AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Eyeball was concerned he could get thrown in the clink, but I told him, “What the fuck’s Vice gonna do, charge you with dropping off your laundry?”
“Yeah, but – what if they lock us up anyway?”
“Then I’ll fuckin’ bail you out.”
“What if they get pissed and tase us, or some shit like that?”
“Then the Riders’ll go to war on their asses, and the whole Richards PD’ll wish they’d never been born. Jesus Christ, Eyeball, quit bein’ such a goddamn pussy.”
Everything went down without a hitch. Eddie showed up at 3AM looking like a stoner in a hoodie, Eyeball passed him two gym bags of dirty socks, and I watched the whole thing with binoculars.
Not a goddamn thing happened.
No bust, no sirens, no Feds with guns, no takedown.
Nothing.
Which didn’t mean a thing, in and of itself. The Feds could’ve just been taking pictures from a distance, documenting it. Building a case.
Or, if they’d been doing surveillance on the Riders long enough, they might have known who Eddie was. Maybe they thought the drop was fishy and decided to let it go rather than tip their hand.
But something else strange happened, too: Venus stopped making phone calls out by the dumpster. Either she really had gotten out from under the DEA’s thumb… or somebody knew that I knew what was going on.
And nobody I’d ever heard of had gotten out from under the DEA’s thumb.
93
Now Venus was a bigger question mark than before.
What I really wanted to do was kill her. Just get rid of her once and for all.
Problem was, I didn’t know who her contact was, or how they’d found out the drug buy was bogus.
I thought about taking her out to the desert and using a crowbar and a pair of pliers to get her to talk. In retrospect, that’s exactly what I should have done. But instead, I fucked up and made the dumbest mistake I’d made in years.
I took it to Jack.
There were good reasons for it. For one, protocol demanded it. He might have been a do-gooder idiot, but Jack was still the president of the MC.
Plus, even though I was running all sorts of illegal shit on the side, none of it included first degree murder. If I didn’t include Jack on the decision and he found out later, he could’ve kicked me out of the Riders. Years ago it would’ve meant a bullet in the back of my head. John Glynn and other club presidents wouldn’t have even hesitated – not for a betrayal that huge.
But we were kinder and gentler now. A thousand points of light and all that horseshit. Plus, Jack didn’t have the balls to smoke me. Didn’t even have the balls to tell his pet gorilla to do it.
Knowing all that, it was a particularly stupid mistake to tell him about Venus.
Oh well. Live and learn.
I went to the body shop the next morning. I pulled Kade in on the meeting, too. After all, he was the Sergeant-At-Arms. If a civilian was going to get killed on official club business, he was probably going to be the one to pull the trigger.
I laid out my case, telling them about the post-it note, the microphone on the dumpster, Venus’s conversation, the fake drug buy, and the complete lack of anything happening afterwards – including her going completely radio silent.
The only thing I didn’t tell them was how Benjy had clued me in initially. Part of it was, I didn’t want Jack going to Benjy and exposing my little white lie about the ex-boyfriend. I knew Benjy would get all butt-hurt and I’d never hear the end of it. I didn’t need that fuckin’ hassle. Otherwise I’d have to dispose of two fuckin’ bodies.
But in retrospect, I think my gut was warning me, Don’t lay all your cards out on the table. Just in case.
Thank God I listened to my gut.
“Why didn’t you bring this to me earlier?” Jack snapped when I finished my story. Kade just stood in the corner, arms crossed, silent as a wooden Indian.
