I just keep driving to the desert access pass, but when I get there, I can’t enter. Two motorcycles are just lying across the middle of the road, blocking the entrance. And there are two large boulders so I can’t go around.Fuck.
My heartimmediately goes into overdrive. There’s that bad shit I was expecting. I keep my hand steady on the steering wheel as I consider my options. Take the Jeep over the bikes and not give a single fuck about what happens — I have to go where I have to go — or back out and head to the highway to find a different entrance.
I want to stick to my plan. My stomach churns. I have a terrible feeling about the bikes across this road. Then, I hear more bikes coming from behind me.Shit.
I don’t even knowwhy, but my instinct is just tohide.I pull the car around the other side of this abandoned building that sits near the desert access pass covered in vines and all this other shit. My Jeep isbarelyout of sight, but I’m counting on these men being too distracted by what they’re doing in the desert to notice me. I turn the Jeep off as the bikes get closer.
The best thing to do isshut the fuck up.But it doesn’t feel easy. My lungs are bursting for space in my chest, the adrenaline coursing through me simultaneously begging me to scream and run. I regret not taking Seth’s pistol with me, but I thought a gun would be more trouble than it was worth and I didn’t wantanythingconnecting me to that old life once I got to Denver.
Three bikes pullup at the access pass. They don’t look in my direction. I’m safe…for now.I thought outlaw biker gangs were something made up for movies — you know how there aren’t exactly bands of bank robbers pulling offOcean’s 11out there? I thought it was like that for bikers. But now…
They don’t bother hiding what they’re saying, so clearly they don’t expect anyone around here. I suddenly wish I’d found somewhere further away to hide, but I didn’t know where they were coming from and it seemed far more important to hide than to take the chance and run into them.
Most of thesemen are blond. The three that ride up all have black bikes. I make a mental note because the True Crime part of my brain activates immediately. The three that ride up don’t seem like the leaders. I don’t know for sure, but something about their demeanor doesn’t scream leader. I have good eyesight – we have a long line of pilots with perfect vision on my dad’s side – so I can make out the names on the three patches by some miracle. Shithole, Bullet, and Meth. Cute. Meth has black and gray hair in a horseshoe and pulled into a rattail. He’s thin with sunken cheeks like he really is on meth.
Bullet is close to seven feet tall, blond-haired and blue-eyed with enormous, tattooed arms. Swastikas. A large eagle. The number 88. Holy shit. I think this guy is a Neo-Nazi. They occasionally pop up in True Crime episodes, so I’m not exactly an expert, but I know enough to suspect these men are ex-cons.
Isuspectthey’re ex-cons but I know for sure it’s dangerous for me to be here. I really wish I had a gun…
Chapter Four
STEEL
I’m a hot fucking mess when I roll into Globe, Arizona, home of the Midnight SS. The small town wasn’t always packed to the gills with racist shitbags. I spend an insanely large amount of time making my way down the old Route 66 highway and getting drunk in every bar to get all the information possible.
It helps to be a conversationalist. It’s one of the ways I’m better than my twin brother. He’s a brooding alcoholic. I’m the chatty kind. It makes me better with women, better with people in general and so far, it’s paying off.
Only thing is, the shit I’m learning about these Midnight SS motherfuckers makes me want to stay far away from them.
When you’re dealing with folks like that, you want to strike first but striking first means risking time in prison. Time away from my brother. He already looks so much younger than me. He might be leaner, with less muscle on his frame, but prison aged me more than I thought it would. I don’t want to go back.
The pressure pushes on the back of my head with total agony. I wait until midnight to scope out the Midnight SS clubhouse. I take my bike to a safe house pre-arranged by Magnum. The car he leaves me to tail the wannabe Nazis seems like a trap. A bright red Chevy Silverado. Seriously? It’s what I have and I trust Magnum, so I take the truck. Red? He could have at least found a silver one…
I blast the air conditioning, but it barely seems effective against the Arizona heat. I know the entire family loves it out here, but I want the winds to blow me out across Route 66 all the way to Santa Monica. Somewhere with ocean breeze and bikinis. Fuck this heat.
My conversations with various folks in the know in various bars across the country helps me to find the clubhouse. Bikers talk to bikers and I know how to play my cards. I talk felon shit with other felons, biker shit with bikers. You get the point. Everyone has their thing and you find out where to meet ‘em and keep ‘em until you get the information you need.
I know the Midnight SS clubhouse is off U.S. 60, about fifteen miles off-road in the middle of the desert. How you find your point depends on who you believe. I have my pick of the finest drunks in Texas… I leave their differing opinions up to a coin flip and head West off the highway.
There might be guards around the clubhouse tonight, although I was assured the Midnight SS are so secretive, they don’t bother with guards. Not enough folks know of their existence. Yet, if they do exist, and if they do have any power, they know of ours. I don’t like how that makes me feel.
Just when we got peace, I don’t want to start a war. I want to lay my father’s memory to rest. I want Hunter to raise his family. Shit, I have some catching up to do unless I want my twin brother to be the one who gets every damn thing in this life while I have nothing.
The winds need to change.
I turnoff the headlights and try to get the engine as quiet as possible as I roll my way across the barely-marked roads towards the clubhouse. I suspect my coin flip has me pointed in the right direction because of the tire tracks pressed into the dirt.
This could just be a popular place for dirt bikes, but the hair on the back of my neck raises with the raw instinct that suggests I’m approaching something dark and dangerous. The first thing I notice, even before the Midnight SS club house, is a large towering something rising out of the desert.
Two willow trees. Big willow trees with large boughs. Every last inch of my body drips in sweat. I drive the truck behind one of the willow trees and park it there between the tree and the clubhouse. If there was anyone around, they would have shot me by now. Shit, this is Arizona. Anyone could shoot me.
I reachfor my gun and hop out of the truck. Send the felon on the suicide mission… Who gives a fuck if he makes it out alive, right? I can’t complain. I don’t care if I make it out alive either.
The clubhouse isa lot cleaner than you would expect. No graffiti, even if you would expect a place like this left unguarded out in the desert to pick up a few tags. I suppose folks are too smart to fuck this clubhouse up if they even know it exists. I wish I felt safer because of my pistol, but it’s just so fucking hot that I can’t help but feel this low-level irritation.
It’s not just the beads of sweat dripping down my neck. The air is thick, wet, and that makes it hard for it to enter my lungs. I stuff down the feeling I have that some shit could pop off at any minute. It would be pretty damn hard for any living thing to avoid detection out here – something I should take note of in case the folks who own this place come back.
But how often do bikers really use their clubhouse?