Bubbles

---

Church was a solemn affair — the news of El Atroz moving so close meant a likely war. We’d fight if they brought it, of course, but if there was a way to do an end run and keep the battle off our doorstep, we’d prefer it.

“I’ve verified they’re where Lexi says. They flew under our radar because they’re keeping a low profile,” Brain told us. “I propose sending Dawg, Knife, and me in to check out a few of the honkytonk bars. We’ll go in as civilians — no cuts, no bikes. Recon.”

I never get sent in as recon. Ever. I tend to stick out no matter where I go. Plus, I’m the one who goes when the shit might hit the fan, and I’m fine with that.

Brain sighed and looked to me. “What’s your take on Lexi? Is she holdin’ anything back we should know?”

“She won’t hold anything back she thinks might get someone in the club hurt. It isn’t just me she’s worried about, but all of us. She’s jumped in with both feet and understands the need to appear to be Switzerland, but she’s gonna tell us anything she thinks we really need to know. She’s holding the recipes and ratios and shit to herself, and we don’t care about that. She’s also holding the trap houses close, and their workspaces, but she assures me none of it’s in our territory.”

I sighed. “I’m sure Abbott dipped in her head Friday night when he told her what he is. With the possibility of Celrau being on Sand Mountain, he’ll want to know everything he can about El Atroz. What are the odds we can get him to share what he learned?”

Duke looked to Brain, who told me, “Aaron shared a little, but nothing we didn’t already know. Basically, she’s heard they’re close and knows which drugs they’re supplying, but no further details. Most of what she knows about the supply chain, she put together from overhearing conversations.”

I could feel the room waiting to hear how I reacted. I wasn’t happy about Abbott dipping into her head, but he was considered a friend — and one we needed. There wasn’t a damned thing we could do about it, and he hadn’t hurt her. I shrugged. “Not gonna go after him for it. I assumed he’d gone in. Knowing it for a fact don’t change nothin’. He didn’t hurt her, and it ain’t like we can kick his ass for it.”

“Which brings us to the next point,” said Duke. “Aaron and Abbott want us to talk to them before we take action. I’ve assured them we’re only doing recon at the moment, but reminded them everything else has to be voted on, so I couldn’t give them any assurances.”

“I’ve asked Bud to keep an ear to the ground in Atlanta,” said Brain, “since bikers on Sand Mountain are about as close to Atlanta as they are to us.” He looked at Bash. “Ask Angelica to talk to Maggie and little Evie. See what they know.”

Bash chuckled. “Little Evie’s not so little anymore, but I’ll get her to talk to them.”

Brain looked to Paco, then around the table. “I tasted around a few of their servers, and I’ll need something specific to hack — preferably the name of a database, but even just a few email addresses would be a place to start. There’s too much of a chance I’ll leave a trail if I just dip in and snoop. I’ll be brainstorming with Shadow in Atlanta to see if he has any ideas, but I’m at a dead end on the hacking front for now. Whoever is securing them has done a damned good job.”

Lexi would be pissed if she found out about this, but I had to put it out there. “How about Lexi’s mom’s phone? I just need to be in Bluetooth vicinity to infect it, right? Not sure when my Half-pint will need to go back, but I can try to find a reason to go with her.”

Brain looked at Duke, and Duke looked at me. “Yeah. Brain’ll get the software on your phone and show you what to do.”

Brain’s software would let us see every text, hear every phone call, and even tap into her microphone and camera at will.

“If I configure a camera to connect to a neighbor’s Wi-Fi and beam data back to us, you okay with placing it?”

This was a much bigger ask. We could plead ignorance on the phone app, and there’d be no proof I installed it. Putting something physical in her apartment that would show up after I left, however…

“Let’s put that on the back burner,” said Duke. “We’ll see what we can find out in other ways, first.”

I nodded. “Thanks. Push comes to shove, I’ll do it, but...”

“She ain’t just pussy,” said Duke. “She’s family. We’ll try to find another way.”

Lexi was in the main room with the other ol’ladies when we came upstairs after church, and I stopped and watched from the back of the room. My Half-pint was sitting on a chair, Angelica was on the floor, and Lexi appeared to be doing some kind of complicated braid in a twirl around Tink’s head. I looked around and saw Tippie’s hair in a beautiful bun with a braid around it, Harmony’s hair arranged so it looked like the woven pieces were some kind of hair-tie to hold the rest of her hair away from her face, and Gabby’s hair was braided on the sides going up, so all of her hair was loose at the top center of her head and made her look like she had a mohawk.

Gabby saw me first, and she came running, turning in a circle so I could see. “Never have I had so much fun helping someone with their homework. Matty is taking pictures of her doing the work, and then he takes us outside to the wooded area to get pics of our hair. When she finishes, we’ll go out so she can do the video part, and she says that’ll take care of most of her project.” She saw me watching Lexi, and added, “Don’t disturb her or she’ll have to start over!”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” I went to the bar, got a beer, pulled a chair around, and sat in it backwards to drink. Tippy was close, watching me like a… well, kinda like a wary deer, and I smiled at her. “Good to see you in the clubhouse, darlin’. Had any interesting jobs lately?”

Her expression calmed and she smiled. She’d just needed some feedback. She nodded in answer, and said, “Yes, actually. A total restoration job on a colt revolving rifle from about 1860. Beautiful weapon.”

She rolled her eyes at my lack of excitement. “Right, you want something modern and sexy. A man with more money than he knows what to do with bought a Lapua and then couldn’t figure out how to break it down and clean it, and paid me to do it for him, and to add some tech toys to it while I was at it. Oh, and I’ve had an opportunity to play with the new TrackingPoint hardware and software, which I have to admit is kind of scary technology.”

If the claims were right, she had a point. “They say it can hit a target a mile out, traveling up to twenty miles per hour. That true?”

“You have to know the exact wind speed and direction, but yeah. Like I said — scary.”

Nix sat down beside her. “It isn’t quite as good as me, but it’s still new technology and it’s only going to get better. There’s lots of safeguards to make sure a person tells it to fire, and not other software, but it’s nothing Brain couldn’t get around. Someone could set it up and be a hundred miles away when it shot, and LEO would have no way to know whether someone set it up a day before or a week before, if you got the location right.”

I hadn’t even considered those ramifications, but, “How would you handle the wind, if you set it up that far ahead of time?”

“Be willing to bet Brain could program that from a distance if he had enough time to fiddle with the software. Otherwise, might need to set it for no wind and wait until you have a day without.”

“And if you sneak it into a neighbor’s unused attic space and set it up, it can be there for weeks before you…” I shook my head. “Cops would find it, after. You’d have to buy it so it’s untraceable.”

“Or steal it.” Duke sat beside us and gave Tippy a gentle smile. “Glad to see you here. We miss you when you stay gone too long.”

A few more brothers came to say hello to Tippy, and everyone was careful not to overwhelm her. I moved away when we finished our conversation, but kept an eye on her despite the fact Nix stayed by her side. I felt protective of our little deer.

Lexi finished Angelica’s hair and Matty herded everyone outside who’d had their hair worked on. I was deep in a video game where it was our club against some unknown group online — and we were kickin’ their ass — when the women came back inside. Lexi curled up beside me and I made room for her without lookin’, but handed my controller to someone else when we finished the game.

She climbed into my lap and curled up, and something didn’t feel right. Her scent wasn’t terribly off, but something was bothering her.

“What’s up, Half-pint?”

“Can you just hold me a few minutes?”

“You know I can, but you need to tell me what’s bothering you.”

She shook her head and I smelled grief. “Bullshit family stuff. I’m okay.”

Brain caught my eye from another sofa and nodded towards the door. Yeah, he thought I needed to get her out of here and get to the bottom of it, too. I stood with her in my arms and walked out of the clubhouse, through the areas we usually set up for our parties, and into the little wooded section. I sat on the ground with my back to the outer concrete wall and Lexi in my lap.

“Talk, sweetheart.”

“My mama texted that I’m dead to her, and that I’ll need to find another Tennessee address. She’s gonna let the apartment people know she lives alone again. Etta will let me use her address for school, so I won’t lose my grant, but…”

She took a half-dozen breaths without continuing, and I kissed her on top of the head. “You think this has anything to do with our talk with Jiminy?”

She shrugged. “Maybe. It’s possible she’s assumed I’d work for her eventually, and now she sees that won’t happen. I mean, I know she assumes my sister will come work for her when Etta gets too old to bring in the big money with sex work. Etta has other plans, but she hasn’t told Mama, and I don’t blame her.” Another breath. “Etta talked to her. My sister thinks mama’s checked out for a couple of days again.”

From what Lexi had told me in the past, this meant her mother was hitting the drugs hard and wasn’t planning on working in the next couple of days.

“Okay. Let’s take a few brothers and go clean your stuff out of your room.” She’d left enough of her belongings so it’d look like she still lived there. Section eight housing means you have to let people in to inspect the apartment every so often, so she couldn’t move everything out.

She took a fortifying breath and looked at me. “Yeah, before she fucks with it. I don’t look forward to seeing her, but we should do it sooner rather than later.”

I took her in and deposited her on the sofa between Matty and Harmony. “I’ll be back for her soon.”

Brain was up before I had to tell him I needed him, and the second I looked at Bash, he was up too. The three of us walked towards a conference room, and Duke spoke from behind us. “My office.”

As soon as the door closed, I told them what was up, and finished by telling Brain, “Gather whatever we need to spy on her mom.”

He nodded. “Audio in the apartment, since I can put something in that’ll last six to eight weeks on a single battery charge. I’ll handle bugging her phone, since I’m going. We’ll have video and audio from her phone when it’s plugged in and charging, and we can target it any other time. Also, we’ll know everywhere she goes, so Lexi won’t need to tell us where anything’s located.” He looked at his watch. “I’ll grab what I need from the downstairs safe and leave. Give me at least a five-minute head start, so I can hack a few of her neighbors’ routers and set the hardware up to hit them at random. I’ll put three to six in, so we’re assured our bugs will find a signal to phone home with.”

When Brain left, Duke looked to me with concern. “You gonna tell Lexi?”

I considered every possibility. “No, and I’ll lie out my ass if they find the bugs — we don’t know nothin’ about them.” I sighed. I needed to confront the alternative. “If they don’t find them and we use something we learn, we’ll need to decide at that time whether to warn her about blowback. If we have to tell her, I’ll need ya’ll to be okay with me tellin’ her ya’ll didn’t tell me until later.”

I didn’t ask him to make sure we didn’t put her in danger because I knew he wouldn’t do it without taking precautions.

“Right,” he agreed. “If it comes to it, we’ll either figure out how to keep her out of it, or warn her and protect her if that ain’t possible.”

“We’ll go in with boxes, tape, and a few rolls of bubble wrap,” said Bash. “How much stuff does she have to pack?”

“Her bed, a shelving unit, a small nightstand, maybe a box or two of knickknacks, a couple of big boxes of shoes and clothes? Should easily fit in the back of a pickup.”

Lexi

---

Every nerve in my body was tight as a guitar string while we climbed the stairs in the apartment building. I had Bubbles at my side and his brothers in front of us and behind us, and they’d protect me from physical danger, but no one could protect me from whatever words came out of my mama’s mouth.

I didn’t knock to get in. I had a key and I used it.

Relief flooded my system when I realized she was too spaced-out to be a problem, and then I felt immediate guilt for bein’ happy my mama was worse than useless.

The men started takin’ my bed apart as soon as we hit my bedroom — Bash and Duke carried the mattress out, and Bubbles pulled a screwdriver from lord-knows-where to disassemble the frame.

Brain taped a few boxes together and helped me empty my shelves.

Duke and Bash came back, and Brain stood in a corner and fiddled with his phone. I knew the control room often contacted him for help, and I wondered what was up, but didn’t mention it.

Mama didn’t even pay attention to us until the men took my box spring and bedframe out.

“What you doin’ in my house?! I’m finna shoot every one of ya’ll’s white asses!”

I heard a scuffle and stepped out of my room to see what was goin’ on. Bash had taken a gun away from Mama and was unloading it. He glanced at me. “She have more bullets?”

“Extra clips are either in the sofa cushions or on the floor under it. Or maybe both. There’s a shotgun under the sofa, too. Buckshot.”

“You tellin’ all my secrets, girl!? I give you life, an’ dis de way you treat me!”

“Not all yo secrets, but you cain’t shoot my friends.” I heard myself talking like her but decided not to change. You never know what might set her off, and hearing me talk white might be enough to make her shoot me when she was this far gone.

Bash pulled the shotgun and extra mags out from under the sofa, and she punched him in the face while his hands were full. It was a good, solid punch — you don’t pull a punch when you don’t feel pain — but he acted like it’d come from a two year old. He handed the weapons to Brain, who took them into another room.

And then I watched Bash walk through the house, smelling, and he found every damned gun. Every. Single. One.

He found the twenty-two duct taped to the back of a chair on the other side of the room, the nine mil in the cookie jar in the kitchen, the revolver under the towels in the tiny linen closet outside the bathroom, and the rifle under mama’s bed. He sniffed into my room but didn’t get the semi-auto nine out of my closet.

“You’ll need to talk to Bubbles before you take a weapon into his house.”

“It isn’t mine, it’s Mamas, so I won’t take it. I won’t do anything to screw with his parole.”

Meanwhile, Mama was still ranting and raving, but no one was payin’ attention. Her words were so slurred, I’m not even sure she was making sense. She hit Bash again and he ignored her, but he caught her hand before she hit him again.

“I don’t hit women, but hit me again and you’ll find yourself hogtied while we finish.”

She glared at me. “Friends! You call these friends! You hear dat, grill?!”

“Yeah, I heared ’em. Punch him again and I’ll help him hogtie your black ass.” She opened her mouth to respond, and I said, “Sit yo ass down and shut the hell up.”

Bash let go of her, and I’m pretty sure he aimed her for the sofa, which made her sit when I’d told her to, which really pissed her off, but there wasn’t much she could do. However, it seemed to make her remember all the other reasons she was pissed at me, and she finally started in with what I’d been dreading.

“Yuh ain’t my daughter no moe! You some uppity white bitch, think she too good for her raisin’! Get out my house b’foe I—”

I took two steps and slapped the shit out of her, which shut her up, and I finally told her what I’d figured out in high school.

“If you didn’t want a kid who looks white, you shouldn’t have gotten knocked up by a white man! Do you know how fucking idiotic you sound, complainin’ about me lookin’ white, when you the one who made me this way? You know what? Fuck you, Mama. I don’t need this shit. Sit your ass back down and shut up. I need ten minutes to finish packin’ and I’ll leave. You never have to see me again!”

Duke and Brain came out of my room with more boxes, and Duke told me, “You don’t need ten minutes. Everything’s boxed. This one’s mostly clothes and isn’t too heavy. Grab it, and we can get the rest.”

I was fine while we walked down the steps, fine while we made sure the truck was loaded so nothin’ would fall out. They’d brought two prospects to watch the truck, so no one would steal shit out of it, and they’d tied stuff already in there, so it didn’t take much.

Bubbles was driving, and I was okay until we pulled out of the parking lot, but then burst into tears when we hit the road. I couldn’t help it. So much emotion in me, and it came out at once. Bash unfastened my seatbelt, pulled me into his lap, and held me while I cried. Bubbles rubbed my back while he drove, and Bash told me to let it out. No one fussed, no one complained, no one told me it’d be okay. I heard “We have you,” and “You’re good. Let it out.”

I also remember Duke telling someone, “I’ll tag Slick. See how busy Betty is.”

I didn’t pay attention to where we were until we pulled into a parking lot and I realized we were at the Rolling Thunder Motel.

Betty was in the office, and came out and to the truck as we pulled up. She climbed into the spot I’d been sitting before Bash pulled me into his lap, put her face to mine, and hugged me.

“I’m invited to spend the night in Bubbles’ guest room tonight, so you’ll have me close.” She sighed. “Mama’s a first-class bitch, baby sister. Get in my lap. Angelica’s gonna smell you on Bash and lose it.”

“No,” said Bash. “She’ll be fine. This is grief. My princess will be glad I held her.”

I looked at Etta. “Why are you riding with us? Where’s your car?”

She shrugged. “Slick told me it’ll be at Bubbles’ house when I wake up in the mornin’. I think the guys were kinda desperate to get me into the truck with you.”

“Maybe not desperate,” said Bubbles, “but she’s better with you here.”

We drove to Bubbles’ house, the men unloaded the pickup into the garage, and then left me and Etta at the house.

“Need to ride back with them so I can bring my bike back,” he told me. “You and your sister need some time. Love you.”

He kissed my forehead, and he was gone.

Etta watched me punch in the code to unlock the door, and then another code once I was inside, to disarm the alarm system.

“He trusts you.”

“Yeah, I guess so. You sure you’re okay with me using your address?”

“Of course. You’ll need to get your cellphone bill changed so it comes to me, and school stuff. What else?”

I shrugged. “My cellphone bill is emailed. Bank statements, too. I mean, I’ll need to give them my new address, but they never send anything.” I met her gaze. “I finally told mama it’s her fault I look white, ’cause she fucked a white man, and she’s an idiot for tryin’ to make it my fault, but she’s so messed up, I doubt she’ll remember. I’m gonna have to tell her again.”

“Maybe, maybe not. She remembers important stuff, sometimes. Wash your face and change clothes. You’ll feel better.”

Etta was in a tiny miniskirt and a halter top. “Grab whatever you want outta my closet.” Everything would be too short for her, but she’s as skinny as me, so it’d fit.

Etta was in my long robe when I came out of the bathroom. It comes down to my ankles, but barely covered her knees. I stripped out of my clothes and put one of Bubbles’ shirts on. I needed to be close to him.

“You hungry? I want breakfast. You good with bacon and fried eggs?”

“Yeah. I’ll make the biscuits.”

My mouth watered. Etta makes them from scratch and they’re melt-in-your-mouth good.

“And bacon-grease gravy,” I agreed. “Damn, we’re gonna have a feast ready when Bubbles gets back.”

Bubbles

---

I’d seen Brain placing shit around Lexi’s mom’s apartment. Hell, he’d even picked Lexi’s mom’s phone up and done shit to it, and the bitch was so strung out, she hadn’t realized.

“The idiots are using a whiteboard app to keep track of everything,” Brain told us on the way back to the clubhouse. “They chose well — it would’ve taken me a few days to get into it, and it’s possible I’d have never even found it. I gave myself access while I was in on Lexi’s mom’s phone. The app is secure as fuck, which gave them a false sense of security. They have the schedule of when shipments are due to arrive, the street name of the trap houses with a fucking inventory of what’s at each one, and even what looks like a timesheet for El Atroz in Alabama — when they’re on guard duty and when they have time off. We have their names. Looks like they brought nine members in and no ol’ladies.”

“Guard duty?” I asked. “That mean they’re helping out in Chattanooga?”

“Hard to tell from the little bit I saw so far. Looks like they’re growin’ weed — could just be a matter of guarding their local operations.” He sighed. “Didn’t see anything about the factories, so I’m wondering if El Atroz is working for both cartels, meaning we’ll need to dig into the other cartel’s servers to find out more.”

“Right, so we’re only seeing information on Jiminy’s operation, but not the other cartel. Makes sense.” said Duke. He sighed. “Get what you can without being spotted. We’ll run through it all during church.”