AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Eyeball and Chuck stepped forward –
Without looking up, Lou stretched out his hand from where he knelt on the ground.
Eyeball and Chuck stopped immediately.
“Now, now,” Lou said mildly. “We all know the punishment for insubordination.”
The entire group was silent as Lou stood up gingerly and winced. “God damn, Jack, did you have to hit me that hard?” he asked good-naturedly.
I stood there in silence. There was nothing I could say; he’d taken me by surprise, and now I’d been outmaneuvered. Anything I said, I would have to back up immediately.
But the entire motorcycle club was a powder keg waiting to explode. Lou had only done what they’d wanted to do. He was their hero right now. If I were to take another go at him, I’d probably end up just like the gunman – except not at Lou’s hands, but at the club members’.
Maybe on Lou’s orders, though.
Definitely with his approval.
So I stayed quiet and just glared at him.
Lou turned and addressed the rest of the MC. “What’s done is done. The motherfucker’s dead. No use arguing anymore. Eyeball, Chuck, Bug, Wild Bill – grab an arm or a leg and take this cocksucker out in the desert a good five miles. Don’t drag him, carry him. I don’t want to see any drag marks. And don’t bury him. Don’t make the coyotes and buzzards work harder than they have to.
“Cowboy, call up Al and get him – not one of his idiot employees, but tell Al to get his ass out of bed and come get this guy’s bike and haul it to the junkyard. Tell him to put it in the crusher immediately. Tell him I said so.
“Dan – go back to the club, ask Shelley for the lye. That’s L-Y-E, not L-I-E, dumbass. We keep it in the back with the cleaning supplies. Don’t get any on you, and if you do, don’t wash it off with water or you’ll be wishing you were dead two seconds later. Every bit of blood this motherfucker laid down on the road, you pour that lye all over it, you hear me? Destroy the DNA evidence. Not that we’ll need to. I’ll make the call to Dan Peters just to give him a heads-up that he doesn’t need to send a patrol car out this way for a good couple of weeks.”
Dan Peters was the town police chief. He’d served in that position for over ten years, and had been a bought-and-paid employee of the Midnight Riders back in the old days. Now that we’d gone legit, he still turned a blind eye, for a fee… but a blind eye to the marijuana business. Not to murder.
He’d had plenty of practice doing it in the past, though.
“The rest of you fuckers, pick up every piece of metal and plastic you can find and toss it out in the desert. And for god’s sake, don’t get your fuckin’ prints all over it,” Lou shouted.
The group broke up and went about their tasks. As they did, Lou turned to me. “You can go on home, Jack,” he said with a smile. “I know you’ve got that pretty little piece of ass waiting for you. I can take it from here.”
“I should kill you for that shit you just pulled.”
“But that would make you a hypocrite and disrupt your whole New World Order, wouldn’t it?”
“Then I should turn you in.”
“To the cops?” He laughed. “Not that I couldn’t buy my way out of it, but… you’d turn me in for killing a shitheel – a fucking Santa Muerte, no less – who murdered one of our own? Seriously?”
“I think there should be some punishment to fit the crime. What was that bullshit you told Eyeball about disobeying the president and getting buried in a shallow grave?”
“Oh, it wasn’t bullshit. I thoroughly believe it. But if you’ll recall, I said if I was president. I’m not; you are. But you’re not me… are you, Jack?”
He smiled again, but it did nothing to hide the malice and contempt in his eyes.
And the smug sense of victory.
I turned around, got on my bike, and headed home.
16
Fiona
Just as I was about to go crazy staring at Kade in unending silence, we heard the sound of a Harley pull up in the driveway.
There was the faintest spark of alarm in Kade’s face.
