Chapter 3 – Zeb
Chapter Three
Zeb
Deacon has me lure them out, but I don’t see what good it will do.
Wyatt won’t let them get shot, even if I have all the proof I need that they’re responsible for the drugging situation.
Listen, they claim to have good reasons for it and I didn’t ask too many questions aside from if I was getting paid and how much I was getting paid.
For all I knew, this directive came from a higher-up. Deacon comes strolling into my room, unlocking my door with his key like a crazy entitled motherfucker. If I had my gun on me…
“Get up, they’re all getting to the casino within the hour. I need hands.”
He means scary motherfuckers who can stop this situation from turning into a gunfight. We can’t bring any of this to Wyatt until we get answers, but if we all turn and kill each other while he isn’t looking, I can’t say whether it will be better to be dead or alive after that.
Deacon is a harsh boss. I groan and get out of bed, assuring him that I’ll be ready within the next thirty minutes or so. He tells me to hurry my ass up and follows up with a few more choice words. The whole thing is fucked.
I’ve been stacking my money aside to move out to Boston or Buffalo on the East Coast once all our jobs here are done and I don’t have to keep running back and forth for Wyatt.
Frankly, I haven’t decided which. For a while I was seeing this girl who wanted to take us over to Pittsburgh.
She went. With her drug dealer. Ghosted me and I never saw her again.
God never makes mistakes – I can’t stand the thought of a meth head dragging me down.
I saw the addictions take my mother, father, and a whole bunch of other folks associated with the Blackwoods.
It’s either meth or the military with us – not a whole lot of in between.
Luckily for me, I did well in the military.
It lets me conduct my covert operations a lot more easily when you understand how civilians think and how to avoid detection.
Whatever. I workout. Pray. Take a shower.
Pray again. I consider praying again to dispel the disturbing thoughts in my head, but I should have work soon to make it easier for me to stay away from the darkness.
Exposing the truth to Magnum will be… interesting.
I never took him for mentally stable and the Sinclair men need about a fifth of whiskey a day to stay level.
I grab our prisoners who we are pretending aren’t prisoners from the apartment Deacon put them up at. The redhead looks up at me with her raccoon eyeliner around those eerie blue eyes.
“I can’t be in trouble,” she says. “I was supporting my husband and doing what was right to keep my family together.”
“None of my business.”
“If it’s none of your business, you would be doing the bullshit with Deacon to take away our freedoms.”
Her husband speaks in a low voice, “Baby, that’s enough…”
“Come along with me. I’ll drive you out to Deacon’s casino.”
“I’m pregnant,” the red-head says with a typical entitled snarl on her face. “And by the way, does my brother know what the hell you’re up to out here?”
I think she’s lying, but I don’t bother exposing Tylee’s manipulation for what it is. I have it on pretty good authority that she drinks and does drugs far too much to be pregnant right now. I raise an eyebrow, but I don’t answer. Her husband shakes his head with disappointment.
Definitely a lie. Maybe they’re trying again and she’s just hoping.
I heard Tylee use that excuse before. I still don’t answer her, ‘cause I’m not getting paid to answer, so it makes no difference to me as long as it makes no difference to her.
Her husband puts his hand on her lower back and offers me a sympathetic look.
“We’ll do whatever Magnum wants to make this right,” her husband says. I grunt and nod because frankly, I don’t care what they do. Deacon didn’t pay me to worry about all of that and I’m just here to get my money so I can fuck off to the East Coast.
I heard Buffalo and Boston have equally terrible winters, but I can always spend the winter time in the southwest and make my way up the East Coast earning money along Route 66 until I hit Chicago.
Then I’ll gun it back to Buffalo (or Boston, wherever I end up) and settle in with booze and bad bitches until the season changes again.
Now that I’m almost twenty-two years old, I want to settle down and get some space from the club during the year. I’m ready to retire and focus on my own hobbies and interests aside from fixing bikes, which I’m pretty good at, I’ll be honest.
Magnum’s ride sits outside the casino parked next to Deacon’s when we get there. The red-head gets nervous. She looks over at her husband like there’s something he can do to save her ass right now.
“We should call Wyatt,” she whispers.
“We don’t need to call Wyatt,” he grunts. “Trust me.”
The entire situation is a total fucking mess.
All I can think about is getting myself a cigarette and the next place I’ll go when this is all said and done.
Tylee got herself into a fucking mess from what it sounds like.
Isaac and her are over. I have to stop them from getting killed and end up in the hospital after the whole thing.
Once everything blows over, Magnum and Damara leave.
Deacon offers me a drink and I don’t turn him down.
The shit between Isaac and Tylee is exactly why I’ll never get married and I can’t ever imagine being in a position to tattoo my club name on a woman’s ass, or neck, or wherever.
They’re more trouble than they’re worth.
And I wouldn’t know what to say to a woman in the first place.
I’ve been to bed with plenty of them, but they were the ones chasing after me most of the time. Convenient. But I’ve never met a woman who caught my interest for longer than a week or two. They get sick of me pretty quickly too.
Once we sit down and I get my lips wet with a few sips of Hollingsworth house whiskey, Deacon gets straight to the point.
“Are you seeing anybody? Got any business down south?”
“Why?”
“I have some work for you on the East Coast with Ethan. Could be a real chance to prove yourself to Wyatt.”
“Don’t care much about proving myself to Wyatt.”
Deacon laughs. “You’re a shit, you know that?”
“Just being honest.”
“This country is going to the dogs,” Deacon says. “I don’t know how it came to this, but we have a chance to make a fuck ton of money and keep our people safe while it all goes to hell.”
“I thought we had a president who cared in the white house,” I respond knowing full well that Deacon will miss the sarcasm.
The military can make you cynical about the men in charge pretty damn quickly.
They don’t give a crap about us while we serve and they definitely don’t give a crap about us when they’re done using us up.
Deacon finishes the rest of his whiskey glass. “You don’t actually believe that.”
“Tell me about the job.”
Wasn’t I looking to move somewhere that started with a B? Last I heard, Ethan was out in Boston with his wife, Amanda. She works as some type of head shrink or something like that. Pretty lady with a nice chest – no disrespect to either of them.
Deacon gives me a distrustful look but decides that I must be trustworthy enough for the job he has in mind because he goes on ahead with his business proposition.
“Small armed militia groups are popping up everywhere. It’s underground, need to know, but with the National Guard descending on every major city in America, people are scared. They want to exercise their Second Amendment rights.”
“Can’t say they’re wrong for that.”
“No,” Deacon says. “Massachusetts has stricter gun laws than we do. Ethan got us a warehouse out in Randolph, just outside the city where we can stay undetected. I have three trucks with bolt-action precision rifles, pump-action shotguns and a few boxes of double barrels.”
“Anyone caught with that would spend a long time in federal prison.”
“Exactly. That’s why I talked to Wyatt and he thought it was best we send a convoy. Considering everybody who might have done it otherwise has family business and a wife standing in opposition, I told him I would talk to you.”
“Why me?”
“You served our country. You know that what’s going on over there isn’t right. It doesn’t matter if they’re blue-bellied liberals. They have the right to protect themselves and their family.”
“It’s a waste of the army’s time,” I mutter, mostly because I don’t know what to say and I want to consider very deeply what Deacon wants from me.
“How much are we going to net with this?” I say before Deacon can comment on my remark.
“Might be a good source of income for a while depending on how many trips we can pull off without anyone finding out.”
“First round?”
“Your cut will be 5% of what we sell. Plus whatever you make doing extra work for Ethan out there.”
“I don’t have a place. I’ve been staying at Doc’s old cabin out in Missouri.”
“It’s your lucky day, veteran. Wyatt said I could offer you something like a sign-on bonus if you agreed. Fully-furnished one bedroom apartment right in Somerville.”
“Close to the warehouse?”
“No. You need some distance to stay out of trouble. The neighborhood might be a little fancy for you.”
I can handle fancy. I can handle anything as long as I get a break from slinging shit out West. I need a change – and Boston sounds like a good one.