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Judge had been our most recent prospect, fresh out of prison and happy to have a plan for his life, but he’d been patched-in a while before.
That meant that all of us had to do the shit that none of us wanted to do now. Cleaning, taking out the trash, running the errands, and whatever else that needed done around the clubhouse.
“Got the files,” Slash said, pointing toward the kitchen island where several stacks of folders sat, teeming with paperwork about the inmates at the prison. “Had ‘em organized by close release, but fucking Raff knocked the whole thing over before he left.”
“I’ll do it,” I volunteered.
To that, he shot me a look over his shoulder on his way to the freight elevator. “That desire for busy work got anything to do with that wig?” he asked, but turned to walk away without waiting for an answer.
And, really, what could I tell him?
That I’d tracked down the chick who’d poisoned me, confronted her, then walked away without saying anything to the club? Not only that, but then I’d gone grocery shopping with her and nearly fucked her in the car when I was supposed to be waiting for him and the other guys?
Yeah, that wasn’t going to fly.
I was going to have to tell him about Morgaine eventually. But some part of me just wanted to wait.
Wait for what, I had no idea.
She certainly seemed like she’d gotten all she planned to get from me.
I could feel the dark clouds starting to circle in my brain, making me crack my neck and open the files on the island.
It would be a lie to say we didn’t choose to settle in Shady Valley because of the proximity to the prison. Because, at the end of the day, the men most likely to be interested in joining a bike club that ran illegal guns were ones who already had a history of doing illegal shit.
Should it have turned us off that they got caught, if they were serving time? Eh, maybe. Sometimes, though, it just meant that they didn’t have the right tools, that they were working alone with no backup, no one to bounce stupid ideas off of. Or, of course, the people they did trust rolled on them. That seemed to be happening more and more these days.
No honor amongst thieves, as they say.
That said, we didn’t take just any old criminal who was going to be released in the near future.
We had a lot of strict criteria, in fact.
No crimes against women or children. That should go without saying, but, apparently, it needed to be said.
We didn’t fuck with anyone who had a current affiliation to any sort of organization.
Judge had been with the Albanian mob back in the day. But when the Bratva came into town, they warred with the Albanians until they won.
So Judge had no one to connect with when he got out. No family either, so he’d been a perfect guy to approach.
That and he had a violent history, being an enforcer, but a code that meant he didn’t just go full-on lunatic with just anyone.
Slash would have weeded out a lot of the shit like that when he first passed through the pages, but I crumbled up a few and tossed them in the trash when I saw a couple of obvious gang tattoos.
By the time I was done sorting, we had a list of about forty candidates who would be released over the next year. Some were way ahead of their original sentences, but, hey, overpopulation was an ongoing issue, and these guys were getting booted early.
Early release, though, meant probation. Probation meant check-ins with a parole officer and all that shit that made affiliating yourself with a known outlaw bike club a problem.
So that narrowed it down to a solid ten or twelve to go off of.
“You been up all night?” Detroit’s deep voice asked, shaking me out of my thoughts enough to look up and see that the sun was pelting in through the windows already.
“Shit. Yeah. I guess so,” I agreed, shaking my head.
“Not one to tell a man what to do,” Detroit said as he went over to the coffee machine and put a pot on. “But the way shit is looking to me, you need to rein yourself in,” he told me.
We both knew what he was talking about.
Detroit was a quiet, observant kind of guy.
He saw shit that the other guys who were maybe too distracted by money, partying, or pussy did.
As was his nature, he tended to keep his mouth shut about the observations he made, though. So if he was saying it, then it was clear that my demons weren’t as under control as I liked to think.
“You’re not wrong,” I agreed.
I’d been able to distract myself for a while. With tracking down the woman who poisoned me. Then with thoughts of her that I had no business thinking.
