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“The back,” Becca said to herself. “The secret biker Batcave. Neat.”
The meeting room itself was somehow both smaller and larger than she expected. The boardrooms and meeting rooms she was used to in the corporate world were wide, open, with lots of empty space and glass all around and a sparse, clinical feel to it.
This room was earthy and wooden and a little dark. The large wooden table in the middle looked homemade, and there were display cases on the walls containing old leather vests… cuts, Kate had said they were called.
The table itself was exactly large enough for the number of people in the room. In her legal and corporate wranglings, she was used to giant tables that always ended up with lots of empty seats; she always figured that was to act as a low-key flex to the opposing side.
In here, there were exactly three empty seats, for Griz, Wyatt, and Boomer. The others were taken up by an oddball assortment of men. The only thing they had in common was the leather cut they wore.
“You can take my seat,” Griz offered.
“Thanks, but I’ll stand,” she said.
Not that it would make much difference if these rough men got physical with her, but still, there was something about keeping her feet while they sat that made her feel more confident. And she’d need every ounce of that if she was going to get through this.
“Brothers, thanks for coming,” Boomer said, as the three men took the last empty seats around the table. Boomer sat at the head of the table, and both he and Griz looked too big for their chairs.
“This is Becca,” he continued, “Kate’s sister. I’ve asked her to join us today after what happened last night.”
“Hey, yo, Becca, I remember you,” one of the bikers said, a short, wiry man with a shaved head that somehow seemed to be in constant motion even as he sat still.
“Oh, right,” Becca said after her mind clicked into place and she recognized him. “The surveillance van. The guy with all the gadgets. Condor.”
“Yeah!” he said, brightening up at that. “My code name. Good times.”
“Condor,” the man next to him grumbled. “God damn, Devil, you watch too many spy movies.”
Devil shook his head. “Spy movies are the shit, Ripper. You should watch a few. Maybe teach you some charm.”
“I’m plenty charming,” Ripper said. He looked to Becca to be middle-aged, with a bit of a beer gut, and wore nothing but a tank top under his vest, showing off his heavily muscled and even more heavily tattooed forearms. His hair was black streaked with gray, and was slicked back, and he sneered at Becca like she was a chunk of dogshit caught in his boot.
Yes, plenty charming, Becca thought.
“You know Wyatt and Griz, of course,” Boomer said. “Around the table there is Devil, Ripper, Pinball, Crusher, and Jocko.”
“Such inventive names,” Becca said nervously. “Here I am stuck with a boring one like Becca.”
The stares of the men felt like there was a bag full of bowling balls on her chest. Normally, Becca would welcome being the center of attention of a group of men, but with this group of men, all she wanted to do was to find something she could hide under and never come back out.
They looked like they wanted to crack her like a walnut and toss her broken pieces on the floor. At least, the ones she didn’t know looked that way, especially Ripper, who glared at her as he cleaned his fingernails with a large pocketknife.
Take it easy, Becca, she told herself.They’re just posturing. No different than a CEO sitting you down at an expensive table surrounded by priceless art. They’re trying to make you feel like they’re the dominant species in the room.
“So what did happen last night, Boomer?” Ripper asked.
Boomer paused before answering. Becca caught the way he looked at Ripper, with just the slightest trace of annoyance, and realized that Ripper already knew the answer to that question. He was just trying to direct the conversation, to steal Boomer’s thunder.
And from what she could tell, Boomer knew what he was up to. Becca had to smile a little inside.The more things change, the more they stay the same, she thought.Office politics are everywhere. Even in a biker gang.
MC. That’s what they called it, the MC. She had to remember that. It was no good to insult these men by accident, especially not here.
“As Ripper has no doubt already heard, there was an incident last night involving Death’s Head,” Boomer said.
“These fuckers again,” Pinball said. He was heavily overweight and had a shock of reddish hair that seemed to sprout in all directions at once.
“We keep running into shit with these guys, Prez,” Devil said.
“Too many times,” Ripper added.
