21. ‘Sheriff George’

TWENTY-ONE

Son of a bitch, let my guard down for five minutes and all hell breaks loose. I’m so fucking sick of these racist bastards. I know these thoughts go against the badge I wear each and every day, but this has to end. And soon, before my little town becomes a war zone and ends up on the national nightly news for all the crazy motherfuckers in our country to see.

Carefully, Raven and I make our way down the hallway to the sounds of screaming, laughter, and gunfire. Since we have no idea what we’re gonna walk into, I make sure to be first out. Before we blindly walk in, I turn to Raven.

“Give me a minute to get a handle on what’s going on, Raven. No, don’t argue, I’m the sheriff of this town and believe it or not, I know what I’m doing, child. Just gonna take a peek then we can decide what’s the best way to approach this. Might want to put a call out for help, ’cause we have no idea how many injured or dead.”

That last word has Raven close her eyes and shiver. Fuck, didn’t think on that one. As I move out it hits me, Raven has a third of her club sisters out there and more are on the way. I’ve got three of my deputies out there and as far as we knew, before we went to the office, two injured women. I move silently toward the end of the hallway. Once there I take a deep breath and slowly lean forward to see what the hell is going on. What I see has my mind go blank for five seconds. Then I quickly turn around and move toward Raven. This is worse than I even thought it would be. She’s waiting for me impatiently.

“Raven, you got a back door?”

“Running away, Sheriff?”

I shake my head, closing my eyes for a split second for patience.

“No, what I’m thinking is one of us goes out the back, gets into my vehicle, which thanks to Tank is bulletproof. Then we make a grand entrance. That should give the other one enough time to take a few of those Thunder Cloud Knuckle Brotherhood down. They’ve got everyone in your main room. Now, don’t run out there, but what I saw was Stephanie, Kiwi, and Peanut have been stripped down to their underwear. Shadow looks to be unconscious, covered in blood, half unclothed. Panther, Avalanche, and Jersey are also beat to shit but awake and warily watching the brotherhood. Tink is who they are working on right now. No, don’t, Raven, let me finish. The assholes have her kutte and T-shirt off, but she has her jeans and boots on and a bra. She’s up against I guess one of their, don’t know what to call it, so I say like you do, prospect. They are fighting. And from what I saw Tink is winning, kicking his skinny ass.”

At that moment we hear a gunshot then nothing else.