"Yeah, flying visit. Was hoping you might be able to spot me a double room for the night."

Alex gives me that look he always used to give me when I was a kid and he was gambling away my grandfather's money—for a brief time they ran a business together, competing in races all over the country, and my pops trusted him with his winnings. He knew Alex was losing his money, but he didn’t really care. Alex was his best friend—hence how he ended up with the Honda CX500 when my grandfather croaked—and it was never about the money for him anyway. All he cared about were the bikes.

"Uh, well, yeah, son. I got the same room you normally use. I keep it free for ya. Just in case." We skip the whole credit card deposit, paperwork bullshit regular guest have to go through, and Alex tosses me the keys. When I head back outside, he follows me to the doorway, squinting out into the darkness. "That a girl you got with you?" he asks. Nosey fucker never did know when to not ask questions. I refrain from telling him to mind his own damn business, though. Against all odds, I have a soft spot for the old bastard, just like my grandfather did.

"Last time I checked," I inform him.

He nods, rubbing his calloused fingers over his two-day-old scruff. "That's good, son. Harry would be pleased. About time you found someone nice to settle down with." He squints a little harder, trying to get a better look at Sophia. "She's a beaut, too. Dark-haired. That's good. I never could picture you with a blonde."

"She's just keeping me company. She's not with me."

Alex's twisted old mouth pulls up to one side, displaying his crooked, slightly blackened front teeth. "Then you're a mad man, son. She's made for you, I reckon. Better get on that before anyone else does."

I fight off the urge to laugh. If only he knew.

******

The room's warm, which is welcome. Sophia heads straight to the bathroom and the sound of running water whispers behind the wooden door. I sit on the edge of the bed closest to the door and get ready to make some phone calls. Cade is first on my list.

"S'up, man. You breaking for the night?"

"Yeah. I'll be arriving at Louis' place around three tomorrow. Can you call Leah and let her know we're on our way in?" Leah McPherson works for my father, the one single favor the bastard's ever done for me. She needed to get the hell out of New Mexico, permanently, and I needed to find someone who would take her on, fast. At the time, my dad was the only person I could think of to ask. He goes through housemaids quickly, too abrasive and plain fucking rude for anyone to stomach him for too long, but a sharp-tongued Southern bastard was nothing after what Leah had already been through. I figured she would cope, and she did. Has been coping for the past two years. Ever since, she's been a convenient go-between, passing on messages from my father to me and vice versa. Makes communicating with the old man a hell of a lot more pleasant.

Leah is also very good at passing on information that my father probably doesn’t want me to know.

"I'll call her right away," Cade says. And then, “Shay came in here asking who she was buying all those clothes for this morning. She was pissed, man."

"Yeah, well, Shay can be pissed all she wants."

"It's bad juju to have a woman slamming around the clubhouse."

"What do you want me to do about it? Marry the fucking girl?"

Cade snorts. I can hear him shuffling papers or something—must be in my office. He takes care of the paperwork for the Ink Bar and the general running of the compound while I'm gone. "The day you marry anyone is the day hell freezes over. But maybe you could just talk to her. Have a quiet word in her ear or something. Fuck, man, just tell her it wasn't meant to be or something. I don't know."

If he were anyone else, I'd tell him to go fuck himself good and hard. "I'll think about it."

"Great. Now, the Mexicans want more—" Cade cuts off. I think it's just because he was about to say guns, and you can't say the Mexicans want more guns on the fucking telephone. Especially with the attention our little community out in the desert attracts. But Cade makes a guttural growling sound that tells me this is something else. Something bad.

"What? Tell me."

"You in front of a TV, man?" he says. "You'd better turn it on."

Oh, boy. When Cade sounds worried like that, it can only mean trouble. I hit the power button on the TV in the room, waiting for the old piece of shit to blink into life. The same Jeopardy! show Alex was watching materializes slowly, pixel by pixel, onto the screen. "Which channel?" I ask.

"Any. Just look for a news station. You won’t have any problems finding this."

Fuck. If something's happened that's made it to all news stations across America, it must be big. I stab at the programming buttons on the bottom of the TV, searching, until I come across a stricken-looking woman in a pale green suit, staring straight out of the screen at me. She clears her throat, taking a deep breath, as though pulling herself together. "Again, eighteen people have died and seven further people are injured in what is perhaps the most violent gang shooting in Los Angeles for years. Eyewitnesses reported that at three pm this afternoon, a group of men dressed in leather jackets and black jeans entered Trader Joe's on Sunset Boulevard and began indiscriminately shooting at shoppers. It's unclear how many gunmen there were at this time, as security cameras within the store were shot out as soon as the men entered.

"Our sources have confirmed that the reason for the attack is most likely drug related. It is believed an undercover police officer working for the DEA was meant to meet with a handler at the grocery store. Police are yet to confirm if this is the case, or whether a DEA agent was in fact shot and killed, but the tightening of security around the crime scene and the LAPD's notable silence on the matter would lead us to believe this is correct.

"Once the shooting was at an end, the men involved in this senseless, violent attack sped off on motorcycles. Footage here shows three of the men celebrating as they prepare to flee the scene."

The image turns fuzzy as camera footage replaces the news studio, showing a clear image of the supermarket from outside. From the angle of the footage, this camera was covering a small food court outside the entrance, but you can clearly see three men emerging from the left, heads bowed, long hair ratty and hanging in their faces. One of them spins around, must hear something, and then there it is: The Widow Makers’ emblem. Our patch. Right in the middle of the motherfucker’s back. I can’t hear what’s being said between them, but they’re not fucking celebrating. Their wild arm movements, the way they’re shoving at each other as they hurry off screen—they’re arguing. 

“Police are yet to release an appeal for information. Should a member of the public recognize any of these men, we at News 541 want to help. If anyone has any information about these individuals, call in on…” The newsreader rattles of a telephone hotline, the screen frozen on a shot of the three men, bodies all pointed in different angles as they survey the area, faces nothing more than charcoal smudges. The only thing I can make out clearly is that goddamn patch.

“Oh my god.”

I jump, hitting the mute button on the television. Sophia’s standing right behind me, her body wrapped in a towel, breasts crushed together by the way she’s fiercely holding the material tight around herself. Her bare shoulders are speckled with water drops, her hair almost black now that it’s wet. Once more, it hits me like a kick in the gut: the woman is fucking beautiful. And she’s staring at me like I’m some kind of monster. “What—what have you done? That’s your club, isn’t it? The Widow Makers? Why would you have all those people killed?”