CHAPTER TEN
*Vincent “Vee” - Road Captain*
Waiting at our service location for Kal, Coty, Kio, and Zane to show, getting here “stat” turns into thirty minutes, and thirty minutes turns into an hour. An hour where not a single word is exchanged between Brodi, Baylor, Chaz, and me.
No one has to spell out that we are anxious as fuck about this unexpected meeting. Especially Brodi and me.
My lighter flame fights against the strengthening breeze pushing across the street from the gulf. The shake in my hands only makes lighting the joint that much more difficult. I barely manage to get the task done without burning the tips of my fingers.
That glorious, crackling blossom of red as I take in the first hit nearly matches the bloody sun creeping up behind the old devil attraction. Eyes narrowed down the length of my lifeline, I stare at the blazing globe, hoping its intense rays will burn away the flashes of visions that keep coming back to me while each puff dulls all the other sensations in my body.
Though the silenced gunshot was a clear enough indication, I still struggled to believe Kal followed through with capping her dad. When I overheard them discussing The Cleaner — something they usually only do for special cases that truly need to disappear as though they never existed to begin with — I had to see the drop for myself.
Sure enough, I witnessed Kal and The Cleaner make the transfer with my own eyes. A slack arm fell out of the loosely wrapped tarp as they wheeled the body inside on a gurney like something out of a television murder drama.
Plenty of vacant eyes and cold, blue limbs saturate my memories, but this loss just hits differently.
Probably because I have already clocked out of this lifestyle and only just now am willing to fully admit it, if only to myself.
The worst part is that there is only one person who has ever been able to help me completely dissociate, and in a matter of hours, I went from finally having her to watching that precious gift turn to dust and slip through my tattooed fingers.
Lace will never recover; this will break her, and she will never be the same. I may not have pulled the trigger, but I got really fucking close and am still just as guilty by association. When she finds out, I am all but dead to her. We all are.
The first tease of my high covers me like a warm blanket that slowly grows more weighted and smothering as a rush of paranoia slams into me the next instant.
“Where the fuck is your prospect?” I bite out, throwing the question at Brodi. I promised Zane I was in his debt for cleaning up after my first assignment this week. Last I heard he was sent to make sure Lace stays local.
Brodi stops pacing, his bugged eyes snapping to mine. “Supposed to be watching Lace still. Someone has to stay with her. I texted him after we got the call, told him to disregard the meeting and stay with her instead.”
Baylor and Chaz come to life at the mention of her name, their focus jolting up from their dazed attention on the ground to bounce between our conversation. But the convo starts and ends there.
“Is she okay?” Chaz tries to prod.
Baylor knows better than to ask. So does Chaz, but he tends to lean a little more ballsy than the rest of us.
Brodi shrugs and resumes pacing, mumbling under his breath, holding a mental conversation no one but him can hear as his thumbs tap against each of his fingers one by one over and over again. When we all got here, he was clearly on blow, calm and cool, but that has since worn off, and he is back to firing on way more cylinders than his body should be able to handle.
I step toward him and hold out what remains of my joint. He accepts my offer and sucks in everything it has left in one, aggressive inhale, cheeks puffing at the end as he fights against coughing. The fiery tip gets too close to his finger and thumb, and he quickly flicks it away, shaking the sting out.
A quiet, warning whistle draws our attention toward Baylor. He nods in the direction of the gate we always enter through. Chaz launches to his feet and helps Bay stand just as the rest of our group, minus the Chaplain, round the corner.
Stifling tension comes packaged with their arrival as we group into a circle. Baylor, Chaz, Brodi, and I share uncertain glances. The paranoia that teased me a moment ago buzzes stronger through my nervous system as I watch Kal give Kio a barely noticeable downward tilt of his head in seemingly slow motion.
Fight and flight instinct kicking in, I pull my gun and stride backward. Brodi, Chaz, and Baylor are just as quick to react, taking equal parts defensive and offensive stances like mine. But none of us are the target. Coty is.
In three rapid moves, our enforcer gets in front of our vice president, distracts him with a flat palm to his face, then takes him out with a rapid, upward punch to the solar plexus. Coty stumbles backward and falls to his hands and knees, wheezing. Kio swipe-kicks him behind the wrists next, laying him out flat, before pinning him to the cracked concrete with his knee and doing a full body search, removing everything in his possession — weapons, phones, watch, and last but not least, wrangling off his club jacket.
There is no need for an explanation when an undressing goes down like that. Coty fucked up and is suffering the consequences. Whatever he did must have pissed Kal off pretty bad for the task to be passed onto Kio like Coty is nothing more than an assignment to delegate.
Baylor, Chaz, Brodi, and I disarm. Kio passes all the loot over to Kal, yanks Coty off the ground, binds his hands, and situates him nose to nose with our superior.
The show is a warning for the rest of us; rank and brothership holds no weight if we step out of line. When our prez addresses his former vice, the message extends to everyone else listening too: “Coty is no longer permitted to interact with Lace in any capacity whatsoever during the rest of our stint here.”
To twist the blade in even deeper, Kal hardly gives him time to register. Kio grabs Coty by the bicep, drags him to the maw of the building and pushes him inside to walk the red devil tongue like a plank, instantly forcing Coty to correct any potential negative reaction that might explode out of him or else risk acting out in front of our meal ticket.
Instead, Coty has to internally combust and seethe in silence as the remaining six of us enter behind him in no particular order and create a wide circle around the empty table in the center of the room, the early morning sun only barely high and bright enough to reflect in a stream off its glass.
Baylor drops the folder of “coupons” onto the table. I dig out the one in my pocket and drop it on top. Kal unlocks the wheels and nudges the table into the shadows with the reinforced tip of his boot.