7. Rex
With only Sonic, prez and me in the room, it was nowhere near as lively as when all of us were present. The camaraderie was gone, now it was all business. The menace permeated the air, a vengeance that was going to be ours. But the balance that we maintained in our town was skewed, and we needed to right the scales before more kids died.
The position of the clubhouse wasn’t just convenient because it lay behind the business, the business and clubhouse were built here deliberately… right on top of an old war bunker. Built by the prez’s crazy-ass old man who was paranoid that the Vietnamese would come back for him. He had the bunker dug out with a tunnel connecting the two buildings. We’d added onto it over the years since we took it over, more tunnels that led to rooms for each of us in case of lockdowns. Rooms where we can keep things hidden in case the sheriff decided one day that our green wasn’t enough to keep his head turned. A maze of our own making, and Cal was the Minotaur in the center, the beast that destroyed any who entered his territory.
And the best bit—the tunnels weren’t on any plans. They were ours. The Street Kings had our secrets, the minute you took that patch and were permanently branded with the wire, you were a lifer… no getting out.
And then you were shown the bunker.
Prez pushed aside the large chest, conveniently on hidden runners for ease. The trap door was pulled open, an automatic light flashing on to guide our boots down the metal staircase.
The silence was comfortable between us as we entered our underground domain; the thick cement a calming weight around me. Threads hated it down here, couldn’t stay down here that long, he said the air was suffocating. To me, it was calming having the walls on all four sides, like I was protected from all the bullshit.
Our boots echoed as we hit the hallway, the cavernous space lined with racks of canned goods that’d last our family for weeks, maybe months. We hadn’t tested that theory yet.
“Will the little blonde be a problem?”
I didn’t know who Cal was talking about at first, the question just thrown into the ether, and with Sonic”s secret extracurricular activities recently, I assumed he was talking to him—until his dark eyes slid to mine, a question in their depths.
“Why would she be a problem?” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “I just met her yesterday.”
“I also saw the way you looked at her.” Prez pulled open the thick steel door that led into the inner sanctum, the middle of our maze. “You’ve never looked at other women that way.”
I wrinkled my nose at the stale air that hit me as we walked in, or did I sneer at the statement?! “I’ve only fucked club pussy for years, why would I look at them in any way except to tell them to suck my cock.”
Sonic snorted in amusement, a contrast to Cal’s disapproval. “I really hope that you don’t ever have daughters.” He rummaged around in the desk that was an exact replica of the one upstairs in his office, his point about ‘the little blonde’ forgotten.
I sometimes forgot that behind the hard exterior, he was a family man at heart. His daughter—and pride and joy—was old enough to date. Not that she was allowed to with the amount of uncles that scared off any suitors.
A shock of anger sprung through me when I thought of some cunt speaking about Bailey the way I talked about club pussy but then, they knew what they were getting into when they showed up in tiny skirts with their tits hanging out every night—they wanted club dick. They acted like whores so we treated them like whores.
Bailey—my niece albeit not by blood—was a good girl. And every single brother here would fall on a blade for her, ain’t no way any man would ever treat her with anything less than respect, not on our watch.
Sonic collapsed in an arm chair in the corner, his boots kicked out and splayed wide. His head fell back against the cushion, his eyes closing as if they were weighted down and he could barely keep them open. “What’s wrong, Brother?” I whispered as Cal continued his rummaging.
His lips pinched, lines forming around his mouth like he had words stuck in his throat. His head rocked side-to-side, and I left him to his solitude in the corner, because the man would only tell us when he decided.
But I hoped he pulled his finger out his ass soon and told us what his problem was, because we weren’t fucking mind readers. And I couldn’t kill his enemy if I didn’t know who I was fighting.
“Aha,” Cal shouted out, holding a piece of paper in the air. “I knew it was here somewhere.”
“You need to get a new filing system.” I grabbed the paper from him, looking over the scribbles and trying to decipher the chicken scratch.
“I have a filing system,” Cal grunted. “This is organized chaos.” His arms spread out to gesture to the piles of crap all over his desk.
“How comes your desk upstairs doesn’t look like this.” I shoved a box of books onto the floor to sit on the lone chair beside the desk.
“Because Jenna organized my shit up top, she’d ruin me if she saw this place,” he mumbled, a slash of red arcing across his cheeks.
Laughter bubbled in my gut, but I kept that shit tamped down, ain’t no way I was laughing at my prez, he’d tell Jenna, and she was mean as fuck sometimes.
“What are we looking at, Prez?” Sonic was wide awake now, his game face fixed on the forgotten paper in my hand.
“It’s the details of the new shipment that’s going to Mexico next week.” His feet kicked up on the desk, his boots crossed at the ankles. He looked relaxed if not for the tension in his shoulders. “I want a tracker put in the coffin. Get Gauge to sort it.”
The order details were for a 6 foot by 3 foot solid oak coffin, hand made with a gloss finish. Gauge would do the woodwork, and Threads would do the interior, sewing the satin sheets together and padding it out for comfort.
Although that always struck me as stupid, because why did the dead need to be comfortable, it’s not like they could fucking feel it.
Once we’d got the funeral home up and running over 15 years ago, it made sense to have the plush padded interior… it hid the drugs sewn inside so well.
The coffins were ordered online legitimately, and we shipped the beautiful, finished product across state lines. No one thought to check for packages hidden inside, especially considering Threads’ skill with a needle, the man made it so you could barely find the seam.
And it was even easier to ship across when there was a body inside, that was when it got fun. Those state troopers always paled at the stiffs we carried across.
Poor ‘Juanita’ was going home to be buried with her family on her home soil… they never questioned it.
“If we know where it ends up on their side, we can try and figure out who’s tampering with it and bringing it back over.” Cal sighed in relief now that he had a plan of action.
I squinted down at the paper, my mind racing with questions. “Why did you only bring us down…”
Cal’s eyebrows raised at my question. “You’re astute, brother. That’s why you’re my sergeant.” His boots hit the floor with a thud, his hand running over his head as if he was trying to claw out information, leaving red welts along the skin. Sonic watched him worriedly, the dark slash of his eyebrows forming a V.
“Why aren’t we all here?”
“I can’t help shake the feeling that the only reason we’re not able to find out anything is…” Prez swallowed his next words, but the implication was there.
“You think there’s a rat.” Sonic’s hushed reply had an immediate denial on the tip of my tongue. I wanted to curse him for thinking such bullshit about a brother. It wouldn’t happen, it couldn’t! We’d taken an oath, and that oath was sacred. The brotherhood, the club… it was family. And you didn’t fuck with family.
“You’re angry,” Prez noted when I couldn’t hide the disdain, the rage at the idea that someone would ever betray us. I wasn’t able to keep my emotions clear when something like betrayal was on the table.
“I can’t believe it, Prez.” The paper crumpled in my fist. “There’s gotta be something else, a rat can’t be our first thought. It’s ruining the good names of our brothers.”
“I know, son.” He hadn’t called me that in a long time, not since he’d found me, a scrawny kid with nowhere to go. Cal had given me a family, and with one sentence, it felt like it was being ripped away from me.
Sonic shuffled forward, wariness lined his face as he approached me. “He’s right though. Think about it.” He stood as still as a statue, frowning down at the cement floor like it held all the answers. “We’ve investigated every avenue, every lead, there’s nothing. Every time we get to a location to speak to someone, they’ve done a runner. No one’s talking to us anymore, because someone has got there first… but how the fuck did they know we were coming, huh?”
“We’re losing the town, we don’t have the edge anymore,” Cal stated. “People are still scared of us, but they’re more scared of something else. Neither do they trust us to sort this shit out.”
“Who do you… who do you think it is?” I ran over the members in my mind, seeing their faces and experiences like a film reel in color. For me, I’d been part of this club for 20 years, since the day I met Cal and he’d taken a chance on me. I’d be a lifer. It was the same for many of us, Link especially. Our enforcer was Street Kings born and bred.
The stress was taking a toll on our president, the heels of his hands dug into his eyeballs, rubbing them to ease the pressure of his worry.
Callahan was strong, a warrior. The one man who never showed his weakness except to his wife. But now, his dark eyes pinged between me and Sonic, except we had no answers for him, only more questions.
“I don’t know, I’ve run that over and over in my mind on repeat. But I can’t figure it out. Everyone except the prospect carries the patch, and has fought and bled for this club. And even then, Ryan has been prospecting for almost two years now, I was going to have a vote on him soon.” He let out a great sigh. “I’ve paused that for now, until we know who it is that’s been sharing our secrets.”
“Did you know?” I asked Sonic.
The stoic man nodded. “I’ve been exploring the idea for a little while now.”
“Is that where you’ve been running off to lately?” It was almost like shutters slamming down behind his eyes, his face closed off to every emotion. He didn’t respond to my question, but his eyes shifted to Cal, a silent message that implied our prez knew exactly where he was every single time. And if he knew, then it was none of my fucking business. I shook off the disturbing question. Why the fuck was I asking where he was? Did I think he was the rat? No way… not our VP!
“We keep this between us for now. And it’s not because I suspect those who are not here. I trust my brothers with my life, but the smaller the circle, ya know.”
“I get it.” I chucked the ball of paper on the desk. “The less people who know, the less chance it gets out to anyone. We don’t want to show our hand too soon… info first. I’m heading up to Nag’s cabin, see if he’s got anything to share.”
Slowly, I twisted to leave as if I’d aged twenty years in the past twenty minutes. Hearing that there’s someone you trust with your life that might be trying to stab you in the back was a killer.
“Hey, Rex,” Cal called out.
Pausing with my hand on the door frame, I looked at the man who had spent more than half my life by my side.
“Be safe.”
And with a nod, I left them to their meeting, intent on finding out as much as I could, because I knew I wouldn’t sleep with the daunting task of hunting down a traitor.