“More suspicious than asking for a burner?” I raise an eyebrow.
He shrugs. “Weirder things have happened around here.” Chaos relaxes against the back of his chair. “Look. You’ll be stuck here while Molly’s in the picture. It works out good, and it might also be good for The Kid to have someone close to her age around. Could help Marty get her to talk so they can take her home. Watching Jenna will be a walk in the park.”
Sure. He obviously hasn’t spent as much time quarreling with her as I have.
“It’s settled,” he announces with a slap of his hand on the table. “Back to the real issue. The Devil’s Breed.”
“What’s your feeling, there?” Loki asks.
Chaos sighs and then runs his teeth over his bottom lip. “Strike hard, but strike smart. We can’t go in guns a blazing just because they poked us in the ribs a few times. If we don’t do things right, we’re just inviting the other chapters to get involved. It needs to be clean, and it needs to be discreet.”
“I think after what you said about the reporter, they’ve poked more than a few ribs,” Highway quips.
Chaos tips his head as though to agree. “Maybe so, but the way I see it is we have one shot at this. We go in half-cocked and fuck this up, they get time to reinforce their walls. We need to besure what we’re going to do will work before we do it. Having the girls here will give us time to do that.”
“And whatareyou proposing we do?” I ask carefully.
He holds my gaze for a long moment before glancing to each member at the table. “Let’s be realistic. A man like Smoke who’s employed a long-term strategy like this? He’s got backup plans. Lots of them. He doesn’t start this level of shit without thinking it through to ensure he gets what he wants—our territory. We cut off one head, he’ll strike with another.” He huffs a disbelieving laugh. “The Devil’s Breed used to be allies with the Fallen Aces. When Tuck was at the head of the table, they gotthisclose to ending the skin trade in the northern states.” He holds his index finger and thumb before his face, squinting at the tiny gap. “Smoke is the reason they turned that around. He saw the vast amounts of cash going down the drain every time the club shut down another arm of the pipeline, and he got greedy. The only way to end this is to end him.”
“We all know he was responsible for the resurgence,” Jinx says. “But how do we make sure the next guy won’t be the same? Half them motherfuckers are just as full of ambition.”
“By taking the Devil’s Breed name out of Missouri altogether.”
The silence is thick enough to hear a pin drop.
Loki breaks the tension with a scoff, Highway then chuckling at the absurdity of it. Circus leans forward, elbows on the table, face indiscernible as usual, but I can guarantee even he thinks Chaos’s plan is madness.
“You want to make their chapter patch over?” Darko asks, seemingly confused.
“You’re shooting for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow with that one, Pres.” Loki shakes his head. “Bags not being the fall guy who has to tell them that. Don’t fancy being hung,drawn, and quartered by the officers who refuse to bend the knee.”
“You think I’d give them that option?” Chaos asks, leaning back in his chair to sling one arm over the back.
“That’s how you made it sound,” Highway points out.
“How do you suggest we get rid of the patch then?” I ask with a slight lilt of humor in my words. “Kill the lot of them?”
Chaos stares me down, all eyes in the room on him, as he says, “Why not?”
FIFTEEN
JENNA
“You’re allowedto say no any time you want,” Darla assures Mila as the minivan pulls away, jostling us down the driveway. “If you don’t want them to touch you, tell them. If you want to ask questions first, do it.”
The sheriff’s department returned shortly after two in the afternoon to bundle us up for our group medical. Tall green pines flash by the window as the vehicle picks up speed, dirt spraying out behind it.
Two motorbikes hang back from the filth, escorting the van. Loki and the guy with the lion’s mane of hair. Apparently, Chaos didn’t feel comfortable packing us off with law enforcement without a chaperone. Why? I’m not sure. Does he think they’d throw us behind bars the first chance they’d get? Drop us off on the roadside with nothing but the clothes on our backs and well wishes for a better future?
Use us as bait?
Turn us against them?
Regardless, it keeps me on edge as the van makes its way into Temperance, pulling into the hospital car park a short while later under threatening gray clouds. The reverberance ofthe bikes rattles the vehicle’s interior when they pull up behind, engines loud before they’re cut off. I drag a deep breath through my nose as the side door slides open, cold air rushing around my ankles.
“This way, ladies.” The deputy who came out this morning, Keller, assists Mila from the van.
She steps off the running board on shaky legs, eyes wide while she takes in the unconventional building before us.