AllFreeNovel
Share Us
By Oklahoma standards, in just about every way (except maybe traffic), even in this crapped-up hole in the forest, California was heaven and Disneyland and Valhalla combined.
“I guess that’s the guy?” Duncan asked as he dismounted. “What’s his name?”
Sam came up to his side. “Yep, that’s the guy. Little Jon Androuet.”
The Nameless had voted down the patch-over repeatedly, but never by a wide margin. Eight Ball had spent the past few months trying to make a bloc of those members who would stand with the Bulls against the rest of their club, and Little Jon Androuet was his man on the inside. It hadn’t been an easy task, and Duncan was surprised that there were five men here—the Nameless had only ten men on their roster, and most of those had either voted against the patch-over or were too loyal to go against the vote. Five members on the Bulls’ side now seemed like too many.
“Fuck, I hope they don’t expect to feed us fuckin’ rabbit,” Jay groused, his mind obviously on other things.
Again, Duncan shifted his mind’s gears. He didn’t think he’d ever eaten rabbit. “Is it bad?”
“My dad likes it, but I think it tastes like feet.”
Chris and Monty came up, and the circle of the Young Guns was complete.
Monty slapped Jay on the back. “Chug enough beer, and you won’t taste the meat, whatever it is.”
“Glad you shitheads have your priorities straight,” Duncan said with a grin.
Jay laughed and flipped him off.
––––––––
~oOo~
––––––––
They did serve rabbit—as kabobs. Not the animals hanging on the line, but some other poor bunnies. They also served venison steaks. And hamburger and chicken. Duncan tried a kabob, but Jay was right—it tasted gamy as fuck.
“Dirty chicken feet,” he told Jay and the others.
But there was plenty of cheap beer and good whiskey, and a mountain of baked potatoes, so the eating was, all in all, good. The place was Little Jon’s, and he had a big fire pit as well as a brick grill, so the yard was plenty warm. Everybody was sprawled around on old picnic benches, rusty chairs, or on the ground itself. A few bully-type dogs trotted around begging for scraps, and for a few hours, the Bulls were simply at a barbecue with some new friends.
“Fuck that,” Jay muttered after the face-stuffing had wound down. He rolled to his feet.
“What?” Duncan asked. He had a black and white dog named Orca draped over his lap.
“The old farts are talking serious,” Jay said. “I’m sick of those assholes circling up and leaving half of us out in the cold.” He stalked over that way.
Sam and Duncan watched him go. “Should we go with?” Sam asked.
“He’s probably gonna start some kinda shit,” Monty answered. He lay flat on the ground with his hands linked over his chest and showed no signs of wanting to move. Monty didn’t care about strategy or secrets or anything like that. He had his patch and had no ambition for anything more. He was perfectly happy for other people to do the strategizing and tell him where to point his gun.
Jay stirred up a different kind of shit lately, these days he was more interested in being a part of things than he was in tearing shit down, but either way, diplomacy was not his chief asset. Duncan had been pulling his friend out of the fire most of their lives—and just about full time since Zach had moved to Nevada.
He set the dog aside and stood. “Yeah, let’s go over.”
Duncan and Sam crossed the wide yard to a cluster of five large, ancient, round redwood tables, where the five Nameless sat, along with Eight, Dad, Dex, Simon, Apollo, Caleb, Fitz, and Jazz, and Cooper, Zach, Lonnie, and Kai. Jay had taken up a showy position between Eight and Little Jon and stood there with his arms crossed. Duncan went to his side, and Sam followed.
All the older men noticed, but no one said anything about the young guns in their midst. At least one of the Nameless wasn’t much, if any, older than them.
“We’re not the fuckin’ CIA,” Eight was saying, obviously irritated. “I don’t know how you think we’re gonna do some covert operation. We gotta take the fuckers down.”
“We will,” Little Jon replied. “But you said you don’t want a smokin’ hole left”—Duncan shot a glance at Jay, because Jay was the one who’d argued that they’d leave a hole if they went in hard –“We need somethin’ we can build back up on, and I’m sayin’ if we do it low-pro, we can get it done pretty clean.”
“It is a lot of moving parts, bro,” Cooper said.
“And a lot of trust,” Apollo added. “No disrespect meant here, but there are three men sitting right here we don’t know at all.” He looked directly at three men sitting across from him, all Little Jon’s guys, including the youngest of them. “You three aren’t Nameless, right?”
