Chapter Ten
“I’ve got the shop to open, Dougal,” I complained, glancing at my watch and seeing the minutes creeping to lunchtime.
It should have been open hours ago, but I was here, watching a woman swinging on a hook and wondering where the fuck we were going to get enough Gabapentin without our vet on the books.
The rest of the Rats had filtered out, Grim going first and the rest following enthusiastically like he was the Pied Piper.
That left just the two of us. Dougal watching silently through the office windows and me, perched on the desk, nipping the bridge of my nose.
“Dougal,” my voice came out as a groan. “Gabapentin? Where the fuck are we gonna get that? And at the amount Grim wants? The vet was a smart move. But it still wasn’t enough product to produce what the Hand wants us to do.”
Dougal shook his head. “I dunno. Just let me think on it for a while. But it was finding Gabapentin or take on the fucking mafia for it. I could see where Grim was heading. And that would be a death sentence.”
I nodded, agreeing. We kept our heads low.
We didn’t challenge their lines in and out of the area.
We used different products and different clientele, offering an expensive drug at half the price to the average person, but never stepping on the toes of the mafia.
And the Russians never bothered with us, as long as we stayed away from them.
With the Hand back in the UK, the Russians were alert, and we all knew that Grim was intending to take them on.
Once he’d built his army and taken out the Northern Kings, he’d challenge the Russians.
“You’re frowning, Chase. What is it?” Dougal’s voice broke my thoughts.
“I don’t like where this is going.”
“You’ve never hurt a woman before, have you?” he asked gently, like a father schooling his son on his first hunt.
“It’s not that.” I folded my arms across my chest. “I don’t like what the Hand has planned.”
“What? Taking out the Kings?”
“No, not that.” I shook my head, a dull ache forming across my skull. The lack of sleep catching up with me. “After that. Do you think the Bloody Hand are just gonna set up shop here and then we all go back to normal bike club shit?”
Dougal stared at me silently, and I suspected he’d already had the same thought.
“He’ll go after the Russian Mafia. And we’ll all be cannon fodder. It doesn’t matter to him whether we all live or die, as long as he secures one of the biggest drug trafficking routes in the north of England.”
“He just wants control of the bike clubs. We’ll all be patched over,” the President shrugged, “and we’ll follow their rules. But I doubt he’d want to take on someone so big as the Volkovs.”
It was my turn to shake my head. “They’re at their weakest right now. No experienced enforcers, two dead family members, the Irish keeping them in check. The easiest crime syndicate to wage a war against right now.”
Dougal rubbed his jaw.
“We’d still lose though,” I kept going. “The Russians have weapons like we can only dream of, and contacts, and actual trained soldiers. It would be a massacre. And Grim won’t care.
So long as he can get that drugs route. He’d use the bike clubs to fight and that fucking little street gang of wannabe bikers to run the product when we’re all dead. Is that what you want?”
Our President’s hands balled into fists at his side, his jaw clenched, muscles in his neck flexing, and I knew I was pushing it.
“Time you got the shop open, Chase,” he growled, a tone low and threatening, and I knew I’d pushed enough, for what good it would do.
He wasn’t wrong. I’d have customers and staff sitting outside waiting for me.
Bike parts in boxes, waiting for signatures and a load of custom bike jobs not getting done.
And somewhere in that melee of chaos would be a box of contraband or two.
Just small stuff. Enough to keep the club’s coffers afloat, and the police constantly sniffing around trying to work out what we were up to.
I dragged my helmet from the desk I was leaning against.
“What’s next for her?” I asked, tipping my chin to the glass windows.
“I want some more video footage. When I send that message to the Kings I want that bitch crying and screaming. See you back here tonight.”
I nodded in silent agreement, something heavy in my stomach again, the creeping feeling of some sort of misplaced emotion back.
The keys jangled in the silence as I played with them between my fingers, listening for the door to close behind me.
I didn’t know what drew me back out onto the floor.
What the pull of the captured woman was, but I stepped out into the cold of the empty warehouse.
She whimpered only slightly, dangling helplessly from the hook.
I stepped quietly, moving closer, watching the tension in her body.
My steps were soft, almost like I was walking on air, non-existent.
Yet her head snapped up, her nostrils flaring.
“Chase?” Her voice was almost a whisper, cracking around the edges.
“Aye,” I answered flatly, ignoring the stab in my chest at the sound of my name.
She said nothing else for a while, her breathing irregular, just a tiny waver, but enough to take the smoothness out of the wispy sounds.
“This really hurts.”
I wanted to say ‘good’. That she deserved it. But I said nothing, leaving the silence hanging in the air between us.
“Can you just let me down a bit? Just like before.”
I stared at her, saying nothing, the chain in the ceiling creaking under her weight, a light groan from her lips, a third exhaustion, two-thirds pain. I could hear it in her breathing too, an unnatural rhythm. Grim’s orders had been to leave her there.
“Please, Chase.”
There it was again. My name on her tongue, raw and uneven.
She wasn’t begging. Not just yet. And all I needed to do was lower the winch.
An inch of mercy. That was all she asked for.
Grim. Dougal. They were what mattered. Not a woman on a winch.
Not a King. I turned, the noise grating under my foot, grit dragging across uneven concrete.
“Fucking arsehole,” she growled now at my back.
Her voice was stronger, harder. Full of red-hot hatred. I could almost feel the heat of her eyes under that blindfold. I smiled, reaching sideways for the lever and pulling on it hard.
The chain in the ceiling heaved and clanked, a thundery tone filling the space.
Her legs crumpled underneath her, and she yelped a little, her body jarring, exhausted limbs unable to keep her steady.
I pulled the lever a little more, straightening her up, just enough for her to stand flat on her feet with her arms stretched above her head.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
I paused for a moment. Just briefly, fighting the urge to turn back to look at her. And then, shaking my head, I walked away, through the office doors. Not turning round. Not looking back.
*****
My phone rang on my desk, rattling like it was having a seizure. It could keep vibrating. For now.
“Do you need to get that?” the man in the expensive jeans asked.
“It can wait. So, what do you think?” I directed his attention back to the shiny red Yamaha in the showroom.
“Hmmm. I dunno. I wanted something different. Really different.” He looked at me pointedly.
“I do racing bikes. Some custom builds, mate. Not sure what you’re looking for?”
“A custom. Or something different. Rare. Look,” he took a breath, almost tentatively, like he was slightly worried to ask the question. “I want something else. Something different. Something no one else has. I hear you’re the man for it. But all I can see here are off the shelf racing bikes.”
I raised my eyebrows at him.
“I mean, they’re fucking great,” he stammered, “but I want something special. And I don’t see that here.”
I studied him more closely this time. His jeans were the most expensive thing he wore; the black coat over the top was mid-range. I couldn’t tell whether he was a genuine punter or a cop.
“Special costs more. Costs trust, too. You got either?”
He met my stare without blinking. “Both. If you’ve got the bike.”
Ballsy. I circled him slowly, like I had all the time in the world and not like my club president had just tried to get me twice on my mobile.
“A fella doesn’t just walk in asking for ‘different’. Tell me, who pointed you my way?”
“Tony the Tool,” he said instantly. “Used to race with you at Croft. Said you built him a front end that didn’t try to kill him every corner.”
I stopped, like a two-stroke seizing at full tilt. Tony was a mouthy fucker, but he wasn’t stupid enough to hand my name to the wrong person.
Jerking my chin towards a door on the far side, I strode off, the man in the expensive jeans following behind me, nearly as expensive trainers squeaking obscenely on my showroom floor.
The Yamaha shone under the strip lights, gleaming red and mean as sin, one of five bikes in the back room. The man behind me whistled.
“You know what you’re looking at?” I asked him.
His eyes glossed, his mouth hanging open as if his chin was filled with lead. He walked closer, careful not to touch, just staring, eyes roaming, taking every single rivet, line and contour in.
“TZ750. Mid-seventies, right? Four-cylinder, two-stroke, about a hundred and forty horses. Kenny Roberts said it was the bike that scared him straight. That fairing, fuck me, that’s gorgeous. You don’t see them intact anymore.”
I watched him, silent. The words weren’t rehearsed. They came out low, reverent, talking about something that’s lived in his blood for years. The fella knew his bikes.
Finally, he turned back to me. “I didn’t come here for a toy. I came here because I want something that bites back. Something that makes the rest of the world come when they hear it screaming down the road. You’ve got it. I’ve got the cash. We doing this or not?”
For the first time since he walked in, I felt my shoulders loosen. He wasn’t a copper. No copper would know that bike’s history, let alone talk about it like it was holy scripture.
I nodded, my eyes glancing over the machine one last time. The red paint caught the strip light, glowing like fresh blood. The fairing was scarred but proud, the frame still carrying that raw menace only a two-stroke bitch like her could hold. A relic and a weapon in the same breath.
I’d spent months coaxing her back to life; every gasket and seal fought me like she wanted to stay dead. Now she would purr, polished, ready to bite the hand that dared to ride her. She wasn’t just a bike; she was a widowmaker wrapped in fiberglass and steel.
It would be a fuckin shame to let her go.
But the stack of cash he was offering would keep my brothers fed, my business flush, and the law off my back for another season.
I gave him the ghost of a smile as he thrust a bulging envelope of it in my direction.
I nodded, turning to count the money out on the desk behind me.
Fifty fucking thousand pounds. I could keep her, send her to auction.
Get twice as much. But this deal was quiet.
Under the table. That’s the way it needed to stay.
And the fucking tax man wasn’t going to see a fucking penny.
I unlocked the drawer in the desk, thumbing the little tab on the bundles of keys until I found the right set and then handing them over.
“Keys are yours. Just remember, she doesn’t forgive. Treat her rough, she’ll put you in the ground.”
My mind flitted somewhere else. Just for a moment. A split second before the vibration of my mobile in my back pocket started again.
“You got a lid?” I asked the man smoothing his hands over the red paintwork. “Aye, in the car. Just waiting for me Dah to get here to pick the car up.”
I grunted, my attention already back to the incessant buzzing of my phone.
“What?” I answered gruffly, grimacing when my President’s Scottish tone responded.
“Chase, Thrash is on his way to the warehouse.”
“What do you mean?” I hissed, keeping my tone low and out of earshot from the guy who’d just handed me a load of cash. But he hadn’t heard, his eyes still roaming over the bike shining under the spotlights like it was the first woman he had ever seen.
“I need you at the warehouse. Thrash is going mental.”
“How the fuck does he know where to come?”
“’Cos I told him.”
I groaned, pinching the bridge of my nose. That fucking warehouse wasn’t going to stay fucking discreet for much fucking longer.
“Need you there now.”
“On my way.”