I knew it. And I wasn’t averse to a little chemical help from time to time. “It is good?”
He shrugged. “It’s all right. I don’t do it much, so I’ve been burying that fucker and digging it up for the last six months.”
“Burying it?”
“Kings don’t do drugs. Not the top boys, anyway. And I never carry shit where there are kids around.”
“You have children?”
“Fuck, no.”
He made the same face he had to the orange. It was perversely endearing.
“What is on the flash drive?”
“Better music than yours.”
Ranger tossed it the way of the MDMA bag on the floor.
I snatched it up. “I do not believe you.”
“Give a shit.”
“And what kind of name isRangeranyway?”
The man in question smirked. “Road name.”
“Is not your given name?”
“What do you think?”
“I think English people are strange, and bikers are even stranger. Your name could be anything.Folkis not a road name after all.”
“Don’t judge me by that hippie bastard.” Ranger spoke with affection in his voice—with the love that underlined why the Rebel Kings Motorcycle Club had been a safe place for him toland when the Dog Crows had imploded. “Why don’t you guess my name?”
“Guess?”
Ranger drank more vodka and reclaimed the joint, brushing his fingers against mine. “If my name could beanything, where would you start?”
“Michael.”
I spoke without thinking.
Ranger laughed. Hard. “No.”
Of course it wasn’t. He did not look like a Michael. Or a Daniel. Or any of the English names I tried to recall. This game would be hard. “This is unbalanced. You already know my name.”
“Do I?” Ranger glanced up from opening his bag of MDMA. “You and your mate call each other all kinds of shite. How am I supposed to know what’s real?”
My mate. He did not mean in the animal sense, he meant my friend. He meantJake.Jakov.Jacob. Maybe he had a point. “My name is Viktor. Anything else is affection or insult. Though, your big friend with the hair calls meVicky, and I cannot tell what he means by that.”
Ranger laughed more, the gravelly sound hitting my blood faster than the drugs he offered ever would. “Rubi. Can’t make that dude up.”
“I like him.”
“Yeah?” Ranger stuck a powder-loaded finger into his mouth and held out the bag to me. “Not sure the feeling’s mutual. You want some of this dizzle?”
With him at my side, the low and mellow music pumping through the dimly lit room, it was hard not to feel high already. But it had been a long month and my brain was congested. Escaping it for a few hours was as irresistible as he was.
