34
Deacon
Church started the way it always did, with coffee going cold and a table full of men handling business while the bigger problem waited somewhere outside the room.
Priest sat at the head of the table, Graves had a notebook open, Rook already looked irritated, and Ledger had his papers arranged with his usual precision.
Ink sat to my left with a pen in hand, Ghost had his laptop open, and Nomad watched the room from behind that loose posture that never fooled anybody.
My mind kept trying to split off anyway. Jade. Lila. Matty. The things I still hadn’t told Lila. Club business. The shop. Too many pieces of my life had started demanding attention at once.
Priest tipped his chin at Ledger. “Start us off.”
Ledger did. The Bar first, then Red Mercy and Retribution Auto, numbers delivered dry and clean. When he reached Last Rites, I took over.
“Shop’s busy,” I said. The numbers only confirmed what we already felt every time we walked through the door. “Busier than we can keep handlin’ with all the other shit goin’ on. Vise is puttin’ in more hours. Rory’s chair stays full. Ronan’s booked out. So we brought in another artist.”
I glanced toward Ghost before adding, “He’s solid,” I said.
The portfolio had earned him the chair before anything else.
“Good line work. Good color. Fast without gettin’ sloppy.
We need another hand in the shop, especially with every damn one of us gettin’ dragged off to watch over somebody or chase after Joker. ”
Priest gave a short nod. Ink kept his eyes on the page, though something in his posture tightened.
Ghost caught the practical problem first. “I want the full background before he settles in too deep. How clean is he?”
Garrett was an employee, not club, but Last Rites belonged to us. Anybody working under that roof got close enough to matter. “Clean enough on paper, but here, I’ll send you the details I have on him.”
Ghost’s email pinged. His fingers moved across the keyboard before he answered. “Moves around some. Different shops. Different towns. No obvious debt, no arrests that jump out, no affiliations I can tie cleanly to trouble yet. But I’ll keep diggin’.”
Rook latched onto the only word that mattered. “Yet.”
“Yet,” Ghost agreed.
Priest leaned back. “Shop needs the help. Doesn’t mean we get sloppy.”
“We won’t,” I said. Last Rites had too many club ties for sloppy to be an option.
Priest’s gaze shifted to Ledger. “You read Lena’s journal yet?” The question changed the room faster than anything about Joker had.
Ledger went rigid enough that every man at the table felt it before he answered. “No.”
Priest watched him for a beat. “Where is it?”
Ledger’s mouth flattened. “Right where she left it in the house.”
The journal was more than evidence. It was Lena’s voice waiting in a place Ledger had already had to survive without her. Priest rubbed a hand over his jaw, frustrated with the situation rather than the man.
I stepped in before the silence hardened. “Man,” I said, keeping my eyes on Ledger, “you gotta go get it and read it. We gotta know how much she told them. What exactly we’re workin’ against here.”
Ledger stared at the papers in front of him, jaw locked. Ghost finally tipped his attention away from the laptop. “I’ll go with you.”
Ledger looked up.
Ghost’s voice stayed flat, but the loyalty under it wasn’t. “We wouldn’t leave this shit for you to do alone.”
Ledger dropped his head for a second and dragged a hand over the back of his neck. When he raised it again, the grief was still there, along with the dread of whatever Lena had left behind. “Yeah,” he said, voice rough. “Alright.”
Priest eased off enough to let that be the decision. “I know you don’t wanna touch it. I know it’s gonna be hell. But we need to know what she left us.”
Ledger answered with a small tilt of his chin and went back to the papers. Numbers were easier than memory.
Ghost tipped his laptop screen down. “Got somethin’ on Joker.”
Every man at the table snapped back into the room, and Priest’s voice went flat. “Talk.”
“Not direct movement from Joker himself. But there was Dead Man’s Hand traffic up past Eastwick Hollow. Headed toward the hills.”
Nomad frowned. “What the hell would DMH be doin’ up there?”
Everybody knew the stretch Ghost meant. Dense forest and bad roads cut through older territory lines, ground that belonged to men who noticed who crossed it.
Ghost confirmed the problem. “That’s the problem. Hollow Crown controls the routes up that way. They don’t let just anybody pass through their territory into those hills.”
Rook’s mouth flattened. “So why’d they let DMH?”
Graves looked toward Ghost. “Either they didn’t know,” he said, though none of us believed that was likely, “or they knew exactly who was movin’ through.”
Nomad leaned back. “Doubt Hollow Crown misses bikes they didn’t approve,” he muttered.
“They don’t.” Men like that didn’t overlook unfamiliar colors rolling through their roads.
Priest looked at Ghost. “How many?”
“Enough to matter. Not enough to look like war.”
That made it worse. A small group meant purpose.
Ink finally lifted his attention from his notes. “Who or what were they goin’ to?”
Ghost shook his head once. “That’s what I’m still workin’ on.”
Priest looked toward Ink. “Anything new outta Jackknife?”
“Still nothing current.” Ink’s mouth tightened. “He gave up another old route this morning and a property DMH stopped using months ago. Ghost checked both. They’re real, same as everything else he’s handed us.”
Ghost nodded. “Hasn’t lied yet.”
“No. He just keeps knowing exactly where to stop.” Ink tapped his pen once against the page. “Every answer gives us something we can verify without giving us a damn thing Joker can’t afford to lose.”
Rook leaned forward slightly. “Maybe we stop making this comfortable for him.”
Graves looked toward Ink. “Kid scared yet?”
“Yeah.” Ink’s expression stayed tight. “Just not scared enough to forget whatever Joker drilled into his head before he sent him here.”
Priest let that sit for a beat. “Then push harder. Scare him. See what falls out when he stops thinking about every answer before he gives it.”
Ink nodded. “Been wanting to.”
Something in the way he said it caught my attention. Ink still hadn’t figured out why Joker had chosen that particular prospect to send into our hands, and every careful answer seemed to bother him more instead of less.
Priest’s jaw tightened. “Keep workin’.”
Ghost nodded once.
The same ugly possibilities moved around the table. Joker and Sadie were still missing. Dead Man’s Hand had crossed into territory they shouldn’t have been crossing. Hollow Crown had either allowed it, missed something they had no business missing, or had a reason to look the other way.
Priest looked around the table. “We don’t assume nothin’ yet. But if Joker’s got friends, shelter, or business up in those hills, I want to know before it turns our problem bigger than it already is.”
Rook gave him a hard look. “It’s already too big,” he said.
“Yeah,” Priest said. His gaze moved back toward Ghost. “That’s why I want ahead of it.”
Church broke soon after, leaving us with more questions than we had walked in with.
Last Rites was past its afternoon rush when Ink and I walked in. Needles buzzed beneath low music, and disinfectant cut through the smell of ink and skin.
Ink pushed through the door first. Rory was behind the counter with a piercing tray spread in front of her, dressed in black with silver catching along her fingers and ears. She looked up once, checked the clock, and found a reason to be annoyed. “You’re late,” she said.
Ink followed her glance. “By three minutes.”
Rory went back to the tray. “That’s late.”
I snorted, which earned me her attention. She looked me over with the same suspicion she gave questionable jewelry. “You look too cheerful. It’s suspicious.”
“Maybe I like my job.”
“That’s worse.”
From the nearest bay, Ronan glanced up from a sketch and gave me a small nod before returning to work. Vise came out of the break room with a bottle of water, took in me and Ink, then looked toward the bay by the front windows.
Garrett Talon had already made himself comfortable there.
Broad-shouldered and dark-haired, he leaned against the partition with a stencil book open in one hand.
He looked settled, but his eyes were still cataloguing the shop.
When he spotted us, an easy smile spread across his face.
“There they are,” he said. “Was startin’ to think the legends were fake. ”
Ink kept walking like the greeting wasn’t worth slowing down for. I stopped. “Legends, huh?”
Garrett’s mouth tipped at one corner. “Seemed respectful.”
“Sure it did.” Tattoo shops were full of personalities, and shy didn’t keep a chair booked. Still, there was something about how quickly he’d found his footing that kept me paying attention.
Ink stopped near the bay, expression flat. “You get settled?”
“Mostly.” Garrett looked around again. “Nice setup.”
Ink gave him one short nod. “You’ll learn it.”
Garrett’s gaze drifted toward the front counter. “She always look like she’s one bad sentence away from stabbing a man in the throat?”
Rory never looked up from the tray. “Only if he deserves it.”
Garrett grinned. “Good to know.”
Ronan’s mouth shifted at one corner while I jerked my chin toward the bays and started the walk-through.
“Alright. Bookings run through the front, but everybody handles their own consults and repeat clients. Everybody’s got a lane they’re best in,” I said.
“Rory leans watercolor and runs the piercings. Ronan does a lot of new school. Vise is strongest in neo-traditional. Ink loves geometric but also does blackwork. Priest is strictly blackwork. I’m American traditional.
Doesn’t mean that’s all we do. Client books with you for somethin’ outside your usual, you handle it if it’s in your wheelhouse.
But those are the styles people mostly know us for. ”