Blade

 

As we pulled away from her house, I took Lucy’s hand in mine. I could see it was affecting her more than she wanted me to know, but I didn’t want to draw any attention to that fact. I wanted her to believe she was being strong, because she really was. It took a lot to go face her parents the way she did. I didn’t know what went on inside that house, but if she went at them the way she came at me sometimes, no matter what her father said this time, she had come out on top.

 

“Hey, how do you feel about going in this afternoon? Or do you just want me to take you back to the house?” I asked, trying to distract her.

 

“Take me to the office. I need work to help me get my mind off all this,” she told me, wiping her eyes. If she’d been crying, she never would have admitted it.

 

“Are you sure?” I asked her.

 

“Of course I’m sure. If I thought I needed to go home and eat ice cream in front of the TV, I’d tell you that’s what I need to do. No, I need to go to work. I need to be productive,” she snapped. Then, she took a breath. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to take it out on you. I’ll be fine at work. It’ll give me something else to focus on.”

 

“Great,” I said, and I took her to the office. I told her to call me if she needed anything, and I called Robby as I was leaving the yard to let him know she was there but that he needed to call me if she needed anything.

 

He agreed and told me he’d have her home after work. He already knew she was living with me again. He asked how things went with her folks, and I told him what I knew, that she’d told me she’d burned that particular bridge. Or maybe her father had, knowing him.

 

He expressed his sympathy for her and said he’d keep an eye on her at work for me. After we hung up, I drove over to the club. I needed to get my mind off of things, too. I couldn’t help but worry about Lucy, but I needed to get my mind off it. I needed to stop worrying about every little detail of her life. She could handle it. She had handled everything else pretty well so far.

 

I pulled up and parked around back. As I walked inside, I nodded at the unmarked cop car sitting across the street. They’d been watching me pretty steadily since they’d heard about those girls trying to run drugs and prostitution through the club. I had tried to tell them that I was cleaning up, but they didn’t seem to want to believe me.

 

I walked in to find Molly setting up behind the bar and a couple of girls dancing on the stage, practicing their routines. The music was down low. I tapped the bar as I walked by.

 

“Hey, Blade,” Molly said as I passed by.

 

I walked into my office and checked to see if I had anything important coming up. I didn’t have any new messages, and there wasn’t anything on my desk for the day.

 

Then, I heard a bunch of shouting in the main room. The girls were shouting at a few male voices. I couldn’t clearly make out what was being said, but it wasn’t good. I grabbed the crowbar leaning against the wall next to my desk and headed out with it in my hand, ready to strike anyone with it. There was a machete behind the bar, and a gun tucked under my belt in case things really got real in there.

 

“Is there a problem, gentlemen?” I called as I walked out of the back room.

 

“Freeze!” a cop shouted. They were in what looked like riot gear, like a SWAT team. What the hell was a SWAT team doing in my fucking club?

 

I threw my hands up and dropped the crowbar onto the floor. “Officers, what seems to be the problem?” I asked as one of them came behind me and pulled my hands down.

 

He cuffed me while the rest of them led the girls outside. “Walk,” he said, pushing me at my wrists.

 

“What for? What’s going on? Why am I being arrested?” I asked.

 

He didn’t say anything, but as I got outside, I saw that they were un-cuffing the girls and sending them on their way. They weren’t allowing them back into the club, but a few officers did walk in as the rest of us were kept on the sidewalk.

 

“Can’t anyone tell me what’s going on?” I shouted.

 

I was thrown in the back of a regular cop car, and the officer read me my rights from the door, informing me I was being arrested. He slammed the door and tapped the roof of the car. The officer in the driver seat pulled off, leaving the rest of them swarming around my club while the girls were being forced to leave. I could see Molly protesting as we pulled off.

 

“Is there any reason why no one will tell me what the charges are?” I asked the driver.

 

“You’ll find out down at the station. They’ll tell your lawyer, and the two of you can discuss how you’re going to handle it. Other than that, I’ve got nothing for you,” the officer said.

 

“Of course not,” I said under my breath, watching my words closely, knowing that anything I said was going to end up being used against me in court. I shifted my weight so the cuffs were a little less uncomfortable and waited to get to the station, where they were going to process me, let me make a phone call, and throw me in the slammer, all without telling me anything about why I was down there.

 

I knew the drill.

 

The police station looked a lot like the emergency room at the hospital downtown, just replacing the paramedics with cops. All the same characters came and went, most of whom all had the same stories. I walked in, and they had me ready to go. They knew me. It wasn’t my first rodeo, not by any means.

 

“Go ahead and let him use the phone,” a large black lady cop said when I walked in. I couldn’t remember her name. I always called her Officer Marge, or Large Marge because she was a big woman. We’d had a couple of run-ins over the years.

 

“Thanks, Officer Marge,” I called out to her as I was led away to the phone.

 

She shook her head and laughed. “We got you, Mr. Shaw,” she said.

 

Despite being on opposite sides of the law most of the time, I liked Large Marge. She didn’t take any shit. Seeing her made the pointless raid on my strip club a little less aggravating. It was more of an inconvenience now.

 

“You get one call,” the cop said as he sat me down and took off my cuffs.

 

“Thanks,” I said, spitting the word at him. I made a show of rubbing my wrists, even though the cuffs hadn’t really bothered me. He seemed like the kind of kid who let people in under his skin easily and I definitely wanted to play on that if I could.

 

I picked up the phone and dialed Robby’s cell phone.

 

“What the hell, Blade?” he asked when we were connected.

 

“They raided the club. I don’t know if they found anything or what they were even looking for, but the place is clean. Listen, I’m going to be in here until someone can post bail for me. It might take a night or two. Make sure Lucy is taken care of. Keep her at the clubhouse. I don’t want her at my house in case this is more than some overzealous cops, okay? I think someone’s behind it, so she definitely doesn’t need to be alone,” I told him.

 

“I’m on it. And I’ll go ahead and give Carothers a call for you, see if we can’t get him down there right away, money in hand,” he said.

 

Paul Carothers was our attorney, the best in town, possibly the best in the state. He handled everything for us. Money wasn’t a thing. He was on our payroll, so he was always getting cash even when we weren’t in trouble. We took care of our own.

 

“Great. I’ll be here,” I told him, hanging up the phone and signaling to the officer to come get me.

 

They threw me in a holding cell for the night. I had my own, which was a little concerning. Usually, I just ended up in the cell with all the other punks and delinquents. I rarely got special treatment. It made me wonder what they thought they had on me. There was nothing in the club that could have landed me behind bars. If so, they would have found it any of the millions of other times they ransacked the place.

 

I was being set up, and I knew who was behind it. It was obvious. It had to have been Lucy’s dad. But if he were that fast, it meant he really was as powerful as she said he was. And that meant the MC was about to have to go up against a very worthy foe. All he had was money, though. Someone like him couldn’t afford to meet us on the street and fight it out. He had to take us down like this, through law enforcement connections.

 

If he were connected enough to get me in jail that fast, though, I wondered if he were connected enough to keep my lawyer from showing up. I shook my head and laughed at the idea. We paid Carothers very well. There was no way his loyalty could have been shifted.

 

I yawned. I was in my home away from home, and contrary to popular belief, the jail cells were usually really quiet. Occasionally, some punk ass kid would show up and start running his mouth. The other guys in the cells quickly handled them. We didn’t like all that racket.

 

I kicked back on the metal bench and put my arms under my head. I knew there was a good chance I was going to be in for a while, for at least a night, before they were ready to release me on bail.

 

I tried not to run over all the questions I had while I lay on the bench. I wondered why they let the girls go and only arrested me. I wondered what the charges were going to be. I wondered if Lucy’s father was going to make an appearance before my lawyer had a chance to show up.

 

I yawned again, mostly to quiet the thoughts in my head, but they kept coming. I wondered if someone was going to drag me back to an interrogation room to tell me what the charges were and see if they could get any additional information out of me for Mr. Smithfield.

 

Lucy didn’t know it, but I knew who her father was. Bryan Smithfield was a prominent businessman. Every thug on the street knew his name. We couldn’t tell anyone how, but he wasn’t exactly a mystery. I was sure there was someone out there who had worked for him in the past, and that was probably how the rest of us had come to know who he was.

 

I sighed. It was obvious my mind wasn’t going to let me rest. It wasn’t going to give me a break. There was nothing else I could do other than rest, though, so I stayed on my back on the hard bench. I stared at the ceiling and waited – for sleep, for my lawyer or Mr. Smithfield to show up, for something.