One of the officers waitin’ with Danner choked on his laughter as he swallowed it down.
“Cut the crap,” Danner shouted. “We’re checkin’ hospitals. There was blood found at the scene, so I’m guessing one of yours or the other was hurt badly. When we find the hit biker, we’ll know the truth.”
“You do that, Danner,” I agreed easily because Axe-Man was currently in one of the closed garage bays bein’ seen to by Dr. Ross who’d been on The Fallen payroll for decades. He was losin’ his eyesight, but it was better than nothin’. “Give us a call, you need help with your investigation.”
The fumes of anger between us turned the air waxy with the heat of our hatred. Danner stood there, braced, itchin’ so fiercely for a fight I wondered if he’d break down the gate and come at me.
Finally, he turned and got back into his cruiser.
The other car lingered as Danner drove away, and I realized why when Gibson emerged from the car with Hutchinson, the only two cops left who were even mildly friendly to The Fallen.
For them, I got my ass in gear and went to meet them at the gates. Gibson’s face was contoured with confused misery, but Hutchinson’s was close to panic as he pressed his cheek to the fence.
“Danner’s got a tip on one of your locations,” he hissed. “Apparently, someone called in about a suspected grow-op in the mountains near Squamish.”
Gibson held a hand up before I could say a thing. “I don’t want to know whether or not that place is real or yours or what. I barely wanted to be here to tell you about it…this goes against everything I’ve previously believed in, but fuck, I don’t sanction the way SS Danner is coming after you, and I don’t think you’re all as evil as you might seem. You especially, not if Lion raised you.”
I peered through the shadows at Riley Gibson, seein’ him for the first time maybe ever. His skin was pale and crumpled like used waxed paper, unhealthy and exhausted no doubt from sleepless nights ponderin’ his morality. He was the kind of man, like Lion, whose conscience weight heavy on his soul, and I knew whatever Danner was plannin’ for the club had to be fuckin’ dark to get Gibson on our side.
Nodded curtly and stuck my hands in my pockets as I rocked back on my heels. “Appreciate the call, boys.”
Hutchinson tipped his chin, knowin’ he’d wake up in the mornin’ to a shit ton of grade A weed on his doorstep like a gift from the fuckin’ tooth fairy. Payment for his aid.
But Gibson hesitated, so conflicted I could see the war of it clash in his eyes even in the darkness.
“You gonna be good to handle it?” he questioned quietly, eyes dartin’ over my shoulder to the brothers who waited on the stoop of the clubhouse.
Waited until his gaze locked with mine so he could see straight down through to my soul. “Nothin’ is all black or all white, Gibson. Might’ve hurt you to come give me the knowledge, but you gotta know, this place and these people here aren’t about chaos and murder and wrongness. Yeah, we got our own code, but the cornerstones of that are loyalty and brotherhood. You just helped us out. Means one day, somehow, we’ll repay the debt. Don’t worry about bein’ found in bed with us, either. Not one of us is a nark, least of all me, not to a man like you, not to a friend of Lion’s, yeah?”
The cop let out a shaky breath and then gave me a smirk like a twisted wire, mangled and wrong. “Trying to stop a war, you know?”
My hard chuckle was brutal as the cockin’ of a barrel. “Yeah, man. Though, gotta feelin’ it’ll happen whether we want it to or not.”
King
* * *
There was a time somewhere in the earliest hours of the morning when the night was at its darkest and the stars began to dim where only the wicked and rebels were awake. It was that hour at The Fallen compound, the Chapel full to burstin’ with all twenty-two men of the Entrance Chapter squeezed into the long room, sittin’ in hand-carved chairs with wings at their back or standing against the wood paneled walls. A lone yellow light swayed over the oak slab table, castin’ shadows that obscured the brothers’ faces like masks, lendin’ an eerie, demonic quality to the meeting as if Zeus was Satan leadin’ a meetin’ of hell’s lords.
I dragged in a deep lungful of the tobacco, leather, and pine-scented air, feelin’ the nostalgia of it in my chest.
“We plannin’ on tellin’ those fuckers exactly who stole their loot?” Skell asked, leanin’ forward to make eye contact with Zeus. “They should know what happens to those who cross The Fallen.”