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7

WRAITH

K ing leads the New Jersey Chapter up the trail to the clubhouse. He wields a mighty sword as the hereditary president of the Iron Outlaws at the national level. The title alone garners him respect.

Under him, we’re flourishing and growing all over the country, and it’s a big deal they’ve come to see us.

“Still haven’t levelled that trail up here, I see,” King says once he’s removed his helmet and pushed his dark hair off his face. Dust and dirt cover his jeans after days on the road. “Can still feel the vibration through my bones.”

“We know how to ride it. How to avoid the divots and loose gravel.” Butcher steps up to hug him when he climbs off his bike. “We cowboys aren’t as pampered as you city bikers. Plus, it works as an early-warning system.”

I step forward and meet my counterpart, Spark. The guy was always reserved, but when I reach him, I see a smile and a wedding ring. Gone is the haunted look in his eyes after wrestling with PTSD from his time in Afghanistan. “Heard you got married.” It almost chokes me to say anything. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks.” He grins as he climbs off his bike. “Got a kid now too. Little boy. Hard to get on the bike and leave them both behind, but good for the soul to hit the road.”

There’s a sting when it comes to sharing the joy others have in their families and children. A birth announcement. A home run in little league. A family Christmas card with kids who change and grow every year.

I won’t get to do any of that with Lottie. Everything she was ever going to do on this earth has already been done.

Including destroying my heart.

Doesn’t mean I’m not happy for others. I am. It’s just harder to find the words.

“Fuck’s sake,” Niro says. There’s a little metallic pin of a pink cupcake on his cut, which seems out of character for the guy who single-handedly took out four bikers from a rival club at Sturgis three years ago. “Don’t let him start showing you pictures. We’ll be here all day, and I need a drink.”

Grudge gestures the rest of the group to the clubhouse. “Well, let’s get inside and make that happen.”

Atom throws an arm over Bates, the New Jersey Outlaws’ enforcer. Fucker is as good looking as Catfish is. “How’s the new baby?”

Bates grins. “Brooke is doing great. Had a few hurdles with Avery, my eldest, though.”

“What happened?” Smoke asks.

“Avery packed a bag and ran away from home to live with me,” Niro says. The man looks proud as fucking punch when he speaks.

Not sure I’d let my kid go live with the walking wildcard.

Bates flips him the bird. “She didn’t want to share me with another baby. She figured Uncle Colton didn’t have any kids, so she’d go live with him and Catalina instead.”

Halo nudges both Bates and Niro toward the door. “You two practically raise that kid together anyway. And Cupcake is already back home where she belongs.”

“Cupcake?” Catfish asks.

Niro taps his pin. “Avery’s my niece. She’s gonna start her own women-only MC. So, I gave her a road name.”

“What the fuck?” Butcher says. “We’re encouraging girls to start clubs? Next thing, they’ll be wanting to ride with us.”

Niro’s eyes narrow. “I’m married to one who does ride with us and could land your fucking club on its ass.”

Butcher laughs as King steps between the two of them. “Niro, Butcher didn’t mean Cat any disrespect. Butcher, best if you apologize. We don’t need two days of Niro being any more pissed than he is at having to leave her at home.”

“Didn’t say anything I don’t stand by.” Butcher eyes Niro carefully but knows he has no choice. King is the president of presidents. What he says is law. “But didn’t mean to disrespect your old lady.”

The tension drops from Niro’s shoulders almost as quickly as it rose. “Good, then I won’t need to kill anyone before dinner.”

I chuckle at that, but it’s interesting to see how King seems protective of Niro. The last time they all visited was over two years ago, and I could have sworn King was ready to kill Niro himself.

“No Switch this trip?” Smoke asks.

Vex, the wizard of a tech guy who protects the Outlaws, shakes his head. “Wanted to. But he was badly injured, still recovering. Too far of a ride for now. Kind of envy him, though. He’s fucked off with his wife to someplace hotter and sunnier than this.”

We make our way into the clubhouse, and once everyone has a beer, we head into church.

Butcher gives up his seat at the head of the table to King. The room is crowded, anchored around the large table milled from two giant slabs of solid American black walnut.

It takes a minute for everyone other than King to figure out where they now sit given all the extra chairs. But like positions sit next to like. And Saint and Vex sit next to each other

Clutch has a series of packages in front of him. “We brought this hoping you can sell it along.”

“What is it?” I ask.

“It’s meth,” Clutch says. “Broke it up into smaller packages to spread across the eight of us in case we got pulled over on the way here.”

Smart move. That way if anyone got caught, the amount they were carrying wouldn’t have been as severe.

I would have suggested the same.

“How did you come by it?” Smoke asks.

“From a raid we did the day of King’s wedding,” Niro replies.

Butcher looks to King. “You got married too?”

King lifts up his hand to show a black wedding ring. “Bit that bullet willingly.”

“Fuck me,” Butcher complains. “You don’t need to marry a woman for her to become an old lady.”

“Seeing as she’s my sister, yeah, he did,” Saint says.

Halo looks at Saint. “Love how you’re rewriting history here. You weren’t all that happy about him being with her back then. Seem to recall you threatened to kill him.”

Saint flips the road captain the bird, but everyone else chuckles.

“What do you want for it, King?” Butcher asks.

“A favor.” The man taps the table twice before looking up. “Sometime in the future, we might need you. I don’t want to put an end date on it. Just that if we call, you come.”

“How much is there?” Smoke asks.

“A bit over a kilo,” Vex replies. “About quarter of a million dollars.”

Butcher looks at King. “Why don’t you sell it?”

“We stick to what we know, and it isn’t meth.” King pushes his hair back from his forehead. “We don’t have a pipeline for it.”

Atom leans forward. “That’s a lot of money. Why give it to us?”

Clutch nudges the packages forward. “We had a really good fucking year. Call this sharing the love.”

Butcher nods, and Catfish takes it. “We’ll move it through L.A.”

“Safer than Denver, right now,” Atom says.

“Why’s that?” Halo asks.

“The Russians, possibly Bratva,” I say. “They’re growing. Filling the void in Denver. Disrupting our flow of goods through the airport.”

King rubs his palms together. “What kind of disruption?”

Catfish leans back in his chair. “We have a handler on the inside who manages to get shit out for us, bypassing certain channels, so we’ve been bringing shit in through the Denver airport from Mexico City. Guess we got too lax in our routine. We were collecting the first Saturday every month. The airport is usually rammed and understaffed. Makes it easier for things to be overlooked. They have their own sources at the airport, so they stole our last shipment.”

“Fuckers,” Vex grumbles.

“Lesson learned,” Atom says. “We’ll mix up the routine now, but plan to be at the airport the first Saturday in May to catch them waiting for us.”

King looks to me. “What have you done to get the delivery back?”

“We’ve been trying to gather intelligence on them,” I reply. “Where they organize, property they have in the city, that kind of thing. We don’t know enough about them or how their network functions to know where to start looking for our shit. We left well enough alone before they started encroaching.”

Halo looks to me. “Need to start looking at who’s around your club.”

It’s my job to know. But the last two years, I’ve only been focused on one thing: the men who killed my wife and daughter.

I’m about to speak when Butcher begins. “At my instruction, Wraith has been focused on ridding us of a rival club. But it’s time to look farther afield.”

I appreciate him taking the fall for me, even as guilt eats at me.

“You know, things have been a little tame in Jersey,” Halo says.

Niro runs his hand over his chin. “I like the way you think.”

King looks to Butcher. “With a few extra men, you fancy going looking for some recompense for that shipment?”

“You guys just rode here,” Smoke says.

Spark shrugs. “Meh. We wanted a long ride.”

“It’s only an hour’s ride into Denver.” Grudge looks to Butcher. “We could do it.”

Butcher is more cautious. “Feels like we’re stirring shit with them because we can, not because we have a plan.” He looks down at his watch. “That said, we have five hours before it gets dark.”

“Plenty of time to plan,” Atom says, slapping Halo’s shoulder.

I look to Spark. “I can bring you up to speed on what we know about their setup.”

Niro winces. “Whatever happens, we can’t tell Cat we did this. I promised her there’d be no excitement without her.”

Saint groans. “For fuck’s sake. Do we need a ‘what happens on tour, stays on tour,’ pledge?”

Niro stands. “Yeah. We fucking do.”

“Okay,” Butcher says. “Let’s plan it up. I like the idea of causing a little mayhem.”

“I’ll work with Wraith,” Spark says.

With the meeting dismissed, Spark and I remain in church. “You got a good reason for taking your eye off the ball?” he asks when we’re alone.

I eye him carefully. “Your president might be the national president, but that doesn’t make you the national sergeant at arms.”

Spark folds his arms across his chest. “Don’t know why my question made you think I’m trying to be. Just thought you might want to talk it through.”

I scoff at that. “Talk what through?”

“I know a thing or two about PTSD. And I know how it feels to hold the dead bodies of people you care about.”

I look over at him. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“People talk, Wraith. You’ve called in a bunch of favors from clubs across the country to hunt down those Midtown Rebels you’re chasing. Butcher told King what happened to your family. Can’t imagine how painful it must be to lose your wife and kid. I’d fucking die inside if anything happened to Iris and Archer. I even talk to a therapist to deal with the intrusive thoughts that they might die.”

I don’t want to dismiss the veteran’s experience, but…

“Not talking about it.”

Spark leans back in his chair. “Maybe you don’t need to talk yet. Maybe you just listen. First, protecting the living is more important than avenging the dead. Your president obviously doesn’t want to say that to you because he’s your friend. But it’s your job to know the groups that surround you, who they are, where they are, what their business is. Second, you won’t heal if you don’t talk about?—”

“Don’t need to fucking talk about it. You know shit about me and my life.”

Spark smiles sadly, as if he can see the world and I can’t. Like he knows better. “You’re right. I can only guess. Maybe I would know more”—he leans forward in his seat and nails me with his gaze—“if you fucking talked about it.”

Feels like I walked into that one.

“Fuck you.”

“And third, Butcher may never replace you as sergeant at arms, but King will. We all worry about you. But, if you want to keep your position, you need to figure out how to look forward, brother. Or the past may be all you ever have.”

I’m still thinking about Spark’s words when we arrive in Denver. The main emotion is anger. Not sure I’m ready to dig any deeper than that right now.

It’s dark, but there is no attempt at stealth on our part. You can’t miss the engines and chrome and cuts in procession as we ride in our club formations. Butcher leads the way as King doesn’t know this part of the city like we do.

We pull up at the edge of the neighborhood our last round of intelligence said the Russians were settling into. Tonight, we need to figure out if it’s just a local Russian crime gang or truly is the worldwide Bratva.

Our plan is to separate into four groups and go scour the neighborhood for any information that could tell us who exactly we are dealing with. For kicks, we mix it up. I go with Niro, Bates, Halo, and Smoke. We start with a street that looks prime for protection money. Late night stores that trade in tobacco, weed, alcohol, and rub-and-tug massages.

“Hear you’re handy with a blade,” Bates says as we walk toward the first store.

Smoke throws an arm over my shoulder. “Let’s just say the fish he catches aren’t the only things he guts.”

Bates pulls his cut back a little to reveal two knives on his belt. “I’m more of a stab-rather-than-shoot kind of guy. Today could be fun.”

The owner of the cannabis shop refuses to tell us anything. Neither does the owner of second, third, or fourth store we enter. They all have that same no-eye-contact vibe. They’re lying and we all know it. But we agreed on not hurting innocent people to get intel.

“They know shit,” Niro says. “They just don’t feel safe telling us about it.”

I nod. “At the next place, maybe we take our cuts off.”

Halo and I both shrug out of our cuts and hand them to Niro.

“Why the fuck do I get to carry the leathers?” he asks.

“Because you look most like a coat stand,” Smoke says and Bates laughs.

“Fuck you all,” he replies.

But the gesture doesn’t help. The woman at the massage place practically starts crying when she sees Halo. “We don’t have any more money for you.”

Halo raises his hands. “We’re not here for money. But we do need to know who’s asking you for it.”

She shakes her head and looks away.

I step forward. “We can help you, if you help us. We have the same goal. Getting rid of them.”

She tips her head across the street. “They hang out in the bar over there. Please. Don’t tell them I told you. They smashed up my friend’s hair salon because she refused to pay.”

My phone vibrates, and I see Butcher’s name on the screen. “Get descriptions, Halo,” I say as I step outside to answer the call. “Butcher.”

“You got anything?” he asks.

“Possibly. They’ve got some kind of protection racket going on. A shopkeeper told us the people who run it hang out in a bar across the street from us.”

“On our way.”

“You get something?” Grudge asks when he arrives with King, Spark, Saint, and Catfish. “Because there’s pressure being applied from somewhere, but it’s enough for people to not want to talk.”

I tip my head in the direction of the bar. “Apparently, they hang out in there. There isn’t a discrete way to do this. Suggest we go in, speak to the bartender, and see where his eyes go, seeing he probably won’t answer.”

Energy is contagious. Niro bounces on the balls of his feet. Halo checks his Glock. Atom lights a cigarette and takes a long draw. The rest of the groups join us.

“I’ll talk to the bartender,” Butcher volunteers.

“Halo, Spark,” King says. “The two of you figure out our exits.”

Catfish steps forward. “I can go around back and make sure no one leaves.”

“I’ll go with him,” Saint says.

Once we have a semblance of a plan, we step forward as a group. And honestly, there is no more powerful feeling on the planet than stepping forward with people you know have your back.

It takes approximately seven seconds of being in the bar to know the place is hostile, we’re not welcome, and this is gonna end in a fight.

And it’s not because Niro shouts, “Hey, Russkis,” as we walk through the door, although I’m certain that doesn’t help.

Butcher heads to the bar, and I stand by the door, covering his back. With the music playing, it’s a little hard to hear what’s being said, but there’s immediate discomfort among some of the patrons.

An older couple grabs their coats, and I allow them to leave. Two men, both bald, eye us carefully. One reaches for their phone and seemingly takes a photo, then makes a phone call.

“You’re not welcome here,” a young man to my right says as he slips his hand inside his jacket.

“You reach for that weapon, and I’ll break your fucking hand,” I say.

He simply smiles. “You have no idea who you are messing with.”

“Pretty sure we do.” I tap my patch. “But you know who we are because we aren’t scared to show ourselves.”

And it’s the last thing I say before the fighting starts.