Slate (Rebel Wayfarers MC) (35 page)

“This is bullshit, Prez,” Cut repeated, and Mason’s hand reached out and closed over his throat.

“Five,” he finished softly, his other hand coming up from nowhere to land one solid, crushing blow to the side of Cut’s head.

He dropped the unconscious man on the grass and asked coolly, “Slate, you got someone to clear the trash tonight?”

“Yeah, Prez, Skeptics indicated they’d be happy to perform catch and release for us, unless you don’t want Cut released,” Slate called across the yard, waiting to hear which way the scales would tip tonight.

Mason nodded, saying only, “Release.”

***

The room wasn’t really big enough to accommodate an angry Slate. He held the phone to his ear, pacing back and forth along the length of the room. Last night, Mason had sent him for a sit down at the Wisconsin compound with the leaders of the Disciples, and since it was late when they finished, he’d stayed and partied with their guests. Slate had a hangover, but it wasn’t bad, and wasn’t what had him riled this morning.

“GeeMa, what do you mean he’s gone? Did his band go on tour early?” Slate softly spoke the question into the phone as he ran an absent hand through his hair, standing it on end. He listened to the voice on the other end of the phone for a few minutes, his face gradually falling into its normal, hard lines.

“Wait up, wait up...you mean he stole money from you? Wasn’t he still working?” Slate ground out. He paced up and down again, pausing to lean against the wall, tipping his head back with a thump. “No, no, I believe you, GeeMa. I don’t get what he was thinking. I’ll call Myron, get a wire transfer into your account tod—” He paused when she interrupted. “Yes. No...I know that’s not why you called, GeeMa,” he said softly with a smile in his voice, “but gotta keep some mad money in there; never know when you and GeePa will want to go off for a wild weekend.”

Grinning at the response on the phone, Slate closed his eyes. “It’s good to hear your voice too, GeeMa. I love you guys, ya know. Let me know if you hear from Ben, and I’ll do the same. Don’t worry about him. He’s probably in the bus with the guys, headed to those gigs out on the west coast he was talking about a few weeks ago. I don’t have a thing to say about him leaving, but we’ll have words about the thievery. I’ll make sure he understands, GeeMa. There’s only so many times you should have to put up with his as—butt doing something like this. I got this.”

There was a pause, and the grin on his face grew a little wider. “Yes, ma’am, I will. Love you, too. Bye.” He disconnected the call and stood still for a minute, leaning. The backward kick, which knocked a hole in the wall behind him, combined with a violent yell of, “
FUCK
,” caused pounding at his door in seconds. “Slate, you okay man?” he heard one of the prospects asking through the door. “Yeah, man, it’s all good,” he muttered. “Call Woody and tell him he’s got a wall job.” Hearing a message of assent, he turned and sat down on the edge of the bed, forearms propped on his thighs and hands dangling loosely between his knees.

He didn’t know how long he sat there like that, his mind circling and teasing at Ben’s behavior, which had worsened dramatically over the past few years. His little brother started a band in his late teens, and they’d been playing in Cheyenne bars for the past few years. He’d been drinking before he was legal, but once he hit that magic age, it seemed that every picture he saw of Ben, there was booze in his hand.

A few months ago, he’d sent money out for Ben to buy some recording time in a studio, so the band could make a demo CD. It was done with the understanding that his little brother would straighten up his act. If he was serious about music as a career, then it needed to become a job, not a fucking life-long party. Susan fucked that up; she found out about the money and weaseled about half of it out of Ben’s hands. She’d done what she did best, partied for days with her dealers and johns.

Ben had been so pissed at himself about trusting their mother—again—that he’d punched a wall and broken two knuckles, negating the need for use of the studio for weeks. By then, the rest of the money was gone too. Slate snorted softly. His brother had a good voice, really good, and that little fucker could make his guitar weep when he wanted to, but he didn’t have any common sense in his head.

A tapping at the door drew Slate’s attention. “Yeah?”

“Prez is on the horn, man, wants to chat,” came through the door.

Sighing heavily, Slate stood, opening the door and holding out his hand to the prospect for the phone. “This is Slate,” he said quietly, acknowledging the open line.

“Brother, we had a break-in at Tupelo’s last night,” Mason started. “They bypassed security, nothing on the tapes. They passed up the till, ignoring the cash. What they got was the armory, or at least part of it.” Slate leaned his forearm against the doorway, listening intently. Mason said, “Skeptics were on a run, saw Cut’s bike parked around the side last night. They thought it was odd enough to note, and thought that note was enough to mention, when they heard about the trouble. Bones called me a half-hour ago.”

“Fuck me. Bones was sure of the ID?” Slate asked quietly.

“Yeah, the paint on that scoot is distinctive, hard to miss his tank,” Mason growled.

Slate nodded silently, the fucker had replicated his ugly fucking shoulder tattoo in paint on his bike, and it would be hard to mistake. Running his tongue against the inside of his teeth, he sighed, “All right, yeah, I got this, Prez. Where do you want him delivered?”

“Just get our shit back, Slate. Call a brother to help, if you need it.” There was a slight pause. “Hey,” Mason started in a more upbeat tone, “did I tell you about Mica’s ink?”

Slate chuckled. “Naw, what did princess get?”

Their conversation ended soon after, and the amusement slowly faded off Slate’s face. Picking up his cellphone, he punched in a number from memory. “Myron, hey, man, it’s Slate. I need you to wire five thousand into my grandmother’s account at her bank in Wyoming. Yeah, same account information. Make sure you pull this from my account, fucker; it’s me, not Rebel.”

Striding through the clubhouse, he tossed the other phone across the room at the prospect standing near the bar. “Okay, Myron, can you text me when it’s done, and I’ll let my grandmother know?” He walked into the kitchen area, looking at the pan of scrambled something on the stove. “Sure, man, thanks.” He disconnected the call, shoved the phone into his front pocket, and grabbed a plate, serving himself.

Carrying his plate back out to the bar, he pulled the phone out again, making several calls to arrange meetings in Chicago in a couple hours. They’d meet at Tupelo’s, where he could look over the damage for himself. It had the benefit of being a neutral location, which meant he was able to ask Skeptics and Dominos to show too.

Two nights later, Slate was standing in the back room of a Skeptics’ clubhouse in St. Louis, looking down at the battered piece of meat that was once Tucker. “Franks, get me a bottle of water, would ya?” he called over his shoulder at the doorway.

Holding out a hand behind him, he accepted the water slapped into his palm, and squatted next to Tucker’s head. “Cut,” he started in a conversational tone, opening the bottle, “man, you don’t have to go out like this. Just tell me where things are. You can still walk away.” He dribbled water into the open mouth below him. “Doesn’t that sound good? Doesn’t it sound better than this? Being able to walk away? It’s what you shoulda done to begin with, but you can still do it.” Tilting his head down, he listened intently as Tucker responded. “There now, that wasn’t so hard, was it? We’ll check it out, and I’ll be right back.”

Standing, he turned and walked out, closing and locking the door behind him. Taking a deep drink from the bottle, he spoke, “It’s in a storage locker across the river in East St. Louis. You got someone we can call to check it out?”

Franks nodded, pulling out a phone. Slate gave him the information, and took another drink of water. While they waited for confirmation that the stolen merchandise had been recovered, Franks asked him, “Mason give you the nod to let this fucker go?”

Slate tipped his head to one side, cutting a look at the man. “Yeah, my call, and my call is that we’re gonna brand the fucker’s colors off, but he gets to live. Consider it...a lesson to others who might think about fucking with Rebel property of any kind. My brothers expect no less.”

Franks blanched, taking in a shallow breath. “I’ll call Doc. We’ll make sure he keeps breathing until you are ready to turn him loose.”

Slate tilted his head again, seeing the look of fear and respect on Franks’ face. “That’d be good. You do that, man. Much obliged for use of the clubhouse. Sorry for the bother, but appreciative of the assistance.”

Later, when the sounds of screaming and the smell of burning flesh had both faded from the air, Slate stood in the bathroom for a long time. Knuckles white against the edges of the countertop, he studied his own face in the mirror, not liking what he saw there.

***

Hanging around at Mica’s office for so long while on babysitter duty had given Slate insight into some of her clients, and he’d found a juicy squeeze in Donnelly, the one who he’d taken Mica to see, when he’d been pawed at by Daniel’s ex. Part of a family long entrenched in the shady side of Chi-town, it hadn’t been hard to find details to use against him. Then, it hadn’t taken much use of that leverage to convince him to throw more work Mica’s way once she came home and got settled back into her business.

Slate’d been so successful in his campaign that Mica had expanded her business, hiring additional full-time employees and taking on new clients. To celebrate, she’d had a grand re-opening tonight, and from reports, the party at her offices had been successful.

Standing behind the bar in Jackson’s, Slate looked around at the crowd, pleased. This was where the real party was, after that fancy pants shindig in the offices earlier. For a private party, there were a lot of people here, Slate estimated over a hundred in the bar now, and not everyone had shown up yet. Of course, since it was a party for Mica, it shou
ldn’t be a surprise it was well attended. Everyone loved her, and there’d been quite a few here tonight who felt like they had a hand in her triumph.

Slate had been stuck down in Memphis for a few weeks, and had gotten back in town just today. The Rebels were in the middle of chartering a new chapter there; it made a secondary mid-point between Chicago and Houston, taking some of the strain off the Little Rock members.

While they did not yet have a charter in Texas, there was a big push from some of the smaller clubs they’d run into there. Those clubs all wanted affiliation with the Rebels, but it wasn’t good business to have too much room between club chapters, so they had some things they needed to get into play first. Memphis was a good fit, and he’d settled a lot of details, including locating a couple of good revenue streams they could snap up easily.

He liked that part of the club life; he enjoyed finding puzzles that needed solutions, and then sourcing the right answer. That business side of things gave him a lot of satisfaction, because he knew he was helping support his brothers and their families. Everything came down to the brotherhood, this family he’d chosen, and the loyalties he felt for and with them. His face hardened. He might not relish—fuck that…he fucking
hated
the enforcement portion of his position within the club, but he knew it was important, too.

Mason had seen how much the business in St. Louis had taken out of him. He’d been sympathetic when he heard the decision Slate made, the discipline enforced on Cut, but they both understood it was necessary. You couldn’t let anything slide; if someone fucked you or the club, you had to fuck them back in order to ensure no one else thought they could take advantage of the club. He mouthed,
God forgives; Rebels don’t
.

The Rebels couldn’t let Cut run around with the club tattoo on his back either, so the actions served two needs, but
God
, it had been a hard task, and Slate still woke up in a cold sweat from nightmares of the man’s screams.

Slate rolled his shoulders, consciously releasing the tension that came when he thought about St. Louis for too long. He hooked his thumbs through the belt loops of his jeans, leaning his shoulders back against the wall.

Scanning the crowd, he started mentally marking a number of the people already here. There were four different patches on cuts, arrayed alongside Armani suits; rough hockey players bumped glass rims in toasts with lawyers and judges. Mica’s area of influence had spread wide in the years she’d spent in Chicago, and the attendees tonight reflected that.

His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he pulled it out to read a text from Road Runner.
Seemed he needed someone to set up some tables in the bar for food, because he was finally on his way. He raised a hand, pointing to and calling three prospects to his side. He gave them orders to pull tables from one of the private rooms and line them up along the front wall of the bar, and then to go outside and watch for the van with the food.

Satisfied they’d get things ready, he strolled over to talk to Bingo. His next trip would be down to Fort Wayne, and the chapter president was a good source of information. They were deep in conversation when Slate felt the atmosphere in the bar change, the hair lifting on the back of his neck. He lifted his head, glanced around, and froze in place.