Connor
Whatever thoughts or ideas I’d had about Katie had vanished the instant she mentioned that Damian of the Bandits had come by the store recently.
Suddenly, instead of being annoyed at Katie’s persistence, instead of feeling the deja vu of someone like her giving me shit, my mind flashed to beating to death with my bare hands the asshole that had caused this club—and many of us individually—so much agony and trouble. If he came by the store before, he might drop by there again. Maybe if I stuck around the store more…
Or, at least, if we had someone by the store there often…
But that was probably asking for too much. It was like if we found out Damian had vacationed once to Arizona, and so we set up a trap at the Grand Canyon. Sure, it was possible, but it wasn’t fucking probable.
But all the same, thinking about Damian…thinking about that fucking graffiti at the bar…thinking about how he had been one of the three with Rachel…
“Fuck!” I yelled over the top of my bike, gunning the damn thing well past the speed limit.
I came to the top of the hill and got a little bit of air as I sped well over it. For the briefest of moments, I felt like I was levitating—and then, with no time to process it, my tires slammed onto the road.
I wanted Damian under the bike the next time I did that. I wanted my tires to smash his fucking throat and to rip his face apart. I wanted the last thing he saw to be my tire treads splattering his fucking guts everywhere.
Yeah, I was a mean motherfucker. There was a reason I avoided intimacy or even friendship.
And then, just as I got to the bottom of the hill, wouldn’t you fucking know it, the blue and red lights of a cop car appeared.Sheriff fucking Davis? Didn’t we deal with this shit already?
I had no choice but to pull over, but I very much had plans of reminding the sheriff about what he and Steele had worked on before. If he had to punish me, so be it, but it wouldn’t be the last we heard of it.
As I pulled over, I felt tempted to start smoking a cigarette, as Brock so liked to do, knowing the foul smell would annoy and offend the sheriff. But I didn’t smoke that much, and in a weird way, I didn’t want the cigarette to calm me down; I wanted to remain as pissed off as I was at that moment. I killed the bike, leaned back, and looked over my shoulder as, sure enough, Sheriff fucking Davis stepped out of the vehicle and approached me.
“Boy, do I even need to tell you what the hell you just did?”
“Don’t call me boy,” I growled. “You know my name. Use it.”
The sheriff bit his lip, avoiding turning this into something uglier than it needed to be.
“All right, Connor,” he said. “You were going ninety miles per hour. I don’t care if you’re in the deserted areas of Utah or Nevada; you know that’s breaking the speed limit.”
“So I’ve heard,” I said. “Are you going to throw me in jail? If so, can we just get this shit over with and have Brock and Steele yell at you tomorrow morning?”
But to my surprise, the sheriff shook his head.
“I have you on camera, so I have to at least pull you over,” he said. “But it also gives me a chance to talk to you.”
“About what?” I said with cautious suspicion.
“Connor, the Bandits have picked up on what’s going on in this town.”
I got the hint about “what’s going on.”
“They’re starting to get more aggressive and more retaliatory. I will do my role as sheriff to stop them, but you boys…you guys had best watch yourselves in this town. I’m one man. They are a gang. If the situation doesn’t resolve itself, I’m going to have to call outside help. And outside help isn’t going to discriminate on who’s good and who’s bad. They’re going to go after whoever looks bad.”
If the situation doesn’t resolve itself. As in, if we don’t fucking kill all of these fuckers, state officials or the feds are coming in. And if that happens…
“I’m trusting that you and the Bandits can resolve your differences and end this violence,” he said, words we both knew were code for “destroy them entirely.” “But you need to be aware that this town is starting to come to a breaking point. There is only so much trouble this place can take before I lose control. And I’m not going to lose control. Either I’m going to have it, or I’m going to hand it to someone bigger.”
“Got it,” I growled.
“Now you best be careful speeding out here,” he said. “I’m letting you off with a warning. I hope that this warning has informed you properly.”
He wasn’t referring to the fact that I was speeding.
“Understood. Thanks, Davis.”
