Which means Spider is not handling this well.
Not that I can blame him. Shit went from zero to sixty in a matter of seconds and our arachnid was right at the center of it when it did, and I don’t just mean physically.
With a sigh, I take a drag from my smoke and scrub a hand over my hair, my gaze catching on the blood still dotting my jacket and hand.
Death came swiftly and unexpectedly today, but it was a long time coming. A premeditated surprise, something that had been considered for years and finally realized in a split-second decision, thought out, but delivered on instinct.
“The kid?” I ask after a few beats of silence.
Jackal sucks down his cigarette, drops it on the ground and it isn’t until it leaves his fingers that I realize they’re trembling. “He’s with Mom and Nadine. Breaker and his old lady are on their way.”
“Little John coming too?”
“Wouldn’t shock me.”
“So, we’re looking at a visit from the Pythons’ president, and potentially a club war.”
My friend shakes his head. “Dad called him right away. Explained what happened, told them it was handled, and that Conner is safe.”
Thenowgoes without saying.
When we showed up at the garage a few hours ago, the five of us asked to meet Tank and Gunner here so we could act as witnesses when the president and his VP formally booted their father, Hamish—Gramps to most of us—off the executive committee, no one had a clue how things would play out.
We went into the shop like usual, didn’t see Hamish right away, so we grabbed a few beers from the fridge then waited for Tank and Gunner. After a couple of minutes, a strange noise came from the office, an almost muffled cry or whimper. We assumed it was Gramps’s dog, the hound he keeps around as a half-assed guard dog, but when we heard the noise again it was obvious it wasn’t the mutt.
The five of us went on high alert at that point, each pulling our piece as we began searching the shop. Cyclops and Jackal started checking the cars waiting to be chopped, Marbles and I looked through the supply closets and waiting room, while Spider went straight for the office.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew he shouldn’t be alone. I’d had a feeling of dread swirling in the pit of my stomach ever since Tank called last night, and it continued to grow when I left the clubhouse this afternoon, then became consuming when we got to the garage. Something was telling me that today wasn’t going to go well, that we were probably going to have some sort of shit hit the fan, and letting Spider search the shop alone solidified it.
The minute he opened the office door… no one could get to him in time and in that split second, everything changed for all of us.
When Spider saw Hamish with his coveralls pulled down below his waist, saw Conner standing in front of the desk with his pants and underwear around his ankles, tears streaming down the almost thirteen-year-old boy’s face, he snapped.
He pistol-whipped his grandfather, knocking the bastard to the ground in a daze before he grabbed the heavy glass ashtray from the desk and proceeded to bash his head in with it. Spider lost his shit completely, kept hitting the old man over and over while crying and yellingnever again.
Cy and Jackal covered Conner up and got him out of there as quick as they could while Marbles and I tried like hell to pry Spider off Hamish, but that big fucker wasn’t having it. By the time Tank and Gunner showed up, there was hardly anything recognizable left of their father’s face and it still took all four of us to finally get Spider under control.
Prez took his son into the connecting bathroom and shut the door, our VP immediately got on the phone and started making calls, and Marbles and I just stood there in shock, staring at the battered remains of Hamish MacAllister until we were told what to do next.
Trudy and Nadine showed up about twenty minutes later and that’s when Gunner told me to head out front and make sure no one tried to get inside. And that’s where I’ve been for the last hour, smoking cigarette after cigarette, trying to make sense of what the fuck just happened.
Hamish was a bastard, don’t get me wrong. He was a dickhead most of the time and ridiculously rough around the edges, but I never would have pegged him as a… it makes my skin crawl and my stomach hurt just thinking about it.
I started out working at the garage right after high school. Most of us new patches worked here from the time we joined the Wulven Kings, and it’s where I got really tight with Marbles, Cy, and Jackal. Spider too, but only if Hamish wasn’t around. Drinking beer and shooting the shit while we worked on cars, late nights chopping while we got as close as brothers. Hamish was around most of the time, teaching us how to do what we didn’t know, helping us hone our skills to the point of perfection, but he’d disappear for hours sometimes too. And seeing what I just did, it makes me regret ever letting Hamish leave at all. Not that we were ever privy to where the fuck he went or what the hell he did, but I never would have thought that bastard was a fucking pedophile, and God knows what went down when he was gone.
Judging by his reaction, Spider must have had a clue though, and I can barely stomach the reason as towhyhe’d think that.
“I’ll take Withers,” Jackal grunts. “Gonna go talk to him, get him inside to Dad and Uncle Tav.”
I nod as the coroner’s van rolls up behind the cruiser. “I’ve got them.”
With a barely audiblethanks, my friend shoves off the wall and intercepts the SWPD captain, the two immediately heading for the shop doors while my gaze stays locked on the black cargo van.
Roland Berk pushes open the driver’s side door before all six-foot-one, one-hundred and sixty pounds of him follows. Berk is nothing but arms and legs, lanky and lean, with dark hair and dark eyes. He’s dressed in uniform—the coroner’s staple jacket, slacks, and orthopedic non-skid shoes—and looks like he’s ready to get down to business.
Roland Berk is a good guy, aniceguy and real smart, but I’ve always thought he wasn’t really cut out for this sort of thing.
Not that I know him or anything, not outside of coming when Tank or Gunner call, but he strikes me as the type that would rather run the funeral home he inherited during the day and head home to his family to play board games after dinner or some shit at night. Unfortunately for him, Johansson—the lead coroner in Sabine Woods—is tight with Gunner, and once things started to pick up in the dead body business, he asked Berk to work for him, ultimately sealing his fate as another club go-to when shit gets sticky.
