Perversion (Perversion Trilogy #1)(25)

“You’d think they’d at least TRY to be less obvious,” Sandy says from the driver's seat. His southern drawl is always thicker when he’s pissed off. He sits up from his reclined position and props his beer on the ledge of the open window. “There are only two reasons why anyone would drive that painfully slow in this town, and one requires ducking and covering.”

I shake my head. “Nobody’s getting shot tonight. The one car parade we just witnessed is no doubt courtesy of the new Lacking Gang Task Force, making their presence known.”

“After they had you for fifteen hours?” Sandy scoffs. “Belly won’t be happy about this.”

My gut twists. Belly’s not getting any better. Every day, he grows paler, and as of late, he’s been dragging around an oxygen tank on wheels. He tells us he’s fine while Marci says if the new medication doesn’t work he’s going to need open heart surgery.

“Those motherfuckers are about as inconspicuous as a pedophile on a playground wearing a trench coat that says free candy for kids across the front.” Sandy takes a swig of his beer. “Don’t they know by now that we’re not a gang?” He joins me at the front of the van.

I shrug. “I told them that when they hauled me in.”

He scratches the side of his head with his beer bottle and looks out to the street. “Something tells me they didn’t believe you.”

“Really?” I ask sarcastically, tightening a bolt on the engine. “What makes you think that? Is it the three times a day drive by of the house or the bullet proof vest fuckers descending on us outside of BB’s.”

“Either works,” Sandy says with a shrug. “You pick.”

I turn my wrench and fasten the final bolt which should do a better job than the duct tape Sandy has been using to hold his sorry excuse for an engine together.

“I mean, why the fuck do they think we’re a gang? We don’t even have hand signals.” He waves his hands in the air in what I’m guessing are his version of gang signs. “We don’t wear the same colors or jump people in like Los Muertos or The Immortals.” Sandy turns around and leans against the bumper as if he still sees the car that’s long gone. “I don’t even own a fucking bandana. I mean, by process of elimination, we aren’t a gang.” Sandy pauses, his eyes grow large with excitement. “Or, maybe…do you think that THEY think we’re an MC?”

I roll my eyes. “Two people in this house own bikes, and that’s me and Belly. Only a half dozen or so of our other guys have ‘em.” I point out. I slam the hood shut. “I think that eliminates an MC.”

We might not be a street gang in a traditional sense, but we are a ruthless organization of degenerates. Sandy may come off as ridiculous, but that’s only because he’s easily bored. Truth is that he’s brilliant, even though I won’t ever tell him that. By the age of fourteen, he’d created an underground sports betting operation pulling in thousands of dollars a week until he got shut down after his middle school principal caught him taking bets in the boys’ room.

Then, he burnt down his foster home.

And then the school.

Well, half of it, by the time the firefighters showed.

Haze was brought in because he was a fighter. Brute force was always his method of getting what he wanted, and it still is. The man fought before he could walk. Still does. Street fights. Bar fights. Even ones that aren’t any of his business, he makes his business simply for the jaw of knocking another man’s teeth out.

That’s why he rarely ever comes out of his room. If let him off his leash, I’m pretty sure he’d wrestle a bridesmaid at a wedding over the fuckin’ bouquet and probably end up beating her to death with it. He also has a thing for weapons. The contents of the safe hidden in the drywall in his closet ceiling could arm a small nation, and that’s not even all of it. He’s got shit buried in various unmarked locations throughout three counties.

Digger was brought in because he was a good soldier. A listener. He was the calm and the reason while the rest of us allowed rage to be our guide.

WAS.

Digger was killed last year during a random drive-by, which is one of the reasons we decided to take part in the truce. We all needed time to grieve his loss.

Sandy rounds the van and gets back in the driver's seat. He turns the key and starts the engine. The sound it makes is atrocious, like someone shaking a paper bag full of nails close to your ear. I can fix any car you put in front of me, but Sandy’s van doesn’t need to be resuscitated, it needs to be put out of its fucking misery.

Sandy grins anyway. “I knew you could fix her,” he says, stroking the cracked wheel lovingly. I imagine he’s just happy it’s making any noise at all. “I knew you weren’t gone, Cher. You’d never leave me, baby.”

“Next time, don’t fix it with fucking duct tape,” I say, wiping my hands and tossing the rag onto my toolbox, not bothering to comment on the fact that he named his van Cher, of all fucking things.

“Next time, be around when I need you to fix it, and I won’t have to resort to Nature’s cure-all, the beauty that is duct tape. At least, I didn’t use Liquid Nails this time. I mean, I was going to, but last time, I accidentally gave myself a webbed hand. It took, like, a month for the shit to wear off. I mean, a webbed hand is only a good conversation starter until the skin starts to fall off.” Sandy kills the engine.