Page 14 of Tank

“What the hell is happening?” I hear Nat ask Remy, Remy shrugging in reply.

“You ever thought about using CO2? It’s the same chemical that builds up in the human body when you’re suffocating. The victim will be wide awake and alert enough to panic over and over again until you end them,” Chewy offers up after a moment of thought.

“Oh,” I say, patting my boobs, looking for my notebook. “Oh that’s good,” I pull my notebook out from my bra, along with the little pen and start writing stuff down.

“Aw shit, please Nat, Remy, someone tell me these two aren’t bonding?” one of the guys says.

“We’re totally bonding,” Chewy answers. “Hard.”

“Noooo,” another voice whines before moving away. I don’t even look up to see which brother it is, I’m on a roll and have to note down this stuff before it flits straight out of my head.

“Morning ladies,” a deep voice says from behind me.

“Morning, Tank. Here for the geek show?” Nat says, snickering a little.

“The geek show? What’s going on?” he asks, coming to a stop at the seat next to mine.

“Chewy and Mira just realized they can exchange torture methods,” Remy replies.

“Oh, shit.” This time Marx’s voice sounds out. “Please don’t tell Chewy about that scene in ‘Devil’s Heat’.”

My head snaps up to stare at him, eyes wide.

“I mean, I heard it’s pretty rough. From what I’ve heard. Or read on the internet when I searched your name. Yeah.” With that, he turns and stomps off to his office, the door slamming behind him.

“Well, that was weird,” one brother says, the rest of the MC agreeing with him.

“Yeah, totally,” I cough out.

Everyone finishes up breakfast and I try to take notes around being distracted by all the goings on. Blanche collects up thelittle kids, or Littles as they seem to collectively be called, then corrals them into the mom vehicle with the precision of an army drill sergeant. She’s nice, but also very terrifying. The MC brothers seem to leave the clubhouse in packs heading out to work in the MC owned businesses, the only brother who isn’t employed by the MC, Switch, eats his breakfast and then heads to bed after working the night shift at Rose Grove General Hospital.

Within half an hour the clubhouse is almost empty, save for Mama Debs in the kitchen and Marx in his office somewhere.

“You alright there Mira?” Mama Debs’ voice calls through the hatch.

“Yup!” I call out, tidying up my mess, and popping my notebook back into my bra. I carry my dirty dishes through to the kitchen, cleaning them up and popping them into the industrial sized dishwasher. “I’m going to head home and check up on Mrs. McKenzie, she’ll be all huffy with me for being out all night. But never fear, I will be back!” I turn to head out, but then spin on my heel and give Mama Debs a quick squeeze. Nothing too intimate, we only just met, sheesh! “Thank you for breakfast,”

“Anytime, dear. Anytime.” She uses her strong mom arms to give me a big squeeze before releasing me out into the world, a huge smile on my face, and walking on air.

Chapter 4

Tank

“Another call out brother,” Judge calls from the reception, giant mitt of a hand covering the bottom of the business phone.

“Another one? Holy shit, what is going on in this town?” I mutter to myself.

Walking past him to leave he holds a sticky note up with the location, name, vehicle and cell number of the caller. I snatch it out of his hand on the way past and give him a chin lift, taking a glance. “This is out old man Henderson’s way. I’ll pick up that case of ‘shine for the old boys while I’m out there.”

“Where’s Tav? He usually does it.”

“Yeah, but he and Blanche have that meeting with the school for Elio. Teachers don’t take kindly to 5-year-olds making fireworks in the playground.”

Judge snorts and shakes his head.

I pull myself into one of our two new tow trucks, blast Metallica and let my thoughts run away with me while I make the half hour drive. I’ve always been a thinker, much to Gramps’s chagrin. I think he would have liked me better if I was all brawn and no brains. Willing to do exactly what I was told, noquestions asked. That doesn’t get you home from deployment safely though. That gets you dead.

“Well, lookie what we got here. I didn’t know they stacked shit so high,” Old man Henderson teases in his rough 3 packs a day smoker’s voice when I pull into his place. “Young Tombs slackin’ today?”

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