Chapter 6

(Sinn)

We are all just tragedy waiting to happen

“Mom wants to know if you’re done brooding?”

His brother’s voice jarred him out of a rather pleasant daydream. One that involved Saint, Night, and a spanking bench with a treasure trove of implements nearby.

“Fuck off Dougie and while you’re at it, tell her no.”

“She’s not going to be happy to hear that.”

“Do I look like I care what makes her happy right now? She ripped me away from my happiness so fuck her, fuck Gramps, fuck Pops and if I haven’t already said it, fuck you Dougie and fuck off.”

“You’d already said that.”

“Huh?”

“You told me to fuck off when I asked if you were done brooding,” Dougie said. “So, you said it twice.”

“And you can triple how much I meant it.”

“I’m not the one you should be pissed at. I thought it was a lame idea when they presented it and refused to be the one to set it up, so Travers did it.”

“And I’m gonna knock him on his ass the next time we’re in the same room.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

“Well, you’re not me and it won’t be the first time,” Sinn replied, blowing out a long breath before running his fingers through his tangled hair. “Thanks for not helping them do this to me.”

“Meh, I didn’t do it for you.”

“Didn’t say you did.”

There was silence for several seconds, then Sinn heard Dougie move and the chair across from him creak when Dougie sat down in it.

“What was it like?” Dougie asked.

“Getting kidnapped? It sucked! I thought the whole fuckin’ thing was real right up until Gramps showed up.”

“Naa, not that,” Dougie said. “I meant umm…the whole going blind thing. They keep changing the prescription on my glasses, making it stronger and stronger. Even then I get headaches from having to squint and everything gets grainy around the edges. My peripherals are shot. They’re probably going to yank my license the next time I go to the DMV.”

It was the last thing he expected and as pissed as he was about being here, it saddened him to learn that his brother was now dealing with the same shit that had been making Sinn’s life hell for years.

“It’s not going to be an easy adjustment,” Sinn said. “Some days I get up and for the first few hours things are clear enough that I don’t have to glide my fingertips over the surface of everything just to navigate. Everything after that is like slogging through sludgy gray fog. By the time the shadows are big enough to work out what something is, I’ve probably run into it.”

“Dumped my bike last week,’ Dougie said. “Took a turn too tight and landed in a drainage ditch.”

“What lie did you tell Pops?”

“That I got run off the road by a semi.”

‘Yeah, and what did he say to that?”

“Cursed about how they needed their own roads and had no respect for anyone driving beside them. Ranted about how many guys he’s known who’ve gotten wrecked by them, and how many people they’ve killed, the usual.”

“So, he bought it.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think Gramps did,” Dougie admitted. “He’s been shooting me the side eye every time we’re in the same room. I caught him checking out my bike too. Not sure what he was doing but I intend to go over every inch of it before I ride again. If I remember right, he put a GoPro on yours.”

“Yeah, that’s how he knew about my last three wrecks,” Sinn admitted. “You better hope he was just installing it, not looking to pull it so he could go through the footage.”

“Fuck!”

“I’m not gonna let them chain me up in that office,” Dougie growled. “It’s bad enough I let them convince me to take those goddamned online courses so I could learn finance. I don’t want that to be all I do.”

“Someone had to learn how to make the dirty money clean and you know Gramps would never allow an outsider to do it,” Sinn pointed out. “You were the only one of us who made it through high school without a record, it was a no brainer that you’d be the one to get that assignment.”

“Fuckin’ hated all that fuckin’ math!”

“As long as Gramps is living, you’ll find yourself doing plenty more things you’ll hate.”

“I wish he’d let you patch over.”

“Why?”

“To set a precedence.”

“Wrong precedence. If he ever did allow me to do it, it would just prove I was finally too much of a liability to keep on wearing the colors he created.”

“So, I’ve just got to show that I’d be more of a liability than you are.”

“You already are more of a liability,” Sinn pointed out. “You know where the money comes from, you know where it goes through to get scrubbed. Not only are you a target for other clubs, you’d be the first one the feds looked to turn.”

“I’d never flip on my family.”

“Not saying you would,” Sinn replied. “I’m telling you the facts of your situation and that the best way out of it all the way around isn’t to hide what’s going on with your vision, it’s to tell them. Trust me when I say your days of being trapped in the office would be over with, but they’ll take your keys the same way they take that desk, and then where will you be?”

“In the same hell as you I’m guessing.”

“Or worse. I’ve got someone out there looking for me. You’ve got no one. You’d better help yourself while you still can, or you’ll learn just how lonely a position that can be.”

He could hear Dougie’s breathing grow heavy and a little harsh as they sat in silence. Sinn tilted his face towards the window to feel the warmth of the sun against his skin. He’d have given anything to be out there riding beneath it, even if it meant riding bitch.

“There is someone,” Dougie said, pitching his voice so low even Sinn’s exceptionally honed hearing almost missed it.

“Who?”

“Vic.”

Sinn came half out of his chair at hearing that.

“Vic as in Victor Reigns? My Vic! The asshole who chose the club over me the moment they took my bike away?”

“It wasn’t that he chose the club, it..he just…”

“Wasn’t willing to fight them for me. Yeah, he made that clear!” Sinn snapped, grumbling as he settled back in his chair and shook his head at his brother.

“I know. I was there.”

“But clearly it didn’t matter to you until you found yourself potentially facing the same situation.”

“Not potentially. Doc. Filbert diagnosed me with the same disease as he did you. Said it tended to run in families, lucky us. We hit the jackpot in the gene pool. First poor fuckers to wind up with it in two generations,” Dougie said, his tone low but resolute.

“Then you’ve got some hard decisions to make.”

“There are days when I just want to get it out in the open while I can still see the looks on everyone’s faces when they find out.”

“And other days you want to drag it out as long as possible, enjoy as much freedom as you can, and hope something major pops off that will allow you to delay the inevitable even longer,” Sinn replied.

“Or go out in a blaze of glory.”

“Thus why you want out of that office.”

“I should be riding beside Vic,” Dougie said.

“Don’t you really mean you should be getting shot at alongside Vic, so maybe a bullet cuts you down and makes you a legend like the rest of the guys on the clubhouse wall, only you do know what would happen to Vic if you went out there with him and got yourself killed and he came back to the clubhouse with your corpse to present to our folks, don’t you? Not to mention what Gramps would do to him if Pops didn’t kill him outright.”

“He wouldn’t come back without me,” Dougie said with such certainty Sinn found himself once again wondering if they were talking about the same Vic.

“Are you trying to tell me you have a death wish now?”

“No. Maybe. I don’t fuckin’ know. The only thing I do know is that I don’t want to deal with this from behind a desk. If the world is going to fade into a flat gray blob, then I want it to happen on some two lane somewhere, throttle wide open and blue lights fading in the rearview.”

“Then I guess you’d better work out your exit strategy,” Sinn cautioned.

“Can you help me?”

Sinn slammed his fist on the arm of the chair. “How when I can’t even help myself! Sure, I can make it out the door, no problem. It’s not like anyone’s guarding me now that I’ve been dumped off here. Why would they? I leave at night and I won’t make it ten feet without tripping over Juniper Brush.”

“So slip out of here when the sun comes up,” Dougie suggested. “It’ll take hours for someone to figure out you’ve gone.”

“Gone where, the highway? I can’t hear it from here so I’ll have to head north and hope I don’t veer off course, not that I’ll get far. Even if I managed to avoid all the brush and the prickly pear cactus, the moles, voles, and pocket gophers have left enough holes around to resemble a minefield.”

“Don’t forget the armadillos.”

“How could I? I’ve still got scars from the barbed wire fence I crashed into the last time I tripped over one.”

They both laughed a little at that, then Dougie sighed, and the chair creaked, suggesting that he was about to take off.

“Heading back to the office?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Want me to come with?” Sinn suggested. “I can’t help you crunch the numbers but I’m sure I can figure out a way to fuck something up.”

“What good is that going to do me?”

“Plenty, if you agree to take the rap.”

“You’ve still got the most devious mind out of all of us,” Dougie said.

“And don’t you forget it,” Sinn warned. “Cross me and I promise to only use my powers for evil, and not the kind that would benefit you.”

“Heard and understood.”

“Then let’s get rolling,” Sinn said, following his brother’s shadow through the door and out into the main hallway. From there they headed through the den, then out the side door into a garage almost as massive as the house. The office was on the other side of it. Climate controlled and specially built to be fireproof, bullet proof and completely windowless. Sinn had always pitied his uncle Verne, who’d been relegated to spending the bulk of his time in there until a Mojave Rattlesnake had put an end to his tenure as the club’s financial officer, and his life, after a stroke and multi organ failure followed the bites.

A wave of cold smacked Sinn in the face the moment Dougie opened the door.

“Damn, what are you trying to do, attract a flock of penguins to do all the scut work for you?”

“It’d be nice considering how shitty at it Maddox is.”

“They’ve got him working in here too?”

“Not by his choice or mine,” Dougie admitted. “But it keeps him off mom’s radar which keeps the folks from going to war over him again.”

“Still?”

“If she were on her deathbed, I’m convinced that her dying words to Pops would be to cuss him out one last time for fuckin’ around with Maddox’s mother.”

“Screw that. Her ghost would come back to haunt him about it, and probably pitch a vase at his head.”

“And connect too. Remember that rolling pin she threw at him? And the cast iron skillet.”

“Don’t forget the butcher knife she threatened to cleave off a piece of his anatomy with,” Sinn added, in case his brother had forgotten about that.

“Remember how no one touched the stew that night after she threatened to add it to the pot once she’d hacked it off?”

“Yeah, we were all wondering what else was in there. Especially when Pops didn’t turn up at his usual spot at the table.”

They shared a laugh about that as Sinn walked around the room, letting his fingers trail over everything while he memorized the location of every device, from the fax machine to the telephone, and Dougie’s laptop too, though he doubted he be able to break into that to send a message.

Phone would be his best bet; fax would work in a pinch. No matter what it took, he was going to get a message to Saint, even if it meant going through his brother. Dougie would understand eventually, and if he didn’t, Sinn would be too far away to give a shit.