Page 6 of It Takes a Thief

Lytton said with authority, “Because Toby’s the best. That’s why, Wolf.”

“Yes,” said Faux Pas. “He set up my entire home security system. He even made it so anyone’s fingerprints on my doorknob would be instantly analyzed against the federal fingerprint database.”

Wolf gestured like a game show model presenting a fridge. “Yes! But what if the culprit is wearing gloves?”

“He completely purged my computer of porn before Monique came back from visiting her mother,” said Duji, making everyone chuckle in commiseration.

Now Wolf presented a couch with his hands. “Yes! But why was there porn there in the first place?”

Everyone looked blankly at each other.

Wolf sighed, deflated. “What I’m trying to say, Ford, is Toby isn’t the only IT tech in the world.”

I said, “For this club, he is. And this is club business.” I banged my gavel. These days it felt like the only productive, concrete thing I could do. “I’m betting the Cutlasses are behind this. In the meantime, Wolf, see about getting that fucking thing off Facebook.”

Wolf glowed with pride. “Oh, I already reported it to Facebook for inappropriate content.”

I glared. “No. I mean, shut it down. Completely. Who knows how long it’ll take those asshats to take it down. It’s not illegal—apparently—to run bullshit fake articles about someone. Meeting adjourned.”

“Okay, okay!” Wolf conceded defeat. “But I strongly advise everyone to cover their computer cameras with tape or sticky notes. You never know who’s watching.”

Wolf was better with drones and weapons than he was with tech, so my first call was to Tobiah Weingarten. He managed the Leaves of Grass pot plantation, where he’d been my half-brother’s right-hand man for years. There had been some lame but amusing feud between Tobiah and Wolf over a girl, some sweetbutt named Tracy. Wolf had won, last I heard, so I didn’t know why the grief about it.

Tobiah agreed to get to the bottom of the fart posting, saying, “I’m on it like black on an emo.”

I had a sit-down with Sax in my office while Sock Monkey brought us cold beers. Well, Sax didn’t have one. I did. Both of them. I knew I’d been drinking more lately to relieve the constant stress of my job, my club. We were constantly at war with one club or another, a cartel or a government agency.

Frankly, it was wearying. I was a tough fucking nut to crack, a hardened criminal going way back. I was building bombs in my garage when I was thirteen, when Illuminati Construction was just a gleam in my pedophiliac, sadistic, sociopathic father’s eye. As a SEAL in Afghanistan and Iraq, I’d seen corpses melted like wax, oozing into the ground beneath them, literally dust to dust. We had to see our handiwork up close there, bloated men whose clothes had been blown off with squirming maggots filling their belly buttons. Fluid from cells entered the layers between skin and shed them in “skin slip,” where hands came off like gloves. Flies laid eggs on vulnerable points like eyes, wangs, open wounds. Yet our job was to keep providing Mother Nature with specimens like this because they were our enemy.

The concept of “enemy” carried over into my civilian life, when we fought against other clubs, Mexicans, our own parents. The Bare Bones MC wasn’t much different from the Navy. I still had to fish cadavers from rivers to hang them from bridges again as a warning. Corpses who had hit the water from such a height their ribs had penetrated their lungs, collapsing them. Ribs punctured aortas, slicing through them. Bodies burnt from chemical exposure and yes, meth labs blowing up had cartoon Xs for eyes, lips and tongue bloated like sausages. Seriously, what kind of job did I have?

Lately, running both the club and my heavy equipment business was too much for one man. I had to decide—step down as Prez, or step down as President? I fished another Adderall out of my desk drawer and got down to business.

Dismissing Sax from my office, I saw I’d had thirteen voicemails in the past three hours. Pen in hand, I waded through them all. Vasiliev, the Russian selling us iron, set up a meeting time and place that night. Fred Birdseye, Prez of our Flagstaff chapter, was bitching about some insubordinate brothers who’d struck out on their own without his approval to hijack some truck. Our contact at the sheriff’s office wanted to know what we wanted to donate for the silent auction at the gala coming up. My old Veep and closest friend Turk wished me greetings from his new digs near Lake Havasu. A CHP wanted to know if it was our brothers who’d run another biker off the road down near Camp Verde. Then there were always the civilians, two this time, who’d managed to get ahold of my private number, complaining how rocks from the beds of our trucks had pinged their windshields.

And the daycare center wanted to know where my wife was. She hadn’t shown up to pick up our two kids at noon. It was now almost one.

Before I could call them, though, our mild-mannered Accounts Payable guy came in and told me someone had gotten ahold of our corporate credit cards. They’d stolen our identity and were charging shit all over town.

CHAPTER THREE

MADISON

I didn’t tell my friends about my meltdown. I think I was hoping I could get back to normal in time for the next day’s shift. My world was changing from one of rigidity, subordination, and rules into one of reinvention. I just couldn’t admit it yet.

So I asked my BFF Sabrina to pick up Fidelia and Niko from daycare and bring them to my house. Instead of meeting them there, I called a few of the likely suspects and asked them to meet me at the Rolling Pin, not our usual hangout. The Rolling Pin, on the way to Cottonwood, was one of those dives with fake wood paneling, moving waterfall beer signs, gum under the chairs, and dart boards shot all to hell. In other words, almost identical to our Bum Steer in downtown P&E, except there would be nobody who recognized us. We goofed around a little, giving me enough time to go to the bathroom and snort some Tango & Cash, aka Fentanyl. I had started taking it six months before for a snapped rib but now I took it for emotional reasons. Reasons that usually boiled down to being upset with Ford.

I’d gained weight since knowing him as a teenager. Especially after giving birth to Niko, I’d packed it on. Ford could get anyone. That’s not to excuse him, but hey. At thirty-two he just got better-looking. That smoldering, dark, smoky look to him was only enhanced by his ink and all the old, worn patches on his cut. The way his dick packed his jeans was nice, too. I still lusted after this sooty specimen of man. That wasn’t the problem.

Knowing he could get anyone he wanted threw me into a nonstop tizzy of insecurity. I’d been raised insecure, criticized till the cows came home by a mentally ill mother. I was already extremely unstable in my personal confidence. Oh, I knew I had massive knockers. Men made sure I never forgot that. But they were so big I was almost lopsided, like if I wore heels higher than three inches, I’d topple onto my face. And some of these sweetbutts made me look downright geriatric now. Hell, some Bare Bones brothers were grandfathers—Duji, Tuzigoot. So it was quite literally their granddaughters competing with me—or so I felt—for Ford’s attention. I just wanted to slap single guys like Wild Man and Gollywow when they made fools of themselves in front of the granddaughters. Any sweetbutt younger and tighter than me.

I was already reaching a mid-life crisis at age thirty. I was sick to death of seeing people die at work. Of course, we saved some, but for how much longer? You insert stents, pacemakers, slice and dice arteries and create bypasses, hand out drugs with horrifying side effects. How long will it be until you start to feel you’re just messing with Father Time? Sure, some of our patients had a seemingly good quality of life after we helped them. But the ones who died or lingered weighed heavily on me.

I brought another gin and tonic, my third, back to our table.

Of course, it was June who frowned upon this. “Maddy, slow down. You have to drive yourself home, don’t forget.” It didn’t really have to be June—I had no shortage of self-righteous, holy friends. Beatrix had been a nun, so she had every right to act superior. Gudrun was a fellow nurse, so she could’ve called me on my slurred speech or whatever. But it had to be my sister, June, who took over our witchy mother’s role of nonstop criticism.

I shrugged. I’d also just snorted a hefty nostril full of He-Man, which was already making me drowsy, “on the nod,” as they said. Good. “Can you drive me? Oh, hell, I’ll walk. I had the worst day ever at work.”