Page 45 of Freak
Mel almost chuckled. At first glance—second glance, too—Autumn Rooney, a VP at the development company that owned the Signal Bend Pavilion, was a prissy little urban corporate princess. She was about five feet tall and wore ankle-breaking heels and fancy suits with snugly tailored skirts. But inside all that she was a tough little chick, and she’d taped Cox back together several times.
At first glance—and second—crabby, hotheaded Cox and elegant, sophisticated Autumn were a wild mismatch as a couple. But damn if they weren’t making it work.
Badger sucked in a huge breath and gusted it out. He put up a finger and made a circle, indicating the four men around him. “My office. Let’s go.”
Without waiting for agreement or demurral, he spun on his bootheel and stalked down the hallway. Double A tipped his head in that direction, indicating that they should follow, and did so himself.
Rhett and Gravy hesitated, conferring in a look.
Mel waited, too. Though he was a mere soldier in the club, had no standing to be summoned to a top-tier meeting, and though he absolutely would not be taking any blame for whatever mess had happened, he absolutely meant to be the back of the line, to make sure Montana’s officers complied.
After a good minute, finally Rhett stepped toward the hallway. Gravy glared hard at Mel, waiting for him to move. Mel glared back, also waiting.
Gravy blinked first—actually, he rolled his eyes, but he turned toward the hallway—and Mel followed him to Badger’s office.
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Five men hardly constituteda crowd, but Badger’s office was small and packed with sixty-some years of Horde shit. For seating, there was a sagging old couch along one wall, an old wheeled chair at the desk, and an ancient vinyl kitchen chair sitting beside the desk, buried under a shaggy, two-foot tower of papers that looked like the first jostle would send them scattering.
Badger took his desk chair. Rhett and Gravy took the sides of the couch. With a shared look, Double A and Mel agreed that neither would be taking up the narrow space between those sons of bitches, so they’d both stand. Dub stood before the rickety, rusted file cabinet, and Mel stationed himself against the closed door.
Badger spoke first. “Rhett, you and yours are guests in our house. For guests, and family, too, we make allowances, in the name of hospitality and friendship. But fucking Christ, man. Y’all are taking liberties.”
Rhett’s frown went so deep, Mel expected him to surge forward, maybe even get to his feet. Instead, he settled in, stretching his arm across the back of the couch, spanning the empty space between him and Gravy. “You think we’re takin’ liberties?” he rasped. “You think you’re bein’ hospitable? Your man cut mine open. If Gravy here didn’t pull him off, he might’ve done more’n that. How exactly is thathospitable?”
Gravy’s crazy-quilt face was inscrutable. “It ain’t.”
Mel had some gaps that needed filling. “What started the shit between Cox and Maniac?”
“You did, asshole,” Gravy snarled.
Mel turned to Badger and asked with his eyebrows what the fuck that meant.
The Missouri president released one of his long-suffering sighs. “When you went after Abigail, Maniac called her fat.”
“No,” Double A challenged. “You weren’t in earshot. I was. What he said was, ‘Come on now, that bitchisa cow. He likes plowing lard, that’s his business, and if he’s got a complex about it, it’s his problem.’” Outrage rolled Mel’s fists up tight, but Double A was smiling as he continued, “Cox was standing in reach, and his blade was sunk before Maniac finished talkin’. Far as I saw, he didn’t react any other way, just popped his switch, pushed it in, and gave a twist.”
“Wipe that fuckin’ grin off your face before I do it for ya,” Gravy threatened. Double A stopped smiling, but not in a way that could be mistaken for compliance.
Gravy went on, “CouldakilledManie, all over some petty little chick shit. Y’all are some real pussies—lettin’ women run your show, runnin’ into the middle of their bickerin’, takin’ true brothers down over chick shit that don’t fuckin’ matter. It’s embarrassin’ enough to have a mother charter sittin’ around throwin’ fuckin’ cheeseball town fairs and buildin’ fuckin’ shoppin’ malls when the rest of us are doin’ real work, but goddamn. Y’all straight-up handed your balls over to the bitches. I can’t believe y’all was ever anything worth a damn. That fuckin’ movie they made back in the day was a real make-believe fairy tale, wasn’t it? Don’t deserve the cred that comes with this patch.”
Mel’s lungs froze solid. He shifted his attention to Badger, who sat like a statue, motionless and expressionless.
Back in the 2010s, when the club was working on the one-percenter side and had gotten caught up in the first threads of the nightmare that eventually ended with Julio Santaveria, a truly bad guy had attacked the town with what could best be described as an army. The Horde had rallied the townspeople—Mel among them—to fight back, and the town had won. It had made national, even international news, and Hollywood had come calling. The movie, simply calledSignal Bend, had been one of those ‘Oscar bait’ things, and won a bunch of awards.
The movie people had taken the usual liberties with the story, but that story was not a fucking fairy tale.
More to the point, in the years of increasing horror and chaos that followed, Badger himself, hardly more than a kid at the time, had been brutally tortured and nearly died. He carried the gruesome scars to this day. Showdown and Len, too. And Havoc Mariano had been horrifically murdered right in front of them.
To call all that make-believe, to call the men who’d lived it ‘pussies,’ right in front of Badger, was an offense so great Mel couldn’t see a way through this moment. It felt cataclysmic.
Earlier, Jonesy had seemed curious about the tension in the Hall, as if he was picking up a vibe he hadn’t expected. Did that mean Gravy’s contempt was his own, not spread through the Montana charter? Or had the Montana intelligence officer been testing the waters somehow?
Rhett, their president, had let Gravy spew that sewage without correction or any kind of interjection—and was now simply sitting there, watching Badger react. As if he hadn’t been at all surprised at the rant—as if he’d expected it.
