Chapter Eighteen
THE CHEAPair freshener glued in the corner of The Sheep’s Clothing toilets oozed the heavy, overpowering smell of gardenias. It wasn’t enough to cover up the smell of shit, and it mixed oddly with the salty, meaty smell of old blood.
It had been a bad week for Shepherd—two consignments of drugs intercepted, three of his trap houses closed down, too many of his street dealers picked up, frisked down, and locked up—and he’d shared the misery. A middleman for a client in LA questioned Shepherd if he could actually come through on the deal. Shepherd had broken the sink with the guy’s face, blood scabbed on the white porcelain and a bloody tooth jammed in the plug, and put his unconscious body on a bus up the coast.
Bass paced the small space nervously as he waited for Merlo to call him back.
“Shit. Shit. Shit,” he muttered to himself under his breath. Where the fuck was Merlo? The only reason to have a handler was so you could get in touch when something went wrong, either side of the line.
Ten wide, dirty tiles from the door to the far wall, under the small window that was cracked open onto the alley. The smell of garbage and cat piss from the dumpster was an improvement on the stink in here.
Bass made the trip twice. Then he stopped in front of the wall and, with a surge of frustration, cracked his fist off it. His hand came off worse than the wall. One of the pale blue tiles chipped from his ring, and his knuckles split open.
“Shit,” he muttered again, resignedly this time.
The sink was out of order, so he wrapped the hem of his T-shirt around his hand. It would stop bleeding eventually.
His phone finally buzzed in his hand, and he snatched it up to his ear.
“Something is going down,” he said sharply. “Shepherd sent Boone and Sonny an hour ago, tooled up and on a mission. He didn’t tell anyone else why or what next. I think he suspects that someone in the club has informed on him.”
There was a pause on the other end of the phone as Merlo absorbed that. Bass fidgeted as he waited and shot nervous glances at the door. There was only so long you could spend in the bathroom before people started to ask questions.
“Fuck,” Merlo said after due consideration. “There’s just been an incident at the hospital. Someone was shot.”
Bass closed his eyes and braced his bloody fist against the wall for support. His stomach sank like a stone into his boots. A quiet, terrible voice strung a series offuck,fuck,fucks together in the back of his head.
“Tag—”
“No. It was a doctor, but it wasn’t Hayes,” Merlo said. In the background of the call, Bass could hear raised voices and sirens in the background. His stomach lurched queasily in an attempt at relief, but it was halfhearted. The last twenty-four hours Bass had felt that itch that meant the shit was about to hit the fan somewhere. “He was shot in a drive-by near the hospital this afternoon. They called me in case it was related to some of the cases he’s consulted with the agency on this year.”
The unsettled feeling in Bass’s gut latched on to that. “Psychiatrist?”
“I’d say that was an impressive guess, but it’s a fairly safe bet,” Merlo said. “Why?”
“Redhead?”
“The odds were against you getting that one right,” Merlo admitted. “You know him.”
“He’s Tag’s ex,” Bass said. He scrubbed his knuckles over his forehead in frustration as he turned away from the wall. What he wanted to do was call Tag, make sure he was okay, and go find him if he didn’t answer. But he was pretty sure his number had been blocked again, and if he walked out of The Sheep’s Clothing right now, he wouldn’t get far. Merlo hadn’t touched the core MC yet, but he’d gutted their business interests and pulled in enough people they knew would squeal. It was the closest anyone had gotten to actually defanging the Brothers in a long time. “Check in on him. Make sure he’s either at work or at home.”
Merlo made a distracted noise on the other end. “A deputy is on the way to his house. I’ll check in with the hospital administrator to see when he’s expected on shift. If we track him down, I’ll put a protection detail on him. He’s not just your boyfriend. He’s a witness in the case.”
“Let me know if you don’t find him,” Bass said.
“Why? There’s nothing you can do,” Merlo pointed out bluntly. “Stay where you are, keep out of trouble, and I promise that I will keep Dr. Hayes safe. Do your job, Detective Sebastiani, and trust me to do mine.”
He hung up, and Bass clenched his fist around the phone.
“No,” he said aloud to the small bloodstained room. “I don’t think I will.”
BIKERS WEREdifferent from other criminals. That was the idea they bought into, anyhow. They weren’t like the Mafia or the Russians, who were just in it for money and power. They liked to pretend they were Robin Hood on a Harley, modern-day Vikings. Once a year one of them would punch some wife beater in the face and pretend that made it okay to turn out fifteen-year-olds with track marks on their thighs.
It was a brittle lie, and it was almost always where the cracks started to show first when law enforcement put pressure on an MC.
Bass went behind the bar and grabbed a bottle of tequila. He took a swig straight from the bottle and swilled it around his mouth for a second before he let it slide down his throat. The cheap liquor burned from the back of his tongue to the pit of his stomach.
“Fuck,” he growled as he wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “It tastes like cactus piss.”
