Chapter 9
Hawk
Tonight was a very important night. Even though the shipment wasn’t due for another week and a half, I had to go to the warehouse to finalize everything with the truckers. I needed to make sure they were getting paid, I needed to check the schedule and make sure the drivers for the night before the shipment were the ones I requested, and I needed to iron out any kinks that might be happening in the plan. The shipment was never the issue because we always prepared so far in advance, but making sure that preparation paid off was a massive deal.
And it was one that was always tasked to me.
I rode up to the warehouse and was promptly met by the manager. He came over and greeted me with a handshake before he ushered me into his office. I needed to take a look at things: schematics, shipment number, crate numbers, schedules. He had everything laid out for me to make it easier, so I sat down and took my time looking over everything.
I double-checked crate numbers with what I had in my files and triple-checked all the payment records. It was important to us that those involved in helping us got paid their due. It’s how you created long-term relationships when working these types of ventures.
But I had to admit, that black sedan was still on my mind.
I hadn’t seen it while I was driving out of the neighborhood this evening, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t hiding around somewhere. I cursed not leaving my cell number with Syd, just in case she needed to call. I needed to remember to leave something on the fridge for her to see.
It was important that she could contact me in case of some sort of emergency.
“Everything looks good on this end,” I said. “Payment dropped into your account last night, right?” I asked.
“Yep. Asked all the workers, and they all got paid. They were all really happy, too. It was more than we were expecting,” he said.
“Well, we’ve got some discrepancies in our inventory. Nothing to do with you guys, it’s why we’re trying this type of route again. The extra money is to… incentivize the guys to keep their fingers off our things.”
“Understood,” he said. “I’ll pass the word on.”
“I would actually prefer it if you didn’t. I have a feeling the sticky fingers are actually within our ranks, and not coming from the outsiders helping us. I’m heading up this inventory count this time, so if we get all the stuff in and it’s all counted, and here, I can quickly rule out the outside workers without anyone knowing what I’m doing,” I said.
“Make sense. Sorry, you’re having troubles.”
“It happens. I figured the boost in pay would help to incentivize a job well done in a week and a half,” I said.
“It most certainly will. Thank you for your confidence.”
“Not a problem. If this goes well, would you and the guys be open to negotiating some sort of…?”
“Most definitely,” the man said, grinning.
“Perfect. I’ll leave you to it, then. I’ll come back through a couple days before everything’s supposed to go down. Make sure you guys don’t need anything.”
“We’ll look out for ya,” he said.
“Oh, and one last thing,” I said. “There’s a worker here, goes by the name of Concrete?”
“Oh, yeah. Works just about every day, thank fuck. He’s a massive hulk of granite, hence the nickname.”
“He’s been hired by us for quite some time to look out for anything that might seem suspicious. Usually, we don’t say shit about this, but you seem like a guy I can trust.”
“You most certainly can, sir,” he said.
“If he reports anything weird back to me, your pay won’t be yanked. We don’t play that game. But he does have the authority to reroute as necessary, and let’s say his… muscles do a great deal of talking when people get in his way.”
I saw the man swallow hard and I knew I had his attention. I wanted to plant as many seeds as I could. Weeding out sticky fingers with outsiders required dropping seeds of information that even a toddler could piece together. We didn’t always work with the brightest of individuals, and if we got the entire shipment with everything intact after all I’d told this guy, I knew Talon, and I had to look towards our own club to figure out how the three boxes of ‘oil’ went missing.
“I understand completely,” he said.
“Good. I’ll be back in about a week,” I said. “There’s gonna be a truck that pulls up. The driver’s name is ‘Oceana.’ Our merchandise needs to be loaded onto that truck as quickly as possible. The driver will take it from there. That’s all you guys need to do.”
“Got it. Keep an eye out for anything weird, unload the delivery truck, load up your truck, and send off Oceana.”
“If the driver gives you any other name, load him up with something else. Anything else. I don’t care what it fucking is. If the person driving that truck does not tell you his name is ‘Oceana,’ do not give him our shit.”
“You know the driver’s a man? What if a woman tells us her name is ‘Oceana?” he asked.
“Good. I like a man that pays attention,” I said, grinning. “No. It’s a male driver. If it’s a woman, I don’t care if she gives you the right name. The driver has to be male, and the driver’s name has to be ‘Oceana.’”
“Got it,” the man said.
“Perfect.”
I walked down the warehouse and simply took a look around. I spotted Concrete, who did nothing to acknowledge the fact that he knew me. That gave me a bit of a worry. There was always something from Concrete. A nod. A salute. A cheeky little grin. He didn’t give you much, but he always acknowledged you if he knew you.
It was how I knew we were all on board.
But when he didn’t acknowledge me, I saw him staring off into the distance. I followed his line of sight and realized he was staring out towards the remote warehouse. I looked back at him, only to find him staring out at the road, and that’s when I knew what was happening.
He was trying to tell me something.
I put my sunglasses on and simply took a leisurely stroll. I kicked a few things around and slowly meandered by everyone, who gave me blank stares. A few nodded, a few grunted, but most just kept on with their work.
But all of them eventually flickered their gaze over to that damn warehouse.
I found my way down to the remote warehouse. It had been abandoned for the longest time until the place refurbished it and started using it as storage for the containers that never got picked up. Some companies would pick up their empty metal containers and reuse them, but some companies would simply abandon them. It used to clog up the warehouse, but now some millennial geniuses or whatever were taking these massive empty metal containers and turning them into affordable, livable homes.
I didn’t understand any of that bullshit. All I knew was that opening this warehouse meant containers stored in it were assumed to be abandoned.
Which made it easier to stash the types of goods we were pedaling if a shipment came in earlier than expected.
I looked around the abandoned warehouse, not really sure what I was looking for. I had my hand on my gun, ready to draw it at a moment’s notice. Whatever it was, all the warehouse workers we’d paid wanted me to know something was over here.
Which made me think something over here affected the work they were about to do for us.
I checked in every container and listened out for every sound. I checked in every corner and even shone a flashlight up into the rafters of this massive fucking building. I saw absolutely nothing that would give me any indication that this deal was going south. I saw no cameras, no wires. I didn’t find any bugs planted in any of the containers nor did I find even a person crouched down trying to hide from my presence.
What I did hear eventually, however, was the engine of a car strike up.
I cut my flashlight off and slowly made my way towards a crack in the building. The closer I inched to the sound, the more nervous I became. I scooted along the dark wall of the warehouse, hoping my shadow wouldn’t off anyone who might’ve been outside canvassing this exact spot.
But I didn’t have to get much closer to see the car making that noise.
It was that fucking black sedan again.
I cursed myself as I held my breath. With my footsteps light as silk, I strode out of the warehouse. The sedan didn’t move like it had seen me, which meant I had the upper hand. I knew it was there, but the driver of the car didn’t know I had seen them.
Which meant I could follow their asses and figure out what the fuck was going on once and for all.
I gave a small nod to each person as I passed. They did fucking good, and if I had anything to say about it, we’d be using them again soon. The manager looked at me with a worried stare as he stood beside Concrete, their faces turned towards me as I rounded for my motorcycle. I saluted them both, silently thanking him for doing exactly what we paid him to do.
To fucking watch over our shit when we couldn’t.
I kicked up the stand of my bike and ran it back around to the warehouse. I didn’t start it up, and I didn’t get on it. I only walked it into one of the containers. I waited, watching the shadow of the sedan as it slowly started to creep by, then I allowed the metal of the containers to bounce the sound of my motorcycle around, disorienting the driver of the sedan as I simply sat there.
I watched the car cruise back and forth, trying desperately to figure out where the hell the sound was coming from. I wanted to follow them. I wanted to figure out who the fuck was driving that car. If it was one of the Iron Souls, I needed to have a very long, intimate talk with them.
If it was the DEA, I needed to start informing The Road Rebels of what I’d taken on and the trouble it had brought our way.
We’d been careful. The sedan wasn’t for us. The Road Rebels took painstaking measures to make sure our shit was under control. But the Iron Souls shit was all over the news. Every time another person was caught and detained, there was some breaking news bullshit that scrolled across the television.
If the DEA really did know about Sydney, she was in a great deal of trouble. And I knew the DEA wouldn’t stop until they’d finally collected her.
Finally, I heard the sedan drive off. I waited for a few seconds before I slowly came inching out of the warehouse, sliding out behind them onto the main road. I kept a few car lengths behind, wanting the sound of blaring radios and car horns to mask my sound. I was going to follow them wherever they took me, no matter how long it put me on the road tonight.
The more information I could work with, the better I could protect Syd and Emery.
If the driver of the sedan knew I was there, they didn’t seem to be phased by it. They drove the speed limit, they didn’t try any weird maneuvers to get away from me, nor did they try to stop themselves in the middle of the highway to get to me. I trailed along behind them, riding for twenty minutes up the highway before they finally exited. I rode up one more exit and wrapped around, trying not to look too conspicuous as I finally caught up with the sedan again.
I rode three cars behind it into a small town. The Nevada dust was kicking up with the wind that night, and I knew if they didn’t pull over I’d have to cut on my light soon. The single light shining on them would give away the fact that a motorcycle was behind their car, and the last thing I wanted was anything else giving me away.
Luckily, they pulled off and parked in the parking lot of a diner.
I crossed the road and cut off my bike. I walked it to the edge of an abandoned building, sitting myself there in the shadows. My black bike and my black leather jacket concealed me from being seen in the dark, and I sat for a little while and simply watched. They were parked, but they didn’t get out, and for a split second I thought maybe they knew I was there. They were waiting for me to make the first move or some shit, and a slight shiver slithered up my spine.
That was until they finally got out of the sedan, the two agents laughing with one another as they walked in.
I recognized them instantly. Those were definitely DEA agents. With their nice suits and clean-cut looks, there was no way they were a part of the Iron Souls. They were laughing and shooting the shit while I sat there and watched them, and I clocked the government license plate, memorizing the letters and numbers.
The next thing I needed to figure out was if there were multiple black sedans running around our Nevada town. I needed to know if the sedan I was looking at now was the same one stalking my house. If it were, then it would be easy to distract. Sydney would just have to lay low for awhile and not go anywhere. One black sedan meant the DEA wasn’t sure if she was here. It just meant they were merely scoping out places she could’ve eventually fled to.
And I could see why they would assume she could come to me.
If they’d been digging into her and they went back enough, we were practically attached to the hip. And if they calculated the amount of time she left and compared it to Emery’s age, they probably already pieced together that there was a possibility Emery was mine.
Which meant she would really flee here.
But if there was more than one black sedan, that meant they were hunting her down. It meant they were ready to pounce and raid the house. It meant they would stop at nothing until they’d found her, which meant one of two things: either she played a bigger role in the Iron Souls than she was letting on, or they really were going to string the Iron Souls up and make an example out of them.
Either way, it affected this shipment, and it affected Emery. If I was caught harboring a fugitive, they could haul me away as well, which meant Emery had no family to run to. They’d stick her in a fucking foster system somewhere, with some family that could never love her the way I could.
The idea of someone tracking Emery burned my blood. Part of me wanted to stay here and watch them. Follow them and see where they went after the diner. But nighttime had fallen, and the stars were twinkling, and without Syd having my number and being all alone with Emery, I needed to get back to them.
I had enough information, for now, to help me with what I was trying to figure out.
I took one last look at the license plate before I struck up my bike. I rode out of town, rehearsing the combination of letters and numbers in my head. I knew I needed to be concerned about the DEA snooping around. They were at the fucking warehouse we were using, for fuck’s sake! This could spoil everything, and I knew I needed to tell Mac.
I needed to tell the group what was going on and who I was stowing away.
My loyalty would be questioned and I risked being tossed out of the club. The legacy I wanted to leave behind-- the family I wanted to protect-- was all hinging on the next step I took. My mind raced as I barreled down the highway, my tires carrying me as fast as I could risk it as I fled back to my home.
I couldn’t betray The Road Rebels. No matter how much I wanted to protect Emery and Sydney, the truth was she’d left. She’d left her family high and dry, and The Road Rebels didn’t forget about shit like that. I had to tell them the DEA was snooping around because whether or not she was still in that life, I was. This put my entire family at risk, and even though Sydney was the woman I loved and Emery was my daughter, I couldn’t be around to protect them if we got busted.
I couldn’t be around to raise Emery if they threw us both in prison.
I exited off the highway as I looked at the road behind me. No one was following me, and I didn’t see any cars without taillights behind me, but I wanted to be sure. I diverted onto a bike path, cutting on my light as I whizzed through the trees. My heart ached with what I had to do, but I knew it had to be done.
I couldn’t allow the transgressions of the Iron Souls to take down The Road Rebels, too.
If I alerted the club before I talked with Sydney, they’d string her up. Not literally. Women and children weren’t something we hurt. Ever. But they would drag her through the mud. I’d certainly lose my position as well as the trust I’d built within the group, and they’d try to chase Sydney and Emery out of town in order to preserve their own legacy and shipment.
I didn’t want that to happen. I didn’t want Emery to be subjected to that.
I raced up the road to my home and saw no black sedans sitting there. That gave me some relief that maybe there was only one, but the only way to be sure was to check the license plate the next time it came stalking the house.
But after I asked Sydney the questions I needed to, I doubted she would still be here to look at it.
I wanted her to stay. I wanted to protect them both. But I couldn’t allow them to take down an entire group just because they fled. Just because Sydney made bad decisions. I knew she was lying to me. Not telling me the whole story. But as I shrugged my helmet off and parked my bike around the side of the house, I put on my stern face.
I needed the truth from her, and I needed it now.