Patriot Read online

  “Up to a point, man,” I said, remembering all the times my commanding officers in the military would make sweeping, overreacting proclamations, making life difficult for everyone. “You’re Lane, not Butch. Don’t lose sight of who you are and the heart you got.”

  “I appreciate it, brother, and to some degree, I’m saying this out loud for myself as much for you,” he said.

  He sighed.

  “You know, I keep trying to figure out if I’m going to need Cole. Especially if this issue really is something that’s going to undermine the club.”

  To me, the answer was simple.

  Yes, we were going to need Cole.

  Cole Carter had the last name of the founder, had not killed Shannon—thankfully, Lane had gotten over that belief, even if it took him nearly a year to clear his mind of the false story—and had always been loyal and faithful to all of the other Reapers. The two of them had never become co-Presidents as their father had wanted, but I could just imagine the two of them bouncing off each other so well.

  But this wasn’t the place to have that conversation. I bit my lip and just shrugged. It was my way of telling Lane that that question didn’t matter that much right now.

  “What’s the issue, man?” I finally said when it seemed like Lane was more interested in me saying something.

  He stood up for a second, made sure the door was locked shut, peered out the crack of it, and sat down.

  “I think there’s a spy in the Black Reapers for the Fallen Saints. And I think it’s one of the officers.”

  My body went cold. I could literally feel shivers and chills go down my spine. The tip of my nose went numb, my fingers started to, and I felt like I needed a hoodie to combat the cold. This was... this was...

  Déjà vu all over again.

  I remembered back to that fateful night in Ramadi when I’d lost a few brothers... when I later learned why I had lost some of my best friends... how one of the men in the group had fallen for the beliefs of the enemy... how they had deserted us...

  No, no, this shit couldn’t be happening again. There was just no fucking way. Life couldn’t give me a second traitor in this short a time upon me. That wasn’t fair. That wasn’t fucking fair!

  “That’s impossible, man,” I said, gritting my teeth as I struggled to maintain a stoic appearance. “All of those officers were handpicked by your father. Your father knew people better than anyone else. There is no way that he picked someone who would be a traitor.”

  “Patriot, I know it sounds ridiculous, but I keep thinking about how things have gone since my father’s death,” he said. “Every fucking time we strike the Saints, it’s like they’re one step ahead of us. The only reason either of us is alive right now is because my brother came out of nowhere to save the day. And that only happened because of a lucky breakthrough for Angela. We can’t rely on fate saving our asses again. You know?”

  “I know, man, I fucking know,” I said.

  At this point, I felt like I was fighting more out of principle than out of belief. I had never said Lane’s thought out loud, but the notion of a traitor had crossed my mind more than once about how a group as ill-disciplined as the Saints couldn’t have known what we were going to do so well. The only way they had was either an incredible string of luck, or...

  “Just… damnit, man, are you sure?” I said, even as I began to admit the likelihood of the truth. “You had better be damn well sure. You make that sort of accusation against someone here, that’s the kind of thing that gets people killed. You kill the wrong guy, well...”

  “I know, I know,” Lane said. “And look, I’ll admit, I can’t be one hundred percent sure. If you ask me who I suspect is the spy, I have no idea. I’m telling you, so I trust that you’re not the spy, but I spoke with someone about—”

  “With whom?”

  Lane sighed.

  “Angela.”

  My eyes cocked at that one.

  “You’re taking a really big risk bringing outside people into club business, man,” I said, doing my best not to get frustrated. “You know how much the brotherhood means. Angela’s a great woman, and I’m glad you got her, but you’re foolish if you think that bringing her in for something like that is smart.”

  “I know, I know.”

  I defended Lane in a lot of cases when I felt people just didn’t bother to understand him, but this was a spot he’d fucked up. Too late to do anything about it now, though.

  “In any case, she warned me that anyone, even you, could be the spy, but just to be one hundred percent clear, I don’t think you’re the spy.”

  “Good,” I said. “I’d have to kick your ass anyway if you thought I was, man.”

  Lane laughed at that, and I smiled back to be polite, but this wasn’t a conversation I was particularly enjoying. It was just reminding me how much I hated what had happened in my past, and how futile my efforts to date had been to deal with it. It reminded me that I couldn’t escape those failures.

  “I am thankful, though, that you have that level of trust in me.”

  “Of course,” Lane said easily. “You’re the closest thing I have to a brother in here.”

  No, that’s Cole. But I get what you mean.

  “So if you really think there’s a spy among us,” I said. “If you really think that someone is ratting out our secrets to the Saints, what do you want me to do? I can get some equipment to test for bugs, maybe I can put tracers on people’s phones to listen in to calls, but it’ll take some time and some sneaking around. And if we do this wrong...”

  “I know, I know,” Lane said. “Why don’t we discuss this later? I don’t want someone to barge in at the wrong moment right now.”

  “Brewskis?” I immediately suggested.

  “Think it might be hot after what happened?”

  “Could be,” I admitted. “But I doubt it. We both have gone to that spot for ages now, even after some pretty ugly incidents. It would have to take someone really stupid to end that peace. It would be the equivalent of invoking World War Three. So long as we both show up at the same time.”

  Lane smiled.

  “I guess right now, I’m just being extra cautious about how we handle things,” Lane said. “There’s a lot that I’m realizing I used to believe in, but now, I can’t say for sure if I do anymore.”

  Like your own skill and confidence, for example.

  Okay, that was perhaps a bit brutally harsh. But it’s not without reason.

  “By the way, did you zone out during the club vote?”

  Shit. Okay, yep, you can’t hide that anymore. That’s a good sign you don’t have it like you used to.

  “Yeah,” I said after a hesitation. “Just thinking about some shit. What was the vote on again?”

  “Do you...”

  Lane thought better of asking if I wanted to talk about it first. Unlike him, who seemed to not mind opening up and confessing his fears, I had trouble doing that. I could barely fucking have a conversation with myself about those matters.

  “The vote was on if we should go and reach out to some of the medical staff at the hospital and see if we can get them on our payroll,” Lane said. “I don’t like having to have our men go all the way to the hospital for treatment, dragging the club away from here and splitting us apart. I want us centralized as much as we can.”

  “Well, I said yay, didn’t I?” I said with a laugh.

  “Yeah, but I think you should have had a bigger role in it,” Lane said. “I sent Axle to do it just by default since he and Butch are usually the outreach guys, but such outreach usually entails a harder touch with those two. I should have asked someone with a softer touch—”

  “You’re saying I’m soft, aren’t you?” I deadpanned.

  Lane raised his hands but couldn’t help his smirk.

  “Guilty as charged.”

  “Fine,” I said as I stood. “So you want me to go over there and apologize for sending the big, scary black man over?”


  “Well, maybe not so bluntly, but if Axle comes back with bad news, just, you know, see what you can do,” Lane said. “You know I’m not wrong when I say that you’re the friendliest and most approachable of the club.”

  “Which is why you made me Treasurer, huh?” I said with a laugh. “Because you want the guy who interacts with the outside world and other club members the least to be the one who has the most personal skills.”

  “Oh, hush, it was literally the job you angled for since you joined us,” Lane teased.

  “Maybe I’m angling for a different job.”

  “You prove that one of them is the spy, you get first dibs on it.”

  Lane had meant the comment as a joke, and he even laughed to himself as he stood up.

  But for me, it was just a terrible reminder that I was probably about to experience a whole lot of déjà vu.

  Kaitlyn

  I stared at LeCharles for a few seconds, arms crossed, letting him get his hopes up that I would actually say yes.

  But then I remembered my shift was starting back up in a few minutes, and I dropped the facade of consideration.

  “You’re out of your mind if you think I’m going to take any amount of money from you and your gang,” I said.

  “We’re not a gang, we’re a club,” LeCharles said. “We don’t promote violence—”

  “Which is why you come in here every month with bullet wounds, right?”

  LeCharles looked pissed. It was pretty much the reaction that I was hoping he would have.

  “Of all the professions you thought you could bribe, did you really think the one underlined by an actual oath was one that could be bought?” I said, arching an eyebrow. “Do you really think I’d sacrifice decades of income to earn a few extra hundred bucks in the interim?”

  I knew my friends would have told me to just go back inside and leave this LeCharles or Axle guy alone, but I kind of relished showing him up a bit. I enjoyed seeing a biker gangster—no matter what he said, that’s what I saw him as—squirm and not get what he wanted, especially from a woman who wasn’t afraid to stand up for what she believed in. It must have been such a sad contrast to the women that he usually encountered.

  “We will pay you more than you are being paid here,” LeCharles said, only digging himself further into his own grave. “We will give you whatever you want in terms of money.”

  “Whatever I want, huh?” I said with a smirk. “Tell you what, then. Pay me ten million dollars upfront. I’ll quit the job here within two weeks, and I’ll provide whatever medical needs you want after. But I’ll only show up for such matters, and you’ll have to stop putting yourself in danger. Otherwise, I take the ten million, and then I walk away. Do I make myself clear? Or do I need to dumb it down further?”

  LeCharles glared at me, but I was more amused than anything else. I just arched an eyebrow at him, chuckled, and walked past his bike.

  “Don’t bother asking any of the other nurses either,” I said over my shoulder. “I’m just going to tell them what you just tried to pull. Oh, and definitely don’t try any of the doctors. You might be able to intimidate a nurse or two before we convince her otherwise, but the doctors are smart and won’t even speak to you.”

  LeCharles’s eyes widened with anger, but I didn’t worry in the slightest. The gang knew that if it killed a nurse, it would get run out of town in a second. Frankly, I was too stubborn to back down as well.

  It was probably something that was going to get me in a lot of trouble at some point, but for right now, I just enjoyed seeing guys who weren’t used to feeling uncomfortable start feeling really uncomfortable.

  Still, it’s not like I just got to ride the high of frustrating an asshole for the rest of the day. I felt frustrated myself, in large part, because there must have been something to lead LeCharles to believe he could have bribed me. Maybe there was already another nurse on staff who did this kind of thing, and they needed more help.

  Or maybe they’re just assholes, period.

  In any case, though, I left LeCharles without another word, with only the sound of a motorcycle roaring to life as I entered the hotel reaching my ears. As soon as I saw Devon, I pulled her aside.

  “You won’t believe what just went down,” I said in a soft, low voice.

  “I saw you with that guy,” she said, a smile forming. “Did he ask you out? Are you going—”

  “What? No, Devon! Listen to me. Listen. Those assholes are going to try and bribe you to work under the table for them.”

  Devon looked at me, nonplussed.

  “Okay...” she said. “Are they asking us to do anything illegal?”

  Technically, not that I was aware of. There was always the risk of a lawsuit if the service we provided off-site failed, but that had never stopped me from helping someone if they had sprained their ankle on the sidewalk or something like that. And in some sense, I felt compelled to help the sick and the hurt whenever I saw such help needed.

  But if one knew that the help was needed because some man-child had done something stupid?

  “The point is, Devon, they’re asking us to be their bitches and provide whatever they want,” I said. “You know there’s going to be a whole host of issues. They’re not asking us to just massage their injuries. They’re going to want full-scale treatment, maybe even surgery. You want to be the person that borrows things from the hospital and then has to face up to them?”

  “Okay, put in that light, that’s fair,” she said.

  “They’re going to make this pitch to the other girls and probably even some of the doctors,” I said. “We have to make sure everyone’s aware of what’s going on. I don’t want anyone to be in a spot where they have to make a decision that could compromise our integrity. You catch what I’m saying?”

  Devon nodded, even though I knew her passion and enthusiasm for what I was saying wasn’t quite as strong as what I had. That was fine. I knew that at times I could be a little too strong for my own good, even in comparison to some of the other strong-willed people. What mattered was her awareness.

  “Good,” I said. “Let me know if any of them come to you.”

  “I will,” she said. “I will.”

  She brushed past me right after. I wasn’t sure if I believed her. But I did believe that she would at least think a little bit harder before just bending over and letting them do whatever they wanted to her.

  I tried my hardest not to think about what LeCharles had done for the rest of my shift.

  Unfortunately, perhaps because my stubborn pride meant that I found myself more aggravated by shameless acts like that, I found myself muttering under my breath and cursing him out with more frequency than I normally would have. I knew I should have let it go—he was just someone who thought he could get away with something, and if he pushed his luck any further, I’d make sure he could never press any luck ever again.

  But that wasn’t how I worked. It was both my greatest strength and my greatest curse that I was willing to take on any fight that I saw as unfair.

  It, fortunately, had no impact upon my job as a nurse in the hospital, as I was able to give guidance and provide checkups on our patients as needed. None of my patients were any the wiser, and though I filled in all of the other nurses on what had happened, I only needed to mention it once to get the point across. Time would tell if they listened to me or just tried to brush me off like Devon seemed to.

  My shift ended at about ten p.m., and when it did, I just headed straight for the car. The encounter with LeCharles and its fallout had exhausted me, and all I wanted to do was head home and have a nice glass of wine before calling it a night. I began the trek out of the hospital to the parking lot.

  And then, wouldn’t you know it, the same fucking damn thing happened again.

  This time, a thinner white guy, clean-shaven and with nice blue eyes, pulled his helmet off as he saw me exit. He flashed me a smile that I just wanted to slap the shit out of.

  “Hi, are you K
aitlyn?”

  “Yes,” I said, immediately taking a defensive posture. “Let me guess. You’re another Black Reaper, come to talk to me about how I should work for you guys under the table so that when you commit more violence, you have someone who can come and rescue your sorry asses.”

  The man dropped his smile, but he didn’t seem to adopt an angry or annoyed response as LeCharles had. He was much more relaxed sitting on his bike in comparison. Still, he was on a bike, and he had a sleeveless jacket that said “Black Reapers” on it. That alone made me disregard anything about his mood, other than to note he probably wasn’t going to be as annoying as LeCharles was.

  “I am another Black Reaper, yes,” he said. “And yes, I have come to talk to you about that. But I’m not going to pitch to you that. I just want you to understand my position.”

  Wait, what?

  “I’m Michael, by the way,” he said, extending his hand.

  “Michael? Is that your real name?” I said, ignoring his hand but still very much confused about this… gentle approach. “Or is that your code name? Like Axle or something else ridiculous?”

  “I’m not talking to you as a member of the Reapers right now, I’m talking to you as a human.”

  Okay… let’s see what he has to say.

  “Fair enough,” I said, taking his hand in mine and giving a firm grip.

  “I know that Axle came to you and spoke to you, and his tact was lacking.”

  “He tried to block me from going back into work by parking his bike between my car and the hospital,” I said. “That was a little aggressive. It certainly was unbecoming of a gentleman, to say the least.”

  “Okay, so he was a lot lacking,” Michael said. “Look, I’m sorry about that. I know he didn’t approach you in the best way possible. But he came to you because he thought that you were good at your job and we could create a win-win situation. Can you at least have a beer with me so you can hear me out?”