Page 7 of Hawk (Road Rebels MC 1)
“Good. Everyone’s excited to get back to Redding,” Talon said.
“Don’t blame them,” I said. “Got a decent slice of pussy the last time we were there.”
“I still can’t believe you didn’t take her number. She was drooling all over you,” Snake said.
“It’s just pussy. I can get that shit anywhere,” I said.
“Wow. A pompous statement. Didn’t think you had it in you anymore, Hawk,” Snake said.
“He’ll always be hooked on Syd. You know that,” Fox said.
He wasn’t wrong, but I tried to not to react. I wasn’t ready to tell them that Sydney had rolled up on my doorstep with a six-year-old daughter that was mine. I wasn’t ready to tell them that I was actually considering taking her in and keeping her here. I needed to respect Syd’s wishes on keeping Emery sheltered from this type of lifestyle. On the one hand, as I sat here talking about shipping in guns, I could see what she meant. But, Emery had an entire family that would be itching to protect her and love her.
I felt Sydney was robbing her of that time and time again.
Not only that, though. The group would be hounding my house trying to see her and induct her back into the group, and the only thing that would serve to do was give her an excuse to run again. She ran out of fear and grief the first time, so there wasn’t anything that signaled to me that she wouldn’t run again. If she felt an entire group of people would go against her wishes on how to raise her child, she’d flee and tell herself she was protecting Emery.
And I wasn’t going to lose her a second time just because The Road Rebels didn’t understand how to fucking cool their jets.
“We got the auto part crates coming in this time, right?” Fox asked.
“Yep,” Mac said. “Which’ll make unloading everything a bit easier since those jugs aren’t quite as big.”
All of our drugs were shipped in through auto part crates. With the mechanic shop, we had so many parts constantly coming in, that it just made sense to hide the drugs in the crates as well. We took precautions just in case one of our shipments ever got busted. They never came just sitting in the crates. The drugs were packed tightly within the frame of the crate. Our club dealing in cocaine and weed. We never got into the harder shit. It was too risky, and we wanted to draw some sort of moral line.
None of our members were allowed to sample the product for their own use. My father had made that rule back in his time, and I was happy that Mac was enforcing it as harshly as my father did.
And so far, it had kept us all clean.
We knew dealing drugs was one of riskiest businesses we could divulge in as a club. Our supplier was associated with the Columbian drug cartel. If we fucked shit up, things would get serious real quick for us. But our club had voted it as our best business when my father was alive, and it has been that way ever since. It supplied us the money to keep everyone happy and operations moving.
“You guys will be in charge of this shipment,” Mac said. “I’ve got some business to attend to around the time this shipment comes in.”
“Any particular people you want us to enlist to help with it?” I asked.
“Where the hell you goin’?” Snake asked.
“Gotta be with my mother that weekend. Chemo and shit Friday. She’ll be sick as hell through the weekend,” Mac said.
“Shit, I forgot about that. How’s she doin’?” Snake asked.
“Holding up,” was all Mac offered.
“You’re good. We’ll find some people to fill in, then we’ll fill you in on how it all went down that Monday,” I said.
“It’ll have to be that Monday evening,” Talon said. “That’s when we all hit the road for Redding.”
“Won’t be coming to that, either. In case something happens,” Mac said.
“I’m staying behind on this one, too.”
“Yeah, ‘cause you got the clap on the last one,” Fox said as he snickered.
“Thanks for that reminder, dick,” I said.
“Oh, you’re never living that one down. Not a fucking chance,” Snake said, chuckling.
“Fuck you all,” I said.
We worked together for a couple of hours to finish up the weekend overflow before I headed off to the grocery store. I hadn’t forgotten about the things I promised my daughter I’d pick up, and I thought about what I could possibly make us all for dinner. I walked up and down the aisles looking around, picking up shit like macaroni and cheese and stuff to make tacos with. I figured those two things would be a hit, and if they weren’t then, I could cook up the hamburger meat in burger form. I grabbed some last minute breakfast foods to shove in with the snacks I’d promised, then quickly checked out and stacked it all on the back of my bike. I’d been gone for about three hours now, and I didn’t want Sydney to start panicking.
Plus, I was ready to get back and see my daughter.
It made me nervous, being away from them. With Sydney being on the run from the DEA, I knew she posed a threat to our entire operation. We’d be dodging DEA for years, and I wanted to keep it that way. If even one person followed her here and started studying me, they’d quickly get to know my movements. They’d follow me in order to learn more about Sydney, and in the process they would most certainly piece together what we were doing. I knew I needed to get her somewhere else… kick her and Emery out if I wanted to preserve the secrecy of the operation The Road Rebels had built.
But I was torn. Emery was my daughter, and Sydney was the mother of my child. I couldn’t just abandon them when they needed me the most.
I was torn between two families I wanted to dedicate myself to, and I didn’t really know what to do about it.
I pulled out of the parking lot and allowed the wind to clear my mind. If I ever found my mind swirling, I knew I could always rely on a solo ride to clear my head. I would blast music in my ears while I weaved in and out of traffic. Sometimes I’d ride until I’d burned through an entire tank of gas, then simply camp for the night wherever I was before coming back the next day.
Rides like that were therapeutic for me, like the drive I had ahead of me now to get home.
But, I noticed something suspicious as I
was driving down the highway. I bobbed and weaved through traffic as I kept my eyes in front of me, but every single time I looked in my rearview mirror, I saw it.
A fucking black sedan that kept exactly one car between my motorcycle and its headlights.
I turned down foreign roads and looped around on paths I never took. I pulled over to a gas station and filled up a tank that didn’t need filling as I watched the black sedan parked in the lot across the street. I watched them in my mirrors as I got back onto the road, speeding up as I hit the highway again. But just like I suspected, they kept right on my tails.
And always with one fucking car between us.
I might not be an educated man, but I sure as hell wasn’t born in a barn. I was being fucking followed.
And if I was being followed, that meant someone knew Sydney was with me.
Chapter 6
Sydney
I knew in the back of my mind that Hawk hadn’t gone to church. In all the years I’d lived alongside The Road Rebels, religion was not something they had ever delved into. It was probably a cover for something. Whatever it was they now did to get money. Back when I was running with them, they had the mechanic shop as well as the bar, but nothing else to my knowledge. Though they always tried to keep the women and children out of the loop with those kinds of things.
At any rate, I knew he wasn’t at church, and he was trying to diminish my knowledge of his whereabouts by feeding me the lie.
I wasn’t upset. I understood that’s what he was doing. I had rolled up onto his doorstep with his daughter, and now he felt it was his time to protect us. We were running from the DEA, so I knew I brought trouble to his doorstep with whatever operations The Road Rebels were running. He was taking a massive risk, taking both of us in. My risk of being followed was high, especially since the government was wanting to use the Iron Souls as an example of what happens to motorcycle gangs if they got caught.
But when four hours rolled around, I was beginning to worry about where he was.
