I’m not allowed in this room other than to drop off food. But my question is answered pretty fast when Two-Shit takes a key from Chain and opens the extra door and flips on the light.
I suck in a breath. It’s storage, that’s for sure, and the wall is lined with guns.
My hands tremble at the sight of them. Two-Shit pulls them down and passes them out. He counts out ammo and doles that out, too, the metal bullets clinking on the table.
I clasp my hands together, willing them to be still.
Iron Jack nods as the Wild Hair load their weapons. He turns to Merrick. “I believe you have your gun of choice already.”
He does?
Merrick nods. “It’s in my room.”
It is? A gun? Where? I hadn’t seen it anywhere.
Suddenly, everything about being in a motorcycle club feels very, very real. The outlaw nature. The danger. The vigilante justice.
I glance at Merrick, but he’s focused on the men and their guns.
“All right,” Iron Jack says. “We’ve had an escalation, which isn’t surprising after our raid. This morning, several members of Lucifer’s Kin used a truck and two bikes to attempt to run down Prospect Merrick and our house mouse.”
Mumbled threats make the rounds.
“Motherfuckers.”
“We’ll fuck them up.”
Iron Jack continues. “Until we’ve got the Kin out of Miami, no member of the club will ride alone. Anyone not intimately familiar with the back roads between the club and our regular haunts, like the Leaky Skull or the construction sites, needs to study up. Merrick was able to evade the Kin today by off-roading through a field.”
How did he know that? We literally just drove up.
But he has said he has scouts everywhere.
“We aren’t going to wait for attacks. This weekend, we’ll go on the offense with a raid of their clubhouse. Our aim is to get all the women out and burn it to the ground.”
The room gets quiet.
Finally, Chain says, “That’s a big job. Who’s going to coordinate?”
Iron Jack leans forward on his forearms, his gaze sweeping the room. “I’m calling in an enforcer from Deity’s Calling out of Kentucky. He’s known for clearing out problem clubs.”
“I’ve heard of him,” Too Fast Freddy says. “He made two entire clubs straight up extinct.”
Iron Jack nods grimly. “We run a clean operation here, and I’m not going to get dragged into the shithole by a meth club. It’s time we rid northern Miami of the Kin. I don’t care if we run them out or put them in the ground. We’re going to end this.”
Chain raps his knuckles on the table. “Pardon my questions, Iron Jack, but this is an extreme measure, even for shit like the Kin. When we got the Horned Devils out, we just ran them out. We didn’t torch them.”
Iron Jack’s mouth goes tight into a grim line. Finally, he says, “I have reason to believe the Kin are the ones who ran Steel and Theron off the road two years ago.”
I stifle my gasp. He’s talking about his parents. Were they trying to kill us, too? Why Merrick and me? We’re nothing.
“What tipped you off?” Two-Shit asks.
“The formation. The red truck. The semi that hit my parents was all black, but there was red paint on their bikes, like they’d been hit already by something else. Pushed out in front of the semi by something red.”
The room goes quiet.
Then Two-Shit says, “Good enough for me. Let’s end these motherfuckers.”
