Page 39 of Damascus & The Wildfire
My heart raced as I hopped in my Range Rover and peeled out of the driveway. I glanced at the clock. I’d arrive just before their weekly Church meeting. Good. I wanted them all in one place.
When I reached the clubhouse, I stormed through to Thane’s office without knocking. The scent of cigars hit me in a wave as I threw open the door. The men were already seated around the round table in the corner, their faces turning toward me in surprise. I shoved my phone in Thane’s face, the Chronicle article on screen. He glanced at the phone, then to me, his expression unreadable.
“Did I fucking invite you?” Thane snarled. “Get the fuck out.”
“How much of this is true?” I demanded, my voice shaking. I glanced around the table, my gaze landing on each face—Reaper, Hatchet, Linc, and Fuse. I showed my phone to each of them, my hands trembling. “I need to know what I’m defending—or if I even can defend all of you. Rangers bleeding out on the highway. Prospects going missing. Probably buried in a swamp. You’re selling cocaine to kids? And Fuse beat a woman nearly to death? Is this the kind of club you are? Is this the kind of men you are? You’re no better than the Jackals.”
Thane narrowed his eyes at me.
“Disrespect me or my club again, little girl, andyoumight just go missing.”
My jaw dropped at the threat. I felt a tug on my arm and glanced back to see Merrick, his stoic expression betrayed by the storm in his eyes.
“Come with me,” he commanded in a voice that left no room for debate. A voice he’d never used on me. He tugged on my arm again, half dragging me from Thane’s office into another small roomwith a sofa and two large filing cabinets. An assortment of guns hung on the wall.
“You can’t speak to our president like that,” he said, his voice tight.
“He’s not my president. You’re criminals.” My voice cracked.
Merrick’s jaw flexed. “We never claimed to be Boy Scouts.”
I clenched my fists. “I can’t represent a club that allows men to beat up women.”
Merrick pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose and exhaled sharply before turning to open the filing cabinet. He dug through the folders before pulling one out. He opened it, rifling through the pages before bringing one to the top and handing it to me.
It was a doctor’s report—cold, clinical, detached. A seven-year-old female with poorly healed breaks and a recent head injury, all indicative of child abuse. I flipped through the papers to read a Child Protective Services report. I flipped to another page. Despite the clear abuse, the state granted the mother custody again. Then a police report, two months later. Of all of them, this one was the worst. Unspeakable.
Tears glistened in my eyes as I glanced up at Merrick.
“She’s Bayou’s daughter,” he explained. “He has custody now. But the shit the girl’s mother and her boyfriend put the kid through will haunt her for the rest of her life. When Bayou found out, Fuse was there. He made the call to make the guy pay, and then the goddamn woman attacked them with a shovel. She was more concerned about her deadbeat boyfriend than the hell the man was putting her child through. Fuse took the fall so Bayou wouldn’t go to prison. Gracie needed someone to raise her.”
I swallowed hard. My anger dissipated like a tornado sucked back into the clouds.
“Sometimes the truth isn’t in the headlines,” Merrick said quietly.
The pages trembled in my hands. “What about the other reports? The missing prospects? The Rangers? The drugs?”
Merrick’s expression remained unreadable. “I can’t explain it all.But we have a reason for everything we do. Sometimes prospects leave on their own. Sometimes we make them. And sometimes we have to defend ourselves. We don’t go around looking for trouble, but sometimes it finds us. The drugs, though, were the Rangers. And we put a stop to that a few weeks ago.”
“How?”
Merrick’s eyes hardened as he stared into mine. “If I tell you, I can’t take it back. It becomes your secret to keep, too. We don’t share club business lightly.”
“I want to know,” I insisted. “I need to know. Besides, I signed the NDA, and I can’t protect the club’s reputation if I don’t know what’s happening.”
Merrick paused for a beat before relenting. “We went to Austin a few weeks ago and told the Rangers they needed to stay out of our territory. Stop dealing. Their president pulled a gun on Reaper and shot him in the leg. So, Reaper shot him in the chest. The new president agreed to a truce.”
“And the missing prospects?”
“Usually, they skip town if we kick them out. Easier to live life if we aren’t the monsters in the dark. We only make them disappear if they’ve done something unforgivable or that puts the rest of us at risk.”
“Like what?”
“Feeding information to law enforcement.”
“And by making them disappear, you mean …” I trailed off, uncertain I wanted to hear the answer.
Merrick only gazed at me, his silence giving me the confirmation I needed.
