Page 20 of Vapor's Blaze

“I’ll have most of them to you later this evening,” King responds roughly.

“I don’t want most of them. I want all of them. I paid you good damn money and I want my fucking merchandise.”

King huffs out an exasperated breath. His buyer is an old timer who’s been calling a lot since we started monitoring King. Every single time he calls, he’s belligerent and pushy. I know King must be exasperated, but he if he is, he wasn’t showing it.

“Ernest, I have an extra rifle that I’m going to throw in. It’s a nice Remington with a mounted night vision scope. I think you’ll really like it. Yours for free, because you waited.”

“That is mighty fine of you. I look forward to getting my hands on that extra rifle. You getting Tracker to deliver, like always?”

“Yes, I am. I know how jittery dealing with a new person is for ya.”

“Great. Catch you on the flip side, asshole.”

It’s bizarre how he threw asshole onto the end of the conversation, like it was King’s name. I’m convinced that old man calls everyone ten times a day to complain about everything they’re doing to disappoint him. He probably thinks he’s speaking some kind of cool street lingo. It sounds like the Hellfire Hounds prez really has his hands full with Ernest. Then again King deserves the annoyance of having to deal with the fucker.

I keep my eyes on the security feed on my phone but reach up with one hand to dial back down the sound of the earbud.

King stares at his phone for a second and shoves it back into his pocket with more force than necessary.

“I can’t believe you let that bastard talk to you that way, boss. The crazy fucker should have been given a dirt nap long ago.”

King spins around to glare at Boone. “He’s a fucking paying customer. We can’t make money off him if we kill him for petty shit.”

Boone shrugs. “He disrespected you, prez.”

“And the minute he’s no longer a paying customer I’ll take pleasure in putting a bullet in his head. Right now, he just an annoyance.”

King stares at Boone for a brief moment before, asking, “Got any other brilliant bullshit to say to me today.”

Boone took a step back. “No, boss.”

“Then get the fuck out and don’t come back into my office without permission.” His right-hand man did an about face and left without another word. Me? I’m just surprised King has security cameras in his own office. It makes me think he doesn’t trust his own men not to break in and rummage through his shit.

This old man is ruthless and could be bloodthirsty. I’ve seen him kill in cold blood with my own eyes. Over the years I’ve never seen him capitulate to another person. He wasn’t the kind of man that anyone would want to cross if they could help it, so seeing him not put a hit on the old man for disrespecting him is almost unbelievable.

The old timer’s money is green, and money is King’s crucial concern at the moment, so I guess it makes sense. Seeing King put business over his pride feels weird because I’d always seen him as an unhinged lunatic.

Then again, he’s survived in the criminal underworld a long time by trusting no one, keeping his cool with arrogant people and then striking back when they least expect it. I’m really getting a feel for how he operates.

King walks out into the main bar area and pushes his way through a throng of brothers who were already getting super drunk. There are a handful of club whores who look a lot older and less classy than the women who hang around our club. One woman is on her knees in front of one of the brothers, from the look on his face it’s clear what’s going on. For some reason that turns my stomach, not that I’m being a judgmental asshole as I know on some nights our clubhouse can get pretty rowdy—but there’s a time and a place for everything.

I keep losing him on the security feed as he walks through his clubhouse because they don’t have cameras covering every single area. I have to scan the windows through my binoculars to maintain a visual on him.

One of the club whores calls out, “Where are you going, King? The party is just getting started.”

King ignores her but another brother shouts at her, “He’s going to check on his fucking grandson. Is that alright with you, bitch?”

I barely make out the last of the sentence because King has ascended two flights of stairs. I see him walk past one window and then another. The thought pops into my head that if I were a sniper, I could take him from this vantage point.

Old intel told us that there are no womenfolk in King’s immediate family, no wife, old lady, daughters, or granddaughters. He only had one son. He died years ago leaving two sons behind. King immediately took custody of both his grandsons and raised them up in the MC he founded. I couldn’t imagine raising kids in an outlaw bike club, but King was doing just that. We tried to get intel from Tracker, but his grandson wasn’t talking. We respected him for that, he was a good kid, working off his debt at our bar in town, so any info we had on King, came from surveillance. King’s grandsons—Tracker, and his younger brother, Hark, lived in a shared suite in the attic. King lived in the other attic suite—the entire third floor was off limits to the rest of the clubhouse, and being a private family space meant no security cameras, so I had to rely on visuals from the binoculars and audio from King’s phone.

I hear a loud knocking on a door, there’s silence and I guess King is waiting for his youngest grandson to unlock it. I hear someone open the door and then it shuts again. Since he had his cell phone on him, I could still pick up what was said. Getting a visual on him was difficult because the window was small and didn’t give a good view of the interior of the room.

I see King move back and forth a couple of times as he walks around the room.

“You got your homework for me to review, Hark?”

“Yes, sir.”

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