Chapter Six #2
“Because all the people involved are dead,” King said, his voice rising angrily. “And they’ve been dead for a long time. And,” he added, moving away from his chair. “It has nothing to do with you or this situation. We have more important things to do than stand here arguing.”
He held up his hand to stop War interrupting him.
“We follow through on this plan with Omen, if we get nothing, we bring him back here and once we’ve spoken to him, he's yours. If you push this or keep questioning me, I take that away from you.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Don’t make me,” King snapped. “Leave it, War. It’s ancient history.”
We watched him walk out of the room without a backward glance.
“You all know what it is?” War asked around.
“You heard your old man,” Dirt got to his feet and slapped War on the shoulder. “Best leave the past in the past. We focus on Omen. Kansas is still doing everything he can to find Waverley, we’re still questioning everyone, and Casper is leading a crew hitting their businesses.”
“Won’t that put Wave in danger?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” Dirt said. “Like we’ve already discussed, they had a chance to hurt her while they were here. King is right, what happened in the past is irrelevant to this. We need to figure out what is going on now. Us going after their shit may make them come at us. And we’ll be ready.”
The meeting more or less ended there when Dirt, Ink and Banshee walked out. War watched them, then looked at Ballistic, who had hung back.
“This is bullshit,” he said.
“Just know what they’re saying is true, it has no bearing on the here and now,” Ballistic told him.
“Is that supposed to make me feel better? I’m part of this council and you all know something I don’t. How am I supposed to trust you?”
“Because it went down a long time ago, you weren’t even out of diapers.”
“Oh, great. So that makes it okay to keep me in the dark. My bad.”
Ballistic didn’t say anything else, just left. War cursed and shoved one of the chairs across the floor, the screech of it making me flinch. “I’m getting sick of this shit.”
“You and me both,” I muttered. “But they’re not going to tell us what it is so there is no point wasting our energy on it, not when we know where Omen is.”
“You think someone is gonna show up looking for him?” he asked, jamming his hands on his hips.
“No.”
“Me either. They’ve thrown him to the wolves, they don’t give a shit about him.”
“How long are we gonna let it play out?” I twisted my hand behind my back, where my gun was resting.
“We’re not. Let’s go.”
I followed him out of the basement. We’d suffer the consequences later. We needed answers. And Omen had them.
We didn’t want to give anything away, either to our brothers, or Omen so we parked our bikes away from the neighborhood and walked in.
As we approached, War’s phone started to ring, then mine did but we both ignored it.
I didn’t know where they were hiding out, but they couldn’t miss us as we moved towards the house, being careful to stay out of sight of the windows of the address where Omen was holed up.
The house was run down and tired looking, but it wasn’t in that bad of a condition.
There were no cars or bikes on the driveway, the place looked empty.
It was only that he had actually been seen here that we knew anyone was in the house.
I didn’t know who it belonged to and I didn’t care. All I knew was, Omen was inside.
“You’re gonna get our butt cracks fucked real hard,” a voice came from the side of the house. I turned around to see Handlebar standing there, a concerned look on his face, his gun held down by his thigh.
“Take the back,” War told him. Handlebar looked hesitant to follow his VP’s order. “Get someone back there with you. He’s not running out of here.”
Handlebar eventually nodded and disappeared around the side of the house.
There was plenty of foliage and an old fence between this property and the one next door.
We stood behind a large oak tree in the front, giving Handlebar and whoever else was here, a chance to get into position.
Someone will have called King or Dirt by now.
“War, you need to keep your shit together,” I told him.
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“Let me handle him.”
“Are you serious?”
“Very,” I gripped his wrist when he tried to turn away. “We’re talking about her life here. We need information and I’m good at getting it. If we go in there and beat the living crap out of him, we won’t get a thing. Let me do my job.”
“Fuck,” he hissed, his fists clenched. “We need to hurry up before they arrive all guns fucking blazing. Handlebar is right.”
“We knew that coming here,” I pointed out, looking back at the house. I thought I saw a curtain twitch. “We don’t have time to argue. Let me lead.”
“Fine. I’ll give you ten minutes, then I’m fucking him up.”
“I can work with that,” I grinned at him. “Let’s go do this.”
We walked quickly up the overgrown path and up a couple of steps of the porch.
“Can I at least kick the door in?”
“Well, we’re not exactly here to knock.”
War’s smile was maniacal. I let him go ahead of me. We were both big guys but kicking doors in wasn’t easy. Certainly not as easy as they made it look on TV. But War had so much pent-up rage coursing through him that it only took three tries before the locks splintered and the door burst in.
We heard the shouts immediately and rushed inside. I glanced around to get my bearings, but the shouting grew louder, coming from the back of the house.
War took his gun out and ran after him. I’d allow them to subdue Omen. Someone had to check out the rest of the house to make sure we weren’t walking into danger.
“You are out of your damn mind,” a voice said behind me. I spun around but I’d recognized the voice. Felix was carefully closing the door over. We didn’t need to be making any more of a disturbance than necessary.
“Someone called Dirt?”
“I had to, man. He told me I was in charge. Thanks a fucking lot.”
“Don’t be a pussy.”
“You see what Dirt does to people who piss him off?”
I laughed. “Sure have. Clear this house with me.”
Both of us turned to the back of the house when we heard a door slamming, more muted yelling and then the tell-tale sound of fists hitting flesh.
“I’m only going along with this because the bastard deserves it,” Felix grumbled as he took out a gun and headed for the stairs.
I felt a little bad about dropping him in it.
Lana was about to give birth any day, he didn’t need to be on Dirt’s bad side.
I’d convince the council these guys all had no choice but to go along with us.
Down the narrow hallway, I could see into a kitchen.
Handlebar was holding Omen on a chair as War used something to tie him to it.
Omen was bleeding from his mouth and his eyebrow was split. I walked through the rest of the ground floor, making sure no one else was here and met Felix as he came back down the stairs. He nodded we were good.
“Keep an eye out the front,” I told him.
“My pleasure,” he saluted me with two fingers. “Give him a hit from me,” he added angrily. “He deserves everything he has coming.”
Yeah. He did. Felix left and I headed to the kitchen.
It was pretty old fashioned in here, faded yellow Formica worktops over dingy white cabinets.
The stove looked at least twenty years old.
There were dirty dishes in the sink and on a dining table behind War, who stood with his arms crossed, glaring down at Omen.
They all looked at me as I came in. Omen’s eyes widened and he started to shake his head.
“Hustle, you’ve gotta believe me, I didn’t know what they were going to do.”
War moved past me and punched him again, hitting him so hard the chair moved. I gave him a disapproving look and he shrugged at me, as if to say “what?” I nudged him to back the fuck up. I saw movement outside of the window and reached for my gun again.
“Casper,” Handlebar said making me relax. “Keeping an eye on the back.”
I nodded. He walked over to the kitchen door and leaned against it, folding his arms. Handlebar wasn’t usually the kind to be involved in this stuff, but he was a brother in the club and this fucker betrayed us.
Didn’t matter what part you played, something like this happens, you take part where you’re needed.
I pulled up another dining chair and put it in front of Omen. He was sobbing and spittle and blood was dripping from his mouth onto his shoulder where his head lolled. I was surprised War hadn’t knocked him unconscious with that hit. He was definitely disorientated.
I straddled the chair, which I had placed facing away from him, and leaned my arms up against the back of it. I stared at Omen until he eventually looked up at me, his eyes rolling slightly as he tried to focus. I smiled, it wasn’t a nice smile which was clear when Omen began shaking.
“Let’s talk.”