THIRTEEN

Hooch

Dagne replaces the fuel cap on the Silverado as I exit the shop at the gas station, supplies in hand. She swore black and blue that she didn’t need anything but the thousand dollars good-faith payment I gave her for the trip, but I get the feeling that if I didn’t buy her food and drink, she wouldn’t either.

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know.” I round the vehicle to the passenger side, and organize the bags behind the seats. “The address is punched into the GPS. If you lose it, call me. The message is tucked in the sun visor. If you lose that, definitely call me.” I shut the door, and lean on the tray to face her on the far side. “If you need anything, even if it’s a chat to stay awake—call me.”

“Got it.” A small smile plays on her lips—lips that I’ve noticed since jacking this up with her yesterday have a small scar, as though they’ve been split and not healed quite right.

“Do I have your number in there too?” She jerks her head to the cab of the truck.

“Nope.” I round the hood to where she now stands with her hip popped into the side of the extended cab. “It’s in this.”

Her eyes track my hand as I pull out a burner phone I set up for her.

“It has one number only—mine. And I’m the only one who knows its number.” She reaches for it, but I pull it out of range. “You have to promise you don’t use it for anything other than callin’ me, okay? Anyone else gets the number, you’re able to be tracked, especially back to me, and as a precaution I’d like to avoid that.”

Her eyes narrow, jaw set hard. “You said this trip wouldn’t put me in danger.”

“It shouldn’t, but as with anything, you can’t be too careful.”

“Right.” Dagne takes the phone, pocketing it in her plaid shirt she scored from Digits.

I shelve the irritation at seeing her wearing another man’s clothes to unpack on a better day.

“Straight there, deliver, and straight back. Balance of your payment on return. Check in twice a day.”

“Set times?”

I shake my head, opening her door. “Nope. Just when you can. Once in the mornin’, and once at night.”

“Sure thing, boss.” Cheeky bitch smirks as she climbs into the truck.

I close the door behind her, leaning my folded arms on the open window. “Drive careful.”

The engine turns over with a gentle roar. “I might not have a vehicle of my own, Hooch, but it ain’t my first rodeo.”

“Right.”

Her gaze drifts to my arms. “You need to move if I’m to go anywhere.”

“Of course.” I step back between the pumps and watch as, with a wave out the open window, she takes off onto the main road out of town. Fuck, I hope this works. I don’t have enough time for a plan B if it doesn’t.

Satisfied she’s not about to return for any random reason, I make my way across the dirt half of the yard to where I parked the bike out of harm’s way. The leather is hot from the unrelenting sun this morning, warm even through the thick fabric of my jeans as I sit astride and wait. Families pass by, young women on their own, and men carpooling to the afternoon shift in the factories. Life passes me by while I sit in the heat and pull out my tinderbox to contemplate my own.

As an only son, the gavel was promised to my hand from as far back as I can remember. The hours between daycare closing and Mom finishing her shift were spent at the clubhouse on my father’s knee. He toted me around that place like a disciple, showing me everything, explaining what it all meant, before I was old enough to connect the dots.

I lived and breathed club culture. It’s the only thing I knew, and when it came time for me to attend public schooling, I was a lost wolf without my pack. The predators circled, they waited for an opening, but like a wolf, I didn’t go down without a fight—no matter how scared I was.

The school system was done with me by age twelve, my first law-issued slap on the hand coming at thirteen, and the first mark on my permanent record at sixteen. I was angry, fighting something I didn’t understand. It took me twenty-eight years to realize what.

That I never had any control over my life.

All my choices were made for me, predestined by the family name on my birth certificate. Good intentions or otherwise, my old man never gave me a snowball’s chance in hell of picking my own path.

It was prison, yet in the outside world—routine etched into the very core of my soul.

And as the plain, unmarked cruiser pulls up to my left I figure out what it was that killed the capacity to feel: the realization that even with my old man’s death there was never going to be any escape, simply a new puppet master.

“Time’s up.”

I stare straight ahead. No point in looking his way; I can’t see him. An open window on the passenger side is all I’m afforded in case of prying eyes.

“Without stepping into Wingmen territory, I can’t get a hold on this.”

“That’d be your problem, not mine.” His voice is clinical, cold, and everything I’d expect from a federal robot like him.

“I still don’t get why you need me for this; you have all the connections.”

“I have suspicions, reasonable doubt—no hard evidence.”

“And that’s my problem how?”

A low chuckle emanates from the car beside me. “Need I remind you?”

Certain he can’t see much above my waist, I scoop out a bump and numb the strain. “Where to from here, then?”

“I need a statement from somebody on the inside detailing who’s at the head of this supply arm—that doesn’t change.” The distinct flick of a lighter punctuates his words. “How you get it is up to you; I can turn a blind eye to that. But I have a meeting in a week with the heads of this investigation.” Smoke drifts out the window. “I promised them a name, and an end game.”

“Another week.”

“I’ll need the contact name, and location within six days at most. Gives me twenty-four hours to do my paperwork.”

Fuck it all. I’m clutching blindly at straws as it is—what’s another week going to achieve? I’m destined to fail, which makes my message with Dagne all the more important to deliver.

“Sure.”

“Don’t come back empty handed this time, Josiah. You fail to get what I need, I put the evidence I have into the right hands and you face the rest of your life behind bars.”

Asshole.

I start the bike and peel away before the fucker can get another word in. His navy sedan fades in my rearview as I open the throttle and find the space to breathe again.