Chapter 25
25
Jagger
“ I ’ve never spent more than six hours in this place,” I mutter, staring at the grey wall in front of me. I’m on the phone with Samson while Knox and Diesel are back in the cell. They’re using their phone calls to handle the lawyers and the club while I’m trying to get as many updates out of Samson as possible. “They haven’t set a date for the arraignment yet.”
“Relax, Jag. The lawyers will know what to do,” Samson says from the other end of the line.
“They should’ve been here by now,” I reply.
“Listen, I spoke to them already. They said they were going to stop by the courthouse first to get an arraignment date before they head over to the jail. They said you know what you have to do while in custody.”
“Okay, you’re right.”
“How are you holding up?” Samson asks.
“I’m as well as I can be under these circumstances,” I tell him. “Where’s Robyn? How is she?”
The silence that follows has me checking the payphone screen. Maybe the line got cut off.
“Samson?”
“Yeah, sorry, still here. Robyn’s okay, but she left a short bit ago,” he says, and the sky practically falls on my head.
“What?”
“She’s okay, I told you. The Feds turned the whole clubhouse inside out after you were arrested. We tried to stop them, but they kept threatening to arrest us too,” he says. “I figured you wanted us to stay out of jail for what’s coming next. Problem is, they went overboard with their search procedure, left the whole place fucking ransacked and said we should just send the DEA a bill provided we’re still operating by the time the district attorney is done with us.”
“Spalding, that smug son of a bitch.”
“Robyn and Kyra are staying at Ellie’s place. She had to take Kyra out of here, man. It was loud and aggressive; the poor kid was scared.”
“No, I get it. I’m just sorry it turned out this way. We promised her they would be safe at the clubhouse,” I say with a deep sigh.
“I’ve got about four guys watching Ellie’s house as we speak. We’ve got the prospects patrolling the neighborhood on their bikes as well,” Samson replies. “We’re doing everything we can to keep Calvin and the Hughes goons away, letting them know we’re still standing, man.”
“We are still standing,” I declare. “But the drugs… Samson, you know damn well—”
“That shit was planted,” he growls. “We vet our members carefully. Kid, I don’t know what to tell you. It doesn’t make any sense.”
I look around for a moment. The hallway drowns in a dim white light. I can hear chatter from the jail cells at one end and phones ringing and men talking at the other end. The sheriff’s station has been overrun by DEA agents.
“Either somebody managed to sneak in…” Samson says, and I know what’s coming next, though I hate to even consider it.
I beat him to it with a heavy groan: “Or it was an inside job. We might have a dirty Rider among us. It should be on the cameras, though. We have one mounted just above the basement door.”
“True, but there’s always traffic in and out of the fucking basement. We keep a lot of liquor down there, plus financial documents, archived tax returns, and all that crap, sensitive documents in the wall safe, ammo and shit. Almost everybody in the club has access. It’s a wide net to cast.”
“We still have to check,” I insist. “That was a large bag of dope. It’s not something you can just sneak in, alright? Go over the videos and highlight any large boxes or crates being brought into the basement. Have the guys check with you. Do we know where that bag was found specifically?”
“No, Spalding wouldn’t say.”
“We need to find out. It’ll help narrow down the search maybe; I don’t know. But we can’t let it slide, man. Somebody did this to us, and the longer we’re in jail, the more vulnerable the club is, the more vulnerable Robyn and Kyra are, even with security present. It doesn’t matter if we’re not there.”
“I know, I know,” Samson says, trying to soothe me, and I can hear myself talking louder and faster. “Take a deep breath, Jag. Let the lawyers do their jobs. You’ll be outta there in no time. I’ll handle everything else here; I promise.”
“Thanks, Sam. I’m sorry for all this.”
“Hey, no apologies needed. It’s interesting, though, don’t you think?”
“What is?”
“Marlo Hughes is itching to rebuild her drug empire. She wants you to help her. Calvin’s back and working with her. He wants to get back at Robyn one way or another for sure. Then there’s this Spalding prick who came in with a warrant and just happened to find all those keys of dope in our basement… Come on, don’t tell me it didn’t occur to you.”
I exhale sharply. “It did. There’s obviously a conspiracy in the works. But until we find the traitor, we’re flying blind here.”
“Time’s up,” one of the deputies says, coming over after having spent the past five minutes in the bathroom down the hall. “Back to your cell.”
I give him a look of irritation. “Come on, man, one more minute. You know me. You know us .”
“Sorry, I can’t. Sheriff Bentley said we can’t show preferential treatment, not with so many Feds swarming our station and sticking their noses so far up our asses that if I open my mouth, you’re gonna see a DEA windbreaker at the back of my throat.”
“Samson, take care over there,” I mutter and hang up.
I trust him to look after Robyn and Kyra. I trust him to keep an eye on things and get started trying to find out who set us up. We’re on our own here, at least for now, so I nod once and let the deputy escort me back to the cell.
There are six of us in a relatively small jail cell.
Diesel, Knox, and I are pretty big, so we take up about half of the space. The other three are burly fellas too and it’s getting cramped as each of us try to stretch our legs once in a while. A grunt here, a nudge there, and there’s already too much tension for such a tight enclosure. I feel as though we’re sitting on a powder keg and someone’s about to light the fuse.
“Lawyers should be on their way,” Knox mutters at one point.
We’re seated on one bench, our backs against the wall and a full view of the rest of the cell and the attached corridor with its flickering overhead lights. It looks cold and uninviting, but jail isn’t supposed to be comfortable.
“I don’t understand what the holdup is,” Diesel says. “They should’ve been here by now.”
“Samson said they’re focused on getting an arraignment date set, which is a good thing. Besides, it’s more important than talking to us about what is clearly a miscarriage of justice,” I reply.
One of the men snickers maliciously. “Miscarriage of justice.”
“What’s your problem?” Diesel asks, giving him a dark glare.
“My problem? I don’t have a problem. You three, on the other hand, you’re fucking cooked and you don’t even know it,” the guy says.
He’s the tallest of the three, chunky too, big enough to take any of us down provided he’s a good fighter. There’s plenty of muscle mass underneath that fat. He seems sluggish and slow, yet deadly if he lands a fist in the right place. His buddies are both gangbangers by the looks of them: well-built, scruffy, and itching for violence, twitchy and anxious. It’s a miracle they’ve kept their cool until now. I don’t like it.
“What are you talking about?” Knox asks the giant.
“Marlo always gets what she wants,” he replies with a dry smile. “Always. Whether you see it or not, you’re gonna be on the receiving end soon enough.”
“Is that a threat?” Diesel cuts in.
I give him a hard look. “What are you doing?”
“They’ve been watching us this whole time, looking like they either wanna kill us or bend us over; I’m not sure which,” Diesel says. Despite his abrasive demeanor, he never talks out of his ass. He saw something more.
“Marlo sent you,” Knox concludes, looking at the three goons.
“Bro, you’re a bit slow on the uptake,” the scruffier one says. “I thought club presidents are supposed to be smarter.”
“And I thought gangbangers knew better than to try and pick a fight with a Rogue Rider,” Diesel replies.
The middle guy rises from his seat, his shoulders squared and his hands balled into tight fists. “In here, you’re our bitches.”
Diesel gets up and gestures with his hand. “By all means, come at me.”
And just like that, the fuse is lit. Knox and I have no choice but to get involved to try and keep the peace. We cannot throw the first punch.
“Don’t be stupid, fellas,” I say. “It’s not going to end well for you.”
He sneers and takes a deep breath. “Marlo’s running out of patience. Either you do as you’re told, or she’s going to take you off the game board completely and put someone more competent in charge.”
“The Rogue Riders don’t belong to Marlo Hughes,” Knox says. “We’ve got enough manpower between us to put her back in her place if she insists on being this stupid. But if you don’t back off right now, I can’t promise you it’s not gonna hurt.”
The scruffy one gets in my face. I can smell tobacco and nacho cheese on his breath. His teeth are brown and crooked. He’s hooked on something, which might make him unpredictable; a caged animal is the worst.
“Don’t do this,” I warn him.
He shoves me. “Do what?”
“Don’t,” I warn him again but resist delivering a physical response.
He shoves me again, then tries to punch me because he’s too desperate to fight. I duck and throw a left hook. I get him in the jaw, and I feel the bone cracking against my knuckles. He falls to the floor and all fucking hell breaks loose.
The giant and the middle guy jump in.
I swerve right to dodge one punch, but I get kicked in the ribs.
Diesel takes on the big guy without hesitation. “Come on, you son of a bitch. You know you want this,” he snarls as the giant charges at him. They grapple, and Diesel gets slammed into the wall, but he brings his elbow down over and over on the guy’s head.
Knox fights the middle guy, ducking and punching with remarkable technique despite the small space.
I grab the scruffy one by the shirt collar and drag him away from the scuffle, then pull him up and have him sit on the bench. He tries to kick me, but I punch him again and again: left hook, right hook, left hook, until my knuckles bleed and he’s too weak to stand. Blood pours from his mouth and nose.
“Are you gonna stop now?” I ask him, “or do you want me to keep going?”
“A little help here!” Diesel grunts.
I turn around and see him overwhelmed as the giant keeps landing punches to his sides. Without hesitation, I swoop in and deliver a low kick on the inside of his calf. The man cries out in agony, then falls to his knee.
To my left, Knox is just about done beating the middle guy to a pulp.
But the giant isn’t ready to give up yet. Before he can stand again, however, I go in hard and fast, punching him in the ear enough times to see him wobble. His eyes roll, and he finally falls for good, flat on his back.
Diesel has trouble getting himself back up on his feet. “Motherfucker’s built like an ox. Jesus Christ, that hurt.”
“I thought you had a handle on this,” I joke as I help him sit on the other bench while Knox drags the middle guy next to my opponent—both of them looking like shit and definitely incapacitated.
“Where the fuck are the cops?” Diesel says, looking around. “That shit should have brought them running.”
“There are four jail cells in this station, yet they put all six of us in this one,” I say.
“Fuck,” Knox curses under his breath, giving me a troubled look. “Marlo’s got someone in here too, a deputy maybe. Fucking hell, she is like a cancer in Redwood; she keeps spreading.”
“We can’t stop her if we’re stuck here,” I say.
A deputy finally rushes over to our cell, looking sweaty and pale-faced. “What the hell happened here? I heard the commotion from the other end of the hall!”
“These three tried to jump us,” Knox bluntly replies. “We had no choice but to defend ourselves.” He pauses and points to the camera mounted in the upper left corner. “You should have footage to confirm.”
“Our lawyers will definitely want to know why we were all put in the same cell, though,” Diesel grumbles, still holding his side.
The deputy answers, his eyes wide with concern. “We were just following Spalding’s orders.”
“Spalding told you to cram us in with them?” I ask, the skin on the back of my neck tightening. The implications are getting uglier with each passing moment. The deputy nods once. “And Sheriff Bentley had no idea.”
“He’s out at the clubhouse, making sure the DEA didn’t get out of line,” the deputy says, “or too much out of line anyway. Samson called the station and complained about it.”
“Smart old man,” I mutter. “Well, you need to put us in a different cell, or this here will only get worse.”
Diesel scoffs. “You might wanna get these fuckers over to the hospital first, though.”
The deputy nods.
“Shit’s getting real,” Diesel then tells Knox. “We can’t let Robyn be on her own, not while she’s carrying—”
“I know,” Knox cuts him off. “I know.”
Robyn and Kyra are our family. We’ve got another kid on the way. We can’t let the Hugheses or the DEA destroy what we’re building here.
Marlo has already declared war, and the fact that Spalding made sure we’d be here when these three gentlemen delivered her message, well… I don’t believe in coincidences, and judging by the looks on Diesel and Knox’s faces, neither do they.