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“This goes right, and me and Arlo ain’t Nameless much longer either,” Little Jon said, nodding at the big, shaggy, grey-haired man at his side. Arlo, apparently. “I trust these men. If you trust me, then extend that to Billy, Dean, and Digger here. It’s just me and Arlo ready to take the patch off our backs. You want a charter here, you’re gonna need more than two men. So I did a little recruitin’ on my own. You got a problem with that, then I’m out, and you fight me, too.”
All the Bulls in earshot exchanged glances. Eight and Cooper seemed to have a whole silent conversation. Eventually, Cooper shrugged, and Eight sighed heavily. “Alright.”
Little Jon nodded and leaned in again. “Good. As for the plan, Arlo and me, we know this area, and we know the Nameless. There are two ways to do this—loud or quiet. We either got a lotta moving parts, but it all goes down quiet-like, or we make one big move, blow a big hole in Cypress Avenue, pull all kinda attention our way, and make a mess’ll take years to set right.”
“What’s the quiet plan?” Jay asked. Eight glared at him but didn’t shut him down.
Duncan’s father answered. “Surgical strikes. Break into teams, each one assigned to take out a Nameless patch.”
“Assassins?” Duncan asked without thinking. He’d been too stunned to consider whether he should have kept his mouth shut. His father gave him a quelling look, and Duncan took a step back.
“Killin’s killin’, kid,” Arlo said. His voice was like a truck tire grinding through gravel. “In the face, or back of the head, all the same. I didn’t think y’all’d be precious about it.”
“We’re not,” Eight snapped. “But you’re talking about hitting eight guys in different places, all at the same time. That is some Mission Impossible bullshit.”
Eight men. They were talking about killing eight men. Not in a firefight, not self-defense. Assassination. Duncan’s stomach turned to acid. He looked at Jay, who was laser-focused on the discussion. He turned to his other side and met Sam’s eyes, which were wide open and stunned.
“There are, what, twenty-four, twenty-five men sitting right here,” Little Jon pressed. “Teams of three? I’ll let you divvy the teams up however you like, make sure your trust is solid. But this is the easiest, cleanest way to make sure there’s something left to build on.”
“And you can deal with eight bodies?” Apollo asked. “There’s a story we can make?”
“None of those guys has living family on the outside?” Kai asked.
Little Jon shook his head. “Kirk Landry has an ex-wife and a couple of kids, but they live down in Bakersfield, with her family. Kirk ain’t seen his kids since she left. Jensen Dahl’s old lady’s in a permanent coma after she sailed her Escort off the side of Highway 1 while she was tweaked as balls. Everybody else’s people are dead, inside, or they never had any outside the club.”
“Then I know the story,” Kai said. “They shuttered the club and rode out of town.” He leaned toward Apollo and Jazz. “The Nameless’ve been struggling for years, and they’ve been without a president for months. It makes sense they’d give it up eventually. So why not now? Little Jon and Arlo staying behind makes that even more convincing—a schism in the club. It’s a story that’s mostly true—the best kind. Between the three of us, we could put it all together in a day.”
Duncan stood and watched that idea click with all the older men. They went from arguing about which plan to actually planning. They were going to assassinate eight men.
In cold blood. Because those men didn’t want the Bull.
He wanted to step back, walk away, go back where he’d been. All the way back to Oklahoma if he could.
But he couldn’t. He was a Bull, and he belonged here. This was his family.
Even when it made him sick.
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~oOo~
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Because they needed to keep a low profile until the job was finished, and because the planning went deep into the night, the Bulls stayed on Little Jon’s property that night. They spread out in a few tents or on their bedrolls near the fire.
Duncan had a bedroll near the fire, but he didn’t sleep much. For one thing, Monty slept next to him on one side, filling the air with rabbit-meat farts like biological warfare, and Jay slept on his other side, on his back and snoring like a bear, as he always did when he was whiskey-drunk.
For another thing, while it was a lot warmer here than in Tulsa, it was still January, and the night was not sultry. The fire kept the area warmer than freezing, but it was still damn chilly.
And finally, Duncan was still trying to get his head around the plan. He’d been ready for war, for a firefight. Not looking forward to it, but ready for it. That kind of violence made sense to him. In his mind, there was honor in it. These sneak attacks they were planning, how was that honorable?
He was also thinking about Phoebe, wishing he’d left things better with her, wishing he’d done better when they’d texted after, wishing he hadn’t fucked around in SoCal. He kept telling himself that he’d done nothing wrong, and that he could make things better with her when he got back home, but that felt like lies. Maybe if he could text her again and let her know he thought he’d figured out what he wanted, but he hadn’t had decent cell service in more than a day, and there was none at all in this hole in the woods.
His head was as noisy and busy as a jet engine. Sleep was impossible.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Sam moaned and sat up. Seeing Duncan, he grinned and nodded at Monty. “I will never understand how that dude gets so much trim. He never fucking stops farting!”
Duncan grinned and held his hands about a foot apart. “Tripod. Guess it’s worth some poisoning.”
