Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
JOHNNY “HAWK” MANN
Toeing down the kickstand of my Harley, I rip the helmet from my head. My gaze travels across the gravel lot, to the group of men congregating around a rickety wooden picnic table. They don’t pay me any mind, though, they’re too enthralled with whatever cockamanie story Leftie is telling them.
A smile ticks the corners of my mouth.
Good old Leftie—the only original member of the Knightdale, North Carolina charter of the Satan’s Knights.
I used to wonder if anyone actually paid attention to the old geezer when he told longwinded tales about the club or if they just let him talk for the sake of hearing his voice. But then I experienced story time with Leftie for myself and I realized the man was wise. Arthritis got his hands, so he doesn’t ride much anymore, but he’s still an asset to the club. He’s like a fucking encyclopedia of knowledge. From coast to fucking coast, Leftie’s got the intel on every charter of the Satan’s Knights. He can recite the road name of every ranking member, tell you what they ride, who they fuck and what beef they got.
He’s a fucking legend.
Sliding the chin strap of my helmet over the handlebars of my ride, I dismount. The soles of my boots crunch down on the gravel and I make my way across the lot, toward my brothers. The closer I get, the louder they become and that smirk that was teasing my lips widens.
“…then I bent her over my bike and gave her a tune up,” Leftie reminisces, a look of nostalgia washing over his worn face. “Those were the days…the days when a man walked into a bar, sporting his leathers and all he had to do was crook his finger and he had a line of filly’s ready and willing to take a ride on the back of his bike.” He lifts his beer to his lips and goes to take a sip but pauses when Wiz, our tech guy, says, “Speak for yourself, old man, I still walk into a bar, crook my finger and have a different girl on the back of my bike every night.”
“You also got the clap,” Shady retorts.
“The fuck I do,” Wiz hisses.
Leftie shakes his head and takes a swig from his bottle. His eyes find me and slightly widen as he pulls the bottle away.
“Well, well, look who came riding in on the wind. Thought you weren’t expected back until tomorrow.”
That garners the attention of my brothers and they all turn to me. Greeting them with a jerk of my chin, I bring my gaze back to Leftie.
“Deal fell through,” I explain, reaching for my pack of smokes. I flip the top on the Marlboro’s and pull a cigarette out with my teeth.
A few years ago, right around the time I started prospecting, I started my own business. Well, that’s not entirely true—the club owns a piece of it. I was living on a veteran’s salary, and since I was a prospect, I wasn’t entitled to any of the club’s revenue. I didn’t have a savings I could dip into and no bank in their right mind would give me a loan. That’s where Maverick, the president of the club, came in. Our charter had their fingers in too many pies and Sally’s BBQ, wasn’t cutting it anymore. They needed a legit business to run interference with the new gun contract we had with a club up north, therefore Maverick offered me the money I needed to start Booker & Mann and in exchange the club gets fifty percent of the profits.
It seemed fair to me and if I’m being honest, I wasn’t in it for the money. As a former Marine, I witnessed a dog’s ability to serve soldiers in the field firsthand. Booker & Mann trains canines for police departments, the military and personal protection. What started out as a small business soon grew into a major operation and with an overflow of international contracts coming in, Maverick secured a piece of land near Poplar Creek for us to expand on. Now we have all the space we need to properly train dogs for specific tasks such as explosive removal or searching for missing corpses.
Take this past weekend for instance, I was negotiating a contract for a company overseas, they wanted an odor put on a dog in terms of narcotics, explosives and human remains. But shit like that takes time and the buyer was under the impression I can just snap my fingers and have the dog magically appear trained and ready for its next mission.
Ink claps a hand on my back and offers me a beer. I toss my cigarette, crushing it with the sole of my boot.
“Sucks that the deal didn’t go through, but it’s good to see your ugly mug,” he says as I take the beer from him. “Maverick’s got us doing a poker run tomorrow night.”
I twist off the cap on the bottle and take a pull. A poker run—my brothers and the open road—the perfect remedy and just what I need to recharge my batteries after a hellish week. To be honest, we can probably all use it. The last couple of years have been rough on our club. From learning our former VP was in bed with the Sinaloa Cartel and the repercussions of that which led to a never-ending fucking war, to Maverick and Holly’s daughter being diagnosed with cancer. Sometimes I wonder if we’ll ever catch our breath.
But, yeah, a poker run. Maybe that’s just what we all need.
“Five or seven checkpoints?” I ask.
“Maverick organized this one himself so what do you think?” Ink replies, taking a swig of his beer. As if on cue, the door to the clubhouse opens and our president steps outside with our VP— Ghost, trailing behind him. My eyes cut to Maverick’s and I immediately lower my beer from my lips. I know that fucking look, it’s the look he gives when the wind changes and hell is on the horizon.
Just as I’m about to ask him what’s going on the loud roar of pipes sounds behind me. Maverick steps forward, his boots crunching against the gravel and Ghost reaches inside his kutte for his piece. Leftie is no slouch, though, and before any of us younger members can make a move, he pulls a shotgun out from under the picnic table.
Like I said…he’s a fucking legend.
Setting the beer bottle on top of the table, I pull my gun from the waistband of my jeans and turn it on the approaching Harley but stop in my tracks when I get a good look at the bike.
The tires skid to a halt in front of Maverick and the rider digs his heels into the gravel as the Harley comes to a complete stop.
Fucking Capone.
I start to lower my gun just as he kills his engine.
“Gonna blow a tire you keep ridin’ like that,” Leftie scolds as Capone removes his helmet. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Two years ago no one would’ve questioned his rogue ways. Taking chances and making reckless decisions were part of his D.N.A. However, that was before Maverick saddled him with the job of watching over his then seventeen-year-old daughter. The order had nothing to do with the impending war the club was facing, he was just an overprotective father who didn’t like the idea of some little douchebag breaking his daughter’s heart. So in an attempt to run interference between Tara and her ex-boyfriend, he had Capone shadow her. Undoubtedly it was a job for a prospect, but for whatever reason it became Capone’s.
Maverick’s plan had a couple of hiccups though.
For one, he didn’t anticipate his daughter would be diagnosed with cancer shortly after Capone started tailing her.
And he sure as fuck didn’t see the cartel shooting up Sally’s in the midst of her diagnosis.
But I think the thing that really sent everything into a tailspin was Capone falling for Tara who is ten years his junior.
Yeah, no one saw that shit coming—well, except for maybe me.
As soon as they learned she was sick, something just switched for him, and I immediately noticed the change. The guy who prided himself on being my wingman and probably had more stories about chasing tail then Leftie, had no interest in getting laid.
Suddenly his world revolved around a sick girl he originally wanted no part of. He became her rock. He never missed a fucking doctor’s appointment, and he took her to every chemo treatment.
When Tara rang that little bell, declaring herself cancer free, it was his arms she ran into, and that’s really when it became clear to everyone that Capone was in love with our president’s daughter.
Surprisingly enough, Maverick accepted their relationship. I don’t know if that’s because Tara was so sick and he just wanted to see his daughter happy, or if Capone’s approach to dating his daughter eased the blow of their age gap. He made it clear that he had no intentions of holding her back from experiencing life, he just wanted to love her.
That’s why they’re currently doing the long-distance thing. Tara is away at college, living the dorm life on Staten Island, and while I was away trying to secure Booker & Mann’s next contract, he was visiting her.
Plucking the cigar from his mouth, Maverick lowers his hands to his sides and stares at Capone, worry etched across his feature
“What’s wrong? Is it Tara? Holly said you called her on Friday to tell her everything checked out with her oncologist appointment.” His fist closes around the cigar, crushing it as he waits for a response.
Capone nods. “Her scans came back clean. There’s no evidence of disease.”
Maverick lets out a ragged breath and unclenches his fists. Pieces of the busted cigar slip through his fingers, scattering all across the gravel. “Okay, then why’d you pull in here like a fucking mad man? Leftie nearly blew your head off with his shotgun.”
Capone drags his fingers roughly through his hair. “Tara broke up with me.”
The relief that settled into Maverick’s features only a moment ago fades and is replaced with confusion.
“What?”
“You heard me,” Capone growls.
“What did you do?” Shady questions as he plants his palms flat against the picnic table. Rising to his feet, he glares at Capone. He might not be her dad, but he takes the role of overprotective uncle very seriously.
I don’t catch Capone’s response because my phone starts to ring and as soon as I catch sight of the name flashing across my screen my whole fucking world seems to pause.
Jo— or more commonly known as Josephine Booker. It’s been a minute since my best friend’s sister has invaded my thoughts. A shame considering she’s the woman who got me and Andrew through our tour overseas. I didn’t have much family—nobody to write me letters or send me care packages and Andrew only had Jo . She would send him boxes full of shit. I mean you name it, and she sent it. The girl even managed to find a way to send their Aunt Barbara’s famous banana bread. Andrew could give a fuck less about snacks or magazines, so most of the time he’d just dump the box at my feet.
One day while I was staring at the return address on the box, eating the banana bread she had sent her brother, I decided to write Jo a letter of my own. It was short and sweet—just a thank you. The next time Andrew got a package, I got one too. You hear about those people who adopt servicemen—well, Jo adopted me. From that first box until our failed mission, Jo kept sending me packages and letters. I appreciated the snacks and all that, but those letters—man, I fucking lived for Jo’s letters.
But I never thought I’d see the day where her name flashed across the screen of my phone again, especially not after the way I left things between us. It didn’t take long for her to change her number after that, and we haven’t spoken since. The only reason I have her new umber stored is because I stole it out of Andrew’s phone when I realized he was spiraling.
I never used it though.
Never got the courage to.
Part of me in denial.
“Hawk,” Leftie hisses, drawing my attention away from my phone.
“I’m sorry…” I mutter, looking from him to the showdown between Maverick, Shady, and Capone. This would be the part where I pull Capone away, and get him to calm his jets, but Wiz and Ink seem to have it handled just fine. My gaze cuts to my phone then back to Leftie. “I’ve got to take this,” I say, holding up my phone.
He jerks his head and I step away from the ruckus. Swiping my thumb across the screen, I accept the call and lift the phone to my ear.
“Mann,” I say, barely recognizing the hoarse tone of my own voice. When she doesn’t respond right away, I go to pull the phone away from my ear and check to see if I lost the call but the sound of her short breath passing through the line stops me. “Jo? Are you there?”
“I heard it was Hawk these days…” she whispers.
Her raspy voice gets my blood soaring and sends my pulse skyrocketing.
“You can call me whatever you want,” I return, my pulse pounding in my ears.
One fix of that sultry tone and I’m a fucking goner, but the words that come next make me wish she never called in the first place.
“It’s Andrew, Johnny…he’s dead.”