Whistler's Trouble (The Copperhead Kings MC #4)

1. Six Minutes

Six Minutes

Whistler

I'm putting ten dollars of regular into a truck that needs thirty when a man in good shoes tells me it might rain.

He says it like weather is a thing he invented.

“Spring usually does that," I tell him.

Three notes slip between my teeth while the pump ticks. Clear, clear, clear. Nothing behind them. Just air and habit.

The man smiles. Mid-forties. Gray at the temples. Navy coat that fits him too well for Hollow Creek and brown shoes too clean for a gas station off Route 12. He's holding coffee he doesn't drink.

"You from around here?" he asks.

"Depends who's asking."

His smile widens. "A man trying to decide whether to take twelve through Hollow Creek or stay on the highway."

"Stay on the highway. Twelve gets narrow past Miller's Bend, and Mrs. Haney drives dead center because she believes lanes are a federal conspiracy."

He laughs on cue. "Good to know."

I give him the feed store, too. Tell him Prewitt's has coffee if June likes you and a bathroom if she doesn't. Tell him the rail crossing will knock the alignment out of whatever rental he's driving.

Tell him the garage in town charges outsiders twenty percent extra unless they mention my name, in which case they charge thirty.

He gives me six minutes of weather and roads and harmless questions.

Hollow Creek. The Roost. The ice storm. Prewitt Agricultural Holdings.

"That the place the motorcycle club bought?" he asks.

"Nobody bought June Prewitt. Anybody says different ought to say it where she can hear."

"I meant the business."

"June owns fifty-one percent. Kings own forty-nine. Management committee has three seats, long freight needs two independent votes, and Ledger wrote the agreement thick enough to stop a bullet. All public record, friend. You can read it without freezing your toes off beside pump four."

He finally drinks the coffee. "You know a lot about it."

"I know a little about most things and a lot about nothing useful."

The pump clicks at ten dollars.

His eyes go to my cut, then my face. "Eddie Sharp, right?"

The name lands soft. That's why it lands hard.

I hang the nozzle up. "My mama calls me Eddie. You don't look like her."

"Neal Tillery."

No hand offered. No badge, either.

I grin because grinning is what I do when a room changes and nobody else has noticed. "Well, Neal Tillery, take the highway. Rain makes Twelve mean."

He watches me climb into the truck.

The sedan behind him is silver, new enough to have temporary shine and ordinary enough to disappear in any courthouse lot. Private plate. No antennas. No state seal. He parked nose-out beside the air machine, where a camera catches the side of his face but not the tag.

I notice because being talkative isn't the same as being stupid.

Tillery expects those things to travel together. Most people do. A man hears me make three jokes and starts preparing the fourth. He sees the youngest patch, the easy grin, the truck held together by primer and debt, and he decides I'm an open door.

An open door can still have a man standing behind it with a gun.

"One more thing," he calls.

I keep one hand on the truck door. "Knew you were going to ask me to prom."

"The partnership at Prewitt's. People happy about that?"

There it is. Not ownership. Intent.

"Harold Pruitt's eighty-six cows got fed through an ice storm. Mrs. Haney can still pay in eggs. June still owns her father's store. Folks seem happy enough."

"And the Kings?"

"You'd have to ask every one."

"I'm asking you."

"I'm happy when June puts the good coffee on."

I close the door before he can ask again.

I whistle three clear notes and two that drop low as I pull away. All clear. It's a signal meant for brothers, not strangers.

There are no brothers close enough to hear it.

At the Roost, Crow is behind the bar with a yellow legal pad and the face of a man personally offended by accounting. Ledger has his laptop open. Tack sits on a stool with both boots planted and one hand around coffee. Spring rain has started tapping the metal roof.

"Man at Route Twelve told me it might rain," I say.

Crow doesn't look up. "Did you shoot him?"

"Considered it, but he had nice shoes. Seemed wasteful."

Ledger's fingers stop above the keys. "What man?"

I set my keys on the bar. "Neal Tillery. Mid-forties. Good coat. Bad coffee. Wanted to know whether the feed store belonged to us."

Crow goes still.

Most men would miss it. I've spent eight years learning every kind of stillness Crow owns.

Ledger removes his glasses. "What did you tell him?"

"That June owns fifty-one, we own forty-nine, and public records are public."

"What else?"

I repeat the conversation. Every question. Every answer. Six minutes, clean enough to lay out on the bar.

Ledger makes me do it twice.

The second time he interrupts whenever I summarize.

"Exact words."

"He said, 'People happy about that?' I said?—"

"Did he say people or locals?"

"People. He said partnership, not purchase. And when he asked about club authorization, he watched my hands instead of my face."

Ledger writes that down.

Crow looks at me differently then. Still hard. Still measuring. But not the way men look at a cracked bottle. The way they look at a blade they forgot was sharp.

"You clock the car?" Boone asks from the doorway.

I give him color, parking position, half the tag, and the county frame.

"Camera?"

"Pump three gets his face. Air machine gets the car. Clerk's name is DeShawn and he saves footage thirty days unless the owner remembers to pay for cloud storage, which he usually doesn't."

Tack's hand pauses over his coffee.

"What?" I ask. "I buy gas. I make friends."

Ledger is already calling the store.

By the end, Crow isn't pretending the legal pad matters.

"He give you a card?" Ledger asks.

"Didn't give me a badge, either."

Ledger turns the laptop around. Neal Tillery looks out from an official page with the same calm smile and worse shoes.

STATE BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION. ORGANIZED CRIME AND PUBLIC CORRUPTION.

"Well," I say. "Public corruption sounds important."

Nobody laughs.

The room gets three degrees colder. Two beats too late. The conversation was never about the weather. He wanted to see whether I'd talk.

I had.

I just hadn't told him anything I thought mattered.

My phone buzzes.

Nadine: The blue sedan in the hospital lot has your paint on it.

Me: Allegedly.

Nadine: Security video is less philosophical.

Me: Did anybody get hurt?

Nadine: My faith in adult literacy. The sign says COMPACT CARS.

Me: My truck has a compact emotional life.

Nadine: You're an idiot.

I grin down at the screen.

Crow sees it. "Nadine?"

"Hospital administration."

Tack puts down his coffee. The corner of his mouth moves once.

"Phones," Crow says.

The grin leaves me.

We put our phones in the box outside church. Ledger opens a new file. Crow tells him to pull everything the club's attorney can get on state bureau agents assigned to this district.

Ledger already has the file open.

Church runs until the rain becomes dark against the windows. Ledger preserves the gas-station video. Boone writes down the sedan's partial plate. Vale calls back and tells us Tillery requesting public filings isn't illegal, suspicious, or actionable.

"So we wait?" I ask.

"You prepare," she says. "Waiting is what unprepared people call the time before consequences."

Afterward, I retrieve my phone. Nadine has sent one last message.

Nadine: Move the truck before shift change or I'll have it towed.

Me: Missed me that much?

The typing dots appear. Vanish. Appear again.

Nadine: I miss the parking space.

I lean against the wall with the phone warming my palm. In the church room behind me, men build a defense against a threat none of us can punch. On my screen, Nadine gives me the same piece of herself she always gives—an insult sharpened until it can pass for distance.

For the first time, I wonder what happens if one of us stops pretending.