Crash (Brazen Bulls MC #1)(43)
They passed a faded sign, with a painted image of a big train pulled by a black steam engine coming around a bend. The paint had faded so markedly that the image was only faintly discernible, as was the greeting Welcome to Signal Bend! The sign was like a ghost of a welcome. A haunting.
Not far past that old sign, Delaney led them to turn right onto a lane framed by dense weeds. A long, low building, hemmed in by tall chain link, was the only structure in sight. A rusted-out sign on the fence to one side of the open gate declared it Signal Bend Construction. On the other side of the gate was the symbol of the Night Horde—a horse with a flaming mane, which they’d nicknamed, inventively, the ‘Flaming Mane.’
There were a few pieces of heavy construction equipment that had seen better days, some time ago, parked at the back of the lot. Otherwise, a van, a couple of pickups and a few Harleys made up the contents of the lot. The Bulls backed in at the end of the short line of Horde bikes.
“Shit,” Dane said as they dismounted. “This place is dying fast.”
“Don’t count it out,” Delaney answered. “Times are tough, but so are folk like these. Shit like this goes in cycles. They’ll hunker down and wait it out.”
The door opened and two giants walked through: Little Ike Lunden and Showdown Ryan. Neither of them was an officer, though Little Ike was the president’s son—he was too young and too newly patched to have earned any pull.
Rad turned to Delaney to see if he was taking offense at the lowly welcome. If so, he was hiding it well.
Little Ike came forward first, and Delaney accepted the hug of warm greeting. “Hey, brothers. Expected you a little later. Big Ike and Reg are in town, meetin’ with the mayor.”
As all the men took their turns in greeting, Delaney said, ‘Not a problem. We had a clear road, so we came right through. Wouldn’t mind a beer and a bite, if you got it.”
“Sure do,” said Showdown. “Got the women putting together a spread right now. C’mon in.”
Signal Bend had been first populated way back by a bunch of Swedes or Norwegians or folk like that. Somewhere Vikings came from. Most of the people in town were descended in some kind of way from those first folk. So the Horde had a highfalutin way of doing things. Every MC Rad knew called the room where they had their meetings their ‘chapel’ and called their meetings ‘church.’ Not the Horde, oh no. They met in the ‘Keep’—you could hear the f*cking capital K in the way they said it—and they called their main room, which everybody else he knew called a party room or a bar room or just the main room, the Hall—capital H.
Rad’s feelings about all that were ambivalent. On one hand, he thought it was a lot of affected bullshit and far too self-important for a club that was barely a smudge on the map. On the other hand, calling a room with a table a ‘chapel’ was probably just as affected. And he understood the impulse to cling to history. Especially if it was all you had to cling to.
So they went into the Horde’s Hall, which looked like a worn-out version of every club party room he’d ever seen, and greeted the other members of the Horde who were there. Then they sat at the bar and drank and ate and waited for the club leadership to get there and accept the Bulls’ help.
Pretty f*cking ballsy of Big Ike to make them wait.
oOo
One of the women in the Hall was a reedy redhead who looked barely legal. She was dressed in ratty jeans and a flannel shirt, like one of those grunge idiots, but she was hot. Tall, with long limbs. Fine ass. Rad was an ass man. And tits. And legs. Hell, he was an equal-opportunity enjoyer of all female parts.
While he checked her out—no harm in looking, whatever was going on between him and Willa—the Horde next to him leaned close. “That’s my little girl. Watch your manners.”
Rad moved his eyes from the girl and gave Frank, the Horde SAA, a careful nod. “Sorry, brother. No disrespect intended.”
“None taken yet. S’why I said something. Hate to have to break a friend’s face.”
Frank was a probably a good twenty years older than he, and he carried a lot of booze and rich food in his belly. But Rad had learned long ago not to get cocky about whom he could take and whom he couldn’t—especially not if a daughter’s honor was on the line.
“Not lookin’ to party in any case. Got a woman at home.”
As Frank swallowed down his beer, he gave Rad a wise nod. The foam frosting over his mustache when he set his empty glass down took some of the gravitas from the moment. “You got kids?”
“No.” He’d never felt the pull toward fatherhood.
“You’re lucky. I love my girl more’n anything else, but it’s hard duty, taking care of a kid. ‘Specially a girl. Just been me and Tash most of her life, and I know I ain’t done right by her. Girls need a woman’s hand, and ain’t no women around here worth shit. Raised up by me, she’s a wild thing. Now she looks like that, and I don’t know what the f*ck to do with her.”
Rad had no idea what to say to any of that, but he knew damn well he wouldn’t be checking out the redhead again.
oOo
The Bulls had been sitting with the Horde almost an hour when the front door opened and Big Ike and Reg sauntered in, with the prospect Frank had sent after them trotting in behind.