Mason

 

I wasn’t sure what the hell was going on anymore. I didn’t realize what I’d just done until I was talking to Clara about it. I’d just knocked the shit out of Liam, one of our longest standing members, for Clara. My relationship with her was just supposed to be professional. I was supposed to just be using my connection with her to get information from her. Instead, I was getting involved and punching out my own men.

 

At least I could take comfort in the fact that Liam had asked for it. He’d been asking for it for a long time. I told myself it was his insistence on being a jackass that lead to me kicking his ass. His incident with Clara had just been the last straw.

 

“Boss, we have a problem,” Mick said over my shoulder suddenly as I walked away with Clara.

 

Before I turned around, I looked into her eyes and saw she was as worried as Mick sounded. “What is it?” I asked him, turning away from Clara.

 

“I think we may have tracked down some of our stolen product,” he said.

 

“How do we know?” I asked, holding Clara behind me by her hand.

 

“A friend,” Mick said carefully, shifting his eyes to Clara standing behind me.

 

I pulled her in front of me, to stand between us. “Is someone selling my drugs?” I asked her.

 

“I don’t know. I would imagine if my boss has me stealing them, he’s doing something with them on the other end.”

I narrowed my eyes at her, pressuring her with my look to make sure she was being as honest as she could be with me.

 

“Listen, I don’t know. My job was just to steal. I didn’t handle anything else,” she defended herself.

 

Not satisfied with her answer, I waved for Alec again.

 

“Yes, sir? You want me to watch her again?” he asked.

 

“Yes, keep a close eye on her. If she does anything, use this.” I passed him my gun.

 

“I’m sorry, do what with it?” he asked.

 

“What do you think, Alec?” I asked.

 

“Yes, sir, I read you loud and clear.” He stuffed the gun in his waistband and pushed her away.

 

“I’m sorry, Clara, but security comes first,” I said to answer the angry look in her eyes as Alec pushed her away.

 

“All right, tell me what we know,” I told Mick with a hand on his shoulder.

 

“Sure. One of our partners called from the field this morning. Said he met with a new dealer last night who’s been trying to get him to come on board,” Mick started.

 

“Is this someone we’ve shorted recently?” I asked.

 

“No, just a rat,” Mick assured me. “Small time.”

 

“Okay.” Those guys were great because their allegiance wasn’t necessary for business. They were guys who just hopped around trying to find the best fix for the best price. They acted as informants for us.

 

“Anyway, he calls and tells us he thinks he got some of our heroin off this new dealer. Mason, how much you want to bet this dealer is connected to Clara’s boss?” Mick asked.

 

“I know he is,” I told him. “You know where the deal went down?” I watched Alec urge Clara upstairs with my gun. I hoped I could trust him alone with her—more like her alone with him; I wanted to come back to find both of them still intact.

 

“I can get the address,” he told me.

 

“Do it. We’re taking a little ride to check it out,” I told him.

 

“On it.” He pulled his phone out and called the guy, stepping away a moment so he could hear him better.

 

I hopped on my bike and waited.

 

“Got the address. It’s not far from here,” he said.

 

“All right, let’s go.” We fired up our engines, both bikes coming to life in a loud roar that filled the room and echoed off the far wall.

 

We drove farther into the old industrial section of town, where more and more dilapidated buildings populated the streets. The only thing that hung around this part of town was the riff raff and vermin. The only life that seemed to crawl through these streets—if it could be called life—were the forgotten ones. Honestly, most of the people we ran into on this side of town seemed to be little more than ghosts. It wouldn’t have surprised me if none of them were even real.

 

We pulled down an alley lined with stolen or otherwise forgotten dumpsters and loose newspapers. Real rats wouldn’t even live down here, I thought.

 

“So, where is this guy?” I asked Mick after we killed our engines. I glanced around at the tired, old gray concrete buildings with their empty windows. They were merely vacant husks providing homes for the derelict and the feral, the lost souls who roamed the streets down here on the edge of civilization.

 

Mick just nodded to the building to our left. I followed him, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching us. It felt like we were walking right into a trap.

 

“Listen, do we know we can trust this guy?” I asked.

 

“Yeah, he’s cool. He’s helped us out before, man. Chill out, paranoid. It’s not a trap.” He crept carefully in through an empty doorway.

 

“Hey, man,” a voice croaked from the shadows, and a shifty-looking dude in ragged clothes appeared, merely a shadow himself, his skin as gray as the concrete surrounding us. His rotten teeth—what few he had—smiled at us as he drifted towards us in the darkness of the abandoned building.

 

“Good to see you, buddy,” Mick said as the guy approached us. “I brought my boss with me, man. I think he’s got some questions for you about the drugs.”

 

“I’m not in trouble, am I, boss?” the rat asked me. There was a fear in his eyes that pleaded for his life with me.

 

“No, you’re fine. Do you have any of it left?” I asked.

 

“Nope, it was just a little bit. I already used it, which is why I think it was yours,” he said.

 

“But you told my partner here that this new guy has been trying to get you to come on board for a while,” I pushed.

 

“Yeah, man, he’s been around for a while, keeps telling everyone to buy from him, but he’s never had any product, not until last night. Last night he shows up, and he’s actually got something,” our rat told us. His face lit up as he told us about this new dealer.

 

“What did he look like?” I asked.

 

“He looked like a snake, man. He had these dark, narrow eyes and a long, forked tongue, man.”

 

I shared a suspicious look with Mick. Can this guy be for real? I wanted to ask him. He shrugged, as if answering my unspoken question.

 

“Okay, so he looked slithery and shady, right?” I asked, trying to rephrase and make sense of the rat’s description.

 

“Right. Except he had dope on him this time. He met with some other guys and it looked like they gave him a large sum of money for a good bit of the stuff.”

 

“Okay, so you witnessed the deal go down?” I asked. Now it felt like we were getting somewhere. Our village idiot might have had some real information.

 

“Yeah, but I didn’t see the other guys very well. They just looked like business men. You know, gray suits, sunglasses, even at night, ties, the whole nine, man,” the rat continued. He was really more of a specter than a rat. He was barely even there, and at times it was like I could see straight through him, but he was our rat, and according to Mick, he’d been a good rat.

 

“That’s fine. As long as we know who this other guy was, we can find the guys who bought from him,” I assured the guy.

 

“Cool.” He nodded.

 

“So, where do you come in, man? You said you tried some of the shit he was selling? How did that go down?” I asked.

 

“Okay, so, he pulls up between the two buildings here, just like you guys did, and his buyers pull up in front of the building.” He pointed to the road crossing in front of the alleyway where we’d parked our bikes.

 

“Right.” I turned to look where he was pointing.

 

“So, of course, the headlights get all kinds of attention. We aren’t used to headlights around here unless it’s the cops, right?” He laughed coarsely before continuing. “Anyway, I kind of crawl up close to the window over here to keep an eye on what’s going on. You know, this guy’s been coming around telling everyone he’s going to have a stash of his own soon, and he’s going to keep a regular supply. He’s going to let it go cheap, too.”

 

“This motherfucker,” I said, interrupting him with the words falling out of my mouth before I could even think to stop myself. “Sorry, man, keep going.”

 

“He’s kind of become friends with everyone. He buys us food and shit, sends the weed man around, and brings us liquor. You know, he takes care of us, man. So, yeah, I’m going to watch him when something goes down, just in case shit turns ugly and he needs some back up.”

 

I heard a gun cock in the shadows behind our rat, and my veins ran cold with ice. Mick didn’t even seem to notice.

 

“Hey, man,” the rat laughed, “as long as you’re not here to bust anybody or hurt someone, nobody’s going to mess with you. He’s just back there letting you know we can defend our people when we need to.”

 

Okay, I’d been on the streets as long as I could remember. I thought of myself as a badass. I’d seen a lot, and, hell, I’d done a lot. I was the youngest president of Storm’s Angels, and still the youngest chapter head even at twenty-eight years old, after being president for a few years. But I’d never seen some shit like this. I had no clue guys like this even existed out here in this little ghost town. I shot a nervous glance at Mick. It was time to get the information we came for and get the fuck out of dodge.

 

“So, how did you end up trying some of the heroin?” I asked again, dropping the fake friendliness from my voice.

 

“After the deal goes down, old Snake Eyes sees me hiding in the darkness by the window. I mean, he looks right at me and calls me over to him without saying a word. So I slink over to him. He reminds me that he told me he’d have some dope soon. He says it’s good shit, and he gives me a little to try. From the moment he breaks it out, I know it’s not legit, you know?”

 

“What do you mean?” I asked him, urging him to keep talking.

 

“I mean, I knew it wasn’t his. I knew it was yours right away, man. From start to finish, that shit acts just like what you guys have given me. So, as soon as I felt clean, I gave you guys a call. You told me to get with you if I ever saw anything strange on these streets, man, and I saw that shit last night. That dude saw me like he’d shone a light on me, man, and I was hiding.”

 

I pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of my pocket and slapped it in the rat’s gray hand. “Thanks for looking out, man,” I told him. “Get something to eat with that, okay? Maybe a drink or two, but no dope. We got you on dope, okay?”

 

“Yeah, thanks, man. I guess your dealer will be around again soon?” he asked.

 

“Someone will be,” Mick told him.

 

I looked at Mick with my eyebrows raised. I couldn’t believe the story this guy was telling us, but that was something Mick and I would have to discuss once we got back to HQ. Lizard men who could see in the dark, dope that was immediately identifiable. I didn’t use heroin, so I didn’t know if he could tell from the high or the color or what. I knew it was pretty obvious with other drugs sometimes, but I really didn’t know much about heroin outside of selling it. I figured I needed to learn a little more.

 

“Hey, man,” I stopped him before he faded back into the darkness. “Look, is there anything else you can remember about this new dealer who’s been coming around?” I pulled another twenty out of my pocket so he could see it in my hand.

 

“Yeah, man, wears a necklace with a large tooth on it.”

 

“Like a fang?” I asked.

 

“Yeah, man, a fang. That’s it. He wears a fang around his neck.”

 

I slapped the twenty in his hand without a word, shot Mick a look, and started walking back towards our bikes.

 

I knew who had our dope, which meant I was pretty sure I knew who Clara’s boss was. Her former boss.