into the workshop.
Once we were inside, I realized that Red was right. There were bloody drag marks and the white mask with the bullet hole in the middle of where the forehead would be. But the splatters of blood, the bullet hole mask, and the bloody marks on the ground weren’t what had my attention.
“So that’s where it went,” I said under my breath.
“What?” Red asked curiously.
“That’s the President’s chair, man. Didn’t you fucking notice?” I asked him incredulously.
Red put his hands in his pockets and walked slowly around it. I watched as he shook his head before stopping in front of it. “It’s too cut up for me to have noticed. That means Pardon was here.”
Obviously, I thought grimly. There weren’t many things I was sure of anymore; who to trust, if I could trust myself, if Swing was still alive, but this... I knew for sure that Pardon was behind this.
“When did everything go so wrong?” I asked myself quietly.
Red cleared his throat but didn’t say anything. I heard another set of footsteps as Honest entered the warehouse. With a heavy sigh, I crouched down in front of the chair and took in the nicks in the wood, the dried blood; shit, there were even small pieces of Swing’s clothes stuck in the wood.
“How deep did they cut him, you think?” Honest asked quietly.
“Deep enough. We gotta find him. He’s obviously in Bend, but where the fuck is he?” I asked in frustration, getting to my feet.
At that moment, my phone rang startling all of us. I looked down at the caller ID and sighed. It was Pardon and I wasn’t sure if I should answer the phone or not. I decided to let it go to voicemail but he only wound up calling again.
“Hey,” I said, answering the second time.
“Where the hell are you?” he asked.
“The warehouse. Just checking on some shit, making sure that Nero stayed good on his word about Warner,” I replied looking at Red and Honest. Pardon, I mouthed. They both understood and left the warehouse, closing the door behind them. I held my hand over the speaker of the cell phone hoping that the closed door and my hand would be enough to muffle the sounds of their engines roaring to life and leaving.
“Did you find anything?” he asked curiously.
“Not a thing,” I replied, moving my hand away from the speaker.
“Alright, well come to the clubhouse. We’re about to take a vote and I need you here, son,” he said in a tired voice.
“What are we voting on?” I asked as I made my way out of the warehouse toward me bike.
“Havoc vote.”
“Another one? On who?” I inquired curiously.
“You’ll find out when you get here,” he said, before disconnecting the line.
I had a really bad feeling in the pit of my stomach about this vote. I didn’t know who the hell else Pardon wanted dead, but I knew that finding out was going to be easier than getting the deed done.
Six
Alaska
I wasn't exactly sure who had done it until Swing and Tumbler had come out of my office. As soon as Pardon and his crew had walked out of the front doors, a gunshot rang out, and Boots dropped dead to the ground. They were both gripping guns tightly in their hands; Tumbler had her usual Ruger P89DC and Swing had my Smith and Wesson.
“The two of you look like Bonnie and Clyde,” I remarked dryly.
Tumbler laughed, but Swing didn’t. He had an arm wrapped around his torso, obviously still sore from the stitching I had done on him. Raising my gun he walked straight up to Saylor and put the barrel between her eyes.
“It’s your call,” he said, glancing at me briefly.
“I thought you had a ‘no women and no children’ policy,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. I leaned my head to the right and looked up at his face. He didn’t seem to be wavering on the idea of killing a woman right now. Even when he cocked the hammer back on the gun, with as much as I wanted him to kill her, I knew I couldn’t let him. That would only make this MC debacle and even bigger mess than it was.