Page 49 of Damron
Nitro grinned. “That’s more like it, Prez.”
Voices filtered in from the hallway. I could hear Augustine barking orders, the low drone of men arming up. The Bloody Scythes weren’t a family, not really. More like a pack of junkyard dogs, chewing on each other until something bigger came along. But even junkyard dogs could bite. I let Nitro help me into a fresh shirt, then shrugged on my cut. The pain was background noise now, part of the job. I checked the Glock at my hip, chambered a round, and waited for the familiar click.
As I walked out, I glanced at the phone on the futon. One new message from Carly: “We need to talk. Please.”
I pocketed the phone, but didn’t answer.
Not yet.
Carly
I showed up at the clubhouse after midnight, the wind off the highway stinging my face and making a mess of the hasty bun I’d wrangled my hair into. The place looked even meaner at night—lit by a single guttering bulb over the door, the parking lot scattered with trucks and bikes like bones in a mass grave. The Prospect who met me outside was so green I could smell the fear off him. He didn’t look me in the eye, just muttered, “They said you could come in. But you gotta leave any piece at the door.”
I flashed my empty hands. “Not packing. You want to search me?”
He blushed and shook his head, then led me through the battered steel door and into the den of wolves.
It was quieter than I’d expected. The jukebox was dark, the air thick with cigarette haze and the sour, chemical tang of cheap mop water. Most of the patched members were hunched over a battered pool table or slumped at the bar, bottles of beer sweating in their fists. The moment I crossed the threshold, every eye in the place pivoted toward me—some hostile, some curious, a few just bored enough to wonder if the senator would start a bar fight. The low conversation died, replaced by the slow tick of the ceiling fan and the shuffling of boots against linoleum.
“Senator,” someone called, and the word wasn’t quite an insult but sure as hell wasn’t a compliment.
I ignored it, scanning the room for Damron. He wasn’t in the main drag, which meant either asleep or holed up in his office nursing the wounds the media wasn’t allowed to see.
“Down the hall, last door on the left,” the Prospect muttered, as if reading my mind.
I made my way past the lineup of Bloody Scythes memorabilia: old patches under glass, faded photos of men who’d died with their colors on, a framed newspaper clipping from the first time the club ever made the front page. It smelled like old sweat and fresh paint and something else, darker, that clung to the walls no matter how often they cleaned. The door to Damron’s room was ajar. I knocked anyway.
“Come in or fuck off,” came the reply. It was him, all right—voice thick with whiskey and contempt.
I pushed inside, the overhead bulb making a spotlight of the battered futon and the man sprawled on it. Damron was half-naked, bandages crusted with blood from shoulder to hip, a fresh line of stitches peeking out from under the wrap at hiswaist. The IV bag was gone, replaced by a bottle of Wild Turkey sweating on the floor. He was holding a strip of gauze in one hand, a hunting knife in the other, trying to cut the old dressing away from the wound.
“You look like shit,” I said, closing the door behind me.
He didn’t turn, but I saw his shoulders tense. “I feel worse. Surprised you’re here, Senator. Thought you were busy throwing me under every bus in the state.”
I dropped my bag by the wall. “My people said you wouldn’t pick up.”
He grunted. “Don’t like talking on the phone. Especially not with politicians.”
I crossed the room and took the knife out of his hand before he could protest. “Let me,” I said, then knelt at the edge of the futon and started peeling the soaked gauze away from his skin.
His body was a wreck—old scars layered under new ones, each one with a story I didn’t want to hear. He flinched as I worked, but didn’t say a word.
“I saw the press conference,” he said, voice flat as the desert. “Nice job. You almost made it sound like you don’t know me.”
I tossed the ruined gauze into the trash. “It was necessary.”
“Sure,” he said. “Always is.”
The silence between us was sharper than the knife. I reached into my bag for the antiseptic and clean dressings, then started cleaning the wound. He hissed in pain but stayed still.
“You could’ve told me you were coming,” he muttered.
“I wasn’t sure I would,” I replied, dabbing at the edge of the stitches. “I didn’t want to start a war.”
He chuckled, bitter. “Too late for that.”
I taped down the fresh bandage, fingers lingering on his skin a second longer than they should have. “You’re lucky you didn’t bleed out. They said you pulled your own IV.”
