Chapter 12: STEEL

Twelve

STEEL

A fter all these months out of prison, I finally switched back to cigarettes. Nothing tastes better than hand-rolled American Spirits. I know all the dangers, so I keep it to one cigarette in the morning with whatever coffee I pick up from the gas station, one cigarette with my liquor in the evening and a cigarette after sex.

Haven't fucked since before I went in. I don't feel like I'm missing much. All the chicks hanging around the club look worse for wear. Opioid addiction has fucked with every last inch of America and getting head from a cracked out chick about to pass out holds no interest to me.

It's not easy to find good women. Hawk lucked out by not getting his ass sent to prison. I find it funny he's the one who found a woman first. Women always preferred me. I was always the sober one, the one who could hold a conversation without embarrassing myself.

Now my brother has everything I thought I would have by his age and I'm a goddamn felon. It's hard not to feel like a screw up. Like my father would have been disappointed in me, even if he was the one who told me to accept the plea and promised me everything would be okay when I got out. I was only in prison to keep bigger charges away from Gideon – what he did to that woman in the desert. So I pled guilty and did my time for a good cause.

Dad promised everything would be fine.

Nothing could have been further from the truth. I was in prison while pieces of dad were getting put in the ground. Didn't see his grave until they had the stone finished. I've had to bury others since I got out. Friends. Family. I almost can't stand it. It's a part of life and I get that, but life might be worth all that shit if you had a good woman laying next to you. A woman with a nice tight pussy, big tits, and lips that fit perfectly around your dick.

Club rules won't stop me from letting a woman of any goddamn color suck me off if her lips are the ones I want.

Not like I've met a woman I want in a while…

Southpaw: Three clubs are suspects for the bodies in the desert. Got the list from Tamiya. Midnight SS . Blood Riders. Rebel Vipers.

He sends me the location of all three clubs. My job is simple. Ditch my Barbarian gear, wear a white button down shirt, dress like a more serious type of gangster and collect information in biker strongholds. Out of the three clubs Southpaw lists out, the obvious villains stand out.

Midnight SS.

I had my fair share of run-ins with the Aryan Brotherhood in prison, including some fucked up shit I had to do to secure my protection. Those memories from prison are the ones I want to push to the back of my head – the dark shit I had to do to survive. It doesn't matter where you're locked up in this country, you have to be strong to survive. Not just strong. You have to be cunning and willing to fuck shit up if necessary. I had to get so goddamn comfortable with hurting people that I sometimes scare myself.

I ride to the Rebel Vipers stronghold first. Their clubhouse is on the outskirts of Omaha, Nebraska around 5 hours away from the Old Route 66 highway entrypoint in Missouri. Several Blackwoods and Sinclairs own businesses at that point of the highway.

Magnum is one of the first Sinclairs to invest in businesses out west with his real estate ventures in Santa Fe. Mostly Blackwoods and Shaws have businesses out there. But our family owns a gas station near Joplin, MO, run by Caitlin Sinclair. Juliette was the target of the main attack, so Southpaw suspects the Sinclair family may be the target.

These folks might be just as likely as a bunch of Americans who run around calling themselves SS like they forgot what side of the damn war our granddads and great-granddads were on… I barely graduated high school and I know that. You get sick of their shit when you have to listen to the Aryan Brotherhood talk their shit in prison.

I park my bike in Omaha at the rental Southpaw arranged for me. It's a small double wide about ten miles away from the Vipers clubhouse with a small Ford Escape parked out front that he wants me to use for surveillance. The damn thing looks like a mom van. I don't care if Tylee "kindly" donated it to our cause… I suspect she just wanted her brother to fund a new F-150 truck for her.

I hang out at biker bars all week before one of the gang members talks to me. He's a new recruit, easy to manipulate because of how green he is. Five years in prison teaches you how to spot the gullible. It starts as a matter of survival, but you can only pretend to be a predator for so long before you actually become one.

The recruit, Luke, drops his ID right in front of me and I read it in a flash. He's twenty-three years old, lives in Nebraska, and from the looks of that ID picture, he's been around bikes his entire life. I get him hammered, let him beat me at pool, and I find out everything I can about the Vipers.

His daddy is the gang leader and although they are into some messy shit… they have absolutely no issues at all with the Rebel Barbarians. I keep my identity a secret, giving him a fake name and a detailed backstory that I steal after one of my old cellmates. Thank you, George the tree cutter from Montana.

Luke must be the dumbest of his brothers, because he spills all the information I could possibly want. He even invites me back to the clubhouse, but I can't risk anyone older than him placing me from a charity ride or anything like that.

I just keep him drinking and then give the bartender $100 to get him home safe before I take my mostly-sobered-up ass back to my temporary housing. No leads here. The only thing I did was worsen my alcohol dependence. I don't see the point in contacting Southpaw until I get some sleep.

A sunbeam blasting warmth across my face wakes me up around 11 a.m. the next day. Drinking never keeps me asleep past noon. It's much better to treat a hangover with more alcohol than with sleep. Dad always used to say that. I piece together something moderately healthy and workout for forty-five minutes before I call Southpaw.

After prison, my routine for looking after myself has become both meticulous and non-negotiable. The only things I'm missing are a pair of pretty lips to cum on or to cum in. I'm not too picky.

Southpaw picks up after two rings. I can hear his son gurgling in the background, so he must be busy on dad duty or diaper duty. I can't tell which would be worse.

"What happened last night?"

He knows I've been tracking that recruit.

"Got the kid drunk. He spilled his deepest secrets. Typical bullshit. Nothing about the club."

"Fuck," Wyatt says with a frustrated groan. I hear Anna clear her throat disapprovingly in the background.

"I'll track down the Midnight SS next."

"Are you up for such a long trip?"

"I've got nothing better going on. After so much time in a cage, it feels pretty good to ride again."

"Enjoy that freedom," Wyatt says wistfully as Junior gurgles loudly. "I have Ruger watching Oske closely while we investigate to make sure she isn't up to any bullshit."

"You trust Ruger to watch a woman?"

"No. But if Oske finds out he's watching her, she'll know I'm not fucking around. One wrong move and I'll handle business the way our fathers would have wanted."

He doesn't know how much that comforts me to hear.

"I'll keep you posted on what happens when I get there."

"Midnight SS," he says wistfully. "Sounds fucked up. Doesn't ring a bell though."

"I'll call you when I get there."

"Stay safe, brother."

I take my time driving out there. In a hurry, I could make the drive in two days, but this time I drag it out to seven. It's something in me that doesn't want to get close to the Midnight SS motherfuckers.

It's this deep instinct I've got that they're the ones looking for trouble. But why? Putting the business with the Blue Blood Knights behind us was supposed to mean an end to shit like this.

I don't want to do something that sends me back to prison. I would rather die than go back there and I'm too afraid to tell anyone. Especially not my twin brother. I can't help but think if he were the one behind bars, he would have handled it much better than me. I can't help thinking that he's always been better than me. Now, I suppose there's proof of that. I'm a felon. He isn't.

If I can do something to redeem myself and to make up for my mistakes, maybe it's helping the club to solve this mystery. Who wants to punish us? Who wants to hurt our families? And how can we stop them…