Lacey, what have you done to me?
I had been so clear headed before I met her, able to focus solely on trying to get Chalupa the freedom he so rightfully deserved. Though I also had to acknowledge just how sad my life had been before I met her, because she brought a different kind of light to my life that I didn’t expect.
I never smiled as much when I wasn’t around her, I never felt challenged by anyone like her before, and those were all things that made me want to fight for her, even though there was a part of me that felt like no matter what I did, it was just destined to end badly.
I knew I was being hard on her, criticizing her for working for the DA even though we were living in two completely different worlds, but I didn’t know how to mesh them even if I wanted to.
I could’ve only hoped that I was going to figure out how to do that soon, otherwise I was going to have the guilt of not knowing what we could’ve been eat away at me. That was going to be far worse than the realization that we were never going to work out. I had to know for sure if she and I were meant to be, if there was any way we could get past everything that had been happening and eventually find our way back to each other.
That is, if she can even find it in her heart to forgive me.
I had to focus on the task at hand, because I finally had reason to believe that Las Balas were the ones behind Chalupa’s arrest, and I was that much closer to unraveling the mystery for myself. I still decided to go at it alone, because it was going to be much easier for me to sneak around by myself than to have Hawk with me, even though there was always the possibility that I was going to need backup.
I got on my bike, heading down to the new location of the Las Balas shop to see if I could find out anything else that would finally bring this case to a close.
I had to make sure to stay out of sight because the last thing I needed was for them to catch me there. I could only imagine what they would do if they managed to subdue me.
We’d had run-ins with them before, but it was never like this. I was never trying to find solid evidence as to why they would retaliate like this when we’d done nothing to harm them.
We’d always managed to stay in our lane, and for the most part they’d been incredibly quiet over the last few months. I was starting to think that they weren’t going to be much of a problem anymore until Chalupa called me from the station.
Now I wanted to fight back with a vengeance, enact my revenge on them the very way they’d tried to set us up and wipe us out. I could feel in my gut that we were getting closer, that I was finally going to have the answers to those questions that had been eating away at my brain.
I made sure to pull up a bit of a distance away from the railroad tracks, trying to see what I could from behind their shop. There were Las Balas crawling everywhere, and they all looked rather smug, as though something was about to go down. I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, like there was something going on here that was far more dangerous than any of us realized, and so I continued to inch closer.
I hid behind the surrounding buildings, trying to get as close as possible without anyone seeing me, feeling for my gun in its holster at my back to make sure that I could shoot my way out if I absolutely had to.
I gulped, peeking my head around the corner to see a few Las Balas members meet a car that certainly didn’t look like it belonged there. It was a black sedan, the kind that was used by the police when they were trying to go undercover. I kept watching as the car slowly pulled into their shop, and I peered through the dirty window to see who was going to get out of it.
There is no way that Las Balas could’ve teamed up with the police, could there?
If that was the case, we were going to have much more of a problem than I initially realized.
I kept watching while the car slowly came to a stop, and out of the driver’s seat came the last person that I ever expected to see on Las Balas ground.
The DA is involved with this?
For a moment I thought that maybe he was trying to scope things out for himself, pretending to go undercover to find out more about what their operations were like, but that just didn’t seem to be the case.
I pulled out my cell phone and set it to video mode. I recorded as the doors to the office swung open to reveal the leader of the Las Balas, El Diablo. I watched the two of them interact, looking as though they were having a pleasant conversation, and the more I looked on, the angrier I became.
The DA is the one trying to silence the Outlaw Souls because he’s making a deal with El Diablo? What could he DA possibly be bribed with to ignore his responsibilities, ignore the law for the sake of letting them walk?
I heard footsteps approach me, so I ducked down behind one of the dumpsters in the back while I watched two of the men walk out to light up a cigarette.
It took them a while to leave, but out of the corner of my eye, I could’ve sworn I saw the black sedan leave, and that’s when I knew that we had a much bigger problem on our hands than any of us could’ve guessed.
I thought about what to do, about how we were going to get out of this mess knowing that the most powerful man around was in Las Balas’ pockets. It didn’t make any sense, and I wondered what they’d promised him to get that sort of response.
El Diablo was the one that sent the DA after us, planting false evidence to make the arrest look legit even though they had nothing on which to convict Chalupa. I was starting to worry, because I didn’t know how we were going to prove Chalupa’s innocence to the people that mattered knowing that the DA was involved in all of this. He was the last person I expected to be dirty, but now I had access to information I was going to have to act on fast, otherwise I knew it would be the end of the Outlaw Souls.
I managed to take a blurry video of the exchange, but I didn’t even know if that sort of thing would be admissible in court.
I didn’t know the first thing about how any of this worked, and I wondered who was going to be able to help me see this through. Not only did I have Las Balas to worry about, but now I had to find a way to expose the DA with nothing but a little video that might or might not be the answer we’d been looking for.
I was overwhelmed with stress, making my way back to my bike so I could take off in the direction of Hawk’s place, because I needed some advice on how to move forward with this. I knew if I called a meeting with the rest of the Outlaw Souls, the first thing any of them were going to want to do would be to storm Las Balas’ new shop and take as many of them out as possible. That was just going to give the police more reason to convict us all, and I wasn’t going to let anyone go down for this, now knowing the truth.
I arrived at Hawk’s house not long after. He opened up the door with a beer in his hand, looking as chipper as ever. The moment he got a good look at the expression on my face, he knew there was trouble.
