Page 81 of Forty

“Or what?” He repeats himself, slower, and he holds up the keys, clenched tightly in a giant hand. “We have Rab Daugherty in there.” He gestures to the barn. “We break him, we bring Knocker to the table, weendthis shit. We put two decades of senseless bloodshed behind us. And you gotta bail now? ‘Cause some gash texted you? You’d betray your club, your brothers for thatlyingbitch?”

Yes.

He makes it complicated, but it’s not. I learn from my mistakes.

She’s first. On her best day and her worst day. She’s first.

“Last chance. Give me the keys.”

“We’re your brothers.”

“Hand me the keys,brother.”

Heavy throws them, pitches them overhand into the field.

We run at each other, and we meet midair as I slam my fist into his nose. Blood squirts, sticky warm splatters on my face. And it’s on.

He comes back with a kidney shot.

We grapple. I nail him with an uppercut, but his massive bush of a beard deflects the impact. He’s grunting in my ear, and we’re clutching each other, working in body shots.

Boom is shouting, and I catch Nickel approaching in my peripheral vision.

“Shouldn’t we break ‘em up?” Boom yells.

“Don’t really want to die tonight.” Nickel grunts as he squats to watch.

We’re slowing down. I clock him in the jaw, and his head snaps back. It takes him a few seconds to come back, and his reflexes are shaky, but he commands so much mass, he takes us to the ground.

We’re at an impasse. Heavy has forty pounds on me, and he doesn’t have a messed-up arm, but I’ve got years of combat training, and I don’t spend so much time on a computer.

We’re rolling now, occasionally getting in jabs, but mostly wrestling, vying for an upper-hand that neither of us can keep; we’re too evenly matched. Neither of us is giving up. Blood’s streaming from his nose. I’m holding a rib in place with my left arm.

He tries to piledrive me. I use his momentum to throw him into the ground, but he twists, dragging me under, and I get a huge hunk of his hair in my mouth. As I spit it out, my knee connects with his nuts.

And then a corner of the barn explodes.

The sky lights up. Shrapnel and dust flies in a plume, yards into the air.

Mikey’s standing in the headlights of his SUV with a rocket launcher in his hand. “Shit. I was aiming for the tree.”

“Jesus Christ! I’ll tell you whatever the fuck you want to know!” Rab hollers from the intact half of the barn.

I squint at the weapon. “Is that the RPG I gave you back when you were a prospect? That time we went after that drug dealer for Wall?” That was shortly after my discharge. Three years ago.

“Yup,” Mikey says. “You never asked for it back. I kept it.”

“You ever fire it before?”

“First time.” He grins. “Has more of a kick than I expected.”

Heavy and I look at each other, and just like when we were kids, we crack up at the same time, doubling over.

My arm and ribs are throbbing. Heavy’s hacking. His nose is definitely broken.

The laughter dies off, and he slaps the keys into my hand. “You’d really pick her? Over your club?”

“You’d really make me?”

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