Forty miles later, the bikes pulled up to a brick two-story building that had once been a manufacturing company. In old peeling paint on the side were the words, Amalgamated Machine Works, and below it in smaller script were the words, Machining Since 1885.
They parked at the curb near a garage door in the side of the building.
Knowing the place was locked up like a fortress, Red Dog pulled out his phone and called Crash. “You want to raise the garage door for us?”
“That depends. Did you bring donuts?”
“No, I didn’t bring fucking donuts, asshole. Let me in.”
“Nope. Not without donuts. The good kind.”
“Are you fucking serious right now?”
“Serious as a heart attack, bro.”
Dog pulled his phone away from his face and stared down at it. “He fucking hung up on me.”
“What’s the matter?”
“The motherfucker wants me to bring him donuts.”
That got a snicker from Wolf and a snort from Cole.
“I could go for a donut,” Green remarked, a glazed over look on his face. “The chocolate frosted kind with sprinkles.”
Their gazes all swung to him.
He refocused his eyes on them. “What? I like sprinkles. Sue me.”
Dog whipped out a twenty and shoved it at him. “Run down the street and get a fucking dozen, then get your ass back here pronto.”
“What? Me?”
“Just fucking do it.”
Ten minutes later, only when Dog assured Crash that he had chocolate frosted payment in hand, did the steel door slowly roll up deeming them entry into what the boys lovingly referred to as The Batcave.
Dog eyed the black ’68 Plymouth GTX parked in the ground-floor garage. Mary’s car, the one he’d bought her for her birthday a couple years back. With its 375 horse power big block, 440 cubic inch V-8 engine under the hood, it was a much sought after muscle car and seriously impressive out on the open road. Of course, what Mary loved about it was its sleek lines, shiny 14” rally wheels, and its pretty black paint job.
His son, on the other hand, loved all those things and seriously had his heart set on assuming the keys when he turned sixteen in about fourteen months.
Gazing in the backseat, Dog noticed it was packed full.
Fucking hell.
The men loaded onto the metal freight elevator. Cole slammed the gate shut and threw the lever that had the shaky contraption ascending slowly, the brick wall sliding past them visible through the iron bars. The old thing creaked and groaned as it slowly rose.
Red Dog glanced back to see Green had the donut box open and half of one already eaten, chocolate glaze all over his face. “Seriously?”
“What?” Green asked around a mouthful. “I was hungry.”
Cole barely threw the lever into the stop position before Dog was flinging the gate open with a bang and charging out. The others followed him, stepping into Crash’s loft.
Crash had remodeled the old building into an eclectic industrial loft. The walls were brick; the ceilings were a good thirty feet high with exposed iron beams and skylights staggered between them at intervals. The floor was a polished concrete.
There was a pool table to the left, a light hanging over it, beyond that was an open kitchen with a huge granite island. Funky industrial pendant lights hung over it. Across, off to the right was a large U-shaped sectional sofa, a coffee table and a couple of overstuffed chairs grouped around a thick brightly colored area rug that gave the place some color.
Dog moved past the pool table to the granite island where Crash stood sipping on a cup of coffee.