Page 41 of Feint

The thing about fear and hope, I’d come to find, was that it was a very useful interrogation tactic. If you made a man fear you only, he would take his information to the grave. But give a man hope to get out of his situation, and he would spill his guts. No one wanted to die for someone else’s shit. And this man was no different.

“Y-yeah, I was a part of the raid on your club’s storehouse. W-what do you want to know?” he stuttered out, trying to lean himself up against the wall.

I smirked and tapped the side of his face with the gun, and he froze. “I want to know where my product is, how many of you guard it, and what the security measures are.”

He looked back over at the body of the president and then back at me. “It’s located near the outskirts of Bakersfield…”

I held open my phone. “Show me exactly where. If you lie, I will kill you in your hospital bed.”

“W-we moved it there… N-no cameras, but at least a dozen m-men. I don’t know h-how they are stationed. I helped unload it all inside. Now, go so he can call the damn ambulance before I bleed out!” he cried out as he looked at me, shakily pointing to the location.

I stood up, bookmarking the location. “You did good. Thanks.” I started to walk to the door when I heard him sigh and direct his attention to the bartender.

"C-call the ambulance… H-hurr—"

BANG!

His words were cut short as I put a bullet into the side of his head. The bartender looked at me in terror, dropping the phone he had grabbed to the floor. And for a split moment, I considered killing him too. But I didn’t murder people who didn’t deserve it.

I tossed the president’s gun back onto the floor and walked over to the president, pulling out his own boot knife. I cut the president’s patch off the front of his jacket. I leaned over the counter, grabbing a bar rag, and two bottles of alcohol, and left the bar.

I stopped by their bikes, rolling each of them into the middle of the parking lot. I open their gas caps before pushing them over one by one. I hated these bikes. My anger coursed through my veins as I shook out both bottles of alcohol over them all and soaked the bar rag. Pulling out my lighter, I flicked it until it lit the rag before tossing it onto the middle bike. They quickly went up in a blaze as I walked away and slipped on my bike. I took off faster than I had ever ridden before back to the clubhouse. Knowing the mess I had left behind and the message it would send once the word spread, I needed to tell Damien what had just happened as fast as possible.

I sped into the clubhouse parking lot just as Wilder and Damien were going over some of the bikes out front. I walked over, yanking off my helmet, and I looked between them.

They exchanged a look with each other before Damien spoke. “Damn, Kordell, where’s the fucking fire, driving in here like that?”

“I just killed the president of the Wayward Suns,” I rushed out. My adrenaline was pumping through my body.

They both stopped dead in their tracks.

“What did you say?” Damien got out, her eyes wide.

The road captain’s jaw dropped.

I explained it all to them. How I had been cruising home and came across them at the bar, how I’d walked in after seeing who one of the bikes belonged to and gunned them all down. And how I had the location of our stock. I held out the patch to her so she knew I wasn’t lying.

“I need your permission to go get it, Damien. The clubhouse won’t listen to me right now, but if you give the order, they will. We can get our product back, take it to the Kkangpae, and save this business deal for our clubhouse.” I was as close to begging her as I had ever been to begging someone for anything.

She ran her fingers over the patch, noticing the blood splatter on it. Deep in thought. But Damien was a woman of action; it never took her long to think about anything.

She nodded to herself before speaking to us. “Wilder, grab a dozen of our guys, and I want you all to take as many vehicles as you think you’ll need to go get this done. Tell the sergeant that we are going to need him to take stock when we get it all back.” She looked between us.

“Umm… Prez, remember that the sergeant isn’t in town. He just left on that trip to meet with the branch up north a couple hours ago to try and see if they had any contacts. He won’t be back for a few days.”

Wilder looked a little nervous, and Damien rubbed her eyes, exasperated. She ran her fingers in her hair.

“Fuck, that’s right. Okay… then, Kordell, you’re going to have to take stock. You know the order too. I’m not the praying sort, but let’s fucking hope it’s all there. Road Captain, go grab people. NOW!”

The next hour was filled with the road captain rounding up people as Damien gave them the details of the operation. It was already dark, so we would have the cover of night on our side if we worked fast.

Just as we were about to leave, the word broke publicly that there was a shoot-out at the bar. There was no way the Suns wouldn’t be more concerned about the state of their president than their random warehouse right now. And once they found out a patched member of the BLVD Riders was the one who had killed their president, there would be a potential attack on our clubhouse.

“Damien, I can leave the road captain if you need me to—” I started, but she held up a hand to cut me off.

“No, you are doing something that will require our best guys to make it in and out with as little issues as possible. I’ll handle things here. This is our home, and we can defend it well. Just maybe don’t take all night and day to get your job done, all right?” She gave me a nervous smile, and I nodded.

“Won’t let you down again, President. You can bet my life on it.”

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