CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

The neutral spot that Aaron Beeson had requested, and that Joe had chosen, was up in the hills. The spot was technically part of the land belonging to the county waterworks, but hardly anything could be seen except a cell phone tower that had been built a few years back. It was the one Kyle had discovered on a ride once, and he and Joe used to go up there and sit and look out over the sienna brown landscape and the hills, swaying righteously beneath them. It was conducive to deep thoughts and grandiose plans, and made them feel like brother philosopher-kings, rulers over all they surveyed. But the reason he’d chosen it was because if anything bad went down, he wanted it to be as far away from Ruby as possible.

 

Two bikes led the brigade up Highway 99, with a couple of Aaron's men bringing up the rear. He had expected this, though. The driver of the second bike, who rode in tandem with Aaron, was a mystery. It was a slight person, a helmet with a shield down covering the face. It was only after the figure hopped lightly off the bike and took off the helmet that Joe recognized who it was.

 

Brenda Weston was one of the most intimidating women he'd ever met. She was almost fifty, but she had the kind of marble skin that showed only the trace of age--or a good plastic surgeon, he'd never been sure. Almost six feet tall and muscular, her head head-to-toe shiny black leather showed off the fact that she'd kept her curvy figure throughout several pregnancies, and her long black hair was thick and flawless as she shook it out from under her helmet.

 

As Tony's mother, she was their ally, but it was definitely unorthodox to show up at a meeting riding side-by-side with a guy whose relationship with them was rocky at best--not to mention who may have been involved in her son's stabbing.

 

"What is she doing here? With you?" asked Rex, narrowing his eyes, his hand on the inside pocket. Next to Rex, A.J.’s face looked like a slab of stone. Behind him, Joe heard Wings take a step back. He was too easily intimidated--another thing to work on.

 

"Relax, kid, I'm not here in any official capacity." Her voice was husky from years of cigarette smoking, which added to the effect. "Like any mother, I was a bit anxious to find answers about why my son ended up in the hospital with eighteen stab wounds in his chest. Aaron seemed like the guy to provide them."

 

"She came down to Mexico and ended up staying longer than she expected. I don't blame her. I treat my guests right." This was Aaron now, a well-tanned man with high cheekbones and cropped black hair.

 

Though he officially belonged to no M.C., he wore a leather jacket that made him look like a 1950’s matinee idol. He was also chewing gum, a habit of his that had annoyed Joe for years. He chuckled now as he gave Brenda a serious kiss on the lips. Beside him, Colt raised his eyebrows. It shouldn’t have surprised him, though. Aaron was at least ten years younger than Brenda. "Anyway, we've got it hammered out. Unfortunately, putting in the last piece of the puzzle will require discretion."

 

"Discretion?" Colt looked skeptical, eyes darting to Joe. In fact, all of the members’ eyes had been on him since the meeting began.

 

Aaron clenched his jaw, seeming to look taller due to the pure intimidation factor, though he was, in actuality, a few inches shorter than Joe. "Me. Ryan. Alone."

 

"But--" Aaron shot Brenda a glare, and she shut her mouth immediately.

 

Joe, as president, had the right to make that decision to speak to Aaron without the other members, but it was good form to at least determine that his colleagues had no major objections. A.J. looked incensed and even opened his mouth to object, but he nodded when Colt fixed him with a stone cold glare. Rex and Wings, of course, followed A.J.'s lead. Joe pointed the way down the hill to one of the culverts that he had chosen in case this situation arose, sheltered on three sides by hills.

 

“Well?” asked Joe, looking down at his boots, trying not to grit his teeth as Aaron casually smacked his gum; trying not to think about Kyle or Tony or what the Jockeys had every right to take from him in retaliation. This was important. No one had ever taught Joe how to act like a leader, though Kyle and Colt had tried. Mostly, he was learning on the job.

 

“How did they get to you? The Reapers?”

 

"Nobody got to me. Your boy Tony lied to you when he said I called. My associate Briggs only stabbed Tony in self-defense after the kid got clever.”

 

“Give me a good reason and I’ll consider believing that.” Knowing Tony, though, he knew it wasn’t unlikely.

 

“You guys are my best and longest-lasting allies, and Brenda," he looked over at her, obvious lust, if not genuine affection, in his eyes. "Needless to say, Brenda wants this kept under wraps too.

 

“She agreed not to retaliate, and I agreed not to go public about Tony's...temporary lapse in judgment. Without me and my guy's testimony, the cops won't have a case against Tony. They'll stitch him up and he'll go home. Best of all, you and the Jockeys get to stay in the front of my Rolodex."

 

This was big, Joe thought. The Jockeys didn't need a big public court case against one of their own, which inevitably would bring to light other sins they'd committed in the course of doing business. And Beeson was the one supplier that, financially, they could not afford to lose.

 

"You still use a Rolodex?" Joe smirked.

 

"It's a figure of speech, wise ass."

 

"So what's the catch?" He crossed his arms in front of his chest, looking briefly down at the ground, then back up Aaron, trying to stay impassive, though he suspected he was about to hear something he wouldn't like. At all.

 

"You."

 

"Me?" Joe hated that he couldn't disguise the surprise in his voice.

 

"You keep the promise you made to my cousin."

 

"Lydia?"

 

Joe swallowed, his stomach felt like it was sinking, melting into the earth beneath him, making the whole world heavy.

 

This was worse than he could have possibly imagined. He'd worried, anticipated a lot of things, but not this. He'd been prepared to sacrifice a lot. To go to jail; to give his life if it came to that, though he suspected that neither of those things would help.

 

But going back to Lydia meant bidding goodbye to Ruby forever--it meant watching Ruby, most likely, walk back into the arms of Fox Keene. After all, Fox could provide what Joe could not--he could marry her; pay for her education, take her to swanky parties and vacations, give her a legitimate life, albeit one built off of betrayal and brutality.

 

He ran his hands through his hair and took several slow inhales, tried to get his breathing under control. He had to reason with Aaron. It was his only chance.

 

"Let me get something through your head. That promise is null and void. I told Lydia that and she accepted it. We agreed she'd go to Mexico to cool off."

 

"Then why does she still have her ring?"

 

"That was your grandmother's ring,” Joe burst out. “It was a keepsake. We agreed I'd use it to propose to her. Luckily, it never got that far." She'd also offered the ring because she knew there was no way in hell Joe would be able to afford one on his own, but Aaron didn't need to know that.

 

After Lydia’s father had died, Aaron, his nephew and heir, had taken over the business side of the operation, and Lydia had received her inheritance, which included the compound in Mexico that Aaron leased as his basis of operations. Lydia didn't need to marry Joe for his money or lack thereof; she had plenty of her own.

 

She wanted to marry him because he was the president of the Jockeys and power was her aphrodisiac--as if having a family who controlled the flow of drugs and weapons over half the California-Mexico border wasn't enough. And Joe had, briefly, wanted to marry her because she seemed like she could offer him everything he'd never had—money and power. A place and a name in this world. And all of that felt hollow and cold now, a palace of ice, in the face of the warmth he had found with Ruby in the short time they'd known each other.

 

"Well, it's too late." Aaron said.

 

"What do you mean?"

 

"Lydia was way ahead of you. She's already at the Bird making herself at home."

 

Shit. Ruby. He couldn't imagine what Ruby would think if he saw Lydia waltzing around showing off a vintage diamond as big as a meteor and telling everyone it was from Joe.

 

"Think about it, Joe. You get Lydia and her daddy's money, Clarke's sister can go back to Fox, and we all go down to my place for Christmas margaritas." Joe suddenly had the urge to smash Aaron's professionally-whitened grin into a million pieces.

 

"Ruby's not going back to that psychopath in a million years if I can help it."

 

"It's either that or every Jockeys charter in California finds out that Clarke was trying to take the club down from the inside, and you were letting him do it."

 

"That's complete and utter bullshit," said Joe, his anger boiling to the surface, exactly as he'd resolved it wouldn't. At least he was alone; if A.J. and Rex had been with him, someone probably would have been stabbed already. “It was Fox who had betrayed us. It was Fox who was plotting to weaken and then take over the Jockeys.”

 

Aaron looked unmoved. The wind ruffled his hair, a robotic, unfeeling look on his face.

 

“Listen,” Joe said slowly. “Kyle had been helping him. They were importing what Fox initially said were Chinese-made motorcycle parts for the dealership, but were really Kalashnikovs smuggled from Moscow. So not only was he undercutting the Jockeys by poaching our own European suppliers, but the money rolling in was also attracting Feds like a raccoon to a garbage can. It was also what kept Kyle from questioning Fox for so long.”

 

“And they call me greedy,” laughed Aaron.

 

“You can only be greedy when you’re rich,” countered Joe, determined to defend Kyle’s decision, though he’d questioned it himself at the time. “When you’re poor, you’re just desperate. Besides, as soon as he did find out, he tried to stop him. But by then, Fox was ready for him. So were the cops.”

 

Aaron spoke slowly. “But you were helping them.”

 

“Only for Kyle,” said Joe, a chill running through his body at the realization of all Aaron knew. “For no other reason. I knew he was in trouble, and there wasn’t much I could do without attracting Fox’s attention. Kyle would do the same for me,” he snarled. “You wouldn’t understand that. Vultures usually don’t.”

 

"That’s all very sweet,” replied Aaron. “Where’s the proof?”

 

“Goddamn it, you know there isn’t any.” That was the thing. There was evidence; video surveillance, a paper trail. Fox had been meticulous in setting up Kyle to take the rap instead of himself, evidence that would satisfy both the cops and the Jockeys if it came to that. The idea that the whole time Kyle thought he was working to build a better life for Ruby, when really he was being set up by Fox, made Joe literally ill.

 

“We all know that Kyle walked into an ATF sting and tried to shoot his way out. It was suicide by cop.” Joe said through gritted teeth. “Why do you think the D.A. hasn't lifted a finger to investigate it?"

 

"I don't care. I'm not buying it."

 

“If you give a shit about the Jockeys, you will. If you go around implying it was anything more than that, there will be trouble. Trouble I’d highly advise against.”

 

Joe could think of a lot of reasons why it was more than that, and all of them had to with Fox Keene being Fox Keene--rich, powerful, and willing to use just about any too at his disposal to get his way. But there was little he could reveal to Beeson without digging himself into a deeper hole. Sure, he could count on the guys in his own chapter, but that didn't account for Sean's, or others whose trust was more precarious.

 

“Seems you’ve already agree to my deal already.”

 

“I haven’t agreed to a damn thing,” said Joe, though he felt the ground eroding under him as he spoke.

 

He didn’t have any bargaining chips anymore. Not when Aaron Beeson’s tentacles had such a far reach. This was more important than him and Ruby, he told himself fiercely. He was an idiot to make this about his heart, or even his cock. This was about laying Kyle to rest. It was making sure the M.C. survived whole and intact under his watch. About making his brothers proud of their leader. “If I--” he faltered. “If I agree, nobody touches Ruby.”

 

“Absolutely,” said Aaron. “She’s free to go or stay, as she pleases.”

 

Joe exhaled. "What about the Reapers?"

 

"Don’t worry about the Reapers,” Aaron replied. “They’re a joke. They've got nothing. No territory, no suppliers, no allies, nothing. They won't be bothering us anymore. With us working together, they won't dare." Joe wasn't sure he liked the way Aaron kept using the word "us." He preferred to keep the older man and his entire dirty operation at arm's length. His infrastructure was in place before Kyle, and then Joe, became president, and he’d never felt like Beeson had fully embraced the turnover.

 

"How do you explain this?" asked Joe, pushing back his hair and showing him the healing wound on the side of his face. “Seems kind of bold, don’t you think?”

 

“Right. From some pissant in the county jail calling himself a Reaper? Come on, Joey. Bet the only club that punk’s ever been in is his local 4-H.”

 

“He had the tat,” Joe muttered. “And he sure seemed to know a lot.”

 

“Well in that case, he’s not the only one who knows more than he should. Come on, now.” He stuck out his hand for Joe to shake, and the whole landscape seemed to turn to watercolors as Joe returned the gesture.

 

Back at the top of the hill, seeing the club president stalking toward him, face like a tornado, A.J. grabbed for his shoulder, practically salivating to be clued in. “What--”

 

“It’s over,” Joe growled, kicking his bike into gear. The only thing left was to ride home and pray something would be left when he got there.

 

***

 

"Welcome back. How was your day, hon?" The smirk on Lydia Beeson’s lips as she flipped her jet-black hair and turned around to face him, told him that her term of endearment was no accident.

 

Firmly ensconced at a table in the center of the Thunderbird, she crossed one of her black knee-high boots over the other leg, primly sipping what Joe instantly recognized as a Grey Goose and tonic, her sparkling antique diamond ring curled around the glass.

 

She was half-Mexican--her father's advantageous marriage had been part of why he'd been able to consolidate power so quickly-- and she had inherited her mother's huge, onyx-black eyes. But to Joe, she looked like a pit viper, lying in wait to bite, and then squeeze everything within reach that she perceived as weak.

 

He went immediately to the table and stood over her. "Where's Ruby?"

 

"Oh, I thought you knew,” she said, painted innocence on her face, her lips pursed like a duck’s. “On her way to Mexico. With Aaron."