Apollo tightened the last nut on the little Civic’s wheel and shoved the torque wrench into its holder at his workstation. With a shop towel, he wiped his grimy fingerprints off the fender and turned to fill out the paperwork on the completed maintenance service.

“They’re back,” Becker said and walked out from under the lift at the bay next to Apollo’s.

At Becker’s mention, Apollo heard the Harley roar over the noise of Delaney’s Sinclair on a busy Saturday afternoon. Delaney, Ox, and Rad had taken a meeting with the Night Horde today—in Tulsa, but away from the clubhouse, which was strange. But then, relations between the Bulls and the Horde had been strained for a while now, ever since the Horde president, Big Ike Lunden, had disrespected Delaney in front of the Volkovs, while they were all sitting around the Bulls’ fucking table.

Apollo stood beside Becker and watched the Bulls leadership roll up into the clubhouse lot next door.

“What d’ya think that was about?” Becker asked.

“No idea.” And that was strange, too—usually, the officers brought Apollo into the loop early for club work. He did most of the clean intel gathering for the club—the stuff that didn’t end up bloody. That was why he spread his charm all over Tulsa. But this time, he’d been told the same thing anyone else in hearing distance had been told: that they were ‘meeting the Horde’ at The Roost, a country-style diner in town.

Maybe it was just a casual meet? But if so, Rad wouldn’t have been there. He hated Big Ike and wasn’t the kind of guy who hid his feelings—especially not the negative ones.

“I guess we’ll find out,” he said and headed to the office. The cute little jailbait chick whose parents paid for her Civic was waiting on it, fluttering around beaming biker fascination in every direction, and he needed to get her little booty-shorted ass and pushed-up titties back on the road before somebody in the station got in trouble.

––––––––

~oOo~

––––––––

Delaney didn’t call the club into the chapel. None of the officers said anything about the meet with the Horde until after the station was closed and the patches were chilling in the dark cool of the party room, filling up with beer and the pizza rolls that the sweetbutts had set out in big steel bowls. It was Saturday, so the party would pick up later in the night, but for now it was fairly quiet, just the usual suspects.

Apollo had Tyra on his lap, feeding him pizza rolls from her hand, grinding her barely-covered pussy on the fly of his work pants, when Delaney came into the room, took a beer from Janine, and dropped himself on the recliner near Apollo. The president sighed wearily and swallowed down about half his Busch.

Chewing on a pizza roll, Apollo nudged Tyra to the side so he could see Delaney eye to eye. “You just gonna let it be a mystery?”

Delaney glowered at him. “Figuring it out, kid.”

Which meant it had not been a casual meet. It was club business, and it was complicated.

Apollo gave Tyra a firm but friendly swat on her firm and friendly ass. “Take off, sweet thing.” She kissed his cheek and did what she was told. When she’d made some distance, Apollo leaned over and, checking his tone so he didn’t push himself too deep into trouble with the boss, asked, “Why is it you bend so far back for the Horde? They’ve go no pull, but we stick our necks out for them all the time. I don’t see how it does us any good at all.”

He’d known he was asking a thorny, challenging question, but even his careful tone hadn’t padded it enough. Delaney slammed his bottle on the table between them so hard that foam rose up and oozed down the sweaty glass. “Watch your mouth, Apollo. You don’t know what you don’t know.”

Intimidated now but unwilling to drop the matter, Apollo pushed on. “That’s the problem, Prez—what we don’t know. This feels like your personal shit on the club’s back.”

Delaney waved his arm out, indicating the room. “This is my personal shit. I am the club. I’m all that’s left of what Dane and I started.”

His voice had risen with each word, and now they had the attention of the room. Delaney sighed and stood up. “Anybody missing?”

“Just Si,” Ox answered. Simon was still on his extended honeymoon but due back in a couple of days.

“Alright. Chapel. Now.”

The women, prospects, and hangarounds got out of the way as the Bulls grabbed fresh drinks and followed their president into their hallowed space.

Rumors and gossip moved fast among the Bulls, so Apollo was sure that not one man sitting at the table wondered why they’d been called suddenly in on a Saturday night. They all knew where the officers had been, and they’d all been talking about it, wondering. All but the men who knew the answers.

Because rumors moved so quickly, secrets were impossible to keep among them. And that, as far as Apollo was concerned, was a good thing. Their loyalty locked their lips against outsiders, but among the men who sat at this table, secrets swelled until they burst. When a secret happened, its exposure created a seismic event in the club. Even something as personal as Simon’s relationship with Gunner’s sister had blown up, when it would have been largely inconsequential if it had never been hidden.

While he was worried that Delaney’s anger might make things uncomfortable for him for a while, Apollo wasn’t at all sorry that he’d pushed the point. Information wanted to be shared. When it wasn’t, it turned sour and became innuendo and suspicion. It putrefied the bond among them.

“Let’s just get to it. You want to know about what went down with the Horde today.”

While heads around him bobbed contemplatively, Apollo took note of Ox and Rad to gauge their feelings about the meet. Both seemed fairly blank, which could be a good sign.

“It wasn’t Big Ike we met with. It was Isaac and Showdown.”

“Big Ike sent his kid?” Apollo asked. That would be unusual on several counts, now that the Horde were out of Russian guns—unless the kid was trying to get back in on that. “Or is Little Ike trying to go over his old man’s head?” Apollo knew the power structure of all the organizations the Bulls worked with, and that duo was a strange one to meet with. “And Showdown—he’s not an officer. They were here on business?”

His barrage of asking-while-he-thought questions earned him another intimidating glower from Delaney. “I told you I was figuring it out, Apollo.”

“Let’s figure it out at the table, where it belongs,” Ox interjected. He turned to Apollo. “Isaac came on his own. I guess he brought Show because he trusts him and needed a second. The rest of the Horde doesn’t know they came to Tulsa. They asked for some help.”

“The last thing we need is to get in the middle of some internal beef with that club, D,” Rad said.

“I know your thinking, Radical. You made that plain.” Delaney lit an unfiltered Camel, flicking a match alight with his thumb. He took a puff, then watched the smoke swirl as he blew it out. He’d kicked the habit a few years back but had picked it back up during the war with the Hounds last year. The chapel was the only place he smoked, though, where his old lady couldn’t get in and ride him about it. “Isaac—don’t call him Little Ike anymore unless you want him calling you out—came hat in hand. He wants work for the Horde. Their town is dying. He’s looking for ways to keep them alive.”

“Mother Russia won’t have them on her runs anymore,” Gunner countered.

With a quick glance at Delaney, Ox took over. “He’s not looking to get back in on that. He’s just looking for us to throw work their way. Anything we got.”

Maverick stared straight at the president. In general, Maverick was the patch most likely to get in Delaney’s face. “Why’s his old man not here, if it’s so important?”

It was Ox who answered, however, while Delaney scowled at Maverick. “The kid is trying to do right by his town. We all know”—he glanced at Delaney again, then back at Maverick—“there’s trouble in that club. Irina jumped right over Big Ike and gave Isaac lead on the guns. There was tension before that, but putting the kid in charge of the work broke something. Then the old man fucked the job over. So yeah, what they got in Signal Bend is two leaders wrestling over the crumbs of that hole in the road.”

Rad shook his head. “We give them work Big Ike didn’t ask for, he’ll fuck it over again. Until they square up who holds the gavel, helpin’ them hurts us.”

Apollo agreed. The Brazen Bulls did plenty of charity work in and around Tulsa, but that work helped them, too. They didn’t need to be hanging their ass out for a club that could only do them damage. They’d laid their reputation on the line for the Horde before, with Irina Volkov, and just about had that blow up in their face while they were fighting a fucking war of their own.

He was from a little town in the middle of nowhere, too, one that had dried up when the oil had, so he felt for Signal Bend and understood the need to do anything to save it. But Rad was right. The Horde was too volatile. Helping them hurt the Bulls.

“Rad’s right. As long as Big Ike’s got the gavel, that club is trouble, D. I know he’s your friend—”

Delaney’s fist slammed the table and cut Apollo off. “You don’t know SHIT!” He caught himself and sat back. “Vote it.”

Usually, Delaney started the vote, so the table sat in silence for a few seconds while the president sucked on his cig and glared at the worn wood before him. Finally Ox cleared his throat. “Do we throw some of our secondary work the Horde’s way? Nay.”

He nodded at Apollo, sending the vote around the table so Delaney would be last.

“Nay.”

By the time it was Delaney’s turn, the vote was unanimous so far. Delaney voted by storming out of the room. The patches watched him go, all of them stunned. He’d never done anything like that before.

When the door slammed shut, Ox reached for the gavel and pulled it close. “Vote is nine against. I’m gonna call Simon an abstention. That okay with you, Gun?”

Gunner, who held Simon’s proxy—they were now brothers-in-law, after all—nodded. “Yeah, that’s good.”

“Nine nays, two abstentions, no ayes. The Horde’s on their own.” Ox knocked the gavel on the table, and the meeting was over. The patches rose slowly to their feet.

Apollo sat for a second and combed through the information he’d acquired during the afternoon and evening, trying to understand what had the president so riled up. Voting against giving the Horde work when Big Ike hadn’t sanctioned the ask should have put the Bulls on Big Ike’s side. Delaney should have wanted to vote to go the way it had. But he was obviously furious.

There was a secret between the Bulls president and his Horde counterpart. An old one. And it was putrefying.

––––––––

~oOo~

––––––––

Tyra came back for him as he left the chapel, handing him a fresh beer, then sliding her hand under his kutte and pressing her tits to his chest. “You need anything, honey?” Her sparkly pink lips pouted up at him and offered more than the beer.

But Apollo’s mind churned, digging through the mess in the chapel and what he knew about Delaney and Big Ike Lunden.

The mood was off all through the party room. Maverick and Rad were already gone—back home to their old ladies and kids. Delaney was gone. Gunner was headed for the door, too, with Ox right behind him. It was just the young singles left, and the hangarounds and neighborhood folks who’d wandered in for a free drink or two.

The food was frozen snack shit, and the girls were...the girls. He was not in the mood for the clubhouse, not tonight.

With one hand on Tyra’s ass, he lifted the beer she’d given him in the other and swallowed it down all at once. He belched loudly and handed her the empty. “I’m gonna take off, Ty. I’ll grab you next time.” He laid a beer-flavored kiss on her mouth and gave her ass a swat.

He could feel her irritated disappointment heating his back, but club pussy was one category of woman he did not have to worry about offending.

––––––––

~oOo~

––––––––

He parked his Wide Glide in the garage, next to the ’63 Ironhead he was, slowly but surely, chopping, and went through the door into his kitchen. The house was dark, and had a vague hint of that musty smell a place got when the AC had been running almost nonstop against a muggy Oklahoma summer. Like wet socks at the bottom of a hamper.

Rather than turn on a light, he just opened the fridge.

Inside, he found a McDonald’s sack, transparent with grease, half full of the fries he hadn’t finished the night before. He pulled those out and a bottle of MGD and called it dinner, leaning against the counter and stuffing his face while he stared at the nearly empty fridge shelves. He needed to get to the market, he supposed. Tomorrow, he’d run some errands. And cut the lawn.

His gob stuffed with cold, greasy fries, he pulled up the emergency brake on his mind. It was Saturday night. He was young, single, and hot as fuck. He’d walked away from eager pussy, and now he was standing alone in his kitchen, eating cold French fries out of a grease-soaked sack.

Well, this was completely unacceptable. Whatever the fuck was going on with Delaney, it could wait. He wasn’t going to let it ruin his Saturday night.

He shoved the sack and the rest of its contents into his kitchen trash, finished the beer and tossed the bottle in after it, and went back to his john to wash up and change out of his Sinclair greens.

––––––––

~oOo~

––––––––

Back on his Glide, Apollo didn’t know where to go. The Wayside? Maverick’s old lady owned that place, and it’d be cool to support a brother, but The Wayside was dull as dirt. The kind of bar regulars called an ‘institution’—where the same smelly old asses had flattened the seats on the same cracked stools for decades. Where ancient boozehounds went to wait for the Reaper. No, not that. He needed something with a little more life.

He rolled through the Tulsa streets, serpentining through traffic, letting the rhythmic white strobe of streetlights flying by and the red glare of taillights and stoplights fill his vision and guide his path, while his mind sought a place to go.

The Crazy Rose? Nah, that place was off the list since all that shit had gone down with Griffin and Patrice. Besides, that was more life than he was interested in—a huge place with three bars and loud country music...no.

He’d made his way to Cherry Street and saw Donovan’s up ahead. He’d been there two or three times, and he liked it. Donovan’s styled itself as a traditional Irish pub, and maybe it was. Apollo had never been closer to Ireland than Chicago. The décor was heavy wood from floor to ceiling, with old-timey photographs and vintage fight posters on the walls, mingling with Guinness and Harp mirrors. He could go for a Guinness, actually. Maybe chasing a swig of Jameson.

Donovan’s advertised live music most nights, usually of the fiddle-and-pipe variety—which he kind of liked, not that he’d admit it. It got crowded on weekends, and he could tell by the number of parked cars lining the street that this Saturday night was no exception, but the hotness quotient of the female clientele was generally pretty good. In fact, a nubile trio went in through the door as he rolled past.

There wasn’t much chance of seeing another Bull here, and tonight that wasn’t an altogether horrible thing.

He turned around and walked his Glide back to the curb in front of a Nissan SUV and parked. Neatly folding his kutte, he tucked it into his saddlebag. No need to show colors here.

When he opened Donovan’s carved wood door, high-spirited Irish folk music flowed out. Yeah, he liked it.

As expected, the place was crowded, but he pushed through to the big U-shaped bar and sidled in between two chairs, both occupied by young women. He turned his charmer on at half wattage. “’Scuse me, ladies. Don’t mean to interrupt. I’ll be out of your hair right quick.”

The old walnut bar was built so that regular chairs lined one side and half of another, then the floor stepped down, and the rest of that side and the whole of the third was bar-height. He was on the chair side, so he bent a bit toward the women.

“No rush.” The brunette batted heavily lined blue eyes up at him. She was cute, but he could tell most of that was makeup. He didn’t mind makeup, for the most part; he respected the effort to make the most of ‘what God give ya,’ as his granny might’ve said. A little reminder of a good time, say finding a sparkly smudge on his dick the next morning? Nothing wrong with that. But this chick had laid it on with a trowel. That spoke to him of something else going on—on the inside. Insecurity, something like that. That shit, he minded. Insecure meant needy.

“Really, Amber?” an unhappy male voice complained. Apollo cast an eye over his shoulder and saw a college guy, all shiny and pressed, standing behind the brunette. Who ignored him. Seemed like needy had met needy and made a team—or a date, a least.

Apollo stood straight up grinned at the guy. “Easy, guy. Just trying to order a beer.”

College Man expressed his disbelief without uttering a word. Apollo turned back and got the bartender’s attention. He ordered a Guinness and was pleased to see the guy take his time with the pour. He tipped him well for that. A good Guinness pour required extra attention.

As he started to extricate himself from Amber and her College Man, a seat at the other end of the bar was opening up. “Hey, man,” he hailed the bartender whom he’d just tipped well.

“Yeah, mate?” He had an accent of some sort. Probably Irish.

“Put this at that empty place, will ya?” He held out his glass.

The barman grinned and took his glass, and Apollo made his way through the pub, around the big bar, and to his waiting seat.

The band—a fiddler, a girl singer with a tambourine, and a guy with those pipes that weren’t quite bagpipes—finished their set, and after a dilatory round of distracted applause, the pub took on the usual sound of people on a night out.

Apollo thought it must suck to play at a venue like this, where few in the audience gave a shit you were there.

He waved the bartender over.

“Ready for another?”

Apollo eyed his half-drunk glass. “Sure. And a round for the band, too. Whatever they’re drinking.” He knew that would be top-shelf shit on an offer like his, but that was fine.

The bartender cocked him a friendly grin, and Apollo spun on his barstool and leaned back against the bar. The house lights had come up a bit, too, with the band on break, and he indulged in some people watching, taking note of the women taking note of him.

He liked that. Maybe it meant he had insecurities of his own, but fuck it. He liked that chicks thought he was hot. He put some effort into it. He’d been a skinny-ass nerd of a kid, gotten his lunch stolen four days out of every five, until he’d come back from a hard summer on the farm and started tenth grade six inches taller and sixty pounds heavier.

It had disappointed his skinny-ass nerd of a dad when he’d started paying more attention to chicks and workouts than to school, and his grades had slipped too low to qualify for a scholarship anywhere, but it wasn’t that he hadn’t learned. He’d learned plenty, and he’d made good use of it, college or not. Paid off his parents’ heavily mortgaged farm last year. Bought himself a little house.

His folks thought he’d done all that by investing his service station wages well. He let them think it.

Damn, his head wanted to stew on shit tonight. He reached back for his fresh Guinness and lifted it at the musicians, who’d lifted their glasses in thanks.

Between them and Apollo, a shiny black shadow passed. He turned to make sense of it and saw...well goddamn. Look at that. Walking away from him, probably from the restroom: A sweet, swaying overturned heart of an ass encased in black leather pants, miles-long legs rising up from black leather boots, bare shoulders peeking through a long, thick mass of nearly-black hair. Jesus, was she topless?

Okay, from the back, that chick singlehandedly upped the average hotness level of Donovan’s tonight from a seven to a nine.

Then she turned around. No, she wasn’t topless. She wore a wine-colored halter that hugged her—okay, slightly small, but perky as fuck—tits. And her face. Jesus, look at that face. Dark eyes rimmed with dark liner. Wine-red lips, so fucking full. She sat at the bar and brushed her hair behind her shoulders—wine-red polish on her nails, and a big ring on her middle finger. Heavy silver bracelet around a slim wrist.

Apollo thought of an excellent way to clear the shit from his head tonight.

“You okay, mate?” The bartender’s tone made the question sarcastic; he’d seen where Apollo’s attention had landed.

“You know her?”

“Sorry, I don’t. Never seen her before.”

She was with a guy—a big, soft guy, with wire-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. Wearing a yellow striped polo shirt. A matched set they were not.

Becker’s protests to the contrary aside, Apollo tried not to splash in other guys’ pools, so he didn’t usually do what he was about to do. But this chick was too hot to waste on Nerd Central over there. He knew guys like that. He’d been a guy like that—a kid like that, anyway. That dude was playing out of his league.

“Send her a drink, will ya?”

“She came in with that guy,” the bartender said.

Reluctantly, Apollo shifted his attention from the dark-haired beauty to the bartender. “What’s your name?”

“Bobby.”

“Well, Bobby, I’d like to buy the lady a drink.” He pushed a twenty across the bar. “Whatever she’s drinking.”

This time, Bobby’s nod wasn’t as friendly, but he took the twenty and mixed the lady a Sea Breeze.