A Leap in the Dark (Assassins of Youth MC Book 2) (17 page)

I felt I hadn’t done enough. At Liberty Temple, I’d always been in control. If a client showed up with drugs or a weapon, I’d come in with my goon and eject the guy. Take his money, of course. What was he going to do—complain to his wife?

But here in the real world I was learning there were times when your hands were tied. I was only a lowly Prospect, and I had to bow to the wisdom of my Prez.

“Yeah, I’m with you,” I said, not entirely convincingly. “It’s only a matter of time before Pratt blows it anyway. If he pushes me over the edge, I want your word that you’ll back me up on it.”

Gideon nodded tersely. “You got it. I trust your judgment as to what constitutes ‘getting pushed over the edge.’ What’s he threatening you and Deloy with, anyway?”

Deloy looked at me, blinking with his big round eyes. I hadn’t told anyone about the video threat. We were newcomers to this town and this club. Why hassle them with something that might not even happen? Our past was our cross to bear. I responded, “Oh, the same sort of slander shit that’s in the newspaper. Dredging up our pasts in order to ruin our future.”

Just then the Doppler effect of a siren came toward us and then passed on Crosstown Street. It sounded like it hung a left onto Watchtower where most of the shops were. Deloy dashed to the front swinging doors, followed by a pileup of men so heavy it threatened to bury the poor kid.

“Is it a fire truck?”

“Is my store on fire?”

“Who’s dying?”

I alone went out the side door, jogging across the street. The ambulance looked like it had indeed stopped in front of Maximus’ barbershop pole. The EMTs were attending to someone prone on the sidewalk. Maximus must have panicked that someone had keeled over in his shop, because in a flash he was doing the James Brown next to me, his knees practically meeting his chin as he ran.

“Fucking hell if that bastard Pratt’s going to ruin my run for mayor before it’s even started.”

Well, it sure looked like Pratt was trying. He was the one flat on his back on the ground right in front of the barbershop pole. A strange chemical smell was in the air, stinging my eyes, as though I’d run through a cloud of something. Since Maximus was the store owner, we shoved our way past several constituents to find an EMT stripping off Pratt’s burned pants.
Burned pants?

“What is that device?” someone shouted in my ear. It was Dingo, our tech expert.

Another squatting EMT held a piece of pipe wrapped in duct tape with a black wire attached to one end. “Looks like a—”

“A fucking pipe bomb!” Dingo yelled.

“Holy…” The EMT walked gingerly, heel-to-toe, a few doors up the street, placing the pipe bomb daintily on the ground. He got on his radio, maybe to call in the bomb squad.

Maximus shouted, “Where’d that pipe bomb come from? Was this asshole trying to blow up my shop?”

The attending EMT said, “Whatever it is, it was in his pocket. And he’s burned pretty badly because his pants caught on fire.”

That was when I noticed his asinine hoverboard in the sidewalk gutter. It was barely recognizable as a space-age skateboard anymore, having twisted and melted and burned. For some reason—and my instincts turned out to be true—I looked at Dingo with narrowed eyes.

“Hoverboard blew up?”

His placid face was innocent. “Hoverboards explode all the time! Did you know Amazon is not selling them anymore for that very reason? Something to do with the battery.”

“How mysterious,” I said.

“I heard about that,” said Gideon. “Pretty common thing.”

Dust Bunny said, “Overstock isn’t selling them at all.”

They were putting Pratt’s stretcher into the ambulance, and Maximus said,

“I’m gonna ride with the mayor to St. George. Wouldn’t want our constituents to think we’re not on the same side.”

“Yeah,” said Gideon, “and while you’re at it, find out why he had a fucking pipe bomb in his fucking pants.”

OAKLYN

“I
t’s the end
of an error!”

The crowd roared its approval of Maximus’ campaign slogan.

Mahalia had actually written that for him. She had experience dealing with the press. She’d arranged to film this TV spot at Angel’s Landing in Zion National Park overlooking the Virgin River.

I thought at first she must’ve made a mistake telling us where to go. Motorcycles were parked all up and down the shoulder as Levon, Lazarus and I pulled up. As we got closer down Floor of the Valley Road, we saw the parking lot for the scenic view jammed with bikes and four wheel drive trucks.

“Is there some kind of rally here?” I asked as I removed my lid. I unbuckled Lazarus from his adorable sidecar—as the saying went, “only a biker knows why a dog sticks his head out of a car window.” I put the leash on him before I let him jump out. It was December, so not nearly the amount of traffic as the summer when this road was closed and people had to take the shuttle in. It had snowed at these elevations the week before, so Maximus would have the stunning beauty of the snow-capped pinnacles for his shoot.

That was, unless there’d be a hundred tourists in the background.

“I don’t think so,” said Levon. “I mean, we’re it as far as MCs go until you get to Salt Lake. I saw Dust Bunny’s bike back there, and Dingo’s and Sledgehammer’s. These other bikes have logos of bones on the gas tanks.”

“That guy’s duffel bag says the Bent Zealots,” I said.

“There’s Yosemite Sam. Sam! Who the fuck are all these people?”

Yosemite Sam was smiling, always a bad sign. He only smiled out of malice. But today he seemed genuinely happy, and he waved an arm for us to follow him. “Come on!”

We had to run to catch up. “But why are all these scoots here?” Levon asked again.

“Well, I guess word got out that we want to take Avalanche back from the Morbots. These are all guys from our brother clubs, the Bare Bones, the Bent Zealots.”

I could tell by the wide smile on Levon’s face that this was a good thing., “You’re fucking kidding! I’m dying to meet these guys.”

“I’ll introduce you to the Bare Bones’ Prez.”

Yosemite Sam found a cluster of patch holders I’d never seen before. They seemed to conglomerate around two darkly handsome men. They looked part Native American, like Mahalia and I—buried deep in our Mormon heritage. One wore a patch on his cut that said
PREZ
, and the other’s patch said
SERGEANT-AT-ARMS
.

“Ford,” said Yosemite Sam, bro hugging it out with the
PREZ
. “I’d like you to meet our newest Prospect, Levon Rockwell.”

“Levon, welcome,” acknowledged Ford, thumping my old man on the back.

Yosemite Sam said, “And this is Ford’s brother, Lytton Driving Hawk.”

“
Doctor
Driving Hawk,” corrected a pretty, bosomy girl.

Yosemite Sam said, “Levon was a Lost Boy. Those are the guys who were kicked out of Cornucopia as teenagers and made to wander the highways of Utah.”

“
Sam
,” I warned under my breath.

“It’s okay,” said Ford. “Gideon was telling us all about Maximus’ political platform. Booting those motherfuckers out of office is the best thing that could ever happen. I don’t want to mess with your business inside the walls, but those fuckers need to
stay
inside their walls. Outside is
your
backyard, and you need to reclaim it from those fundies.”

The pretty girl asked me, “Who are all these other guys in cages? I’m June, by the way.”

I introduced myself to Dr. Driving Hawk’s woman. “You know, I think they’re members of a local riding club, the Lazzat Un Nisa Society. Maximus used to belong to them before we stole him.” It felt odd, saying “we.” It shocked me every time I spoke like that. I’d never belonged to any club or society before. It was a greatly comforting feeling. I felt safe, in a weird way, knowing the club would always be there to protect me. “And I see a couple of Elks.”

“Elks?” giggled June.

“Yeah. You know, the Elks Lodge? They do good for the community. We managed to get them on our side, too.”

“Looks like you’ve got half the town.”

“Sure as shit does,” I replied. I’d been swearing more, being around the Assassins. It just came with the territory. “There’s a
band
?” Five or six guys in powder blue suits snapped their fingers and twirled in synchronicity while another banged a set of drums behind them.

June said, “Yes, Gollywow’s band. They’re not really playing. Just lip syncing to one of their songs. They thought they could intercut some shots of Maximus with shots of the band. You know, to show how hip he is.”

“I’m not too sure these guys will demonstrate hipness,” I said skeptically.

“Don’t worry,” said June. “To fundies, this band is beyond the pale. Only people willing to be a little open-minded will vote for Maximus.”

“And people sick to fucking death of the same stranglehold over their town for thirty years. Let’s go listen to Maximus.”

“It’s the end of an error!” Maximus shouted. “Meet the new boss! I’m not the same as the old boss!” He was dressed conservatively in a suit and tie. Of course he wouldn’t show his cut, his colors, in the TV spot.

We were surrounded by Bare Boners and Zealots who roared their support. I wondered if we would be shown in the ad. Probably not. Everyone in town knew we were bikers, but we were presenting Maximus to the entire world. Who knew? Maybe he could move on to a job with the State.

“You’re a nurse?” June yelled in my ear. It was obvious she’d already heard about me. “My sister Madison is a nurse, too. She’s somewhere around here. It comes in very handy having a nurse in a club.”

“Yes. I’m already finding that out.”

The crowd seemed to agitate Lazarus, so I said goodbye to June and led him down to the river to get a drink of water. It was gorgeous down there, stepping between sagebrush bushes and patches of fresh untrammeled snow. The rusty walls of the gorge rose up on both sides and I felt like I was in a giant natural cathedral. Soon the rushing of the river water drowned out the hurrahs of the bikers, and Lazarus eagerly drank.

I let him off-leash for a few minutes so he could swim in the water. He found a pool to paddle around in and looked to be in heaven. Quaking aspens waved their mustard leaves against the orange canyon walls. It was serene down there. Lazarus got out of the water, shook himself, and then I threw a stick. He retrieved the stick about twenty times before he was willing to just sit by me, his thick, long fur streaming rivulets of water down the rocks.

“Hey!”

I twisted around. Levon was coming down the trail. I thought I’d never get over the sight of him in that black leather cut. It suited him and it showed the world that he wasn’t going to take shit anymore. I was proud of him for going up against the fundies. I knew Ladell Pratt had threatened him with more shit than printing gossip in a newspaper that only ten thousand people read. That was how many people were within Avalanche town limits. Levon hadn’t told me the whole story of Ladell Pratt, I knew.

Pratt had never admitted to having a pipe bomb in his pocket when his hoverboard so mysteriously exploded. Basically he had acted like it jumped into his pocket from somewhere else, or had been planted, and the chief of police, also a fundy, had pretended to go along with it. No one had figured out that Dingo had messed with the hoverboard’s battery while Pratt was inside The High Dive harassing people. It was true that hoverboards exploded all the time, so his second and first degree burns were put down as being accidental. I had the feeling we were just waiting for the other shoe to drop regarding Mayor Pratt.

I started off by apologizing. “Sorry I let him off-leash. He looked so mournfully at the river, and I just couldn’t resist letting him swim.”

Levon looked down at me. He scratched me behind the ear like I was Lazarus. “That’s okay. We’re away from the road, and he’s not a bolter. He’s a Velcro dog. He’ll stick close to you.”

I nodded. “That’s great all those other clubs showed up.”

“Yeah. Unfortunately, we can’t show them in the spot. We want to go wide with this ad—just let everyone in the county know who we are.”

I corrected him, “Who Maximus is.”

He corrected me. “No. Who
we
are. We’re still a ranching and farming area north of St. George. ‘Outsiders’ who aren’t fundies aren’t going to fault us for being bikers. They’ve been used to the Lazzat Un Nisa Society, anyway. We’ll just get together some Toys for Tots drives, show our intentions.”

“The SPCA,” I suggested.

“Right. I just ran into some guy from City Hall who told me he’s pretty sure my business license was signed off on.”

“Holy hell! That’s great, Levon! No more worries.”

Levon’s expression softened, and a faraway cast came into his cornflower eyes. “What I
will
punish you for is going off by yourself without telling me.”

“What?” I shaded my eyes with my hand as I looked up at him. What was he talking about?

He reached a hand down. “Time for a little edgeplay.”

“What’s that?” I stood, wavering a little on the rock where I stood.

He didn’t answer my question. “Come on.”