Tank
I knew something was wrong the second I pulled up to the house. Bringing my bike to a stop and getting off, I looked at the front of the house for any sign that something was off. Things looked normal, but I had the weirdest goddamn feeling in my gut.
I walked through the front doors, the first thing I noticed being the lack of scent in the air. Star’d been putting that kitchen to good use, and I’d been lucky enough to come home to a home-cooked meal just about every day since she’d been here.
But now, there was nothing.
I went to the kitchen. The light was off, and the countertops were spotless.
Something was up.
“Star?” I called out, my voice echoing through the house.
Nothing.
“Star? You here?”
Still, nothing.
I checked the backyard, then the lounge, a hot feeling forming in my stomach as I did. No one out there, either. Next, I went up upstairs, knowing that if she wasn’t in her bedroom she wasn’t there at all. Throwing open the bedroom door, my suspicions were confirmed: she was gone.
The room was a mess, and clothes were here and there. It looked pretty clear to me that she’d packed up some clothes in a hurry and made a break for it.
Goddamn stupid girl, I thought. No idea how dangerous it is just to wander out into those woods.
It was hard for me to describe how I felt when I realized that Star had gone. Betrayed—that was the first emotion. Betrayal gripped me hard; it felt like hot fingers around my heart. I don’t know why, exactly, that was the first feeling that I felt. After all, Star was property, basically a living fuck-doll that I’d bought for a goddamn pretty penny. Right? I mean, I should’ve felt frustrated more than anything, like if one of my TVs had sprouted a pair of legs and walked off.
That was how I know I should’ve felt, at least. In reality, it was the betrayal. I felt like someone who I had … I dunno, trusted, had done me dirty. After all, I’d given her a good home here, kept her safe from Dakin, and … well, I’d even started getting used to her being around. I was starting to warm up to the idea of coming home to a home-cooked meal made by a woman with a smile that made me feel … some kind of way.
I scolded myself as I paced around my house. That was some lovey-dovey shit, I told myself. Not the kind of way the leader of an MC should be feeling.
But I couldn’t help it. I felt like I’d been abandoned, almost. The reality of the situation was that all this time this girl had been doing nothing more than playing me for a chance to leave. Every smile, every kind word, even those damn meals, they were all her way of getting me buttered up, making me let me guard down. Sure, I could’ve kept her locked in her bedroom—or worse, like some of those other guys did with their girls—but I wasn’t about that. I figured a happier woman would make for more pleasant company. Shows how fucking naïve I was.
Before I could consider my feelings too deeply, however, I heard my phone buzz in the other room. Picking it up, I saw that it was Oslo.
“What is it?” I asked, the frustration creeping into my voice.
“Whoa, man—you good?” asked Oslo.
I took a deep breath. I was fucking pissed, that was for goddamn sure, but I didn’t need to snap at my men over this kind of shit. That was a good way to get a reputation as an unreliable, unstable leader.
“Yeah, man,” I said, evening the tone of my voice. “What’s up?”
“It’s Dakin,” he said.
Shit.
I’d gotten so pissed about Star that I’d forgotten we were on the brink of war with Dakin and his men. That made Star’s leaving extra fucking infuriating. I hadn’t been planning on using her as the bargaining chip that Dakin wanted, but how the fuck was I going to convince him that she’d actually left and that this wasn’t some kind of little trick that I was pulling? Dakin didn’t exactly strike me as the kind of guy to believe something like this at face value. I’d have to do some convincing.
“What about him?”
“He wants to meet again,” said Oslo. “Wants to see if you’ve come to a decision.”
Nothing to do but tell him the truth and hope he believed me.
“Tell him that there’s been a … complication, and that we need to meet ASAP.”
“That doesn’t sound good, boss,” said Oslo. “What kind of complication?”
“I’ll let you and the boys know when I get there. Meet at The Winchester. I’ll be there in an hour.”
As soon as I hung up I wanted to throw the goddamn phone across the room. Instead, I took a series of long, deep breaths, trying to get my mind right. I thought about where Star might’ve gone off to. She might’ve hitchhiked, but she was probably smart enough to not walk down the main road. After all, that’s how I got to the house; she wouldn’t risk me finding her like that.
I remembered the little town in the woods a few miles down the way. She’d likely seen it at some point and figured that’d be her best bet. I didn’t have too much time to look around for her, but it was on the way. After I got my shit together, I got on my bike and headed down that way, reaching the town in about ten minutes. I asked around, asking if anyone’d seen a little blonde girl in the last day, but no one had. Place was full of truckers coming and going, so she’d probably hitched a ride with one of them back to Gainesville.
No time to search the city—I’d need the whole crew for an operation like that. No option but to meet up with Dakin and give it to him straight, and hope that he didn’t fly too far off the handle.
I met up with the boys at The Winchester, and they were all eager to hear if war was actually going to happen. The way they squirmed in their seats made it clear that more than a few of them were itching to do some dirty work. It’d been a while since our last little scrap, and they were hungry for a fight.
“This ain’t something we want to just walk into,” I said, standing in front of the men.
“But we wiped the fuckin’ floor with the Bandits!” said Swift, one of the younger men of the crew.
He was referring to the last crew we’d tussled with. Sure, he was right—we had taken out a couple of their men with no losses on our side and pushed them out of the state, but Dakin’s crew wasn’t an upstart crew of men too big for their fuckin’ britches. These guys hadn’t seen the kind of heat that Dakin’s crew had access too. It’s easy to talk big in the safety of one of our haunts; it’s a whole other thing to do it when some coked-up psycho’s firing a grenade launcher at you.
As much as I still wanted to take Cruiser apart piece by piece for doing me dirty, he was right—a war with Dakin would possibly wipe us off the goddamn map.
“Dakin’s crew ain’t one to fuck with,” said Oslo. “We scrap with them and we just might get taken out. And I don’t mean one or two of us—I mean the whole goddamn crew.”
I nodded, letting the men know that I agreed with Oslo. He was one of the few cool heads in this place, and I’d been sizing him up as my new VP. Just had to give him a chance to see what he’d be like in the field when the chips were down.
“What’d Dakin say, exactly?” I asked Oslo.
“Just where to meet him, and that you better come with one other man and the girl.”
“What the fuck’s so special about this girl?” asked Bowie. “Why Dakin want war over some piece of ass?”
My heart felt hot again, and I wasn’t sure why. There was no way to explain all this shit to the men.
“Who the fuck knows,” I said. “Dakin’s got a hard-on for her, but if I just throw in this girl with the rest of deal he’ll know that he can just walk all over us whenever the fuck he wants. Not gonna let that happen.”
That answer seemed to satisfy the men. They didn’t need to know that there was more to it than that.
“Oslo, you come with me to meet with Dakin,” I said, turning my eyes to the rest of the men. “Rest of you, hold tight until you get new marching orders. Shit might just go sideways real fast, and if you don’t hear from me this time tomorrow, assume that war’s on.”
The men nodded, some with grim faces, others with eager expressions. I gestured to Oslo, and he formed up at my side. We got on our bikes and a half hour later, we were back at that same house where I’d met Dakin, that strange house in the middle of nowhere. His crew was there, though there wasn’t quite the crowd that there’d been when that party was raging.
“There’s the man I’ve been waiting to see,” said Dakin, waiting for us out front. “But no girl? Really fuckin’ interested to hear why that’s not the case …”
Oslo and I shared a look as he hopped off their bikes.
Here goes nothing … I thought to myself, doubt creeping in.