“Mom, I’m gonna bust.” Levi had been back in Memphis for less than three hours and his mother had already filled him full of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and white gravy and homemade biscuits. He could tell that she missed having someone around to cook for since his dad died. His Pop’s diabetes kept him from eating the rich southern food she loved to cook. Levi had eaten every bite she gave him, but now she was trying to serve him a piece of homemade apple pie a la mode.

“Just a few bites,” she said. “You’ll love it.”

“I know I will. I love your apple pie. But, I have to let my dinner digest first.” He looked around his mother’s kitchen. The counters were filled with homemade cakes, pies, cookies, and even doughnuts. “You starting up a bakery?” he asked her with a grin.

She looked embarrassed. “I’ve just been in a baking mood lately. I’ll take most of it up to the clubhouse this afternoon.”

Levi nodded. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.” She wiped her hands on a dishtowel and sat down at the table with him.

“You ever think about moving?”

She raised an eyebrow. “No. I’ve lived in Memphis all of my life. Where would I go?”

“Massachusetts…maybe?”

“Why on earth would I want to go to Massachusetts?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking about a change and I have this opportunity to get in with a really good, strong club up there. Have you heard of the Southside Skulls?”

“Of course. I knew their founder, Doc Marshall. His son is president now, right?”

It always amazed him how well-informed his mother was. She rarely went to the clubhouse anymore, but she always knew what was going on. “Yeah, Dax—he’s the one that’s offering to take me on, even knowing that Cheney is probably going to be pretty pissed off…”

“Levi, ‘pissed off’ is putting it mildly. I don’t trust Cheney and your father didn’t trust him either. If it was that easy to leave, your dad would have done it, a long time ago.”

“I got the impression that Dad’s not leaving was what pissed Cheney off. He was doing his best toward the end to make him as miserable as possible. He even told me that he wasn’t going to let Cheney have his way.”

Levi’s mom sighed. “That was true, but your father didn’t just want to leave, he wanted…Just please do me a favor, honey, and really think this through.”

“Mom, what are you not telling me?”

“Nothing, Levi.” She pushed back from the table and stood up. Turning her back to him, she started drying dishes out of the dish rack. “Just promise me you won’t do anything rash, okay?”

Levi pushed his chair back and stood up too. “Mom, look at me.” He watched her reach up and wipe her face before turning to look up at him. “I know when you’re keeping something from me. What is it?”

“Nothing,” she said, sharply. “I just don’t want you so far away and I don’t want you to risk…whatever you’d be risking if you left. Remember what they did to Duckie when he left?”

“Duckie was stealing from the club, Mom. He didn’t ‘leave.’ He was kicked out.” Duckie had been caught red-handed, skimming cash from his drug sales. Cheney had brought him in front of the executive board and they voted unanimously to kick him out of the club, even Levi’s father. But they didn’t just kick him out. Cheney and Jackie D had him taken into the shop before he left and Spider had used a blowtorch to remove his Defenders tattoo off his back. He left with third-degree burns on his back, but at the time, Levi remembered thinking he was lucky that Cheney let him ride out of there alive. This wasn’t the same situation. Levi hadn’t done anything against the club, and he’d suffered through a double tragedy losing his dad and Krissy. Even if he wasn’t fed up with the way Cheney did things…he might just need a change.

“You don’t have to worry about me, Mom. Cheney has never taken out his dislike of Dad on me. I’m just going to talk to him…”

“No!” She snapped, loudly, and banged the cup she was holding down on the cabinet so hard that it shattered in her hand. She was bleeding and she just stood there looking at the piece of ceramic left in her hand. Levi grabbed the towel out of her other hand and as he pressed it to the bleeding one he said:

“What the hell, Mom? What is this about?” Instead of answering him, she dropped the bloody piece of the cup that she was still holding and pulled away from Levi and walked out of the kitchen. Levi stood there in shock, looking at the blood on the counter and the floor, wondering what the hell just happened.

“What’s going on?” He turned and saw his Pops, leaning forward in his wheelchair, holding the kitchen door open with one hand.

Levi shook his head. “I don’t know. Mom just kind of freaked out on me.”

His grandfather’s eves went to the blood on the counter and the floor. “Is she okay?”

“She cut her hand, but I don’t think it’s too bad. It’s her state of mind I’m worried about. Has she seemed okay to you?”

“She’s been her old ornery self. What did you say to her?” he asked, rolling the chair into the kitchen.

“I was talking about leaving the club. She freaked out. She thinks Cheney will…I don’t know, burn off my tats or something.”

“They have done that, and worse. Maybe she’s got a point,” his Pop said.

“You too? You think I should just stay where I am because I’m afraid of what Cheney may or may not do?” Levi had almost forced himself to forget the crazy idea that his father’s and Krissy’s deaths were not an accident, but he had the feeling that was what his mother had been trying not to say…and now his Pops as well.

“No,” Pops said, “I told you that I wish you’d get the hell out of that club and as far away from here as you can.” He sighed and said, “But I told your father the same thing…and now I have to wonder…”

“Dad!” Levi’s mother had come back down the stairs and was glaring at her dad.

“Well, if you don’t want him to leave, then you should at least be honest with him about why that is. I think he has a right to know.”

“I have a right to know what? What are you talking about?” Levi was looking from his mother to his Pops. They were still glaring at each other. No one said anything for several long seconds, so Levi said, “Mom, I’m not twelve years old any longer. What the fuck are you two talking about? Is this about the accident?”

“Don’t use that language in my home.”

“Then talk to me, damn it!”

“She doesn’t think it was an accident. Your old man told Cheney he was leaving. He planned on talking to you about going with him that night…but you’d had a lot to drink, so he was going to wait. Obviously, he never got the chance.”

A chill ran through Levi. Hearing it said aloud by someone else made it that much more real. The idea had been there since the day he and his mom talked about what the investigator told her. He had hoped that Mickey could look at the bike and tell…but it was too far gone. Levi didn’t want to think his father and Krissy were murdered, and he tried to convince himself that he was being paranoid, but now he knew his mother was thinking the same thing.

“When did Dad talk to Cheney?”

“Levi, leave it alone, please…”

“Mom! When did he talk to Cheney?” Levi had been worried about his mother’s not crying after his old man died. He didn’t have to worry any longer; she was sobbing now.

“I can’t lose you too, Levi. It will kill me. Please…we can’t bring them back…”

“And we can’t just let them fucking get away with killing them either. They killed the only man you ever loved. They took my father away. They took Krissy away and along with her, my future. If Dad hadn’t gone to take Krissy home, both of my parents might be dead! Where is the accident report?”

“In the desk in the living room,” his Pops said. That netted him another glare from Levi’s mom. Levi went into the living room and pulled the three-page document out of the top drawer of the desk. His eyes scanned it until he found what he was looking for and then he folded it up and stuck it in his pocket. When he went back into the kitchen, he noticed his mother’s hand was still bleeding through the bandage she’d gone and wrapped it in.

“We’re taking you to the ER,” he told her, “and on the way, you’re going to tell me everything. I’m not a kid, Mom. Dad and Krissy deserved better than what they got and if Cheney planned this…he’s going to pay, whether you help me or not.”

She looked at her father and he nodded. “Go on and get your hand fixed up, and listen to your son. He’s a grown man, Janice. You can’t protect him forever. Besides, he’s no safer in that club now that Mac is dead than he is going after them.”

“I’ll get my purse” was all she said. Levi grabbed the keys to her car off the key rack by the door.

“Tell her I’ll be in the car.”

“Levi, go easy on her. The only thing she’s guilty of is loving you and Mac too much.”

Levi took a deep breath. He knew his sudden anger with his mother was displaced. He nodded at his grandfather and said, “I will, Pops. But if Cheney did this…”

“I know, son. You do what you have to do and nobody in this family will fault you for it.”

* * *

Levi couldn’t stay in the room while they stitched up his mother’s hand. He sat in the lobby of the ER and waited. While he did, he let what his mother told him in the car on the way over run through his mind. She said his father had a meeting with Cheney the morning of her birthday party. He’d been working up to it for a long time, ever since he’d had his heart attack the year before. Cheney was putting more and more pressure on him to retire, but he was worried about leaving Levi alone, at Cheney’s mercy. Mac was afraid that Cheney would take his angst toward him out on his son. He’d already started giving Levi the shit jobs, and Mac thought that sending Levi after Spider that night had been a set-up. Cheney didn’t believe Levi would kill Spider; he thought it would be the other way around. At least, that was what Levi’s old man believed, according to his mother.

When Mac met with Cheney, he told him he was leaving the club. Cheney didn’t give him a hard time about that, she said, but what he was pissed about was that Mac wanted to take Levi with him. Levi didn’t believe it was a coincidence that his dad’s brakes gave out the very night after he’d talked to Cheney—and somehow, he was going to prove it.

He slipped the paperwork from the accident out of his pocket and looked at the name of the man in the car that had hit his dad and Krissy again. His name was Matthew Bledsoe and he had died at the scene as well…but there was a next of kin listed, a daughter named Hannah Carter. There was an address for her too. She lived in Clarksville. As soon as Levi took his mother home and made sure she was okay, he headed to Clarksville to meet Hannah Carter.

* * *

Levi drove his bike up in front of a small, neat-looking house on a residential street in the small city of Clarksville. The Defenders did a lot of business in Clarksville, so Levi was very familiar with the city and found the address easily. Now that he was in front of the house, he wasn’t sure that going there without calling first was his best idea ever, especially when he saw the man that stepped out of the front door. He was a fairly large man, not tall, but muscular. He had a full black beard and mustache, and a large scar along the right side of his bald head. None of that was what stood out to Levi, however. It was the leather kutte he was wearing that most interested the young man. He was wearing an Invaders patch. Where his name went were the initials “G.M.”

The big man watched Levi suspiciously as he stepped off his bike and slid off his skullcap. The man’s posture wasn’t threatening, but he definitely looked on guard as Levi walked up to the house.

“Help you?” he asked, in a deep, gravelly voice.

“I was looking for Hannah Carter.”

The man eyeballed Levi’s kutte for several seconds before saying, “What do you want with Hannah?”

“I’d rather discuss that with her.”

“You can discuss it with me first and we’ll go from there.”

“Who are you to her?” Levi asked.

“Name’s Jim,” he said. “And whether or not my relationship to Hannah is any of your business has not been established.”

Levi sighed. “I’m not here to cause any trouble for her or anyone else. My father and my girlfriend were killed in the accident that her father was in a little over a month ago and…”

“She ain’t got nothing to say about that.”

“I’m just trying to understand…”

“I don’t care what you’re trying to understand. Hannah is going through a hard time right now and I’m not going to have some little boy dressed up in a biker costume come in here and make things worse.”

Levi chuckled. He’d been called a lot of things in his life, but “little boy in a biker costume” took the cake. “Look, I understand, I really do. I’m grieving the loss of my father and my girlfriend. My mother is grieving too…”

“Then go home and take care of your own family and I’ll take care of mine.” Levi started to open his mouth again and the guy said, “I’m done asking nicely.”

“Can I leave my number?”

“Not with me.”

Levi chuckled again. “Okay then, you have a nice day.”

“I will, soon as you’re gone.”

The man watched him as he got on his bike and rolled it back down the driveway. He was still watching him as Levi started the Harley and drove away. Instead of heading toward Memphis, he turned onto the on-ramp for the highway that would take him into Nashville. He wasn’t looking to get into a gunfight with a pissed-off Invader, but maybe there was one who wouldn’t be pissed off and who might just be willing to help him.