"You goin' weak, Crank?" Butch glanced at the prospects, then glared at Fox.
"I said stand down, now." My order as third in command got their attention but I could tell they weren't happy. The police relaxed a bit, but I heard one of them call for more officers, which probably wasn’t a bad idea. Lightning had these guys riled up.
But the guys pulled back a few steps and started talking amongst themselves as firefighters moved closer to the blaze. The roof caved in on the left side and sent a shower of embers spiraling into the sky. Firefighters redirected their hoses to keep the flames from jumping to the buildings on either side as glass exploded from the front windows and scattered across the lot, and the heat pushed everyone back another ten feet.
I watched as they positioned a hose on the diner too, dousing the building in a cool spray probably to prevent the fire from jumping, though the siding on the entire end of the building was melting off. Anne would have a good insurance claim on her hands, but hopefully they'd be able to save the building. And when I turned back, Fox still hadn't moved from the tailgate.
Going to him for support in leading these men right now was off the table. Any choice he made would be rooted in selfishness, not smarts. And after the day I had, I had a mind to go destroyeverything those locusts stood for, but I thought of Peter and how he would feel if he knew the man who fathered his grandson was a killer.
I wouldn’t do that to him. And I wouldn’t do that to that family, no matter how angry I was at Sara.
"We need to hit back tonight, Crank." Butch's stalked up to me, egging me on. He wanted to do what lightning had told them, and I wasn't having it. If they rode, it’d be without me. "Lightning would've had us rolling already."
"Lightning's in handcuffs," I grumbled, and I added a stern glare with it.
"Then you lead it." One of the men behind Butch stepped forward, a younger guy with fresh ink on his neck. "Or are you going to stand here and watch our bar turn to ash while the Locusts sit at home laughing?"
"Crank's gone soft," another voice muttered from the back. "Lightning was right about him."
Every muscle in my body tensed to strike. A part of me wanted to burn every building the Locusts owned and make them choke on the same smoke we were breathing. The rage was real and it was ready, and it would have felt damn good to turn it loose.
But rage was what Lightning ran on. And that was what got him locked up in the back seat of a police cruiser like a caged dog.
"We do nothing tonight," I told them. "Lightning's gonna want in on whatever we do, and he'll be out by morning. We'll wait for him and make a plan, and then hit them together."
My eyes found Butch and held. "Anyone who has a problem with that can take it up with me personally."
I knew just what Lightning would do when he got released, but I wouldn't be able to stop that. Still, I wasn’t going to go be a part of it either. This whole thing was nonsense. It'd gotten way out of hand, and I had bigger fish to fry right now.
The grumbling continued but the men backed off. Tomorrow was a new day, one I was sure would bring more violence. But tonight, I planned to join Fox in his misery and drown my sorrows. I just had to do it somewhere other than the bar now.
And those Locusts had better pray I figure out how to control my temper because if I didn't get a handle on this, people would die.
29
SARA
I spent the better part of two hours making sure Mom was on track to pick up where I left off in a month's time. Bills were paid, salary reports updated with our API to make sure everyone was paid on time, and as long as we had no catastrophes things would run themselves and give Mom a while to relax. If she needed more time, I could talk Amber through things over the phone.
I just knew I had to get out of town.
After hearing about the fire—and smelling it for days now—I knew Tony would plan some huge retaliation. He spent forty-eight hours in county lock up while the arson investigators taped off the Anvil property and chased looters away multiple times. The whole place reeked, which drew in some predators and scared off other wildlife, but the scary part wasn't the animals. It was whatever chaos would unfold when the Gravehounds decided to move. I'd told Mom the Griddle was shut down for a week minimum, and that she wasn't to go to work for a month. I hoped that would give them time to cool off.
But shouting carried through the office window while I worked on the week's receipts. I knew right away that it was Tony's voice. I'd heard a few bikes and figured they were out there cleaning stuff up, but I hadn't gotten up to look because after not hearing from Garret for a few days, I knew if I saw him I'd break down crying.
I pushed the chair back though, curious to see what the angry voices were about, and looked out the window. Bikers were gathering at the burned-out Anvil, milling around while Tony stood on an old charred crate and had his fist in the air as he shouted. I cracked the window so I could hear him clearly.
"Every last one of them!" He stomped on the rickety crate and pointed in the general direction of Locust territory. "This ain't no shakedown, and we ain't sending a message. This is revenge. We ride tonight and end this. Every Locust who had a hand in burning our home to the ground dies tonight."
It made dread curl in my stomach. The men were shouting back, feeding off his energy. It was like watching a high school pep rally on steroids, except these weren't football players. They were grown men with guns and tempers and it was dangerous. Tony would get some of them killed and they didn't even care.
Garret was in that crowd somewhere, listening to Tony call for blood, and if they rode tonight, there was a real chance he wouldn't come back. Men died in wars between clubs. It happened all the time, and Tony was pushing for exactly that.
I shook my head and pressed my eyes closed as he continued screaming and chanting, riling them up. Not one of those men realized the only reason they were fighting the Locusts at all was because of Tony, and now he wanted them to shed blood. It didn't make sense at all. All of this to cover up the fact that hekilled a woman? He could've let it die down and no one would've remembered a thing.
But maybe it was his own guilt making him stir stuff up. He couldn't live at peace because peace was boring and it gave him too much time to sit and think about what he'd done.
Well, I had been silent for long enough. It was easy to stay afraid when I lived hundreds of miles away and didn't know what was happening. I couldn’t stand by watching Tony lead these men into a fight where some of them would die or end up killing someone and going to prison. I'd seen how angry Garret got—mad enough to hurt me if he wanted to. His temper would get him in trouble, and if he survived, there was a good chance he'd kill someone. I couldn’t let that happen.
