Chapter Thirteen: Exposure
Chalk
We were holed up in another meeting with every single one of the club members in attendance. I had yet to tell the crew about the guy who showed up at my house, but now was the time to speak up.
Sarah didn’t know that her father was strapping up every day. That every time I dropped her off at school, I winced. I watched her enter the school to make sure she went straight inside. I was there at school drop-off in the afternoon too. Right when the school bell rang. I watched all corners. Checked for bikes. Left. Right. Left. Right. Nothing. I kicked myself for not getting his license plate when he’d been in my damn driveway.
It had been a long time since I’d seen everyone’s face in the same room.
“Gunner!Man, where have you been? I haven’t seen you in so long,” I greeted my old friend. Seeing the guys made me think about something else other than being paranoid.
“Man, I’ve been out of commission for a minute. I hurt my back and I’ve been keeping it low key. It’s only coming good right now,” Gunner replied, sheepish.
“Damn. How did you mess it up?”
Gunner ran a hand over his head. “Man, you don’t wanna know. I slipped off my bike moving around a corner, when it was raining the other week. Hit a slick path. Threw me right out. I skidded off the road – lucky there was no big ditch. Just threw me down the road a little bit.”
“Why didn’t we know about it?” I asked.
Gunner hunched his shoulders up. “Bones knew. I’ve been resting, ain’t nothing serious to me in the long run. You know how it is when you fall off your bike. You take your lumps then get right back on and ride.”
“I do. I feel you. I haven’t fallen off for a long time. Touch wood,” I replied.
Gunner chuckled. “And keep it that way.”
Our bookkeeper Maverick was in the room as well. He was a dark horse, and one I didn’t see regularly because he was busy working on the books.
“Hey, Mav. You good?” I called out.
Maverick grinned at me. “Doing good, keeping the lights on for us with Numbers. We’re doing fine.”
“Good to know.” I nodded at him.
Bones tapped his palm on the table to get the meeting started. “Hey. Thanks everybody for giving up your night to be here. I thought it was worth everyone being in the room for this. I know individually, but we need to get a collective consensus on things.”
“This about that snake, Rocky? The second snake?” Bear slammed his fist into his palm in anger.
Bones pointed to Bear. “Yup, you got it. The information we wanted to know has come in.”
“What info is that?” Smoke inquired as he sipped on his beer.
“We thought Rocky was a Devil Rider possibly, but come to find that he is bonafide Road Warrior, but more importantly, he is a patch. He was involved in a murder that has gone unsolved for a while now. One that Mia is working on. He was questioned by the police, but they let him go, due to lack of evidence. We found out he used to work the Biloxi streets. He’s a known street thug and dealer, which is why he was picked up by the Road Warriors in the first place. We have to be careful with this one, in terms of letting him down easy.”
“Whaddya mean about letting him down easy?” Hawk asked. “Do you mean telling him to go away politely?” He scoffed. “Like that’s gonna work. He’s just gonna keep hanging around and playing pool.”
“Ah, I don’t know, he might sense we’re onto him if we keep pummeling him with questions. Plus, Angie has just about finished with our article. She wants to expose him in the article and put him in the hot seat. So if he wants to hang around the club, he’s going to be on enemy turf with questions hanging over his head and every one of us armed.”
I grinned. “Right on. That’s too bad, he was a decent pool player too. I was getting something out of it. Him and Angie are the only competition.”
“Hey! I’ve given you a run for your money a couple of times,” Gunner said, pouting.
“You are delusional. You’re lucky I didn’t take all your money that night,” I joked as the banter started to fly between us. It was good to be back in the room with the guys even if it was a meeting about an intruder. “I do wanna mention something…” I looked around at the guys. “Be diligent. A biker I didn’t know was hanging around outside my house last week. I didn’t catch him in time to get his plates, but he was there. I don’t know which camp he was from, but there’s heat.”
Bones stepped in, “You heard him. Keep your eyes and ears to the ground. Thanks, Chalk. You haven’t seen anything else, have you?”
My fists bunched into involuntary balls thinking about the lengths I would go to if anyone hurt my little girl. “Right. I wish I did, so I could find out for sure who he was, but nothing.”
“This is bull shit. It’s gotta be that Rocky guy! He’s the closest to us enemy-wise,” Bear called out in anger.