As soon as we get back to Tanner Springs, Angel and I head straight for Rock’s house. When we get there, Trudy greets us at the door.

“Jesus, I just got Rock home.” She narrows her eyes at us. “Can’t you men leave him the fuck alone for even a minute to let him recuperate?”

“This is important, Trudy,” Angel tells her. “I’m sorry, darlin’, but it can’t be helped.”

“All right,” she sighs, and stands back from the door. “Come in. But wipe your goddamn feet. And don’t stay long. I’m kickin’ you out if you’re still here in half an hour.”

Rock is sitting on the living room couch, a couple of Trudy’s throw pillows propped up around him. “Ah, geez, the welcome wagon,” he mutters, but he looks glad to see us.

“I wish that was all we were here for.” Angel takes a seat in an overstuffed chair next to the couch.

“What?” Rock looks from Angel to me. “Somethin’ go wrong with the drop?”

“It was an ambush,” Angel says without preamble.

“What the fuck are you talkin’ about?” Rock demands, rising halfway off the couch. “That can’t be right!”

“No doubt about it, Rock,” I retort, my jaw tense. “Sarge and Horse are dead.”

“Jesus Christ!” Rock explodes.

“It was a trap,” Angel growls. “Whoever was supposed to meet us wasn’t there. The Outlaw Sons came in their place.” He waits a beat. “With some Iron Spiders.”

Rock freezes. His face contorts into a mask of anger. “The Spiders,” he repeats.

“We finished them all,” Angel continues. “The ones that were there, anyway. But we only have a rough idea how many Outlaw Sons there are. And we have no idea how many Iron Spiders were left after we blew up their compound and killed their prez. Maybe all the ones that were left patched into the Sons. Maybe the ones that came for us wore their Spiders cuts to show us that this was revenge for what we did to them.”

“So we’re at war.” His voice is quiet, but deadly.

Angel nods once. “The Outlaw Sons were never in this to do a deal with us. They were in it to end us.” His eyes turn black and fierce. “This won’t be over until one of our clubs is wiped out, Rock. Off the face of the earth.”

Rock roars in fury, leaning forward and slamming his fist on the coffee table in front of him. Objects fly off the surface. He jumps up off the couch, kicking at the table and sending it careening into the wall opposite him.

“Jesus Christ!” Trudy shouts, running in from the kitchen. “Rock, what the hell is wrong with you? What have you two done to work him up like this?”

“Shut the fuck up, you cunt!” Rock yells, rounding. He raises a large, meaty fist as he strides toward her. “Get the fuck out of this room, now!”

“Rock!” Angel’s up and shoving himself between them. “Come on, brother. Calm down.” He reaches an arm back and gently pushes Trudy away. “Look, Trudy’s right. You gotta calm down. You’re no good to us if you’re lyin’ in a box.”

Rock shoots Trudy a look of pure disgust. “Get outta here,” he snarls.

She narrows her eyes at him. “Fuck you, Rock,” she hisses. “Just fuck you.”

Trudy storms out of the room. Rock clenches his teeth and turns back to the couch. “Shit. Sarge and Horse.” He sits down, shaking his head. “Everyone else okay?”

I shake my head. “Bullet got shot. Smiley is patching him up.”

“You get those motherfuckers?”

“The ones that were there, yeah. All dead.” Angel’s lip curls into an evil grin. “Ain’t much left of their faces, though. The Sons are gonna have to identify ‘em by their patches.”

Rock stares into space. “The guns?” he finally says.

“We have them,” Angel says. “I’m guessin’ they thought they’d take our club out, and end up gettin’ em back in the end.”

“They ain’t takin’ this club out,” Rock rasps. “I will fuckin’ kill each and every one of ‘em myself if I have to.”

The three of us sit in silence for a few moments. This war that just started between us and the Outlaw Sons, it’s gonna get big. It could pull in most of the clubs in eastern Ohio: us, them, our chapter to the south, the Death Devils… It ain’t gonna be solved in a week, or even a month.

It’s the outlaw equivalent of World War III.

We stay for a few more minutes and try to think of something to say to cheer Rock up, but the war with the Outlaw Sons is too much on all our minds. Trudy comes in twice more, and both times Rock shouts at her to get out, getting more and more agitated by the second. Eventually, we decide to take off before he has another heart attack.

“You stay away from here,” Trudy orders us as we walk to the door. “He was in a foul mood anyway, before you came. He ain’t gonna get better if you come here and keep riling him up.”

“You okay, darlin’?” Angel asks. “He was a little rough on you back there.”

“I can handle him,” she grumbles, and then gives us a disgusted look. “But you two ain’t makin’ it any easier.”

Trudy watches us for a few seconds as we walk down the sidewalk toward our bikes, then slams the front door behind us.

“You headin’ back to the clubhouse?” I ask Angel.

“Eventually,” he frowns. “I gotta call church. Talk to the club about the ambush and the war.” Angel runs a hand roughly through his hair. “But I wanna talk to you first. And I’m fuckin’ starving. Come on.”

Twenty minutes later, we’re sitting in a back booth at the Lion’s Tap downtown, a couple glasses of draft in front of us.

“I gotta call Axel and tell him we’re at war,” Angel is saying. Axel’s the president of the new chapter of the Lords of Carnage to the south. “They might not get hit right away, but they will eventually. They need to prepare. They need to know it’s serious. That we’ve lost men.”

“Speaking of which. We gotta notify Sarge and Horse’s families,” I reply. “And plan a memorial.” Fuck, it makes me feel sick to say that. I can’t believe they’re gone.

“Yeah,” he nods glumly. “Jesus, this is a hell of a time for Rock to be outta commission. It ain’t good to be operating without a president right now.”

“You’ll hold us together, brother.” I drain what’s left of my beer and signal to the waitress for another. “Shit, you’ve been VP for a long time. You know what you’re doin’. Ain’t nobody in the club who doubts that for a minute.”

Angel snorts. “Except Rock, maybe.”

“Nah. He knows the club’s in good hands. He just doesn’t like it when he’s not out in front, callin’ the shots.”

“Yeah. Well. That’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about.” The waitress brings our food and moves away. Angel looks me in the eye. “I’m not so sure how soon he’s gonna be back in the saddle. Trudy told me in the hospital that Rock’s doc wants him to do a complete overhaul of his lifestyle. Diet, exercise, all that noise. And above all, no stress. Apparently his scans showed he’d had a couple mini heart attacks before this one, and there’s a bunch of scarring and shit. I guess he’s at risk for another attack, and his ticker can’t take much more.”

“Fuck,” I whistle. “He ain’t gonna take that very well.”

“No shit. I don’t expect him to take it at all. I tried to talk to him about it, but he blew up and said I was tryin’ to take over his club.”

“That’s bullshit. He doesn’t believe that.”

“I dunno.” Angel shrugs. “Wouldn’t be the first time we’ve clashed when he thinks I’m challenging his authority. When I went to the hospital for the first time after his attack, he told me not to make any decisions about the club without consulting him first. Well, given the situation, I don’t think that’s gonna be possible. There’s gonna be times I’m gonna have to decide shit quickly.”

“He knows that,” I say. “Or he will. The club’ll back you up, brother.”

“Rock’s been like a father to me,” Angel continues. “In a lot of ways, a hell of a lot more than my own father was. This club’s my family.”

Angel’s father was Abe Abbott. He used to be the mayor of Tanner Springs. Used to be, that is, until he let greed and power get the best of him.

Abe Abbott and Rock had a long-standing gentlemen’s agreement about the Lords of Carnage. An agreement that allowed both the mayor’s office and the motorcycle club president to function in a kind of peaceful coexistence. The deal was, the Lords took care to keep their less legal business activities out of the spotlight, and the authorities of Tanner Springs wouldn’t look too hard at any of their comings and goings.

It was a deal that worked perfectly for everyone concerned, for many years. Until Abbott found himself in financial trouble and running up against an unexpectedly tough opponent in the mayoral election: Jarred Holloway. Abbott made a couple of very bad decisions, and ended up betraying the club’s trust. Especially Rock’s.

Some of the club members weren’t too sure at the time whether Angel’s loyalty to the Lords of Carnage would trump his allegiance to his own father. But Angel knew that Abe had fucked up, and badly. He stuck by the Lords and by his president. And any doubts the brothers might have had about him evaporated.

In the end, Abe Abbott went missing — either skipping town or meeting his end at the hands of the Iron Spiders, who he’d also been cutting deals with behind our backs. None of us knew where he was or what had happened to him. I sometimes wondered whether Angel knew anything about it, though I’d never ask him.

“The club’s my family,” Angel says again, pounding his fist softly on the table. “But so’s Rock. I gotta do my best by both of them.”

“You will, brother.”

“We’ll see.” He eyes me. “But that’s part of why I wanted to talk to you. I need you to tell me more about the situation with this fuckin’ fed.”

I nod. I figured this was where we were heading. “I pretty much told you everything I know. She’s here investigating a tip her office got, about a trafficking ring operating out of this area. I ran into her at the Downtown Diner, and then again a couple days later. She eventually told me why she was here. And it just so happened that not long after that, Isabel mentions in passing that some girl from Ukraine came into the hospital with injuries, and she looked like she’d been held hostage or something. Turns out, once they get a translator in there, that she was being sold for sex. And when I came into the room and the girl saw my cut, she started freaking out, screaming and shit. And she’s convinced one of the men who was fuckin’ her was wearing this exact same cut.”

“So this fed chick is gonna come knocking on our door.” His jaw goes hard.

“I don’t know. I’ve told her it couldn’t be one of us, but I don’t know if she believes it. I doubt it’ll be enough for her not to follow up on it.”

Angel eyes me. “You bangin’ her?”

The question’s so blunt it takes me by surprise.

“Yeah,” I admit.

“Shit, son, where’s your head at?” he growls.

“It ain’t serious.” It’s true, but for some reason when I say it, I don’t sound all that convinced. “Just some unfinished business from the past, is all.”

“It’s fuckin’ stupid, is what it is. That’s why the past is the past, brother. You don’t drag it into the present.” He shakes his head in disgust. “Now you’re helpin’ her in an investigation that’s gonna lead her straight to us. Right when we got other shit to deal with.”

“It ain’t like that, brother. She’s not gunnin’ for the club. She’s got other fish to fry.”

But Angel’s not convinced. “Can’t trust the law, brother. Either they’re crooked as shit, or they’re on some sacred mission and think they’re wearing white hats.” He scoffs. “Either way is bad, but the white hats are worse. They have a price, same as everyone else. They just don’t know it. At least the corrupt ones know they’re corrupt.”

In the end, against his better judgment I convince Angel to let me arrange a meeting between him and Brooke. So he can decide for himself what to make of her. I tell him I’ll get in touch with her after he calls church.

Turns out, I don’t have to wait that long.