Biker’s Collar: Property of Scrap (Rebel Barbarians MC #6)

Chapter 4 – Scrap

Four

Scrap

Present Day

D eacon Hollingsworth is out of his fucking mind. He didn’t mention that a major part of this poker game is that the buy-in for the table isn’t just a thousand dollars – it’s a human life. I don’t know what the hell Rage told the girl running this table, because I don’t have a human life that I’m willing to gamble. I’m not as crazy as my brother. The other men at this table are different and they’re too fucking calm about it. Midnight SS. They’re the motherfuckers who killed our brothers.

They don’t think we know…

I don’t know how they could have missed their dead club members or the absent bodies from the hole in the desert but… maybe they’ve been preoccupied.

Last I heard, Deb Hollingsworth has Avery’s mother imprisoned at some lake house out in the Ozarks. Ruger has Darlene at Oske’s trailer beating the fuck out of her – if he hasn’t killed her yet. And I’m here…

Southpaw must have known this was coming, but I know how my brother thinks. Commanding me to gamble would be encouraging vice. Leaving the choice in my hands somehow makes it better. He knows how Shaw men are around a card table. Or slot machines. Or sports betting apps. My brother is a fucking fox. He lets that good woman he keeps around protect his image and project something far more harmless.

But I know Wyatt. He’s darkened to his core and nothing will change him. If anything, that family of his has made him worse. More protective. More willing to go to war. Whatever the fuck he’s planning tonight, Wyatt has to know that it could go wrong. That we could end up having to put a bunch of Neo-Nazi bikers in the ground.

We could end up in prison doing that without much of a plan.

I peel open a peppermint Zyn container and pop one out, sticking it in behind my top lip. Instantly, I’m more awake and glance over at the Indian girl running the table. She reminds me of Oske. Maybe the same tribe, maybe just another Indian girl.

The girls hardly look at us. I don’t know if I should be more focused on the game, or more focused on figuring out why the fuck my brother dropped me into this mess like a stone without a single fucking clue what the hell might be going on. I understand the choice we all made. War.

War means trusting your general, which is easy to do in my case. Wyatt might be crazy but he’s still my brother, and the losses out there in the desert affected him as much as they affected all of us, if not more. He takes responsibility for everything — far more than Owen and definitely more than me. I can’t help but try to get a good look at the Indian girls’ tits, even if I have bigger concerns. Not much to see, but the expended effort reminds me of how damn hard it is to find a woman when you live most of the fucking year on the road.

And when the fuck does it end if we start a war now.

The Indian girl starts talking, which takes my mind off the adrenaline coursing through me.

“Good evening, gentlemen. My name is Nina and I will be the host of the poker game this evening. Tonight, you are here for a very special reason and a very special prize. The girls tonight are all kept in a separate location and all property disbursed to the winner will be thoroughly inspected by a third party before you sign release forms and documents. Please direct any concerns to my floor manager, Mr. Rage.”

Nobody gives her any verbal or physical acknowledgement, except the neo-nazi biker with the name Biter on his patch, who reaches over and touches her ass. She doesn’t respond negatively or positively to his advances, but his buddy gives him a dirty look.

Slitlicker cuts the deck and deals the first hand. This must be a set-up of some kind. Not for me — for the Midnight SS. Wyatt’s crazy ass must have thought it would be better for me not to know what was coming. Make it seem more real. I know how my brother thinks.

He doesn’t give a fuck what type of situations he puts me in as long as he thinks I can handle it. Like I said, he’s more like our father than he thinks. My cards aren’t great, but I stand a chance at winning the hand. Don’t know how long I’ll have to play and win to get the entire pot.

Is that what Wyatt even wants me to do?

Can’t imagine he would want me to sit at a poker table and throw the fucking game. I scrutinize the other players. This could all go tits up in a goddamn second.

“Fold,” Horse Cock says. More cards. Another fold. The hand gets down to me and Biter. His gaze flickers over. I pretend to be thoroughly distracted by my hand of cards. High cards, but not enough to win if he has any of the aces.

I raise the stakes, throwing in a few more chips.

What the hell does it matter. If Wyatt wants a war with these motherfuckers, chances are they’ll end up dead. Horse Cock looks at me with an expression on his face that’s downright gleeful, matching my bet. I keep looking at my cards. Situations like this, it helps to be wired different. To get the same fucking high from winning or losing.

The Indian girl flips the card. The biker slams his on the table with a self-satisfied grunt.

Straight flush.

It’s a good hand. One that very, very nearly beat mine.

I spread my cards. Immediately, Biter rises, one hand on his holster. His buddy shoves his chair back, joining him. But it’s too late.

“Sit down,” the second Indian girl says, pressing what must be a small revolver into his back. “One wrong move, and I’ll put a hole in your kidney.”

I have my gun out, pointed at Slitlicker. Don’t have to know what the fuck is going on to know who counts as blood and who doesn’t.

“You heard the woman,” I say to him. “Hands off your weapons.”

The room is so damn quiet you could hear a spider fart.

The tense silence doesn’t last. The door sealing us away from the rest of Deacon Hollingsworth’s motel creaks open loudly before slamming against the wall as Deacon and three other Barbarians storm into the room with semi-automatic weapons.

“Gentlemen,” Deacon says. “I apologize for the deceptive behavior.”

I could have done with a goddamn warning about this, but it’s much easier to keep a steady poker face when you don’t even know the cards you have in hand. I don’t know where the fuck Deacon Hollingsworth got all those armed Indian girls, but they hold those weapons like they know what they’re doing and they’re looking for an excuse to put a hole in a white boy.

“What’s going to happen right now is simple,” Deacon says to the Midnight SS. “Y’all are going to take us to the warehouse where y’all are keeping the girls. But first, empty your pockets.”

The men all have their hands in the air and emptying their pockets would offer enough of a chance for a good shooter to whip out a pistol and cause some damage. I pull the revolver out of my cut and slide a bullet into the chamber. Deacon doesn’t share my concerns about the situation.

Only one biker talks. His real name is Abraham Dorn, club name, “METH”. No doubt Deacon chose him as the easiest one to crack for a reason. Five minutes in the bathroom with the sunburnt redneck and Deacon had Mr. Dorn chattier than a parakeet hooked on his drug of choice. The others don’t know he snitched. I had to get involved in some of the dirty work, which I’ll get on Wyatt’s ass about later, but this time it wasn’t as bad as sending me to bury a body, rob a damned Jew, or look for rotting corpses in the desert.

Tying up a bunch of redneck freaks who think they have anything to do with the German Nazis just offers me a chance to work out that excess energy from that unresolved gambling itch. Once we have the bikers blindfolded, drugged, and tied up in separate rooms, Deacon insists that he trusts the Indian girls to keep watch.

We put Dorn in the back of Deacon’s Ford F-150 – no sense taking the bike – and Deacon dangles drugs in front of the poor sap until he practically offers his asshole to confess.

“I’ve been clean for ten years,” he says as he scoops the white powder eagerly into the back of his throat. He doesn’t even bother trying to snort it. He must have been on the stuff pretty fucking serious. Maybe he should have kept it in moderation if he was going to end his streak of sobriety with this much of a screw up. But since this particular screw up benefits us, I let it happen.

This is Abraham’s last day on Earth. Might as well let him have his little patch of happiness while it lasts. Deacon preaches to him, completely faking his enthusiasm, but raised in the church long enough to have the right cadence and know the right verses to manipulate Abraham.

“God helps the helpers,” Deacon says nonsensically. “So you help us find that warehouse full of girls… and we’ll help you.”

It’s a load of shit. Deacon plans on packing this motherfucker's nose with enough coke to plug it. No need to clean up overdoses. Drug addicts make it easy for us. I never found much interest in any drug except nicotine. I shift the Zyn around my upper lip with my tongue, greedy for another strong burst. I’m getting impatient the longer this drive drags on with Deacon preaching as I struggle to make sense of this dumbass’s directions.

Eventually, we turn down a road called Irish Settlement Road which quickly transitions from paved to pure Southwestern dirt. The truck tires kick up enough dust to blind us and I can’t help but ride along with my hand on my weapon. This could be a trap. There’s the possibility that the dust will settle and I’ll have to pull the trigger at the first damn head I see.

Deacon doesn’t share my anxieties. He just keeps preaching and driving along guided by faith… in his own damn self. We get to the specified address. It looks like it could be the place.

“So what? We drag this motherfucker up there with us?”

“Good place to die as any,” Deacon says, hopping out of the truck. “Can you handle him?”

I grunt as I hop out of the truck. How much I can handle this guy depends on how the drugs are hitting his system. I open the backseat and he appears to have relative control over himself as he steps out. The faraway look on his face betrays the illusion.

“Listen buddy. You take us into that warehouse, all your problems go away. Every last one of them. Now walk.”

“I thought you would carry him,” Deacon says, like this is a time for jokes.

“Do we even know what we’ll find in there?” I ask him, since he’s dragging my ass along on this mission blind. “Women. Lots of women.”

“Don’t be a pervert.”

“What was perverted about that?”

“Your tone. These women are victims.”

“Don’t start.”

“Start what? Being human?”

“They’re victims of their own damned stupidity. Who trusts some guy they barely know who promises them a job in some city far away from everything they know?”

“Someone desperate.”

“Exactly.”

“Desperate doesn’t mean stupid.”

“In my world it does,” Deacon says unsympathetically. “Listen, I’m not a bastard. I’m setting them free whether or not they’re whores.”

I don’t bother indulging his argument any further. The fastest way for me to stop this disagreement is to just get this job done. Our idiot meth head Abraham walks up to the door and turns to us.

“Tell me one of you brought the key.”

“Yeah,” Deacon says. “I did.”

He shoots the door handle three times until the metal flies off. Some fucking warning would have been nice. I don’t bother covering my ears, but I can’t really hear too well for a few seconds. Fucking idiot. Abraham Dorn is red in the face and he covers his ears. He’s quiet now that Deacon fired his gun. Sobered him up just enough to recognize that the sound of gunshots symbols his mortality. He looks over at me, but I don’t make eye contact with him.

I’m still wrapping my head around why the fuck my brother would drop me into this situation without any warning. My phone buzzes in my pocket. Once. Might be Ethan. Then three more times. Okay, that’s Wyatt. I have to ignore him, because Deacon gestures for me to enter the warehouse.

“All clear.”

I shove my knee into Dorn’s back and shove him into the warehouse behind Deacon.

“Where are we going, buddy?” Deacon asks our prisoner. “This door, or that one?”

We’re in the large, empty part of the warehouse where they must unload trucks. There’s a door on the west end of the warehouse, then a ledge that leads to a door on the right on the opposite end.

“That one.”

“You sure? Because lying won’t make you live longer.”

The guy is too high to even look worried. But his body can’t hide his natural reaction to the threat despite the drugs. His shoulders tense up and he can’t help but look from me to Deacon nervously. He’s not even conscious of it, but I am. Spend a lot of my time studying body language hoping it will help me at the poker tables. I feel an odd sense of pent up pressure that remains in desperate need of relief from the unfinished game earlier.

“I’m sure,” our prisoner reassures Deacon. I prod him again and we walk along the ledge towards the far door. I don’t hear anything that sounds like women held captive. No guards? This seems like it would be the type of place to have guards. Nobody with me seems worried. Not like we could trust Abraham Dorn to rat on his brothers.

“Were you out there in the desert?” Deacon asks as we approach the door.

“Don’t know,” Abraham says. His voice is slurred. That piece of shit can handle a hell of a lot of meth. Deacon and I make brief eye contact because we both thought he would be a lot further along right now.

“You must know. You and your club members shot several of ours in the desert. I know you don’t give a fuck about anything, not even yourself,” Deacon says. “But if you tell the truth… maybe I’ll spare your life.”

Deacon is lying, but I don’t care enough to stop him. The faster we get this shit over with so I can demand an explanation from my brother… the better.

“I wasn’t out there. I might have an idea what happened but… I don’t give away valuable information about my brothers for free.”

If his brotherhood had any significance at all, nothing could make him break those vows of loyalty. But these motherfuckers are weird. Strangely fixated on race beyond what is necessary.

The last time I was anywhere near a black woman, she robbed my ass blind. But that doesn’t make all black women thieves. Just like all white people aren’t methed up idiots like Abraham. I push him bitterly towards the other side of the warehouse door. Deacon points to the keypad. No guards because they seem to have tighter security.

“What happens if I shoot this off?” he asks Abraham. I doubt this motherfucker has the rank to answer that question. The door reminds me of the type Ryder Sinclair can break into without much effort at all.

“Won’t work.”

“Thought so,” Deacon says, giving the guy a disapproving look. “You don’t have the passcode.”

“Not my thing.”

“Try 1488,” I mutter.

“What the fuck?” Deacon asks.

“It’s a prison Nazi thing. Trust me.”

“How the fuck do you know that?”

“Just try it.”

Deacon tries the code. The light flashes green. Holy fuck, I’m right. Paying attention to Ryder’s crazy fucking prison stories finally paid off. Deacon gives me a suspicious look.

“You’re a fucking freak.”

“You’re welcome.”

He drags Abraham forward. The guy gets more tense with the contact from Deacon. Every animal has that sense when he draws closer to death. Even a man so high off meth he’s giving away club secrets to sworn enemies – to the same enemies who are going to pump him so full of meth he never takes another breath.

“Holy shit,” Deacon exclaims once he enters the room. “Get in here, Scrap.”

I follow them into the room. I’m stunned into silence and my first instinct is to count the heads of the bound and gagged captives. I count seven before my eyes land on the last woman – a plus-sized woman with skin the color of a roasted almond. How the fuck did she end up here?

“Vickie?”

Deacon shoots me a confused look. But she looks up at me, completely incapable of hiding her recognition. She remembers me.

The black woman who robbed me blind remembers me – and now she’s tied up in a warehouse out here in the desert.

How the fuck did that happen?