Crash (Brazen Bulls MC #1)(12)

The first couple of years, the club had just been a small group of men who didn’t fit in elsewhere—whether they’d come back from the jungle wrong, or their family had f*cked them up, or whatever, they hadn’t been able to make much of a go out with the normal types. They held what jobs they could, they ran the Sinclair station, which had been Delaney’s father’s, and they rode together through town and across the state. They did some good, got into some scrapes, but didn’t stir up much attention from legal beagle types.

Then oil busted, and nobody could rub two pennies together, so Delaney went out and found a way for his people to earn. First it was legit protection work. Then it was not-so-legit protection work. Then transport protection, mainly goods lifted off freighters out of Galveston or even New Orleans.

By the time the Eighties became the Nineties, the Bulls were full-on outlaw, with a rep among law and outlaw alike. That put them on the Volkov radar. The Volkovs were still upstarts then—the Italian families probably still considered them upstarts—and they were willing to work with a club just getting up to its knees in the real dark water.

Now the Bulls ran the midline of their gun route. Everybody knew that those guns were going, among other places, south of the border, into the hands of drug lords, but the Bulls didn’t consider that their business. Their business was moving guns from Point B to Point C. Points beyond in either direction were not their concern.

“First order of business,” Delaney said, setting the gavel on the table. “Everybody good after last night?” The officers had done a whole check on scene, but the night had been too chaotic to know if everybody knew everything.

The men circling the scarred and gouged oak all nodded or made some kind of positive noise. They’d been too far back to get caught in the impacts. Apollo’s left arm was wrapped in gauze, though. That wound was worth some discussion.

Dane acknowledged that as well. “What’s the word, Apollo?”

Apollo, whose legal name was Neil Armstrong—his father was a space buff, and Apollo had been born in August 1969—and had gotten his road name in the obvious way, made an equivocal face and lifted his bandaged arm. “Pulled a kid out of one of the cars that blew, ‘bout a minute before it went up. Leaned on hot metal and left some skin behind. That’s how Gunner and me knew to pull people back.” He grinned. “Gonna have a killer scar.”

“Well ain’t you a pretty boy hero,” Ox said, in a jovial sneer.

“Any word on the * that caused that mess?” Rad asked. He really wanted to get a piece of that guy.

But Delaney shook his head. “I talked to Hutch last night.” Floyd Hutchison was the Tulsa County Sheriff, who’d claimed jurisdiction over the scene. The Bulls had a decent relationship with Hutch. Symbiotic. Mutual back-scratching. “He was grateful for our help, but he wants us to stand down. Too much heat on this thing. They’ve got national press on it, and he wants to bring the guy in straight. I told him we’d let him do his job.”

Rad huffed and raked his hand through his hair. “Fuck, Prez. Hutch can’t find his ass with both hands, a flashlight, and a map. Him doin’ his job is us doin’ his job, six times outta ten.”

Delaney homed his attention on Rad. “We got no need to go in guns blazing here. None of ours was hurt.”

“Those kids he hit, the ones on the Kawas—they were good kids. Knew the rules.”

“Yeah,” Simon agreed quietly, smoothing his hand over his beard. “Their info was in the paper this morning—just eighteen, twenty years old. And five other kids—little kids—were hurt or killed. It’s f*cked up.”

“We can’t answer every wrong in the world, brothers.”

“A wrong on the road at home, though…” Rad pushed.

Delaney’s brows drew in, and Rad knew he’d pushed as far as he could. “We have business of our own to attend to, and that’s where our focus needs to be. The Volkovs are adding product and changing the routes. And Kirill wants us to scout a second route, heading north. That is going to take some recon and some diplomacy. So let’s let Hutch do his job. We have plenty of our own work to do—which’ll get us hurt if we f*ck it up.”

Feeling restless and dissatisfied, Rad crossed his arms and leaned back, but he didn’t protest further. Delaney was right.

But if he ever happened upon the guy who’d torn up that stretch of 75 last night, he’d make sure it was a memorable encounter.





CHAPTER FOUR



Willa woke the next morning stiff, sore, and groggy. She’d had another beer after Rad had left, and she’d needed to pop a couple of Percocets to calm her knee down, and the combination, while not lethal, had sent her into a heavy, dreamless fog of a sleep. Six hours or so of perfect stillness had turned her aching body to stone, and for a few minutes, she lay staring up at her ceiling light fixture, watching the sun dapple shadows through its wicker shade, and seeking the will to move.

Ollie sat at the side of the bed, whining. She didn’t need to turn her head to know he was staring fixedly, willing her to get up and let him take his morning pee.

Her body felt like it had gone through the spin cycle in an industrial washing machine, her head was still muzzy and slow, and she had a nasty case of the guilts for the way Rad had left.