Chapter 14: STEEL

Fourteen

STEEL

I 'm a hot fucking mess when I roll into Globe, Arizona, home of the Midnight SS. The small town wasn't always packed to the gills with racist shitbags. I spend so much time making my way down the old Route 66 highway and getting drunk in every bar to get all the information possible.

It helps to be a conversationalist. It's one of the ways I'm better than my twin brother. He's a brooding alcoholic. I'm the chatty kind. It makes me better with women, better with people in general and so far, it's paying off.

Only thing is, the shit I'm learning about these Midnight SS motherfuckers makes me want to stay far away from them.

When you're dealing with folks like that, you want to strike first but striking first means risking time in prison. Time away from my brother. He already looks so much younger than me. He might be leaner, with less muscle on his frame, but prison aged me more than I thought it would. I don't want to go back.

The pressure pushes on the back of my head with total agony. I wait until midnight to scope out the Midnight SS clubhouse. I take my bike to a safe house pre-arranged by Magnum where he's also left me a car to tail the wannabe Nazis, even if it seems like a trap. A bright red Chevy Silverado. Seriously? It's what I have and I trust Magnum, so I take the truck. Red? He could have at least found a silver one…

I blast the air conditioning, but it barely seems effective against the Arizona heat. I know the entire family loves it out here, but I want the winds to blow me out across Route 66 all the way to Santa Monica. Somewhere with an ocean breeze and bikinis. Fuck this heat.

My conversations with various folks in the know in various bars across the country helps me to find the clubhouse. Bikers talk to bikers and I know how to play my cards. I talk felon shit with other felons, biker shit with bikers. You get the point. Everyone has their thing and you find out where to meet ‘em and keep ‘em until you get the information you need.

I know the Midnight SS clubhouse is off U.S. 60, about fifteen miles off-road in the middle of the desert. How you find your point depends on who you believe. I have my pick of the finest drunks in Texas… I leave their differing opinions up to a coin flip and head West off the highway.

There might be guards around the clubhouse tonight, although I was assured the Midnight SS are so secretive, they don't bother with guards. Not enough folks know of their existence. Yet, if they do exist, and if they do have any power, they know of ours. I don't like how that makes me feel.

Just when we got peace, I don't want to start a war. I want to lay my father's memory to rest. I want Hunter to raise his family. Shit, I have some catching up to do unless I want my twin brother to be the one who gets every damn thing in this life while I have nothing.

The winds need to change.

I turn off the headlights and try to get the engine as quiet as possible as I roll my way across the barely-marked roads towards the clubhouse. I suspect my coin flip has me pointed in the right direction because of the tire tracks pressed into the dirt.

This could just be a popular place for dirt bikes, but the hair on the back of my neck raises with the raw instinct that suggests I'm approaching something dark and dangerous. The first thing I notice, even before the Midnight SS club house, is a large towering something rising out of the desert.

Two willow trees. Big willow trees with large boughs. Every last inch of my body drips in sweat. I drive the truck behind one of the willow trees and park it there between the tree and the clubhouse. If there was anyone around, they would have shot me by now. Shit, this is Arizona. Anyone could shoot me.

I reach for my gun and hop out of the truck. Send the felon on the suicide mission… Who gives a fuck if he makes it out alive, right? I can't complain. I don't care if I make it out alive either.

The clubhouse is a lot cleaner than you would expect. No graffiti, even if you would expect a place like this left unguarded out in the desert to pick up a few tags. I suppose folks are too smart to fuck this clubhouse up if they even know it exists. I wish I felt safer because of my pistol, but it's just so fucking hot that I can't help but feel this low-level irritation.

It's not just the beads of sweat dripping down my neck. The air is thick, wet, and that makes it hard for it to enter my lungs. I stuff down the feeling I have that some shit could pop off at any minute. It would be pretty damn hard for any living thing to avoid detection out here – something I should take note of in case the folks who own this place come back.

But how often do bikers really use their clubhouse?

After scanning the building for a security system, I find nothing. What I notice outside the clubhouse ends up being plenty to send a chill down my spine. The willow trees aren't as benign as I thought. When I get closer to them, I begin to smell a distinct metal smell before I notice blood at the foot and nooses hanging from the boughs. Two nooses from each large bough of the tree, each one about six feet apart.

What the fuck? I take my phone out and use the flash to get pictures to send to Wyatt. When the flash goes off, I can see brown splatter on the tree trunks. Blood. It has to be blood. I shove my phone in my pocket and walk back to the clubhouse. My breathing sounds heavier. It could just be the heat, but something about those trees makes my blood run cold.

You get a heightened sense of danger when you're in prison. I can smell a fight based on the noise levels at breakfast. I could always sense when to keep my shoes close.

I can tell something bad happened here. Bad shit happens here on a regular basis. The doors and windows are all latched, but I find a weakness in an unlatched basement window. It would be much easier for Hunter to fit through than me…

I did everything in my power to keep bulky muscle on my body in prison. Without guns, without my family, I needed my body to be my primary source of protection. I left with only three scars from fights. One long scar on the left side of my torso, one on my right leg, and another on the back of my neck.

The scars don't bother me because they just add another way I'm different from Hunter. We would always fight over who was tougher and usually, Hunter would win. After prison, that has most likely changed. I might even be the quiet one now… at least when I'm not drunk off my ass.

I have to suck my belly in and scrape my shoulder to slide into the Midnight SS clubhouse basement. I land in something sticky and have to stop myself from letting out a very unmanly yelp…

Something ain't right here.

I almost swear, but I just stabilize myself against the wall instead because… I'm pretty fucking sure I'm hearing something. It's dark. Too dark for me to see now that I'm blocked from the moonlight outside. I hold my breath. The noise gets louder. It's not just rats running around the basement, although I hear the familiar sound of their nasty fucking paws…

I hear breathing.

Slow. Human breathing.

I grab my pistol. Adrenaline courses through me so fucking fast, my night vision improves almost instantly. I can at least see movement. Three small figures that must be rats or mice running across the basement floor and then a large lump. The source of the human breathing.

Did you even load the pistol, you stupid motherfucker?

I can taste blood on the back of my tongue.

I don't like this.

"Put your hands up, or I'll blow your fucking head off," I growl with false confidence.