Chapter 11 #2
I sit in the back of the room, fingers counting the grain in the table until my nails hurt. Idle time. It’s useless. Everything’s useless without her. But useless isn’t a way to live, and it’s not the way for a man who made promises.
“Tommy,” Red says finally, voice like gravel. “You good to not go in half-cocked?”
“You know me,” I answer. My voice is smaller than I mean it to be. “I don’t half-step. But I’ll listen.”
Tank folds his arms. “This isn’t about whether you’re violent or not. It’s about making sure the fallout doesn’t eat the club. If there’s a tie to another crew that runs deeper than Pamlico,” He motions toward Karma. “Then we need to know before we move.”
Karma’s face doesn’t change. “We got chatter. Boys handling shit are small time, but they came from old money. Times have changed and rather than get real jobs, they invested what they had from some dead great granddaddy into pussy and drugs. Link looked into it, looks like just a street crew, how deep things run with a supplier, maybe someone who launders things through legit fronts, that is where I think our problem lies. Could be a snake with a dozen heads.”
I want to punch something. Preferably a wall, preferably the nearest liar who decides he can put words between me and what I have to do. But anger wants results, and results demand more planning than a fist.
Crunch meets my eyes. He knows I’m going to blow. He’s been the one to catch me before I leap for years. He’s earned the right to. “We’ll do the reconnaissance first. Get the facts. If she’s with kids who don’t play fair, we bring more cover. We bring legal pathways. We bring family.”
“Family?” I scoff, meaning it as a knife. “I’m family. I don’t need a vote.”
“You’ll need your brothers,” Crunch says, and his tone stops me the way a muzzle stops a horse that wants to graze.
“Karma’s right. This looks like more than a street crew.
He’s called in Link and Draven, his cousins.
You know, Tommy Boy, they’re the best at digging up shit on anything.
We do this right. But we don’t go in like clowns with batons swinging. That’s how men die alone.”
I see it then. The picture he’s painting is ugly but true.
If I go in gun hot, and if one guy gets whacked in front of Jami because he thought he was saving her, the aftermath will be an avalanche.
I could get popped. She could get hurt worse.
The club could get a target painted on its back, and the entire Hellions Motorcycle Club could be tangled in my mess.
“No one’s gonna say she’s fair game because she messed up,” I spit. “But you got to understand—if someone says a single word to her while I’m breathing, I will—”
“—kill them,” Red finishes for me.
“—kill them,” I repeat. It’s not a threat. It’s a fact I’m capable of proving.
Tank hums low. “We make a plan that keeps the club intact and her safe. We don’t unnecessarily escalate. We don’t go in with names raised. We thread a needle nice and slow before we sew the whole situation shut.”
It sounds bureaucratic. It sounds like someone’s measuring human lives in ledger columns. But it’s the only way some men survive. You measure the cost. Then you decide if you’re prepared to pay.
“Alright,” Crunch continues taking charge, voice slicing through the talk. “Recon. Get the locations. Name the people. We find out if she’s with an organized crew, a runner, a feeder. Karma, you got your boys, keep them on watch?”
Karma leans forward like a viper preparing to strike.
“This is what I got so far. There’s a front, some run down motel, looks legit on paper.
Supposedly used as a stash point and for moving people.
The street-level boys are puppets. Pull one thread, you pull a whole damn sweater.
The name that keeps popping up isn’t tied to the Pamilco area directly.
Hell, they aren’t even from North Carolina.
It’s an entire organization out of Jersey.
They supply the boys here. Mason is the man running the show here.
Outside of the supply though, ties seem very thin.
He buys from Caputo, but the gangster doesn’t seem to be backing him in any capacity.
But Caputo is serious with deep pockets if these guys are working under him. ”
Every man in the room shifts. The air is heavier now. Names mean danger. Places mean jurisdiction.
“We’ve run transports for Caputo before. They had a change in leadership recently. Find us the head of Caputo family ,” Red orders.
Crunch nods. “We’ll get discreet. We’ll send two guys out in cars that don’t look Hellions.
We’ll watch the sites—empty mill yard, the bar on the corner, any of the places nearby they may show their faces.
We’ll watch traffic, incoming trucks, pick up patterns.
We’ll track female movement. We find Jami and the route they use to push her out. ”
I want to say fuck the discretion. I want to say we don’t watch patterns. We act. We smash patterns. But I’m breathing now with one lung from rage and one from reason.
“Who you sending?” Karma asks. “I’ll loop my cousins in and if they have anyone to help with a perimeter. We’ll need safe houses. Medical. People who can pull a woman without questions. This is a rescue mission. If she’s more than a girl under the weather, we need extraction.”
Crunch names a list of Hellions within riding distance to back us.
The list is long enough to make me sick.
Brothers, prospects, two guys disguised as delivery drivers, a woman with no Hellions ties but with a reputation as someone who can move a person unnoticed.
Names come and go. Plans get drawn on napkins and tabletops.
Tripp’s voice clicks off a schedule, surveillance tonight, recon tomorrow, votes Tuesday, go Friday.
If we need to move sooner, we’ll call an emergency and roll out.
The vote is ugly and short. We’re Hellions.
We are family and always will vote for family.
The room moves from strategy to load-out without asking my permission.
Pistols stay holstered. We don’t draw first. We take numbers.
We get med people ready. We brief Jenni, if we have to, but no more than she needs to hear.
“You brief Jenni?” I ask Crunch, feeling a tug of ownership so strong it makes me growl. Jami would want her sister to know that we are getting her out of this.
Crunch meets my eyes, again steady and hard.
“She’s her sister, Tommy. If things go sideways, we need someone who knows where she’s been.
I’ll make sure her involvement is limited.
We don’t want her walking into a line of fire.
But those two are as close as we are if not closer, she’s not going to stand down.
” He tries to soften it. He can’t. He’s seen the wild in me and knows how fast it eats.
“You don’t get to pick who I let near her,” I snap. “Nobody does.”
“No,” Crunch agrees. “But you also don’t get to run in staggering and get us all killed because you can’t see straight. We do this right, together. That’s the deal.”
I swallow. His words sink like stones. I hate his logic and need the sense of it the same breath.