“Nice,” Loki scoffs, retrieving his water from near mine. “I’d be insulted if I actually had a sister.”
“It was worth a try.” Darko shrugs and then turns back for the house.
“Hey,” Loki calls after him. “Get Goblin to bring us down some sandwiches, yeah?”
“Why don’t you tell him yourself?” Darko counters.
“I would, but I’m too busy thinking about how your sister calls me daddy.”
Darko spins, cants his head with his gaze narrowed as he considers a reply, and then carries on toward the house with a middle finger thrown in the air.
“I didn’t know he has a sister,” I muse.
“Neither did I,” Loki chuckles. He watches the kid walk for a beat before turning to face me. “He wasn’t giving you news about Matty’s sister then, since we’re on the topic of sisters and all.”
“Nope.” I retrieve the steel bar from the ground. “Just an update on a favor he’s doing for me.”
“Oh yeah?”
I shake my head. “Nothing serious.” The stack of iron panels sits chest high amongst the overgrown grass on the roadside. “Tell me again why we do this and not the prospects.”
“Because we want the fucking thing straight and level.”
“Right.” I slam the rod into the cracked ground and make a circle with it. “Heard anything from Crow or Circus today?”
“Not recently.” Loki takes another sip of water. “They were heading over to harass the Wilcoxes last I heard.”
The Wilcox family has run a flower farm several miles from the town limit for decades, their blooms supplying most of the independent stores in the state. What few people know is that smack in the center of legitimate crops, they have a special poppy field that’s contracted to a select few customers—one of whom is the Devil’s Breed.
“Reckon they’d say anything even if they had seen them?”
“I reckon if they push on David’s good Christian nature, they could make him feel obligated to share.”
“And how would they do that?” I repeat the motion with the steel bar, working the ground into an easy-to-dig area.
“Allude to the sinful things the Breed plan to bring to Temperance.”
“I think if old David had a conscience as rich as what he puts in the collection plate every Sunday, he wouldn’t do the deals he already does.”
“I suppose.” Loki caps his water and sighs. “I can’t shake the feeling that we do too little, too late, though.”
Hell yeah, we are. This fence should have been put up the first week we were here, but the barn was more important, since it provides extra bike storage and a place for people to sleep when brothers from out of state visit. “Better we do something, though, right?”
“Are we a dying breed?” He smirks. “No pun intended.”
“What makes you say that?” I glance at him as I slam the steel bar down again.
“You can’t deny that motorcycle clubs had their heyday in our fathers’ time,” he muses, rubbing his trap muscle. “Things were different then. Not so much surveillance and connection from the digital age. They could get away with a hell of a lot more than we can now.”
“Point being?”
“Every year, the rallies get smaller. Clubs dissolve. People merge with those left. And the public sees us as more of a nuisance now—a stain on the landscape—rather than anything to be feared.”
“You’d rather we started making people disappear again? Bring back the midnight raids and bully tactics to get money from the businessmen?”
“Not what I said,” he states flatly. “I’m just saying things ain’t what they used to be.”
“Then what are we worried about the Devil’s Breed for if we’re all such apparent softies?” I stop work and lean my weight on the bar.
