by Blair Grey
I wanted to be a father. And I didn’t want to put my future family in jeopardy. That’s what it really came down to.
It was the same thing that it had always come back to. I just didn’t have what it took to be part of the MC. I didn’t have the mettle. And I was okay with that. Being part of the group had been nice–I liked all the guys and I didn’t want to let them down. I wanted to do my best. But at the same time, I was starting to picture having a family now. Holly was just the first part of that idea. I couldn’t bear the thought of her getting hurt, even if she wasn’t really my girlfriend and definitely wasn’t my wife.
Surprisingly enough, Ray seemed to know exactly what I was thinking. “I know you never wanted to be a part of this,” he said quietly. “I know that you were under pressure to join, right from the start. But I do like the way that you’ve grown since you’ve been part of Red Eyes. And I think that you’re best suited to keeping the MC alive.” He paused. “You know, it’s not all about violence and the things that you hate.”
“I know,” I said honestly. “I watched you with Linda. You had a heart. You look out for the business owners. I have to admit, I haven’t always seen that in the things that we do. But it’s good to know that sometimes, there’s a time and place for that. Even if you’re part of the most powerful MC in New Mexico.”
Ray chuckled, and even though he looked better than he had in a while, that wheezing cough of his sounded even worse than it had just a couple days before. I wished I could ask him what the doctors had really told him: how long we really had.
From the way he was asking me about being the next leader of the MC, I had the worrying feeling that there wasn’t much time left.
As much as I didn’t want to be leader of the MC, as much as I was pretty sure I wanted out, there was another part of me that still insisted that I couldn’t just turn my back on my brothers. That if Ray wanted me to be the next leader of the club, I had to accept. It was just an interim thing until we could find someone better.
But that could take years, and there was a selfish part of me that didn’t want to wait that long.
Ray stood up, nodding at me. “I know it’s a tough decision to make,” he said. “But I want you to keep in mind that we don’t have much time to decide. Keep thinking about it. Keep your mind open to the idea. That’s all I’m asking you to do.”
“All right,” I said, hating how weak my voice sounded. Couldn’t Ray hear that I was all wrong for the job? “I’ll keep thinking about it.”
If Ray’s smile was anything to go by, he was overjoyed to hear that.
32
Holly
Ryan called me into the undercover house again on Thursday, the day after my fishing trip with Grant. At first, I wondered if that meant that he’d had someone following me, that someone had seen us getting busy on the lakeshore. But then I realized that it probably meant, instead, that he was getting impatient for information and that he hoped I would have some for him. He’d been on this crusade for too long now, in his mind, to have achieved so little progress.
Or worst-case scenario, he had found out about the meeting between Grant, Ray, and the business owner after the fact and he wanted to know why I hadn’t given him information about that sooner. Whatever it was, it was something that I shouldn’t be totally worried about.
I hoped.
When I got to the house, Ryan was there with one of the other undercover officers. “And if those business owners still don’t give you information, you know what to do,” Ryan was saying as I walked in. “They’ve already seen it happen to one place. It won’t be long before we get one of them to crack.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how the fuck this motorcycle club manages to command so much loyalty anyway, when all I can see that they’re doing is stealing money from the poor and peddling drugs.”
I barely resisted the urge to roll my eyes or to point out that we still didn’t know that Red Eyes had anything to do with the drug trade. And if Grant was anything to go by, I definitely doubted it.
I let it slide for now, though. I had a bigger problem with Ryan’s words, but I waited until the other officer was out of the building before I addressed it.
“If they won’t give you information, ‘you know what to do?’” I echoed incredulously.
Ryan rolled his eyes. “Come on, York. You know that there are certain methods that we use to get a community to talk. But there’s a reason I haven’t given you a task that involves your carrying out any of them.”
“But just by being part of this unit, I’m part of all of that. Everything that you do,” I said disgustedly. I had to know. “Are you the ones who burned down that one business over on Anderson? Candy?” Grant seemed to think that he was, and now, I thought so as well, even though I had to hope that that wasn’t what had really happened. That we had somehow both come to the wrong conclusions.
But Ryan just shrugged. “I had to do what I had to do,” he said. “Now, do you have any information for me?”
“Wait, back up a minute,” I said, shaking my head. “Are you seriously trying to tell me that what you had to do was burn down a business to get the information that you need about Red Eyes? Because as far as I can tell, you didn’t get any information, and now you’re out trying to use the same scare tactics on other businesses until you finally find someone who’s willing to talk. Is that correct?”
“York,” Ryan snapped. “We’re close to getting the information that we need. If you want to get this done, you need to man up.”
I stared at him for a long moment, feeling everything inside of me breaking at what he had just said. At what he had basically confessed to. I hadn’t joined the police force because I wanted to help out with burning down the businesses of innocent shopkeepers. I had joined the police force because I wanted to help people.
I hadn’t joined the police force to start a vendetta against people who, sure, might actually be doing bad things but who were mostly decent enough individuals. There were serious problems out there on our streets. Since when had a witch hunt, going after the easiest targets and treating them as guilty until proven innocent, become the noble thing to do? We didn’t have a shred of evidence about the sorts of things that Ryan told us these guys were up to. There was nothing to prove that they had murdered anyone or that they had any ties to drugs.
I just couldn’t believe that this was what my career had turned out to be. Leaving aside the fact that I had been asked to seduce a target to get his secrets out of him, everything else was wrong as well.
I shook my head at Ryan. “I didn’t get into this to ruin the lives of innocent shopkeepers,” I said slowly.
“They’re not innocent if they’re colluding with Red Eyes,” Ryan snapped.
“They are innocent if the only reason that they’re paying dues to Red Eyes is because they need protection from people like you,” I snapped. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew that I should probably take them back. But I didn’t want to. It wasn’t like I had said anything that wasn’t true. I honestly believed that the business owners stood more of a chance being protected by Red Eyes than by the local police.
And that thought sickened me. I hadn’t joined up to do anything like this. “I don’t want to be part of this anymore,” I said, folding my arms across my chest.
Ryan stared at me for a long moment, like he thought I might be bluffing. Like he thought I might change my mind. But when it became obvious that I wasn’t going to, he shrugged. “Fine. Then I think it’s best that you gather your things and get out of here.”
Just like that. As though he had never wanted me there in the first place. As though they didn’t need me.
And maybe that was true. Maybe I had never fit into this unit. Maybe I shouldn’t have this job in the first place.
Maybe Vera had been right. I should have just done something else with my life. I should have been a beautician or worked in retail or something. Anything else. Clearly, I wasn’t cut out for thi
s life. I had to get out of there or I was going to be sick. The only thing that I could think about was that I had somehow been in with the criminals the entire time.
They were the ones who needed to be stopped. Not Red Eyes. They were the ones who were a danger to the local businesses and the community.
I had just walked away from the only career that I had ever wanted. From everything that I had worked so hard and trained so hard for. I had put myself through grueling years at the academy, all so that I could be proud to be part of the force. Now, I was walking away from it all.
It wasn’t just because of Grant, although he was part of it. If I hadn’t started this thing with him, I might not have realized that he and the rest of Red Eyes were far more innocent than Ryan was leading me to believe.
Someone else might have just followed Ryan blindly, helping to put the entire MC behind bars, even Ray. But as for me, I knew where my sense of justice lay. It wasn’t Ryan who needed my help. It was the motorcycle club. I only hoped that I hadn’t screwed things up already with Grant, by lying to him this whole time.
There had to be some way that I could explain. That there was some way that I could make things right.
The one benefit of the fact that I could now tell Grant about my being a police officer was that I could talk to him about all of this. I wanted to tell him about the corruption, about how he didn’t even know the half of it. I wanted to tell him about quitting my job. I wanted to tell him who had been responsible for burning down Candy.
I felt so strangely numb when I thought about work now, and I needed to think through all of this.
Maybe I could get Grant to take me fishing again. Or maybe he could take my mind off it in other ways. All I knew was that I wanted to see him, first and foremost. When I called him, though, it went straight to voicemail, and I remembered what he had said about how he would be busy this week trying to help Linda.
I knew all of the information that he needed, but of course, he didn’t know that. The thought of having to wait until the weekend to hear from him depressed me, but I forced myself to hang up the phone and head home. At least I had Vera to talk to. She might not be the person I really wanted to tell that I had fucked up my whole career over, but she’d at least listen to what I had to say.
33
Grant
On Friday, all the core members met at the clubhouse to hear the information that Braxton had gotten about this undercover unit with the police force. Cameron grinned as he looked around at the group. “Remember when there used to be more of us?” he said jokingly. Before Will and Marcus had gotten married, before Landon had moved to Florida. Now, it was just Ray, Cameron, Braxton, and me.
“There’ll be more soon,” Ray reminded him. “Some of the recruits will graduate into the core group soon, I think. Grant has been doing a good job with training all of them.” He nodded at me and then looked around at all of us. “The police have been starting to overstep their boundaries. What they’re doing isn’t safe for the people of Las Cruces anymore. And that’s where we come in. Those businesses look to us for protection. And it’s not just protection from other MCs. They want protection from anyone who stands to harm them.”
“Like the police are currently doing,” Braxton spat.
“Like the police are currently doing,” Ray agreed.
“Do we know for sure that they were responsible for burning down Linda’s business?” I asked.
“We know for sure,” Ray said grimly. “They’ve apparently been harassing other businesses as well. Anywhere that they know has ties to us. Fortunately, they don’t seem to have too much information on that. They’ve even tried to mess with businesses who have no idea who we are.”
“So in short, they’re acting like their own MC,” Braxton said.
“Pretty much,” Cameron said. “Only they’re doing things that most MCs wouldn’t even dream of doing, like burning businesses to the ground.”
He was right. We might have to take a tough line with some of our businesses in order to get them to pay, but we would never go so far as to burn a business to the ground just to get money or information out of them. I knew that there were other MCs who had fewer scruples than we did. MCs that would go a lot further, especially if they were trying to take over territory. Hell, that was part of why I had thought that this might be the Unknowns at first.
But it was still a pretty extreme way to handle things. I couldn’t believe that they were getting away with it. I guess that when you’re the police, the rules are different, though.
“We have the names and faces of every undercover cop in the unit,” Ray continued. “And it’s time to let them know that they can’t get away with this kind of behavior anymore.” He smirked. “I wish it were as simple as planting drugs on them and calling up the sheriff, but unfortunately, I don’t think that plan is going to work out with these guys, so we’ll have to brainstorm ways to take them down, even if we have to do it one by one.”
He laid down a photo of the first guy. “This is Ryan. He’s their leader. He’s been a corrupt cop for years now. Multiple disciplinary meetings as well. He’s pretty radical, and I bet that he’s the one behind most of the violence that we’re seeing from them at the moment.”
He paused. “The thing is, we’re going to have to tread lightly with this one. As much as I’d like to wipe him off the face of the earth, there are rumors that he has ties to the mafia in New York, and we don’t know how they would react if we take him down. The last thing we need is to attract the attention of the mafia. Not only for the sake of the other Red Eyes chapters, but also for our own skins. Don’t be fooled into thinking that just because they’re on the other side of the country, it doesn’t mean that they’ll have no way of getting to us.”
Ray looked around at each of us, staring deep into our eyes like he was trying to impress the severity of what he was saying into each of us. We all nodded at him.
Inwardly, I was shocked. Jesus, the mafia? It would have been so much easier if it was just the Unknowns out for our blood and territory again. We had proven that we could defeat them once, and we would prove it again, in spite of Ray’s ailing health.
Even if it had been another MC that we had never come up against before, I felt sure that we would be able to take them on, but the mafia was a whole different type of fighting. Where we lived by a code of honor that meant you didn’t do sneaky things when attacking other MCs, or at least mostly, the mafia was all about the underhanded dealings and deaths. You had to watch your back around them in the way that you didn’t usually need to with a rival MC. Oh, you didn’t want to get stupid around another MC either, but they were more likely to kill you with their fists than with poison or a random bullet to the back of your head.
I thought again about the fact that Ray apparently wanted me to take over the MC when he could no longer run it. If we were up against guys with ties to the mafia, there was no way in hell that I was qualified for the job. But then again, neither was Braxton. Cameron might be better suited for that, though. He was good about thinking things through before he acted. His logic just might save him.
Ray lay down another couple of photos of guys in the undercover unit, telling us everything that he had been able to find out about them. “There’s, of course, more of them,” he finally said, handing out a sheet with each of their faces on it. “But those are the main guys, the ones who we really need to look out for. Of course, we also don’t know where they’re congregating or what they’re planning to do once they find out enough information about us or any of that.”
Again, he looked around the circle at each of us. “So I suppose the next step for us is to formulate a plan. Figure out a way to track these guys down and take them out in such a way that they don’t even know what hit them. I don’t expect you to have anything right away. I don’t want you to have anything right away. Let’s think about it, see what everyone can come up with, and then we’ll decide the best course of action. Have a look over
those briefs, see if there’s anything that jumps out at you. I’ll let you know when we should meet again.”
The other alarming thing that I realized as Ray was wrapping up the meeting was how exhausted he looked. The meeting hadn’t gone on for that long, but even this seemed like it was enough to wear Ray out. That must mean that he wasn’t doing as good as I had hoped. That maybe I really would need to make that decision sooner rather than later.
I took my brief and headed out to my bike. I didn’t even glance at it before I swung onto the machine. But as I went to fold it up so I could put it in my pocket, I realized that I recognized one of the faces.
Holly York. There she was, staring out at me, bottom row, two from the right.
What the fuck? I didn’t say it out loud, still conscious that the other guys were somewhere there nearby, getting onto their bikes as well. I couldn’t let them know that I knew Holly.
But I had been the one giving away information to the rat all along, I realized. I wondered how she had played me so easily. I wondered how she had had the guts to do it.
I felt a sinking feeling in my gut, like the rug had been ripped out from under me. Holly had been the one thing leading me to believe that people weren’t all terrible. That there might be some good in this world. That maybe I could have the future that I had always wanted. That I could have children and whatever else I wanted.
But it appeared that all of that had been a lie.
I didn’t know what to do about Holly, but I at least I knew that I couldn’t let this get out. I couldn’t let the other guys in the club know that I knew her. I definitely couldn’t let Ray know that I knew her or that she was the one who had just happened to show up to help me the night I’d been helping Linda after her building had burned down.
