Falcon
I let Leo’s call go to voicemail. I didn’t want to talk to him in the midst of everything that was going on. I stood and stared down at the screen of my phone, watching the notification flash on my screen.
“What is it?” Nathan asked.
“It’s Leo. He just left a voicemail,” I told him.
“Probably checking on his handy work.” He looked away and shook his head.
“I figured as much. I couldn’t bring myself to answer it. I mean, we just found two of our guys buried under parts of our headquarters, and I’d be willing to put money on the fact that Leo is behind this.” I couldn’t hide how shaken up I was.
“You should probably listen to the voicemail,” Nathan suggested. “At least so we can know what the hell he wants. He may be telling you where he is.”
“You’re probably right.” I had intended to do that before Nathan had interrupted me. He seemed to care a lot about what Leo had to say. I was beginning to question whether or not I could trust anyone in the MC anymore.
I walked away and tapped the voicemail notification on my screen. I put the phone to my ear and listened while the electronic voice told me who had called and what time. Then, Leo’s voice came on the line.
“Falcon, I hope I’m not catching you at a bad time. I understand there may be some problems at your headquarters, man. I’m really sorry to hear that. I do hope everyone is okay. I hope you and your men are doing al lright. Well, to the point of my call. I have Clementine with me. She is safe from you and your biker thugs. If you want to see her again, I believe you already know where to find me. You need to show up alone, unarmed, and you need to drop your plans against me. I still feel like we can work out something mutually beneficial. If you show up with your boys and your guns blazing, I will not hesitate to kill everyone you hold dear. If you don’t show up, I’ll assume the worst, and for that, I’m truly sorry.”
I had fallen for his tricks before. I wasn’t going to fall for that again.
I also wasn’t about to go in there with guns blazing in an attempt just to kill Leo. Sure, I needed to eliminate him, but there had to be another way. My main focus needed to be getting Clementine out of there. While I didn’t expect him to actually kill his sister, I knew I couldn’t put it past him to hurt her just to get at me.
I was on the cusp of abandoning the one action that had defined my life for the past five years. I ran a hand down my face as I let my decision settle in. I wasn’t going after Leo just to kill him and his men. I was going after Leo to get Clementine back. If I kept doing the same things for the same reasons, I was going to continue to get the same results. Clementine had shown me that I really just wanted something different.
Well, it was time to act like I wanted a different outcome this time.
“Nathan,” I called out to my VP, startling him.
“Yeah, boss,” he said as he turned around to face me.
I looked around at our guys still sitting with paramedics, being treated like babies. It was hard to believe that I was about to ask these same little bitches to get off their asses and fight with me. Correction: I was about to tell them to.
“Get everyone together. We need to dig up any weapons we can find in the rubble. It’s time,” I told him.
“But everyone’s still recovering from the blast,” Nathan protested.
“Cry me a fucking river. Get them up. I don’t care what the medics say. I don’t care about protests, whining, or any ifs, ands, of buts you can come up with. We’re getting together what we can salvage, and we’re going after Leo. He just called and issued another threat, even threatening his sister. So, we’re doing it.” I hardened my tone to let him know he wasn’t to continue trying to argue with me.
“What about Thomson and the guys at my place?” he asked.
“We’ll meet up with them there. First, let’s get what we can from HQ.” I patted him on the shoulder and sent him after our members while I walked up to the building.
I heard protests from the firefighters, telling me it wasn’t safe. The building wasn’t structurally safe. They didn’t know if there was more fire still burning. There was too much smoke. I wasn’t going to find anything in the rubble. There may have been other explosives that still hadn’t gone off.
The paramedics were telling my guys to stay down. They didn’t know the extent of anyone’s injuries or how much smoke they’d inhaled after the explosion. I heard my guys telling them to back off, that they were fine, and that they were going to listen to me before they listened to any of them.
Soon, other MC members joined me while we combed through the wreckage of our headquarters. Judging by what damage I could see, I understood the firefighters’ concern that the building wasn’t sound anymore. It probably wouldn’t be standing much longer, and if we were lucky, it wouldn’t fall on us.
I watched as guys pulled handguns out of the rubble and dusted them off. For the first time since I’d been back, everyone was starting to look like Demons again. They were walking off and shaking off whatever pain or other discomfort they felt from injuries and smoke inhalation they’d sustained in the blast. We were going to be fine, I realized.
“Listen, you really can’t be in here,” one brave firefighter said, approaching me nervously.
“We’ll only be a minute more,” I told him. “Then you can get back to whatever it is you guys are still doing here.” I patted him on his shoulder and sent him back to his buddies.
While we were digging around inside, my phone started ringing again. I checked it. It was Leo. I shot Nathan a look to let him know it was him again. He nodded to my phone to try to convince me to answer it.
“Yeah,” I said as I put the phone to my ear.
“Falcon, it’s good to hear your voice,” Leo said smugly. “I didn’t expect you to answer.”
“Cut the shit, Leo. I know this was you,” I snapped.
“Yes, it was,” he admitted. “Well, actually, I can only take credit for the plan. It was your guys Zeke and Collin who took the bait and let my boys in. I owe them. How are they?”
“Funny you should ask,” I said with a hoarse laugh. “Your boys killed them with the explosion.”
“That’s a damn shame, Falcon. You know it? I’m really sorry about that.” He feigned concern.
“I’m sure you are. I’ll send your condolences to their families.” Two could play his fake concern game. “Now, why are you calling me again? I’m in the middle of cleaning up your mess.”
“I couldn’t help but notice your lack of a sense of urgency, Falcon. I wanted to call and remind you what’s at stake here. See, if you don’t show up, I won’t have any use for Clementine anymore, and I can let her go,” he threatened.
“Let her go?” I asked. I didn’t like the way his let her go sounded. It sounded a lot like murder.
“Yeah, it just seems like such a waste to keep her around, you know? She knows too much now anyway. She’s a liability more than an asset now. I really need to declutter my life, and I’d hate to have to start with her, but I guess we all have to do what needs to be done,” he said. “You have an hour.” He hung up the phone.
I looked at Nathan and everyone else.
“Guys, take what you’ve got. We’ve got to go,” I told everyone.
In one unified motion, everyone stood back up straight, turned from the rubble, and started to walk out of the building, to the amazement of the men and women watching us. They stepped aside as we walked past them.
“What’s the plan?” Nathan asked as we walked away from the building.
I waved my hand to bring everyone into a huddle.
“Guys, we’ve got less than an hour to meet up with Thomson and the rest of our members at Nathan’s place. We’ll be right across the river from our target. We’ll go from there to take down Leo and his men,” I said.
“Less than an hour? How the hell are we supposed to get there from here in that time? We can’t walk,” Nathan said.
“I’m working on that,” I told him.
I looked up and down the street, trying to find a car we could use. I spotted an SUV parked at the corner. I started walking towards it.
“Oh, hell yeah,” Nathan said behind me. His voice deepened, and there was excitement in his voice at the prospect of stealing a ride.
I tried the door. It was unlocked. I checked the visor and middle console for keys. They were stuffed into the passenger side visor. I didn’t even have to try to hotwire it. I held the keys out for everyone to see.
“We’re in business, guys.” Everyone hurried to the SUV and piled in. I sat behind the wheel and got her going.
It felt good to be back in business, but it still felt a little odd to be going after Leo in his sister’s name instead of just to get him out of the picture. I didn’t know how I was going to tell the guys to subdue everyone instead of trying to kill them when we got there. We weren’t on a mission to kill Leo anymore.
If I killed him, I would lose Clementine completely. If I allowed him to be exposed for who he really was, I still stood a chance at patching things up with her. We were still going to make sure Leo was no longer a threat, but I had to get creative in order to do that.
I was going soft, but I couldn’t let the guys see it. Oh, who the hell was I kidding? They were going to see it soon enough anyway. The trick was playing my softness off as an attempt to work smarter instead of harder.
If I could keep Leo alive long enough for him to stand trial, I could help plant evidence that he’d been involved in the shooting and theft that landed me in prison five years ago. If I turned him over to the law and did it right, I could probably make sure he never got out. And by pulling some strings with the connections I had made when I was behind bars, I could easily make his life on the inside hell.
By foot, the way to Nathan’s house would have taken a couple of hours. By car, it was only a few minutes from the clubhouse to his house. It was also late enough that there wasn’t any traffic on the road to slow us down.
“You mind cluing me in,” Nathan said.
“On what?” I asked, not taking my eyes off the road.
“On what it is we’re doing exactly?” he probed. I couldn’t tell what he meant by that. I had just told him that we were going to his place so we could use it as a staging ground for our attack on Leo and his men. What the hell else did he need to know?
I drove in silence the rest of the way, wondering what the hell was going on with my men.