Axle Read online

  “I am going to read my one comment, and that will be it for our media comments,” he said. “We did not launch the strike on Brewskis. We appreciate and support the public of Springsville and would never put them in harm’s way. In time, you will all learn that this was a manipulative act by the Fallen Saints to turn the tide against us. The truth will come out.”

  With that, he turned around, ignoring the cascade of questions coming from the media.

  “Shiloh,” I said, hugging my dog close. “I think things might get pretty ugly in this town pretty soon.”

  I just wish I could help somehow.

  Can’t believe I’m admitting that, but it’s completely true.

  Axle

  The TV, newspaper, and radio journalists all yelled at me for further comment, ignoring my statement that I would not add anything further. Unlike Patriot, who was chummy with everyone he interacted with in public, I didn’t expect much from them and didn’t give much to them. My few encounters as one of the faces of the club, a decision deliberately made to make the more open-minded types feel comfortable about our presence, had taught me that the media was not my friend. I treated them with enough respect, but I never expected the same back.

  But what I did expect was that the Fallen Saints would be smart enough not to attack Brewskis. That was the one place we had both silently agreed we would never attack, never bring into the fray. If ever there was peace and resolution between the two groups, it would take place at Brewskis. It acted as a sort of ground zero.

  So, naturally, the Fallen Saints had to go and fuck it up.

  Just like Rose...

  No, not like Rose. Just like Rose and I had fucked things up for ourselves last night.

  I didn’t even have time to dwell on that misery as I had all morning. I hadn’t been so curt and silent like that in a long, long time. I think even fucking Butch was wondering if I had lost my voice the night before. Instead, I had to focus on this goddamn shit in an emergency church hall meeting, all while accounting for the fact there was a fucking rat in our club, and he would be in that room, and I had a goddamn good feeling who it was, and I couldn’t do a goddamn thing about it.

  Fuck!

  I shut the clubhouse door behind me so loudly that I heard some bottles rattling inside. I stormed past a prospect who wisely got the hell out of the way and stepped into the church meeting. The other five officers, Lane, Butch, Father Marcellus, Red Raven, and Patriot, were all waiting for me. They didn’t need long to pick up on my mood.

  “It goes without saying how pissed off we are,” Lane said. “I think we all need to plan—”

  “No, fuck that.”

  I tried to not speak out of turn. I certainly never, ever overruled Lane.

  But I had never found myself in a spot so frustrating and so infuriating as the one I had found myself in now. It was out of character, sure. I didn’t give a fuck.

  “We need to retaliate fucking now, Lane,” I growled. “There can’t be any planning on this. There can’t be any thinking on this. We just need to go.”

  “Hey, man, let’s slow down,” Patriot said.

  “They just attacked Brewskis and blamed it on us to the local media. What more do you need proof of, Patriot? You want them to just take over this town like so?”

  “First, man, just breathe.”

  God, I hated Patriot right now. But he understood me.

  “Second of all, this town loves us. They hate the Fallen Saints. They’re going to look at that interview that the Saints had and laugh. No one’s going to believe them.”

  You underestimate their capabilities. They can make life really shitty for us really fast if they want to.

  “I would agree with him,” Father Marcellus said. “The town derives its strength from our presence.”

  “For now,” I said, careful not to overreact to the club chaplain, as if that would somehow invoke the anger of God or something. “We underestimate our enemies, we overestimate how long we stay alive.”

  “Find the middle way.”

  As always, whenever he spoke, all eyes turned to Red Raven.

  “The man who strikes too quickly winds up in the same spot as the man who sits too long. The challenge is not to know what to do, but when to do it.”

  Well, that sure did give us some useful insight. I’m so glad I have a philosophy teacher to guide me along the way.

  “Butch,” I said, staring right at the man I believed to be the rat. “What do you think?”

  He grunted.

  “Lane,” he said.

  It wasn’t a question. It was a statement reflecting his belief that the club president should make decisions, and everyone else was just there to fall in line. It was fucking infuriating, not the least because I believed he was ignoring my question.

  “Okay,” I said, deciding that acting as I was would ultimately undermine my goals. “Lane. Apologies. Go ahead.”

  It looked like Lane wanted to ask me why I’d acted so brashly, but I think he knew well enough something was going on outside of the club contributing to this.

  “We do need to strike back, and we need to do so within the next three nights,” he said. “We need this to be swift and quick.”

  Something clicked in me as soon as I heard him say that we were going to strike in the next three nights. The rat in here would know that. The rat in here would inform the Saints. And all of the prep work we were doing right now… I had to pull Lane aside after the meeting and tell him we basically had to treat it as a thought exercise and not as the real thing. We couldn’t use this in the field, or we would set ourselves up for failure.

  “In line with Axle, though, I feel like tonight would be our best bet. It will be quick, it will be swift, and it will be when the Saints would least suspect it, given that they know we like to discuss club business at this time. Any thoughts?”

  With tunnel vision, unlike anything I’d ever had, I watched everyone across the table from me. Butch, Father Marcellus, Red Raven—it kind of worked out pretty well that the three of them sat side-by-side-by-side, making it much easier for me to analyze all of them at once. Of course, if I had to pick one, I already knew which one.

  None made any motion. It was Patriot that spoke first.

  “I think we should wait a day, man,” he said. “We’re acting on impulse and emotion.”

  “Yes.”

  Butch. You’re the rat.

  “It would make sense for us to approach this without anger clouding our judgment,” Father Marcellus said. “With it, we will put ourselves in danger and ultimately hurt ourselves.”

  “I’m open to hearing alternatives.”

  The conversation continued like so, with most of the dialogue settling on tomorrow night instead of tonight. But at this point, that was all secondary for me. I didn’t care when we struck so much as who struck with us.

  “We’re putting it to a vote,” Lane said a couple minutes later, something I barely heard as I watched my suspected target. “All in favor of tonight?”

  Only Lane and I raised our hands.

  “All in favor of Friday?”

  Everyone else raised their hands.

  Except, strangely, Red Raven.

  “Red Raven?”

  “Things will not calm in the span of one day,” he said. “We should wait until we are of calm mind. And then we should wait one more day to make sure our calm mind is genuine.”

  He had made his statement, but in true Red Raven form, he did not seem intent on pushing it further. Ever the smart one, he recognized that he was not in a position to press his views.

  But, conversely, no one else spoke in support of Red Raven’s proposal.

  “Then it is decided,” Lane said. “We will wait to strike on Friday. Take tonight to cool your heads. We all know that the Fallen Saints will play mind games to try and defeat us. We must not allow them to have that reward.”

  Lane banged the gavel then. There was nothing more to be said by the group.

/>   But that didn’t mean that there weren’t things left to be said.

  The group mostly shuffled out. I said mostly because one person remained in his seat. Butch.

  And though Father Marcellus and Red Raven left, with Patriot at the door and Lane right behind him, Butch hadn’t moved a muscle. His eyes locked on mine, and I waited for him to speak, almost egging him on.

  “What?” I said. “You got something to say?”

  Patriot left, but Lane stood at the exit. He shut the door behind Patriot and locked it. He knew something was about to happen.

  “The hell was that about?” Butch said.

  “Hell was what about?”

  Butch didn’t say a word. He knew I was playing dumb, and I knew it too.

  “I wanted to know your opinion for the strike,” I said.

  “Bullshit.”

  I bit my lip. My anger was rising by the second, and it wasn’t being helped by this probable rat pretending to make me look bad.

  “You’ve been a strange one recently, Butch.”

  “Axle,” Lane said from behind Butch. “Think very carefully about your next words.”

  Butch gave the faintest hints of a smile, his lips just barely curling upward. I felt I was being mocked. I wanted nothing more to smack him right there. I had a feeling I might get that chance.

  “You didn’t think to ever tell us your real name is Brian, Butch?”

  Butch didn’t flinch. But something in my gut told me that he didn’t appreciate being called out for his real name.

  “Oh, yes, we know that. Just like we know that you met up with my ex at the vet clinic. What was that all about?”

  Butch kept silent. I didn’t know what was pissing me off more, the things that had put me in this position, or that Butch had literally no reaction to what I was saying. He’s waiting for me to make the accusation.

  “You’re going to be quiet then, huh?” I said. “Then tell me, why, after you took whatever pet you have—I don’t know, maybe, a rat.”

  Butch finally flinched at that, but he got his cool back quick. Still, it was the first crack in the armor, and I was determined to show Lane his true form.

  “Why, after you took your rat into the vet visit, did you go to the east side? Into Fallen Saints territory?”

  “Axle!” Lane shouted.

  But it was far too late. I was too on edge after last night. The Fallen Saints attack on Brewskis was the final straw that had broken my willpower. Everything was going to come out now.

  “Could it be that you went to confront the Fallen Saints? That’s a brave thing,” I said. “There’s not enough bravery in this world, you know.”

  Like with me and Rose.

  “Or maybe you went there to help them, rat.”

  Everything that followed after that both seemed to be in slow motion and the kind of thing that, in retrospect, happened so fast as to defy explanation.

  Butch rose from his chair and threw a glass at me. It hit my forearm and shattered. Miraculously, it did not cut me badly, but I barely had time to react to that.

  Seconds later, I felt Butch’s massive hands grabbing my jacket, yanking me out of my seat, and throwing me against the wall.

  “Enough!” Lane said.

  But if the President had any sense, he would’ve gotten the hell out and let us fight to the death. Because either this rat was going to die and I was going to do something good for the day, or I was going to die, and I wouldn’t have to worry about anything with the club anymore.

  Butch approached me and raised his foot to curb stomp me. But I rolled to the side at the last second, got on my feet, dodged a punch, and landed a hard socket right to his gut.

  Unfortunately, that shit hurt me more than it hurt him. I didn’t know where Butch had been training, but he’d clearly done a shitload of working out.

  “Fuck!” I yelled as I shook my wrist.

  Butch again grabbed my collar with one hand. This time, though, even though it felt like my hand had broken on impact, I peeled off his hand, slammed the base of my hand into his chin, and drove him back. With him briefly staggered, I raised my foot, drove it straight into his gut, and knocked him to the ground.

  “Die, you fucking rat!”

  But before I could get him, he swept my feet from underneath me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lane standing in the corner, keeping a healthy distance from the fight. It was almost like watching a hockey ref oversee a fight—he was going to let blows land until it got to the point that someone could get killed.

  I scrambled to my feet just in time to feel Butch’s fist collide with my jaw. It knocked me right back to the ground. He mounted me, but I had the quick sense to buck him off with my hips, and we rolled on the ground, colliding with the chairs and the table legs. The more time that ticked by, the more it felt like someone had taken a baseball bat and driven it straight into my body.

  “Motherfucker!” Butch yelled.

  “Alright, enough!” Lane yelled, coming over. “Break it up! Break it—”

  And then Lane learned why he needed to stay out of the fray. A stray fist of mine, meant to hit Butch in the face, hit Lane right on the side of the face, right by the eye. The hit again left my fist a little shaken, but Lane crumpled to the ground, writhing in pain. Butch shoved me violently away, but he did not chase after me. Instead, he tended to Lane.

  “Not a fucking rat,” Butch said. “I am not a fucking rat!”

  That fight hadn’t proved otherwise. If anything, the way he reacted so strongly just told me he was a rat. Why else would he react so strongly?

  Maybe because anyone would react that way in this club if they were accused of being a rat?

  “Whatever,” I said, spitting blood on the ground.

  “You want to accuse indiscriminately?” Butch said. “Get out. We don’t need your kind.”

  I had never heard Butch utter something that sounded so racist.

  And I didn’t need to hear him say anything more.

  Jerome was right. I wasn’t a part of this club.

  If I was being forgiving, I would think that the way Butch suddenly changed facial expressions to one of regret suggested he didn’t really mean to be racist. It might have also indicated that perhaps his loyalty lay with the Black Reapers. After all, if he was trying to split us apart, his regret would not have been so instantaneous.

  But I wasn’t being forgiving.

  “You backwater prick,” I said. “You want to fight again? You want to fucking go?”

  “That’s enough, Axle!” Lane said. “You two need some space right now.”

  “But he’s—”

  “That’s enough, Butch,” Lane again said. “You both can fight me on it if you want, but you’ll have the entire fucking club on your throat.”

  I knew he was right. I hated that he was giving Butch something like the benefit of the doubt. Fine. He may not have been the club rat.

  But he still had done a lot of shitty, fucking awful things.

  “You loved doing things with Rose, didn’t you?” I spat.

  “The fuck you talking about?” Butch said.

  “Don’t play games with me, asshole. You’re the one that gave me her note. She’s the one who knew your real name. What did you do with her?”

  Butch shook his head.

  “You’re fucked, Axle. I knew that, but you’re fucked.”

  My fists curled. Lane got between the two of us.

  “I took my fucking dog to the vet, and she recognized my cut,” he said. “You really think I’d do anything with her?”

  I hated that that was a logical explanation. I wanted to trap this asshole in a spot that he could not explain his way out of. But that...

  Didn’t matter. I had other things.

  “Okay, why’d you go to the east side after the vet visit?”

  Butch looked at me like I’d accused him of breathing, like I’d made the dumbest statement ever.

  “Because I was fucking hungry, and
no one is going to attack me in daylight.”

  Again, he had a point.

  But one last time, I felt I had a trump card.

  “Then why are you telling Jerome about everything?” I said. “Huh? Why are you telling him shit?”

  “Jesus Christ, Axle,” Butch said.

  I’d never heard him speak so much in my life. It was almost like he’d worn a mask of silence before this fight, but now that the gloves had come off, so had the mask.

  “We need allies, not enemies,” he said. “Same reason why I keep telling Lane we need to get Cole and the Gray Reapers in the fray. Because we need allies in order to defeat the Fallen Saints.”

  “Allies who would try and recruit me away?” I said. “Allies like you, who would say you don’t need ‘my kind’? Care to explain yourself on that one?”

  Butch shook his head.

  “I’m sorry how I said that,” he said. “But I’m not sorry for saying we don’t need you if you’re going to be like this. Whatever is making you like this, get the fuck over it.”

  He’s right, you know. You may hate him. He may be the rat.

  But he’s not wrong.

  “That’s enough between the two of you,” Lane said. “Go home and get cleaned up. I’m going to speak to each of you individually before you see each other. For now, stay the fuck away from each other, would you? I’d rather you throw punches at Lucius instead of my fucking eye.”

  As I was closer to the door, I was the first to leave. I nearly spat at Butch before I decided it would make things worse for Lane. I glared at him, but stares just didn’t have the same effect that punches did.

  When I walked out, I saw Patriot and Father Marcellus waiting outside. Red Raven was a little further away, seated, not able to stand for that long. I walked past all of them without a word.

  I went straight to my bike and sped home so fast, a cop could have pulled me over enough times to meet his ticket quota for the month. I was beyond pissed, to say the least.

  Upon reaching home, I checked my phone. To my surprise—perhaps a little too much to my surprise—Jerome had messaged me.