That was all it took.
Butch drove his fist into the stocky one's gut and doubled him over, then brought a knee up into his face that stood him back up and sent him stumbling into his own bike. The third one, who'd been quiet the whole time, pulled a chain from his saddlebag and swung it at Hank, who ducked under it and tackled him into the gravel.
I was moving before the chain hit the ground, running straight at the chaos. The young one who'd started it was trading blows with Rusty, and he was quicker than he looked. He caught Rusty with a left hook that split his eyebrow open and followed it with a right that Rusty slipped just barely. I came in from the side and grabbed the kid by his cut and yanked him off balance. He swung wildly at me and I stepped inside it and hit him with a straight right to the jaw that dropped him to one knee.
"Stay down," I told him, but the idiot didn't listen. He came back up swinging and caught me on the side of the head, which rang through my skull and pissed me off more than it hurt. I grabbed him by the throat and walked him backward until his shoulders hit the elevator wall, then pinned him there with my forearm across his chest.
"You assholes never learn, do you?" I hit him hard in the gut, doubling him over, and he dropped to his knees in front of me.
The fight was winding down around us. Butch had the stocky one on the ground with his boot on his back, and Hank and two other brothers had the quiet one pinned against his bike with the chain wrapped around his neck. Rusty was bleeding fromthe eyebrow but grinning about it, and my body felt like I had enough adrenaline for five elephants.
"We done here?" Butch asked the stocky one under his boot.
"Get off me."
"Are we done?" he snarled, pressing his foot down harder. It was easy to know who the leader of this invasion was.
"Yeah. Yeah, we're done."
Butch stepped off and the man got to his feet, spitting blood into the gravel. I let the young one off the ground and he stumbled toward his bike, holding his gut with one hand.
"You come back to this road," Butch said, "and it won't be fists next time. Pass that along to whoever sent you."
They mounted up and pulled out of the lot single file, heading east with bruised faces and a message they wouldn't forget anytime soon. We stood there and watched their taillights shrink until they disappeared around a curve, and then Rusty touched his eyebrow and looked at the blood on his fingers.
"That little bastard could hit." He chuckled.
"Maybe you're just getting slow, old man," Butch told him.
"Maybe you shoulda warned me he was a southpaw."
"Where's the fun in that?"
The brothers shook hands and knocked fists and started mounting up to ride home. Butch clapped me on the shoulder as he passed. "Good work tonight, Crank."
"Yeah," I grumbled, though after getting myself all keyed up, I couldn't come down. A lot had transpired in the past ninety minutes that would take me days to process.
I turned toward my bike and forced my body to cooperate with me. I was straddling my bike getting ready to roll out with the rest when Lightning pulled up beside me and killed his engine.
"Hang back a minute, Crank."
The others rode off one by one until it was just the two of us. Lightning sat on his bike with his arms crossed glowering off into the distance like he had something super important and somewhat confidential to say. But I wasn't in the inner circle, so to speak, and if there was something that important, I was sure Fox would be the one telling me, not Lightning
"What is it?" I asked.
"I'm gonna say this once, and I'm gonna say it real nice. Stay away from the Ducette family."
I must've looked stupid gawking at him. "Come again?"
"You heard me. Sara Ducette's back in town and I don't want you anywhere near her. Not at the diner, not at the shop, not around back where you think nobody's watching." Lightning narrowed his eyes on me, and I knew someone had seen me back there with her, which meant someone probably knew I screwed her on those steps. That would be a hard one to explain to Anne.
"Somebody's watching, apparently." It was anger I felt over our privacy being invaded, but not even a hint of shame.
"Damn right, somebody's watching. I've got eyes everywhere and I hear things, Crank. You were around back of Ma's Griddle tonight, and you weren't there for the coffee."
"What I do on my own time isn't club business." I reached for my key, ready to fire up my steel and ride off, but he shifted and hardened his gaze on me. I knew he wasn't messing around.
"Everything you do is club business when I say it is. I'm second in command and I'm telling you to steer clear. You got it?" This couldn't be about Peter. Lightning couldn't care less about him other than his small engine shop sometimes got work we could handle.
