Chopper wasn’t about to give up on Chelsea, but there was something he had to do that day. As soon as he got back to Boston, he would knock on her door again, until she answered it or called the cops. But at the moment he was standing in line, after a three-hour drive, dressed in a polo shirt and jeans with no signs of gang affiliation showing anywhere. He left everything except for his ID in the swag wagon he’d borrowed from the ranch for the trip. He hadn’t ever been in prison, but he’d visited many times. He grew up surrounded by some of the most supportive, loving people in the world, who were also magnets for trouble. Luckily, he’d never been in the line of fire when that magnet was pulling at them, but he wasn’t kidding himself that the affiliation alone was sometimes enough. He thought about Chelsea again, and her kid, and he began to wonder if maybe she would be better off if he left them alone. Then his mind went to Zack, who was raising another man’s child, and as far as Chopper could tell, he was rocking it. The boy was sweet and happy and seemed well-adjusted. Cody had a little boy and Dax and Angel had adopted a daughter. As a matter of fact, the ranch was full of kids who were thriving. A lot of it was thanks to the programs that Dax and Angel had implemented. They were programs that Dax had gotten community awards and respect for, so maybe, being “affiliated” in this case wouldn’t be a bad thing.

“ID,” the officer standing next to the metal detector said. Chopper handed it to him and while he was looking at it, a female officer said:

“Walk through.” Chopper went through the open doorway without incident. His ID was handed back to him and he was shuffled into another room where he was told to have a seat. The room was filled with women and children, and he sat there and watched mothers playing with their babies while they waited to visit “Daddy” or another significant man in their life. Chopper loved his life on the back of his bike, in the clubhouse with his brothers, and most of all on the road. But he was thankful as hell for Dax. Back when Chopper’s dad first joined the Skulls things were a lot different. His dad had been one of the lucky ones, arrested only a few times when he was young and only for misdemeanors. But the stories he told about some of the things Dax’s dad, Doc, had the club involved in were enough to set even a seasoned biker’s hair on fire.

An hour passed, and then another half before he finally heard “Justice Crowley.” He stood up and went to the window. The door in front of him buzzed and the woman behind the glass said, “Step through.” He went through the door and found himself in a long hall with doors all along one side and one at the end. The woman came over the intercom and said, “Go through the door at the end of the hall and take a seat behind partition number four.” Chopper did as she told him. When he pushed through the door at the end of the hall, there was a row of stools, each one behind a half-partition and facing glass with a phone attached to one side. Behind the glass was like looking at a mirror image, except for the guy with the shaved head, neck tattoos, and muscles bulging underneath his orange jumpsuit, facing the glass. The last thing in the world Chopper wanted to do was have a conversation with this punk, but it was necessary. He took a deep breath and went over and took a seat on the stool and picked up the phone. The punk on the other side smiled. Chopper tried to imagine what Chelsea saw in him before he even opened his mouth. It had to be the drugs.

“Imagine this, a real-life Southside Skull coming to visit little old me, and here I woke up this morning thinking that I wasn’t going to get any visitors today.” Chopper had called ahead and requested that the officer in charge of visiting ask Wayne to add him to his approved visitor list. It wasn’t half an hour before he’d gotten a collect call from the facility and Wayne had been on the other end. He had a hundred questions. The only thing Chopper had given him was his name, his affiliation, and the fact that he wanted to talk about Chelsea. The last one seemed to be the clincher.

“I’m going to get straight to the point here, Wayne. Someone hired a hit man to hurt Chelsea. He’s dead, but I need to know who was behind it. I need to make sure she’s safe.”

Wayne grinned. Chopper really wanted to hit him. Looking at his face reminded him of all the things this piece of shit had put Chelsea through, and he was sure he only knew a fraction of it so far. “You take him out?” Wayne said. When Chopper didn’t say anything he said, “You fucking my girl?” It was harder that time to keep his mouth shut, but he did. It took biting the inside of his cheek, but he was sure it was worth it not to let this punk know he was getting to him. “Not much of a talker, huh? I don’t know who wants to fuck Chelsea up. I’m sure there’s a list.”

Chopper decided that even Mahatma Gandhi couldn’t have kept his cool around this guy, but he was still trying. Thank God for the glass between them, because he might have already wrapped the phone cord around his thick neck and pummeled his ugly face. “Look, I don’t have time to fuck with you and play stupid games. Trust me, I know how it works in here. You’re bored, so you’re going to try to string me along just to get your kicks. But let me tell you how this is going to work. This is my one and only visit. The one and only time I talk to you. You give me answers, what I need to keep Chelsea safe, and this is what we do for you…make a note of this, Wayne, because I’m only saying it once. Before I leave here today, I will put five hundred dollars on your books, courtesy of the Southside Skulls, and as soon as I’m out of here the shot-caller on your block will get a kite informing him that you are under Skulls protection.”

Wayne chuckled and held the phone against his shoulder as he raised his arms up and showed off his muscle. “Do I look like I need protection to you?”

“You will,” Chopper said. He didn’t give him any details and from the look on Chopper’s face, he didn’t need any. The smile was gone and his eyes had gone dark.

He scratched his neck and looked off to the right like he was trying to make a decision. Chopper wasn’t worried. There was only one decision to make and they both knew it. If Wayne didn’t know that it was delusional to believe the Skulls had gone soft when he was on the outside, the three plus years he’d been locked up must have. “Exactly what do you want to know?”

“Who would want to hurt Chelsea? Who would benefit from her death?”

“That bitch of a sister of hers maybe. She’s looking to take her kid away.”

“Her kid? You already know for a fact he’s not yours?”

Wayne chuckled and said, “I’ve always known for a fact that the little bastard wasn’t mine. I’ve been shooting blanks since I had an accident back in high school.”

Chopper hated this man with a passion after less than ten minutes of knowing him. “Whose kid is he?”

“Is that one of the mandatory questions? Because that one’s gonna cost you a hell of a lot more than five hundred dollars. Not even the Skulls will be able to keep me safe if word gets out that I been talking about that.”

“Why?”

“Huh-uh…you make it worth my while. How much is it worth to you? You want to keep fucking that sweet, tight pussy? I can see it in your eyes.” Chopper stood up, dropping the phone as he did. He slammed his hands into the glass and the phone dangled from its cord. He could see and hear Wayne laughing and he could hear the guards pushing through the door and rushing toward him. Fuck. He put his hands in the air and turned to face them.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I lost my head. It won’t happen again.”

“Visit’s over,” the man with the sergeant’s patch on his arm told him.

“Please, I just need five more minutes. I’ll follow all the rules, I’m really sorry.” His blood was hot, and he imagined that the veins in his neck were distended. He realized his fists were still clenched, and he relaxed them and tried to relax his jaw. Anything to look less threatening. He looked the sergeant directly in the eyes and said, “I promise, please.”

“You got five minutes and these two guards are going to be standing right here behind you.”

“Okay, thank you.” Chopper breathed a sigh of relief, sat back down, and lifted the phone to his ear. “I have five minutes, Wayne. What is it that you want?”

“It ain’t money,” he said. “Have one of your guys meet me in the chow hall at supper tonight and I’ll tell him what my price is.”

“No. I told you, no fucking games. Yes or no, asshole.”

Wayne looked around him. There was an inmate on each side, talking to their own visitors. A correctional officer stood in the center of the hallway. He looked back at Chopper, locked eyes with him, and said, “Tell Chelsea I want the drawing, the skull with the roses coming out of its eye sockets. She’ll know what I’m talking about. I know now that she sold it to the tattoo ass-wipe.” He knows now? Does that mean whoever trashed Chelsea’s apartment has been working for Wayne and not the assassin? It made more sense since the entire thing was done so crudely. “I want the original sent through to my attorney. Put the five hundred on my books and tell your guys I’ll take the protection.”

“Not until I get my answers.”

“Two minutes,” the guard behind Chopper said.

“How do I know you’ll do what I ask if I give you what you want right now?”

“I gave you my word.”

“And what if your word doesn’t mean shit to me?”

Chopper stood up again, this time slowly. He reached to hang up the phone. “Wait!” Wayne yelled loudly enough into the receiver for Chopper to hear him without having the phone to his ear. He gestured like “What?”

“Pick the phone back up,” Wayne said.

Chopper picked it up as the officer said, “One minute.”

“Congressman Bartholomew Walton.”

“What?” Chopper thought Wayne was fucking with him again. “Congressman Walton wants Chelsea dead?”

Wayne shrugged and said:

“I don’t know. What I do know is that he doesn’t want the paternity of that kid to go public. Her sister started a shitstorm by going after that kid. I couldn’t just sit here and let them take all my money to support some kid that wasn’t mine, and once he found out that I was fighting paternity, he got scared. He gave me a little bonus to keep my mouth shut, but he’s afraid Chelsea is going to tell someone. Fuck…I doubt she even knows. She was so fucked up all the time…”

“Time’s up!” The correctional officer said. Chopper was clutching the phone so tightly that it was a wonder it didn’t shatter in his hand. Wayne had better hope that if they ever let him out of prison, he never ran into Chopper on the street. Fucker is a dead man if he does.