Crash (Brazen Bulls MC #1)(94)

They left early that morning. At dusk, Delaney called to say it was done. They’d waited to be sure all the patches were present, those that had survived the shootout, and then they’d blown up the clubhouse.

It was the lead story on all channels during the ten o’clock news.

“Whoo-hoo! Look at that!” Gunner crowed, jumping up in front of the television. “She really made a hole! Damn, I wish I was there.”

Sitting on the sofa with Willa at his side and Ollie at his feet, Rad smiled. But he couldn’t feel much satisfaction. The Lubbock Rats were finished, yeah. Irina had flattened them without breaking a sweat. The Rats were national, but Rad wasn’t especially concerned that this would trigger a whole-club response. Irina would take credit for this in the right way, and she would hold the Rats at bay. Hell, knowing her, she might make use of other charters in some way that kept them beholden to her.

No. Rad’s disquiet had little to do with the destruction of the Lubbock charter. Now that he’d found the balance between the painkillers and the pain and had his brain steady, a thought he’d had in the middle of the ambush had risen again: how did the Rats know where to hit them? How had they known they’d be coming back from Nebraska that night?

Because someone had told them. Someone privy to their plans. Only possible explanation.

He looked around the room. Every single man in a kutte, patches and prospects alike, he would trust to the ends of the earth and back. Every single one of them. They didn’t always agree, but they always worked it out. They respected the table, the vote, and each other. Nobody here would sell out his brothers for any price, and damn sure not to scum like the Rats.

He trusted the old ladies, too.

That left sweetbutts and hangarounds. The regulars got pulled in on lockdowns, but they wouldn’t know details about club work. Still, they’d know enough to get the schedule. The women planned meals around the men, so they knew about when to expect them back. A stray bit overheard about Nebraska might give a smart ear some sense of direction. And there just weren’t that many highways and interstates in Oklahoma. It was conceivably possible, from those few bits of information, to get a general sense of where they might be at any given moment of the run.

Had the Rats f*cking guessed on so little information? They must have.

“Where’s Chet?” he asked, missing a regular hangaround in his survey of the room.

Chet had been hanging around for a few years. He’d applied to prospect and been turned down at the beginning of this year. He was a good guy, but not club material: pushing forty, with a heroin habit and a hit or miss history of recovery. Junkies made terrible brothers. Delaney had told him he needed a whole year clean before they’d even consider it.

Rad had thought he’d been working hard on getting that year done, but he didn’t think that would be enough to sway the whole table.

“Who’s Chet?” Willa asked.

“Hangaround—blond, baldin’, missin’ half a finger?”

“Oh. Yeah. I think he’s here…well, he was working the bar when I got here, but I guess I haven’t noticed him since before Gunner had us locking down. I don’t know. I’ve never really talked to him, and my attention’s been on you.”

Rad gave her a grin and a quick kiss for that, then groaned himself to his feet and called out, “Anybody seen Chet?”

Everyone looked around, and no one answered in the affirmative.

“What’re you thinking, Sarge?” asked Becker, standing as well.

With Delaney and Dane in Lubbock, Rad had the clubhouse. “Chapel. Now.”



oOo



Around one a.m., they found Chet in a Northside dive bar a couple of blocks from Terry’s Billiards. Rad took the lead, fighting like the dickens to stay steady and strong and ignore his throbbing wound and his general fatigue. But when Chet saw him and bolted toward the back, he let Eight Ball and Ox charge forward after him.

Chet running served as confirmation of Rad’s suspicions. Now they needed a goddamn reason.

In the alley behind the bar, with Chet on his knees, his arms stretched out and twisted in the powerful grips of the two biggest Bulls, Rad pulled his blade and crouched before him.

Behind him, Gunner and Simon kept watch. They’d left Apollo and Griffin in charge of the clubhouse.

“You got friends in Lubbock, Chet?”

“I—I don’t know what you mean, Rad. Lived in Tulsa all my life.” His breath had the sweet rot smell of a junkie.

“Then why’d you run just now?”

“You look mad. Got scared.”

Without another word, Rad pushed his blade into Chet’s emaciated thigh. The man shrieked until Ox’s hand clamped down over his mouth, covering most of his face.

“Now, I’m just in the meat of your leg, Chet. What meat there is. But I’m half an inch from your femoral artery. I cut that just right, and you bleed out right here while we watch. You want that?”

He shook his head, whimpering so hard that Rad could see bubbles of snot inflating in each nostril with each breath. Poor Ox, getting that all over his hand.

“Then tell me what I want to know. Who’d you tell where we’d be?”

Chet shook his head again, and Rad turned the knife—not toward the femoral, but enough to make some bad pain. The kind that was pulsing through his own body right now.