Shep

---

“No one has a fucking clue?” We sat around the table and for the millionth time since this started the answers were hard to come by.

“Here’s what Jen said: shot in the chest, right in the heart. Probably shot there, at the water. No attempt to conceal the body or weight it,” Benz said, sharing what he’d learned about the body of our former VP.

“No one in this room did it?” Axle asked and we all looked around. No one said anything.

“Bo, you and I had the most reason – shit, probably Axle too, but I didn’t. You want to tell us anything, Bo?”

Bo’s life had been ripped apart thanks to E.Z. It had taken him over five years to get back to the woman and kid E.Z. had so easily torn him from. And E.Z. had put Deacon’s woman’s life in danger. Shit, he’d ordered Axle to kill Maya. The reasons to hate E.Z. were sitting at almost every chair at the table.

“If I could have shot him, I would have. But I’ll tell you this. I wouldn’t have done it without Club approval. I’ve been without that too long and it worked out shitty for me.”

“You know it very well could have been a Hawk that did it too,” Maddox pointed out. And that was true. E.Z. had exactly zero friends at this point. But I still felt unsettled not knowing who had done it. The number of things that were out of control was way too high for me and this was just another moving piece.

“Doesn’t change what we have to do for the MC right now.” Domino pointed out the truth. We could spend a lot of time looking at who killed E.Z. but, in the end, the point was he was dead. We had business to do if we wanted to move past any of our current shit.

“I agree with Domino. Let’s get it.”

“We’re good with The Cartel.”

Kade’s job was to set up the buy.

“And the terms?” I asked.

“We’re talking a lot of shit, a lot of money, but enough to bring in a least a million to the MC.”

“Good, if we’re going to do this, we don’t want it to be for nothing,” Chase said. And he was right. None of us was at ease with the plan, but it had to be go big or stay home.

“And we’re good for tomorrow night?”

Kade had the details worked out.

“I need to step out,” Benz said and we all agreed it was the right call for him. The less he had to lie to his old lady, the cop, the better. Better he didn’t know the details. Sure, he’d be splitting hairs about even participating but at least he didn’t know that particulars. We waited as he walked into the bar and then Kade outlined what he set up.

“Yep. It’s going to have to be at sunset. We need to travel the route at night and get into Port Az before most people even know we did it.”

Kade and Zig had coordinated the details. It was going to go down tomorrow night. The Cartel had been angling to make Port Az a profit center for years. We’d been at odds with them. They always had shit at the ready to bring in. So once we said go, we didn’t have to wait.

“Pilar’s group ask any questions about our change of heart?” I asked.

Ricardo Pilar was in prison, thanks to Benz’s girl, but he still ran shit. Someday he’d be out and richer than ever.

“Not that I know of,” Kade said.

It was all in place. We were set to go. If this worked, we’d have the upper hand in our town again. We’d have the means to push out The Hawks.

We’d be dirty as fuck, but dirty and in power was better than clean and out of it, I guessed. I hoped.

We finished the meeting and I made a b-line to the kitchen where my little bartender seemed to have switched into a little cook. She’d been whipping up something while we were in Church.

“Tacos? Man, you’re the best.”

JJ was sporting an apron. I could visualize how that would look without the clothes underneath. Everything I wanted was wrapped up in her. And it was also making me scared as shit. If this all went to hell, I’d lose it, her, the club. I was determined to enjoy every second I could with her. I took a whiff of the fantastic meal on the way.

“Meeting go okay?” she asked me.

“We’re good, plans are as good as they can be.”

“Everyone’s locked in,” she said as she laid out the fixings for dinner.

“We’ve all got a part to play, and we know what we have to do.”

I put a hand out ready to grab a few pieces of cheese and felt a familiar swat on the back of my head.

“Keep your mitts out of there! JJ has worked too hard for you to jump the gun.”

It was Mama Bear.

“Sorry, and yes she has.”

“Now, make way. Someone’s back just in time for your inaugural taco dinner.”

Mama Bear stepped aside, and I looked around her to see Maddox’s old lady, Tracy, wheeling Bear in.

“Dad!”

“Yeah, Tracy and your Mom busted me out.”

He looked good – weak, but his color was okay.

I bent down and kissed him on the cheek.

“There better be enough hot sauce in there,” Bear said to my Mom.

“Relax, she’s very good at this, better than me.”

I put my hand out to JJ and she stepped forward.

“This is JJ.”

“I hear you had to take it on the chin when E.Z. lost his shit. We’re all sorry about that. We underestimated his fucking level of crazy,” Bear said to JJ.

“We both took a bullet the same day. There ought to be a Hallmark card for it,” JJ said and Bear laughed so loud my Mom her fingers in her ears to muffle it.

“He needs to get settled,” Tracy said, and Mama Bear agreed.

“What? I just fucking got here. This one gonna eat my share of tacos?” Bear said to Tracy and an unmoved Mama Bear.

“The condition of your release was you listen to Tracy and me. I’ll haul your old ass back to the hospital as soon as look at you.”

Mama Bear was serious as shit. About that, I had no doubt.

“I’ll fix you a plate,” JJ said to Bear as Tracy wheeled him out of the MC kitchen. Mama had decided they were not going to be spending time in the MC. That was smart. She’d pulled him from the brink in record time, and whatever she was doing, we all wanted her to keep doing it. Bear was going to make it, but only if he continued to listen to Mama Bear.

“I like this girl, Shep. Don’t fuck it up,” Bear yelled at me as a parting shot.

“He’s funny!” JJ said, and I grabbed her and kissed her. I wanted to get her out of here. The next few days would be crazy. I wanted her to myself. As I said that, though, a dozen MC members filed in.

“Let JJ go, she’s too valuable to this MC for you to break,” Axle joked and gave JJ a wink. With every passing minute, JJ was charming the rest of my brothers. It made me very happy that most of them were already crazy in love with their old ladies. I was the late bloomer on that score. But if even one of them made a pass at JJ, I’d straight up have to kill them with my bare hands.

I watched as she served up saucy comebacks and hot sauce with an easy grace. She looked like her namesake but there was something so innately nurturing about her. Charming Bear and Mama Bear was no easy thing and she’d earned both of their trust.

Finally, after two hours of spinning around the kitchen, I grabbed Machop and another Probie.

“JJ is off the clock. You two finish up and this kitchen better be fucking spotless or I’ll sic Mama Bear on you.”

“Let me just help clean the...”

I picked her up and hauled her over my shoulder.

“Nope, out of here.”

---

We almost made it to my place. But something about how gorgeous she looked took over.

I wasn’t going to be able to make it all the way home.

I made love to her in the cover of the tall grass, quickly, like teenagers. Then up against the door once we got to my place, and then all night. And I pulled her close to me as we slept.

It was the only way I wanted to spend the time I had with her until the deal with the Cartel went down. It was the only time I could guarantee. A lot could go wrong, and I wanted every sigh, every kiss, every second I could get with JJ.

---

It was time. We’d put everything in place.

I kissed JJ goodbye.

“Just keep to the MC. If anything goes wrong, the Probies will get you to Tracy’s. That place is a fucking fortress too.”

“Nothing’s going to go wrong,” she said, and I kissed her again.

She could have whined, cried, begged me to be careful. Instead, she fucking gave me confidence that this was going to go right. She also gave me confidence that if I was in trouble, she’d goddamn raise an army to help me.

I didn’t want her to have to do that, but still, knowing that she was tough, strong, and goddamn capable made things easier for me. In that way, I finally figured out who she reminded me of.

It was Mama Bear. She instinctively knew how to manage bikers, me, the kitchen, and herself without me. And that’s what made me want to be with her even more.

“I love you baby,” I said. She smiled and kissed me. She fucking hadn’t said it back yet, and I didn’t care. I only cared that she was here when I got back. But she loved me too. It was fucking brilliant. It made leaving her that much harder. But if it all went wrong, at least this thing with JJ had gone right.

The first part of the plan went off without a hitch. Kade, Maddox, Chase, and Domino picked up the drugs just North of the border. We didn’t have to smuggle them over, which was another smart move that Kade had put in place.

Then it was up to me, Deacon, Bo, Zig, Axle and Benz. Benz had a part to play later. A big part.

We had a dozen more Saints escorting the truck along the route. Every one of us was in this. We also weren’t quiet about it. This was a major operation and it had to go right.

We were about twenty miles out of town when the trouble started.

There was a wall of bikes, side by side, across the backroad we’d chosen to use to ride into town.

I was driving the truck. Axle was shotgun.

“What do you think?”

“Slow down, a hair,” he said. And I did. There was only one way forward and The Hawks were blocking it.

“Yep, perfect.”

The Saints bikes circled the truck and I slammed on the brakes.

Axle gave a signal for us to head the way we’d come. We’d retreat and find a better place to fight.

He looked behind us.

“It’s going to be here,” Axle said, and I looked in the mirror.

Behind us was a row of Great Wolves. The Hawks had back up.

“Make it good,” I said to Axle and we bumped fists.

The melee began. The Hawks were off their bikes and we were off ours. We clashed fist-to-fist, fucking eye gouge to eye gouge.

It was a scrum of Saints and Hawks. But Axle and I got further and further away from the truck. Blood and teeth went flying.

“That’s enough.”

A gunshot went into the air. A.J. Moss, the current Prez of The Laredo Hawks, had fired it.

He pointed to me.

“I said, that’s fucking enough.”

We all froze at the gunfire.

“You tell The Saints to stand down or you lose more than just this truck.”

I put my hands up. Axle did the same. We stepped back.

“Good.”

A.J. signaled his Hawks and two of them climbed in the truck.

“Had to call in the back up with the out of towners?” I said, taunting The Hawks about not being able to do this shit on their own.

“Hawks are everywhere, and so are Great Wolves. This is just part of us chewing you up and spitting you the fuck out.”

A.J. wound up and punched me on the jaw. My head snapped back but I didn’t go down. I charged. But I had two Saints on my arms stopping me.

“Let him go. We’re outnumbered,” Axle said into my ear.

They held onto my arms. And we watched all the money we’d spent and all the shit we’d spent it on go rolling away with The Hawks.