Levi spent his first whole day at the ranch, taking tours of all the buildings and meeting people. He was doing his best to keep his mind off the dream or whatever it was he’d had the night before. It seemed so real that even after he woke up, he wasn’t convinced that he hadn’t just had a conversation with Krissy. Strangely enough however, he wanted to believe it was only a dream. If that was the case, then what she’d said about having to go away wouldn’t be true, and he’d get to see her and smell her and touch her like that again, any time he closed his eyes. For the time being, however, he was trying to concentrate on the decision right in front of him. Dax was offering him a hell of an opportunity and he planned on giving it careful consideration.

As Cody took him on his tour on the large ATV Polaris, Levi found himself thinking that to the outsider who didn’t know a motorcycle club owned and lived on the property, it might look almost like a hippie commune. There were cute little houses with well-manicured lawns, and almost every one had a garden in the back. A lot of the houses had children playing in the front yards or older people sitting in lawn or rocking chairs on the front porch. Cody waved at every one of them as they passed and every one of them waved back.

As they passed the area where the houses sat, they came to a grove of trees. Cody stopped the Polaris and both men got off the ATV. Levi didn’t know about trees, so he didn’t know what kind they were, but they looked like any other tree he’d ever seen. It wasn’t until Levi followed Cody through them that he realized the difference. In the center of it all was a large, canvas greenhouse with plastic sheeting in the windows. Cody pulled back the plastic on one of the windows and let Levi look inside. The big room was filled with large, green, lush cannabis plants. It was outfitted with state of the art lights and warmers and generators the size of small cars both inside the room and outside of the canvas greenhouse itself. Massachusetts had yet to legalize the growth, cultivation, and sale of marijuana, but right in front of him was the largest indoor crop of marijuana he’d ever seen, and he had seen quite a few. Growing cannabis was what his father did best and growing up, Levi had learned enough about it to be both curious and impressed by the Skulls’ operation. He said:

“My dad had a field up in the hills in Texas when I was a kid. It was in the center of a cornfield. He planted sunflowers all around the outside of the field so that when they knocked down the corn, the sunflowers would hide the cannabis plants if anyone happened to drive by on the dirt road. It was a big deal with the club until the younger guys took over the executive board and decided marijuana wasn’t going to make them the kind of money on the streets that other, more addictive and more expensive drugs would.”

“We were in the business of moving drugs at one point, but it put us in the middle of a war with some really dangerous people. We lost a lot of guys to prison or death before Dax finally said no more. We’re not choir boys, that’s for sure, but we don’t deal in anything anymore that’s going to attract a lot of violence or police action. If the cops found this place, they’d chop it down and slap us with a few fines and charges that Dax would end up with probation over, most likely. When I first got out of the joint and got a look at what Dax had done to the ranch and the club while I was gone, I thought he’d lost his mind. I’ve come around since then to realizing that the man is pure genius. If he was a greedy man and he didn’t share the wealth, he’d be a millionaire ten times over.”

“How long were you in?”

“I did six years of a ten-year sentence.” Cody didn’t say what he was in for and Levi wasn’t going to ask.

“I’ve been in county a few times. I’m not sure I’d last six years in prison. Just the idea of being locked up…” Levi caught himself and said, “Sorry, I’m sure you don’t want to talk about this.”

Cody walked back over toward the Polaris and Levi followed him. They got back on the ATV, and Cody said, “I don’t mind talking about it. It’s one of the things Dax has me do at the teen center. I can give them a first-hand account of what it’s like in there.”

“What’s up with that teen center?” Levi asked. He’d seen it out the window of the clubhouse and he was curious about it. He’d heard some ugly rumors over the past few years, but he didn’t want to believe them, especially now that he knew Dax and the handful of other Skulls he’d met in the past few days.

“Dax started noticing that a lot of the kids who had been raised in the club didn’t have the best lives growing up. There was a lot of abuse going on, thanks to drug and alcohol use or parents being in jail or fighting or whatever. The kids were being exposed to drugs and sex at an early age and they were getting addicted or pregnant, or taken advantage of. I was one of those kids and if it wasn’t for Dax, I would probably still be in prison. When we were in San Antonio on completely different business, he rounded up and brought back a bunch of homeless kids and child prostitutes. He’s built this teen center where there is someone on duty 24/7 to keep an eye on them, but it also gives them their own space. They can work on getting their GED and they get counseling and we try and teach them life skills.”

“Wow, that’s pretty damned admirable,” Levi said. “I was one of the lucky ones that grew up in the club, but with parents who loved and nurtured me. But I saw what you’re talking about on more than one occasion. Our club has been increasingly violent over the past ten years and the kids growing up in the club have a front row seat to the aftermath of that violence. I don’t expect my club to be—what did you say?—‘choir boys,’ but there’s a big difference between stealing a few cars, growing marijuana, and benefiting off the porn business, and gunning people down in the streets.”

Cody nodded and said, “Yeah, I thought Dax had gone soft there for a while, but now that I have a kid of my own, I appreciate how important the kids…and family—are to him, and I sure as hell appreciate all he’s done for me.”

“Did you know Dax’s father?”

Cody nodded. “Yeah, I knew Doc. I was intimidated as hell by him, just about everyone that met him was. He was bigger than life and he never gave an order that wasn’t followed…at least not to anyone that lived to tell about it. Dax has that same ability to get people to follow his lead, but he’s mastered the ability to do it without using the scare tactics Doc used to use. People do what Dax tells them to do because they respect him.” Cody pulled up in front of the teen rec center and the two men went inside. Levi was given a tour of the building where kids were at work and at play throughout. It was a place that any kid would be lucky to be a part of, he thought. There were two gyms, an indoor soccer field, an electronics room with almost every kind of electronic stuff a person could think of. There were large-screen television sets in all the classrooms and Cody showed him one of the empty dorm rooms…they were nicer than Levi’s bedroom in his apartment. The kids that he saw there looked happy, or at least content. He even felt guilty about just listening to the rumors he’d heard about Dax’s involvement with the kids. One particularly nasty rumor was that Dax was rounding up child prostitutes in order to start his own kiddie porn ring. Levi was glad to find out that they had been way off base about that.

After they left the teen center, Cody took Levi to the mechanic’s shop. The front area that opened to the outside looked like an ordinary shop with motorcycles and cars in varying states of being worked on, or waiting for work. Most of the cars were later models, but nothing fancy or expensive. “Do you take cars and bikes from people outside the club?”

“Oh, yeah. Toolie, our mechanic, has regular customers that have been bringing their vehicles to him for years. He’s a wizard with a bike and a pretty decent auto mechanic too. He’s got four or five prospects now that help him out in here and the rest of us stop by and give him a hand when we can. Come on, I’ll show you the back.”

Levi followed Cody over to a door in the back of the big shop and watched as Cody punched a code into a box next to the door. It beeped and the flashing red light on the door handle turned from red to green. Cody pushed that door open and Levi’s jaw dropped. Cody noticed and smiled. “Nice, huh?”

Levi whistled through his teeth and said, ‘Hell, yeah. I love muscle cars.” The room was filled with cars and bikes, all shiny and most new. The walls were covered with expensive, name-brand parts and lots of chrome. The shop was filled with custom bikes and expensive name cars.

“You know anything about hotwiring these old things?” Cody asked him. With the advent of computers and hackers, it had become almost impossible to steal a car without the key, and next to impossible to disappear after you stole it, thanks to tracking programs like OnStar. But Levi’s Pops and his father had both been old-school, and they’d taught him how to steal any car or any bike…and how to do it quickly.

“A thing or two,” Levi told Cody. “Can I look around?”

“Sure, be my guest.” Levi went over to look at a classic Dodge Charger that the hood was up on. The car was immaculate outside, and under the hood. It looked like the engine had been custom built, and the paint job looked brand new. He moved on to the next one; it was a ’69 GTO, also in immaculate condition. Levi felt like he was in a car museum and he would have liked to examine the cars more closely, but Cody was motioning at him to come over toward another door. Cody put a code into that one and Levi could smell the paint as soon as they walked inside. The walls were covered with plastic and a paint station was set up in the center of the room. There were four men in white coveralls, goggles, and paint masks, working on what looked like an ’80s Porsche. Hundreds, maybe thousands of business-sized cards were pinned to one wall, in the next room, each one a different color, and another wall was covered with various license plates from most if not of all the fifty states. There was a section with rolls of tint for the windows and swatches of upholstery. Another room held tires and there was a wide selection of wheels in every size, shape, and color a car enthusiast could imagine. A few more rooms revealed custom parts for bikes with chrome as the main theme. It was a chop shop the likes of which Levi hadn’t even known existed. If he compared it to the one that the Defenders ran back in Memphis, it would be like comparing a Dodge Dart to that brand new custom Charger they’d passed on the way in.

“You know much about boosting cars?” Cody asked him.

“Not everything, but some,” Levi told him honestly. “Bikes are my specialty.”

“That’s what I heard. Cars aren’t a lot different as far as the hot-wiring goes, but there’s a lot more to watch out for. You want to make sure you’re not wasting your time on one with a steering wheel lock or a built-in GPS device. We have a guy who is a damned tech genius and he can disable the GPS on a bike in a second with a few strokes of his keyboard, but with the cars there’s more to it. We have to get into them first and if they have a GPS then they probably have an alarm too…it’s just not usually worth it, unless it’s one we have a big order for. We don’t worry about what’s inside the car, unless it’s alive. We never take a car that’s occupied—no jacking, even if it’s a pet that was left in the car. There are plenty of vehicles out there for the taking and insurance will likely reimburse the poor sap we take it from…but things get complicated when we start stealing their pets too. We watch out for certain colors. We don’t usually steal a brightly colored car or one that’s got a custom color on it; they’re too easy to spot when we’re driving them back in. We have a handful of guys that drive like Mario Andretti on crack and they get them back here so fast that the color is a blur to anyone that sees it…but again, taking chances is not what we’re after. We don’t take cars with guns in plain view either.”

“Why?”

“If the guy leaves a shotgun strapped in the car, then more than likely he’s got a handgun tucked into his belt and he knows how to use it. We only boost a car for the belongings inside if someone is stupid enough to leave their bank bag lying in the front seat or a designer purse that looks like it might have a lot of cash inside. Mostly, we look for the cars that our ‘customers’ have requested. We hit the fancier restaurants in town, taking what we need while the valets are busy parking other cars, or sending in the girls to distract them. We hit places like the opera house too, and another great place to find what we’re looking for is at a doctor’s office or a recording studio. We always scope out where the cameras are in the lots before we go in, and we time it so that by the time the camera switches to a certain area, we’re long gone.”

“Sounds like fun,” Levi said with a grin. Cody smiled too.

“It’s my favorite job. But…there are some that much prefer the next place I’m going to take you. It’s the last stop on our tour. For this one we’ll have to leave the ranch.”

Levi was up for a bike ride. He’d been cooped up for a day and a half, stuck with his tortured thoughts of Krissy and Zoe and his dad, and he was finally able to think about something else for a while—and on top of that, there was no better therapy than a ride on his Harley. He loved being out on the open road, with the wind in his face and the sun on his back. It was the place where he felt most alive. He and Cody got on their bikes and he followed the big, buff biker out the gates of the ranch and along what seemed to be a main highway for about ten miles. They came to a poorly paved road and Cody turned off onto it. Levi continued to follow him for about five more miles before the big warehouse came into view. There were no signs around it and no markings on the building. Levi had all sorts of ideas in his head about what could be inside…but none of them turned out to be right. A man dressed in a professional-looking security guard uniform opened the door for then before they even got up to it. He greeted Cody warmly and said hello to Levi before buzzing them through another door. The room they walked into was filled with men sitting at tables in front of large-screened computers. They all wore headphones so there was no noise, but the pictures on the computer screens in front of them were all pornographic images. Some of the images were videos of live-action sex and some were stills of beautiful women in varying states of dress. Levi’s eyes moved from one scene to the next and by the time he’d looked at them all, he deduced that there was something for everyone there. “What is this place?”

“This is where we run our porn business. There are rooms in the back where this is all being filmed and these guys are editing the film, almost as it’s happening live. We employ about sixty women and a dozen or so men actors. We have three professional videographers on staff, a few directors and writers, and of course the hair and make-up people and all of that. As you can see, we make straight, gay, and fetish films. The only things Dax and the club have declared off limits are kids, animals, and snuff films. Most of the movies are shipped out of the country, but some of them are sold to collectors here in the U.S. We also have live cams that run around the clock and we shoot films seven days a week.”

“Damn.” It was another amazing set-up, and Levi would be willing to bet that it was where the bulk of the Skulls’ income came from. The more he saw of the empire Dax Marshall had built, the more impressed he was and the more clearly he saw the opportunity that was being laid at his feet. His mind was almost made up; all he had to do was convince his mother and his Pops to go with him. As he thought about moving to Massachusetts from Memphis, Zoe’s face suddenly popped into his head, and he slipped his hand into his pocket and palmed her pendant. He wondered why he couldn’t get her off his mind. He thought about what Krissy said to him in his most recent dream about his someday finding another woman he could feel the same connection with as he had her. He wondered if that woman was Zoe…and if he moved fifteen hundred miles away, would he ever get the opportunity to find out?