Chapter 11
Widow
There’s nothing worse than seeing a brother wounded. It was a reminder that we weren’t as invincible as we’d like to think. Country was black and blue from head to toe, and even though he still hadn’t fully woken up, Doc assured us that he was strong and would eventually come around. The waiting hadn’t been good for any of us. We were all on edge. We’d spent the last forty-eight hours stewing over who could’ve hurt our brother. The only thing keeping us from completely losing it was the fact Menace was making some headway on finding out who was behind Country’s attack. The guy was a fucking genius when it came to computers. Once he set his mind to it, there wasn’t anything he couldn’t do, so none of us were surprised when Viper called us all into church and informed us that Menace had news to share.
It was clear from looking at him Viper was exhausted. He’d been sitting with Country around the clock waiting for some sign that he was going to be okay—a sign we’d all been waiting on. The only reason he’d left his side was to deliver the information Menace had brought him. With a fierce look on his face, Viper started, “Menace believes he’s found the men who attacked Country. I’ve looked over the photographs, but I’ve never seen these boys before. Not part of any revival club or gang I’m aware of, so I’ve got no idea why they’d jump Country.”
He slid several photographs to the center of the table and waited as we all took a look. The second I saw the first guy’s face, I knew I’d seen him before. I reached for the picture, holding it up close, and that’s when it hit me. He was one of the men who’d come to party at Stilettos on the night of the game. I glanced down at the other images and recognized several of the others. When I was certain it was them, I turned to Viper and said, “They were at the strip club a week or so ago.”
“When?”
“The night the Titans played the Colts.” I pointed to one of the photos as I said, “One of them manhandled Izzy.”
“Yeah, and if I remember right, you fucked him up pretty good.”
“Yeah, I did.” I ran my hand over my goatee with a grumble. “But it was Country who ended up kicking them out and banning ‘em. And I gotta tell ya, they were pretty fucking pissed about the whole thing. They were mouthing off about payback, but it wasn’t anything we hadn’t heard before.”
Axel, our VP, shook his head. “Looks like they made good on their threat.”
“I thought they were just a bunch of blowhards. Never thought they’d have the fucking balls to come after any of us, especially not Country and his big ass.”
“You’re not the only one,” Lynch added. “We all saw what went down and thought the same.”
“This was over some drunk who got his ass kicked for manhandling one of the girls?” Hawk leaned forward and looked to me as he said, “I don’t know, guys. I’m not buying it. You have to have some pretty big balls to mess with the Sinners.”
“I have to agree.” Axel shook his head. “There’s gotta be more to it.”
“From the minute they walked through the door, I had a bad feeling about ‘em. No idea why, but something just wasn’t right. I kept an eye on them, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary until the shit went down with Izzy.”
“There has to be something we’re missing here.” Viper glared over at Menace as he asked, “What about that van? Were you ever able to find anything on it?”
“I tried, but I couldn’t get a clear view of the license plate from the street cams. I also went back and checked the parking lot on the night of Country’s attack, but there was no sign of it.”
“Damn. What exactly do you know about these assholes?”
“Honestly, not much. I’ve only been able to identify one of them.” Menace pointed to one of the photos as he said, “Dalton Grant. As far as I can tell, he doesn’t own any property here in town. For that matter, he doesn’t have any property anywhere, but he does have a credit card. He goes to Smokey’s Bar and Grill a couple of times a week. Makes me wonder if he’s got a place nearby. Maybe at one of those dive motels across the street. Thought we could go check it, see if we could bring him in, and have Shotgun have a go at him.”
Shotgun was chosen as the club’s enforcer because of his special talent for getting folks to talk. The man even had his own special rooms designed for extracting information from our adversaries, so I wasn’t surprised when he replied, “You get him here, and I’ll find out what we need to know.”