Falcon
I walked downstairs to meet Zeke and Collin with the possible new prospects in hopes that they would distract me from Clementine. I couldn’t shake her out of my head, despite telling myself I was going to let go of the emotions I had allowed myself to feel. It was time to move past all of that and get down to business. Part of rebuilding the MC was going to have to be bringing new members in again.
Nathan led me downstairs to the clubhouse on the first floor of HQ. Zeke and Collin stood in front of four young guys they’d brought in.
“Zeke, Collin.” I nodded at the two leadership members. “Who do we have here?” I asked, throwing on my hardest face and tone. I wanted to try to convince the new guys that they didn’t want to come in underneath someone as mean and frightening as me.
“We’ve got four new recruits for you, Falcon,” Zeke started.
I looked over the four faces staring back at me. These guys weren’t new to the game. Usually, when we brought people in for the first time, they were people who needed a place where they fit in, or they were seasoned riders who had been living the life without an MC to back them. These new guys looked like they’d been let go somewhere else.
I pulled Zeke and Collin aside, nodding at the four guys standing there waiting to be addressed. Nathan must have seen what I had noticed, as well. He stood with his arms crossed and a stern look in his eyes, not turning his attention from our recruits as I took our recruiters away for a quick private conversation.
“Where did you find these guys?” I asked them.
“They’re just guys we ran into at the bar a while back,” Collin answered.
“Who brought up joining the MC? Did you guys approach them about it, or did they approach you?” I followed up.
“They brought it up to us a couple of times when they realized we were in Rogue Demons,” Zeke answered.
“All four of them came together? You didn’t find each one individually?”
“Look,” Collin said with a hand on my arm.
I glanced at his hand and didn’t look back up at him until he pulled it away from me.
“Look, we’ve checked them out. They’re straight, okay? No funny business here,” Collin continued after he took his hand away.
“You two better hope not,” I warned them both. “Now, we’re going to go back over here and act like everything is okay,” I told them before turning them around to walk back over to their men to make introductions.
I didn’t feel that great about meeting them. I knew I wasn’t going to get their real names. Their real names would have given away everything they were trying to do here. When we turned around to walk back over to them, they didn’t even look worried. Innocent newbies would have been worried that they weren’t good enough or that I suspected they were up to something. For the four made men standing in front of me, everything depended on not letting me know they were concerned I might have been on to them. So I played along with their little game and let my guys introduce them to me.
I shook each of their hands and stared into their dark eyes. They could have been brothers. They all had brushed back dark hair and chiseled, hard jawlines with dark brown, almost black eyes. They were too clean. They stood up too straight. They didn’t look like bikers at all, so I decided to ask a few questions to get a little better idea of who they were and why they were here.
“Who here rides?” I asked them.
All four of them raised their hands.
“Did any of you ride here today?” I followed up.
They shook their heads. I found that answer rather convenient.
“Okay, fair enough. Maybe you didn’t think you were coming to an actual MC’s HQ today. Whatever.” I looked at the first one. “How many miles have you ridden in the last month?”
“I, uh, I don’t know,” he stammered.
“You?” I asked number two.
He just shook his head with a dumbfounded look on his face. I glanced at the other two, and they followed suit. Well, if they were made men, it certainly wasn’t because they had ever belonged to another MC before us.
Picking out men who were in the game versus guys who were just looking for a place to fit in was like comparing domesticated pets to their wild and feral cousins. A dog that lived in a nice fenced-in yard or inside its owner’s home did not look the same as a dog who roamed the streets for its food. These men were domesticated, but they weren’t bikers.
“Tell you what, you guys spend today with Zeke and Collin. They’re top members of Rogue Demons. They’ll get you broken in with some culture, and if you still feel like coming back tomorrow, make sure you ride up here tomorrow. I want to see your bikes, and I’m going to take down your mileage. We’re going to start tracking how much you ride when you’re not here,” I told them.
“How many miles do you require a month?” one of them asked in a professional tone. He had obviously done his homework. A quick search online would have revealed that many larger MC’s had different mileage requirements for different levels of membership. Some required monthly or annual miles depending on the member’s position. We had never written down a set number of miles we expected from our members. We used our judgment.
“I expect you to ride,” I told him. “If I feel that you’re riding enough, you’re good. I’m not going to give you a number, because if you really are riding as much as you should be, it will show regardless,” I explained further.
“Got it,” he said.
“Good. Now, Zeke, Collin, get these guys some drinks. Take some time to get to know each other. Let them get to know the MC a little. Nathan and I still have work to do.” I shot Nathan a look and tilted my head back to the staircase.
We stepped back as the new guys walked over to the bar.
“What are you thinking?” Nathan asked me.
“I’m thinking I don’t trust these guys,” I answered him. I watched as they sat at the bar while another of our members served them beers. They started to look nervous. Whatever their job here was, it started then. They glanced over their shoulders a couple of times, looking back at us or back at the bikes.
“Okay, as long as we’re on the same page,” he said.
“Where’s Thomson?” I asked. “He needs to keep an eye on these guys. If they are up to something, and I think they are, he won’t have any problem putting a stop to it for us.”
“Not at all.” Nathan chuckled. “But I don’t know where he is right now.”
“Probably getting ready for the raid on Leo,” I suggested.
“Yeah, probably. I really don’t like these guys, Falcon,” Nathan said.
“Me neither. Something’s not right about them.”
“Why are we even letting them stay here?” he asked.
“I’m hoping that by letting them hang out, we’ll be able to get something out of them. After a couple of drinks, someone is bound to start talking,” I explained.
“Probably, but still, it just doesn’t seem safe.”
That’s the most sensible thing Nathan has said to me in a while, I thought. “I think we’ll be fine as long as we keep current members on them and don’t get lazy about watching them,” I said, dismissing his objections. “We’ll be fine, Nathan.”
“I hope you’re right.” He sighed.
“I know I’m right. Don’t worry too much. I mean, look at them. They’re in good shape and all, but honestly, if anything went down, do you really think we couldn’t take them?” I laughed as I started up the stairs.
“Good point,” he said behind me, reminding me that no matter how much we may have agreed on the new guys at the moment, he was still on my list for having so many doubts about the MC.
“Hey, Nathan, there’s an outside chance that these guys are for real,” I told him. “If they are, that’s what we need. We need more men who are ready to do what needs to be done to put us back on top. Yeah, we’re a motorcycle club, but we’re also an organization. We’re a business, and we’ve got to put the business first. If these guys can help us focus our energies on growth, I’ll welcome them in.”
We reached the second floor and stepped aside to talk.
“I just feel like they’re here for something other than joining the MC,” he objected. “It feels like they were planted.”
“I know. I saw it, too, but it could be that we have a heightened sense of alertness about us right now because we’re getting ready to go after Leo and his men. We have to have our eyes wide open right now, brother, but that doesn’t mean that everything we see is the Big Bad Wolf, okay?”
“True.” He nodded in agreement.
I tried to rationalize what we’d seen in the new recruits. “These guys obviously already know the game. That’s probably all we’re picking up from them. They’ve been around. They obviously aren’t just new kids from the street, so we could definitely benefit from that.”
“And they could also be here because someone planted them here,” Nathan insisted.
“Also very true,” I agreed, even though what I really wanted to say was that he could also be terrified of his own shadow, but I bit my tongue. One of those new guys could have replaced Nathan eventually, if they lasted that long. Unfortunately, I found that I sided with Nathan on this more than I wanted to admit. They were probably here for all the wrong reasons, whatever those reasons were, and they probably wouldn’t stick around for long once they realized what we were about.
I laughed to myself, thinking that they probably weren’t going to be around longer than it took them to realize I was serious about riding motorcycles. We were a motorcycle club, for crying out loud! We rode. We rode often. Outside of only a handful of situations, we rode almost every day. As for mileage, riding every day racked up the miles on a motorcycle. It wasn’t like I was going to go out there every day, every week, or even every month. If they were riding for us, I would know. I would see it.
The real question was whether or not they would fall in line and start riding. If not, we may have had other uses for them, as long as they weren’t working for someone else, like Leo. Then, again, if they were working for Leo, their employment under him would be coming to an end shortly anyway. If we had some men outside the MC working for us, it wouldn’t hurt when the time came to expand into other areas.
There was so much to think about, so much to consider. It was one hell of a time to be the president of Rogue Demons. But, more importantly, it was about to be one hell of a time to be anyone else on the streets in our city. Leo was going to be but the first to take the fall. We were going to go after everyone and reassert ourselves.
Those men downstairs were already serving a purpose for us. They were distracting Zeke and Collin while the rest of us prepared for war.