“Who knew about it?”
Cole shrugged. “Someone could have been following Santos’ men. Decided the two in the bar were a better target than the four in the car.”
“Possibly.”
“You got any other possible scenarios?”
“No, VP. I don’t. Do you?” Mack snapped in an irritated voice.
Cole shook his head. “What’d Temecula have to say?”
“They’ve got two dead brothers and a couple hundred grand in product missing. They’re a little upset,” Mack replied in a sarcastic voice.
“They have any ideas?”
He shook his head, his eyes again meeting Wolf’s.
“I got nothin’ to do with this, Prez. I swear to you.”
Mack nodded. “I know you don’t. I wasn’t questioning you killin’ two brothers, just needed to know what you saw.” Then his eyes moved around the table. “We got two brothers to bury. Dog, make the arrangements for the trip down there. Notify every Chapter. Everybody in the fucking state attends. Mandatory.”
His order broke the five-hundred mile rule, where only Chapters within five-hundred miles were mandatory to attend a funeral, but no one in the room was going to bring that to his attention.
“You got it, boss,” Red Dog nodded solemnly.
****
A month after the club buried two of its brothers, they still had no idea who was to blame. Temecula wanted heads on a platter, and they were growing more and more frustrated that they had none.
The police had no more on the murders than they did.
Tensions between the club and the cartel were at an all-time high, and the club was contemplating pulling back from the drug trade all together. Many feared this was the work of a rival cartel, a Mexican drug war that none of the Chapters wanted to get in the middle of.
The money, always a strong draw, was becoming less and less worth the risk. A pile of money wasn’t worth shit, if you weren’t around to spend it. It didn’t take a genius to figure that out.
It was becoming a long tense period as winter gave way to spring.
****
The man stood off in the distant desert scrub land, a hundred yards out from The Pony. From his position, he had a perfect view of the brothel that stood about fifteen miles east of Reno, just two miles on the other side of the Truckee River from Interstate 80. This late at night it was dark out in that stretch of Nevada desert, except for the lights of The Pony.
A large illuminated sign stood on a pole by the road, marking the entrance into a well-lit gravel parking lot large enough to accommodate a dozen tractor-trailers and four times as many cars. There was a large brick ranch house that looked from the outside like any ordinary house except for the two large modular add-on wings attached to the back. The front of the lot was well lit for customers. The back was shadowy darkness broken up here and there by dim security lighting, half of which were not in working order, which had made his task that much easier.
Taking a drag off his cigarette, he watched as the flames licked up the walls of the building. Thick black smoke bellowed out of the roof as the insulation, drywall and cheap modular units quickly succumbed to the fire he’d set with the powerful accelerant.
He looked down the road back toward the Interstate. Off in the distance, over the slight rise he could make out the sound of the train and the sirens of the fire engine stuck on the other side of the tracks as the midnight freight train came through like it did every Thursday night, like clockwork.
He’d timed the setting of the blaze perfectly. The place would be totally engulfed before they ever pulled up.
A total lost cause.
He chuckled as he dropped his cigarette to the dirt and ground it out with his boot.
****
Crash lay in bed with Shannon cuddled up against him when his cell went off. He reached over and grabbed it off the nightstand, squinting at the time on the readout. 3a.m. Shit. No good news was ever delivered in a middle of the night phone call. But with life in an MC, they unfortunately weren’t all that rare. He put the cell to his ear.
“Yeah.”