Page 67 of The First Cut

He sighs but takes his seat again. “Yes, Prez.”

“Look, there's a lot of shit swirling around this club and not enough time to deal with it all. First up, I want to know everything you have on Khan and Driller, so I’m not going into church blind tomorrow.”

And for the next hour, that’s what we do, the three of them bringing me up to speed with where they’re at.

“So. We have tentative links between Khan and a few of the girls, but nothing on Driller?”

“For someone who beat his old lady on the regular, he’s surprisingly clean. We found two offshore accounts in Khan’s name, but there's nothing for Driller. And trust me, I’ve looked. I even checked aliases and accounts open in names associated with him, like Lola and Havoc, but nothing. We found a few messages and an odd photo that shows Khan with two of the missing girls, but, again, nothing with the girls and Driller.” Byte fills me in, showing me a photo of Khan here at the clubhouse with two of the missing women in his area. All three of them are laughing.

“It shows they were here but not that he had anything to do with them being taken. According to the local PD, it was just circumstantial evidence.”

“Convictions have been handed out with less evidence,” I remind them. “What about the texts?”

“Again, basic shit. Inviting them to a party or hoping to see them at the next one. Shit like that.”

“Inviting them but without making it look like they were dating. Something like that would bump him up the suspect list.”

“Exactly.”

“So where was Driller when all this shit was going on?”

“Working on the Fargo deal. He spent a lot of time at the Death Serpents MC. He still has friends there now.”

“They’re allies, right?”

Elmo nods.

“But are they allies to the club, or to Driller?”

“They say they haven’t seen him, but I can’t exactly go search the place. My gut says they’d protect him over the club. He’s the one who brokered the deal with them. He’s the one with the ties. That is why Havoc went down for Driller in the first place. They’d only deal with him.”

I scrub my hand down my face. “Tell me about the Fargo deal. I need to know if the deal made will still stand without Driller and Khan in power. And, if not, how it will impact us.”

“Khan’s mother needed a kidney transplant, going back eight years or so now. She was one of the lucky ones. The local communities got together, and everyone got tested. They found a match, and the transplant was a success. The problem was, during the recovery period she lost her job and her insurance. And with already huge medical bills, the monthly bills for anti-rejection drugs, and a whole host of other shit she needed, it was too much. She couldn’t afford the meds and, as a result, stopped taking them.”

“Khan couldn’t pay for them?”

“Khan didn’t know. Mary was a proud woman, and that pride buried her alive.” Byte says.

Ferris takes over. “During this time, back before we cleaned up the club, we were running drugs. But when Death Serpents staked their claim on a piece of land one of them had inherited, it fucked with our ability to use the tunnel system for transporting shit. Death Serpents had gone legal not long after Mary’s transplant. They’d had their own issues, which included their sixteen-year-old princess running off with her far older boyfriend, never to be seen again. She was the reason they went legit. That, and there were a lot of cops around trying to find them, with zero success.

“When Khan switched from distributing street drugs to medical supplies sold at discounted prices, Death Serpents showed interest. But given what happened with the princess, they had trust issues with any man who wasn’t a patched brother. Driller had a tentative relationship with one of them before this, and so he seemed like the logical one to take on the role of liaison. And the rest, as they say, is history.”

I whistle as I take my seat once more. “I can see the idea behind the deal. I like it even, but we’d be idiots to think Driller’s absence won’t have an impact. I’ll arrange a meeting with the president on neutral territory and feel him out, but I think putting all our eggs in one basket is risky. We need other avenues to make money. Especially now. Khan fucked up the protection detail you ran for the locals.”

“Most, if not all of us, have jobs. We might not be rolling in it, but if the Fargo deal falls through, we’ll survive. We just won’t be rich,” Elmo tells me, making me relax.

“Good. It would be a hell of a thing to come on as your captain only to go down with the ship.”

Ferris grins. “We should throw a party. A welcome to the family shindig.”

“Not sure that’s gonna work for Lola.”

“It will give us a chance to put things right. We can’t fix anything if she stays away from us all.”

I rub my hand across my jaw in thought.

“Alright, set it up, and I’ll make sure she’s here.”