Chapter 7: The Road King Clubhouse
The morning sun filtered through the dusty windows of the old timber cabin, casting long, slanting bars of gold across the floorboards. I was sitting at the wooden kitchen table, tracing the frayed edges of the faded photograph with my thumb, when Jax heavy boots hit the porch steps. He had spent the last hour tuning up his bike down by the shed, his wrench clinking against chrome in the crisp mountain air. Now, he walked through the door carrying a burlap sack of supplies he must have scavenged from his truck, his face set in that mask of hard, unyielding indifference I was slowly learning to read.
“Eat something, Leo,” Jax said, tossing a pack of crackers and an apple onto the table. “We’ve got about an hour before Vince and the boys usually head out to the salvage yard. If we’re going to hit the county records office in town, we need to move before the streets get crowded.”
My stomach tightened, a familiar knot of anxiety twisting deep inside my ribs. “Do you think Vince saw us leave the garage yesterday?”
Jax paused, a tin can of coffee halfway to his mouth. He set it down slowly, the metal scraping against the wood. “Vince sees everything, kid. That’s why he’s road captain. He smells a secret the way a hound smells a fox. But he doesn't know for sure what’s in this cabin, and he doesn't know about the birth certificate. Not yet.” He pulled his heavy leather vest over his shoulders, adjusting the heavy silver buckles across his chest. “That’s why I’m going down to the clubhouse first. Alone.”
“Alone?” I stood up, the chair scraping against the floor. “Jax, you said we were going together.”
“We are going to town together, but I have to clear the board first,” Jax said, his voice dropping an octave, steady and absolute. He walked over and placed a large, calloused hand on my shoulder. The weight of it was grounding, heavy and warm. “If I walk into the records office with you right now, Vince will be breathing down our necks before the clerk even stamps the paper. I need to go look him in the eye at the Road King lounge, throw him off the scent, and buy us thirty minutes. You stay locked in here. Don't open the door for anyone, you hear me? Not even if they whistle.”
I swallowed hard and nodded, my fingers tightening around the edge of the table. “Be careful, Jax.”
“Always am,” he muttered, though there was no humor in his eyes.
He walked out the door and fired up his Panhead, the deep, rattling roar of the exhaust shaking the windowpanes before fading down the winding mountain road. I watched him through the dusty glass until the taillight vanished behind a thick stand of pine trees. The silence that followed was suffocating. I checked the heavy iron bolt on the front door twice, then sat back down at the table, staring at the small folded paper that held my entire existence in black and white ink.
Ten miles down the mountain, the Road King clubhouse sat squat and menacing behind a rusted chain-link fence on the industrial edge of town. A couple of battered choppers were parked out front, their chrome gleaming dully under the gray morning sky. Jax killed his engine fifty yards away, letting the bike coast in silent neutral before dropping the kickstand. He didn't bother hiding his expression as he pushed open the heavy oak door of the lounge, stepping out of the bright daylight into the stale, amber-lit haze of stale beer and cigarette smoke.
Vince was sitting at the corner of the scarred wooden bar, a toothpick wedged between his teeth, leaning over a grease-stained map of county hauling routes. Two other club enforcers, guys with thick necks and bad tattoos, flanked him like carved stone. They didn't look up right away, letting the heavy slam of the door echo through the empty room before turning their attention toward the newcomer.
“Well, look who decided to crawl out of his garage,” Vince said, pulling the toothpick from his mouth and spitting onto the sawdust-covered floor. “Word on the street was you had a visitor yesterday, Jax. A little shadow running behind your heels. Thought you worked alone these days.”
Jax didn't flinch. He walked straight up to the bar, planting his knuckles on the sticky wood, and stared down his road captain with a look so cold it made the bartender step back into the shadows. “My business is my business, Vince. You got a problem with how I run my schedule?”
“I got a problem with leaks,” Vince said, standing up to match Jax’s height. He was broader in the chest, his eyes narrowed with suspicious malice. “The boys down at the diner said an eight-year-old kid walked right up to you yesterday asking questions about a ghost. And then you dropped out of sight for twenty-four hours. That don't sound like routine maintenance, Jax. That sounds like baggage.”
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“I don’t carry baggage,” Jax said, his voice dangerously low, each word measured like a blow from a hammer. “I carry what’s mine. And if you’ve got something to say about my private affairs, you better say it to my face without hiding behind the club rules.”
Vince’s jaw tightened, a muscle ticking violently beneath his graying beard. The two enforcers shifted their weight, their hands drifting casually toward their beltlines. The air in the room grew thick and heavy, charged with the kind of volatile violence that could ignite with a single wrong word. Jax stood his ground, not giving an inch, his posture radiating the lethal calm of a man who had already decided he had nothing left to lose.
