Page 16 of Making His Bones

“Yeah,” said Knoxie eagerly. “We can rent a whole room to give him a sense of security, then bugsmash him.”

Wolf practically rubbed his hands with glee. “Are we gonna pretend to be someone else?”

Lytton flashed him a frown. “No. Why?”

Wolf looked blank. “Because he wouldn’t agree to meet with an MC behind a closed door in a loud casino?”

“He’s right,” I said, surprised that Wolf was right. “We’ll have to send a message that we’re someone else.”

“The golf course,” said Fox. Now everyone glared at him. What were we going to do, wear white shoes and belts? But he had a logical answer. “DeFreeze loves to golf over at Shady Pines. Of course he’d check with Shady Pines that they were really inviting him to the Scarlet Dome. We can say we’re some rival golf club trying to poach him, and for him to keep things on the lowdown.”

“I love it!” Wolf clapped. “Oh, man! I’ve got a knitted beret I’ve been dying to wear!”

The whole bar went silent for a split second. I wondered if everyone else was thinking the same thing as me—that it’d be senseless for him to wear his beret since we’d all be wearing our leather cuts that declared us patch holders of THE BARE BONES MC. But some guys probably just thought it was bad fashion sense.

I broke the mood by saying, “Well, we’ll be behind a closed door. Okay, Fox, since you’ve got a landline that’ll say you’re at least calling from a hawk club, can you extend the offer? Preferably for this afternoon since we’re finally all here together?”

“Solid,” said Fox, and blazed out to his sanctuary’s landline on his ride.

I poured myself a beer from the tap because I could when Elektra wasn’t around and said, “I want to thank you guys. You know this might help vindicate Elektra Spinoza. What she went through is just ruthless.”

A few guys looked at me like they didn’t know what “unconscionable” meant, but Knoxie said, “No problem, Gray. You’ve been our brother since the short pants days. And we can tell you’ve got the hots for Elektra. Can’t say as I blame you. She is savage beautiful.”

“She’s a smoke show,” added Wolf, looking at his phone. “Hey, listen to this. This is an article from the Seeker Journal from ten years ago. It’s DeFreeze, saying the murder of the little girl left ‘an indelible mark in his mind, in his heart.’ What a shit-pickle.”

I said, “Well, Elektra said it left a bad taste in the mouths of many townspeople. She thinks they still suspect her. Also, as I said, she thinks DeFreeze knows something about the culprit. Let’s get as much info as we can.”

Wolf nodded. “I’m going to rip me a new interface.”

Well, now that seemed entirely plausible, so no one stopped him. I noticed they all had their irons stuck in their shoulder holsters. I didn’t even own one, a situation that Knoxie was trying to fix.

He came over now, casually pouring himself a beer, too. “Buddy, we know Elektra had something to do with arresting Kneecap. Just wanted to let you know, we’re never gonna accept her for going against one of our own.”

“But Kneecap did it. He acknowledged killing his wife.”

“Yeah. But still. She went against one of us. Without her testimony, the FBI never would’ve come into our little hamlet. Who knows what else she’s gonna do? Ask us all for our DNA to see if we killed her girl?”

Fuck. The last thing I’d do would be to admit that was exactly what she intended to do. I didn’t think P and E was within her geographical radar, but you never knew, especially after busting Kneecap on a prior. I could never tell them her plan to test every man within a certain radius. Maybe I could talk her out of it. Maybe we could get DeFreeze to cave, or this downtrodden Mexican boy could tell us who was behind the kiddie porn. That sounded like someone who’d know who put a girl in a suitcase after raping her with an inanimate object.

“Oh, fuck no. I admit I’m a little hot for her. But she’s leaving soon. She only has a couple weeks’ vacation. She lives in Illinois. We should get going. For all we know, Fox succeeded in talking to DeFreeze.”

So we roared out of town, looking not a little bit suspicious, or up to something at all. Sure enough, halfway through our ride Fox called Lytton and passed the word on that DeFreeze agreed to meet with us at the Scarlet Dome. Now we just had to reserve a big private room, something that shouldn’t be hard in the off-season of July in the middle of the week.

We’ve got the loosest craps in town, declared the sign high above our heads as we parked.

Taking off his lid, Lytton declared, “Let’s get in there ASAP. We can chow down before we question the guy.”

“Question the guy,” giggled Wolf.

As we walked to the lobby, Lytton asked me, “Is this thing with Elektra bringing up memories of your brother?”

My only sibling Neal had been killed in Afghanistan, worst of all during a friendly fire incident. They’d easily found the guy responsible with such a trigger-happy finger, but no one brought charges. It was a mistake, an accident, and that’s how it differed from Delilah’s story, but yeah, I’d been feeling again the pain of losing a family member like that. Was that sense of loss causing me to feel more affection toward Elektra?

“Yeah. That could be why I’m so dedicated to helping Elektra. Can’t hurt.”

“No, it certainly can’t hurt. DeFreeze pulled me over once a few years ago. Said I wasn’t wearing a belt.”

“Bikes don’t have seatbelts.”