Page 13 of Enforcing the Rules

“What about Hondo?”

“Vet’s got him in surgery. I haven’t heard anything yet. Luckily, she’s a friend of Lola’s so she won’t report the attack to the police. Lola’s waiting there. She’s supposed to call me.”

“Mind if I go look in on Night Train?”

He lifted his chin to the door. “Sure. Go on.”

I moved down the hall to the room Rock kept at the clubhouse and poked my head inside.

Night Train lay in the bed, hooked up to a tank of oxygen. Doc looked up from his spot in the corner.

“Can I see him?”

“Sure,” he replied. “He’s sleeping.”

“He’ll be okay?”

“Yes. He was extremely lucky.”

I stood over the bed and watched Night Train’s chest rise and fall. He seemed to be breathing easier now, but his face was still pale.

“I heard he’s gonna be okay.”

Doc came to stand next to me. “Yes. Only a small portion of his lung had collapsed. The excess air in the pleural space will reabsorb, and the lung should re-expand unaided. I’ll monitor it with more X-rays to make sure he’s healing. But things look good.”

I nodded to the oxygen tank and tubes to his nose. “What about the oxygen?”

“He had decreased oxygen levels, so I’m supplementing it until his lung re-expands fully.”

“I see.”

“He came damn close to losing his life today.”

I wanted to respond, but the less the Doc knew about our business, the better, so I nodded and extended my hand. “Thank you for saving him.”

He shook my hand. “You’re welcome. You two close?”

“He was my sponsor back in the day.”

“Heard he lost his wife last year.”

“Yeah. He hasn’t been the same since. I think his dog is the reason he hasn’t eaten a bullet.”

“I heard the dog was injured, too.”

“Yeah. He’s in surgery. No word yet. Say a prayer, huh?”

“Will do.”

I touched Night Train’s hand, then slipped out the door and headed to the big room.

Memphis was waiting for me.

“You and I are taking the east side. Come on.”

I followed him to our bikes. Everyone else was already gone.

We spent the next two days hitting every place we could think of, starting with the sham office the Dude worked out of. It was locked up, and he was nowhere in sight. Last night we broke in and searched the place, but there was no money. We did find a bunch of other businesses tax papers, so we had some locations to follow up on.

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