Chapter 3 Moab
Moab
The wolves all gathered at the church of bad decisions, otherwise known as the RBMC Lexington, KY Chapter main clubhouse, if you went by the sign stenciled over the bar, which I never did.
The meeting room was its own little slice of hell with walls painted the color of oxidized liver, every surface covered in some flavor of testosterone.
The air was a stew of cigarette smoke, ancient whiskey, sweat, and something wolf-like.
I loved it more than anything else in the world.
It was a brotherhood, men among men who understood things like loyalty, brutality, and what it was like to rise from the ashes to be something none of us ever thought possible.
Vin sat at the head of the table, a fist curled loosely on the battered oak, his president’s patch bright in the overhead glare.
His eyes never stopped moving across faces, across hands, across the half-empty bottle he nursed with the focus of a man trying to solve a puzzle.
Rowan perched at his left, half in the shadow of Vin’s bulk, twitching his fingers on a cheap disposable vape and not even pretending to make eye contact.
The rest of the officers fanned out along the sides: Shivs, cold and upright as always, Canon quietly watchful, Bolo nervous as always, and Toolie always with a wrench in his hand.
I slouched in a torn-up recliner that probably predated the club, boot soles grinding old cigarette butts into the carpet. They hadn’t called a meeting for days, not a real one. Which meant something had either gone very right or very, very wrong.
Vin broke the silence with his signature cough, a dry bark that signaled the listening part was over, and the talking part was now mandatory.
“We got problems on the perimeter,” he said.
“More of those Ghouls MC fucks creeping past the line. A couple of nights ago, they left a calling card in the east woods. Shot up a sign, tagged it with their bullshit. Not real subtle. Looks like Louisiana is moving into our territory.”
Someone muttered “assholes” into their whiskey, which was about as rebellious as anyone got these days.
Vin ignored it. “We’re not running patrols light anymore. Moab—” he jerked his chin at me, “—you take the next shift with Shivs, full gear, tonight. I want them to know we saw the message. You see them, you scare them so hard their grandchildren piss themselves.”
Shivs smirked at me across the table, but his eyes said, try and keep up. I gave him half a nod. There were worse assignments.
Vin leaned back, steepled his hands like some backroom bishop.
“Rest of you stay on call. That means no blackouts, no midnight drug runs, and for fuck’s sake, nobody bring any civvies to the clubhouse until this is done.
” His gaze landed on Toolie, who raised both hands like a caught thief.
“That was one time,” he said. “And the woman was too drunk to remember her own name.”
“See that it stays that way,” Vin shot back, then pointed his bottle at me. “Moab. Got anything to add?”
I let the question dangle. My fingers drummed on my thigh, leftover road energy, or maybe the itch to get out before the walls caved in. “Just say the word if you want something more final than scare tactics,” I said, and for a second, the silence grew teeth.
Vin grinned, all gold crown and canines. “You’ll be the first to know if we go full rabid.”
Canon chose that moment to speak up, voice thin and scratchy.
“You, uh, planning on sleeping at all? Or just running off every time you get a text from Prez?” He didn’t look at me, he never did, not unless it was just the two of us and a half-dismantled bike between.
“Noticed you’ve been...I dunno. More Moab than usual, lately. Not that it’s a problem.”
Shivs snorted. “Yeah, the world would collapse if Moab Williams ever took a nap.”
I shot Canon a look, but he wouldn’t meet it. Instead, he dug a nail into a raw spot on his thumb, waiting for a reaction. I softened, just barely. “Got my sleep schedule dialed in,” I said. “One REM cycle per felony.”
The room cracked up, everyone except Shivs and Vin. The latter just watched me, deadpan, like he could see through every joke to the wolf chewing up the inside of my skull. Sometimes I wondered if he actually could. Prospects Torch and Axel looked down, each smirking.
Vin let the laughter die. “You take care of it tonight, then come see me,” he said, quieter now, as if this part wasn’t for public consumption. “We got another situation brewing. Club business, not for the table. Understood?”
I nodded slowly and deliberately. The hair on my neck prickled. Even the “normal” jobs around here tended to go off the rails.
He slammed the bottle on the table. “Meeting adjourned. Go do something useful.” The officers peeled off in pairs, most heading for the bar or the attached garage where Shivs had rigged up a listening post out of an old police scanner and a nest of laptop wires.
Canon lingered, shot me a sideways glance, then drifted out, the vape cloud trailing him like a ghost.
Toolie passed me on his way out, clapping a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Don’t let him bite your head off, Sarge,” he said, using the old rank, the one from before. I knew he meant Vin, but sometimes I wasn’t sure.
I stood, stretching the tension out of my back. The leather creaked under me, threatening to split at the seams. My cut felt too tight across the chest, like the jacket itself was reminding me who I answered to, no matter how many times I tried to shrug it off.
Vin stayed behind, arms crossed and eyes narrowed to slits. I walked over and leaned on the edge of the table. We held the pose, two animals with too much in common to see eye to eye.
“Something on your mind, Prez?” I said. My voice was low enough that it wouldn’t carry.
Vin rubbed a hand across his jaw, the fingers thick and scarred from decades of broken knuckles. “I need you sharp, Moab. Not distracted. If there’s something you wanna talk about—” He left the rest unsaid, a kind of challenge.
I stared at the old wolf for a few seconds, wondering how honest he actually wanted me to be. The words curdled in my mouth, too raw for the room. “Nothing that’ll get in the way,” I said. “You’ve got my loyalty, same as always.”
He grunted. “Don’t bullshit me. Not when the club’s on the line. Whatever you’re dealing with, you get it handled, or I’ll find someone who will.”
My jaw tightened, but I let it go. “Copy that.”
Vin nodded and turned back to the paperwork on his lap. The conversation was over.
I walked out into the main bar, where Shivs and Toolie were already taking bets on how long it would be before the Ghouls made another move.
The jukebox warbled some classic outlaw tune, barely audible over the buzz of fluorescent lights and old men arguing about football.
I poured myself a shot from the bottle behind the bar, then tossed it back and let the fire sink to my gut.
My fingers kept drumming, even when I tried to hold them still.
When I caught Canon’s gaze through the glass window to the garage, he looked away, pretending to fix something on the carburetor of a Triumph that hadn’t run since last Christmas.
I’d have to check in on him later, make sure he wasn’t spiraling.
He worried more than he let on, which was probably why Vin kept him around.
I stepped outside, into the raw evening. The parking lot was gravel and cracked blacktop, lined with bikes that all looked the same to outsiders but spoke volumes to the ones who rode them. My Harley was there, same spot I left it, chain still glinting in the last of the sun.
A cigarette found its way between my lips, and I lit it with the battered Zippo Edda gave me for my thirty-fifth. I inhaled, held the smoke, and tried to shake off the club’s stink. It didn’t work, not really.
The wind carried the sound of an ambulance in the distance, and for a second, I wondered what it would be like to run, really run, and leave all of it behind. Then the thought passed, and I was just Moab Williams, Sergeant at Arms, and my orders were clear.
Tomorrow I’d hit the perimeter, see if the Ghouls had left anything for me to chew on. Tonight, I’d try to sleep, or at least convince myself I wasn’t being watched by every set of eyes in the pack.
As I finished my smoke, I felt the ghost of Vin’s stare on my back, not suspicion, not yet, but the certainty of someone who knew how close you could get to the edge before you took the rest of the pack with you.
Although loneliness rarely affected an outlaw biker, I was there, carrying it like unwanted baggage.
Pussy was pussy when you were new to the club life, but I wasn’t new and had been through my fair share.
Now, I wanted more. An old lady who understood what the club meant to me and what I could mean to her.
I flicked the butt into the dark and watched the ember burn out before I turned to my bike.
***
The road out past the perimeter was a dead vein, old county blacktop patched so many times it looked like a stitched-up corpse.
Most people took the interstate, but I liked the sidewinder, the way it cut through the pines and climbed into the cold, the way it made a man feel like he’d fallen off the map.
Nobody would be out here, not after sunset.
Except me, the human error, riding a murder of steel through someone else’s bedtime silence.
I hit the gas and let the night swallow me.
The Harley was an animal under my hands, low and mean, every cylinder kick a shot to the spine.
Out here, the air was different, less oil, more sap, sharp with the green spit of the woods.
I sucked it in and exhaled everything else, remembering Vin’s warnings, Rowan’s eyes, the sense that tonight’s assignment was less about Ghouls and more about whether or not I could still be trusted to run alone.