28. Garret
GARRET
Usually the wind in my face stole whatever emotion I was dealing with and swallowed it until what remained could be drowned by a few shots of bourbon. But today nothing seemed to help—and I'd managed to pick up a pint in Vincent to drown as much as possible.
I couldn't wrap my mind around the fact that Sara had lied to me. She looked me in the eye while we had sex and knew how I'd feel about this whole situation and she let me make her come while she kept her precious secret. It hurt.
It hurt worse than her ghosting me for four years then waltzing back into my life like she had done nothing wrong.
How could she? I had a kid and I had missed so many important moments in his life—his first words, the first time he rolled over, when he crawled, his first step. I could never get those things back. They were gone, in the past, and I didn't even know what the future held.
But eventually I was tired and I was running low on fuel. I circled back toward Grove Hill, and home. And smoke was the first thing I saw when Route 9 curved toward the Anvil.
Thick black clouds rolled off the roofline in columns that smeared across the sky.
Then I noticed the lights—two fire trucks parked at angles across the lot with ladders extended and hoses snaking across the pavement.
Three police cruisers sat behind them with their lights flashing and a crowd stood in the road watching the bar burn.
Club members and town folk all clustered to gawk at the sight.
I pulled my bike to a stop on the shoulder as the stench of gasoline hit me.
The ripe scent permeated the air so thick it was obvious this wasn’t an accidental fire.
Somebody had walked up to the Anvil and lit it up on purpose.
It had me on my feet, weaving through people to find Fox and make sure he was okay as I glanced up at the first responders holding a hose on the flames.
Butch grabbed my arm before I'd made it past the first truck. He was covered in soot with a white cloth to his face coughing. "Where's Fox?" I asked.
"Tailgate." Butch jerked his head toward his truck at the edge of the lot. "You know this was them damn Locusts, right?" I scowled at him because I didn't doubt it was true. I just wondered what it was that Lightning had done to incite this.
"Breathe, buddy," I coached, turning toward where he had nodded.
Fox sat on the tailgate of Lightning's pickup with a bottle hanging from one hand and his eyes locked on the flames eating through the front wall.
His face was blank, though the trace of sadness in his eyes revealed what he was really feeling.
It felt crushing seeing the man who was supposed to lead us just staring like a mannequin.
He had no motivation to gather the club and protect it, and I had no intention of letting Lightning do something rash and stupid.
I pushed through a few more clusters of people and stopped by our president, catching his eye.
"Fox," I said. "We need to talk about?—"
"Lightning's handling it," he grunted without looking at me.
Lightning stood twenty feet from the police line screaming at a group of patched members, his arms swinging and his face red. "We ride right now! Every one of you, right now, we go down there and we burn their whole goddamn city to the ground!"
"Mr. Laramore, you need to calm down." One of the officers stepped forward with his hand raised. "We'll conduct an investigation and?—"
"Your investigation can go to hell. Those Locust bastards torched our bar and you're standing here with your thumbs up your asses while they celebrate." Lightning shoved past the officer and pointed at the bikes lined up along the road. "Mount up! All of you!"
I watched the scene unfold knowing if I didn't do something my brothers were gonna march themselves right into a prison cell or worse. "Lightning," I called but he ignored me, and the cop grabbed his elbow.
Yeah, this was bad, but sending club members to torch an entire small town wasn't what I signed up for. We were brothers, and brothers stuck together, but I wasn't about to kill for anyone. Least of all Lightning.
"Sir, step back right now," the cop said.
"Get your hands off me?—"
Lightning threw an elbow, then knocked the cop to his feet, and instantly two officers tackled him to the pavement.
His face hit the asphalt and they cuffed him while he swore and thrashed, and his boots scraped against the ground as they hauled him upright and walked him to the nearest cruiser, shoving him in.
The door slammed shut behind him and his muffled shouting carried through the glass.
Then things erupted. Rusty and Butch were shouting, and half a dozen patched members started raising hell. It wasn't long before a few prospects were mounting up ready to take off, and I turned to Fox.
"Fox," I said again, turning back to the tailgate. "Lightning's been arrested. That puts me next in line."
Fox took a drink from the bottle and said nothing, but his eyes tracked up to my face. He was wasted, and getting worse by the second. I had to do something.
Butch stepped toward a police cruiser and Rusty was right behind him, and half the club surged forward with fists up and mouths running. One of the younger guys picked up a chunk of debris from the parking lot and cocked his arm back.
"Hold it!" I shouted, stepping between them and the cops.
"Every one of you, stop where you are." Butch turned and Rusty stopped mid-stride.
"We're no good to the president if we're all sitting in a cell next to Lightning.
" My eyes swept the group and held each man long enough to make the point. "Stand down. Now."
"We gotta do something, Crank…" Rusty coughed a few times and covered his mouth with his arm, and Butch scowled at me.
"You goin' weak, Crank?" Butch glanced at the prospects, then glared at Fox.
"I said stand down, now." My order as third in command got their attention but I could tell they weren't happy. The police relaxed a bit, but I heard one of them call for more officers, which probably wasn’t a bad idea. Lightning had these guys riled up.
But the guys pulled back a few steps and started talking amongst themselves as firefighters moved closer to the blaze.
The roof caved in on the left side and sent a shower of embers spiraling into the sky.
Firefighters redirected their hoses to keep the flames from jumping to the buildings on either side as glass exploded from the front windows and scattered across the lot, and the heat pushed everyone back another ten feet.
I watched as they positioned a hose on the diner too, dousing the building in a cool spray probably to prevent the fire from jumping, though the siding on the entire end of the building was melting off.
Anne would have a good insurance claim on her hands, but hopefully they'd be able to save the building.
And when I turned back, Fox still hadn't moved from the tailgate.
Going to him for support in leading these men right now was off the table.
Any choice he made would be rooted in selfishness, not smarts.
And after the day I had, I had a mind to go destroy everything those locusts stood for, but I thought of Peter and how he would feel if he knew the man who fathered his grandson was a killer.
I wouldn’t do that to him. And I wouldn’t do that to that family, no matter how angry I was at Sara.
"We need to hit back tonight, Crank." Butch's stalked up to me, egging me on. He wanted to do what lightning had told them, and I wasn't having it. If they rode, it’d be without me. "Lightning would've had us rolling already."
"Lightning's in handcuffs," I grumbled, and I added a stern glare with it.
"Then you lead it." One of the men behind Butch stepped forward, a younger guy with fresh ink on his neck. "Or are you going to stand here and watch our bar turn to ash while the Locusts sit at home laughing?"
"Crank's gone soft," another voice muttered from the back. "Lightning was right about him."
Every muscle in my body tensed to strike. A part of me wanted to burn every building the Locusts owned and make them choke on the same smoke we were breathing. The rage was real and it was ready, and it would have felt damn good to turn it loose.
But rage was what Lightning ran on. And that was what got him locked up in the back seat of a police cruiser like a caged dog.
"We do nothing tonight," I told them. "Lightning's gonna want in on whatever we do, and he'll be out by morning. We'll wait for him and make a plan, and then hit them together."
My eyes found Butch and held. "Anyone who has a problem with that can take it up with me personally."
I knew just what Lightning would do when he got released, but I wouldn't be able to stop that. Still, I wasn’t going to go be a part of it either. This whole thing was nonsense. It'd gotten way out of hand, and I had bigger fish to fry right now.
The grumbling continued but the men backed off. Tomorrow was a new day, one I was sure would bring more violence. But tonight, I planned to join Fox in his misery and drown my sorrows. I just had to do it somewhere other than the bar now.
And those Locusts had better pray I figure out how to control my temper because if I didn't get a handle on this, people would die.