There were a coupla problems with that though.
I stood starin’ at one; the ashen remains of one of the biggest warehouses we had just outside Vancouver tucked away on a supply route off Highway 99. It wasn’t a grow-op, thank Christ, but we had nearly three million dollars wortha grade A weed in that fuckin’ warehouse.
Now, it was grade A trash.
And that wasn’t even the worst of it.
’Cause I stood there holdin’ a eight by ten glossy photograph of my daughter, Harleigh Rose, that’d been staked to the ground just outta range of the fire. I hadn’t noticed it when we’d put out the fire the night ’fore last and we’d had to let the scene cool before we came back to assess the damage but I’d seen it right quick when we’d pulled up that morning.
In it, she was laughin’ as only a beautiful, confident teenage girl could do, lips pulled back over teeth, chin tipped back and hair streamin’ behind her. It was a fuckin’ great photo, one my son’s woman had taken durin’ the summer. I had a copy of it on my desk at the garage, framed in kickass chrome and gifted to me by Cress for Christmas.
I treasured that fuckin’ thing.
And now I was holdin’ a copy with H.R.’s eyes punched out by bullet holes, her neck slashed open by a jagged knife.
A warnin’.
A warnin’ that those fuckin’ scumbags were back and they were gonna play dirty, play for wives, children and families.
A warnin’.
It had been ten years since we’d had to deal with shit like this. Ten years that my brothers had lived an outlaw life of recklessness, boozin’, smokin’, ridin’ out into the night like midnight raiders but without the real violence a life like that could bring. I’d made sure of it when I’d killed Crux, ex-Prez of The Fallen MC, a decade ago. The same night he’d shot a bullet through Lou and me.
“Prez,” Lab-Rat called to me, scuttling like his namesake through the mess of burnt wood. “They took it ’fore they lit it.”
I blinked slowly at him, careful not to crunch the photo of H.R. in my clenching fist. “Say again.”
“They took the supply ’fore they lit the buildin’. There’s no weed left here,” Lab-Rat explained.
Fuck me.
“You’re fuckin’ with me,” I growled.
“He’s not,” Curtains said, appearing with his laptop open balanced on one arm, clickin’ through things on his screen like a maniac. “Got surveillance from Evergreen Gas Station. A sixteen-wheeler with blacked out plates stopped for fuckin’ gas yesterday at five pm.”
I reached out to drag the prospect closer by the hood of his sweater so I could see the screen. “Show me.”
“The fuckers,” I muttered as I watched the truck pull up for fuckin’ gas like it was nothin’ and two tall, familiar motherfuckers crawled outta the cab.
One went into the store.
Lysander fuckin’ Garrison pumped the gas and did it starin’ right into the fuckin’ security camera.
I roared, the fury hot and fuckin’ alive in my chest as it burned out over my tongue. I spun away from my brothers and stomped into the debris, picked up a charred plank and snapped it over my knee.
“Fuck,” I shouted again. Another plank crumbled between my hands. Pretended it was Lysander Garrison’s fuckin’ neck givin’ way to my grip. Or that fuckface defector Ace Munford’s skinny spine snappin’ like a fuckin’ twig over my knee.
“You ’bout done?” Bat called over, standing at the top of the incline with his hands in the pockets of his army fatigues as if it was a normal fuckin’ Thursday.
I rolled my shoulders back, cracked my neck and grinned menacingly at the prospect just to see ’im flinch ’cause I was in that kinda mood.
“Yeah, I’m fuckin’ done. Get the brothers to fuckin’ Chapel and call in some of the Nomads if they’re around. I’m not havin’ another war on my fuckin’ hands without reinforcements.”
Bat nodded as I climbed up to him, his eyes cold and calculating, battle mode. “They’re gonna go after families.”
“No shit,” I said, swiping down to pick up the mutilated picture of my girl.
“You gonna call King?”
“Fuck.” I ran a hand over my tangled mess of hair and across my beard. “Gotta. He’ll fuckin’ hate it, but they gotta be careful even down at the university. The fucks won’t stop at nothin’ to get what we have.”
“They didn’t learn their lessons last time,” Bat noted.
“No shit,” I growled. “But last time we were on the fuckin’ defensive. This time, we’ll take this war to them.”
“You ready for that, brother? Got a lotta other things on your mind lately,” the fuck chose to remind me.
I glared at him but he did have a point.
I was a thirty-six-year-old man with two kids, both born before I’d been old enough to grow a full fucking beard. One of them was off at college livin’ a mostly clean life that I fuckin’ loved for him and his woman. Missed him like hell-fire in my chest but knew it was good for him.