BLAKE

 

I leaned back in my seat with my arms crossed. All eyes were on me. It wasn’t the first time I had the entire club’s attention. Brawn. Petey. Ghost. I took all of their money when we played cards on a regular basis. Sullivan’s time was coming.

Nah, it wasn’t shit for them to look at me the way they were looking at me now.

The circumstances were different though.

Garnet looked like he was intent on popping my head off my neck. He paced back and forth at the head of the table. He was about to blow and everybody outside of the chapel was gonna hear it.

He rubbed his hands together like he was trying to figure out where to start. I figured I would stop wasting his and everybody else’s time.

“It was the right thing to do,” I said.

Nobody responded. They were all just staring at me. Garnet kept his head down like he hadn’t heard me but I knew he did.

I looked over at Garnet and eyeballed him. I explained the situation to him but it looked like he didn’t explain it well enough to everybody else.

“Michelle is in the hospital,” Garnet said. “The doctors don’t know if she’s gonna make it.”

“I know that—”

“Do you?”

Garnet cut me off, raising his voice loud enough to echo off the walls of the chapel.

“The motherfucker who did that to Michelle is still out there somewhere,” he said. “The only chance we had at nabbing the bastard was getting the Cobras to squeal and you gave them back the only leverage we had.”

“Holding Katrina hostage wasn’t gonna do either of us any good,” I said. “Did none of you fucking hear me? Spades… Spades, okay? Spades tried to kill both of us.”

“Tried to kill both of you or just you?”

I narrowed my eyes at Garnet.

“What are you talking about?” I said.

“You said that Spades fired at you. They tried to kill you.”

“That’s right.”

“And where was Katrina the entire time? Was she ducking bullets? Was she trying to not get choked out, the same as you?”

I gritted my teeth. Garnet wasn’t thinking straight. So I knew there was nothing I could say to get through to him. But I had to try anyway.

“I told her to hide,” I said. “I told her to stay in the cabin until it was all over.”

“Until it was all over,” Garnet scoffed. “How convenient. As soon as they were done with you, they would’ve taken Katrina back to Ivory and into the waiting hands of the men who hired them.”

“What? What are you saying?”

“Harris hired the Spades. He hired them to kill you and take Katrina.”

I held back a laugh. Garnet was reasonable. He was always reasonable. But looking at him now, it was like someone had replaced him with an alien.

“You can’t be serious,” I said.

“You were out there for more than a week. That was more than enough time for them to find you.”

“Yeah but—”

“Was she ever on her phone?”

“So? She was talking to her brother, letting him know she was all right.”

“And tracking her phone at the same time. That’s how they found you. That’s how they were able to locate your spot. Out in the middle of nowhere and somehow, they found you. You don’t think that’s a strange coincidence?”

Garnet narrowed his eyes at me. I looked around the table and everybody was eyeballing me like I was crazy.

“There were others to find out,” I said. “They could have tracked my phone without me knowing.”

They weren’t listening. I shook my head and sighed. They were all against me.

“Now Harris has his sister back,” Garnet continued. “He’s got no reason to keep helping us find who hurt Michelle. He doesn’t have to cooperate with the police because the insurance will pay him for the stolen vehicle. Now we’re right back where we started.”

“That’s not true,” I said. “Katrina is gonna talk to Harris. She’ll convince him to keep helping us.”

“And you believed her?”

“That’s why I brought her back.”

Garnet put a hand to his face. He squeezed his temples together like he had a headache, his eyes closed in frustration.

“She’s a Snake,” he said.

“She’s not a Snake,” I responded. “Her brother is a Snake, not her—”

“That might as well be the same thing. You know her better than anybody else. She’s close to her brother, right?”

“…Yeah. So—”

“So, she would be willing to do anything for him. Lie for him. Pretend she didn’t know what was happening. Pretend like she’s gonna try to convince him to help us. But you know it’s not gonna happen.”

I bit my tongue to avoid saying something I would regret. Garnet was my brother, the same as every other man in the club.

Arguing with him any longer was only gonna make me more tired than I already was.

I looked down at the table to avoid having to stare back at any of them. They were all looking at me like they were trying to drill a hole through me. I felt the way I did and nothing was gonna change that. There was no point in trying to make them see it from my perspective.

“Now what?” Ghost said to the president. “Michelle is still in the hospital and the guy who did it is still on the loose.”

“Well, we can forget about getting help from the Snakes,” Garnet said. “If we’re gonna find out who’s responsible, we’re gonna have to do this on our own.”

“But where do we start?” Sullivan chimed in. “We’ve been trying to narrow this thing down for a week and we’re not any closer. The Cobras. The Sheriff’s Department. They haven’t come up with anything.”

I finally couldn’t take it. I had to speak up.

“The Spades attacked me,” I said. “Maybe Harris hired them. Maybe they were going for me and not Katrina. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. What I do know is they’re not a motorcycle club. What business would a bunch of skinheads have with someone like me?”

Garnet leaned across the table, his fists digging into it.

“If you wanna look into that, you look into that,” he said. “We’ve got enough of a mess on our hands as it is. My only concern right now is Michelle.”

Garnet was still in fucking love. Getting vengeance for his old lady had blinded him to reason.

I stared back at him and kept my mouth shut, just waiting for his orders.

“I’ll try to set up another meeting with Harris,” Garnet said as he stood up straight. “If this Harris broad is true to her word like Needle says she is, then he’ll listen.”

“And if not?” Sullivan asked.

“Then we’ll keep fucking digging. There’s evidence. We’re gonna find the bastards… Meeting adjourned.”

I got up from my seat without looking at anybody else.

The Grindhouse was packed with people just trying to get away from the mundane routine of their ordinary lives. It was the middle of the day but they were already getting started with the alcohol. I wanted nothing more than to join them.

I moved up to the bar and grabbed a bottle of beer from behind the counter. As I sipped on it, I could see Ghost walking up to me from the corner of my eye.

“Don’t say it,” I said, not looking at him. “Don’t say it.”

“You don’t know what I’m gonna say,” he said.

“…Fine,” I sighed. “Say it.”

“It’s good to have you back, brother.”

He patted me on the back. It was nice to hear those words from him. And it was nice to be back in a place I was more familiar with.

“Civilization,” he said as he took a seat next to me. “I hear if you stay out in the woods long enough, it gets harder to come back.”

“I enjoy camping like any other man. But I’m happy to be back, trust me.”

“You belong in Ivory. You’re a member of the Black Reapers. Don’t ever forget that.”

I shook my head and took another sip of beer, going over everything in my head. I couldn’t reason with Garnet but maybe I could reason with Ghost.

“You hear me though,” I said. “You know what I’m trying to say, right?”

“It’s strange,” Ghost replied. “The Spades… They’ve never done business with any clubs before. They do some shit none of us would touch with a 10-foot pole.”

I looked Ghost right in the eye.

“I’m not the Cobras’ biggest fan. You know that. But do you really think Harris would hire a white supremacist group to put a hit on me? Do you think he would get his hands dirty and put his sister in that kind of danger? What if I didn’t tell her to hide in the cabin? What if I didn’t hear them coming and they ambushed us?”

I kept shaking my head as I took another sip of beer.

“Nah, he wouldn’t risk it,” I said. “Harris might be a prick but he would never risk his own family.”

“The fact remains, Michelle’s attackers are still out there.”

“And did you stop to think that maybe the Spades had something to do with it?”

Ghost sighed a deep breath before nodding.

“Then why won’t Garnet follow this lead?” I asked.

“Because Garnet hates the Cobras. And he loves Michelle. Pinning it on the Cobras means he gets to kill two birds with one stone.”

“What do you think?” I said.

“About what?”

“Do you think Harris is responsible for what happened to Michelle? You’ve had a lot of time to think about it. If he’s responsible for it, he did a real fucking good job of hiding the evidence.”

Ghost didn’t respond. He just tilted his head up and looked down his nose at me. People said I was cocky but Ghost was fucking arrogant. As I watched a smirk form on his lips, I shrugged.

“What?” I said. “What’s so fucking funny?”

“You spent a lot of time with her out there.”

“I did.”

“You got to know her real well. I bet you really got to know her.”

“I fucked her,” I said bluntly. “More than once. What’s your point?”

“My point is that maybe Garnet is affected by his feelings. But maybe you are, too.”

“Nah, my mind is fucking clear as the sky.”

“Really? And Katrina… Do you have feelings for her?”

I gulped my beer.

I cared about Katrina. I couldn’t hide that. But I wasn’t about to give Ghost the satisfaction of an answer he already knew.

“I still don’t see your point,” I said.

“You do. You don’t want to admit it, but you do. You care about this girl. She might be helping her brother but you don’t wanna see it as a possibility.”

“Maybe you’re right. It’s just…”

All I could do was shake my head.

“…I know her,” I said. “I talked to her. She was honest. She’s not the kind of girl to get caught up in some shit her brother is doing.”

“And what proof do you have other than that she was willing to let you fuck her?”

“Because I can see it in her eyes. I can see it in the way she looks at me.”

“Needle—”

“Listen, okay… Maybe I am letting my emotions get the best of me, same as Garnet. But the bottom line is four Spades tried to kill me. Maybe someone hired them. Maybe they did it on their own. They had something to do with this. And I’m gonna get to the bottom of it.”

“Garnet doesn’t want us messing with a group like that—”

“Are you gonna help me or not? Let Garnet focus on the Cobras. I need to look into the Spades. They tried to kill a patch. We can’t let that go.”

Ghost may have been arrogant but he was smart enough to know I was right.

He sighed through his nose and nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “Look into the Spades. I’ll help you any way I can. Don’t bring this up to Garnet though. He’s got his hands full enough with all of the shit he’s dealing with.”

“Hey, I’m as pissed as everybody else over what happened to Michelle. But I was gone for more than a week and you guys aren’t any closer. This is as good an option as any.”

Ghost patted me on the back and let me drink my beer in peace.

While everybody else had lively conversations around me, I sat alone and tried to figure out what to do next.

My best option at this point was waiting for Katrina to hopefully convince Harris to do his part to get to the bottom of this.