Chapter Twenty-Three
Mimic
I never should have opened my fucking mouth. I should have just fucking taken her, like she said. I was starting to understand what the fuck Dakota had said.
Bitches shouldn’t get a say.
When a picture of my sister popped into my head, I froze. What the fuck was I thinking? Dakota was a narcissistic asshole who deserved to be as dead as his fucking father. Nothing that man said should be repeated, not even in my fucking head.
Yet, there it was. His words tormented me. Making me believe I was just like him. I wasn’t fucking like him. My sister didn’t deserve what happened to her. Aspen didn’t deserve what happened to her.
My mother didn’t fucking deserve what happened to her.
I fisted my hands in my hair, pulling it hard enough to hurt. Maybe Rose had something when she was cutting herself.
Jesus fucking Christ, what the hell was wrong with me?
You may not want to be, but you’re just like him. That’s what he wanted.
“Mimic, are you okay?”
I turned at the sound of Jingles’ voice. “I’m fine.”
He eyed me for a moment before adding, “King wants us back in church.”
“Did you get something from that prick?”
“Let’s get into church.” He turned and walked away without answering my question, which meant he’d learned something, and it was something I wouldn’t like.
I followed him into church. We were the last to arrive; the others were already in their seats.
“Sting didn’t give us much. Only that Vulture wants Indie.”
“The VP?” I asked. “Why?”
“We don’t know. I called Skinner and set up a meeting.”
“What?” Blade asked. “Are you insane? They killed our prospect, and you want a face-to-face?”
“We need information,” Cash reminded him.
I wanted to tell Cash to go. It was too dangerous for King, but it was just as dangerous for Cash and me, and I couldn’t put my sister through that.
“We’ll all go,” King said.
“The entire club?” Jack asked.
“No, the officers and half the club. We’ll have Winchester on a roof with his rifle. Now that the man who caused Grayson’s accident is dead, he isn’t needed there as much.”
“Where are we meeting?” Colt asked, his shoulders heavy with a weight we all felt.
“A diner in Pine Bluffs.”
“That’s over the state line,” Gunner pointed out.
“It is. We can be trusted in their state. They can’t be trusted in ours.”
“What about our guest?” Jingles asked, looking over at me.
I stared at King, waiting for him to answer. He’d promised me I could have him when they got what they needed. Would he be like every other person in my life and go back on that promise?
My mother promised she would always be there. To always protect us. George promised to let me go, but he never really did. Not until he was dead.
“He stays here,” King answered, his eyes on me.
I nodded, a silent thank you for keeping his word.
“When do we leave?”
“First thing in the morning. I want to be there before Skinner. I want Romeo, Tank, Winchester, Stocks, Banshee, Ace, and Zero with us. The rest stay here to guard the clubhouse.” King stood up. “Everyone is armed to the fucking teeth.” He ended the meeting by slamming the gavel against the table.
The ride to Pine Bluffs didn’t take long. Diamond Creek was close to the borders of both Wyoming and Colorado. The ride was uneventful and would have been enjoyable if we weren’t meeting a club that had declared war on us.
When we made it to the diner, everyone except Winchester went inside. Win made his way to the rooftop of a nearby building to set up his rifle to protect us all.
The diner was small. Barely able to hold the number of men that would be at this meeting.
It had a counter on one side and a long booth that spanned the opposite wall.
In front of the booth were small tables lining the length of it.
I wondered if King had been here before; this booth with the wall at our backs was the perfect place for when the Death Dogs arrived.
When we walked in, the cook met us in the middle of the room.
“I don’t want no trouble here.” The man was in his fifties.
His potbelly and bald head reminded me of a guy on an old show about a diner in Arizona that my mother used to watch.
He had tattoos on his arms that said he had either done time in the service or in prison.
Maybe both.
“Not here for trouble, but we are meeting another club. How much to close for the day?”
“Ten thousand.”
I scoffed at his audacity, but King said, “Colt, pay the man. Sir, I suggest you send your staff home. We can lock up when we leave. If anything were to get damaged during our meet, we’ll cover it. We aren’t here to make your life harder, just hoping to make ours a little easier.”
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to call the sheriff and put him on alert,” the man said as he untied his apron and tossed it on the counter.
King looked around at us, then back to the old man. He nodded, adding, “As long as the sheriff understands we won’t start any shit, but we will defend ourselves if we have to.”
“Sheriff McCoy is a reasonable man. My name’s Mel.” He held his hand out to King, who took it without hesitation while I smirked. That was the name of the man in the show my mom used to watch.
Mel, true to his word, sent his staff home and called the sheriff.
King spoke to him for a few minutes and they agreed to have a few deputies outside the diner where they couldn’t be seen.
One thing King didn’t tell him was about Winchester up on the roof.
If he had to shoot someone, he’d get down and out of the way before anyone knew where he’d been.
Mel hung around for a bit and made up some burgers and fries before moving upstairs, where he lived. King tried to get him to go somewhere else, but the man wouldn’t have it. Said he’d never run from a fight a day in his life and he wasn’t running now.
Everyone picked at their food. Tension kept us from scarfing it down. It was good too. King said he wanted to come back out this way once everything was done, maybe bring the old ladies and kids.
He meant when the war was over. That would be when the Death Dogs were dead. We all knew they would never surrender. It was them or us. They were a bigger club. They might think they had us over a barrel, but they didn’t know who we had in our pocket.
But we knew who they had in theirs.
Angel had called Blade back and told him what we needed to know. Steele had been stewing about King forcing his hand with starting a new chapter. For almost six fucking years, the man had been planning a way to take us out.
He’d finally found a way with the Death Dogs. King had used Chasm’s death as a way to leverage Steele into letting him start a new chapter.
I never knew Chasm; he’d been in the club when everyone was still in Arkansas. Rumor was, Steele sent Chasm into a warehouse knowing he wouldn’t be coming out.
We heard the bikes before we saw them. Skinner had been told to bring only six men besides his officers. We were about to find out just how little the man could be trusted.
The door swung open, and the bell jingled out a tune as Skinner, the president of the Death Dogs, and his VP Vulture, the man who thought he had a right to my woman, walked in followed by twenty men.
“You forget how to count?” King asked.
Skinner looked at his men before giving King a leering smile.
“You said six men besides my officers. That’s what I brought.
” He walked forward, stopping at the table and sitting in the chair across from King.
“You see, when you have as many men as I have, you need a few more enforcers to keep the peace.”
“You don’t need all those enforcers when you’re leading men with respect.”
Skinner’s smile dropped a fraction, but he caught himself, not wanting King to know he’d hit the nail on the head.
“What’s this meeting about?” Skinner asked, ignoring King’s barb at his leadership abilities.
“You killed our prospect.”
“You killed our friend.”
“What friend?” Cash asked.
He knew what friend. The Death Dogs had been in bed with Daniel Scott. Winchester had killed him with his rifle, while Massacre stood over him pointing a gun at his head after beating the shit out of him for what he’d done to Amber.
“Daniel Scott.”
King sat forward, clasped his hands together on the table and said, “I don’t know what you’ve heard, but Mr. Scott was killed by an assassin. Even had his name etched on the bullet. That wasn’t us.”
“You beat the shit out of him in the middle of Main Street and then had him killed.”
“Now, Skinner, again, you’re misinformed. Massacre, a member of the Golden Skulls, was the one who beat the shit out of your friend. Not us.”
“He was staying in your fucking house,” Skinner sneered.
“That is true. He came to get his wife. They’ve since gone back to California. You’re welcome to take it up with Reaper. But our prospect wasn’t involved. You owe us.”
“Prez,” Vulture whispered. Skinner held up his hand, cutting him off.
“What do you want?” Skinner asked.
“Well,” King leaned back against the booth, folding his arms over his chest as though he had all the time in the world.
Meanwhile, I was sitting here using every ounce of control I had not to lose my shit and ask why they wanted Indie.
“I had planned to ask for restitution, money for the kid’s family. But then your man Sting fucked up and went after one of our women. Now I’m thinking a life for a life.”
“What the fuck are you talking about, King?”
“My enforcer’s old lady.”
Now I was using my control not to fucking react. She wasn’t my old lady yet. And he’d told me to stay the fuck away from her.
“He went into one of our businesses, punched her in the face and knocked her unconscious. If that wasn’t bad enough, he showed up at her apartment in the middle of the night and tried to fucking kidnap her.”
I had my eye on Vulture. He was the one Sting said wanted her. His hands were clenched tight together, and his face was turning red.
“And to top it off, he tried to grab her from the fucking coffee shop when she was with my VP’s old lady.”
Vulture launched himself forward, leaning on the table, and screamed in King’s face, “She’s my fucking daughter, and I want her back.”
Until that moment, we had all been sitting in the booth. Every one of us, aside from King, stood, knocking the tables in front of us to the ground, and pulled our guns.
The Death Dogs pulled their own guns. We might be outnumbered, we might not even survive, but we wouldn’t go down without a fight. And we’d take as many of them with us as we could.
The front door opened, and a man in a sheriff’s uniform walked in. He walked between the Death Dogs, even pushing an arm or two out of the way until he stood by the table with King and Skinner.
“Hello, boys, heard you might need a mediator.”
“Sheriff, look around,” Skinner said, standing up to face the sheriff. “You’re outnumbered; they’re outnumbered. Who do you think is walking out of here alive?”
“You might be right there, but by my estimation, only a few of you will be walking out, and my deputies will scoop you up or put you down as you do. I do know one thing, though. You won’t be walking out of here alive.”
The sheriff nodded his head at Skinner’s chest. The small red dot bounced around over his heart. He looked through the window, but he’d never see where Winchester was hiding.
Turning back to King, Skinner growled, “I want my nephew and Vulture’s daughter.”
“And I want world peace. We don’t always get what we fucking want,” King replied, sitting back against the booth. He might look calm and unconcerned, but those of us who knew him, knew he was ready to strike at a moment’s notice.
“This isn’t over,” Skinner snarled as he shoved Vulture toward the door. His men went with him. The last one being an Enforcer named Harrow. He locked eyes with me before pointing the index and middle fingers of his right hand at his eyes and then swinging them around toward me.
Yeah, asshole. I’ve got my eye on you too.