“I don’t know how you expect me to do this,” Phil protested after Arsen finished speaking.
“I don’t either,” Arsen said, acknowledging the difficulty of what he was asking. “Take Gage and Berk, whoever else you need. Spend whatever it takes, but I want these assholes taken care of once and for all.”
Phil leaned back in his chair. He wanted to do this, he felt he owed the Horsemen for Chet and Toni, Greg and Kim, but he didn’t know how he was going to track down less than a hundred people in a city of over one and a half million.
Stacy hadn’t been lying. Chet and Greg, and their old ladies, had been shot at close range and left on the side of the road last night. When Arsen had announced the death of their brothers and sisters to the club this morning, the Blades had reacted with uniform outrage and a thirst for blood. It had been business before, but now the war with the Horsemen was personal.
“How much is ‘whatever it takes?’” Phil asked.
“What…ever…it…takes,” Arsen repeated slowly. “Take a hundred grand to start with. If it takes more than that, fine. I don’t care what it costs, I want these fuckers taken out.”
“I’m going to need more than just Berk and Gage.”
“Fine. Leave me a skeleton crew to run the MDMA, but you can have everyone else.”
“I also want to get a burner phone that all contacts come into so I can keep up with shit and we’re all giving out the same information.”
“You got it. Once we get the MDMA made, I can send more brothers if you need them.”
Phil nodded. With twenty or twenty-five men spreading cash and knocking heads, they might have a chance. Maybe. “We’ll make it happen.”
“See that you do. We owe it to Chet, Greg and their wives.”
Zane nodded. “How are we going to choose who goes and who stays?”
“I have to stay, and I’ll pick who I need to stay with me. As soon as we’re done, we can ride up and help. I need you to stay, to run interference for me.”
“I’m going to Phoenix,” Zane said firmly.
“No, you’re staying here with me. Phil can handle it. I know you want to go. I want to go. But we have to get the MDMA out. That’s job one. I need someone to handle all the shit that goes on while we’re running and handle the arrangements for our fallen brothers. I want all the old ladies in packaging today while we run beads.”
“The soap can wait!” Zane protested.
“I know the fucking soap can wait!” Arsen snapped then took a breath to calm down. He felt for Zane. He wanted to get his hands bloody too. “This a dry run to see what problems we’re going to run into while running short. We can’t fuck up the MDMA run, Zane, you know that. We run beads today, MDMA tomorrow, and you and I will make the deliveries on Friday. Once the molly is packaged tomorrow, everyone except you and I can ride to Phoenix.”
“We’re not going to get everyone in a week,” Phil said quietly. “We may not get anyone in a week.”
“I know, but I know the brothers aren’t going to want to sit around here. We’ll get the operations crew back here on Wednesday night, and do it all again. What old ladies stay can fill orders from inventory until we run dry.”
Zane glared at Arsen a moment. “Fine, but I don’t like it.”
“You don’t have to like it,” Arsen said firmly. He looked between Zane and Phil. “How soon can you be ready to ride?”
“Four hours, maybe less. I have to get the burner.”
“Fine. While Zane is here, work with him because I’m going to be busy. Anything else?” When Zane and Phil shook their heads, Arsen stood. “Fine. Let me go piss some more people off.”
When Zane stood, Arsen took him by the shoulder. “I need you to back me on this.”
“I will, but I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t know shit about running the plant.”
Arsen nodded. “I know. But running so short, I won’t be able to do anything else, and I need you to backstop me on anything that comes up and handle Chet and Greg. Plus, the five guys that I’m asking to stay aren’t going to be happy about it, just like you aren’t. With you staying, that frees up another brother to go.”
“I still don’t like it. Chet and I joined at the same time. I need this, Arsen!”
“Every member of this club feels the same way. Getting all the Horsemen is going to be a grind. We’ll get our chance.”
Zane relaxed slightly, the tension he’d been holding draining out of him. “I know. I’m just so pissed off right now I can’t think straight.”
“Which is why we have to get this out of our system. That’s why I want to do a hard push for a couple of weeks. I don’t want to lose any more brothers because everyone is pissed off and not thinking. We have to be smart about this. This isn’t going to be a sprint, it’s going to be a marathon.”
“Yeah, I know.” He gave a heavy sigh. “Let’s go piss off some more brothers.”
Arsen and Zane stepped out of Church together. The club was already gathered, waiting for word on how they were going to hit back at the Horsemen.
“Listen up!” Arsen barked. “For the next two weeks we’re going to make a max effort to find and kill those fucking Horsemen.” His voice was steel hard and artic cold. “The only thing that takes precedence over finding them is getting the MDMA out and getting our brothers in the ground. Phil is taking every brother with the exception of me, Zane, Casey, Churchill, Stu, Bill, Thom, and Kelly. We’re going to stay behind, run the MDMA, then we’re going to join them Phoenix.”
He expected pushback from the men he selected to remain behind, the most experienced operators, but while they didn’t look happy, he suspected they already knew in their hearts they weren’t going before he said anything.
“Phil is heading this up and I’ve given him carte blanche to get this done. I don’t care what you have to do, I want these assholes found, and I want them dead. You make sure everyone knows if they are helping the Horsemen, if they lie to us, or if they withhold information from us, we’ll be looking for them next. Greg and Chet deserve no less.”
He glared at his brothers a moment and liked what he saw. Every pair of eyes had the same hardness and determination he knew was in his. The Blacktop Blades were about to fuck the Chrome Horsemen long and hard.
“Kelly!” Arsen called, waving the man to him. “Do you think we can make the run with only five operators?”
Kelly paused and scrubbed at his mouth as he thought. “It’s going to be tough, but yeah, I think we can do it.”
“I agree. I want to do a bead run today to see where our problem areas are going to be.”
“Probably not a bad idea,” Kelly agreed as the rest of the men asked to stay behind joined them. “I’m not surprised you asked us to stay, but I have to tell you, I’d rather be riding to Phoenix.”
“As would we all,” Arsen confirmed. “We’ll get the MDMA out, then you five can ride up Thursday night.”
Nelson nodded. “Good enough.”
“Am I running a delivery?” Casey asked.
“If you feel up to it,” Arsen agreed. He’d selected Casey to stay behind because he wasn’t moving very well after being shot.
“I’ll have to take my truck, but yeah. I want to do what I can.”
Arsen slapped him on the back. “Good man. I told Zane he was going to run your delivery and he wasn’t happy about missing the party in Phoenix. You need backup?”
“Nah,” Casey said. “I trust Jason.”
“I’ll send Zane, just the same. You’ve just been shot after all.”
“What’s the run?” Kelly asked.
“150,000.”
“Shit. Who’s taking the extra?”
“Dirty Bastards want a resupply. They get the extra hundred this week.”
“That’s a big run,” Kelly said.
Arsen grinned. “We’ve done bigger.”
“Yeah, but not with only five people.”
“Can we handle it?”
Kelly grinning slyly. “Yeah, but it’s going to be assholes and elbows all day.”
Twenty minutes later, as the assault team began to trickle out of the clubhouse, Arsen rounded up his production crew. As the men worked, combining the scents, binders, and dyes to produce the beads, the old ladies worked in warehouse, pulling and boxing orders.
It was tough labor for all concerned. Typically, the men operating the production floor had only one or two jobs, but now they were covering three, four, or in the case of Stu, six different jobs, bouncing back and forth between tasks as required. The production was slow and inefficient as bottle necks developed, but none were on the production critical path so production continued, if not with the same proficiency as before.
The women who were helping in the plant boxed, checked, and labeled the orders for shipment. Today they were also tasked with pulling the orders and stacking product into totes they pushed through the warehouse on carts.
A typical production day for the Blades ran from nine in the morning until around five at night, when the van pulled away to make their daily drop at the UPS shipping facility. Today, however, the last of the orders weren’t loaded into the van until nearly nine. The women had worked right through lunch, eating pizza Arsen had brought back for them.
As Kelly and Nelson pulled away from the dock in the van, everyone sighed with relief. As Kelly had said, it had been assholes and elbows all day, but they’d gotten all the orders out and had produced a full run of their Lavender beads, their best-selling bead. Tomorrow the men would produce MDMA, and the women would be back to fill more orders. The Blades kept about a two week supply of their beads, salts and soap on the shelves. As Arsen explained when Belle asked, when they began to run low on inventory, they would bring back the full production crew for a week or so to make full capacity runs to rebuild their inventory.
As the gate closed behind the van, Quinn looked up as thunder rumbled in the distance. “It’s going to rain.”
Arsen nodded as lightening flashed, then after a long pause, another faint roll of thunder rumbled. “Maybe. It’s that time of year.”
“Come on. I want to get cleaned up and get home before it rains,” she said as she started for the clubhouse.
Quinn wandered into the clubhouse and into the bathroom. It had been a long time since she worked that hard. She was tired and sweaty, but felt wonderful. She had really gotten to know Michelle and Lisa as they worked, and found she liked them even more now than she had before. The women had talked about Toni and Kim, and she had cried along with them a couple of times as they worked through their grief, then she had talked about Teresa and Miranda before they were taken. It felt good to unburden herself a little to another woman, and the sharing of their pain and loss seemed to have eased the burden on all of them.
She finished washing her face and patted it dry, using the damp towel to wipe her neck. Saturday she would spend some time cleaning and washing since Michelle was helping with the shipping and Toni… She shook her head to push away the dark thoughts. Now that the heavy lifting of getting the new website and boxes in place was done, she would have time to do more to help with the clubhouse. The women would cope and pick up the slack, just like the men would.
***
They pulled into Arsen’s drive as the wind began to sandblast them. It had been a weaving ride home as he battled the gusting winds. She hopped off the bike and he quickly backed it into the garage as she stood in front of the Raptor, pulled her helmet off, and looked at the angry sky.
“Made it,” he said when his Indian fell silent, watching the wind whip dust into the sky.
It hadn’t started raining yet, but he knew it was coming, and it was going to be a boomer. The heavy rains typically didn’t last very long, but when they occurred they were often violent, and this one was shaping up to give them quite a show.
They parked their helmets on the bike and stepped into the house as the garage door rumbled down, rattling and banging in the heavy winds. “I’m glad you’re not in Phoenix,” she said as she turned in the kitchen, stepping into his arms.
“I’m not. I wish I was there right now, helping track down those bastards who killed Greg and Chet.”
“And their old ladies,” she reminded him.
“And their old ladies,” he confirmed.
“I’m still glad you’re here, with me.”
“Are you still worrying about that bitch, Stacy?”
She started to deny it, then decided he deserved the truth. “A little.”
“Don’t let her get to you. She’s a dead woman walking. In a few days, or a few weeks, you’ll never have to worry about her again.”
“I know.”
He slowly eased out of her embrace so he could look into her eyes. “Do you? Do you really?”
“I do,” she said, but then looked down in guilt. “I know it’s stupid, but hearing her voice brought so much back, made me remember what she did to us, how she encouraged the men…” She stopped and shuddered. “It was bad before, but it was worse after she got involved. She and that other guy. They’re sick.”
“What other guy?”
“I don’t know his name. I just know it went from rape to rape and torture after they showed up. They didn’t just use us, they hurt us, and that seemed to get them off. Miranda was with Stacy and that guy when she didn’t come back. I could hear her screaming and begging, then she just stopped.”
“Soon they’ll all be dead, every last one of them.”
“Good.”
“Do you mean that?”
“Yes.”
“What changed?”
“Having them come after me again, hearing her promise to rape me while you watch. You’re right. The world will be a better place without them.”
He smiled and gave her a kiss on the forehead. “Let’s fix dinner. I’m starved,” he said to change the subject. Quinn was an excellent cook, and seemed to enjoy it, and he hoped it would drag her thoughts away from what she had endured. He wanted to kill Stacy, if for no other reason than abusing Quinn and then dragging her back to that dark place.
They moved about the kitchen, working together. As he seared strips of beef, Quinn ripped lettuce and sliced fresh mushrooms, peppers and cucumbers. She had just finished adding cheese when he carefully laid the beef on top.
As they ate, Quinn’s mood slowly improved. She didn’t understand how simply being alone with Arsen could calm her so, but here, in his beautiful house with him nearby, she felt safe, as if nothing in the universe could touch her. Intellectually she knew she was probably safer at the club house with its security system, tall aluminum fence, and Arsen’s brothers around her, but that didn’t change how she felt.
As she crunched through her greens she realized just how important to her he’d become. He was her rock to cling to in the stormy oceans of life, her safe haven, the one thing she could depend on above all else. He’d saved her twice already, once physically from dying in the Arizona desert, and then later, more slowly, he’d saved her emotionally. He’d given her solace when she needed it, and space when she needed that, and had asked for nothing in return. He was a good man, a man she would gladly give her heart to.
“What are you thinking?” he asked as he watched unidentifiable emotions play across her face.
“How lucky I am you found me. I owe you more than I can possible repay in a hundred lifetimes.”
He smiled. “I think you’re exaggerating a little, don’t you?”
“No.”
His smile widened slightly and he put down his fork to take her hands. “You don’t owe me anything. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done because I wanted to.”
“But why?”
He shrugged. “Why do you do the things you want to do? You do them because you want to. I can’t give you a reason other than to say I’ve enjoyed it. I’ve enjoyed having you around.”
“What about the Horsemen?”
“What about them? That has nothing to do with you, and it was coming had I found you or not. Don’t start taking blame for things that aren’t your fault. You’ve been nothing but a benefit to the club.” He paused and his smile softened. “And to me.”
She looked into his eyes and could read the sincerity there, but the intensity of his gaze made her look away. “I guess,” she said as she tried to pull her hands back.
He held tightly to her hands, not letting her take them away. “No,” he said firmly. “No ‘I guess.’ It’s the truth and I want to hear you say it.”
“Say what?”
“None of this is my fault.”
“Arsen, I—”
“Say it,” he said again, more firmly this time.
She paused. “None of this is my fault,” she said softly.
She wasn’t very convincing, but it was something so he let her hands go. “Not one person in the club thinks this has anything to do with you, except maybe you. You worry about increasing our sales of B3. I’ll worry about the Horsemen. It’s a waste of your time to be worrying about the same thing I am.”
She nodded and picked up her fork again as the darkness inside her grew a tiny bit smaller.