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Everyone who wasn’t needed at the station or on other jobs was crowded into this little space, leaning on the gurneys. Gunner had jumped up and stretched out on one.
Duncan had been made to repeat his story several times, with each entrance of a Bull, and when the cops had shown up for their report, and it hadn’t wavered in any important details. He and JJ had gone out, aiming for the Dawghouse, a popular spot with Tulsa roughnecks and rowdy types. Located in an old supermarket, the place had three entrances, into three different areas: pool, darts, and old-fashioned arcade games, like bowling, air hockey, and shuffleboard; a sawdust-on-the-floor country juke joint, complete with mechanical bull; and a club that was a cross between a cut-rate Hooters and a full-on titty bar.
It had to be seen to be believed. Almost every Friday and Saturday night, there was a brawl. The youngsters loved the place. Eight would have, too, back in the day.
But JJ and Duncan hadn’t made it there last night. Looking to earn some money, JJ had picked up a freelance gig, carrying several ounces of crystal, pre-packed in quarters, teenths, and eights, to ‘some guy’ on 11thStreet.
There was so much wrong with that, Eight didn’t know where to look first.
Duncan swore up and down he hadn’t known what JJ was up to until it was already going down, and Eight was inclined to believe him, if only because this probably put his patch out of reach. A patch dealing outside the club was a huge sin that might well get JJ excommunicated. Aprospectdealing outside the club would be lucky to keep breathing.
That Dunc was a club kid would likely keep death off the table, but Eight didn’t see how he’d make it to another patch vote now, even if Maverick might have been persuadable on the point before tonight.
Not only was it big bad news that JJ was dealing outside the club, but he didn’t know the guys he’d hired out to or handed off to. A ‘friend of a friend knew a guy’ who’d needed someone to run an errand, and JJ could make a quick few hundred bucks, according to Duncan.
That was so fucking stupid. Any one of the people JJ had touched in this could have been undercover. Clearly, they were at least very bad news. And now a fucking twenty-year-old kid, a child of this club, was lying at death’s door and might have blown a hole in the Bulls’ defenses.
There were a couple chairs against the back wall in this alcove. Eight dropped into one, put his elbows on his knees, and dropped his face into his hands. Fucking hell.
Maverick sat heavily in the chair beside him. “We gotta take Dunc’s kutte.”
He was probably right, but it was pretty convenient, too, considering that Mav hadn’t wanted him in that kutte in the first place. “It needs to go to the table,” Eight said, addressing all the men around him. “That’s for later. Right now, let’s just focus on JJ and whatever fuckery he brought down on us.”
Apollo said, “The new security system will help. I’ll beef up the firewalls on our electronics again.” He gave the men around him a hard look. “And fucking keep your shit quiet.”
“Moseley’ll come by with his hand out. You know that shit’s coming,” Simon added.
Moseley was the current chief of the Tulsa PD. He was very much for sale, but he liked to push his luck every chance he could, always looking for the upsell. This was the kind of bullshit that made a seller’s market.
“We need to find these motherfuckers,” Dex said. “They shot Jay and got off with the product and the cash. That’s trouble, too.”
Dex was Rad’s handpicked replacement at SAA. He was a well-established patch, by the Bulls current standard. He’d put the Bull on his back ten years ago, and stepped up as SAA when Rad retired four years ago.
For years, Rad had been grooming Gargo as his go-to enforcer and likely replacement, and Gargo was still one of their most dangerous men for wetwork. But when Dex came in, something between him and Rad just clicked.
Gargo and Rad had very different personalities. Rad was a doer, really physical, only interested in strategy when they were in the middle of a fight. Violence was his first and only tool. That made for one kind of very good SAA. Gargoyle, though he was built like a fireplug and had an inbred, fat-necked look about him, was actually really smart. And also incredibly weird, reading obscure philosophy and spouting off elaborate quotes nobody could make sense of.
He might have been a good SAA, too, though wildly different from Rad.
Dex might as well have been a Rad clone. His given name was Seth, but Rad had given him his road name as a reference to the TV showDexter. In honor of the boy’s deep,scientificinterest in torture and death.
He was also a veteran, with three tours in Afghanistan under his belt, so he understood about making war. He didn’t talk much about his years in the Marines, but Eight was pretty sure he’d learned about torture and death while wearing desert camo.
When they got ahold of the assholes who’d worked JJ, said assholes were in for a very bad time.
The realization that he was the one in charge of figuring out all this shit slammed down on his bald head, and Eight dropped that head back into his hands.
Fucking hell.
~oOo~
Once JJ was out of surgery, the doctors reported that he’d lost a kidney and would be on a ventilator for a while as his lung healed, but the odds were good that he’d pull through and recover more or less completely. Eight let Maverick work out the vigil shifts, and he rode to the clubhouse to check in with the guys working the station.
Then he was going to go back home and get in bed; he was way too fucking old to pull a night like this and survive a whole following day with his brain intact. They had a late night coming up, too, no doubt. Apollo was working on getting a 20 on JJ’s doers.
And his left leg hurt like a motherfucker after sitting in hospital waiting room chairs for hours.
Sometimes he really missed Oxy, but he’d taken himself right to the brink of a very dangerous problem back when he’d dropped his bike on the highway and nearly lost the leg. He’d spent months trying to heal and get back on his bike, and the pain had been maddening. Oxy had kept him from putting a bullet in his head, but it had also become a crutch. If not for Becker, he might have gone over into a full-fledged addiction.
