Page 52 of The Lies We Tell

King turns to face me. “Are you questioning my judgment?”

I look up to the sky as I wonder how best to answer. “Your judgment? No. Your compassion, maybe.”

He shakes his head. “Compassion in this game gets you nowhere. Especially not with women.”

“You talking about Skylar?” I watched him put a bullet into the head of a woman he had feelings for, even if he never admitted them out loud.

“Not going there with you, preacher man.”

“Some women let you down. But the majority are good fucking women. This feels like something we can do. The police at best are going to use due process. They’re going to apply twenty percent of a cop or detective’s time to it. And it will lead nowhere. We have Vex. The guy has dark web superpowers. He could help. We have access to the docks. You want these guys gone, we can do it.”

“Were you always a religious man? Like, from being young, did you want to be an army chaplain?”

“Grew up in a religious home. Army seemed a good way to see the world. Sometimes you’ve got to do what you’ve gotta do, right?”

None of it is a lie. Yet it is. He doesn’t seem to notice I didn’t exactly answer the question or claim to be a chaplain.

“You have the power to do something about this, King. To stop women like your sister, Gwen, from being ripped from their families. You know what this feels like. To not see your sister for over a decade. Don’t make someone else have to go through this.” It’s a shit move on my part to bring Gwen into it, given she reappeared in the summer after a decade missing. “You know something of those feelings of loss.”

King scratches the side of his face, his fingertips rasping along his bristles. “You’re not going to let this drop, are you?”

“Not while there’s a chance you could change your mind.”

He takes a drag on his cigarette. “Fine. If Vex agrees he wants to do it, you can start the recon to understand their organization, what they might be doing, etc. Action requires a club vote. Come to me when you have something worth sharing.”

“You won’t regret this,” I say.

King shrugs. “It causes shit for the club, I’ll kill you before they do.”

And with that he goes inside.

I can’t help the grin. Maybe this is my excuse with the ATF. They aren’t going to like this, but this is the operation I’m here for. Right place at the right time to build a rock-solid case. And if all else fails, I can tell them I’m following my president’s orders. It’s a stretch, but it’ll keep the heat off my back.

Perhaps I’ll chat with Vex now. He’s at the bar with Clutch.

“Vex, you got a sec?”

He lights a cigarette. “Sure thing, preacher man. What’s up?”

“I want to dig deep on the Righteous Brotherhood. Treat it like an op. Reconnaissance. Intel. Where their funding is coming from, who their buyers are. There has to be a way in.”

“Is King in?” he asks.

“All the way. Said to take anything to him that needed a vote.”

Vex nods. “Good enough. Where do you want to start?”

By midnight, we have a plan. And by two in the morning, I’m drunk and in boisterous conversation with Halo, King, Spark, and Clutch. Because, thanks to my current actions and my meeting with Davis, I don’t know how many nights with them I have left.

20

BRIAR

“You stuck there, Briar?”

I glance across the yard to where Hap is standing in a pair of old camp shorts and a T-shirt so faded, I can’t make it out what was once on the front of it.

My hand is on the handle of Saint’s truck, where it’s probably been for the past ten minutes while I debated my life choices. I spent the morning doing what Saint suggested. I wrote everything down about what happened. Every sound, word, feeling, action. I even sketched all their faces and ink. It put me back there, and now I feel emotionally adrift. Untethered.