PROLOGUE
Kyle
My ass hits the couch cushion, but no sooner do I twist the cap off my bottle of beer, then there’s a knock at the door. With a sigh, I push back up, set my beer on the black lacquered tabletop, and move my way through the sparsely furnished apartment. It’s done in whites, grays and blacks with plenty of leather, chrome, and glass. It’s way too contemporary for my taste, but what do I know? I’ve pretty much lived the past three years in a shit hole.
After a quick look through the peephole, I’m unlocking the door to pull it open. Joseph Kizner stands there with a worried look on his face.
He’s always fucking worried around me, and it’s grating on my nerves.
“I’m fine,” I say before he can ask, stepping aside to let him in.
“You look like shit,” he returns casually as he shrugs off his heavy wool overcoat. Winter in Chicago is no fucking joke, but I wouldn’t know as I’m not allowed outside this apartment. The walls are closing in on me, and all I can do is ride it out.
I don’t address his comment on how I look. Instead, I walk to the fridge to pull out a beer for him. He follows me into the modernized kitchen, which is done all in stainless steel and granite, and accepts the bottle from me. He twists the cap off, setting it on the counter.
I wait patiently as Kizner takes a sip. After he swallows, he gets right to the point. “The wiretaps have been approved and are going into place as we speak.”
I nod in understanding. That means shit’s getting real.
“We’re going to go ahead and move you,” he says, and then watches me carefully for my reaction.
I’ve known Joe Kizner a long time. Over the years, he’s lost a little more hair on top and gotten a few more wrinkles around his eyes, but, otherwise, he’s not changed much. We worked together at the ATF on a very dangerous and high-profile case that started ages ago, but that doesn’t mean we’ve spent a lot of time together. That’s because I went deep undercover, immersing myself into a sinister motorcycle club named Mayhem’s Mission. The club was long suspected of running drugs, guns, and sex slaves. Joe was my handler on the outside.
The case started just over five years ago after several informant tips started adding up to a plausible decision to go in. I volunteered and moved to Jackson, Wyoming, settling into a new life as nothing more than a motorcycle mechanic at a local shop. Over the next several months, I got to know some of the club members who would bring their bikes in for work. Eventually, I was invited out to some parties at the club. I went on some “charity” runs, which were nothing more than fronts to make the club look legit. I fucked club whores and snorted coke with my new buds. I devolved from my basic human nature, and I became just like them.
As time went on, I saw things.
I saw illegal shit go down at the clubhouse, and I kept my mouth shut. I did this all under the watchful eye of their leader, Zeke, until, after almost two years, he approached me to patch in with the club.
I’d been tested, of course, before the offer came to me.
A test that will probably continue to haunt me as it involved conveying a very direct message to one of Zeke’s enemies, and while said enemy was a lowlife piece of criminal shit who had just gotten out of prison for raping a sixteen-year-old girl, I still see rivers of blood on my hands because I became his judge, jury, and executioner in one fell swoop just so I could pass Zeke’s test.
That’s when I became a real criminal as well.
For three years after that, I rode with the club. I facilitated drug deals, helped to transport women sold into slavery, and I hurt countless people who the club felt deserved to be hurt. I participated in gang bangs with my new brothers, and I lived without a single fucking regard for the law that I’d sworn to protect.
But I did all of this with the sanction of the U.S. government. As a deep undercover agent, I was given absolute autonomy in my actions to help solidify my position within the organization so that I’d be given a position of trust. It was sort of a “don’t ask, don’t tell” type of policy, and Joe will never know the true extent of the heinous things I did to play my part.
Thereafter, it was a matter of collecting evidence and information, and then passing it on as carefully as possible to Joe. We barely saw each other over the three years I was deep because it was just too dangerous, but I did my job and did it well. I garnered enough evidence that just a few short months ago, the ATF was able to bring down Mayhem’s Mission and their operation, which was spread out over the entire western part of the United States.
This was one of the most remarkable take downs in ATF history because an agent had never been that deep before, or stayed that way for that long. But the real feather in my cap, which will earn me a hefty promotion, a pay raise, and probably some presidential medal or some shit, is that I was able to learn that one very high-ranking U.S. senator from Colorado was deep into business with the club. The senator had state-level cops in his pockets. They were able to pull strings all the way down to local police so that blind eyes were turned to most of the criminal activity. The club made millions of dollars on their enterprises, and that money surged upward to reward the senator.
While I was able to provide plenty of direct proof against Zeke and the club, I’d never been privy to any actual exchanges between the club and the senator. As such, the ATF was quietly moving to get federal wiretaps in place, because while Zeke headed the largest chapter of Mayhem’s Mission in the United States, it wasn’t the only one, and there was plenty of shit still going down.
Which brings me back to Kizner’s visit to this apartment that I’ve been holed up in for almost three months now.
“Moving me?” I ask.
“We had to disclose you as a witness when we sought the wiretaps,” he returns. “You’re now officially a target.”
“Not going into WITSEC,” I tell him adamantly. No way am I giving up every last vestige of control to the U.S. Marshal’s and their witness protection program.
“Stupid fuck,” he mutters in return.
When the ATF took the club down back in October, I was still in deep. They were able to secure the compound and make their arrests without one Mission gang member knowing I was a rat. When they busted in with their flash-bangs and SWAT gear, I took off running as was the plan. I went out the back door, along with two other gang members, and we fled into the back woods, all three of us splitting up in various directions.
I stayed hidden until I was later extracted with such secrecy that only three people in the entire ATF knew of my whereabouts. It later went down in the official report that I’d been executed by Zeke’s right-hand man, a Mission gang member who had taken a bullet between the eyes during the raid and couldn’t say anything to the contrary.
So, on October twelfth, I was officially declared dead and whisked away to hide out in Chicago until the ATF could finish building their case against the senator and the law enforcement officials who were on the take as well.
“WITSEC is your safest option, Kyle,” Joe reminds me.
“It’s a wasted resource on me,” I counter. “I can take care of myself.”
“But you’d have added protection until this gets to trial.”
“You mean, I’ll have watch dogs that will curtail my freedom,” I tell him with a pointed stare. I’d been locked up here in this tiny apartment for almost three months, and I was going stir crazy. I wasn’t about to stay in this type of situation going forward.
“To help keep you alive until trial,” he again pushes at me. “And we need you for the trial. Every single fucking arrest hinges on your testimony.”
“Well, gee, Joe,” I say sarcastically. “I’m glad you’re worried about me personally and not just as a valuable asset.”
Joe sighs and rubs his hand along his balding head. “I’m not even going to address that. You know I’m worried about you personally.”
I sigh as well, raking my fingers through my long, blond hair. It’s taken on a few extra grays over the last few years with all the shit I’ve seen and done. “I know, and I appreciate it. If you’ll just get me a new identity and send me somewhere remote, I’ll handle myself. I can keep myself safe until the trial.”
“There’s more to it than just—”
“I know,” I cut him off. “So set up bank accounts under my new name, move my monies in there because God knows I’ve saved a fuck of a lot of money over the last three years the ATF was paying me, and I don’t know… get me a job or something, so I can stay busy.”
Joe stares at me a long moment before he says, “You know if you don’t go into WITSEC, you’re on your own. And you know he’ll send people after you.”
“He” being the senator, and I nod… because yes, I know this is a distinct possibility.
“Then make sure you send me somewhere he’ll never find me, and then cover my tracks,” I say simply. The government’s been hiding witnesses for decades, and they’re good at it.
Joe takes a long slug of his beer before setting the unfinished bottle down on the counter. “Alright. It will take a few days to get everything set up. I’ll be in touch. Until then—”
“Stay in the apartment,” I mutter.
It sucked donkey dick being dead and having to hide.