Chapter 1
“It’s called ear goggles. Look it up.”
-Cam
Present Day
“On three! Three, two, one, drink!”
The chanting from the bar gets louder the drunker everyone gets. Forget beer goggles. There is such a thing aseargoggles. That’s where you drink so much your eardrums don’t work anymore. You have to talk louder to hear yourself. These assholes passed that point about an hour ago and are getting on my last good nerve.
Someone elbows me in the side, and I realize I haven’t thrown back my moonshine shot. I nod, shoot it down, and make a face at the bartender.
It’s the weakest shine ever. Almost like -water.
The bartender smiles. I scowl at him.
The place lives up - or down - to its name, depending on how you look at it. The Dirty Hoosier sits on the outskirts of Tailholt, Indiana. From the outside, it’s a crumbling barn, ready to blow down with the next strong wind. But that’s a facade. Inside - the walls are concrete. Steel bars cover the two windows. And a stickiness creeps up from the floor that I’m not sure you can ever clean away.
You could call it a dive bar, but that would be insulting to dive bars.
“Mellie!” A voice calls out to me over the din of voices and hair metal bands blaring from the jukebox. “Mellie?”
I raise my hand in salute to the big man in the room. “Boss?”
I swirl around on my barstool to watch Dakota Hell making his way through the crowd. He’s a celebrity in here. Thefearlessleader pats people on the back for their job well done. A job that killed one of his enemies and the guy’s family.
“Mellie,” Dakota grins at me with the cracked teeth of a stage two methhead. “Great job out there today.”
I lift a shoulder. “No biggie.”
He slaps me on the back with his ham-sized palm. “No biggie? Thanks to you, I never have to hear that motherfucker’s name ever again. Well, except on the news when they do his obituary!”
The crowd laughs. My gut churns. I twist my lips into the semblance of a smile.
Dakota leans in, his breath hot on my ear. “I have something I want to show you.”
I glance at his pants and thankfully don’t see a tent pitched there. But then again, that doesn’t mean much with this guy. “What did you have in mind?”
“Get your mind out of the gutter! I’m taking you to the safe house,” Dakota laughs. “You earned it, Mellie-Girl.”
Don’t cringe. Don’t cringe.
This is what I’ve worked for the last six months. Dakota Hell - real name Dakota Helfinger - is a 40-year-old brown-skinned man. He carries a spare tire around his middle and a chip on his shoulder the size of Lake Michigan. Dakota claims to be a direct descendant of the Potawatomi tribe in this area. He talks a good game about “the white man” taking his land and collects people into his cult like teenage boys collect baseball cards.
But it’s all a lie.
Because I’m a fired-up bitch who likes to know things, I took a sample of this asshole’s DNA and sent it off for processing. There’s not one ounce of Native American in this guy’s lineage. He’s a melting pot like the rest of us.
Trouble is, his dangerous rhetoric is not like the rest of us. Dakota’s tribe, or gang, or cult, orwhatever-the-fuck-you-want-to-call-ithas become downright deadly.
He’s a domestic terrorist who likes to blow up people who don’t see eye to eye with him. And that list is long.
I slap another fake smile on my face and nod to the blond-haired, blue-eyed bartender. “Let me close out with Ken Doll here, and we’ll be on our way.”
Dakota waves me toward the door. “It’s on me, Mellie-Girl.”
I shrug at Ken Doll, then follow Dakota out into the steamy Indiana night. The fireballs in my stomach get bigger, and I can almost taste the epic takedown of this asshole.
This could be my last night undercover. It can’t come soon enough.
