Chapter 22
Penn
The heat rises off the asphalt of the highway, and I’m surprised it’s not melting the rubber right off my boots. Or my tires.
I keep my grip loose on the handlebars as my thighs hug the vibrating frame of my bike. Rooster and Jethro lead the transport truck, and Pacino, Kannon, Capone, and I follow behind it.
It’s quiet. Too quiet, and the hair on the back of my neck stands on end. The calm before the storm, as they say. Except this storm will be bullets, not heavy rain.
My mind is still half stuck back at the house, thinking about Dixie and our boy in her belly. A son. Every night, I rest my hand on her belly, willing the boy to kick and remind me he’s in there, and I’ve gotten rather lucky the past few nights.
I have a family to get back to now. Dixie, our son, and Princess. A real family. That realization doesn’t make me soften. It makes me stronger. It makes me want to shove my fist through anyone who threatens the peace I have sleeping at home waiting for me.
It’s also a bit terrifying. For the first time in a long time, I have something to lose. Which is why I refuse to get sloppy on our runs.
The moon is almost full, but not quite. Considering the weird shit that happens during a full moon, I’m more than happy to avoid that. It’s pretty much a guarantee that something will go wrong.
There’s a lot more light thanks to the moon than usual, and I have to thank it for the glint of metal in the desert that catches my eye. A quick, sharp flash of light from behind what looks to be large boulders. It’s a reflection and absolutely not natural.
“Watch out!” I shout, but I’m too late.
A deafening crack echoes across the canyon, and the sound is like lightning hitting a tin roof. The transport truck veers violently to the left and into the desert sand, the front passenger tire flat as it rolls on the metal rim.
It screeches to a halt, and the driver keeps it upright, thankfully. But there’s more to this than one bullet taking out a tire.
“Ambush!” Pacino shouts, pulling his gun from the holster.
Rooster and Jethro start shooting from their stopped position guarding the stranded truck, and Capone stops next to them. Kannon pulls out his gun and nods at me. “Ready for some shit?”
His eyes are wild and filled with a cold fury that only comes from a man with nothing to lose. Pacino and I, however, both have something to lose. Pacino has a wife, and I have a pregnant girlfriend. But these assholes need to be taught a lesson.
We speed up and head into the desert, counting on luck being on our side to keep the bikes upright as we barrel towards the rocks concealing our enemies. Kannon leads the charge, and I swear, that man has more lives than a fucking cat.
The closer we get, the more we can see, and when a man pops up, I see the Venom leather clear as day. He aims his gun directly at Pacino, and the sight of the snake patch makes my blood boil.
Kannon fires before I do, and the man jolts twice before slumping over the rock, his gun falling into the sand. Blood pools in the dirt, and I’m actually impressed.
“One down,” Kannon shouts, but there’s no emotion in his tone.
Another pops up holding a rifle, and Pacino and I both shoot three shots, hitting the man at least four times in the chest, knocking him backwards into the sand. His rifle shoots aimlessly once in the air as he becomes motionless, the life drained from his body.
I see a third man running toward a cluster of bushes, his boots slipping as he tries to flee the mess he helped start. But I’ll be damned if he gets away.
“Not today, motherfucker,” I mutter as I aim my gun.
I squeeze the trigger, and the gun kicks against my palm. The shooter screams, clutching his upper left arm where the bullet pierced his flesh, and he drops his weapon.
Aiming for another shot, I miss as he ducks and grabs a hidden dirt bike. Kicking the starter as he climbs on as gracefully as a man with a bullet wound in his bicep can, he takes off when the engine comes to life with a high-pitched whine.
He never looks back as he zigzags through the open area until he hits a ridge of boulders. I’m about to race after him when Pacino shouts, “Let him go!”
Kannon lowers the weapon he had aimed as well, displeasure on his face. “Why?”
“We got enough. And we need to clear the road before the cops catch wind of this,” Pacino says. “Tell me we have a spare tire for the truck.”
Shrugging, I holster my gun and head back to the stopped truck where Rooster and Jethro examine the damage. We should really do something with the bodies, but fuck it. They decided to attack, and we took them out. When their leather is spotted, no one will be surprised to find them dead out here.
“Stupid bastards,” Kannon says as we stop to see what we can do to help. “They thought they could catch us sleeping.”
“Butch is getting desperate if he’s sending his boys out here to die to try to take a shipment,” Pacino agrees.
Shaking my head, I sigh. “It wasn’t a random hit. They knew our route, and this is the first shipment in months with heavy artillery. They fucking knew.”
The real question is how they knew. We change our routes. And we never get the same shipment consistently. It’s all strategy to keep them off our tail because drug-dealing club members getting their hands on high-powered weapons they can’t get anywhere else would be the end of us.
“We got a spare?” Kannon asks.
“Yeah, but we don’t really have a great way to jack up the truck on the sand here,” Jethro says. “It’ll just fucking sink.”
“I got an idea,” Rooster says, hopping up and opening the back of the trailer.
Kannon paces along the highway next to our bikes like a restless dog itching to chase after a rabbit. His fingers tap along his holster as if he’s waiting for a duel to start at high noon.
“This is messy,” he mutters as I study him. “I’m starting to think that Zep’s not completely wrong when he suggested taking out those motherfuckers.”
“Kannon—”
“This isn’t a coincidence, and they didn’t just get fucking lucky. They knew we were going to be here. What makes us really believe that Johnny’s death was really a hit and run the cops can’t find?”
Johnny’s death is the dark cloud that’s been hanging over us for two years now.
The official report said it was a hit and run on a dark road, but no one was able to find the car.
They identified it as a Ford based on the paint transfer, and they believe it was an Explorer.
But that’s it. No vehicle. No driver. No justice.
“Johnny was careful. He knew how to ride, and he knew how to watch his back. A random car crossing the yellow line, especially in town on a clear night? You can’t tell me it feels right,” he continues.
“We know it was a hit, but we don’t know it was a hit. That’s the problem,” I remind him.
“Their prospects have been running at the mouth about how they took out our president. Ran him over with a black Ford Explorer like it’s some kind of joke.”
Rolling my eyes, I shake my head. “You really think a prospect could take out Johnny? There’s no fucking way. And if they did, he’d be patched in the next day.”
“What if they did? You only gotta get lucky once.”
“Then why not say anything until now? We know Butch has cops in his pocket, so it’s not like they have to worry about that. And there’s no proof, which they know we won’t make a move without.”
“Maybe they just felt like it was safe. Like we’d been complacent long enough that we wouldn’t get revenge.”
I laugh. “No one thinks we wouldn’t take our shot if we got word that they ran down our fucking president. They’re just running their mouth trying to get pussy their president hasn’t already had.”
“How can you be so fucking sure about that?”
“Because they’re not trying to hide it. The person who did this is keeping their mouth shut because they know they’re fucking dead if they get caught. And those prospects don’t know shit. Not even Butch is dumb enough to let non-patched members in on club secrets.”
This stops him, and he nods at me. “That’s true. Butch is a lot of things, but dumb isn’t one of them. Unfortunately.”
“We’ll get the guy who did it when we get the evidence needed. Like you said, we just need to get lucky once. Someone’s going to slip up, and when they do, we’ll get our revenge.”
“Penn!” Pacino shouts. “Come help.”
I jog over and look at the truck jerry-rigged up with the shot tire sitting beside it. “What’s up?”
“Help me lift the new tire. We can’t jostle the truck too much, or it might fall off the jack.”
No pressure.
I grab one side of the massive tire, my triceps straining as Pacino and I lift the heavy rubber and set it into place as gently as possible. The driver makes quick work of putting the lug nuts on, and the jack sinks into the sand just as he finishes the last one.
“Well, that was perfect timing,” Jethro says. “Everyone good? Whole? No holes we didn’t start out with this morning?”
“All good,” I say. “Two snakes are in the desert with another driving off with a hole in his arm.”
“Let’s get the fuck out of here, then.”
I’m not going to argue, and I hurry to my bike as the truck slowly makes its way back onto the highway. All I need to do is make sure this load gets delivered, and I’m on my way back home to Dixie.
God help any man who tries to stop me again.