Three guys wearing Inferno Motorcycle Club patches.
“I fucking told you,” Crunch said.
I didn’t say anything until we were in the parking lot, away from the building. Then I screamed incoherently, the anger I felt toward the club coloring everything. “Fucking motherfucker shit!”
“We need to get out of here now,” Crunch said.
A few miles away, we stopped to call Crunch’s wife. I’d never seen Crunch so terrified as he was when he made the call to tell his wife to get out of town. I stood there while he gave her instructions, my mind turning over what had happened.
“Shit’s gone down,” he said. “Get the paperwork and your weapon from the safe, just like we planned. The bags are in the car, right? Good girl.” He paused. “Don’t take anything else. Leave the note on the kitchen counter. I’m staying with you until you’re on the road. Get out of town and call me. We’ll give you a place to meet us.” He hung out on the phone with her for a few minutes, then turned to me, exhaling loudly.
“She and MacKenzie are on their way.”
“They’re going to know something’s up when she and Mac are gone, Crunch,” I said. I was trying to work out what we were going to do next, but I was flying by the seat of my pants here.
Crunch shook his head. “She'll leave a note for me, saying she finally left me, that she went back to her mother's in Puerto Rico. Her mother will cover for her, and there’s no way the club is going there to verify it.”
“You thought this through,” I said. At least he had some semblance of a plan.
“I confronted Mad Dog about the discrepancies in the accounts a couple months ago. It was stupid, obviously. I know that now. But I was doing the books, and it was just a discrepancy- that's all it was. No big deal. I thought Benicio was ripping us off, at first. Mad Dog brushed it off, said he'd take care of it with Benicio. But then the vote with the cartel thing came up. My curiosity got the better of me."
"And you started poking around online," I said.
"Yeah," Crunch said. "The past couple weeks. I was getting together enough evidence. Figured to accuse the club President of something like that, it would have to be ironclad. I wanted to make sure it was."
"He accused you," I said. "Brought it to the officers for vote. Sent me here to make sure me and Tank took you out."
"I thought I was pretty safe after I let it go and backed off," Crunch said. "I made a plan with April, but still. I didn't really expect this, not now."
"All three of us were supposed to be finished off," I realized.
"We all dissented on the cartel thing," Crunch said.
Shit. I knew it was a big deal when I didn't vote with him on the cartel alliance, but pissed off enough to fucking kill me? Kill all three of us? It was crazy, even for Mad Dog. "Blaze didn't vote for it either."
"Yeah, but he's off traveling with the Old Lady," Crunch said.
Blaze was the Vice President of the MC, and had no qualms about disagreeing with Mad Dog, on the cartel deal or on anything else.
"Do we even know where they are?” I asked.
Blaze and I weren't exactly on speaking terms when he left. In fact, the last time I saw him had been at the club vote, when I'd voted against Mad Dog. Blaze had tried to talk to me, but I wasn't in the mood for talking, not at that point. Not after an all night bender. I'd known Mad Dog was going to bring it up for vote, and I'd gone all out. I was still shithoused at the vote. Blaze had followed me home. The last time I saw him was as he sped away as I threw a bottle at his bike, glass shattering on the ground.
I felt a flush of shame just thinking about it, about how our friendship had spiraled. About how I had spiraled down. Fuck him, though - he was the one who had been so detached from the club the past year. If he'd have been more involved, none of this shit would be going down. Tank would still be alive.
Tank was dead because of Blaze's lack of involvement. So screw guilt. Blaze was the one who should feel guilty.
"Blaze and Dani made a big deal about keeping it a secret," Crunch said. That was a good thing. Otherwise, they would probably be dead.
I stood there, while Crunch dialed Blaze. "His phone is off. I'll keep trying the cell. And I'll track down where they are. If they haven't taken any precautions to lie low, it shouldn't take me that long."
"What we need to do is hole up somewhere and wait for April and Mac."
Inferno Motorcycle Club
Los Angeles, California
“Shut the door behind you,” Mad Dog said. The three men stood just inside the back room, Mad Dog’s office area. Office was a loose term for what it was. It was a small room in the back of the clubhouse, a converted empty warehouse in an area of town that consisted of industrial buildings with dubious reputations.
“It went good, Boss,” Mud said. Mud was an imposing man, a solid block of muscle, his bald head covered in tattoos.
“Everything went down as planned, then.”
“Yeah, Prez,” Mud said. “You don’t have to worry about anything. Like we said on the phone, it was done. Burned that bitch to the ground.”