Integrity Has No Bounds (16 page)

“I’ve put my time in defending this country,
and I took the shit that came down that had nothing to do with what
I was doin’. I took all that, for the group. My whole family
suffered for this group. I got the proof, and the reason. I’m done
giving to this bunch of turncoat motherfuckers. There’s no way that
cocksucker did all this shit on his own, he ain’t smart enough. I
know in my gut he had backing.”

Bernell started to rise, he was the VP after
all, it was time this big motherfucker got what he deserved.

Rolf put his hand on the prez’s shoulder.
“You should know you are about to lose your Vice, so you might want
to stay out of this, maybe you want to go to the bar over there and
watch a movie while I take care of something. Your choice, I’m done
talking either way.”

He no longer cared what the others thought,
he’d walked in the door and the red haze started falling, filling
his brain. He walked over to where Bernell waited with a handful of
men beside and behind him.

“Did you tell your pussy boys that it’s a
good day to die? Did you tell them that you’re running drugs and
causing families to be ripped apart?” The red rage grew brighter
with every word he spoke, and Rolf reached for Bernell. The other
man wasn’t quick enough to escape his clenching fists.

Rolf hauled him forward and lifted him to his
toes. “Did you really believe you would engineer my downfall and
walk around like a lilly assed prince? Motherfucker, you fucked the
wrong family. Telling my boy not to come back was the dumbest
fuckin’ thing you could do, making the deal with Pascal was the
second dumbest thing, stickin’ around for me to find out you’re
still fuckin’ with my kids. Well, you blue balled goat fucker, you
gonna worry about it now.”

He began shaking Bernell from the moment he
had him in his grasp, the fucker was smirking at him, and that
pulled the red veil down completely. Bernell went flying into the
nearest table and Rolf was right behind him to grab him in his
hands again. Everyone in the room could feel the bone crunch when
the big man jerked his opponent over his raised knee into the ribs
running alongside of the man’s spine. If they didn’t feel it in
person, it made no difference, watching the VP’s body arch and
flopped helplessly in the legendary Rolf’s hands gave them all the
proof they needed.

Rolf yanked the arrogant bastard’s arm up,
jerking his bent body straight, while his fist planted itself dead
center on Bernell’s face. He shoved the two hundred pound man and
laughed as Bernell landed face first into the wall. He slid down
the wall and lay in the floor, not even a telltale twitch was seen,
but Rolf threw three chairs at the possibly already dead man.

Two of Bernell’s allies came at him, making
the mistake of showing blades in their grasp. Rolf grinned at them
and held out his hands in a come and get it gesture. He was busy
with them and barely registered the sound of a gunshot behind him.
The second shot didn’t register as he enjoyed punishing his
enemies. Hearing the pained screams of the man who he just crushed
his wrist that had been holding a knife and Rolf used the hand
holding the knife to shove it into his buddy’s ribcage. Both men
went down and stayed down, and when Rolf came after them to finish
punishing them, they crawled away, leaving trails of blood and
piss. He overturned tables and chairs to get them, roaring all the
while.

He had no idea he was carrying a bullet in
his lower back, and was bleeding, but June Bug had shot the fucking
coward as soon as she saw which man held the gun still pointing
toward Rolf. She then climbed up onto the bar with her Glock .40
pointing into the crowd.

Stevie told the bartender to move from the
back of the bar to where she could see him and then joined her
mother in policing the twelve men still standing or sitting in the
room.

Trencher had taken Rolf’s advice and skirted
the fight to go over to the bar. He was lucky enough to have gotten
a beer from Tim before the blonde beauty essentially shut the bar
down by forcing Tim from his post. The video feed on the big screen
was pissing him off, and now that he knew what had set Rolf off, he
couldn’t blame the man for wanting blood. In the first few frames,
he’d recognized Rolf’s boy, Harry, behind a classy bar setup, and
he saw what good ol’ Leon was doing right off. The tape must have
been stopped there, and resumed with Stevie behind the bar, and
Leon was there too. Seeing him sneak in the building at late hours
of the night after Stevie disappeared from the video, opening the
board of the small stage and packing bricks inside and tapping the
wood back into place.

Twice he saw Bernell and Pascal join Leon in
digging the packages from under the stage and hauling them from the
building. The last few minutes of the video showed the vindictive
grin on Leon’s face as he set the fire.

This certainly explained a lot of what he’d
been seeing in the past couple of years. He shook his head at his
own stupidity, no wonder the brother was ready to do damage,
Trencher himself was ready to hurt someone, but Rolf had earned his
revenge, and as the president of Thor’s Legion, he made the
decision to ignore anything he didn’t see tonight.

Standing close enough to kick him in the head
was Rolf’s woman. She was magnificent standing over the room with
that 1911 in her hands, steady as a rock. He kept his head staring
at the TV screen for the most part, but couldn’t resist bending
forward enough to see Stevie Lee James with a fuckin Glock, with
the same stance as Momma, and he was impressed by the two women’s
bravery. He wouldn’t have kicked either woman from his bed. June
Bug was a rare bitch, there was no flirting with the men in the
club on any level. She only had Rolf in her sights while they were
in the clubhouse and he envied the closeness the two shared.

His own ol’ lady was dead, and good riddance
to her. She had been a faithless whore and he’d lost all feeling
for her the day she aborted his kid. She’d been with that scum from
the Swamp Rats, Pappy D, and was rolled out of the door of a rusty
fuckin’ pick-up truck at the driveway. She was hopped up on some
drug and started running down the road following the pick-up. The
stupid woman had run right in the path of an eighteen wheeler.
Curtis had been around then, he had dealt with the whole thing
because Trencher had been drunk at the time.

He wanted to turn around and enjoy watching
Rolf clean the clubhouse’s rats out, but when it came for Church
tomorrow, he wasn’t going to say one fuckin’ word against the man
or his family. He was here, but hadn’t seen a thing. Dammit.

*****

John watched the Swamp Rat leave the property
and he nodded at the Prospect at the gate, and turned to go back
inside the building. He barely cleared the doorway when he heard
bikes pulling in outside. He kept going to the back room where he
saw Baron walking into behind Gunner’s wheelchair.

Myrtle had Melvin sitting his happy furry ass
right up on the bar watching the people in the room. Myrtle handed
him a beer as he walked past.

He needed to touch base with the two men
before he headed out to find his woman.

Gunner was bitching about his confinement in
the motorized chair, but he was grinning and optimistic about
getting out of the damn thing in the next few weeks.

“Stretch is giving me too much sass, enjoying
the fact she can outrun me, as soon as I am mobile her little ass
will be feeling my wrath.”

Baron laughed out loud, last night their
woman had gotten a taste of the spanking she’d been courting, but
touching her bare ass had led to other things and she’d sidetracked
them with her passions. “Face it, bro, she has our number, and we
wouldn’t want her any other way.”

He was still grinning as John walked in the
door. “So we can safely say that you’ve been successful with your
hunt?”

John nodded, “Taken care of, disposed of, now
I have to go hunt down my woman. I got a text saying she had to
take care of her problems because she wasn’t the helpless woman she
thinks I believe she is.” He shook his head. She had no idea how he
really thought about her,
soon
, he promised himself.

“I need some background on her and Viking. Do
you know, I don’t think she even knows Harry’s road name? He spent
a lot of energy keeping her in the dark about the club here. She
thought that we would be mad at her for whining about the extortion
shit. That fucker, Leon, wasn’t with Candle when I caught up with
him, so she’s going to still be a target. Lonnie is still butt hurt
that she gave him the slip, and the whole goddamned thing is a
clusterfuck.

“When I get my hands on Viking, I’ll be
having a chat with the boy. I understand why he left, hell if it
had been me, I would have done the same fuckin’ thing. He neglected
to make arrangements for her safety or let her know that he’s
alive, and that doesn’t set right with me. He should have known
she’d be vulnerable.”

Gunner was shaking his head before John was
finished talking. “Hang on a minute, man, the club let her down, he
asked for us to keep an eye on her while he was gone. He was only
supposed to be dead for a few months, but from the last text I got,
he was following some dirty Fed fucker, then got himself fucked up
when his scoot collided with a damned gator that ran out in front
of him.

“He was following the fucker who was
transporting the shipment at the time, so his stay in Florida was
extended by over a month, and by then he had to catch the fucker on
another run. He’s been with his old club, Thor’s Legion, in a
charter down by Tampa. The last I heard, he was still working with
Curtis. When I heard about Stevie being attacked, I sent him a text
and the particulars.”

John considered what he had been told. He
knew that Viking had been with another club when he walked in the
door, but he hadn’t bothered to ask which club. The young brother
had quite a resume if he had been with those guys. John had never
been involved with any of the members of the outlaw bikers, but
he’d heard plenty of stories.

It stood to reason, if Stevie’s brother was a
former Thor’s Legion member, then she must be involved too. Fuck,
he was resigned to the two day trip and he wasn’t actually positive
that she was with them. Sighing, he looked at Gunner.

“I don’t believe she knew he was alive
yesterday, so I don’t think she would be in Florida with him. Where
do you think would be the most likely place to begin? I could just
get on the scoot and drive, but I’d like some idea of a
destination.”

Baron and Gunner exchanged nods and Baron
told him about the tall skinny kid who walked into the club one
night and asked to speak with him.

“The kid was good, he earned his rockers, and
was loyal to the club. He brought his sister in the next day, and
maybe a half a dozen times since then, but he said that she wasn’t
cut out for the life. The night you helped us torch that bike
wasn’t supposed to go down like it did.”

“As for Thor’s Legion, be careful, Stevie’s
ol’man is the biggest motherfucker I’ve ever seen. I’ve run into
him a few times over the years, and he isn’t the kind of man who
will give anyone a pass when it comes to something he considers his
or the club’s. Last I heard was the parents were in prison, that’s
why Viking came here. He told me that he couldn’t take his sister
back either.

“He was nervous, but someone had put some
balls on the kid, he didn’t blink when Skids gave him shit, or any
of the other’s for that matter.”

John was beginning to look impatient, and
Baron gave him the information he’d came to them for. “If I was a
betting man, I think it’s a safe bet she went back to the club in
‘Bama, that’s the only place I would think to look.”

John was halfway out of his chair when Gunner
started to laugh.

“Man, you want to think about meeting the
woman’s parents, especially if Rolf is her father. That is one
fucker I think could wipe the floor with your arrogant ass. I wish
you luck, man, but I’ll expect to hear you have to be carried from
the man’s tender taps on your head.”

He was still grinning as John left the room
after getting the address from Baron, and flipped him the bird.
“Our boy has his work cut out for him.”

John took the bagger back to the garage and
exchanged it for his personal scoot. The ride wouldn’t be as
comfortable, but he liked it better and Stevie would want to drive
her Jeep home, once he convinced her that she wanted to come back
with him. That was going to be the hard part. The warnings about
her ol’ man didn’t faze him, but then nothing much scared him
anymore. He didn’t plan to fight with the man, he’d try reasoning
with him first.

He spent the night under the stars in his
bedroll, once he’d found a grove of peach trees that had been
picked clean. Looking into the night sky reminded him of the long
nights in the desert and again during the time he began wandering
in an attempt to find a place to call his own. Juanita had been his
choice, his business was doing well. He’d been dragging ass about
the family he wanted to have, and it was high time he did some
catching up. He would be thirty-one in May, and the thought of
little people running through the woods by his cabin made him
smile.

He wasn’t in love with Stevie, but he wasn’t
far from it. This nagging sense of loss was riding him hard since
he read her last text. He had to admit that she caught his eye the
first time he saw her coming into the garage, with her shiny
gunmetal grey Jeep after her brother had given it to her for
graduating college.

That day he’d thought she was younger than
she actually was by a couple of years. She had a young looking boy
with her that day, and every thirty-two hundred miles after she
showed up by herself. She always insisted John do the oil change,
her brother told her to take it to John to have it serviced, and
she was stubborn about it. This last year, she’d stopped insisting
he take care of the Jeep, she didn’t have the time he usually made
her wait for him to finish what he was working on to deal with the
simple maintenance. He felt resentment for her defection, even if
she had good reason for it.