Gypsy King

by Devney Perry

  Emmett and Leo had risked their lives to stand beside us when we’d closed down the club. They were building good lives. Honest lives. I’d give mine up, but I wouldn’t betray them.

  Bryce planted her hands on her hips. “So where does that put us?”

  “I’ll answer your questions. Some things are on the record. Some are off.”

  “And I’m just supposed to believe you?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “How can I know you’ll be honest?”

  “Because I feel like shit,” I admitted. “Not many people can get under my skin, but you have. And I feel guilty. For what I said last night. For calling the cops today. This is me saying I fucked up. Asking for one more chance.”

  She cast me a wary glance. “You have to know that I think this is all crap. Just another one of your tricks.”

  “I get it.” I sighed. “Ask me your questions anyway. Just don’t print the stuff that will hurt other people. Agreed?”

  The offer hung in the air, until finally, she gave me a single nod. “Agreed. I want to know why you closed down your club.”

  “On the record, our members decided to go different directions. Dad and I stayed in Clifton Forge with Emmett and Leo. Most of the other Gypsies moved away.” When she frowned, I held up my hands. “I know you probably think of it as this big event, but it wasn’t. It happened slowly. One guy would leave for one reason or another. We wouldn’t bring on anyone new.”

  “Attrition. You’re saying you shut down your club because of attrition?”

  “It’s the truth.”

  Jet had prospected the club the same year as I had. He’d moved to Las Vegas after he’d met his girlfriend there and now ran his own garage. Gunner had moved to Washington to live by the ocean with the money he’d stashed away over the years. Big Louie, who was a few years younger than Dad, had bought the bowling alley here in town and met Dad for drinks at The Betsy every Thursday.

  The others had scattered to the wind. Some had even left to join other clubs. Those had stung, but we didn’t fault the men who wanted to keep living the club life.

  “The club changed,” I told Bryce. “We all made that choice together. Unanimously.” I’d always been proud to put on my leather cut with the Tin Gypsy patch on the back. Then one day, I pulled on that vest and there was no pride. That was the day I began to question everything. “What it was, what kind of men we’d become, didn’t hold the same appeal.”

  “And what was it? What kind of men were you?”

  “Men who did whatever the fuck we wanted.” If someone pissed me off, I’d knock out some of their teeth. If someone hurt a member of our family, they paid with their life. “We were fearless. Intimidating. Didn’t care much about the law. And we had money.”

  “How’d you make your money?”

  “The garage.”

  She frowned. “Don’t forget who you’re talking to. Fifteen years ago, it was rumored you had at least thirty members. Your garage might be nice, but it wasn’t supporting that many people.”

  No surprise Bryce had done her research. The woman who’d completely thrown me off guard, who’d seized my attention, was sharper than the knife tucked into my boot.

  We’d actually had more like forty members back then. About fifteen had been guys Dad’s age and nearly all of them were dead now. Life expectancy with the club didn’t exactly fit a standard bell curve.

  Even though we’d been small compared to other clubs around the nation, we’d been powerful. Dad had wanted to grow and expand all the way through the Northwest. He would have done it had we not decided to disband. But his ambition had made us targets.

  Made our families targets.

  “Off the record?” I waited for her to nod before I continued. “Money came from drug protection. Sometimes we smuggled the drugs ourselves, but mostly we made sure mules made it to their destination safely. Kept trucks from getting hijacked from either the cops or another dealer.”

  “What kind of drugs?”

  “Meth mostly. We ran whatever the suppliers cooked in Canada. Some pot. Some cocaine and heroin. I don’t know what else there was, but does it matter?”

  “No.” The disappointment in her eyes made my stomach fall. “I guess it doesn’t.”

  For her, I wanted to be better. Do better. Why? It was the question I’d wrestled with since the beginning. But there was something about her, this woman, that made me want to make her proud. And I’d give all the money in my safe not to see that look on her face again.

  “That was how we made most of our money,” I said. “It was easier years ago before border patrol started cracking down. We could slip through the cracks because Montana has a big border and they can’t watch it all.”

  “So you worked for drug dealers?”

  I nodded. “Among other things.”

  “What other things? Be specific.”

  “Protection. A business in town could hire us and we made sure they didn’t have any trouble. We made sure their competitors did. We had an underground fight circuit too. Got to be pretty big. We’d have fighters come from all over the Northwest. We’d organize it, some of us would fight, and the club would take a rake off all the bets. Made damn good money too.”

  Had Emmett and I had our way against Dad, we’d still be running the fights. But Dad had insisted it all had to stop. He’d been right. It was better this way.

  “It doesn’t make sense. If you made good money, why quit?”

  “Can’t spend money in prison, Bryce. And turns out, we make damn good money on custom cars too.”

  She studied my face. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. Sorry to disappoint you, but we closed down the club for noble reasons. It wasn’t worth putting members or their families in danger anymore.”

  “In danger from whom?”

  “Rival clubs. Old enemies. And my guess is one of those enemies is Amina’s murderer.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Bryce

  The urge to pinch myself was overwhelming. Part of my brain was sure I’d fallen asleep on the rock-hard cot in the jail cell and this was all a dream. I couldn’t believe I was standing across from Dash in his high school’s empty parking lot as the sun faded from yellow to tangerine in the distance. The cool Montana evening breeze blew a strand of hair across Dash’s forehead. The green treetops that bordered the school rustled in the distance.

  It was almost too serene. It was nearly too pretty to be real. But if this was a dream, I wasn’t ready to wake up.

  Hungry for more, I stood still, watching as he sat propped against his motorcycle and told me about his former club.

  This might all be a lie and another betrayal. While I was still livid at Dash for the past twenty-four hours, I wanted the story badly enough to listen and pretend that, as his eyes brightened, it was from honesty.

  God, I was stupid. But did I leave? No. True or false, I licked up every one of his words. Questions popped into my head faster than a string of exploding Black Cat fireworks.

  “So you think one of your club’s former enemies killed Amina?”

  He nodded. “They’re the most likely. Someone is looking to take revenge against Dad. They waited until we let down our guard. Got comfortable. Took a chance to set him up for murder.”

  “Who?”

  “Probably another club.”

  “But there is no such thing as the Tin Gypsies anymore. Unless that’s a lie.”

  “No, the club is over.”

  “Then without a club, you aren’t a threat anymore.”

  He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Vengeance doesn’t care if we’re wearing patches or not. Someone wants it bad enough, they’ll wait.”

  This was true. When revenge consumed people, it was amazing the incredible patience they could summon. If Draven was being set up, the person responsible was smart. They’d waited, like Dash assumed, until the Slaters were unprepared to face a threat.

  “So you suspect it was another
club. Which one?” I’d caught some names in my research. There were a surprising number of motorcycle gangs, or members at least, who were in Montana.

  “Our biggest rivalry in recent years was with the Arrowhead Warriors. They weren’t as big as us but their president was and still is ambitious. Not afraid to pull a trigger. For a while, he made it a habit to go after our prospects, promising them money and power. He’d manipulate the weaker ones. He convinced younger guys to join his club instead of ours.”

  “You probably didn’t want them anyway.”

  He chuckled. “No skin off our nose to lose guys who weren’t loyal.”

  “What else?”

  “The Warriors ran their own drug routes but we had relationships with the bigger dealers. They did whatever they could to ambush us, hoping the dealers would see us as weak and change business partners. We’d retaliate. They would too. By the end, it was hard to know exactly what one thing had started it all.”

  The hair on the back of my neck stood up. “Do I want to know what retaliation means?”

  “No.” The hint of malice in his voice made me shiver. “But the turning point was when they went after my sister-in-law.”

  “What?” I gasped. “Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine. They tried to kidnap her but we got lucky. Local law enforcement stopped it before things turned bad. But it was a line they never should have crossed. Members were fair game. They knew the risks from day one. So did their wives and girlfriends. When shit got bad, we’d lock everyone down. But Nick, my brother, has never been in the club. Emmeline should never have been in danger.”

  It was interesting how these men, these criminals, lived by a code. They had boundaries. Though I guess since Emmeline had been threatened, those boundaries weren’t exactly solid. Would this attempted kidnapping have hit the news? I made a mental note to check the archives when I went to work tomorrow.

  Dash’s eyes lowered to the asphalt. “Dad was the president then. Something about Emmeline’s kidnapping flipped a switch in him. I think because he saw how much Nick loved her. He didn’t want to cost his son his wife. Not after he’d already cost us our mother.”

  “Your mom?” My heart stopped. In all the news articles I’d read about the club, Draven and Dash, only a few had mentioned Dash’s mother. According to the stories, she’d been killed in a tragic accident at home. There had been no mention of the club’s involvement or the details around her death. “How?”

  Dash gave me a sad smile. “That’s a story for another day.”

  “Okay.” I wouldn’t push this one. Not now when it would clearly bring him pain. Or when it would risk the conversation ending.

  “Timing was everything,” Dash said. “Dad approached the club after Emmeline’s threat and asked all of us if we’d consider getting out of the drug business. The year before, every person at the table would have said fuck no. But border patrol had tightened. A handful of guys had been busted and were either serving time or had just gotten out. And at the same time Emmeline was kidnapped, one of our oldest members, Emmett’s dad, was murdered.”

  I tensed. “Murdered? By who?”

  “The Warriors. We’d been fighting for over ten years. This wasn’t the first death, on our side or theirs. But it was the final straw. They came to The Betsy where we were drinking a beer, watching some playoff game. Stone, that was his name, got up to take a piss. A couple of Warriors were waiting. Hauled him outside and before any of us even knew he was gone, they shoved him on his knees and put a bullet between his eyes.”

  I flinched, the mental image impossible to ignore. And, my God, poor Emmett. My stomach twisted into a tight knot. Did I want to know more? I knew this violence Dash spoke of wasn’t confined to only the Arrowhead Warriors. I was sure it extended to the Gypsies as well—and Dash.

  Was he a killer too? I definitely didn’t want the answer to that one.

  “Stone had been with the club since the beginning.” Dash spoke to the ground but there was sorrow in his gaze. “He and Dad both joined about the same time. He was like an uncle. Stone helped me fix up my first bike. Gave me condoms when I turned fourteen and told me to always keep one in my pocket. Neal Stone. He hated his first name. He was balder than a baby’s ass so he grew out a big white beard to compensate, then braided the damn thing.” Dash shook with a silent laugh. “Shit, I miss that guy. Emmett went off the deep end for a while. It wasn’t good. But he came back to the club. Made peace with it, or tried to at least.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too.” Dash blinked a few times before he looked at me again. “Anyway. Timing was on Dad’s side. Enough fucked-up things were happening to our members, our families, that we all hit pause. Saw the writing on the wall. It was time to change.”

  “You disbanded.”

  “Not right away, but we got the wheels moving in that direction. The first thing we did was come to an agreement with the Warriors. Their president knew they’d crossed a line. He knew if family was fair game, they’d risk losing some of their loved ones. So we agreed to a truce.”

  “You and your truces,” I muttered.

  He chuckled, the corner of his mouth turning up. “We sold them our drug routes. Made sure our dealers were good with it and wouldn’t retaliate. Got out of drugs all together.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Yep. I smile every time I spend that money.”

  And I was guessing there was a lot of it. Probably stacks of cash he’d hidden under his mattress or buried in his backyard.

  “After that, we unraveled the rest of the illegal activities too,” he said. “The fights. The payouts from businesses in town. All of it. Just wasn’t worth the risk we’d end up in jail. Wound it all down in about six years.”

  “And then you disbanded.”

  He nodded. “Then we called it quits. We could have stayed a legal club but too much had changed. And the Gypsies would always have a reputation. No matter what we did, people would have been afraid. Expected the worst.”

  It made sense. Though I couldn’t imagine how hard it had been to say goodbye to something that had been his life. The club had been ingrained in every aspect of his world, his career. His family. It must have been like cutting off a limb, but he’d done it.

  They all had.

  We stood across from one another, the only sound coming from the breeze and a few birds flying overhead. I processed everything he’d told me, hoping it was true.

  It seemed true. Was it? Had he trusted me with his story? It was hard not to be moved with his gesture of faith.

  My gut was telling me Dash hadn’t lied. And for now, that was good enough, especially because nearly everything had been off the record. I could see it now, why he’d want to keep his secrets. If all this got out, it would ruin the reputations they’d been trying to repair. It could mean a deeper investigation from the police.

  “Hold on.” My head cocked to the side. “If you came to a truce, why would the Warriors set up Draven for Amina’s murder?”

  “Good question. Could be one of their members is acting without permission of the president. Could be one of our old members who joined the Warriors.”

  Wait, what? “You had members who left the Gypsies and joined the Warriors even after they killed your”—what did they call each other?—“brothers?”

  He scoffed. “Yeah. The life of an honest, hardworking mechanic isn’t for everyone. These guys were all in their early twenties. Drawn to the club life. It wasn’t that big a surprise.”

  “You think a former member is framing Draven?”

  “At this point, anything is possible. But there are five men who went to the Warriors. Right now, they’re my top suspects.”

  If I were in his position, I’d be wary of them too. I wanted their names, but I doubted Dash would give them to me. I had a feeling I wouldn’t get invited to a club-to-club meeting.

  The silence returned, the birds having found a tree in the distance to land and sing. The inf
ormation rolled over and over in my mind but I was out of questions for the moment.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “Now?” He stood from the bike and walked closer. “Now you make a decision. You take all this and decide how deep you want to go. You believe me or you don’t. You trust me or you don’t. You keep it quiet or you don’t. But now you know what kind of men you’re dealing with. Ones who hold grudges for years. Ones who have no boundaries. Ones who aren’t afraid to come after a woman just because she’s fucking a man with the last name Slater.”

  “Fucked. Singular. Past tense.”

  Dash stepped closer, the heat from his body chasing away the chill from the breeze. Goose bumps broke out on my forearms and I clutched them tight around my waist.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Past tense?”

  “You got me arrested. I have to go to court tomorrow. Definitely past tense.”

  “Hmm.” He brought a hand up to my face but didn’t touch my cheek. Instead, he took the end of an errant lock of hair and tucked it behind my ear. His fingers skimmed the shell, but the slight brush was enough to send shivers all the way to my toes.

  I was pathetic. I’d spent hours in a jail cell, yet here I was, panting over him again.

  “Is that why you told me all of this?” I asked. “So I’d fuck you again?”

  Dash shook his head, taking a step back. “You want the truth?”

  “You know I do.”

  “Then help me. Help me find it.”

  Was I really going to do this? Was I going to trust him? There was no doubt if we worked together, whatever story I told would be better. Deeper. Fuller. And damn it, we both knew how badly I wanted that story.

  “If you hide something from me, something that makes a difference or puts me in danger, I’ll print it,” I warned. “All of it. Whether or not it’s on the record. Whether or not it ruins your life and those of your friends, I’ll tell the world.”

  It could cost me my newspaper. I would have to violate my journalistic ethics and no source would likely trust me again. And it might even cost me my life if this former motorcycle club decided to retaliate. I was putting myself, my integrity and my job on the line. But it was the only leverage I had over Dash.