Chapter 22
22
Diesel
“ W e’re flying blind here,” I tell Knox.
We pull up outside a warehouse on the south side of Redwood, deep in the industrial area. Five years ago, this place was dead and downright dilapidated. Gangs used to hang out here. Looking at it now, I’m pleased to see trucks coming in and out of the main building—things have changed around here since we bought the property for our transport business.
“What do you mean?” Knox asks.
Jagger gets off his bike first, removing his helmet and gloves as he cautiously looks around. I notice his attention stuck on a dark SUV parked a couple of blocks back.
“What is it, Jag? A tail?”
“Yeah.”
“Do we have any idea who it is?” I ask.
Jagger gives me a quick glance. “It’s probably Spalding or one of his agents. That doesn’t look like a dealer’s whip; it looks government issued.”
“We’re doing recon on the Hughes family. We don’t want the DEA following us and drawing unwise conclusions.”
I nod once. “So we lose the tail.”
“Otherwise, we might as well hang out here for the rest of the day.”
“Roger that. Let’s go around the back then. There’s a service road we can slip through.”
Jagger frowns, looking left and right again. “He’ll see us. The service road links back to the highway, just farther up ahead. We need a diversion.”
“Got you covered,” I say, then spot one of the warehouse administrators coming out of the building. “Hey! Jay! My good man!”
As soon as he sees me, Jay lights up with the kind of excitement a kid experiences upon meeting Santa for the first time. He’s a go-getter who’s always in a positive mood. He’s also a little on the crazy side, which may work in our favor today.
“What’s up, fellas?” he calls as he walks over, his grey tee shirt stretching over a beer belly. “How can I be of service today? Surprise inspection? I got all the trucks up to speed with their permits and technical reviews. Not a hair out of place!”
“Actually, we need your help with something else,” I reply, shaking his hand. I appreciate the firm grip. “See that SUV back there? Look discretely, please, Jay.”
His glance darts past me, pupils dilating as he spots the car. “Yeah, I see it.”
“The driver of that vehicle has been tasked with tailing us. It’s likely a federal agent. But where we’re going, we can’t have that kind of attention following us.”
“You boys up to something hinky?” he asks with a chuckle. But it’s not his usual laughter. He sounds nervous.
“Actually, no,” I say. “We’re trying to stop the Hughes folks from doing something that’ll ruin all the progress we’ve made so far. They’re dealing out of Humboldt Park again, as I’m sure you’ve heard.”
“And by the train depot out by Easton,” Jay says with a deep sigh. “Word on the street is there’s a deal going down today.”
Jagger gives him a hard look. “You’ve been keeping your ear to the ground?”
“Hey, man, I used to work for those people. I keep in touch if only to make sure I don’t get dragged into that mess again,” Jays says. “Y’all gave me a chance when nobody cared about what happened to me. Y’all helped me get clean and hold down a decent job. If there’s anything I can do to help you protect what you’ve built here over the years, I’m your man.”
“What we’ve built,” Knox gently corrects him. “Do include yourself in that statement, Jay. We wouldn’t have come this far without good men like you, so don’t sell yourself short.”
“Easton, you said,” I mutter, a plan already forming in my head. “That’s just a few miles up the road from here.”
“We could definitely check it out, verify the word on the street,” Jagger agrees, “then hit Humboldt Park and see what’s going down there as well. But we still need eyes off our asses.”
“I’ll handle it,” Jay says and nods curtly.
I give him a curious look. “I’d love to hang back and watch, but I trust you won’t get yourself into any kind of legal trouble, buddy.”
“Nah, I’m just gonna waffle his ears off ’til you’re in the clear. How long do you need?”
“Two minutes, tops,” Knox says. “Without revving our engines to draw the Fed’s attention, we’ll have to go a tad slower until we’re off the service road.”
“Alright. I’ll give you five just to be sure,” Jay replies and pats me on the shoulder, then walks out of the warehouse yard and makes his way along the edge of the road, headed straight for that SUV.
“Let’s roll,” I say, briefly glancing in my side mirror.
Cautiously, we ride around and all the way to the back of the warehouse structure. It’s big enough and crowded with trucks and workers’ personal vehicles so we can easily stay out of sight. We slip up the service road, a narrow artery with gravel and a clear view of the highway toward Easton. Glancing back, our DEA agent is out of sight, likely busy with Jay.
Once we reach the end of the service road, careful not to rev our engines too much, I look back again. My view of the SUV is partially obstructed, but I can still see Jay talking and gesturing at the driver as though he’s irritated or just being overly dramatic. Either way, it works for us.
I lead the way back onto the highway.
A couple of hundred yards later, I finally hit the gas and go hard and fast, with Knox and Jagger riding beside me. That was just the first stage of our mission today. We don’t know if Spalding has other agents waiting around town to track us if he loses us, but we assume the possibility and move accordingly.
Rising ahead to our right is Easton’s sprawling train yard that connects to the main line on the other side of Redwood. No passenger trains pass through this place, only freight trains. They’re loud and loaded with all sorts of hardware and fuel tanks, insanely long and powered by behemoth engines.
We take advantage of the noise of one such giant rumbling through the yard to sneak in. By the time the last train car has passed, we’re pulled up behind an abandoned security checkpoint with a dingy wooden cabin.
“This is a big place,” Jagger mutters as he takes his gloves and helmet off.
I check the gun holstered underneath my jacket. We’re packing 24/7 again, which doesn’t give me the greatest joy, but given everything that’s been bubbling to the surface of Redwood, it might help keep us alive in the coming weeks.
“If there’s a drug deal going down here, it’ll likely be over on the north side,” I say, pointing in that direction. “We’ve got the tracks to cross and plenty of stationary cars to keep us out of sight.”
“Knox, you’re better acquainted with Easton,” Jagger says. “Lead the way.”
I agree with a swift nod, so we follow him across the tracks, constantly looking around. There’s barely a soul out here with the exception of the yard workers—and the handful of them are focused on loading and unloading two different trains all the way over to the south side of the structure.
As we approach, I can feel my stomach tightening. The hairs on the back of my neck prick up.
“I’m hearing voices,” I whisper.
Knox nods. “I’m counting four. Two dealers, two buyers, most likely.”
I inch closer and look over his shoulder so I can have eyes on them too. “I can tell who’s a Hughes goon from a mile away,” I mutter.
“Red plaid and green sweater?” Knox asks.
The fella in red plaid is tall and skinny, a semiautomatic is hanging from his waist. It takes a certain type of audacity to flaunt that kind of weapon out in the open. The guy in the green sweater is stocky and sharp-looking, likely the brains of this particular operation.
“The buyers don’t look local,” I say.
It’s two gentlemen in dark jeans and black coats. Their black hair is slicked back and they have dark skin. “I’ll bet Christmas dinner they’re cartel-affiliated,” Jagger says, “if not straight-up lieutenants. Can you see the neck tats?”
“Prison ink, for sure,” I reply.
The clicking sound of a safety switched off makes me turn my head just in time to see a third offender, another Hughes goon, sneaking out of the very car we’ve been hiding behind. This one’s sporting a jean jacket and a terrible haircut.
“Who the fuck are you?” he asks.
The blood freezes in my veins as I slowly turn around and put my hands up. Knox and Jagger do the same, though Knox still has one eye on the drug deal taking place about thirty yards away.
“I’ll tell you who I am if you put that gun down,” I tell Bad Hair. “We’re not here to cause any trouble.”
“Not good enough,” he says, then pauses for a split second, a glimmer of recognition lighting up his face. “Holy shit, you’re Riders.”
“Was it my handsome face that gave it away or the club patches?” I reply.
“Can’t let you leave,” Bad Hair scoffs. “Marlo wants your heads on a spike, and I want that Christmas bonus.”
Knox intervenes with great caution. “Now hold on. You don’t want to do anything stupid. People know we’re here. We’ve got a DEA agent tailing us as we speak, likely on his way into the yard. I doubt Marlo will be happy if the DEA stumbles upon your operation while you’re busy playing Rambo.”
“Shut the fuck up!” He says, and I know he’s about to fire his weapon.
But I draw mine first.
No hesitation. It’s him or me.
POP-POP.
Point blank, I give him two to the chest. Bad Hair gives me a shocked look as he falls from the car flat on his face into the cold red dirt.
“Shit, we’re made,” Jagger warns.
I can hear them coming. There are four pairs of boots scuffling across the tracks, voices shouting, some in English, some in Spanish. All four are headed our way, and the Hughes boys are about to find one of their own dead.
“Gotta make a run for it,” Knox hisses and bolts first.
Jagger and I follow him, light on our feet as we dash behind the back of the train car, jumping from one track to another in-between other old wagons to put as much distance between us and them as possible.
Bullets fly past our heads.
I duck, then stop for a moment and point my weapon back at our pursuers.
“Diesel, no!” Jagger calls out, already ahead of me. “RUN!”
“Fuck that, I am not running from my own town,” I mutter and unload half a clip into the four bastards. I manage to take one of them down completely, blood spraying out the back of his head. I clip one of the cartel boys in the shoulder and force the other two still standing to hide behind the nearest car. “Move,” I yell, then fire a couple more rounds just to keep their heads down before I catch up to Jagger and Knox.
“Left,” Jagger says, taking the lead and a tight turn.
We follow, then jump onto an empty train car and reach the other side.
Commotion can be heard from the workers we saw earlier in the southern sector. They heard the gunshots, and now they’re coming over. I can see them in the distance, clearly confused but drawn by the noises.
“Hang a right over here,” Jagger says.
Again, Knox and I follow.
POP-POP!
One of our pursuers is about to catch up, jumping over the tracks to keep his sights on us. To my surprise, Knox takes out his gun and fires a few rounds at him. Two of these hit the second cartel guy in the stomach.
I hear the thudding of his body as we finally get back to our bikes.
“Move, move, move,” Jagger says, jumping onto his Harley.
Everything happens too fast and too slow at the same time. It’s a weird sensation, damn near impossible to immediately register. My body has gone into autopilot mode. Limbs moving, fingers working, eyes darting all over the place.
We ride out of the yard as the second Hughes goon closes in on us.
I swerve through a thick layer of red dust, raising it all in the air before I engage the gas and roll out with a deafening grumble of my big twin. He can’t hit us, not when he can’t see us. We only need a few fragments of a second.
My heart’s racing faster than my Harley.
But we make it back onto the road and go as fast as we can, putting the unexpected nightmare behind us. What’s ahead matters more.
“Well, this is a fucking shitshow,” Jagger says once we’re stopped at a gas station on the other side of town. “We left bodies behind… FUCK.”
I look around. There’s nobody here except the attendant, dozing behind the counter inside, flanked by candy bar and breath mint displays.
“Look on the bright side,” I mutter. Jagger and Knox give me a confused frown. “We didn’t bring our registered weapons,” I add with a wiggle of my eyebrows. “They can’t trace the bullets back to us.”
The silence that follows has me bracing for two possibilities.
One, either Jag or Knox will tear me a new asshole for the ill-timed dark humor, or two, they’ll see the sense in what I just said.
“And the surviving Hughes boy certainly won’t talk to the police,” Knox says, breaking his otherwise sometimes-annoyingly righteous pattern. “He’d have to tell them what he was doing there in the first place. He was left on his own, drugs and money laying around. The railroad workers must’ve called the cops straight away.”
“No time to stash the evidence,” Jagger says and sighs deeply.
“There’s also a downside to this,” Knox reminds us both. I already know where he’s going with this. I considered it from the moment I decided to kill Bad Hair before he killed us. “The surviving Hughes boy will tell Marlo all about this. She’ll know it was us.”
“And she’ll want to retaliate,” I say.
“Fuck,” Jagger snaps and kicks a pebble away with his boot. “She knows we’re close to Robyn. Marlo will try to get to her in order to get to us.”
Knox shakes his head slowly. “Hold on, brother. Robyn is safe. She’s at the clubhouse, and when she’s not at the clubhouse, she’s working at the salon or picking Kyra up from school. We’ve got people watching her. Marlo can’t get anywhere near Robyn, not without starting a whole fucking war with the club, and she knows it.”
“I’m not going to sleep on that,” Jagger replies. “Marlo is her grandaddy’s spitting image, character-wise. Just as ruthless, just as fucking evil and she’s rebuilding her grandaddy’s empire brick by brick. It’ll be war either way.”
“Jag, stop,” Knox says. “Don’t go down that rabbit hole just yet.”
“Calvin is still whispering in Marlo’s ear,” I suggest. “He’s obsessed with Robyn. He wouldn’t let Marlo hurt her or Kyra.”
“I’m not going to sleep on that either. Calvin is one more rejection away from flipping out and doing worse than Marlo ever would,” Jagger says. “We can’t rely on him to keep Robyn away from the mess.”
“What do you suggest then?” I ask, nowhere near equipped with the patience and clarity for such a conversation while the adrenaline is still raging through me.
“Fucking hell, I don’t know.”
“Then we stick to our guns in the meantime,” Knox replies. “We keep Robyn and Kyra close. Tell the sheriff about Easton, Humboldt Park too. He and his deputies will double their patrols. They’ll go heavy on policing if they have to just enough to keep the Hughes gang busy while we figure out their game.”
I shake my head slowly. “Those were Colombian drug lords. You fellas realize that, right?”
Knox exhales sharply. “I don’t even want to go there.”
“We kind of have to. It all depends on how Marlo’s going to play it with the cartel. Either they think she’s weak and they come into Redwood, guns blazing, to settle the score, or they’ll expect her to settle the score for them. Marlo’s a control freak. I doubt she’d want the cartel sending more people up here to handle something she should be able to handle on her own. It’s the Hughes’ pride at stake.”
“It might also be her undoing,” Knox says. “We poked the hornet’s nest, that much is clear.”
“Which means there will be consequences. Where those said consequences land is entirely up to us and how we play out what’s left of our hand.”
“Ah, dammit,” Jagger groans, lifting his jacket. There’s blood seeping through his grey shirt. Carefully, I reach over and glance underneath. “One of the bullets must’ve grazed me.”
“Definitely a graze,” I say. “We’ll patch you up at the clubhouse.”
“Let’s roll,” Knox replies.
“Robyn will have questions,” Jagger says.
“We’ll answer them,” I shoot back. “Now get on your bike and let’s roll before you leave your DNA all over this gas station.”
I see the tension between Jagger and Knox as they exchange glances. As much as I hate to admit it, they’re both right.
Jagger is right to worry about how this will affect Robyn. Knox is right to keep his head on the level and focus on the solution rather than the problem. What the fuck do I do then? Wonder how much better this would’ve been if we hadn’t brought Robyn into the fold? No. I have zero regrets. She’d be on her own, vulnerable. And Kyra’s a child, an innocent soul.
No, they’re better off with us watching over them.