Chapter 9
Jinx
I roll into work with Onyx at my side, because Jasper won’t let me go anywhere alone these days. Onyx heads straight to the back office to pull invoices. He’s got his laptop and can work from anywhere. He’s the club secretary and is the administrator for all the club businesses, including this one.
I flip the sign to ‘OPEN’ and begin filling the cash register. The parts store is back to business as usual. The worst thing a club can do when an enemy hits a business is close it. It sends the wrong message both professionally and about the club being easily taken out by rival clubs.
So, I make coffee and inspect the shelves. Eventually, my employees arrive and start sweeping up and fronting the merchandise.
My ring case has been replaced, and my rings are back to being displayed by the register.
We’ve scrubbed the spray paint off the walls and replaced what they stole.
We’ve righted every single thing they messed up the night of the break-in.
I keep turning the situation over in my mind, thankful that Nora is safe and sound at the Sons’ clubhouse being protected by my club brothers.
I check my phone twice in an hour. Nora hasn’t texted.
I told myself I’d leave her be after the kiss we shared yesterday.
She didn’t invite me to stay in her room last night but I’m a patient man.
I’d rather have her eager, than feeling obligated to have sex with me.
I decide to text her and see how she’s settling in.
Me: The store’s open. Are you good?
Nora: Yes. I’m working on my laptop today.
Me: Anything fun?
Nora: I’m doing marketing for a woman’s OF account.
Me: Anybody I know?
Nora: I doubt it. She charges a grand for images. Definitely out of your price range.
Me: Ouch.
Nora: Didn’t know you were into OF.
Me: I’m not. Just messin’ with ya.
Nora: Consider me messed with.
I get excited because it sounds like we are easing into flirting. Of course, that would be the exact moment Onyx walks back onto the sales floor.
“Did you know that Striker has the salvage yard office set up like a war room? Multiple monitors, the laptop runnin’ code, the CB squawkin’ low in the corner.
Jasper’s at the head of the table. Slate’s beside him over there trying to figure out how to use that fancy thousand-dollar coffee machine Striker bought. ”
“Don’t be absurd,” I tell him. “No coffee maker is a thousand fuckin’ dollars.”
“It was over a grand. I saw the sales slip myself.”
“For that price, it better give handjobs on the side.”
Onyx snorts a laugh, spreading invoices and printouts across the counter. The more he lays down, the more serious his expression gets.
“Something’s been eatin’ at me,” he says.
He’s been pulling double duty as both the club secretary and the club treasurer since his brother, Mica, left to start his own club and he’s looking kinda stressed.
“The Hyenas shouldn’t have been able to pop back up in Cedar Falls.
Three years ago, we ran ‘em out of town. Now they’re back again.
And they’ve got new cuts. Souped-up bikes that look like they’re cobbled together from trash and are the fastest things on the road.
They’ve got drones and the tech they stole from us.
They’re clearly good at buildin’ shit. I think they’re fuckin’ stealing all their shit. ”
“Striker and Jasper are still thinking they’ve got cartel backing,” I remind him. “We already talked about that, remember? What we’re trying to figure out is why the Hyenas keep circling back around to our territory. Why here?”
“Maybe they’ve got a chop operation. Or they’re movin’ some kind of product through here and need eyes on the corridor.
” Onyx shrugs. “I can’t tell you which yet.
I can tell you Coal’s got way more money than he should have, which means he’s either got cartel money comin’ in or he’s already doin’ illegal shit in our territory. ”
“Fuck, I hope he’s not operating an illegal chop operation in our territory. Jasper will lose his fuckin’ mind.”
Onyx asks, “You’ve been ridin’ the county line. What’s the road tellin’ you?”
I lean over the map he’s got laid down on the end of our long counter. I know these roads better than anyone else in the club. I know every blind curve, every scenic overlook, secondary road, and every place that could house an illegal operation out of the sight of the law.
“The brothers are reporting all Hyena sightings. The only cluster that’s not near their clubhouse is here.
” I trace one finger along the back road east of town.
“This is an old industrial route nobody’s used in years.
There’s an old cannery out that way that could be used for a chop shop.
If so, that extra activity might be them guarding the road to keep it a secret. ”
“I’ll call Jasper. We should have a look out that way.”
“I’ll see what I can do about plannin’ a route that gets us near the cannery without crossing their patrols,” I tell him.
He comes back with Jasper on speaker phone. “Jinx, I want you to take a small crew. This is intel gathering only. Do not engage with the enemy. See if they’ve set up shop out that way and if so, what the fuckers are up to.”
“You got it, Prez,” I respond.
He adds, “Take Onyx and a couple more club brothers. If you see anything you can’t handle, you turn around. Otherwise, I want to know what the fuck is going on out that way.”
“Don’t worry, Jasper. There ain’t no way in hell we’re gonna start a fuckin’ gang war all by ourselves in the middle of nowhere.”
When Jasper hangs up, I tell Onyx, “Speak for your fuckin’ self, brother. After what they did to our shop, if I find they have a fuckin’ business in our territory, I’ll burn it to the damn ground if I get half a chance.”
Onyx gives me a feral grin. “Yeah, of course. If the opportunity’s good, we’ll go for it. Not even Jasper would begrudge us a little payback after what they did to our parts store.”
Of course, I’d love to drive home how much I don’t appreciate them tryin’ to force Nora into a marriage she didn’t want, but I keep that part to myself.
***
The five of us roll out within the hour, leaving my employees to run the parts store.
It’s dreary and raining today. That means the air’s cold and wet.
For a while there’s no one but the five of us and the road.
Then I hear a bike behind us. It sounds far away but it has that throaty roar of a Hyena bike with no muffler.
These fuckers ain’t stealthy in the least. I recognize the sound.
The Hyenas get some sick twist from buildin’ a bike out of three other junked bikes.
I don’t understand the thrill of that, like at all.
For some reason, the bike tailing us doesn’t close in on us. A man wanting to jump you closes the gap when the road goes empty. This one is hanging back, keeping pace with us and letting us see him. It occurs to me that he’s herding us like a sheepdog.
I gesture to the others that there’s a trap. We all slow down and so does the bike trailin’ us.
I look ahead and see that the road’s creating a funnel.
The guardrail is on the right and there’s a steep bank on the left.
I already know that up past the bend the road narrows down into a single lane between two loading docks.
It would be the perfect kill box if we were stupid enough to keep going.
I’ve ridden this road a hundred times, so I’m certain of what I see happening here.
There’s a farm cut on the left. It’s a tractor-sized gap in the cut bank.
A person would miss it flying down the road at fifty miles an hour.
I’ve taken this shortcut for my entire life.
I take it again today. Throwing my hand out flat, I peel left into the gap.
My club brothers follow me because they have faith I’d never lead them astray.
We drop off the industrial route onto a dirt path, and behind us the Franken-bike blows past the gap because the rider didn’t know it was there.
Through the trees we catch sight of two bikes parked sideways across the neck of that single lane. They’re sitting right there, where I knew they’d be, along with a pickup truck that looks like it’s seen better days.
“Ambush,” Onyx says at my side. “You smelled it.”
“Yeah, but it ain’t the end of our problems today, brother.”
I point up because I hear the whir of a drone.
It’s flying over the treeline. The drone is a fat black quad with a camera gimbal.
It’s not lost. In fact, it’s tracking us as we slide along the farm cut.
I’d bet my bottom dollar they’re feeding our position to whoever’s sitting in that truck.
My phone buzzes. Striker is back at the junkyard.
He’s watching the same feed we’re living right now.
I hear him through my earpiece. “They’ve got eyes on you. The drone’s relaying your position in real time. Take it out before they can mobilize.”
I lead my club brothers to an old stone bridge. It’s low, with a thick cluster of trees growing overhead. The drone can fly over it, but it can’t see through the trees without getting snared in the branches. If it manages to get close, we’ll be able to fire on it from a safe position.
“Get under the bridge,” I say into my mic, gesturing to make my club brothers understand. “Then kill your engines.”
We all slide under the bridge into the dark, damp, quiet space.
We cut our engines and sit right in the drone’s blind spot.
I hear it whirling away above us like an angry hornet.
Whoever’s operating the drone is crisscrossing its own path, looking for four bikes that just dropped off the face of the earth.
I pull my rifle out of its side pocket on my bike and wait patiently for the opportunity I know is coming.
They won’t give up. They want us too badly.
When the drone drifts low to check the underpass, I take my shot.
It resonates through the stillness and when the drone falls to the ground there’s another unmistakable ruckus.
I ride out to confirm the ambush bikes are giving up the fight. Since I just shot their drone down, they no longer have the one thing that gave them a true advantage today. So, yeah, they’re taking off like a bat outta hell.
Onyx and I go fish the drone out of the mud. We quickly check it over for booby traps and then strap it onto the back of my bike. It’s a good rig. It should be, since they’re using the equipment they stole from us to make it.
***
We make it back to the clubhouse with the drone, and Striker and Jasper meet us in the parking lot. I no sooner stop my bike than Striker is already unstrapping it with a gleam in his eye.
But the thing that breaks this whole case open doesn’t come off that drone. It comes from Nora.
She finds me in the kitchen while I’m scrubbing the muck off my hands from handling that drone.
I grin at her. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, beautiful.”
She leans against the kitchen counter with her arms crossed, ignoring my nice compliment. She’s got a pensive expression on her face.
“What’s up, Nora? Did something happen while I was gone?”
“No. I’ve been thinking. You and the Sons are trying to figure out where my father’s money comes from, right?”
I shut off the water. “Of course we are. Cutting off their money cuts off the munitions and drones they’re using against us.”
“Santos.” She says it flat. “My brother Spark got drunk about six months back and wouldn’t shut up about it.
Santos is a money guy from south of the border.
Spark said the club was done scraping, said they had a partner now who’d make the Sons look poor as church mice.
” Her jaw tightens. “I didn’t understand what he was going on about or why he was so excited.
But I figured that I’d best tell you about it, in case it was important information. ”
“Look, Nora. I know how hard it must have been for you to give up important intel on your family. It might be the information that helps us take the fangs out of the Hyenas. If so, it will make us all safer.”
“They tried to traffic me, Jinx.” Her voice is more pissed than hurt. “That’s what forced marriage is, right?”
I nod, because she’s not wrong about that.
“The way I see it, I’m not obligated to keep all their dirty little secrets anymore. I’m done protecting men who never once protected me.”
I reach, wrap my arms around her and whisper, “You made the right choice, sweetheart. I’ll make sure the right people in our club know about this piece.”
***
I bring it to church later in the afternoon. First, I give a report on the mission to the cannery. I talk about the ambush, the drone built from our stolen tech, and then I give them the name Nora told me.
Striker looks like that name rang a bell and starts pulling up a parcel on the map just past the edge of our territory.
“I think she might be referring to Santos Auto Export,” he says.
“Cars and parts go in, get crated for buyers overseas. These types of operations are mostly just money laundering operations. They’re runnin’ cartel money through a scrapyard shippin’ business.
And it sits one road over from every place Jinx flagged earlier today. ”
A long silence spins out in the room as my club brothers process this information.
Jasper leans back in his chair. His voice turns serious.
“So, the Hyenas didn’t crawl back here on their own.
Somebody bigger is payin’ them to make another run at our territory.
And they hit Jinx’s auto parts store for the tech to pull it off. ”
“Looks that way, Prez,” Onyx says.
I realize that whatever’s coming for us, it’s a lot bigger than two clubs and a busted storefront.