I woke up the next morning to the sound of somebody banging on my front door.

I blearily grabbed the gun under my pillow – not the one Benjy used, but a Glock – and stumbled out to the hallway.

“Who the fuck is it?” I shouted.

“Jack,” the voice called out from my front porch.

Shit.

I jacked the slide on the gun and made sure I had a bullet in the chamber.

“Who’m I talking to?” I yelled. “The hothead from last night, or the coolheaded president of the Midnight Riders?”

“The president.”

Yeah, right.

I unlocked the door and pulled it back a few inches. Jack stood there, looking pissed but calm.

“Couldn’t you have just fuckin’ called?” I asked.

“This is a conversation that needs to happen face to face.”

I opened the door a little wider. “Your pet Viking out there?”

“No, Kade’s holding down the shop.”

“In that case, come on in,” I said, and opened the door.

He noticed the gun at my side as he entered. He looked at me and cocked an eyebrow.

“I didn’t know who the fuck you were when you woke me up with all that fuckin’ noise.”

He grunted. “You got any coffee?”

I yawned. “Do I look like I got any fuckin’ coffee?”

“I meant, you got a fuckin’ coffee maker?”

“In the kitchen. Make some for me while I go get dressed,” I said, and shuffled back to the bedroom.

When I walked back in the kitchen five minutes later, I still had the Glock tucked in the back of my pants. Just in case.

He was sitting at the kitchen table sipping on a cup. I poured myself a mug and sat across from him.

“Well?” I asked.

“Did you have anything to do with her murder?” he asked me, point blank.

“No, I did not,” I said, staring him dead in the eyes.

I’m a good liar. I don’t know if he bought it, but I sure as hell didn’t give him any reason not to.

“Can you think of anyone who might have had something to do with it?”

I sat back in my chair and pretended to ponder the question. “I seriously doubt it was the Feds, so… could’ve been a coke dealer. Somebody she owed money to.”

“Why would he kill her if he wanted money?”

“I know you’ve forgotten how this works, since the Riders have gone legit and all,” I said sarcastically, “but sometimes you write off a bad debt to send a message to all the other deadbeats.”

“How’d he know she’d be there?”

I shrugged. “Maybe he followed her.”

Jack glared. “That’s quite a coincidence, him following her to the exact place we were meeting.”

“Not really. If he couldn’t pop her at her place or the Veils, it might’ve been the first time he had the opportunity.”

Jack thought about that for a second. “Did you tell anybody else she was snitching?”

“No.”

“Do you think anybody could have overheard you at the Seven Veils?”

“Who, Peanut?” When Jack didn’t look amused, I sighed. “It’s possible, I suppose – but somebody could have just as easily overheard you at your shop and taken it upon themselves to remedy the situation. You got way more Midnight Riders workin’ for you than I got workin’ for me.”

He looked off in the distance. “I think we should tell Dan Peters our suspicions.”

“What the fuck for?!”

“Maybe it’ll give him a lead on who killed her.”

I wanted to say What the fuck for?  again, but I didn’t think he’d take that very well.

Instead, I scoffed. “NO. If we’re gonna handle this shit, let’s do it internally. You get Dan Peters involved, he’ll have his sticky little fingers all over your wallet before you know it.”

“How are we going to handle it internally?”

“We make a list of the guys and find out where they were last night. Do our own investigation.”

Jack shook his head dolefully. “I still think we should tell Dan Peters.”

“Tell him WHAT, exactly? That we think she was snitching for the DEA? Do you have a fuckin’ death wish? We tell him that, he’ll ask, ‘Why was she snitching?’ Then what do we say? ‘Duuuuh, I don’t know’? Our only source of revenue at the moment is smuggling pot, or did you forget that already?”

“I thought Peters was your boy,” Jack sneered.

“When I buy him off, he’s my boy,” I snapped. “If I don’t, then he’s a fuckin’ wild card. If you want to involve Dan Peters, I say we pay him a little something to make this shit go away.”

“Jesus – ”

“The last thing we need is for the MC to get extra scrutiny, which is exactly what a full-scale investigation by the cops would bring. You’re the one who’s worried about our lily-white reputation – is this what you want, extra heat?”

Jack narrowed his eyes. I could tell he was taking me seriously. “What about the DEA?”

“We’re gonna have to wait and see.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, if she was talking to the DEA again – ”

“What do you mean ‘if’?” he asked angrily.

“Well, she kind of kicked the bucket before we could find out for sure, didn’t she?”

Jack looked like he was about to strangle me.

“Say she was,” I said, trying to calm him down. “Then either they’ll come after us with what they’ve got so far, or they’ll try to pin the shooting on us, or… shit, I don’t know. Maybe she didn’t give ‘em much. Maybe they don’t know about the pot, and maybe they’ll just go the fuck away.”

“That’s a lot of maybes.”

“What do you want from me? Neither one of us can do shit about it now. It’s out of our hands. But there’s no need to go involving Dan. If he thought he could profit from the situation, he’d sell us out to the DEA lickety-split.”

“How would he profit from the situation?”

“He hasn’t exactly been making a shit-ton off us the last couple of years,” I pointed out. “If he could wipe out the Midnight Riders with one blow, and replace us with an operation slightly more amenable to paying off the local authorities – ”

“Like the Santa Muertes,” Jack said sourly.

I nodded. “There’d be a lot more money in it for him if they took over our territory.”

“But we could bring him down just as easily as he could bust us,” Jack complained. “He took bribes from the club for years.”

“Maybe. But it’s our word against his. Besides, there’s fuckin’ corrupt cops everywhere. You think the DEA has the time or inclination to bring down every police department on the take? You think the Feds want that kind of headache or bad press? Especially when a biker gang makes a way easier target?”

Jack stewed in his rage. “FUCK…”

“All I’m sayin’ is, it doesn’t do us any good to have Dan pokin’ around in who that girl was talking to. In fact, it might behoove us to pay him a little to make sure he doesn’t, that’s all.”

Jack gritted his teeth. After a long pause, he relented.

“…alright. Can you talk to him?”

“Of course.”

Said the spider to the fly.

“I fuckin’ hate that guy,” Jack muttered.

“I know,” I said sympathetically. “I’ll handle it.”

“Somebody needs to tell Benjy, too,” Jack said.

Shit.

“Maybe it shouldn’t be you, seein’ as how you threw him against the wall when you broke into the Ridgeway that one time,” I suggested.

“…yeah,” Jack said, then got a strange look on his face. “What about Benjy?”

“What about him?” I asked. I kept my outward appearance calm, but my heart sped up a little.

“You said he came to you for advice, that he thought she was cheating on him… do you think he could have done it?”

I chuckled. “Are you fuckin’ with me?”

“He’s strung out on coke – he thought she was going behind his back – and if he got it into his head that he was helping out the club – ”

“Jack – Jesus, listen to yourself. You know as well as I do that he was so far gone on that chick it was fuckin’ embarrassing. He’s dumb as shit, but Benjy’s a good kid. You think he’s even capable of doing what we saw last night?”

Jack thought for a second, then the look of suspicion left his face entirely.

“…no. Never mind. You’re probably right about me not being the best one to tell him… you mind doing it?”

“Don’t worry about a thing,” I said soothingly. “I’ll handle that, too.”