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Chapter Thirty-Three

Sawyer

“You motherfucker. You think you’ve won? You turned my father against the club he grew up with. Where I grew up.” The world was exploding around us, but I had Ricky Marlow right where I wanted him—blocked into a corner.

The fight between the clubs had the whole place in pandemonium. It was exactly what I needed to take care of a piece of shit who seemed to take pleasure in ripping my club apart.

I pulled the gun from my jacket pocket and grabbed Ricky Marlow by the shirt, pulling him into my body as I pulled the trigger. One in the gut, and two in the chest. I dropped him and the gun on the ground and pulled off the gloves, swallowing them and chasing it with a beer I found in a cupholder as I slowly walked out of the theater. They didn’t go down easy, but they went down.

A cop in a SWAT uniform stepped in front of me. “You look like you took a few hits. You’re going to jail with the rest of them until we figure this thing out. Don’t make it hard on yourself.” He held out a pair of zip cuffs that I’d seen Fitz put into his pockets in the mornings when he got ready for work and we were together.

There was no reason to fight the arrest. Being in jail was probably the safest place for me.

The blood on my shirt was not my own, and the way fists had been flying, it could have been anyone’s. I’d just have to somehow dump the shirt when we got to jail.

We were divided into groups of five—me with Jim and my brothers, and the Scorpions in the holding cell down the hall. We sat down on the metal benches to wait.

I glanced at my companions, seeing Ders had a T-shirt under his dress shirt. “Gimme that,” I said, plucking at the collar of his T-shirt.

Without a word, he slid off the navy dress shirt and pulled off the T-shirt, handing it to me. I took off my burgundy shirt and slid the T-shirt over my head. I sat there and tore the shirt in half, handing part of it to Ders. “Rip it into strips and let’s flush it.” I showed him the blood spot, and he nodded.

We’d all been frisked already, but none of us had been arrested. Tearing that shirt up and flushing it down the toilet gave us a way to pass the time. What an interesting turn of events.

Hours later, a deputy came back to the large holding cell. “James Middleton.”

I stood and hurried to the cell door as Hobie helped Jim up and over to the door. “What do you want with Mr. Middleton? He shouldn’t be here, anyway. He needs to go to the hospital and get checked out. He’s nearly eighty, man.”

Jim had been hit with a chair during the melee, and his eyes continued to tear from the fucking gas the cops had used to subdue the crowd. I’d been in the casino, not the theater, when it happened, so I got less of it. I felt like shit that Jim had been trapped inside, though I was sure Hobie and the boys had looked out for him.

According to Spider, Jim had been checked out by paramedics on the scene, along with at least a hundred other people. The Old Strip had been lit up like New Year’s Eve from what I saw from the back of a cop car.

“I’m aware. Step back or I’ll cuff you again.” The cop, Officer George Shore, was a rude prick, but I believed he meant what he said, and I didn’t like handcuffs.

I stepped away from the bars and sat next to Ders. Officer Shore opened the door and reached out to take Jim’s arm.

“Be careful with him. He didn’t do anything.” I fucking meant it.

Shores waived me off, but he did offer his arm to Jim, who took it because the fucking cops had taken his mobility cane. They walked away, and I sighed.

“Did you hear anything? Cop chatter or shit over the radio while you were sitting at the curb?”

Spider leaned forward. “Ricky’s dead. Someone shot the stupid fucker. Good riddance.”

“How do you know?” I sat forward with my elbows resting on my thighs so he didn’t see my gleeful expression. The fewer people who knew what I’d done, the less testimony they could give.

“I heard two cops talking about what happened while I was handcuffed and on my belly in the dirty fucking street. We can’t let this shit go unanswered, prez.”

I stared at him. “What? We go to war with the cops?”

Hobie chuckled. “No, bro. This must be the doing of the Scorpions. I’d bet they set this shit up somehow.”

“Well, we’ll be here for a while. I can’t figure out how the Scorpions set up what happened after TJ won the fight, and why would they kill one of their own?” In my head, it sounded like a logical question.

“From what I heard, the cops have no idea who killed Marlow. They have the gun, though, so they’ll figure it out. We have a phone call coming to us, right?”

I sat up and stared at him, smiling as I thought of a comeback. “Yeah, and I happen to know a bondsman.”

We all laughed.

We slept sitting up with our backs against the wall, and bright and early the next morning, the deputy brought around a cart with sack lunches and bottles of water. I opened the bag and took a sniff, gagging at the rancid smell coming out of the bag.

“This place fucking sucks,” Ders said as he tossed half of his bologna sandwich in the trash.

“Dude, never eat the jail food,” Hobie said, having tossed his whole bag into the trash where I’d put mine.

Jim hadn’t been brought back to the cell, and none of the cops had come back to give us our phone call. We were set to go to arraignment in an hour.

“Anybody know a lawyer? We need someone to come to court with us so we don’t say stupid shit if the district attorney makes up bogus charges.” I wasn’t joking. I didn’t trust one of those assholes.

A cute young guy walked back with Officer Shores wearing a suit that was too sloppy to pass as his own. It made me wonder who owned it. “Your baby lawyer is here.”

Shores opened the cell door and motioned for us to follow him down the hall to a conference room where he unlocked the door, letting us inside with the lawyer being last.

Baby Lawyer turned to Shores. “I’m not an attorney, I’m a paralegal for Aileen Combs, Esquire. She’ll meet her clients at the courthouse and wanted me to check on them.” He pointed to the camera in the ceiling. “Turn that off. This is a privileged communication between these clients and their counsel’s representative. If the DA ends up with tapes of this meeting, I’ll have your badge and hang it over my toilet.”

Shores held up his hands as he guffawed before closing the door. I turned to the guy. “Who the fuck are you? Is this some joke?”

The young man grinned. “I’m Harden Sparks. Jesse Sparks is my father, and I’m here to check on you guys. Are you okay?”

I looked at the kid to see he was still wet behind the ears, and I started to laugh. Hobie, Spider, Ders, and Arlo joined me. It made me grin. My family was sitting there with me, and we were supporting each other. And now, the man I loved had sent someone to check on me.

All I needed now was Fitz—and maybe a laxative? Those rubber gloves needed to make an appearance somewhere that they couldn’t be found. A jail cell toilet didn’t seem like a bad idea.

“Harden, can you get me a laxative? I’ve been constipated for a couple of days. My stomach is a mess. Please?”

The kid looked baffled for a moment before he pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Monty, can you get a laxative for Sawyer Abbott? He’s sick. Uh-huh? Oh, okay. Thanks.”

He hung up and pressed the button by the door. When Shores opened the door, Harden stood tall—to all his five feet, four inches. “My client is sick and needs medical attention. A colleague of mine is bringing him medicine unless you want to take him to University Medical Center. If you deny him medical care—”

“Jesus fucking… What’s wrong with him?” It made me happy inside to see Shores was pissed off.

“I’m constipated and it’s making me sick.” Hell, needing to get rid of those gloves made me give two shits less whether I was embarrassed by my admission.

Shores came back with a bag containing a box of laxatives that Monty must have picked up from the bodega up the street. I opened it and swallowed six of the little chocolate squares in front of the cop before sitting on the bench and waiting. I hoped to fuck my ass didn’t turn inside out, but some things were more important than comfort.

“You motherfucker! What the hell did you eat?”

The executive committee of the Pahrump Steel Cowboys were huddled at the far end of the cell with their backs to me as I did the deed in a very big, loud way. It wasn’t a goddamn hotel. It was a cell with a toilet, and I needed it.

“If I could do this anywhere else, I promise you I would.” I took care of things and flushed the toilet as I stood to see the gloves go down the stack. There… another problem solved.

Jim Middleton hadn’t returned to the cell, which was starting to bother me. “I think I’m done, guys. Sorry, but…”

Arlo chuckled. “I’m just glad you didn’t eat at my place. I’m not to blame for whatever is happening in your gut. After we get outta here, I’d rather not see you for a few days, Bones. It’ll take a while for that sound to get out of my head. Anyway, do we have any idea when we’re getting out?”

“Hey, if we’re in here we can’t be blamed for any of that shit that happened because we didn’t do anything at the casino. Do you think that we can still collect on our bet?” Hobie asked. I’d had to give up the ticket along with my wallet when we were brought in.

I hadn’t even thought about how long we’d have to cash in the ticket. “That’s a good question. I’ll have to call someone to see what happened with the betting window. We got our bet in before it closed, so the casino should honor it.”

I sure hoped so. We had a lot riding on that money.

A lady lawyer named Aileen Combs showed up in a really fucking bad mood to represent us during the arraignment, and bail was finally set for each of us. Even though many of us didn’t have records and should have been released on our own recognizance, the judge issued a ten grand price tag per man, including Jim, to be released.

We were charged with inciting a riot and breach of the peace because of the fight at the casino, even though we didn’t start it. The judge was aware that two motorcycle clubs were involved, which was why he set the bail amount so high. I was relieved because I knew it could have been so much worse for us, simply because we were members of the Steel Cowboys.

Deputy Marin came back and stood at the cell door. “You’ve all been bonded out. Back up to the cell door and put your hands through, one at a time.”

I laughed. My gut was still churning from my overdose of laxatives, but what the fuck did the deputy think we were going to do? We were getting out of jail. We weren’t going to start any trouble.

Marin escorted us out of the holding cell and into the hallway leading out to the intake area where I expected to see Sparky or Fitz —but I didn’t expect to see my mother.

“Where’ve you been?” I asked her, my voice was harsher than I wanted it to be.

“Your father sent me to visit my cousin Ruthie in Carson City. What’s going on?”

“Where is Dad?”

Fitz stepped forward. “Take off those cuffs. We posted bail for all of them.”

The deputy went about removing the zip cuffs from all of us, and when he finished, we followed my mother and Fitz out of the detention center like we were following the pied piper.

Tiny and Tim had trucks there to take us back to the clubhouse, but I followed Fitz to his and opened the door to the back seat for my mother. “Get in, Mom.”

She did as I asked, and once I closed the door, I hopped in the front. Hobie got in next to Mom, and Fitz slid in beside me. He turned to me and smirked. “Sugar, you’re a sight for sore eyes.”

I chuckled. “I bet you say that to all the guys you bail out of jail.” The three of us laughed. My mom, not so much.

I turned in my seat to look at her. “Celine, where’s Keller?”

Fitz sighed. “He’s safe, sugar. Calm down.”

We rode out to the clubhouse in Pahrump, Fitz parking in front of The Roundup where the other guys had just arrived. It was great… until my father walked out with a big fucking smile on his face.

I unbuckled my seatbelt to get out and beat the fuck out of him when Fitz grabbed my arm and Mom sat forward. “Calm down. It’s a long story.”

Long story, huh? It better be a good one…