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It was almost seven o’clock now. She showered the road dust off herself and pulled her damp hair back into a ponytail high on the back of her head. Her hair was impractical, long as it was, but truthfully so much of Izzy life was decidedly… unfeminine. She loved her steel-toed boots, her dark brown leather jacket, and her Glock, but she was a woman, too, and never wanted to forget it. She didn’t often let her hair (or her guard) down, but when she did she went all the way.
Standing at the Charger’s trunk, she dug a blade out of her packed duffel bag and slipped it into the inside jacket pocket. This one wasn’t legal. She replaced the switchblade with her Glock and locked the gun safely in her trunk, though she still had her small Smith and Wesson .22 strapped to her ankle, inside her boot. Despite her job, she never actually went looking for trouble, but she always anticipated finding it. This was strictly recon, though, and unlikely to get hairy. She slammed the Charger’s trunk and slid behind the wheel.
As she rolled toward the street, the crooked blinds of the window in the office moved a little. Izzy smirked. If the hag wanted to search her room, let her. Izzy hadn’t left anything in it but wet towels anyway.
She pulled into a parking spot around the side of the building, farthest away from the streetlights. Counterintuitive to some when it came to safety, but Izzy relied on anonymity and her ability to blend in until she made her move. She set the alarm and headed for the front doors. There were a lot more bikes and trucks in the lot now. Apparently this place was busy on a Saturday night. Izzy had gone a little heavy on the eyeliner this time so that she didn’t seem out of place. She swung open the front door and stepped inside.
The place was packed. The jukebox was wailing some Waylon and Izzy felt right at home. If she wasn’t crawling places like this for skips, she was trolling them for a different kind of action on her days off. Places like this were nothing new to her. There was a large bar across the room and she decided to plant her flag there and get the lay of the land. She slid onto an open barstool next to an older man with salt-and-pepper hair. He lifted his chin to her and Izzy did the same.
“Haven’t seen you before,” he remarked.
Izzy smirked at him. “You come here a lot?”
“I live here,” he told her. “I eat from the kitchen, bathe in the sink, and sleep on the bar.” He winked at her for good measure.
“If you did any of that, Milo, my sanitation grade would be irredeemable,” said a platinum blonde from behind the bar. To Izzy she said, “What can I get you?”
Izzy nodded toward the tap. “Draft.”
“Lot of ex-military?” Izzy asked, as she noticed the flags on the wall.
“Yep. Got a lot of ‘em in here. I was a navy boy myself,” he said proudly, pushing up his sleeve and showing her a large black anchor tattooed on his forearm.
“That how you lost your finger?” she asked.
He laughed. “Nah. Lost it in the mill after I left. Got it in a jar at home,” he told her.
Izzy couldn’t tell if he was teasing.
“He does not,” the blonde informed her, giving him the evil eye.
“That’s a relief,” Izzy said. “Don’t want to sit next to a weirdo.”
The blonde laughed. “Well, I can’t guarantee that, but he’s harmless.”
As the blonde got a mug, the old man studied Izzy. “So I haven’t seen you before,” he repeated. “Where you from?”
“Denver,” Izzy replied.
“Nice town,” the man declared. “Lotta cowboys.”
Izzy set down a ten and picked up the frothy mug. “Lot of steel cowboys in here,” she remarked casually.
“Oh, yeah,” the man agreed.
Izzy scanned the bar and saw a group of men sporting black leather cuts in the far corner. As one of them stood, she caught the logo: Badlands Buzzards.
“Buzzards, huh?” she asked. “Interesting mascot.”
The man beside her grumbled. “You don’t want to get mixed up with them.”
“No?”
He shook his head gravely. “One percenters,” he said in a low voice, as though they might hear him over the din of the crowd.
“Ah.” Well, fuck, she thought. That explains the clubhouse. Getting mixed up with one percenters wasn’t high on her list of things to do, but the job was the job and maybe she could work around it. Jeter wasn’t a Buzzard, that much was certain. Maybe they wouldn’t care all that much if she suddenly plucked him from their midst. Or maybe they’d take offense and shoot at her. She sighed and wished for the millionth time that Pop were still around. Taking on a gang of one percenters required some serious boots. But the job was the job, and hers were steel-toed.
