Tease: Mojave Boys MC (3 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

“You really should share the wealth, Ice,” Buddha complained, as Vance and several of his brothers convened in the meeting room at the back of the bar. It was their clubhouse more than anything, and they were supposed to be discussing business right now.

Vance gave his friend a scathing look. The nickname came from his last name—Coldman—but most people seemed to think he just had no heart or feelings. There were times he liked the idea of being seen as a sociopath, but it didn’t usually suit his overall purpose in life. “I could introduce you to every hot woman I met, Buddha, and not one of them is going to choose you and your belly over me.”

“You better watch it, Ice,” Cougar piped in. “Buddha’s not afraid to tattoo his fat ass right on your head after he shaves it clean. And he’s good enough to do all of that without you ever waking up.”

Vance shrugged. “You’re the idiot who pissed him off and then drank yourself to sleep. Don’t take it out on me.”

“Whatever, man. How tight was she? She looks like the type to either be loose as a two-bit whore in London or as tight as a screw wound too many times and about to strip the hole.” At Joe’s words, it was all Vance could do to keep from slapping the man across the face.

Vance wasn’t one to mind teasing, and he was damn proud of his conquest. However, he didn’t like the way the guys referred to Maya, like she was a piece of meat. He’d had plenty of those in his days. Maya was different. If he were someone else, he’d keep her as a play toy. “Guys, let it go. The only details you get are that she’s good, and she’s mine. That means hands off while she’s here.”

“And you’ll be getting a little tail in the process,” Bogie cackled, making lewd spanking gestures. “Are you sure you don’t want to set up a tag team for your little tart? I’m sure two dicks are better than one.”

Gritting his teeth to thwart a truly unforgivable response, Vance just shook his head. “Not when my dick is twice the size of yours. Can we get down to business, please?”

Vance had been with the Mojave Boys since he turned fifteen. His father had been a ghost all his life, and his mother couldn’t seem to hold a job down for very long. She’d turned to selling—drugs, her body, stolen goods—anything she could get her hands on to bring in some cash. Her big mistake was boosting a car for Vance’s sixteenth birthday. She’d been locked up, and six years into her seven year sentence, she’d caught a cold, which turned into pneumonia and killed her.

She’d taught him manners and how to tie his shoes and wash his clothes, but almost everything else Vance knew came from the Boys. He’d been angry, and he stole a motorcycle when his mother went to jail, riding until the tank ran out, maybe a mile from here. Powder, a guy with bright white hair and skin, had found him and the bike and brought him back here.

This had been his family ever since.

Maya had asked about loyalty and family keeping him here. Vance imagined she didn’t know the meaning of loyalty like he did. When another man was prepared to kill for you, took you under his roof without any obligation, and would give his life to keep you safe, you owed your loyalty to that man. Or in this case, these men.

And that was why he’d joined the club and started running guns. It wasn’t about the money; that was a bonus. And the lifestyle? Vance loved the freedom they had here. They were literally their own justice, judge, and jury. No one bothered them, and though vigilantes tried to pose a threat and law enforcement talked big but ignored them in reality, no one really came looking for them. And if they did, Wheelie wasn’t a town as much as it was a business entity. The name of the clubhouse? The Wheelie Bar. The motel was listed as the Wheelie Inn, and the diner was the Wheelie Stop. It was a corporation that the Mojave Boys had turned into a town under their own supervision.

The only real issue they ever had was with the Scorpions, who kept trying to cross borders and encroach on their territory. When it came to protecting what was theirs, violence was law, and neither Vance nor any of his brethren thought twice about taking out one or more of the Scorpions.

The conversation turned to business, and Vance relaxed. This was better; this was the daily grind and what he expected from his makeshift family. They had some serious issues to take care of, not the least of which consisted of a block the Scorpions were trying to secure against their next shipment of guns. They’d formed a line at the California border, where the Boys usually routed their carriers. They also had men watching the only other road that went around the block and could get someone back to Wheelie, so the driver and caravan couldn’t be rerouted.

The way Vance saw it, they had two options. They could blow their way through the barricade with lots of bullets, taking out a sizable portion of the entire Scorpion MC, and bring their shipment in via the regularly scheduled route. If they were going to do it though, they had to haul ass and set up a game plan to get at the rival gang without losing any of their own. The shipment would be rolling into Arizona in three days.

The other option was to spend a lot of time, money, and effort to stop the truck, move the guns to several other nondescript vehicles, and have them driven in innocuously one at a time over the next several weeks. In that process, they would also lose money in sales, unable to traffic out guns they didn’t yet have in their possession.

They’d discussed both plans of action and still failed to come to a decision, but today was zero hour. They had to move one direction or the other first thing in the morning, or they were out a half million dollar shipment. They couldn’t afford that, no matter how much money they had, stole from other clubs, or taxed the locals for their protection.

“We can’t just show up with guns blazing,” Tic-Toc threw out there. “The Scorpions are as heavily armed as we are, and they’ve got good aim.”

“We weren’t planning on an OK Corral style shoot out,” Gaffer growled, lighting up another cigarette with the butt of his first. “We have options. Tell them we want to negotiate, give them a piece of our take. Or we can have a few guys in a car come in, and when the Scorpions check the car, we take them out while another crew rides in to hit the rest.”

“Ride in from where?” Joe wanted to know. “There’s no tree cover, no buildings. Unless you have some magic bubble that makes us invisible until a bullet pops through it, there’s no way to sneak up on them. I think we should filter in the shipment slowly. It’s safer.”

Vance shook his head. That wasn’t the solution. “We don’t have that kind of time, and it’s a waste of resources. We’d have to call in a lot of favors to get it done, we shouldn’t use them all up at once.”

“So many people owe us, we’re golden. We’d barely tap into the favors,” Buckeye argued, laughing. “I think our grandsons will still be cashing in the favors we’ve racked up before they ever start on their own.”

“Vance is right,” Burt piped up. All eyes turned to him; he’d been the unofficial club president for a while. When Maurice had a heart attack and gave up the club over a year ago, they’d unanimously decided they wouldn’t elect a new president until he passed away. The old codger was still alive and fairly well, living it up in a retirement community in Phoenix. Meanwhile, Burt had taken the responsibility, and the club knew when the time came, it would either be Burt or Vance taking on the role.

Burt stood up and started to pace. “We offer a truce and a negotiation we have no intention of sticking to. We’ll throw a number out, something believable like fifteen percent. We’ll demand escorts and protection in return, and we’ll pay commission for helping us move the goods. That’ll get their mouths watering, and they’ll agree to talk.

“We’ll take a full crew to the blockade, ten if not twelve men. We’ll have a signal, and when it’s given, we pull out the trash bags and take out the garbage.”

Vance nodded. “There will be retaliation.” He didn’t have to say out loud that the reason behind this roadblock had as much to do with his actions toward the Scorpions as it did their greed and desire to control the Mojave Boys’ territory.

Restless, Vance had taken a long ride out into the desert, and his bike had run out of gas, the gauge reading incorrectly. He’d rolled it to the next gas station, two miles away, and he’d been burning up. He’d been lucky he’d remembered to take water with him, but he just needed gas, air conditioning for a few minutes, and something cold to drink so he could get home.

Unfortunately, he’d ended up at a station where the owner paid dues to the Scorpions for protection. It had been the first major sign that the gang was moving in on the Boys’ kingdom. Three of the Scorpions had shown up, the owner calling them when he recognized the insignia on Vance’s jacket, and they started to push him around.

Finding himself in a really bad place, Vance considered his options. He could take an ass whooping and call one of his brothers to bring him some gas while he withered away on the side of the road in the burning sun. That was dangerous because he didn’t know how badly they would mess him up, but if he took it like a man, they would let him live as a sign of respect. He could pay a tax, which would have shown inferiority so he wasn’t about to do anything like that. It wouldn’t just hurt him; it would represent the whole club and put them in a defensive rather than offensive position.

But Vance wasn’t going to take their bullshit sitting down. He was a fighter, and if the Mojave Boys had taught him nothing else, they had drilled into him that out here, away from the population majority and outside the long arm of government law, they ruled with a heavy hand. Violence was law, and if he had a problem, that was how he needed to handle the situation.

So Vance had bucked up and done his worst. Acting like he was going to surrender, he’d thrown a swift punch at the first Scorpion to rattle his brain while he drew his gun. He hadn’t aimed to kill; he’d hit one guy in both knees so he couldn’t pursue on foot or by bike, and he’d managed to get another shot off at the third guy. He’d aimed for the guy’s shoulder, wanting to knock the gun from his hand, but the Scorpion had moved, and the bullet had landed square in the heart. He was dead before he hit the floor.

Vance had turned the gun on the store owner and demanded a full tank of gas. When the first Scorpion moved, rubbing his jaw and reaching for a weapon, Vance had drawn a second pistol, holding it pointed at the guy’s head. “You get on your scooter out there, go back to your club, and take a message that this is Mojave Boys territory, and we’re taking it back. If we find you here again, we’ll take out your men and their families without blinking.”

Checking out the scene and finding one of his men dead and the other howling in pain, the Scorpion hadn’t hesitated to get out before he ended up in the same condition. Vance waited until he was gone and escorted the owner out to the pump, getting him to put the gas in. When he was done, Vance ushered him back inside and took advantage of the air conditioning while he tied up the howling biker and the store owner. He tore the dead man’s shirt and used it as tourniquets for his knees. “I really don’t want you to die or lose your legs,” he’d groused at the guy. “I didn’t mean to kill your boy.”

In the grand scheme of things, Vance knew that had been the truth, even if he didn’t mourn the guy’s death. It was one less man to threaten his and his club’s well-being. But between whimpers of pain, the Scorpion in front of him spat, “You’ll pay for this,
vato
. The Scorpions are bigger and stronger, and we’ll destroy you and everything around you.”

Angry, Vance had yanked the cloth a bit too tight, and the Scorpion screamed again. “I’d be a little more grateful if I were you. I could just let you bleed to death.” With that, he’d stood, went to the bathroom to wash his hands, and stopped back by the coolers, grabbing a cold soda and a bottle of water. He downed them both, used the restroom again, and headed out to his bike. He didn’t know how far away the Scorpions were set up, and he had to disappear before more of them came to resolve this situation.

The club knew about the incident, and they’d had Vance’s back ever since. But the only sign of retaliation was this attempt to intercept their shipment of guns and ammo. It was enough, and Vance knew that if the Boys thwarted this attempt, the Scorpions wouldn’t just turn tail and run.

“Screw it. We can hold our own against them,” Cougar replied angrily. “Besides, they’re the ones creeping into our turf. They can have the whole southern region of the desert, but they’re greedy. Hitting them hard like this should serve as a warning.”

“You live in a dream world,” Buddha replied, rubbing his belly like it would tell their fortunes if he coaxed it hard enough. “The Scorpions outnumber us two to one. We’re stronger by sheer will, but we can’t just assume we can handle their numbers. Not anymore.”