Chapter Fifteen
Ghost
January 18, 2025, Diamond Creek, Nebraska.
“Gunner.”
“Yea, Prez?” Gunner looked up at King like a kid who was caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
“You wanna contribute?”
“Huh?”
We all looked at Gunner. It wasn’t like him to be lost in his head during church. Gunner was the one brother any of us could count on to have his head in the game.
“What the fuck is up with you lately?”
“What do you mean?”
Shaking my head, I groaned. We all fucking saw it. Gunner was distracted. The man had his head up in the fucking clouds lately. It wasn’t his normal SOP.
“You’re distracted. You’re hardly ever here. What the fuck are you up to?”
“Maybe he needs a therapist,” Cash grumbled.
“Fuck you, Cash.”
“Seriously, Gunner. What’s goin’ on? Beck said you offered to pick up some groceries for her the other day,” Blade tattled.
Turning to Blade, Gunner sounded offended when he asked, “Why is that weird? I was going by the store and thought she might need something.”
“Cuz you ain’t nice,” Jingles commented.
“What the fuck? I am too nice.”
Scoffing, I looked at my brother. Who did he think he was kidding? He was never fucking nice. That wasn’t true. He was nice to the girls when he opened his mouth and spoke to them.
Which wasn’t often.
But he didn’t offer to do things for them. That’s what we had prospects for, and Gunner never shied away from making sure they had plenty to do.
With a heavy sigh, he confessed, “I needed a reason to go into the store.”
Nav started clicking away and before we could blink, he had a video of Manny’s up on the screen at the front of the room.
We watched as a beautiful woman with long, dark hair walked into the store, followed by Gunner a moment later. Sitting back in my chair, I kept my mouth shut as I grinned. Gunner was stalking this woman, but if I had my guess, he wouldn’t admit to why.
“Is that the woman from the bar? The fucking shrink?” Cash asked.
We all watched as he grabbed her arm and then immediately let go. Everyone turned his way and glared at him. Without any sound, we couldn’t tell what he’d said to the woman, but it looked pretty damn incriminating.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you two? Who is this woman?” King barked at both Cash and Gunner.
“That’s Haizley Walker. She was two years ahead of me in school. She grew up in Diamond Creek. A car accident killed her parents when she was sixteen, and she convinced Sheriff Jones to let her avoid the system and live alone in her house,” Blade informed us.
Nav was busy banging away. It didn’t take him long before he came up with more information.
“Looks like she got a full ride scholarship to college, got a degree in Psychology, and then came home to open her practice.”
“How can she have a practice? She never leaves her fucking house,” Gunner complained.
“She sees clients online,” Nav noted.
“How the fuck do you know she never leaves the house?” King asked him.
I rolled my lips to contain the laugh that wanted to burst out. Gunner gave me so much shit about the woman I met when I was in Oklahoma. I wouldn’t let this go, but now wasn’t the time. Not with the vein in King’s neck beginning to show.
“She told me.”
“Explain,” he demanded.
Gunner ran his hands over his face. He was screwed.
“I saw her at the bar the night Cash got wasted and I had to call Tank and Ben to take him home.”
“Wasn’t wasted,” Cash argued.
“You couldn’t even stand up on your own, asshole,” Gunner insisted.
“Enough! God, you’re all fucking children. Continue.”
“Then, a few days later, she came into the shop. She had an appointment with Indie but canceled it.”
“What was she getting done?” Colt asked.
“None of your fucking business.”
Colt’s shit-eating grin said he knew exactly how to push Gunner’s buttons, and he enjoyed doing it. Hell, we all did. Things got a little stale around the clubhouse sometimes, and we would get a bet going to see who could piss him off the fastest.
Jack usually won.
“Then I ran into her at Manny’s. She said every time she left the house in the last week, she ran into me and accused me of following her.”
“Are you?” I asked, sure he was stalking her.
“Am I what?”
“Following her?” I clarified.
“No, I’m not fucking following her. I was at the bar first. She walked into my fucking shop. Where I work!”
“You just happened to be driving by Manny’s and needed a reason to go in the store? Was she the reason?” Jack asked with a smug look on his face.
Gunner turned a glare on Jack. That was why Jack always won. He was the instigator. He knew all our buttons and pushed them often.
“Why the fuck are we talking about this? Don’t we have important shit to go over? If not, I have shit to do.”
King and Gunner faced off. A silent conversation ping-ponged back and forth between them until King barked, “Gunner’s right. We have other shit to do.” Then pointed at Gunner and added, “Stop following the fucking shrink!”
“Any news on Sypher?” Blade asked.
“Nothing. Fury said he’d call once they knew more. I got a call from Steele, though. Freeway’s getting out. He wants to send him up here.”
“What the fuck? Why?” Gunner asked, his voice low.
“Too much shit goin’ on down there. With his... history, Steele thinks it would be best if he had a new place to land.”
“King,” Blade whined. “Freeway is an asshole.”
“I know, but he’s a brother.”
“Have you told Dec yet?” Cash asked.
Freeway was a name I had heard many times, but a brother I’d never met. King’s brother Dec was a patrol cop back in Arkansas, and the story was he caught Freeway dealing drugs at an elementary school and tossed him in the clink.
The way I heard it, Dec went and smoothed things out with Steele, but Steele wasn’t really all that bothered by it.
“No, and I’m not going to. Not until he’s out and on his way here. Steele assures me he has spoken with Freeway and explained everything. We aren’t a 1% club anymore, and if Freeway wants to stay in, he has to act accordingly.”
“This is a bad idea,” Jingles murmured.
I didn’t agree or disagree with Jingles. I had never met Freeway. He went up the river two years before I joined the Silver Shadows. There had been rumors, though.
I tried not to pass judgment on people based on rumors. I figured it was better to give them the benefit of the doubt and let them sink their own fucking ship rather than hold the guilt from being the cause of their demise based on lies.
What’s that scripture Colt was always spouting? Let them think you’re a fool instead of proving it by opening your mouth?
Something like that.
I don’t fucking know.
I wasn’t raised in church like he was.
January 24, 2024, Diamond Creek, Nebraska.
Jesus Christ, this place was a fucking madhouse today. We didn’t have parties during the week ’cause most of the guys held jobs at the businesses the club owned. We didn’t need hungover cranky ass brothers spreading ill will around town ’cause they couldn’t hold their liquor.
But Beck said tonight was special because a new brother was joining our ranks. King tried to convince her he didn’t need the fanfare. But Beck was Beck and didn’t listen to a word he said.
Her and the girls had been in the kitchen all damn day making food. It pissed Hash off that someone had taken over his space, but like Beck said, he was welcome to help.
He refused.
Hash was a prospect when Freeway got sent up. Freeway had made Hash’s life hell. The Mother Chapter were assholes to prospects. I remembered how Angel, the enforcer, beat the shit out of me teaching me how to fight.
Well, how to fight dirty. I already knew how to fight. I could hold my own against guys that were bigger than me. But Angel taught me to get the upper hand fast, and he taught me how to hold on to it.
I was thankful for everything I learned, but fuck if I had a single day of that year where I wasn’t bruised and busted up.
The front doors slammed open and the first words out of the big bald bastard’s mouth proved the warning from Jingles in church the other night and that scripture Colt was always spewing. I had to ask him about it ’cause it was bugging the shit out of me.
It is better to be silent and thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
He said it was a proverb or some shit.
Like those fortune cookies they give out at the Chinese restaurants.
Well, Freeway removed all fucking doubt whatsoever if he was a fool or not.
“What the fuck is this? Where are the strippers?” He looked around and focused on Ellie. “Bitch, come here. You’re first!”
Freeway made a beeline for Ellie, and the terror in her eyes broke my fucking heart. Ryder stepped in his path, preventing him from getting any closer.
Ryder was new to the club, but we’d all known him since we set up the chapter here. He grew up with Beck and Blade.
King wanted him to join, but Blade blocked it. None of us knew the real reason why but he finally let his shit go and now Ryder wore a cut.
Jingles moved quickly to back up Ryder, but he didn’t need it. We all thought of Ryder as a little… not soft exactly, but he didn’t grow up in the club like some of us who joined as soon as we turned eighteen.
Ryder was a peacemaker. A jokester like Jack. What we didn’t know was that Ryder had a mean fucking right hook when his family was threatened.
“I don’t know who the fuck you are, but we don’t cockblock a brother. Move your ass so I can get me some of hers.”
Ryder didn’t say a word. He didn’t push Freeway back and tell him Ellie was his old lady. He didn’t need to; she had her goddamn cut on. He didn’t make a show of pulling his arm back to throw a punch, like guys who don’t really know how to fight.
His arm shot around before any of us realized what was happening, and Freeway hit the floor out cold.
That, ladies and gentlemen, was a fucking haymaker!
“Party’s fucking over,” King yelled.
The women stood in shock. Banshee tasked Tank and Big Ben with delivering Freeway to a room.
“We’re going home,” Ryder announced. He gathered up his wife and kids and left. He didn’t come to the clubhouse often because of the strain between him and Cash. Now this shit would make it worse.
“What the fuck did I say? Why the fuck is he here?” Jingles bellowed.
“I’ll talk to him,” King growled and walked down the hallway.
I guess the rumors were true.
Freeway was an asshole. Half the men in this chapter came from the Mother Chapter in Little Rock. We cut our teeth on bullshit.
Lived our lives wide fucking open. Guns, drugs, booze, and bitches. That was the way in Little Rock. It’s why we left. We got tired of that shit. Tired of always looking over our fucking shoulder.
It wasn’t just the law. It was the Cartel, the fucking Russians, the other goddamn clubs that wanted a piece of what we had.
We wanted more.
The brothers who loved that life, brothers like Freeway, stayed in the south. The few of us who wanted more moved up here. Now we had a brother among us that no one respected.
No one wanted.
Life in Diamond Creek was about to get a lot more fucking interesting.