2. Bram
two
Bram
The church table was the same as always: oak, pitted, ugly as the business that happened around it.
The room was built for keeping things in and people out.
No windows, just the single overhead bulb throwing a dirty cone of light across the circle of patched men.
I sat at the head. Didn’t need to call the meeting to order.
Every man there already knew why he’d been summoned.
“Sorry looking sons of bitches,” Rusty said, chuckling as he looked down the table of men who’d seen more shit in their lives in the last two years than most men saw in a lifetime. “Need to cut out the whiskey, weed, and pussy.”
“First two for sure, that last one would cause a fucking mutiny,” I said.
Rusty stood at my right, big arms folded.
He was loyal to his last breath. Getting me through Millie’s death was probably his greatest and most difficult accomplishment.
He was a statue until the last man took his seat, then he sat with the sort of purpose that said we’re not leaving until this is over.
On my left, Kodiak Johnson, the club’s Road Captain, dropped into his chair, checked the lineup, and made a quick mental inventory.
He was always counting, always thinking two steps past everyone else in the room.
“You look like shit,” he said to me.
“Pretend I’m holding up a mirror, fucking asshole,” I said and slapped him on the shoulder.
Down the table, Sniper sat straight-backed, hands splayed flat.
The discipline was for my benefit, not his.
Trace hunched forward like he was about to get thrown out of a bar, every line in his body taut and ready to snap.
The scar in his left eyebrow was silver in the fluorescent light, a line of old damage no one joked about anymore.
They were my two oldest boys, Trace born exactly a year after Sniper.
Millie and I fucked like there might not be a tomorrow and, eventually, there wasn’t.
“Dad,” Sniper said, pulling me back to reality, a reality that had sucked for far too many fucking years.
I nodded at Sniper, the son I’d made president of the Kingman, Arizona chapter of the Jackson Brothers MC. His stay in the Navy SEALs had made him the right man for Kingman, with the Desert Scorpions so close.
I’d put Trace as the Santa Fe, New Mexico chapter president. He was expecting his fourth child, which is why his eyes were glued to his phone. Each of my other sons were presidents of their own chapter, chapters that stretched from Barstow to Washington, North Carolina.
The rest filled in quietly. Full patch, all of them, no hang-arounds or prospects. The air was meat-thick with expectation and the ghosts of every cigarette ever smoked in that room.
Bones Henry, the club’s treasurer, stumbled in, his fly down. Unfortunately for the rest of us, he’d forgotten to put on underwear. The men groaned and told him to zip that shit up.
“He had a late night,” Rusty said. “His old lady tossed his ass out.”
“Again?”
I waited until the door shut, then set the letter on the table, not bothering to open it. The stamp in the corner said Department of Corrections and that was enough for the men who could see it. The ones who couldn’t got the point anyway. They knew the day was coming.
I said, “The Colonel’s out in seventy-two.”
“Motherfucker,” Trace said, looking up from his phone. A bullet had clipped his shoulder the night his mother was murdered. Around that scar were eight tears and the word PAYBACK.
They all remembered. No one said Millie’s name, but I saw it pass over their faces, a flicker of something ugly and quick, gone before it landed.
“I want on this,” Sniper said. “Just me.”
“You know I can’t fucking do that, son.”
Sniper had been in his room playing video games that night, headphones on.
He had no idea what had happened for several minutes.
Then his fucking world caved in. No Child should have to see their mother gunned down, and I’d worked my ass off over the years, trying to keep him from going to prison just to kill the man who had his mother killed.
“I’ll go with him,” Trace said. “Fuck whoever tries to stop us.”
“Shut the fuck up, both of you. Nobody’s doing anything yet.”
Rusty nodded.
Kodiak’s hands folded together, then apart. Down the table, chairs creaked, boots scuffed, and then the room held still.
“Desert Scorpions haven’t disbanded,” I said. “Lost numbers, not structure. They’re sitting on it. Means they’re waiting for the right kind of news.” I let that settle. “This is it. This is their move. Their leader is walking free.”
Trace ground his teeth loud enough for me to hear. “You want us to hit the clubhouse?” He wasn’t going to stop until he killed every one of those assholes.
I shook my head. “We don’t start it. We finish it.”
Sniper said, “Perimeter?”
“Full coverage starting tonight,” I said. “Rusty will have prospects rotate the front and back gates in four-hour shifts. No one gets in or out unless they’re patched. Anyone not on the list, you call it in.”
Kodiak added, “Routes?”
“Need full list of home addresses. Two-man watch on every patch’s house, starting tomorrow. We’ll cover the club wives ourselves. No outsourcing.”
Rusty’s voice was steady, but the undertow was all fight. “You want all the Santa Fe boys brought in?”
“They’re in play,” I said. “But we keep them outside city limits unless something breaks. We keep our presence clean. No more attention from the county than necessary.” I glanced at Trace, the Santa Fe chapter president.
Trace sat back, eyes hard. “Santa Fe is ready. You want me on the gate or running clean-up?”
“Where do you think you’re most useful?” I asked.
He almost smiled. “Never been much for sitting still.”
“Good,” I said. “Because once they realize we’re on the move, it’s not going to be slow. We move fast, we move clean. I’ll have a word with Police Chief Maddox. Let him know the town is going to see some shit go down.” I nodded at Bones. “I’m gonna need an envelope of money for Maddox”
“Same as usual?” he said.
“Add some extra. We need him on this.”
Sniper said, “Timeline?”
I tapped the letter. “Seventy-two hours until he walks. But we move like it’s forty-eight.”
Sniper nodded. That was his way of saying yes sir, and thank you very fuck much.
Kodiak had his notebook out, flipping pages with a mechanic’s precision. He said, “I’ll have route assignments in an hour.”
Rusty’s eyes flicked around the table. “We expecting any inside trouble?”
I shook my head. “Everyone here is solid.”
Trace said, “What about the girls? Want them moved?”
“They stay put,” I said. “You tell them to pack, they’ll tip the whole county. We handle it on our own.”
For a long moment, no one spoke. It was just the hum of the light and the breathing of men who’d sat through too many funerals to need more than direct orders.
I slid the letter across to Rusty. “Read it if you want. Doesn’t change the job.”
He didn’t touch it.
The meeting ended the way these things always did: with chairs scraping concrete and men filing out two at a time, already swapping logistics in low voices.
I stayed where I was until the room cleared.
Then I got up, walked out past the bar, and into the common room.
On the wall, just above the pool table, hung the one photo I’d ever let anyone display: Millie, smiling wide at a club barbecue, holding up a paper plate and wearing a ratty Jackson Brothers tee that looked two sizes too big.
She wasn’t looking at the camera. Her hair was a mess. Her eyes were on me.
I reached out, touched the corner of the frame. Didn’t say anything.
After a second, I pulled my hand back and left the room.
Out in the yard, the air was desert-cold and clean, and I could hear the club coming alive with orders, engines turning, all the old machinery grinding into motion.
There was a reckoning on the horizon, and the Colonel knew it.
His club had been somewhat decimated over the past twenty years while he sat in prison, but there was no doubt that as soon as he walked out of that prison, he’d be making calls and putting the old gang back together again.
I couldn’t let that happen. The man had to die.
I stood there a minute, letting it hit me, then went to find Rusty. There was work to do.