Page 3 of Iron Hearts

Next was Pope, then Pud, Toad, Mugshot, and Forks.

I hung up with Forks, who laughed at me for calling him up when he was just downstairs, but it wasn’t like I knew if he was here. It was lunchtime, and there was no telling where any of these fools were at in any given moment.

I got my ass up and stretched, casting a longing look at the waves outside the apertures that we zipped clear vinyl “windows” closed when it called for it. It almost never did unless the rain came in sideways or in the heart of winter when it could get a little on the cooler side.

I needed to eat, and it would take a while for all the boys to arrive. With that in mind, I opened up the drawer I kept my bike’s keys and my favorite firearm in and tucked it safely in the back of my waistband up under my colors. Straightening up, I moved to the front stairs.

“Where the fuck ‘re you going?” Renegade demanded when I appeared in the garage and headed for the open bay door.

“Grab a bite around the corner and bring it back. You hungry?” I asked.

“Yeah, get me a burger,” he said, and I nodded.

“Combo?” I asked.

“Just the burger,” he said.

“Cool.” I looked to Shadow standing behind him and asked, “You?”

He shook his head curtly.

I saddled up and rode out of the gate. The burger place we frequented was a mom-and-pop place called Smokey’s Char Broil, which wasn’t but two blocks away. They didn’t have a drive-thru. You had to go in and to the counter – and it was a cash-only joint. One that we looked out for, free of charge. We liked the food, and we liked the dude who owned it. It’d been in his family since the fifties.

Every once in a while, they’d comp our burgers, and every once in a while, they’d hit the button Enigma had installed under their counter that would send an SOS to all our phones. Whoever was closest would answer the call. Usually, it was some dumb fuck punk kid trying to rob the joint or a drunk homeless crazy fucker hollerin’ for some bullshit reason.

“Striker!” Wally called from behind the counter. “What can I get you?”

“Couple half-pounders, if you don’t mind.”

“Combos?”

“Fries with one of them, but no drinks.”

“I got you!” he called, and he went back to flipping, hollering out to the kid manning the deep fryer to get me some fresh.

The kid came around the counter with a grease-stained brown paper sack and slid it across the counter at me. I put a twenty on the counter and threw Wally some chin.

“Thanks for your business!” he called out.

“Any time, man!”

I left. Two burgers and a large fry only came to like twelve bucks and some change, but they looked like they were running a little lean today on patronage. I didn’t mind leaving a bigger-than-usual tip on top of paying for my food, which Wally had fully intended to make on the house for me.

I got back to the garage and jerked my head toward the stairs at Renegade, who stood up from the bike he was working on the electrical on and said, “Grab me a beer, and I’ll be right up.”

“You got it, boss,” I said and took the stairs two at a time, crossing the open office floor and taking the back stairs the rest of the way up to the third floor.

The third floor was worlds different from the garage and the office space. You would never guess, looking at either of the two floors downstairs, how fuckin’niceit was up here.

The walls were a deep, flat black with red breaking it up from the crown molding to the chair rails to the baseboards. The tile was an easy-to-clean linoleum in big, fat, classic checkerboard pattern in the equally classic black and white.

The pool tables were black with red felt, with the MC’s logo in the center of each.

The back wall had a black-and-white mural of the Royal Bastards MC logo and track lighting, giving our club’s colors a subtle but respectful glow.

Above the doors leading into the private rooms for playtime were a line of photo frames, simple black, eight-by-tens of each and every mugshot we’d ever taken.

A lot of us had been arrested plenty, some of us had served time, but most of us didn’t have so much as a misdemeanor on our record thanks to Shadow’s connections and some damn fine club lawyers that Renegade kept on retainer.

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