“This was short notice. You’ll get what we have tonight, and maybe tomorrow we can work out something else.”
Shane smirked at Hammer in the rearview mirror. “Dex does make instant ramen an art form, so maybe he can sway your opinion on it.”
Dex… Dex…
Right. Frank’s fuck-up of a nephew, who once backed a cement mixer into Handsy’s motorcycle, then tried to pay for the damage with a pink machine gun. Handsy had actually taken him up on the offer, only to find out the firearm didn’t work.
“Is that code forwe’ll poison you?” Hammer asked, trying to stay calm despite the buzz of the bikes feeling like a swarm of hornets that might sting him to death the moment he left the car.
Frank shrugged. “You know the drill. We won’t touch you. Whatever you did is not our business.”
And yet it felt fucking personal to sit cuffed in the back of their car and about to end up locked up like an animal.
Their trip through the maze of junk came to an end, right beyond a heap of old shopping carts stacked together like a freak tree of metal. They stopped in a clearing with four inconspicuous shipping containers arranged around an empty space.
Hammer did not bother trying to get out and sat still, waiting until Shane opened the door for him with a little bow. “I admit, I didn’t expect we would be hosting the executioner himself. Look how life surprises us.”
Ignoring him, Hammer stepped out and faced his biker ‘brothers’ who’d all stopped not too far away and eyed him as if he were the greatest danger to their existence. Him, the man whom they shared so much with in all those years. What a joke it was that Lion sometimes referred to them all asfamily.
No one spoke, but when Lion nodded at Frank, Shane pushed Hammer toward the open shipping container. Hammer had spent two years in juvie, and later in life ten months in jail, so he despised having his freedom taken away. But it was obvious that trying to run away with his hands cuffed, just to get lost in this labyrinth of crap, would be futile, so he didn’t resist.
The container was a grim space that reminded him of a death pit with a cell at the back. If anything, it could work as a setting in one of Hammer's stories. The bars making up the door to the cell were uneven and made of scrap but solid. Frank had boasted about building all of this himself, and at the time, Hammer had praised him for the sturdiness of the work. The irony of it all.
The cell was unlocked, and he stepped inside, staring at the six-pack of bottled water and cardboard box filled with cheap, packaged snacks resting next to an old mattress someone had attempted to ineffectively clean in the past. There was also a bucket equipped with a lid, but he’d rather pretend it wasn’t there at this point.
He turned back to Frank and Shane when the heavy metal door locked with a loudclang. Those keys they had? They looked as if Frank had welded them himself and appeared like something from a movie set in medieval times. Did that mean he’d get drawn and quartered once this was all over?
A screech of tires outside alerted them all, then a car door slammed shut, and both of Hammer’s jailors deflated.
“Finally!” Frank said, rubbing his forehead as a young guy in a neon-green puffy jacket with cartoon flames going up the sleeves burst inside, panting. His bleach blond hair was longer at the top and shaved at the bottom, and he was flushed under the few freckles scattered over his face.
His wide brown eyes settled on Hammer, even though he spoke to his uncle. “I had to go back for—”
“I don’t care,” Frank said and passed him the keys. “Jag will swap with you in time.”
Dex’s lips parted as he stepped aside to let the other two men through. “When is ‘in time’?”
“I don’t know yet,” Frank yelled from outside.
Dex pouted and shifted his weight like a distressed child. “But I’m hungry…” he said, his voice so quiet, it was obvious he knew his uncle wouldn’t give a shit at this point.
Hammer assessed him from head to toe. While not skin and bones, the guy was on the smaller side, nothing like his bull of an uncle, or even Shane. His nose was small, and a bit flat, but where Frank’s skin was a warm bronze, Dex’s was pale. If it wasn’t for the tattoos showing on his hands and neck, he could have been considered unassuming, but he also wore a black fitted T-shirt with a cartoonish Pinhead fromHellraiser, his belt was studded, and the boots he paired with jeans had steel caps that could do some damage.
Hammer could also swear he spotted a holster under the jacket.
When their eyes met, Dex’s face split in a smile, and he adjusted his messy hair.
“Good evening, I will be your jailor today. I hope you have a pleasant stay. Bottles of water are in the corner, next to the bucket where you can piss. It comes with a handy lid. Please don’t try to escape, or I will be forced to…” He pulled out a colorful gun which, for all Hammer knew, could be a toy, and pointed it at the ceiling. “Pow! Pow!” he said instead of shooting, which was fortunate, because that would have hurt their ears in this confined space.
This.
This dumb fuck was Hammer’s ticket out of here.
Chapter 2 – Dex
EvenifDexdidn’tknow Hammer was his motorcycle club’s designated executioner (and he did), it would have been obvious to him that this guy wasthe shit. It was written in the way he carried himself—all relaxed despite being cuffed and locked behind bars—and in the gray eyes scanning his surroundings with the sharpness of precision tools.
Towering over Dex by more than a head, he was built like a predator, with the broad shoulders of a bear and the muscle tone of a puma. The clothes he wore were simple, just jeans and a white T-shirt under a leather jacket, but while they might fool the average person into thinking they were seeing a man with a casual sense of style, Dex knew what hid underneath. Muscles that could hold him down and the mind of a beast reflected in eyes partially hidden by brown shoulder-length hair. A deep scar cut through his left cheek and upper lip suggesting he had to fight to become the creature he now was.