“No kids yet, but we can practice making one.” Smoke smacks Haze’s ass.
“I bet I knock Raven up first,” Haze laughs as he slingshots one of his gloves at Smoke’s chest.
“That’s a bet I’ll take,” Smoke replies.
“Can we get in on this bet?” Wrecker pulls his wallet out of his back pocket. “I got a hundred bucks on Haze.”
“I’ll put a hundred on Smoke,” Tiny calls out as he unloops the first chain from the hook on the wall and the first body falls to the plastic with a thud. He then goes down the line and the other four fall. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.
“I call two hundred on Haze,” Ring yells from over by the incinerator.
“Two hundred on Smoke,” Doc lays his bet.
“Whadaya say, Prez?” Smoke slaps me on the shoulder as I scoot back with Quinn’s boots in my hands and I drag him to lay out flat.
Standing tall to my full six foot three, I look back and forth between the two and pretend like I’m thinking about it. I rip my gloves off, toss them toward the row of bodies, then pull my wallet out of my back pocket.
I pull three brand new one hundred dollar bills out and hold them high up in the air. “I gotta go with my cousin. Three hundred on Haze.”
Half the group goes wild, the other boos.
This is what Brothers are. This is what being part of a motorcycle club should be like.
It should be friendship. It should be about family. It should be about loving and supporting the ones who love and support you too.
I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that every man in this room would take a bullet for me.
I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that every man back at the clubhouse would do the same.
I know, without a shadow of a fucking doubt, that I would take a bullet for every single one of them.
And their Old Ladies. Or their kids. Or their families.
Trust. Honor. Loyalty. Love.
That is the Rebel Vipers MC way.
As we all work together, we get each body rolled up in a plastic sheet, lift them one at a time onto a metal table on wheels, and roll them over toward the incinerator. Only two bodies can be burned at the same time, so this will be a multi-step process.
Ring and Haze decide to take charge of the load schedule since each burn cycle takes five hours start to finish. From full body to ash is three hours, then you have to let the ashes cool down before you can sweep the oven out and start again.
Once the ashes are collected in a bucket, they are taken straight to the drain in the floor and poured down followed by water from a garden hose.
After helping get the first round started, Hammer and I head back to the clubhouse. With a schedule set for who will come back to move what around when, I have no doubt everything will be done, cleaned up, and the barn will be back to spic and span by this time tomorrow.
CHAPTER TWELVE
WHISKEY
SATURDAY MORNING
Rolling over, I reach my arm out and find nothing but a warm, crumpled bedsheet.
“What the hell?”
I jackknife up, not believing that my wife isn’t with me in bed. It’s my damn birthday! She should be nowhere else but here dammit . . . with me . . . in bed . . . ready to let me fuck her until we’re both floating into nirvana.
And that’s when I hear it. The shower is running.
