Blade

 

“Your attorney is here,” the guard said as he opened the door to the holding cell.

 

“That was fast,” I told him as I got up.

 

“Just come with me,” he said. He didn’t seem amused to be escorting me to see my lawyer.

 

“Cuffs?” I asked. “I mean, have you read my history?”

 

That shocked him and stirred some reaction in his eyes. He pulled out the cuffs and secured my wrists.

 

“Thanks. I feel safer now,” I told him. I was being a total smartass and keeping myself entertained. I knew it was only a matter of time before I was out of there.

 

All my hopes were shattered when I walked into the room where my attorney was waiting for me and saw one of my brothers from the MC. It was Shade, the guy we usually sent to handle sketchy shit, but I didn’t know what kind of sketchy business we were going to be able to get into at the police station. I sat down with him, and the guard left the room.

 

“Okay, what’s the story?” I asked him.

 

“Robby sent me. Carothers isn’t coming. That’s all he would say,” Shade told him.

 

“Has anyone told Brick? We need to make sure he’s no longer being funded if he’s going to let Bryan Smithfield get to him. I’m assuming that’s why he’s not coming. Bryan gets his hands into everything,” I said.

 

“Pretty much. That’s what it looks like. I’ll check when I get back. I don’t know if anyone has talked to Brick since you went in,” Shade told me.

 

“Impossible.”

 

“Man, it’s all happened pretty quickly. You know, this isn’t the only thing we’re dealing with right now. Lucy’s in the hospital.”

 

“What?! Is she okay?” I asked, trying to remain calm so I didn’t upset anyone in the jail.

 

“Yeah, it looks like she was just having some pain. Stress, probably upset the baby or something. They’ve got her on fluids and they’re keeping her for observation,” he assured me.

 

“Okay. Whatever it is, tell Robby and my brothers that I’ll cover whatever the insurance doesn’t, but make sure Hammer and Sketch are up there, okay?”

 

“Got it. I think Robby’s already called them.”

 

“Good.” I took a deep breath. What else could go wrong? “Any other news?” I asked.

 

“Bail has been denied,” he told me.

 

“No way. Why?” I asked.

 

“Judge’s orders.”

 

“Let me guess. The judge is friends with Bryan Smithfield,” I said. “We’ve got to do something about this guy.”

 

“Just say when. We’ve got people ready. I’m sure Brick will be on board once we let him know everything,” Shade said.

 

“Unfortunately, we’re going to have play it right if we want to get him. Nothing yet, just wait.”

 

“Do you want me to let them know to get you a public defender?” he asked.

 

“No, not at all. Have Robby call some of the other organizations. Call some of the other MCs especially. Someone has to have a lawyer beyond Bryan’s reach,” I explained. “I’m not giving up yet.”

 

“Will do.”

 

“Are you taking notes, Shade?” I asked. “I don’t expect you to remember all of this.”

 

“Right, right,” he said, pulling a notepad out of his briefcase.

 

I laughed. “Where’d you get the get-up, man?” He was dressed in a nice, conservative gray suit with a white shirt and red tie, not his normal attire. Shade was almost always dressed like any other street thug. He wore baggy jeans, black shirts, and often hid his face in hoodies. He was really just a street rat who handled business that didn’t need to be seen.

 

“One of the guys hooked me up. You like? I feel ridiculous,” he said.

 

“You look ridiculous, honestly, but that’s only because it’s you.” I went to pat him on the shoulder but my cuffs kept my hands together. I laughed when I realized I was still cuffed.

 

“All right. So, get Hammer and Sketch at the hospital to keep an eye on Lucy. Talk to Brick about everything that’s going on. Cancel Carothers’s money. Get Robby on finding you another attorney through other MCs,” he said as he wrote everything down on paper to remind himself.

 

“And don’t forget, now. Also, talk to Brick about Bryan Smithfield. We need to do something about him,” I reminded him.

 

“Right, but tell him to wait.”

 

“Exactly.”

 

I watched him write everything down in his fast, sloppy handwriting.

 

“Did they tell you why they brought me in?” I asked him.

 

“Yeah, drugs,” he said nonchalantly.

 

“Drugs? What the hell?” I asked, trying to keep my voice down.

 

“Yeah, they said they found some at the club.” What really amazed me was that, for Shade, this wasn’t a big deal. Shade dealt with drugs all day every day. He didn’t have a legitimate job or service he performed outside the MC. He worked the streets for us. That was all he did, so if someone said drugs, it didn’t affect him at all.

 

For me, that was a serious charge. The club was a front. It was squeaky damn clean, too. It had to be. I didn’t want to draw any attention to the money we laundered through it for the MC. Since so much of what we did in the club depended on money the patrons threw at the girls, it was easy to inflate those numbers a little, especially if I could show that I skimmed some off the top every night.

 

“Man, I haven’t ever had drugs in that place,” I told Shade.

 

“They’re saying they found a pretty good stash. What about those girls a while back, the ones you had to fire?” he asked.

 

“No, we had the place searched, remember? I had a couple of guys come in and scour the club. If the girls had left anything behind, we would have found it. Man, that place was clean,” I insisted.

 

“Then, I don’t know,” Shade said.

 

“Bryan Smithfield,” I said. “He framed me. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. That’s Lucy’s dad. Lucy told him we’re seeing each other. Then, right after that everything went to shit. Man, I’m telling you, we have to watch our asses with this guy. He’s serious business,” I told him.

 

“I’ll make sure I talk to Brick about that for you, as well,” he assured me.

 

“Do that. And tell Robby he better get me a real lawyer. Nothing good is going to happen if I go with a public defender.”

 

About that time, the door opened and the cop came back in. “Time’s up,” he said.

 

“What do you mean? Since when?” I protested.

 

“Since now. That’s not your attorney.”

 

Another cop came in and picked Shade up by his arm. He snatched away from the officer and started to walk out on his own, followed by the police. We shared a look as he walked past me. Everything was going to be handled. I just needed to be patient, as always.

 

“You’re lucky we don’t lock his ass up, too, but you’re in bad enough shape already,” my officer said.

 

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. I always am. Besides, I’m being framed.”

 

“So is everyone else in here, man. Save it for the judge,” he said, laughing.

 

“I love how none of you flunkies take me seriously down here. That’s good,” I said, chuckling. The state pen, however, was a different story. The local cats looked at me like just another essentially harmless street thug. Those state guards knew why they called me Blade. That was no joke.

 

“Well, we see your type all the time, man. You think you’re big and bad, and then you end up in custody, and you’re nothing but hot air,” he said, pushing me back into the cell.

 

“Hey, when are you guys going to move me to a real cell? And what about these damn cuffs?” I called after him as he walked off.

 

“You’re so big and bad, Blade, you get out of them,” he yelled back.

 

I looked down at them. I probably could have if I tried. They weren’t on very tight, but the last thing I needed to do was slide my hands through a pair of handcuffs and get myself in real trouble. I could get out from under framing, easily. That wasn’t a big deal, but trying to escape, or whatever they would have billed getting out of the cuffs as, wasn’t worth it.

 

I sat back down on the bench and realized that my “attorney” had shown up the same day and got all the information he had just a few hours after I’d been locked up. That had to be record time for me. They loved to make me wait for anything. It was just the way they treated us because we were in a motorcycle club. They tried to keep us in as long as they could for any minor thing, to try to break up the gang or discourage us from going back.

 

Part of being in an MC like the Vicious Thrills was having access to legal networks and not-so-legal networks that worked in our favor. Having an organization meant we had access to resources other, more common street thugs didn’t have. Locking us up was like locking up successful businessmen.

 

Bryan Smithfield, however, was turning into a royal pain in my ass. Carothers had been with us for a long time. He was supposed to be untouchable, but Bryan had touched him. That told me the kind of power that bastard had. He’d also had a substantial amount of drugs found at my club not even an hour after I had left his house with his daughter. He didn’t realize what kind of mess he was stepping in.

 

Sure, he had put me behind bars, and he had sent my girls home. Hopefully, Molly had called Robby so they could still get paid through the MC while they were out of work. Sure, he probably had some of the doctors on his payroll, which was why I wanted men down there all the time with Lucy in the hospital. But, his problem was going to be that he couldn’t get to all of us at the same time.

 

Shade wasn’t the only sketchy member we had. There were lots of street cats who didn’t wear their colors because they didn’t want to be recognized. Shade was sort of their king, but there were plenty of them, and if Smithfield wanted to pick a fight with us, he was going to have some serious trouble.

 

Lucky for him – and lucky for me, I supposed – there wasn’t much I was able to do behind bars, not until Brick knew what was going on and I had talked with a real lawyer. Of course, by having them lock me up alone, he obviously didn’t realize he was giving me time to stew in it.

 

People like me didn’t need to sit and think about what we could do to people like him. It never ended well for those people. I couldn’t wait to get out or at least get the word out. Bryan Smithfield was going to suffer. He’d picked a fight with the wrong one.

 

He was going to pay for the way he’d treated his daughter. And, then, he was going to pay for what he was doing to me. He underestimated how dangerous we were. He probably thought he was safe in his little white, boxed off neighborhood. He probably had a top-of-the-ling security system in his home, too.

 

Clueless.

 

He probably had no idea I had been sitting in his driveway just that morning. That meant any member of the MC knew how to get back to his place. All I had to do was let the information slip about which house, which neighborhood.

 

Before I knew it, I was sitting on the bench with the handcuffs in my hand. I had slipped out of cuffs so many times I didn’t even feel it anymore when I squeezed my hands through them, and the idiot who had put them on me didn’t make them nearly tight enough. It wasn’t like I had small hands to begin with.

 

I sat there and played with them, taking my mind off Bryan Smithfield. I waited.