Page 65 of Mimic
The diner was small. Barely able to hold the number of men that would be at this meeting. It had a counter on one side and a long booth that spanned the opposite wall. In front of the booth were small tables lining the length of it. I wondered if King had been here before; this booth with the wall at our backs was the perfect place for when the Death Dogs arrived.
When we walked in, the cook met us in the middle of the room. “I don’t want no trouble here.” The man was in his fifties. His potbelly and bald head reminded me of a guy on an old show about a diner in Arizona that my mother used to watch. He had tattoos on his arms that said he had either done time in the service or in prison.
Maybe both.
“Not here for trouble, but we are meeting another club. How much to close for the day?”
“Ten thousand.”
I scoffed at his audacity, but King said, “Colt, pay the man. Sir, I suggest you send your staff home. We can lock up when we leave. If anything were to get damaged during our meet, we’ll cover it. We aren’t here to make your life harder, just hoping to make ours a little easier.”
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to call the sheriff and put him on alert,” the man said as he untied his apron and tossed it on the counter.
King looked around at us, then back to the old man. He nodded, adding, “As long as the sheriff understands we won’t start any shit, but we will defend ourselves if we have to.”
“Sheriff McCoy is a reasonable man. My name’s Mel.” He held his hand out to King, who took it without hesitation while I smirked. That was the name of the man in the show my mom used to watch.
Mel, true to his word, sent his staff home and called the sheriff. King spoke to him for a few minutes and they agreed to have a few deputies outside the diner where they couldn’t be seen. One thing King didn’t tell him was about Winchester up on the roof. If he had to shoot someone, he’d get down and out of the way before anyone knew where he’d been.
Mel hung around for a bit and made up some burgers and fries before moving upstairs, where he lived. King tried to get him to go somewhere else, but the man wouldn’t have it. Said he’d never run from a fight a day in his life and he wasn’t running now.
Everyone picked at their food. Tension kept us from scarfing it down. It was good too. King said he wanted to come back out this way once everything was done, maybe bring the old ladies and kids.
He meant when the war was over. That would be when the Death Dogs were dead. We all knew they would never surrender. It was them or us. They were a bigger club. They might think they had us over a barrel, but they didn’t know who we had in our pocket.
But we knew who they had in theirs.
Angel had called Blade back and told him what we needed to know. Steele had been stewing about King forcing his hand with starting a new chapter. For almost six fucking years, the man had been planning a way to take us out.
He’d finally found a way with the Death Dogs. King had used Chasm’s death as a way to leverage Steele into letting him start a new chapter.
I never knew Chasm; he’d been in the club when everyone was still in Arkansas. Rumor was, Steele sent Chasm into a warehouse knowing he wouldn’t be coming out.
We heard the bikes before we saw them. Skinner had been told to bring only six men besides his officers. We were about to find out just how little the man could be trusted.
The door swung open, and the bell jingled out a tune as Skinner, the president of the Death Dogs, and his VP Vulture, the man who thought he had a right to my woman, walked in followed by twenty men.
“You forget how to count?” King asked.
Skinner looked at his men before giving King a leering smile. “You said six men besides my officers. That’s what I brought.” He walked forward, stopping at the table and sitting in the chair across from King. “You see, when you have as many men as I have, you need a few more enforcers to keep the peace.”
“You don’t need all those enforcers when you’re leading men with respect.”
Skinner’s smile dropped a fraction, but he caught himself, not wanting King to know he’d hit the nail on the head.
“What’s this meeting about?” Skinner asked, ignoring King’s barb at his leadership abilities.
“You killed our prospect.”
“You killed our friend.”
“What friend?” Cash asked.
He knew what friend. The Death Dogs had been in bed with Daniel Scott. Winchester had killed him with his rifle, while Massacre stood over him pointing a gun at his head after beating the shit out of him for what he’d done to Amber.
“Daniel Scott.”
King sat forward, clasped his hands together on the table and said, “I don’t know what you’ve heard, but Mr. Scott was killed by an assassin. Even had his name etched on the bullet. That wasn’t us.”
