Ride Hard (Raven Riders #1)(15)
“Not worried, just cautious,” Dare said. He f*cking hoped he was right.
Wearing a black doo-rag knotted around unkempt, light brown hair that probably hadn’t seen a haircut since before his wife died, Slider heaved a breath, a troubled frown on his face, but he said no more.
“One other thing we probably ought to hash out while everyone’s here,” Dare said, his shoulders heavy with the weight of this topic. “The guns we picked up during the ops in Baltimore.” The Ravens had taken the hardware in partial payment for providing muscle in the Hard Ink team’s fight—that was back before losing two of their own had brought the Ravens into the fight of their own free will. No payment required.
Doc sighed and scrubbed his hand over the whitish-gray hair of his beard. “Guns stolen from the Church Gang. This is dirtier shit than normal, Dare.”
Dare nodded, knowing Doc hadn’t agreed with the club taking possession of the weapons captured during an ambush of the Church Gang a few weeks before. It had been one of their most heated meetings and most divided votes. And Dare understood why. From the very beginning, going all the way back to when Dare first pushed to rebuild the Ravens’ membership in the years after he’d arrived there, he’d made a commitment to Doc that he wasn’t trying to recreate the Diablos’ way of life in Maryland. That meant he didn’t want to turn the Ravens into One Percenters who prized violence as proof of loyalty and a rite of passage, and who fought and killed to defend territory, usually because they wanted to control drug and gun sales in that territory. Dare’s father’s full embracing of the hardest parts of the hard-core MC culture was what had created the ice-cold rift between Doc and his son when Dare was just a snot-nosed kid.
So those had been easy commitments for Dare to make—because he didn’t want to become his father. Ever.
None of that meant the Ravens were squeaky clean, though, because they weren’t. But Dare was more than comfortable with the places where the legality of their actions became blurred or outright crossed the line, because it made the protective work they did possible. Ends justifying means and all that. Sometimes doing a little wrong allowed you to do an even greater good. His version of morality probably seemed like splitting hairs to some, but Dare had lived both lives—he knew there was a difference, a big one. And it mattered a helluva lot.
So, yeah, Dare wasn’t in love with having these guns or needing to sell them. But the club had voted on it, and now they had to deal with that. “I don’t disagree. But now that we have them, I don’t want us holding on to them longer than we have to.” That weight he’d been feeling on his shoulders pushed down on him ever harder as the tension in the room thickened.
Phoenix sat up straight in his seat and jabbed his finger into the table. “I say we should keep a small cache for ourselves. Just in case. And when we sell them, we do it way outside of our own backyard. We don’t want all that heat on the market here. We don’t want it associated with us. And we sure as f*ck don’t want it used against us.”
“Amen,” Ike said. “And keep it out of Baltimore while we’re at it. Don’t want it traced back to the original source with the Church Gang either.”
Nods all around, though not all of those nodding looked happy about it.
“You gonna take this on, then, son?” Doc asked Phoenix. “If we gotta have our hands in this, then I agree with your thinking on it. As Road Captain, you’re best positioned to make the contacts and orchestrate the sale. Maybe Caine, too.”
Phoenix’s brown-eyed gaze cut from Doc to Caine and back again. “Count on it. Whatever the club needs me to do. Always.” To look at him, you might think Phoenix was just a laid-back player, joking and rarely serious. But the guy had a deep-seated sense of loyalty and protectiveness as intense as any man Dare knew. When it mattered, he was solid through and through and knew how to get shit done while staying shiny side up. Dare didn’t doubt his word for a minute.
“I’m in,” Caine said.
“Then Phoenix, Caine, and I will stay in touch on this and keep everyone informed,” Dare said. After that, they moved on to less divisive business—this Friday’s escort run, next Friday’s return to racing, and the restoration of open betting. “Anyone have anything else?”
“I had a Hang-Around express his interest in being considered for prospect status. Mike Renner,” Maverick said.
Hang-Arounds were friends of the club who were sizing up whether they were interested in applying for membership while the club evaluated the guy’s likely fit for the club in return. Some guys hung around and never applied. Some hung around and either they or the club realized the fit wasn’t there, especially if they weren’t on board for whatever reason with the club’s mission. Once they were out, they were out. Some guys went on to become prospects and later fully patched members.
Every single man around the table had gone through the latter process. A lot of guys who gravitated toward the Ravens were looking for a place to belong, like maybe they didn’t have a lot of that other places in their lives. Some were hard-core bike enthusiasts looking for like-minded friends. Others were specifically attracted by the Ravens’ protective mission for reasons of their own. It took all types.
“Discussion?” Dare asked. Taking on a new prospect was serious business. It meant they became a lifetime member of the family, could expect the club to have their back, and could be counted on to have their brothers’ backs, too. It also gave them an in on sensitive information and brought them into the fold of the club’s businesses and income streams.