Page 12 of Blue-Eyed Jacks (Destroyers MC: Skilletsville PA #1)

I hit the Finger Lakes region at midnight.

The cabin at about three in the morning.

The dealer I’d dubbed “James Metfield” answered the door with a gun in his hand.

He should have used it. But when he saw it was me, his shoulders relaxed, and he let the thirty-eight drop to his side.

“It’s you. What the fuck, man? I thought you said Thursday. ”

“I got delayed.”

“I bet you found some hot chick and was banging the shit out of her, right?” He laughed and jabbed me in the arm with his elbow.

The truth could set you free, right? “She was smoking hot. I think I’m in love.” It felt wrong to think of Kate right now. Already, I’d forgotten the smell of her hair.

James, not his real name, led me into the fishing cabin.

What was it with me and properties that looked like shit?

At least I didn’t own this one. And the rental was under a fake name, and a face behind it that wasn’t mine.

Maybe someday in the distant future someone would connect his face to this place, but that was part of the plan. “You ready?”

“Fuck man, when you said pretend you’re me, I didn’t expect to like it so much. I could fish my life away.”

What an unexpectedly convenient thing to say. “Did you do any night fishing?”

“Night fishing?” He shot me a look that clearly thought I was crazy.

“Yeah, about a half hour before dawn, the really big boys bite.” I wasn’t lying.

“No shit?” He was drunk. Evidence of his latest binge littered all over the cabin.

Beer bottles on every flat surface. A bottle of whisky sat on the counter, almost gone.

Missing lines of coke were outlined in the residue on the mirror that lay flat on the table.

The little TV in the corner blared porn.

There were black panties on the easy chair. I picked them up and let them dangle from my finger. “You had guests?”

“Don’t get mad at me. I went to the local strip bar. I picked up this chick. You’d do the same if you’d have seen her tits. She never even asked my name. Tits, man.”

“How big?” I wasn’t interested; I was just biding time.

He mimed the size.

I nodded with appreciation. “Big.”

James snapped his fingers. “Speaking of big, let’s do that. Biggest I caught all week was maybe a ten-inch trout.”

“Fuck, man, that’s smaller than my dick.”

“Bullshit. You’re such a liar, Jackson.”

“Yeah, that’s me. Come on.” I swept up the poles and led him to the boat tied to the dock. While he busied himself with getting it loaded with a fresh case of beer and a cooler of ice, I went to the rental car. I pulled out a duffle from the trunk. The one I’d put in there over a week ago.

I set it under the seat of the boat and helped James push off from the dock.

“We forgot the running lights.”

I scoffed. “This hour of the morning, no one’s going to care.

Besides, we’ll keep to the shallows, go over there to that point.

” I knew this lake. It wasn’t shallow there at all.

Locals sometimes used the cliffs to dive from.

But dumb James didn’t know that. I rowed for a spell, pausing in open water, just past the point where the weedy shoreline dipped drastically from about twenty feet to over seventy. “Fuck. Rowing sucks.”

“You’re the one who didn’t want to use the trolling motor.” James’s laugh echoed in the night.

It pissed me off. “Grab me a beer.”

He had to turn around to reach it. The little boat rocked with the motion. I mirrored the momentum with my body, becoming one with the boat.

“Hey, stop rocking. You’re going to tip us over.” He braced on the gunwales, turning fish belly pale.

I let the boat settle. “Switch places with me. I’m tired of rowing.”

“Fuck you.”

He forgot who he was talking to.

“Switch places.” It wasn’t a request. And I made certain he heard it wasn’t.

“Just use the motor.”

“You owe,” I reminded him.

His mouth worked. “You said the debt would be paid if I just hung out here and used that credit card you gave me. I showed my face around the town like you asked.”

“That was my debt. Now let’s talk about the one you have with Nonno.”

He glanced around, realizing maybe for the first time how isolated we were, and how far out we’d drifted. “You sure you want to do this?”

He was funny. “It ain’t like that . We’re just talking. And fishing. Hand me a beer.”

Warily, he shifted positions again.

No sooner than his back was turned, I struck hard. The boat rocked but didn’t tip nearly far enough to dump us in. Which gave me time to cut off his life jacket and tie his leg to the duffle bag I’d put under the seat.

To drown a man, you needed two things. First and foremost was the will to kill. Second, a moonless night, a lake deep enough, and enough weight to sink the body. Oh, and a knife to open up the gut so gases in the stomach didn’t build up and push the body back to the surface.

If the water was deep and cold enough, at a certain point, the corpse would sink and never resurface. The density of the water overcame the buoyancy of the corpse. But most freshwater lakes simply didn’t have that perfect combination. This one did.

I shoved poor James’s body over the edge.

He was likely still alive, but knocked out so hard, filleting his body didn’t even produce a scream.

I turned on the little trolling motor and pulled back up to the dock.

Blood coated the bottom of the boat, the cooler, the fishing poles, and my hands.

I rinsed them off in the water and cracked the drain plug.

Then, I rigged the trolling motor to drive straight toward the center of the lake.

It veered after a few feet, barely making it to open water before the whole thing swamped.

The tiny electric motor sparked out with barely a sputter.

In less than a thought, there was nothing.

Not even a wake or the lapping of waves.

The night had hit that sweet spot where the world held its breath as it waited for the dawn to get its ass in gear.

An early bird cheeped twice. Soon, a bullfrog echoed it.

Then another cheep from the treeline signaled the world was about to rev into gear.

I showered in the cabin, cleaned the drain with the supplies under the cabin sink, and drove away from the dawn breaking over the horizon.

I hit a motel in Buffalo at eight. Slept for a good nine hours and then ate a hearty dinner at a local place where the waitresses dressed in skimpy little skirts and the owners were assholes like me.

Nonno joined me as I sipped a whiskey and admired the night’s opening act.

“You’re late.”

“He ran.”

Nonno frowned. “I thought you said you could take care of it.”

“I did.” I dug out one of those cheap digital cameras and showed Nonno the photo I’d snapped of the dearly departed “James Metfield,” otherwise known on the street as “Tercel Timmy.” He was a two-bit coke dealer with a bald patch and a big ass mouth.

He’d flipped a dime on more than one dealer in his career and was rumored to have turned State’s evidence on the local Destroyers.

Of course, he claimed those stories weren’t true, and swore he’d make amends, but that didn’t matter anymore.

Because he was fish food.

“Huh. Better get rid of that.”

No shit . I tucked the device back into my pocket.

“Back in the day, your father was a good man.”

I sent Nonno a side-eye. My father taught me every bad thing I knew, including how to make bodies disappear. “Yeah?”

His eyes traced the movements of the stripper on stage. “He never fucked around or missed a deadline.”

“I didn’t miss it.”

“Shock says his wife is missing.”

I snorted. “Which wife?” He’d replaced Kate almost as soon as she disappeared for the first time. Rumor had it the current squeeze was a hot little Puerto Rican chick.

Nonno slanted his gaze at me. “ The wife.”

I screwed up my face, hoping it looked like confusion. “Didn’t that one go missing like… two years ago?”

His gaze lingered on me too long.

I held my hands up to nudge him into an answer. “Well?”

“She resurfaced. Jersey, he says. He’s looking eastward to see how she slipped his net.”

A little huff came out. Whether it was the right thing or not, I couldn’t help it. “East, huh? He stopped by Skilletsville with that girl once. That’s the night his wife puked on his shoes.” I danced around Nonno’s unspoken accusation. “She was a sack of trouble.”

He squinted at me. “If I recall, you like trouble.”

I tsked. “Not like that. I like good trouble, not bad.” I pointed to the stripper, who was upside down on the pole. “That’s good trouble.”

It was a brilliant distraction and broke Nonno’s hard stare. “She’s available.”

My heart skipped. But I plastered a shit-eating grin on, anyway. “Really? How much?”

I licked my lips, hoping he’d name an outrageous amount, so I’d have to beg off. I’d done this job as a “favor” to Nonno, which meant I had to be strapped for cash.

“Consider it a perk of a job well done, even if it took longer than expected.” He slapped my back and motioned the girl over.

She made the mistake of looking around the audience rather than coming directly after being called, and Nonno turned his angry glare toward her. She faked a grin and shimmied her ass off-stage to swagger over to the private table.

I wiped any traces of food from the scruff on my face and smiled, acting as if she was a rare treat.

Because, face it, she was. Nonno liked cash.

He hated giving stuff away for free. Even getting road money to off a narc for him was like pulling teeth.

But it was a good thing I’d been watching the nearby chapters for holes to exploit.

Because when Kate asked for help, it took just a few days to arrange a hit, figure out an escape plan, and trick Nonno into letting me take the job. “That’s a pretty bonus. But…”

His sharp glance skewered me.

Think fast . “…I was hoping for a promotion, not pussy. No offense, baby, but I can get gash any time I want. Maybe not as fine as yours, but…” I grinned at her with one eyebrow tipping an appreciative nod of approval her way.

I let my eyes linger on her crotch for long enough that Nonno’s death glare fizzled.

“You keep doing good work, I’ll think about it. Meanwhile, take what you’re given.” His hand landed heavily on my shoulder as he used it to stand up. Before he let go of me, he leaned over, squeezing hard, and whispered in my ear, “And stay away from what is not .”

Aha . That deserved a true One-Eyed Jack sneer. The kind that started fights and make the guilty damn uncomfortable. “Nonno?”

He turned, his attention piqued, and his hand curled into a fist. “Yeah?”

“I’m One-Eyed Jack’s son. I’ll take anything that’s not nailed down.” I held his eyes and let some of the violence I’d grown up with shine through. “Including roles you need outside help with.” I licked my lips again, showing him I was hungry for power. Maybe too hungry.

Then again, I had to convince Nonno that we were talking about two different things here. On my side of the conversation, it went like this. “I want to be president of my own chapter. And I will kill anyone and anything that stands in the way of that. You’ll reward me for being your dog. Got it?”

On Nonno’s side, he was silently warning me not to make waves. To play the good biker brother and keep the peace internally. What that told me was that he was a scared man. One who was almost as hungry as I was but also one who had to be much more cautious. He wasn’t the top dog yet.

I sent him a nod to tell him that I heard his fear loud and clear, but also that I could be counted on to do the hard thing when it mattered, maybe even help him become top dog.

Because he was a coward with a lot to lose.

I wasn’t. I was a dead man with a lot of life to pack in the span between now and a knife to the back, and I wasn’t going to let anyone cow me into submission when there was too much I desired.

“Don’t forget that.” And don’t forget me.

“Take what you’re given. Faye? Make sure he takes.”

Damn. Maybe Nonno wasn’t as cautious as I thought.

Or maybe I’d betrayed myself somewhere in that exchange.

I didn’t think I had, but any slip now would put the cross hairs on me.

Somehow, Nonno knew I had secrets. And one of them was Kate.

I’d have to do a better job of acting to prove she meant nothing to me and that Shock was delusional.

Nonno had done me a favor by walking away. He’d given me just the alibi I needed to prove Shock wrong about me. I’d do whatever it took to show the world that women meant nothing to me. That the rumors Shock was spreading were baseless.

“So, Faye, is it? How fine is that pussy of yours? Care to show me?”