The raid was over in minutes. It was clearly a hit and run operation designed to take out their ability to manufacture.
He continued to hold Quinn as she shivered in his arms. “You okay?” Arsen asked.
She shook her head but said nothing. He lay his cheek against her head. She was clearly flashing back to the raid on the Desert Riders compound. “It’s okay,” he murmured. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
A moment later, the door burst open with a bang. He glanced up, ready to shove Quinn behind him, but quickly recognized Phil. Quinn’s back was to the door and she screamed, turning to look over her shoulder and fighting to get away.
“I’ve got you!” he cried, holding her tight as she struggled. “You’re safe!”
She struggled a moment before she recognizing Phil herself and quieted.
“Jesus! We didn’t know where you were!” Phil cried.
“Anyone hurt?”
“None of our guys. Two Horsemen dead.” He looked at the man in the floor. “Make that three. One wounded. Berk is sitting on him waiting for the cops to get here. What the hell happened? In the middle of the day? Are they fucking crazy?”
Arsen toed the dead body. “I think they were trying to cut off our ability to manufacture, maybe as a precursor to starting up their own lab again.”
“But in the middle of the day?”
Arsen shrugged. “Trying to hit us before we can get organized, just like we did them.” Quinn had stopped shaking, but she was still clinging to him desperately tight. “Can you handle the cops to start with?”
“What should we do with him?”
“Leave him and let the cops do their thing. We have nothing to hide. Don’t let them into the clubhouse without a warrant. We’ve worked hard to make sure we’re covered if something like this happens. It’s time to put it to the test, but we don’t have to make it easy for them.”
The sirens were close and coming hard, and Phil turned and trotted away to meet the cops.
“You okay?” he asked her. She shook her head but said nothing. “Come on, I have to deal with this. Let’s get you back to the clubhouse.”
He led her back into the clubhouse and she never let go of him. “Michelle! Take care of her,” he called to the first old lady he saw.
“What happened to her? Is she hurt?”
“Not hurt. Terrified.” He began to pry her hands off of him. “Michelle is going to stay with you until I get back.”
“Don’t leave me,” she begged.
“I’m not leaving you. I’m just going to talk to the cops. Michelle is going to take care of you until I get back, okay?” She shook her head, her eyes wide. “Listen to me! You’re surrounded by God knows how many cops and thirty brothers. Every one of them will give their life to protect yours. You’re safe. I have to deal with this. If you’ve ever trusted me, if you’re ever going to trust me, now’s the time.”
Slowly she released her death grip on him.
He kissed her softly on the lips. “That’s my girl. Go into one of the guest rooms with Michelle. I’ll try to keep you out of it, but if I can’t, do you feel up to talking to the cops?”
“Will you be there?”
“Count on it.”
She nodded then took a deep breath and stood up straight. “I’m okay.”
He grinned. “You’re doing good,” he said, then turned his attention to Michelle. “Stay with her.”
The moment Quinn’s eyes flicked to Michelle, he turned and strode away. He had the utmost confidence in Phil, and all his brothers, but this was his club and he’d be the one who spoke for it.
The Tucson police had arrived in force, but Phil already had the situation in hand and the cops’ guns were holstered.
“Thank you for responding so quickly,” Arsen said as he approached Phil and the cop with the sergeant stripes on his sleeves. He glanced at the sergeant’s name tag. “Arsen Kyle, President of the Blacktop Blades.”
“Your man here tells me he has no idea what this was all about.”
“That’s right.”
“So these Chrome Horsemen rode all the way down from Phoenix just to have a little shootout with a bunch of innocent citizens?”
“What can I say, Sergeant Tamprone?” Arsen said with a winning smile. “They’ve been a rival of ours for a long time. I guess it’s gotten personal.”
“Rivals? In what way?”
“I can’t speak for them, of course, but it’s kind of like a pair of high school football teams. There doesn’t have to be a reason, they just are. I always thought it was a friendly little game, until now.”
“Game? How?”
“Who’s the biggest? Who’s the best? That sort of thing. They’re a lot bigger than we are, but we make more money.”
Tamprone looked at him, his eyes narrowing. “You expect me to buy that this known outlaw club attacked you for no reason other than a friendly rivalry gone bad?”
Arsen shrugged. “You’ll have to ask them the reason.”
“Sarge!” a cop called trotting up. “The live one said they run a huge illegal drug manufacturing facility here.”
Tamprone turned his attention back to Arsen. “Mind if we look around?”
“Have a warrant?”
“Do I need one?”
“If you want to search, you do. By the way, there’s another dead body in the manufacturing building.”
“And what do you manufacture, Mr. Kyle?”
“Soap.”
“Soap?”
“Soap, bath beads, and salts.”
“Craig! Check out the body in the manufacturing building! Mr. Kyle will show you the way.”
By the time all the statements were taken and the bodies were cleared away, Tucson’s finest had a warrant to search for illicit drugs and a dog.
“That good enough for you, Mr. Kyle?” Tamprone asked, slapping the paper into his hand.
He read it over. “Perfectly. Thank you. It’s nothing personal, officer, but generations of Americans fought to give me these protections, and it would be a crime to dishonor them by giving those rights away.”
The sergeant grunted. “Search the place,” he ordered, waving the team forward.
“Phil, you and Zane help them with clubhouse. Let them look any place they want. Have Berk join me in manufacturing in case these fine gentlemen want to open any access panels.”
***
It was almost eight o’clock, more than six hours after the shooting started, before the cops completed their search. The dog hit on several items, and the cops tried to seize all the finished product and raw material in the entire facility, but a quick phone call to the club attorney put a stop to that, though they did take samples for analysis.
“Satisfied?” Arsen asked.
“I think you’re guilty of exactly what that thug accused you of,” Tamprone growled.
“How? You’ve been here for how long? I’ve let you test every sample you’ve asked for. I’ve even shown you our books and the formulations for all our products to show that we actually use the items the dog hit on in our process, even though you had no right to see them.”
“You think you’re smart, don’t you?”
“Why is it so hard to believe we are what we say we are? Is it because we like to ride motorcycles?” Arsen grinned. “To show there’s no hard feelings, would you object if we gave you and your men a selection of our products? For their wives and girlfriends, of course.” When the sergeant stared at him, he chuckled. “It’s not a bribe. It’s not for you, it’s for your wife.”
When he didn’t say no, Arsen turned to Zane. “Go put together a gift box for these gentlemen.” He smiled at the men. “It too bad this had to happen now. We’re in the middle of a packaging upgrade. Next month, they would have been really impressed.”
Zane and Phil, returned twenty minutes later with nine large shipping boxes full of their various products, neatly stacked on hand trucks.
“A small token of our gratitude for your quick response and the job you do.” The cops looked at each other a moment. “I’d really rather not have to unpack the boxes and put the stuff back in the racks, and I’m hoping after they try them, your wives and girlfriends will order more,” Arsen encouraged.
The moment the first police officer picked up a box, nodding in thanks, the rest of the cops took one until there was only one left.
“Your wife will be disappointed,” Arsen said.
Tamprone picked up the box and put it in his cruiser. “I still think you’re guilty as shit.”
Arsen smiled and waved as the Sergeant slammed the door on his car and drove away. “Yeah, but you can’t prove it, can you?”