, giving him some kind of report about how the plane handled and what it might need, then, when he’s ready, we go to our bikes.
Hearing aids again turned down, I ride alongside Road, enjoying the feeling of fresh air on my face. I notice how competent he is at handling a bike, but that shouldn’t surprise me. What does, is how in tune we are, leaning and straightening perfectly in unison. Maybe soon we can go for a longer ride, and not just the couple of miles back to the clubhouse.
When we pull in through the gates and ride around to the parking lot, I’m not surprised to see Pip out the back of our clubhouse with a coffee in his hand. He’ll have known the second we touched down.
“Church?” Snatcher needlessly asks.
“Yeah. We’ll debrief now.” Taking his coffee with him, Pip walks back inside.
One by one we drop our duffel bags off with Igor. Preacher will trust him to sort everything out. The guns which were fired had been left behind, but those unused and the spare ammunition will need to be put back into our stockpile.
Pip’s already seated by the time I walk in. Copying the brothers, I first approach the coffee machine and select the setting for hot water. I drop a tea bag into the cup and drown it, then add a dash of milk. I turn around to see Road grinning widely at me.
“Reminds me of back home,” he says as he gets himself a coffee. “Sophie prefers her tea.”
“Yorkshire tea,” I tell him. “My mum sends it to me.”
“When you’ve finished your discussion on beverages…” Pip’s voice sounds more amused than angry.
“Fuckin’ foreigners,” Stormy mumbles.
“Wanker.” I purposefully insult him in my form of English again as I walk past, enhancing my comment with a swipe to his skull to add injury.
“Stormy!” Pip barks and points his finger in challenge. “Don’t say the words I know are about to come out of your mouth as it would be boring to see Swift humiliate you again.”
“Why’s he such an ass?” Road asks me quietly out of the corner of his mouth.
I shrug. He is. That’s all I know.
“Right.” Pip bangs the gavel. “Mission completed successfully. Two happy parents and one little girl back where she belongs.”
“They pay up?” Rascal asks, then nods in satisfaction when Prez gives a confirmatory raise of his chin.
“Road,” Prez begins. “Hear it was down to you that it all went off so smoothly. How’s your leg?”
I’ve never liked being singled out, for praise or a stripping down, and the way Road shifts awkwardly before replying suggests he’s much the same.
“My leg’s fine.”
I glance at him, concerned. I saw him favouring it earlier and could see that’s far from the truth. But I don’t have the chance to say anything as there’s a snort from the end of the table.
“So his talent is pretending to be a fuckin’ cripple. Don’t know how many times that will come in useful.”
“His talent,” Snatcher roars at Stormy from his seat beside Pip, “is thinking with his fuckin’ brain and coming up with something out of left field.”
“We can all fuckin’ do that,” Stormy retorts.
Pip slams his fist on the table. “Yeah? Road’s quick thinking cut the mission time in half. Everything he suggested was right. We still haven’t dissected all the fuckin’ mistakes you made in Pueblo and San Diego.”
“Didn’t make fuckin’ mistakes,” Stormy says stonily.
Prez glares at him. “Don’t think that’s fuckin’ been brushed under the carpet. But your failings will be discussed once I’ve decided on a suitable punishment.” He pauses to let that sink in. Stormy’s face is as black as thunder, but soon Prez looks away from him and toward Duty. “Have the cops found the bodies in Santa Barbara yet?”
As he gets back to the case in hand, the man he’s addressing shakes his head. “Nah. Looks like they were keeping themselves to themselves. It could be some time before anyone goes to the house. It’s been empty for a while. I dug into it. Owners are abroad for an extended time.”
“Hopefully they’ve got an agent keeping an eye on the place. Great welcome home from a vacation to find bodies rotting in their living room.”
Not a great homecoming, I silently agree with Thor.
“The third man was called Rice,” Duty continues. “He got out shortly after Tub and Weaver. Guess they planned all this together when they were inside.”
“Anyone reported them missing?”
“Not so far. I’ll keep my ear to the ground.”
Prez leans back on his chair looking well satisfied. “Another job well done. Great work, team.”
I hear Road clearing his throat by my side and am not surprised when he starts to speak. “I’ve got questions, Pip. Even more now that you allowed me to tag along to rescue the girl. You’ve captured my interest, I’ll say that, but I still don’t know why you say you’re Satan’s Devils, yet are unlike any other chapter we have. You wear cuts, ride motorcycles, but that’s where the resemblance ends. And I still want to know why you’re sitting in that chair. Snatcher ran the show down in California, and I had no problem answering to him. So I have to wonder, what do you bring
to the table?”
My cheeks hollow as I suck in a sharp breath. Road’s got balls to put it so frankly. I notice even Stormy’s raised an eyebrow as though he’s impressed. Glancing the other way, I wonder how Prez is going to take the challenge.
“Yeah.” Prez presses his lips together, then smooths his hands over his shortly shorn hair. “I can see why you’re wondering. I promised you information, Road. The opportunity came up for you to see us in action. A physical demonstration is often better than words.”
“Words is what I’m after.” Road puts his fingertips against the edge of the table and taps them. “Going to California raised more questions than gave me answers. Look, I don’t know what’s going on. You’re asking me to transfer into something I know nothing about, and,” he raises his chin toward Stormy, “your brother there has a good point. I don’t know what I can offer that no one else has got. I can’t fly a plane like Preacher, and I can’t squeeze information out of a computer beyond asking Google what I want.” He now nods toward Duty. “As for Swift?” He turns and offers me a grin, “Well, I’m not just not in her league, I’m not even on the same planet.”
He’s so wrong. I want to tell him not to put himself down. I want him to see that although we’d have rescued the girl anyway, his quick thinking, his putting himself through pain just to move the mission along, had her home and back with her parents probably a day sooner than we would have done. With those three men, another twenty-four hours was a fucking long time.
But I say none of that. I sit stoic and quiet. Road’s nothing to me, so why should I feel this need to console him, to make him see he has something to contribute if he decides to stay?
Because if I keep my mouth shut, he’ll leave.
Which would definitely be for the best. Then I won’t think about him every minute of the day or wonder just what he can do with the morning wood I’d seen earlier.
Road’s not transferred yet. He’s not one of my brothers. Maybe I wouldn’t be breaking my rules if I jumped in the sack with him. Perhaps putting him through his paces for a couple of hours would get rid of this inconvenient urge. It’s possible he wouldn’t even take that long, and he’d be a disappointment.
But he might have hidden talents, and that would compound my mistake.
What the fuck’s wrong with me? I never look at other brothers this way. What is it about Road that makes me feel feminine? I could break him in two with one hand tied behind my back.
I don’t understand why he affects me. I almost hate him for making me feel things I shouldn’t.
I watch him out of the corner of my eye. He’s still looking around him, as if analysing what everyone can offer which he can’t. After a moment, he shrugs, looks straight at Prez and asks, “So yeah, I’ve got questions. Are you going to answer them?”
16
Road…
I want to laugh. It’s so blatantly obvious I have no place here. No one had leapt to my defence telling me I was wrong when I told them I had nothing to offer. Swift had just sat silent beside me, no word of support or comment about how well I’d done.
Though Snatcher had defended me earlier, he doesn’t remind them now, and in the scheme of things the ability for me to easily dislocate my knee isn’t a particularly useful talent, just one which had worked yesterday. Its ability to normally pop out when I least want it to is normally decidedly inconvenient.
If I press Pip for answers and hear him say there’s no place for a grunt like me here, maybe I could be on my bike and headed home later today.
Carefully though, extremely carefully, I’m not ignoring the threats.
They think Drummer would shut down their operation or take their Satan’s Devils’ charter away if the mother chapter prez learns exactly how far Utah has stretched the club’s rules. In that, they are probably right. What I don’t understand is why that’s so important to them. With or without that label, they’d still be a close-knit team, a family, a brotherhood. With the exception of Stormy, they seem to be loyal to each other and disciplined. And not people, I suspect, who’d end a man with no good reason. So they must have a fucking good motive for wanting the Satan’s Devils’ patch on their backs to remain. A purpose that might see them execute a man who’s sat around the table with them, broken bread with them, and, yesterday, supported them.
I had been part of getting that little girl back to her parents. No one had faulted my performance. I’ve got new respect for Snatcher, for Preacher who seems to have no limit to his talents; for Thor, Rascal, Piston and Honor who I was happy enough to work alongside. Swift, hell. Maybe one good reason to leave is that I want her but would never be able to have her.
Her competency, her skills, her confidence and control. Even if I had a chance, would I even be able to keep up sexually? If I did, what then? I’m not in the market to have an old lady, or to be an old man, and I don’t know what she’d expect from me. Would she be happy with my time and body for a couple of hours, or would she want more?
Hell, last night was the first time I slept beside a woman in a very long time. My last experience had soured me. The last time I’d stayed the night, I’d fallen asleep after pleasurable, but not spectacular sex. It hadn’t been my intention, nor had I thought it was a signal I wanted more. But phone calls and even visits to the strip club where I worked had followed. She’d been insistent that we should have a repeat. Lesson learned, it was much cleaner to have sex, then leave and go home to my own bed.
Why am I sitting here thinking about Swift naked beneath, or hell, on top of me, either way I wouldn’t care, when there are far more important things that should be on my mind right now?
Reluctantly, I make myself push the thought of Swift out of my head and get my mind focused.
If I don’t have anything to offer, the decision of whether I stay or not would be taken out of my hands. Hell, prospects here have to work twice as hard to join the ranks of the members. Had yesterday been a test? Had I passed or failed it?
If I’m not a suitable match for their club, but they don’t want me to betray them, for me to agree to leave with their secrets intact, they need to give me something worth lying to my prez. An explanation I can accept for pulling the wool over Drummer’s eyes.
An acceptable reason why it’s Pip at the top of the table when he doesn’t even ride a motorcycle, why there’s a woman member, and why they’ve lied to all the other chapters. Could a sufficient reason exist that I could accept? I really can’t see it. But I’ll give them a chance.
I shrug, look straight at Pip and ask, “So yeah, I’ve got questions. Are you going to answer them?”
Pip looks at me in a calculated way, then raises his chin. “It’s time, so yes. You stay, Snatcher, you too. The rest of you can leave.”
“Want me here?” Cowboy asks, sounding reluctant. He seems a strange person to offer, so I look toward him sharply, in time to see relief cross his face when Pip shakes his head. Cowboy, still looking tense, gets up to follow the rest of the men—and woman—out.
Pip stands and goes to a cabinet I hadn’t paid much attention to. He opens it, pulls out a bottle of whisky—a quality single malt, I notice—and three glasses. Coming back to the table, he pours three shots, pushing one toward me, the second toward Snatcher, and takes the other for himself.
He stares into the smoky depths for a moment, then raises his eyes toward me. “Some of this isn’t my story to tell, some of it is. But Cowboy didn’t want the pain of telling it, so it’s been left to me.”
Snatcher raises his fingers from the table. “Perhaps, as it’s a Devil we’re speaking to, the story goes back further than that?”
Pip tilts his head slightly as he thinks. Then he dips his chin. “Perhaps it does.”
Snatcher nods, then takes over. “It was fifteen years or so back, I was in my current spot. VP to the old prez. Butler and I worked well together. Some of the members we had then, we still got. Thor, Piston, Rascal. Thumper was here as well. It was before Honor an
d Duty’s time, and the others who sit around the table now.” He pauses to take a sip of his whisky. “There were another half-dozen members. We were Satan’s Devils then too, patched over in Drummer’s father, Bastard’s day. You heard about how Bastard ran his club?”
I nod, my teeth grinding together. Drummer doesn’t have much good to say about his dad, and the shit he got the club into. Drug and gun running, prostitution as well. His dirty dealings had ended with a police raid which had decimated the club. Members jailed or, in the case of Bastard and several more, killed outright. Drummer stepped into the hot seat and cleaned up the club.
“Drummer was fairly new to his role; I suppose hiding shit started there. Butler and I were quite happy making money the easy way. We’d go to meetings with the mother chapter, said our ayes and nays in all the right places, then came back and did what the fuck we wanted. Oh, we’d learned lessons from what happened to Bastard, but didn’t take them to heart well enough. Thought we had, but we were wrong. What we did do was make sure our dealings were watertight, concentrating on keeping beneath the radar of the cops. Thought if we kept the law off our backs, everything else would stay in place.” He shakes his head. “Thought we could be cleverer than Bastard.”
He seems to grind to a halt, so Pip encourages him. “Tell him the rest.”
“It wasn’t the law that came for us, but the mafia crew. See? We’d gotten into a lucrative gun trade without realising our supplier was ripping them off. We thought we were the big boys, hell, we weren’t anywhere close. They didn’t mess around. Butler led the run making a delivery, and they were all taken out. We lost our prez and darn near half the club in one fell swoop.”
“That’s when you stepped up?” I prompt.
“Yeah. I didn’t have much choice. We took a club vote and decided maybe Tucson did have it right after all. But how do you go legit and put food in men’s bellies, when they’ve been drug and gun running all their lives? We couldn’t even continue our prostitution business—the mafia stole that from us too. With so little manpower left, we couldn’t defend ourselves.”
Road Tripped: Satan's Devils MC Utah #1 Page 16
