Chapter Thirty Five
Music thumped low in the clubhouse, loud enough that I couldn’t hear the escalation of my heartbeat every time I thought of Sophie and the rest of the women, but low enough that we would catch the rumble of an incoming engine.
Demon tracked the cameras with his phone, flicking through views every second, the incessant swipe of his hand annoying the fuck out of me.
I was wired, my only solace in the pints I’d pulled from behind the bar.
I needed a joint or more. But I needed a clear head more than anything.
“We’ve got movement on the road,” Demon grunted, looking up from his phone. “Car.”
“Do we recognise it?”
His eyes dropped to the screen again, staring hard. Behind me, Fury was on his feet, his eyes on the screen above the bar.
“Fuck!”
“What is it, Fury?” Indie looked around, checking the doors, then the windows, a sweep of the bar as he waited for our VP’s answer.
“Jake.”
“Your fucking brother really knows how to pick his moments,” Indie complained.
Beside me, the twins shifted uncomfortably while Fury dragged a hand over his beard, like he was already regretting whatever was about to happen.
“Let him in,” Indie ordered eventually.
The clubhouse door opened a few seconds later, prospects stepping aside, letting Jake and the cold night air sweep inside.
Plain clothes tonight. Dark jacket. Jeans.
But he still carried himself like a copper.
Alert eyes. Controlled posture. Assessing threat levels every second he breathed.
Rats, the lot of them, and just like rats, you were always only a few feet away from one at any one time, or so it seemed this week.
Conversations died almost instantly as Jake’s gaze swept across the bar. It lingered on cuts. On faces. Numbers. Counting who was present and who wasn’t.
“You picked a fucking brilliant time to visit,” Fury muttered.
Jake ignored him. His eyes settled on Indie instead.
“We’ve had intelligence come through.”
The room stilled.
“What kind of intelligence?” Indie asked calmly.
Jake hesitated. “There’s word there’ll be weapons at Magnet’s funeral tomorrow.”
Silence. Heavy and immediate. My jaw tightened automatically. Around me, I felt the shift ripple through the brothers. Fury straightening. Chaos muttering a curse under his breath. Demon lowering his phone slowly. Baz spoke first. Too quickly.
“What sort of weapons?”
The question cut across the room sharp enough that a couple of heads turned slightly towards him.
Jake’s eyes flicked sideways briefly. “Enough that firearms officers are being discussed.”
Baz nodded once, taking a slow pull from his pint like he hadn’t just jumped in ahead of our president.
But I noticed the way his fingers tightened fractionally around the glass afterwards.
And something else didn’t feel right. He was overly tense.
Unusual for a man who’d lived this life longer than the rest of us.
The tiny twitch in his jaw. It could’ve been nerves.
Could’ve been anger. Could’ve been fucking anything.
Still, something about it prickled at the back of my mind before slipping away again.
Indie’s expression never changed.
“What makes you think that?”
Jake gave a humourless smile. “You know I can’t tell you that.”
“Then why tell us?” Indie countered smoothly.
Jake’s eyes hardened slightly then. “Because things are getting critical.” Nobody interrupted him.
“We’ve had Special Branch pulling airport footage for days now.
Americans coming through Heathrow, Manchester, Newcastle.
Different airports. Different routes. Same tattoos.
” His gaze flicked briefly around the room. “Feels organised. Feels wrong.”
The Bloody Hand. The room suddenly felt tighter around us all. Jake looked back at Indie then, watching him carefully. Searching for something. A tell. A reaction. But Indie gave him absolutely fucking nothing. Just silence. Calm and unreadable.
“And then we’ve got bodies turning up. Unidentified currently. Tattooed. Single gunshots to the head. Too clean. Too professional. I only know of one person who can take a shot as cleanly as that. Even the Mafia don’t shoot as clean.”
From the corner of my eye, I caught Baz again. Quiet now. Too quiet. His gaze fixed on the floorboards while the rest of us watched Jake. Thinking hard about something.
Eventually, Indie nodded once. “Thanks for the information, Jake.”
The word hung oddly between them. Jake’s attention shifted then towards Fury.
“You know where Mam is?”
Fury frowned slightly. “Why?”
“Tried the house phone. No answer. Been round and she’s not there.” Something sharp flickered across Jake’s face then. Unease maybe. “Mam never goes away.”
Fury folded his arms slowly across his chest. “She does now.”
Jake stared at him for a second too long.
And suddenly every nerve in my body lit up.
Jake exhaled heavily through his nose and stepped backwards towards the door.
Indie moved with him automatically. Escorting him out.
Making the point clear. Jake stopped in the doorway then, looking back towards Fury one last time.
“Whatever you do,” he said quietly, “look after her better than you did our sister.”
Fury moved instantly. Chair legs screeched across the floor as he surged forward with murder written across his face, but Chaos and Carnage caught him before he reached the door while Demon shoved himself between them.
Jake didn’t react. Didn’t flinch. He just looked at his brother for one long, hard second before walking back out into the night.
“What the fuck was that all about with your brother, Fury?” Barry the Blade asked accusingly.
“The fuck you asking me for? You got fucking ears?”
Indie tipped a look towards the gigantic man with the long dark hair.
“Jake always knows more than he tells us.” My voice rumbled between them. “He was telling us there is more of the Hand here than we realised. And that’s a problem.”
“And who’s been taking the fuckers out?” Baz continued. “You heard Jake. Bodies. Gunshot wounds.”
“The Viking,” Indie confirmed, his eyes locking Baz’s “V has been taking out as many as he can. Reduce the numbers. Reduce the threat. Maybe even scare the fuckers off. No fucker wants to die, not like that.”
“Sounds like someone put the fuckers in water then, cos clearly we’ve got more to take care of than we thought,” Demon commented. “We sticking to the original plan?”
“Aye,” Indie nodded. We go tonight, fix the weapons under the pews.”
“Y’know the coppers are gonna show now,” Baz looked uncomfortable again. “How many weapons we stashing?”
“As many as we’ve got.” Indie shrugged.
I watched Barry the Blade closely, that odd feeling returning to me. Something firing in my brain that I couldn’t quite reach. Indie watched him too, and I wondered whether he was feeling the same.
*****
Sunlight flooded through the clubhouse windows like the world had forgotten what day it was supposed to be.
Bright blue skies stretched over Gateshead, Newcastle and the north east, the kind of dry spring morning people waited all winter for.
Warm enough that the carpark outside the Dog already smelled faintly of petrol, spilled oil and cigarette smoke.
It felt fucking wrong.
Funerals were supposed to come with rain.
Grey skies. Thunder maybe. Something heavy enough to match the feeling sitting in my chest. Instead, sunlight bounced off chrome and polished tanks lined outside the clubhouse, while brothers drank in low, rough voices waiting for funeral cars carrying an empty coffin. An empty fucking coffin.
I sat near the bar, turning my untouched pint slowly between my hands while around me cuts lingered tensely in the Dog on the Tyne. Kings. Prospects. Outside was too quiet. Too still. Gateshead itself holding its breath because it wasn’t quite sure what was coming.
That thought twisted badly in my gut. Using him like this.
Baiting the Hand into showing themselves at his funeral.
But then again, Magnet would’ve fucking loved it.
Probably called it ‘poetic’, then demanded we make the coffin explode for dramatic effect.
A rough laugh escaped me before dying just as quickly.
The clubhouse quietened slightly as Indie stepped out from the corridor behind the bar, already dressed in a black shirt and cut, Fury beside him looking like violence barely held together by skin.
“Funeral cars are ten minutes out,” Indie announced. “Tez and the boys are already heading to the church. Rest of us move together.”
Silence followed. Heavy, thick. And even though this funeral was a sham, I felt it, anyway.
“Hang on,” Demon said suddenly. “We’ve movement on the road. Motorbikes.”
“We’re not expecting anyone.” Indie’s head moved, searching over the bar for the TV with multiple grainy squares.
I heard the engines then, the high pitch wail. “Sports bikes.”
“Not the fucking Hand then.” Baz looked confused. “Who the fuck’s turning up on plastic rockets looking for us?”
Fury groaned and Indie shot him a glance. “It’s a Busa. It’s fucking Jazz.”
“What the fuck is it with you and your family?” Indie groaned.
I watched the cameras with everyone else. Two of them, slowing as they crossed from the crumbling road to the pitted gravel of the car park.
“What do we do now?” Demon asked, struggling to hide the amusement on his face.
Indie shook his head. “Let them in.”
“Them?” Fury growled. “Not that fucking Road Rat. No fucking way.”
“Yes them. I want him where I can see him.”
The Dog quietened. Breaths held. The order had been given and we watched the two figures in Italian racing leather step through our doors. Jazz pulled her helmet off as she entered, pulling out the long dark plait and letting it fall over her shoulder.
“Helmet off,” Indie commanded of the man who walked a stride or two behind her.
He nodded, fumbling under his chin and then pulling the lid off over his head.
He looked better than when I’d last seen him.
Hanging from chains in our basement didn’t suit him.
For a moment his gaze caught mine. He didn’t nod.
Didn’t acknowledge me, and I felt the knot of anxiety in my chest loosen just for a moment.
“Nice to have you back, Jazz,” Indie started. “Wasn’t expected though.”
“I wasn’t gonna miss Magnet’s funeral.”
“Didn’t think you would.”
Jazz glanced around us, her eyes scanning faces, determining the level of hostility we might show to the man standing in our clubhouse. Then she pushed her helmet onto the table next to her.
“Funeral at the same place?” she asked, and I watched Fury’s brows furrow.
“Aye. Father Leverett doing the honours as usual.”
Jazz nodded, something in her eyes. “Then can you tell me why a whole pack of the Hand and the Notorious are headed in this direction?”
“What?” Indie frowned. “Jazz, what do you mean?”
“But it wasn’t Jazz that answered. “Twenty. Maybe more. Heading this way. Seven minutes out. We pinned it getting here, but by the looks of it, you’re about to have company.”
Fury hand his hands through his hair, eyes dark. “Fuck. How’d they fucking know?”
“Know what, Fury?” Jazz asked, her eyes seeking answered in all of us.
“The funeral is a sham. To draw the Hand where we wanted them. No one knew.” Indie’s eyes darkened too, his voice lowering his gaze picking each of us out, lingering on me a little longer. “Only a few of us. Not even the full club.”
He didn’t need to say it. We were all thinking the same thing.
One of us was the leak. I glanced at my brothers.
At Demon who looked like he might kill the next person who spoke, at the twins who glanced back nervously, to Fury who didn’t know whether to snap the man who ran off his sister or rage that one of our brothers stitched us up.
And then Indie. He showed nothing. No emotion.
Nothing. Indie’s eyes held on me that bit longer, his jaw tight.
A tiny flick of tension. I didn’t move my gaze, held his.
“The women.” One of the twins spoke suddenly, a tiny crack in the tension between us all forming. “If they know about this, they’ll know where our women are at.”
“What do you mean?” Jazz’s voice changed the pitch. “Where’s mam, Fury?”
“At Grace’s. They’re all at Grace’s. Out the way so they wouldn’t get caught up.”
Demon stood now, his face a mask of malice. “The tide’ll be in before we can cross. We’ll never get there in time.”
“The Vandals? Can we get them up there?” Fury asked.
Indie shook his head, and I watched the muscle in his neck tighten. “They’re already at the Church. They won’t make it back in time.”
“Fuck!” Fury wandered round in a circle, his hands stuck in his hair.
“We’ll get there.”
Our eyes snapped to him all at once. To the man who had hung one of our own from a fucking warehouse ceiling. To the one that had cut her down and saved her from his own club. To the one we could never forgive, no matter what he tried to do to redeem himself.
“I’m the fastest rider in the North. I can get there before the tide. Jazz too,” Chase continued. “No one’ll reach them quicker than us.”
Fury shook his head. “Never trust a fucking Road Rat.”
“Not one anymore.”
“Once one, always one,” Fury growled, stepping in closer and then stopping as Jazz put herself between the two men.
“Fucking hell,” she shouted. “Put your fucking balls away. That’s my mam too. And you put her in fucking danger. We’ll get there. We’ll protect them. I’m as much club as you are, Fury.”
Fury looked like he might swat her away, his eyes flicking from his sister to Chase and back again. And then he took a step backward and looked at Indie.
“Go.” Indie instructed.
In the distance, we heard a rumble. Motorbikes. Deep and angry. And more than one.