Chapter 22 Cash
CASH
“So I was thinking,” I say, spinning a coaster on the bar while Mercy wipes down glasses, “maybe we should start looking for our own place.”
It’s been a quiet Friday at Devil’s—unusual, but welcome after the week we’ve had. The regulars are scattered around, playing pool or nursing beers. Bones is in his corner booth doing something on his laptop, and Tank’s teaching the new prospect how to properly lose at darts.
“You don’t like the guest apartment?” Mercy teases, refilling my water. I stopped drinking well over an hour ago since I’m her ride home.
“I love the guest apartment. Especially that tub.” I let my eyes wander down her body as I remember how much we’ve both enjoyed that thing, loving the way her cheeks have flushed in response when my eyes return to hers.
“But it’s not ours, you know? I want something that’s just us.
Where you can paint the walls whatever color you want, have a kitchen that’s yours, maybe a yard for—”
“For what?” She leans across the bar, curious.
“I don’t know. A dog? A garden? Whatever you want.” I catch her hand. “I just want to build something with you, angel.”
Her whole face softens. “You’ve been thinking about this a lot.”
“Been thinking about a lot of things.” I stroke my thumb over her knuckles. “Like how I want to wake up to your hair in my face every morning. How I want a closet that smells like your perfume and my leather. Maybe a garage where I can work on bikes and you can come out and distract me.”
“Distract you how?”
“Wearing those little shorts you had on this morning.” I drop my voice. “Bending over to hand me tools you don’t know the names of.”
“I know tool names!”
“Yeah? What’s this called?” I make an obscene gesture with my hands that has nothing to do with actual tools.
“A torque wrench, obviously.” She’s fighting not to laugh.
“That’s not even close to—”
The front door slams open hard enough to rattle bottles. Three cops stride in—not Gabriel this time—but their posture screams confrontation. They lock onto me immediately.
My blood goes cold.
This is every nightmare I’ve ever had since I was a kid.
Cops coming for me. Taking me somewhere unknown.
Hands on guns like I’m already guilty. The spike of fear is the same as it always was, but I’m not that kid anymore.
I have family, people in my corner. So I lock that fear down, bury it deep, and keep my face blank.
“Cameron Hall?” The lead cop uses my legal name, hand by his revolver, letting me know this isn’t a friendly call.
“Who’s asking and why?” I glance at Mercy, see the panic flashing in her eyes. I mouth to her to stay cool.
“Stand up slowly, hands where we can see them.”
I keep my hands on the bar, palms open. “This some kind of joke? What’s the charge?”
“Drugs,” says the one in the middle, big and puffy in his windbreaker even though it’s maybe fifty outside. He’s got sergeant’s stripes on the sleeve, and something in his eyes says this isn’t his first MC bar raid.
Mercy goes rigid. The whole bar does. I feel it in the air, the way every conversation in the place dies fast. The prospect with Tank steps up, but Bones lifts a hand, signaling him to stay back. The room’s a minefield of tension.
“Drugs?” I say it again, louder, for the benefit of everyone in the room. “You’re shitting me, right? You’re pulling this in front of witnesses—”
“Get your hands up, now.” The lead cop cuts me off. “Turn around and face the bar.”
“You see any drugs here?” I ask, but my voice is cold as ice. “I’m clean as a whistle. So either you’re planning to plant something, or this is just the paperwork stage of Summit’s shakedown.”
Mercy’s eyes go wide. Her hand is under the bar, and since I know exactly what’s hiding under there, I shake my head—don’t escalate. She gets the message and steps back, but she’s shaking with anger.
“Stand up. Now.”
Tank steps forward, looming with all the threat of a human brick wall, but I catch his eye and give him a tiny shake of my head. We don’t want to make this easy for them, but we also don’t want to give them what they want—to goad me into doing something they can charge me with for real.
I raise my hands slowly. Then stand.
“Turn around. Hands behind your back.”
“You have to tell him what he’s being arrested for,” Mercy insists, her voice shaking. “You can’t just say ‘drugs’ and that’s it.”
The cop doesn’t even look at her. “We don’t have to tell anyone anything. Turn around, Hall.”
I turn, letting them cuff me. The metal cinches hard around bone, but I don’t react. Can’t give them the satisfaction.
“This is bullshit,” Tank growls, starting forward.
“Stay back,” the second cop warns, hand moving to his gun. “Anyone interferes, they get arrested too.”
“It’s OK,” I tell Tank, keeping my voice steady even though rage is burning through my veins. “Call Stone.”
They start pushing me toward the door, deliberately rough. One of them ‘accidentally’ rams my shoulder into the doorframe.
“Cash!” Mercy starts to follow.
I turn my head, meeting her eyes. “Just call Stone, angel. He’ll know what to do.”
“Shut up,” the cop snaps, shoving me harder.
“Give them nothing, brother,” Bones calls out, and the last thing I see before they push me out the door is Mercy’s terrified face, Bones already pulling out his phone, and Tank looking ready to take on all three cops bare-handed.
They don’t read me my rights. Don’t tell me what the ‘drug’ charges are. Just shove me in the back of the patrol car, making sure my head connects with the door frame on the way in.
The lead cop slides into the front seat, catching my eyes in the rearview mirror. “Your old lady’s husband says hi.”
I let myself smile, a thin slice of violence in the mirror. “Glad to see his tiny dick is still working overtime, even if he isn’t.”
The cop doesn’t take the bait, just throws the car into gear and pulls away from Devil’s with a squeal.
They don’t take me to the local station—I’d know the inside of that shithole in my sleep.
I expect the usual booking and holding cell, but instead we drive out past the city limits, up toward the industrial zone at the edge of Summit’s half-built mini-mall.
Abandoned construction trailers dot the landscape, puddles of rainwater iced over in the moonlight.
The wind’s got a bite even through the glass, and it smells like damp dirt and cold concrete.
And that’s when the real fear kicks in. No rights read means no official arrest. No booking means no record. A message from Gabriel means this is personal, not procedural. No one knows where the fuck I am.
Shit.
I know what cops do to people when there are no cameras. I learned that lesson the hard way when I was a kid. But now I’ve got a hell of a lot more to live for. I’ll be damned if being dragged away by this fucker’s goons is how my story ends.
They park behind a trailer with the Summit logo half-painted over, like someone ran out of patience or paint.
The cop in the windbreaker yanks me out of the backseat.
The other two hang behind for a second, scanning the dark like they’re expecting trouble.
The wind whips around my ears, stinging and cold, but I’m tuned to the heat of adrenaline surging in my veins.
“You want to tell me what this is about?” I say, playing it bored. “Or are we skipping the foreplay and going straight to the part where you pretend I’m resisting and try to break my ribs?”
Windbreaker shoves me once toward the trailer door, then rips off my cuffs.
The instant I’m free, I think about swinging, about taking even one of these pricks with me, but that’s exactly the reaction they’ve been hoping for.
Instead, I plant my hands in my jacket pockets, flex my wrists, and let my voice drip with contempt.
“If you’re planning on planting something in my pockets, can you pick something good?
Heroin, maybe. Or, I don’t know, some imported cocaine? Go big or go home, gentlemen.”
The second cop, the one with a bad bleach job and shit for brains, spits on the ground at my feet. “You think you’re funny, don’t you?”
I look him dead in the eye. “Statistically speaking, yeah. Compared to you three, I’m a fucking riot.”
They hustle me into the trailer, slamming the door behind us. Inside reeks of mildew and something chemical, like bleach or industrial cleaner. There’s an overturned desk, a couple of folding chairs, and a battered coffee urn that looks like it’s older than Duck.
And sitting behind the desk, boots crossed on the tabletop, is Gabriel-fucking-Rogers.
He doesn’t look up. He’s reading some sort of report, or maybe a menu, or the next sadistic fantasy he’s going to try out on me.
I clock his uniform right away, everything pressed flat as a new recruit’s, but the veins at his temple are standing out, a sure sign he’s lost his shit beneath the surface.
He says nothing. Just lets the silence stretch and keeps reading for what feels like a full minute. The three cops stand behind me with their arms crossed, trying to mean mug the back of my skull, but I don’t even turn around. I just stand steady and let my eyes go dead flat.
The silence gives me time to think. To calculate.
Gabriel brought me here instead of arresting me officially.
That means he either wants me dead, or he wants something.
And since he took me in front of so many people, my guess is the latter.
Information probably—about the MC, about our finances, about whatever conspiracy theory Summit’s feeding him.
But more than that, he wants me afraid. Wants me to know he can reach me anytime, anywhere. Wants me to understand that being with Mercy comes with a price.