Determined not to stew on the night before or the way he’d woken up after it, alone in that god-awful no-tell motel room, Apollo had ridden home and jumped immediately into a scalding hot shower, in which he’d stayed until he felt clean inside and out.

He was being a total chick about it, but shit. He’d never fucked and chucked a woman in his life. It was a dick move. And now he knew why. It sucked.

Out of the shower and back to himself, he’d focused on having the Sunday he’d planned to have. He’d run his errands, unpacked his groceries, fixed the wobbly ceiling fan in his bedroom and the drip in the kitchen faucet, made himself a couple of ham on ryes for lunch, and then cut his lawn. He’d even gotten his edger and weed-whacker out and done the job properly.

The afternoon was another hot, muggy steam bath, but he was glad for it. The streams of sweat running through his hair and beard, and over his bare chest, cleansed the last of the night out of him, and the exertion of the work in hard weather had kept his mind on the work.

He tossed a load of laundry in and took another shower—this one cooler than room temp—and slipped on a clean pair of basketball shorts. From the fridge he grabbed a beer and the fresh porterhouse he’d picked up at the market, seasoned it the way he liked it—just some salt and pepper and a couple of shakes of garlic powder—and gone out to fire up his grill. It was getting dark, but he liked it that way, sitting out on the patio to eat, listening to the crickets, feeling the sun’s heat ebb away.

While the grill heated and the steak sat on a plate in the fridge and soaked in its seasonings, Apollo took his beer into this office and got on his computer. He’d been trying not to do this, but now that he’d run out of other things to do, his stupid head got the question back in its teeth.

He’d had broadband installed the second it was available, so he was online as quickly as he could open the browser. He only had her first name, but ‘Jacinda’ wasn’t common, so he didn’t expect that to cause him trouble. He also had the plate number on her Nissan, but he meant not to go digging where he wasn’t invited. Not for this, not from his home. Apollo was cautious about where and when and why he slipped in somebody’s back door, especially a governmental back door. One stupid move could pull the whole club into a wake of trouble.

There was no Jacinda listed in the directory, unfortunately. Not a single one. So he broadened the search to the widest reasonable net: ‘Jacinda’ and ‘Tulsa.’

The first hit was to a local bulletin board post for a ten-year high school reunion a couple of years ago. It linked to a weblog post, which turned out to be a recap of the reunion party of Cedar Grove High School, class of 1987. The post included a list of attendees and then a lot of bubbly blather about how AWESOME IT WAS TO SEE EVERYBODY!!!! Apollo scanned the list and found Durham, Jacinda. National Honor Society ‘87, Yearbook ‘86-‘87, Sentinel ’85-’87.

He’d graduated in 1987, too. That made her, if it was her, twenty-nine or thirty years old, just like him. That tracked. Also, she’d been a brain and a geek. A shutterbug, by the looks of it.

At the bottom of the post was a badly done collage of about twenty candid snapshots from the event. The shots themselves were professional Party Pix shots, but they’d been scanned by an amateur, and the resolution sucked ass. Still, he could make out faces—and there she was, arm in arm with a group of four other women in that one, raising a glass with a big crowd in that one (her buddy Ryan was in that snap, too), dancing with a guy whose hands had full possession of her ass in that one. Apollo ignored the flare of jealousy he felt.

The photos were captioned, identifying the people in them. In every caption, she was ‘Jaci Durham.’

Jaci. Didn’t suit her. Jaci was cheer or pep squad. Not an honor student photog. And certainly not the sleek dame in black leather he’d met last night.

He tried to stop himself, but his fingers struck the keys anyway, and he’d slipped into the DMV database. He found her license and registration easily. Jacinda Louise Durham, born April 14, 1969. 5’8”, 120 pounds. Brown hair, brown eyes. ‘Brown’ was wholly insufficient to describe the color of either. She looked overheated and pissed off in her license photo.

She lived about two miles from him, at Bordeaux Abbey Apartments.

This was not helping. At all. Before he could get himself into any more trouble, he got offline and went to grill his dinner.

––––––––

~oOo~

––––––––

His cell rang while he sat at his patio table, eating his perfect cut of meat and listening to the Cardinals game on the radio. He turned down the volume before he answered.

“Hey, Ox.” The VP had called last night to ask after Cecily Nielsen, oldest daughter of their late former VP, Dane. She’d graduated college in May, and the Bulls had sent up a couple of guys to load a truck and follow her home. No one had checked in as of last night, though, and Cecily’s mother, Joanna, had started a telephone tree looking for information about her daughter’s whereabouts. Apollo had apparently been the first one to remember which Bulls had gone out after her, which wasn’t great, since Delaney had been the one to send them. The president had been off his game lately. Since Dane’s death, and he was getting worse, not better.

Apollo had just about forgotten Ox had even called last night. He’d been so wrapped up in Jacinda Louise Durham that he’d barely spared a thought for the Bulls all night.

“Cecily get back okay?”

“Yeah, she’s back. I got something else. We need you on the northern route tomorrow.”

It was highly unusual to switch out the assignments so late. Apollo was meant to go south on this run. They all were leaving first thing in the morning. “Okay. What’s up?”

“Request from back East. She wants D to meet with our friends in Texas, so we’re switching you and him. That a problem?”

It was clear in Ox’s tone that he didn’t give a shit if Apollo had a problem, and talking shop on a phone, even a burner phone that he wiped regularly, wasn’t smart, so Apollo kept his questions to himself. Still, it was unusual, and he didn’t like unusual. It usually meant trouble. “I’m good. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Yep.” Ox ended the call, and Apollo set the phone on the glass surface of his table and got back to his steak and his baseball.

At least he had something else to occupy his mind now.

––––––––

~oOo~

––––––––

He was at the clubhouse before seven the next morning, and Delaney’s old lady, Mo, had already laid out a breakfast spread, with aromatic coffee, juice, pastries and doughnuts, muffins, bacon, and sausage. There were only a couple of girls around, helping her out; nobody had time to get busy with a chick this morning, and Apollo had no doubt that Mo had seen to it that there wasn’t any pussy around past ten the night before. Delaney wanted his patches alert and focused on the Russian runs.

The whole club had serious work of one kind or another today. Delaney, Rad, Gunner, and Slick were headed to Galveston, protecting a truckload of Russian guns on the way to the Volkov’s Central American client. Fitz was driving that load. Ox, Becker, Eight Ball and Apollo would escort Gargoyle in the other truck, headed north to Nebraska and the handoff with the Great Plains Riders, who’d take the cargo up to the Canadian border. Maverick, Wally, and Caleb had been tasked to stay in town and keep the service station running and the home front protected.

Simon was due back from his honeymoon that afternoon or evening. It’d be good to have him back after more than a month away. They needed him.

Apollo poured himself a huge cup of coffee. He’d have to piss before they pulled off for lunch, but it was worth it to get the caffeine. He’d slept for shit the night before. Every time he’d closed his eyes, his brain had served him up high resolution replays in Dolby Surround Sound of random scenes from his night with Jacinda. All five senses, fully engaged while he’d lain alone in his bed, jacking himself off like a manic teenager. He’d been sore, sweaty, exhausted, and depressed when his alarm had gone off at five-thirty.

A bolus of Mo’s great coffee and a fistful of doughnuts was positively medicinal this morning. If that didn’t work, there was always speed.

The ride to Lincoln—around four hundred miles—would be medicinal, too. Caffeine and sugar would give him energy, but a good long ride would sweep the trash out of his head and heart. It never failed, even on an important, high-risk job like this: riding straightened his shit out. It was a spiritual experience.

It was the same for all his brothers, too; it was why they’d become brothers in the first place. For all the outlaw shit they did, and all the partying and other wild-man crap, they were bikers because of the bikes. They all understood the same basic truth: a motorcycle—a Harley-Davidson motorcycle specifically—was not merely transportation. It was an extension of self. It represented—it was—a way of living and being in the world that only a few truly understood.

The people who felt that particular bond with their machine almost invariably rubbed up wrong against the boundaries of society in some way. So they came together. They rode, and they understood each other. Everything else derived from that. The love, the loyalty, the family—it was all founded on steel and rubber and wind.

“You look awful serious, love,” Mo came up and hooked her arm around his waist, giving him a motherly squeeze. “All is well, I hope.”

Logging out of his deep thoughts, Apollo lifted his sugary hand out of the way and bent to kiss her cheek. “I’m good, Mo. How’re you?”

She grinned. “I’ve got all the grandbabies coming to me for the day, once I’ve sent you boys off, so I’m wonderful, sweetheart. It’s a very good day.”

It was typical for the old ladies to hang out together when the club was away, especially when they were on a run that had the potential for trouble, and running millions of dollars’ worth of black market firearms always carried the potential for trouble. Apollo had heard Delaney telling Maverick to make certain he kept a bead on them all, since the younger old ladies—Willa, Leah, and Jenny—were spending the afternoon having a ‘girls’ day’, Maddie was working, and Mo was playing grandma, babysitting Willa and Jenny’s kids.

Potential for trouble or not, things had sure as hell calmed down since the year before at this time, when they were locking down or arguing about locking down what seemed like once every month, getting shot at once a week, burning buildings down, and racking up immeasurable losses in collateral damage. Now the ladies were going out to get their nails done and drink daiquiris or something while their men rode truckloads of weapons to drug lords and insurrectionists.

Joanna, Dane’s widow, still had old lady status and would as long as she didn’t remarry outside the club, but she’d kept her distance since her old man had been killed right here in the party room. Apollo supposed she’d lost her appetite for manicures and mixed drinks. And gun runs.

“Sounds great, Grammo,” he answered Mo. “Thanks for breakfast. It’s awesome.”

She smiled and patted his belly. “Gotta keep my family fed and happy.”

––––––––

~oOo~

––––––––

Once they were clear of Tulsa and able to see the asphalt roll out ahead of them, the magic of the road did its thing. Apollo’s mind quieted and his body calmed. The weariness of his bad night, made jittery by too much strong coffee, eased away, and he settled into the saddle and let the world fly past, shaded greyish-green by the dark lenses of his sunglasses.

Though he loved speed and took the chance whenever he could to top ninety or a hundred on straightaways through Oklahoma farmland, this kind of riding was where he could truly relax. Yeah, he was on the job, and that was nothing to blow off. There was a million dollars in illicit Russian hardware in the box of the truck Gargoyle was driving. Apollo was here, with his brothers, to protect that truck.

This was common work, however, and he knew it well. The shifting formations in which they rode around the truck, designed to seem casual and incidental and give the impression that they weren’t protecting anything, were in fact specifically intended to give the greatest protection. They all knew the patterns by heart, knew whom to follow and where to go, knew when to speed up a bit or slow down.

That knowledge and familiarity meant that they didn’t need to be on high alert to be highly aware. Doing just a few miles over the speed limit, right in the least suspicious range, meant that their bikes could almost guide themselves. They had a destination, so there was no question how far or long to ride.

All the variables were accounted for. It was perfect riding to quiet the mind.

He did have to offload before they stopped for lunch, but he wasn’t the only one. They pulled off at a gas station in Kansas, filled up the bike and truck tanks, and emptied their own. They went in pairs to settle up, and hit the road again.

With a full truck, ‘lunch’ was a euphemism. Just inside the Nebraska state line, they pulled off at a shop that called itself a truck stop, but that was also a euphemism. They cycled among three routes north and three routes south, avoiding an obvious rhythm to the cycle. When they took this route, they stopped here at the Crow’s Nest about every other run. It was the closest thing to a restaurant they could stop at with their cargo. It had a concrete slab on the outskirts of the lot, near their tiny line of truck slots, with picnic tables. Some employee with dreams of a job in advertising had named it the Trucker Terrace.

Becker and Eight Ball went into the burger joint that was the Crow’s Nest restaurant and ordered for them all. They sat in the sun under a too-small umbrella that rattled ominously in the stiff, hot breeze off the highway and ate beside the truck.

Apollo knew better than to ask here about the change of plans that had sent Delaney to Galveston today. Nobody else was around, and the wind and corresponding thudding rattle of the umbrella would mask their voices, but there was no reason to take a chance on a question that could wait. But Delaney wasn’t here, and Apollo had an opportunity to ask a question the president would shut down, were he in earshot.

“Ox.”

The VP lifted his boulder of a head from his meal. “Yeah.”

“I need to ask—is there something up with D?”

Ox stopped chewing, but he didn’t answer.

Becker leaned in. “It’s a good question, Ox. He’s been off for a while now.”

“Since last year and all that shit with Griffin and Dane.” Griffin had killed Dane. Simon had then killed Griffin. It was all much more complicated than those few words could express, but at its core: Griffin had killed Dane and been killed for it.

“There’s your answer,” Ox said and returned to his studious concentration on his food.

Apollo wasn’t satisfied. “Come on, man. What kind of answer is that? This affects us all. He’s moody as shit, and he’s getting unpredictable. That shit in church Saturday, about the Horde? What was that?”

Slamming his burger back to its paper tray with such force that it disintegrated into something more like stew with dumplings, Ox raised his eyes again—and he was pissed. “Gargo, go back to the truck.”

The prospect looked down at his half-finished lunch. “But...”

Ox answered with a feral growl, and the prospect swept his food and soda into his arms and almost ran to the truck.

Generally, Ox could best have been described as a gentle giant. He looked like he was one wrong word away from bloody murder, but he was aware of that, and of the harm he was capable of when he hulked out, so he had a very long fuse. But they’d set it alight here on the side of a Nebraska highway.

When Gargoyle was closed up in the hot truck, Ox turned to the patches at the table, wearing scowl that just about cracked his forehead into pieces. “D is not unpredictable, not when it comes to the club. What happened on Saturday? The table voted. How is that unpredictable? That’s what we do for every big question. What the Bulls have done since 1975. We vote. We abide the vote. Always. So what was different Saturday that has you all crying like a bunch of girls?”

“D didn’t vote,” Eight Ball answered. “He stormed out and didn’t even close the meeting. He’s never done that that I know of.”

“Would his vote have changed the outcome?”

No, it wouldn’t have. Apollo, Becker, and Eight all shook their heads, and Ox flicked his hand dismissively, indicating that the topic was closed.

“But he was so pissed,” Becker said. “I don’t understand it. Our vote kept Little Ike from going over his old man’s head. D should’ve been glad of that, right? He and Big Ike go all the way back, yeah?”

Apollo had stayed away from the clubhouse from the end of church on Saturday until breakfast this morning. He hadn’t spoken to any of his brothers about how things had gone down at the table. It gratified him to see that he hadn’t been alone in his thinking.

Ox knocked his food away. “You’re all assholes, you know that?” He aimed his glower directly at Apollo. “And you should fuckin’ know better. How long were Delaney and Dane best friends?”

“Since 1973. They came home from Vietnam on the same transport.” Delaney and Dane’s friendship story was the Bulls’ origin story. They all knew it.

“Dane died in 1998. How many years is that, brainiac?”

Apollo curbed his sense of offense. “Twenty-five.”

“They started the Bulls in 1975. Best friends and brothers for twenty-five fucking years. The kid in the truck isn’t even that old yet. Dane was killed by a brother, a kid not much older than that. You think all that tore you assholes up? Try losing your best friend. The one who shared your vision. The one who understood what war on the ground is really like. The one you built a whole way of life with. If you don’t think that’ll rattle you for a while, then I don’t want to know you.”

“Okay. But what’s that got to do with this shit with Big Ike?” Eight Ball asked.

But Apollo understood. Before Ox could answer, he said, “Ike’s his last old friend. He’s a self-destructive jackass, but I guess he wasn’t always like that. D doesn’t know how to help him, and he doesn’t want to lose him.”

Ox’s murderous expression finally eased back, and his face looked again like it might hold together. “The Horde’s shitty town is dying. Little Ike has good ideas about how to help it. Big Ike’s got some kind of jealous stick up his ass over his own damn son, and that twists him up more and more every day. He can’t get around it to do what needs doing. I only know all this because I sat there and listened to Little Ike and D hammer it out Saturday afternoon. D hasn’t said shit to me about this, but what I see is a man who’s trying to stick by his last friend through thick and thin when shit is getting thin as paper.”

“He wanted the vote to go the other way, so he could vote no and still help the Horde,” Apollo said, now seeing the whole picture in Technicolor.

Ox nodded.

“Then why didn’t he fucking say so?” Eight complained.

“He didn’t want to sway the vote. Working with the Horde right now isn’t good for the Bulls, and he knows it.” Now Becker understood, too. “His loyalty isn’t divided, but his heart is.”

Eight Ball laughed. “Come on. That’s some sentimental chick bullshit right there. My balls’re shriveling up just hearing it.”

“You’re a fuckin’ asshole, Eight,” Ox grumbled. “Let’s hit the road before the prospect passes out in there.”

––––––––

~oOo~

––––––––

The drop-off point was a disused barn on the Great Plains Riders’ VP’s property, at the site of the original family homestead, set far off from his actual home and working buildings. Riggs had fitted the old root cellar under the barn for secret storage, engineering it so that the floor seemed to be dirt all the way across the barn.

The Riders had managed to keep their noses clean through the Tulsa war, and law, local or otherwise, hadn’t yet caught their scent, as far as Apollo had been able to discover. Their rep as a recreational club remained intact, and that made ample room for the work they did together.

The Bulls pulled up at the barn just a few minutes earlier than their scheduled meet time, and the place was deserted. The Riders should have been there, set up to take the guns and store them until they made their run north in a few days.

“They should be here,” Ox said as the roar of their engines died.

The Bulls dismounted and came together, all of them pulling their pieces, on alert for trouble. The place was deserted.

“What the fuck?” Becker muttered.

“Maybe they’re just running late,” Apollo said, though they never had been before, and they should have called if they were. The Riders didn’t have cellphones yet, but they knew the Bulls did.

Ox pulled his phone and squinted at it, then shoved his finger at the keys. Apollo knew he was dialing Cooper’s pager. The Riders’ president.

“Okay. We sit tight and keep a lookout until we hear.” Ox strode back toward the head of the pitted dirt driveway.

About five minutes later, while they were still waiting for a call back from Cooper, they heard a Harley coming from the road. A single Harley, not the crew they’d need to collect the cargo.

Something bad was up.

The rider who pulled up was a Great Plains Rider, but not an officer. Apollo scanned his mental files for the guy’s name and found it: Van.

“We got a snag,” Van shouted over his engine before any of the Bulls could speak. “Coop wants you to take the truck off site until we can get it sorted out. I’ll lead you to a safe place.”

“What the hell is goin’ on?” Ox asked, not moving toward his bike.

“Riggs’s got some unrelated trouble up at the house. We need to get the truck off his property before it gets related.”

Ox turned around in nearly a full circle, like he was looking for the answer in the dusty, dead fields around them. “Beck, Eight—you go with Van and the truck. Keep it safe.” He pointed at Van. “Kill that fucker dead if he’s playing some kind of game here. Apollo, you come with me.”

“Where you goin’?” Van asked.

“To Riggs’ house. I want to see what the fuck is goin’ on.”

“That’s a bad idea, brother.”

Ox stalked up to Van and loomed over him. “Coop sends you to turn our plan upside down while we’re carrying this cargo? There better be a damn good reason, and I want to see it. You want the truck off site, the others will follow. But I’m gonna know what the hell is up. Today, your trouble is our trouble is Russian trouble.”

With a reluctant nod, Van waved at Becker and Eight Ball, and Apollo hung back with Ox while the others rode off.

When they were nothing but a cloud of dust, Ox mounted his bike, and Apollo did the same.

“Let’s see what trouble they got themselves into.”