31
As promised, I’d gotten out of jail early after having delivered all my Silver Crows intel along the way. Over the three years I was inside, I’d created an actual bond with their Prez and VP, which I kept to myself.
I’d learned a lot of things in prison.
Jail was rough, it was shit, but it made me rely on myself more than anything ever had. For three years I’d been stripped not only of any external power and control but also of my own ideas of the power and control I’d always assumed I had over things, over people, situations. Letting go was gut wrenching, but illuminating. Accepting this from early on had only made me realize the bitter truth that the only things we really do have control over in this life are our own selves, our actions. Essentials.
Others dictated when I slept, where I slept, who I lived with, what work I did, what I ate. There was plenty of sliced white bread too, and I had to steel myself in its presence. I did it, considering it another form of daily exercise along with the five hundred push ups I did to keep my hands and arms strong. I’d read books that I’d never otherwise gotten a chance to read, I made new alliances, new enemies. I had brutally honest conversations for the first time in a very long time.
Keeping organized and clean, fit and strong, was my way of exercising the control I did have; my routine, my success. Some read the Bible, others took education courses, some got obsessed with chess or fitness. Whatever I was engaged in, I used my time wisely to expand my consciousness of myself and stay sharp.
You got a lot of time on your hands in prison, time to panic, time to think, time to worry, to obsess, to be angry. Time also stands still for the prisoner. Somehow we believe that when we get out, everything—friends, family, work—will be the same way we’d left it. But over these past three years the world kept on moving without me, and at a clip that was almost incomprehensible.
The day I got out, my one thought was getting to Serena. Drac and Slade met me on the outside, bringing me my old Heritage Softail. My hand shook as it stroked over the saddle. I hadn’t ridden in three whole years. A lifetime. We went to Chicago, and after one night on the town together, I told them I needed a couple weeks on my own before going home. They returned to Nebraska, and I headed to Tania’s. I’d had Rhys keep an eye out for Serena, but after the first few weeks, he’d told me she’d disappeared. I’d told myself she was being cautious now that I was in jail, leaving no clues behind.
I found Tania. She blinked at seeing me in her doorway.
“What?”
She shrugged. “You look different. Bigger, meaner.”
“I’ve been inside for three years, Tania.”
“I know. Come in. ”
I went in.
Her eyes went to my colors. “You on your way back to Nebraska now, to your club?”
“Yeah, of course, but I wanted to see her first. Got to see her. And I can’t find her.”
Tania’s lips pressed together. “I don’t know where she is. She left town after you got arrested. We kept in touch in the beginning, but I haven’t heard from her in over three and a half years now.”
“Jesus. She’s protecting you by keeping away.”
I couldn’t find any trace of “Ashley Wyeth” anywhere, and neither could Rhys. Had she gotten a new name and ID?
“You remember that friend of hers, Ciara?” I asked Tania.
“I do.”
“You got her number?”
“I used to. I’ll look.” Tania found Ciara’s phone number in an old notebook and called her, asking if she’d heard from “Ashley” and if she knew where she was.
Tania listened and made a face at me. “All right, sorry to bother you. Thanks anyway.”
“What’d she say?”
“She said she hasn’t seen Ashley for years. That Ashley started blowing her off a while before that, and she just gave up on her. She sounded irritated.”
I got in touch with Rhys, and we met at his apartment in Chicago, which was more of a shabby garage than a normal living space.
I opened another can of beer. “Anything new with Med?” I’d been keeping tabs on him and his crew from jail through word of mouth, through the internet, through Rhys.
“His club is still having a hard time bouncing back from that series of surprise attacks. He hasn’t been on his home ground in maybe two years now.”
“You’d told me, but I figured that was temporary.”
“He’s still keeping himself on the move. No one ever really knows where or when he’ll pop up, posse in tow.”
“So he’s spooked down deep.”
“Oh yeah. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.”
“Don’t you think it’s odd that suddenly all these fires blew up around him and he’s been on the run? Moving around only with a core group of men, keeping his head down low? Is it the eighties all over again, and nobody sent us the memo?”
Rhys shrugged as he lit a cigarette. “From what I hear, the famiglia isn’t happy with this mess.”
“The Tantuccis? The Smoking Guns always worked with the Tantuccis,” I said.
“Yeah, them.”
“The Tantuccis got any enemies?”
“Doesn’t everyone?” Rhys let out a tight laugh.
“I mean a specific rival. Someone who’d benefit from a branch of the Tantucci labor force being shut down.”
Rhys took in a breath, leaning back in his ratty vinyl sofa. “Well, I got to say, the hate the Tantuccis got for the Guardinos is legendary around this town. Those two families have been enemies from Prohibition days. You think maybe Med got himself in the middle of that lasagna, and the Guardinos are using him for target practice to keep the Tantuccis in line?”
“Why not? I followed one of the Guardinos’ hit men years back. Remember, when you were helping me out, keeping an eye on—”
“DeMarco, right?”
“Yeah. Turo DeMarco.”
“He’s top tier now, dude.” Rhys shook his brown hair from his dark blue eyes as he played with his lighter, adjusting the flame. “He’s risen up in the world since then. His name turns heads, that’s for sure. Started low level over a decade ago, but he’s a decision maker now. Played his cards right. He’s real smooth.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Oh yeah.”
Real smooth. I grabbed the bottle of bourbon and gulped down a mouthful. “If Med’s got Turo DeMarco after him…”
“Boom.” A chuckle rumbled deep in Rhys’s big chest.
“Huh.” I wiped at my mouth, my throat burning in a blaze of bourbon. Med’s business targeted and Med on the run. My veins raced with heat, and it wasn’t from the booze.
Med had pissed someone off and in a big way. But what intrigued me was that only someone from the inside would know how to pinpoint all these hotspots that had been raided, spots that had been in his territory and notoriously under the grid. Med was a paranoid psycho to begin with, and now he was shaken up, freaking out, and on the run like a cockroach scurrying across a bullet ridden wall in the darkness.
I saw the connection like a map spread out before me. And on that map flashed a route between DeMarco and someone who knew the inside of Med’s club.
And that someone could only be, had to be, Serena.
Rhys tamped down on the leaves in his pipe, lit it, and took a couple of stiff inhales. “Ah. You always come through for me, man. Damn. Shit’s fine.”
He passed the pipe to me, and I took a hit.
“You game for something crazy?” I asked.
“Fuck yeah. It’s what I breathe for.”
During his third tour of duty, Rhys had been discharged after going overboard on a mission where he’d ended up slaughtering a family of women and children in Iraq. Enthusiastic. Focused. Unpredictable.
“I need to talk to DeMarco.”
He stared at me, his head slanting as if he were listening to the undercurrent beneath my words. He never asked me why. Ever.
Maybe Turo had figured out who Serena was. Maybe he’d twisted her arm to get information from her, and she’d complied and took off. I was glad that Med was getting his ass kicked, but what would stop Turo from going after other clubs, manipulating any club in Med’s orbit?
Did Turo know where she was? I needed to know and then stop anyone else from finding out. I needed to stamp out any connection there was between them. If I had suspected, maybe a Smoking Gun would too?
I sat up, putting the bottle down. “Do it.”
He only nodded, taking another drag on his pipe, his head lifting as he savored the weed.
“After, you can do whatever you want with him.”
Rhys’s full red eyes met mine.
“You do this for me, man, and you won’t be just my go-to guy no more,” I said. “I’ll share your talents. Set you loose officially with the Flames.”
He exhaled a plume of smoke, his head shaking. “I don’t think I can do the group bro thing. I’m just not—”
“I know, I know. We’ll figure it out.” I slid my arm over his shoulders. “A nomad, yeah? It’s all good.”
“Nomad, huh? Long term benefits included? Health, disability, retirement fund?”
We both laughed.
His eyes remained grim, hanging on mine through the haze of smoke. “I’m with you, brother. You know that. To the end, wherever this takes me.”
I let out a heavy breath.
I wasn’t sure what I’d find out about Serena—why she’d taken off, cut herself off, any connection she had with Turo—but I had to cover all the possible angles until I got to the end, as Rhys said.
I lifted the bourbon bottle in the air. “To the end.”
No matter how bitter.