Page 92 of Not So Goode
Lexie didn’t grin back. “You’re Myles North. There is no rotation.” Her gaze was heated in a way that made me deeply uncomfortable—it was too personal, too private. “You’re not sharing me as long as I’m not sharing you.”
Myles was equally intense. “You seen any groupies lately, Lexie?”
“No.”
“Then there you go.”
“ANYWAY,” Crow groused. “On with it. Enough of the sex eyes.”
Myles grabbed the bottle of whisky. Swigged. “It was three in the morning at this honky tonk in, like, McShitsville, Texas. Middle of nowhere. Not even a fuckin’ cow for ten miles. How the place stayed open, I could never figure out, but you guys loved that bar.”
“It was a front, dumbass,” Crow muttered. “We moved product through the back. I was there as an enforcer. Boots handled the product, Yank was the money man.”
“What product?” Myles asked, looking genuinely surprised.
“Dope. Coke mainly. Small amounts of meth, some acid, and lots and lots of pot. We ran some prostitutes through there, too.” He glanced at me, and then Lexie. “We only worked with women who’d chosen to be there. We weren’t slavers, and we took down any rivals who did deal in any women who were underage or there unwillingly.” A shrug. “That was Tran’s rule. His ma had been kidnapped by traffickers, of which he was a product, back in Manila. So he had a real hard-on for making sure the girls were there of their own choice, and over eighteen.”
“How decent of him,” Lexie droned, her voice sarcastic.
Crow just shrugged. “I didn’t like that end of it, personally, but I was just a kid. I did what I was told. It’s how shit works, babe, whether you like it or not.”
Myles rolled a hand. “So, to continue. That bar, which I now understand, was a business front. It was just a club for guys and their women, and a few regulars I don’t think were affiliated with the club. Some hard-looking dudes rolled in, unexpectedly. A rival gang, maybe?”
Crow nodded. “The Scorpions. A small-time local club hoping to seize some territory and influence by pulling one over on us. They’d been warned not to fuck with us, but they didn’t listen.”
“There was, what, ten, twelve of them that night?”
“At least, that’s how many had come inside. There were more of them outside. Inside, it was just me, Boots, Yank, and Tommy, the guy who ran the bar. He wasn’t a patched member, but he was loyal to the club, since we made sure he got a nice fat cut of the profits. So there were, like, four of us, and twenty of them.”
“With innocent women around,” Myles added. His expression darkened. “I wasn’t there when the shit went down since Jess and I had left to…um, you know…but as I understand it they walked in, spread out, and started shooting.”
“Jesus,” Lexie breathed.
I couldn’t speak.
“Thing about the AzTex is, we didn’t do guns if we could help it. You start shooting, shit gets real fuckin’ complicated real fuckin’ fast. We preferred to deal with shit the old-fashioned way—fists and feet, bats and chains, knives, knuckle dusters, saps. Keeps things civilized, Dad used to say.”
“A knife or a bat is more civilized than a gun?” I asked. “How is that?”
Crow didn’t look at me. Kept his eyes on his guitar, and his fingers flew on the strings, playing a complicated series of pinging tones. “Anyone can pop off a shot. Takes no guts, no balls, no skill. Literally, a kid can do it. Takes dedication and a big sac to walk up to someone and slug ‘em till they don’t get up. You gotta be real about what you’re doing. Keeps a motherfucker honest, feeling their face under your fist.”
I shuddered at the ice in his voice, and in his eyes. “I see,” I whispered. “Do you carry a gun?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Mom and Dad were shot. That turned me off guns for life. I’ve never so much as held a gun in my life, and I never will. Made that vow the day I saw Mom and Dad’s bodies in that morgue.”
I blinked hard. “You saw their bodies?”
He nodded. “I was the only next of kin—I just had them and Uncle Snake, since River Dog and Mammy were off-grid. I had to ID ’em.”
“God, I’m so sorry,” I murmured.
His eyes finally met mine. He heard the genuine sorrow in my voice, the compassion. “Yeah.”
“Well, Boots and Yank didn’t have your compunction about guns,” Myles said. “They returned fire, and they didn’t miss. Not the way the other guys did.”
“Fuckin Scorpion assholes thought it would be like a movie,” Crow growled. “Thought they could roll in with cheap Uzis and spray the room like they’re fuckin’ Rambo or some shit. Don’t work that way. Couldn’t hit the broad side of a goddamn barn.”
“Well, they missed. Boots and Yank didn’t. Took about sixty seconds for Boots and Yank to drop all of those fuckers.” A long, long silence. “When I say they missed, I mean they missed Crow, Boots, Yank, and Tommy. They hit Tania.”