“My brothers and I are transporting some cargo. To where and for what purposes, you don’t need to know. What you’re looking at are some authentic, Russian-made AK-47’s and a couple M16’s made here in the good ol’ USA. All together, their street value is well over the five thousand you want, but we’re throwing them all in because we know it’ll be a bit of an inconvenience to you to move the product. Even so, you’ll come out ahead. So, what do you say, BD, you ready to barter? Our guns for you finding information on any cabins on forest service land owned by the Death’s Disciples or anyone related to them?”
Crash says it so casually, like trading weapons like these is second nature to him.
What am I getting myself in to? Am I really fucking an arms dealer?
I shake my head and force those thoughts away; they’re important, but not more important than my best friend’s life. Even though they make me feel sick to my stomach and ashamed of just how low I’m sinking.
“Yeah, we’ve got a deal. Let me get my things and I’ll take care of your problem for you.”
“Right now?” Crash says, surprised.
“No time like the present. Shouldn’t take me more than an hour. You and Violet can wait here, help yourself to anything in my fridge — but touch nothing else, because I’ll know and I sure as hell won’t be happy. Your Irish friend has to wait outside, though.”
“Fine. I’ll go break the news to Mack,” Crash says, while I go to the fridge and grab a beer — because I sure as hell need one after everything I’ve witnessed — and I take a seat on the couch. All sorts of worrying thoughts about the compromises I’m making and the life I’m stepping into fly through my head.
Meanwhile, Crash pops his head out the door and breaks the word to Mack.
“Out here? What am I, a fucking dog?”
But that’s his only protest, and, in minutes, BD Cooper is out the door with a leather bag containing what I can only guess are his tools and Crash is sitting beside me, idly sipping a beer.
We don’t talk for the entire hour that BD is gone.
Frankly, I don’t know what to say to him. I suppose I should thank him for taking some of his cargo and offering it up to settle things with BD and help me find my friend, but thanking him for trading assault weapons just feels so wrong.
And Crash seems to pick up on how I’m feeling. As awkward as it is to sit in silence, it would be even more awkward for him to force the conversation. Then I’d have to deal with telling him to shut up, and I doubt that would go over well.
Then, in exactly one hour, Bowen Dale pulls back into his driveway and hops out of his late 80s Ford truck. In one hand, he’s got his toolbag and, in the other, he’s got a paper bag and a white cup.
He enters, sets the toolbag down, opens it, and takes out a manila folder and hands it over to me.
“Found six potential locations. All of them are owned by people in the Death’s Disciples MC or people tied to their club.”
I flip through it. It’s not just a list of cabins, it’s a map of the forest land, with each location marked on it, along with photocopied information — license, blueprints, ownership history — for each individual cabin.
“You did all this in only an hour?” I say.
Bowen Dale shakes his head. “That took about forty minutes. And only that because their copier is almost as old as I am. With the other twenty, I stopped and got some donuts and coffee. Got a couple left, if you want one. There’s a maple bar and two chocolate donuts with sprinkles.”
Crash lets out a long, low whistle. “Violet was right. You are legit, old man.”
BD shakes his head and his voice goes cold. “I’m not. I’m not in the game, you never met me, we never had this conversation. You don’t last as long as I have by getting on anybody’s radar. And I’ll kill to keep it that way.”
Crash hardly blinks in the face of the old man’s threat. He gives the folder one last look and then stands up.
“Violet, you ready to go for a hike?”
Chapter Fourteen
Crash
At morning’s light, we reach the start of a trailhead. There are three of us — me, Blaze, and Violet — and, at Blaze’s insistence, we are each bundled up against the cold and carrying backpacks loaded down with a whole list of wilderness supplies that he rattled off, from memory, the second he heard we were heading on an expedition into the mountains. Nevermind the fact that this should be a day trip, at most, and through well-hiked terrain, his smokejumper wilderness survival training kicked in and he took charge.
Outfitted, equipped, and tired as all hell from a night of rescuing Violet from the cops and trading guns to some old coot, I gaze up at the winding mountain trail in front of us and I’ve never in my life been more ready to go hiking.
I just want this over with.
I want to find this cabin, kill Switchblade, and get Kendra back.
And get away from Violet.
Ever since last night, when she went off the rails with her stunt at city hall, when she confronted me in the kitchen about the strangulation marks on my throat, and
