“Fuck you.”
“Does Shark know what happened to the other three guys I roughed up?”
“Fuck you.”
Zach cocked the gun and returned it to the skin below Bones’s shorts.
“How many loans has he purchased from our clients?”
“Fuck you.” Despite the bold words, a line of sweat broke out across Bones’s forehead.
“So the really hard way, then?” Zach pulled out his phone and scrolled through his contacts. “Hey, Viper, gonna need a cleanup crew, ASAP.” After getting confirmation from Viper that three prospects would be there in under ten minutes, Zach returned the gun to Bones knee.
“Okay, last chance. You the one who roughed up our girls?”
Sweat was running in rivulets down Bones’s red face now. “You’re not going to shoot me in broad daylight. Fuck you.”
Zach pulled the trigger sending lead straight through Bones’s knee. The howl of pain was epic. A high-pitched squeal worthy of a slasher movie. “Shit, man, you scream like a scared high school girl. Do I have your attention now?” He held the gun against Bones’s chest.
“Oh shit. Oh fuck. What the fuck did you do to me? I’m gonna lose my fucking leg?” Bones writhed on the ground and was actually sniveling.
“Bring it down a notch or two there, drama queen. If you shut up and answer my questions, you’ll be at a hospital in under twenty minutes. You won’t lose your damn leg. So…from the top?”
Then the floodgates opened and Bones forgot all about loyalty to Shark and the gang. “Yes. I was the one who had orders to go after the girls when the strip club closed. Shark knows you’re coming after the guys you find here. He doesn’t give a shit.” Pausing to breathe, Bones tried to shift and ended up flopping to his back and groaning.
“Keep going. What’s the end goal here? Money?”
Eyes closed and face ashen, Bones shook his head. “No. Drive you guys out. Create chaos in town by dealing H. Weaken you financially with the loans. Move in and push you out.”
Shit. Shark’s balls were getting too big for his brain if he thought he could drive the Handlers out of Townsend. His numbers were impressive, but if all of them were blubbering little boys like Bones, he didn’t stand a chance. Still, if a war ensued, lives would be lost on both sides. Arrests would be made. It would be a costly fucking mess.
The rumble of a motorcycle alerted him to the cavalry’s arrival. While he waited for the prospects to find him, he leaned closer to Bones. “Tell Shark he’s wasting his time. He could come at us with a hundred of you shit-for-brains little boys and he’d still lose. He can take every fucking penny we have and we’ll still gut him and your entire gang. Stay the fuck out of Townsend.”
With that, a van and two bikes pulled to a stop about twenty feet from Zach. Confident Bones wasn’t going anywhere, Zach moved to meet the prospects.
“Hey,” Screwball said. He was Zach’s favorite, despite his name, which was given to him because he was always screwing around. The guy was the master of practical jokes. Always had the brothers cracking up. Unless they were the ones at the butt of the joke. Then they wanted to kill him.
He kept his antics to parties and down time. At twenty-three, the dark haired, former Marine was eager for the patch and did every fucking thing asked.
“Hey,” Zach bumped his fist against Screw’s. “Take this sack of shit and dump him outside the ER in their county. Sorry about the mess.” He pointed to the blood puddle expanding across the asphalt.
“No worries. Bleach ought to take care of it. Hey, LJ,” he called to the prospect emerging from the van. “You and Fox wanna load him up? I’ll get started on clean up.”
“On it.” LJ, short for Little Jack, who was not little in the least, hopped in the driver’s seat and backed the van close to Bones who was ashen and whose chest was rising and falling in a shallow but rapid pattern.
“Need me to stick around?” Zach only asked because he knew they’d say no. No prospect worth his salt would make a patched member help with the shit detail. They’d appear lazy. Unwilling to pull their weight. Not brother material. Because if they weren’t willing to take on a menial job, how could they be trusted when shit got real?
“Nah, we got this. You did the hard part.” Screw stuck his head in the back of the van and pulled out a bucket and a gallon of bleach.
Zach snorted. “I had the fun part.”
“Can’t argue with that.” Screw barked out a laugh. “We need to be gentle with this guy or is it okay for him to get a bump or two on the way?”
“Treat him however you’d like. If he’d been more willing to talk, you could be at the bar drinking instead of cleaning his DNA off the ground. Told him I’d get him to a hospital. As long as he can speak well enough to give Shark my well wishes, I don’t care what condition he arrives in.”