“Be careful, twat! That’s it, gently.” Imperious as ever in his Americanized British accent, Cricket came backing down the steps, leading Prospect and Tank down while they wrestled with boxes of electronic equipment. Cricket pulled a chair over from my workspace and set a laptop he’d carried down. I scoffed because of course, Cricket carried a laptop while Prospect and Tank trudged down the stairs loaded up with boxes of wires and cables, a modem and router, among other various tech gadgets I couldn’t name. Other than the basic skills needed to work my computer and phone, I’d never had any interest in electronics. Cricket was the tech-savvyest among my brothers, and I usually was content to leave him to it. Now, I was sore and dehydrated and not in the mood for his annoying brand of bullshit.
“What’s all this shit for?” My question fell on deaf ears as Prospect and Tank set Cricket’s equipment down and trudged back up the stairs. Cricket ignored me as he rifled through the boxes to find whatever he sought. He got the laptop set up in front of me and connected some wires from one of his boxes to it as he grumbled under his breath.
“Dude, what are you doing?”
Cricket gave an exasperated sigh before he mumbled, “I’m connecting the cellular router to this shitty old laptop and patching into the club’s internal network so you can see what’s going down in church, you absolute Neanderthal.” He squatted in front of me, facing away as he typed something into the laptop. He worked silently for a few moments before he stood and backed away.
In front of me, on an old laptop screen, was a bird’s-eye view of my father, Bones, andherseated at a table. My father’s voice sounded tinny and far away, but I could clearly understand him as he spoke.
“I think we can help you, girl. And I think you can help us. What I’m about to tell you is confidential. It’s not even a known fact to all of our members. On the surface, we’re just another local MC, interested in making money and engaged in less than lawful means of earning it. You’ve seen that we have legitimate businesses like Rusty’s and Crow’s Landing to bring in revenue. You may not be aware, but we also own large shares in Harrison & Sons Construction. All of this brings inlegitimate money. On the flip side, we have Savage Delights, an illegal fighting ring, arms dealers in Mexico we run for, and stakes in multiple casinos to launder the money made on the wrong side of the law. Simple enough, right?”
The girl nodded her head, unable or unwilling to speak. I noticed that she shivered and clutched a blanket around her small shoulders. In person, she took up so much space. Her personality was so large and bright it made her seem physically larger than she actually was. On the screen now, she looked small and every inch the scared girl I tried to intimidate her into being. I idly wondered what happened in church to make her seem so small when I’d been unable to make her bow even in the slightest while in the confessional. Seeing her looking vulnerable now made me squirm a bit in my seat. It didn’t seem right, somehow.
“For three generations now, Los Cuervos have established themselves in the Southwest.” Duke sat back in his chair, sipping from a flask he must have pulled out of his cut earlier. “We work to provide for our families, make money, and contribute to our community, but we also have a…hidden purpose. Did Bones tell you about the four men who founded the Crows?” My gut churned as Indigo nodded, knowing where this was going. Some of our brothers didn’t even know what Duke was about to tell a stranger. What could he possibly be thinking?
“A little,” she replied with a shrug. “He said one man named Rusty died, but he was the Crow who started the garage.” Duke sighed and took another nip from his flask. Indigo licked her lips before speaking again. “He said your dad was Gavin. That’s all I know.”
“Gavin Abbott, my dad, and his three best buddies Rusty Hall, Kris Harrison, and Linden Williams started the Crows. Rusty died before he could have any kids of his own, but the children and grandchildren of the original Los Cuervos still make up some of its members, and some of their other family members still make up part of the Sagebrush community. The people who come to family dinner are Crow family members that decided not to patch into the club but still come around because they’re part of our family.”
“That’s…really nice.” Indigo’s voice sounded small and wistful.
“It is, darlin’,” Duke replied softly, “it is. But like any family, the Crows have skeletons in their closet. Not many people know this, butGavin’s momma, myabuelaMaria, was a survivor of sexual assault and human trafficking. She was smuggled over the border from Mexico against her will and sold in a flesh auction. For a year, she was used and passed around before she managed to escape the town in Texas where she was held. She made her way to Reno, where she got a job as a server.
“When my granddad settled here after the war, he saw her waiting tables one day and fell in love on the spot. It took him a long time…a real long time before myabuelawould let him into her heart. She was distrustful of men for obvious reasons and didn’t want anything to do with a pilot fresh out of World War II. Eventually, they fell in love and were married. Several years later, they had my dad, Gavin.” Duke paused to take another nip from his flask. “Maria never fully recovered from what was done to her, though. She patched the holes in her soul, but the evil that was done to her haunted her in her dreams and never fully released its grasp. Things like that leave a stain. It impacted Gavin, as I’m sure you can imagine. Watching the people you love suffer when there’s nothing you can do to punish those responsible…well…that’s its own kind of hell.”
My father’s expression was grim, and I knew he was thinking of the pain that we’d all felt every day since Ellis went missing. I’d seen him hold my mother while her grief threatened to consume her, and I was only now starting to see the toll his strength for his wife took on him when he was wrestling with his own grief. It was like trying to save a drowning person when your head was already underwater.
Indigo’s hand crept from beneath her blanket and slowly reached across to rest on Duke’s clenched fist. “I…” She cleared her throat. “I know what that’s like, President Duke. And I’m sorry.”
Duke swiped his free hand down his face and cleared his throat roughly. He patted Indigo’s hand and released himself from her comforting touch. I hated thatshe, a stranger, witnessed our family’s pain. I didn’t understand why he was telling her about the origins of Los Cuervos. I struggled a bit in my bindings, trying in vain to get loose, if only so I didn’t have to watch my dad have a heart-to-heart withher.
“Anyway,” Duke said, “four friends joined to create Los Cuervos Motorcycle Club in 1966. Motorcycle clubs existed before the ’60s, but outlaw motorcycle culture as we know it now really got going in thatdecade. I’m sure you’ve heard of clubs like Hell’s Angels or the Outlaws. The difference between them and Los Cuervos was that we had an ulterior motive.
“We’ve been working since our founding to help victims of human trafficking and end the practice where we can. As you so eloquently put it earlier, in a way we are big fish in a small pond. We’re a regional club with chapters in several southwestern states. Small potatoes compared with the organizations that earn millions in flesh sales, right?”
Indigo nodded, waiting for Duke to get to the point. “What if I told you over the past fifty-odd years, the Crows have been building a network of like-minded clubs whose goal is to end trafficking and flesh sales and strike back at the organizations that profit from them?”
Indigo sat up a little straighter, face animated, making her look a little more like herself. “Like The Motorcycle Justice League?” She bounced in her seat, and I rolled my eyes at her juvenile response.
Duke chuckled a bit. “If you like. We don’t pretend to wear white hats. We aren’t the Superman-type, but I guess if you think of it in those terms, we’d probably be more like Batman. We are involved in criminal activity, and we can be harsh men, but we live our lives by a code and do our best to keep ourselves true to our original mission as Crows: help those who need it most, cultivate and contribute to our community, and build something worthwhile for Los Cuervos.”
“That’s a really nice story President Duke…except for what happened to Maria, that part was sad. I’m just not sure why you’re telling me all this.” That makes two of us. I didn’t understand it, but I knew there was a purpose to everything Duke did so I waited for the other shoe to drop. Suddenly, Bones’s face came into view of the camera. I watched as he smirked at the camera before the sound cut out. I could still see Duke and Indigo at the table, but I could no longer hear what they were saying.
“What the fuck?” I turned to look at Cricket, who was sitting with earbuds in, presumably listening to the conversation I had just been excluded from. With my arms and legs tied to the chair, I had no way of getting his attention. I started yelling his name, and I knew he could fucking hear me, but Cricket made no move to clue me in on what the hell was going on. The bastard even shushed me! I squinted at the screen, but the resolution wasn’t good enough for me to try to lip-read.
As he listened, Cricket’s expression shifted from amused at my anger to livid with whatever he was hearing and eventually to shock and disgust. Whatever story she fed Duke and Bones made Cricket look like he was about to be sick. Cricket tried to play himself off as the funny, attractive guy without a care in the world, but anyone who really knew him knew that he felt things very deeply. Her story was affecting him, and as I watched him listen to her, I knew she had her hooks in him now.
He was friendly to her before, but now, he’d make her enemies bleed. That was just the kind of guy he was. Once you were in, you werein.Bones already seemed to like her. I was sure whatever sob story she fed them would have the same effect on Bones and Duke. This was why I needed to be the one to take her confession and weed through any lies to find out exactly who Indigo was and what she was hiding. No one else listening could keep an objective mind and resist being swayed by her soulful green eyes.
The grinding of Cricket’s molars and his muttered curses were my only soundtrack to the video of Indigo and Duke. Eventually, Bones’s face came back into view, and Cricket removed his earbuds. The audio resumed, and I could hear the conversation in church. Indigo’s voice rang out in the damp confines of the confessional mid-sentence.
“...understand he won’t ever stop looking for me, and if he finds me, he’ll destroy anyone in his way till he has me back. And me? Death would be a gift.” She shuddered, gripping her blanket and sitting back in her chair like the wind had left her sails. Whatever she confessed to Bones and Duke took its toll because she looked exhausted.
Bones’s voice came from an area off-screen, and Indigo turned her head to look at him as he spoke to her. “You are safe here, chica loca. I won’t lie and say that we don’t have a formidable enemy, but I do know that no Crow would betray you. As you know, Cricket heard what you had to tell us, but it goes no further than this room unless you decide to confide in anyone. The choice is yours.”
“Yes,” Duke added, “you have my word that this stays between the four of us until you decide to open up to anyone else.” My father’s blue eyes stared right into the camera as he spoke. “It’s up to you to decide whether and when anyone elseearnsyour truth.”
“Okay then, President Duke. I accept.”
