Page 28 of Baiting Kong

“My guess is that the pieces come from the dad and the brother,” Creature said. “I’ve seen it done before. It’s a rare tradition. Pope would know more about it. He’s the one who had the only other bell like this I’ve ever seen.”

“And what did he say about it?”

“That it’s a way of passing the luck from one family member to another,” Creature explained. “You know each bell is supposed to be gifted.”

“Yeah, it’s bad luck to buy your own,” Mark said. “Every biker with a bell shares that tradition, at least, every one I’ve ever met.”

“Exactly,” Creature said. “So those bells would have protected the original riders, and when Scout decided to join them on the road, they forged half of their bells into a bell for him.”

“And then what, they take a chance of riding without?” Kong asked. “Why not just get him his own bell?”

“Because that’s not the tradition,” Creature explained. “It’s a family thing. I’ll bet another family member gifted a whole bell that the dad and brother cut in half and fused to the remaining halves of theirs.”

“So you always carry a piece of family with you wherever you go,” Kong surmised.

Creature nodded. “Exactly.”

“That’s a hell of an awesome twist on the legend of the bell,” Mark said. “Wish I’d known about it when my boys started riding.”

“I’d have loved to have half of my old man’s bell,” Kong admitted.

“I bet Wreck would too,” Mark said, a hint of pain creeping into his voice.

Losing a club brother was always hard, but Kong knew Mark took that shit personally. As president, he took the job of looking after the men and women who followed him as seriously as he watched over his own kids. Despite the loss not having taken place on his watch, his old man had been leading things then, and Kong knew he was the one who’d instilled that sense of responsibility in Mark long before handing over the reins of leadership to him.

“I’m still confused about how any of this has anything to do with Teddy,” Kong admitted.

“He might not have picked up enough about bike building and the innerworkings of a machine to make a good mechanic, but he appreciates the beauty of a bike,” Mark said. “One thingneither Kat nor I ever had to worry about was him keeping our machines looking like they’d just rolled off a showroom floor. I used to tease him about trying to polish the chrome off my bike, but I was always proud of his attention to detail and the care he showed both machines. I remember this one time, he'd been polishing Kat’s bike before a ride when he noticed some yellowish dribbles on one of Kat’s pipes. At first, he thought someone had pissed on it, but it looked thicker than piss, like oil or something, just not right, so he looked closer and found a small puncture in her brake line. He saved our girl's life that day. He stopped everything he was doing, even busted into the Chapel meeting to get me, and I’m glad he did. That shit was deliberate.”

Mark’s Zippo snapped open, and he bent his head to light his cigarette, clearly agitated at the memory. Kong would have been livid too if someone had tried to kill the woman he loved, not to mention the mother of his children.

“My point in bringing it up was that Teddy would have recognized the craftsmanship that went into the bike,” Mark said. “When Saint saw the messages, he thought they had something to do with Sinn being missing and point-blank asked Teddy what they were referring to. Teddy told us that it was regarding a scrapyard he’d been meaning to check out, something he’d been putting off because he knew that we would have sent Sinn along with him and Cody.”

“And I take it he and Sinn have issues.”

“Too many to get into,” Mark said. “I’d bet a steak dinner with all the trimmings that Teddy made up some bullshit reason why Scout should withhold the information from us. He was so bitter about Sinn being included on their trip to look at frames. I think he wanted to finish the job I’d given him, but on his terms, ones that he could shove in my face once he’d gotten the job done without the ‘pest’ supervising him. And the little shit did,too, in a roundabout way. He didn’t just bring Scout because the kid needed a job. I mean, I could see Teddy helping a homeless kid that way, yeah, as long as he took a liking to them. But he knew what I’d do when I saw that bike, the little shit. He knew I’d give Scout a chance to get the parts we hadn’t been able to acquire.”

Creature shook his head. “Having Sinn in the shop is good for business, and if Scout is just as good with a machine, then he needs to be at the shop too, not cleaning the fuckin’ toilets.”

“Amen, brutha,” Mark said, before he turned and looked Kong dead in the eyes. “Which means I’ve a mission for you.”

“Name it,” Kong said.

“I need you to get the truth from Scout,” Mark said. “I wanna know how much he knows about bike building, I wanna know where that scrapyard is, I want to know how he’s connected to it and the Hounds, and because I’m pissed off and curious as fuck right now, I wanna know all of what happened in the gas station the other day, because somehow, all of this is connected.”

“Why not just beat Teddy’s ass until he tells you?” Creature asked.

“Because he’d enjoy it too much, and I’d wind up wringing his neck and fucking him through the wall just to ease the aggravation he’s caused ever since he got it in his head to go to war with Sinn!” Mark snapped. “So, can you get me what I need or not?”

“I’ll get it.”

Chapter 10

(Scout)

“So, we’ve done a bit of rewriting since we gave you the original script,” Mr. Duchamp declared as he eyed Scout up and down with a creepy-ass look on his face that left Scout feeling filthy and uncomfortable, even while he was still mostly covered up. “But no worries, you don’t have to memorize any new lines; in fact, you won’t have any lines at all.

No lines?

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