PANIC

Chapter Thirty - ROOK

Downtown Fort Collins is at the north end of town and even though the main drag is still College Avenue, it’s not wide and busy like it is down south by the Best Buy and PetSmart. It’s one of those old historic Western towns and has cute shops and lots of restaurants and bars. There’s even a trolley that runs down Mountain Avenue from Old Town to City Park. And Spencer has told me numerous times that it’s seriously been voted Best Place to Live in the World or some shit like that. I can see it, actually. It’s got a big university smack in the center complete with veterinary hospital and research buildings, but it’s still old-timey in many ways. Like parking in the middle of the street to shop in downtown. Literally. You pull into the center of the street and park between the north and southbound lanes of College Avenue.

I’ve passed by Veronica’s downtown tattoo shop dozens of times, so I know where it is, I’ve just never been inside. I pull the truck into a spot a few businesses down and turn the engine off. My stomach is doing all kinds of flips.

Why? Why does everything have to be so dramatic? I know the guys have secrets, but I just assumed that the secrets were about the hacking stuff they do. Did. Do. I’m not sure if they still do that shit or not. Obviously they did it for me, but whether or not they’re doing it for someone else right now, I have no idea.

But stealing from deadbeats and selling human slaves are two very different things.

It doesn’t add up.

I am kicking myself for not taking those papers from Gage right now. At least then I could read the whole thing. Because last time Gage said they were accused of murdering someone and got away with it. So when you combine all the shit Ronin is being accused of human trafficking, murder, grand larceny, and selling blow.

I have no idea what this means, but I’m not buying it one bit. It’s total bullshit.

I get out of the truck, wait for a few cars to pass by, then jog across the street and head up towards the tattoo place. I stop outside and look up at the sign. It says Sick Boys Inc. According to Spencer, Veronica Vaughn is the youngest non-Y chromosome member of the Sick Boys gang and she, her father, and all four of her brothers work at this shop. Apparently she is just one of the Boys around here, because from the sign you’d never know there was a girl inside doing ink.

It’s dark out now and the lights are on, but I can’t see anything because the front windows are frosted up like they belong in a bathroom. So all I can make out is a large blurry shadow and the faint buzzing of a tattoo machine.

I pull the door open and walk in, get slightly disoriented by the massive wall of tattoo photos that practically slams me in the face, and then startle at the voice to my right.

“Shrike Fucking Bikes? Roonnnnnnn-eeeeeee,” the guy bellows out in a deep voice. “Spencer’s Blackbird is here!”

I turn around to see someone who is probably one of the Sick Boys and look him up and down. He’s huge, for one. Massive. Like over six foot two. And his tatted-up biceps are bulging out from a t-shirt that hugs every spectacular muscle on his upper body. His light hair is cropped close, military-style, and his dark eyes convey a roughness that matches the scruff on his chin. “Who the hell are you? And how do you know who I am?”

“Vic Vaughn, and your name’s on the sleeve of your jacket and the backside says Shrike Fucking Bikes. Not Shrike insert-expletive-here-because-we-are-so-cool, but actual Shrike Fucking Bikes. Like that’s the name of his business. And only Spencer Shrike would put ‘fuck’ in the name of his business on the back of a jacket. You don’t need to be Cujo to figure that one out.”

I squint up at him because that just makes no sense, then look down at my jacket sleeves. One is painted up to say Blackbird and the other says Gidget. I automatically get a little protective of Spence and retaliate appropriately. “Cujo is a nasty-ass, rabies-ridden dog. You’re thinking of Columbo. And this is a pretty hot fucking jacket if you ask me.”

Vic Vaughn winks at me. “So’s the girl inside, even if you didn’t ask me. And I was just testing you on that Cujo thing. I heard you’re a film freak. You should come by the FoCo Cinema sometime, me and the boys wouldn’t mind gettin’ ya in the dark for a movie.”

“Shut up, Victor,” Veronica says as she comes around a corner dressed like she’s doing a root canal back there. She’s wearing pink scrubs, a white lab coat, a pink visor with a clear plastic face shield that she flips up as she approaches, and a blue mask over her mouth. “Hey, Rook, come by for your free tat?” she says through the mask, making it puff out a little with each word.

“Uh, no.” I stammer for a moment because her get-up is pretty distracting. “Actually, I was wondering if you had a minute to talk. About…” I look over at Vic, and then cover my mouth and whisper, “Spencer, Ronin, and Ford.”

“Hey, Blackbird? You’re like two feet away, I can still hear you. Well, Ronnie, I win this bet. I said a week and it’s been”—he looks over at the calendar—“nine days.”

We both ignore that remark and I change the subject and point to her clothes. “What’s with the outfit, Veronica?”

She absently looks down at herself. “Blood-borne pathogens. Did you know that an ink machine can spray minute particles of blood into the air and you breathe it in if you don’t protect yourself?” Veronica grabs my arm and pulls me to the back of the shop. We pass a few more rooms, each with tattoo machines buzzing—but all of the male Sick Boys look like regular ink artists with their t-shirts, jeans, and tatted-up arms.

“Come on back, Rook. I’ve got a guy in the chair, but he’s such a pussy, he can use the distraction.” She drags me into a small room that looks like a cross between a hospital surgery room with the different doctor office-type stuff lined up neatly on a long counter, and Fran the Nanny’s mother’s living room—because just about every single surface is covered in plastic.

You could kill someone in here, Murder by Numbers style, and just roll it all up in plastic and toss it in the dumpster when you were done.

I shiver.

A very large biker who has half his arm bubbling up dots of blood from the partially finished tattoo shifts in his chair and makes the plastic crinkle. “You get used to it,” he says matter-of-factly, panning a hand up at the sheeting that covers the flat screen on the wall. I spy Milla Jovovich with orange hair so I’m pretty sure it’s The Fifth Element playing, but it’s hard to see through the wrinkles. “She’s got a germ issue and a blood phobia.”

I almost snicker as I picture her back in the Chaput parking lot freaking out about her bullet scrape. It makes more sense now.

Veronica ignores the dude and absently waves a hand at him. “Rook, this is Tiny. Tiny, Rook. Rook here needs to girl-talk with me. You don’t mind, do ya, Tiny?”

The big biker smiles at me through his full beard and I force one back as well to be polite. “Nah, you girls just go right ahead.”

Veronica offers me an extra face mask and visor shield, but I hold up my hand and refuse. “OK, Rook, spill it. What’s up?” She slips her gloves off, washes her hands, and then snaps on a new pair, grabs her inkwell, flips down her clear plastic face shield like she’s getting ready to do some welding, and the buzzing starts up again.

She is one strange chick.

“Well, it’s sorta private, ya know? Like, I’m not sure I should—”

“Rook,” she puffs through her mask, “we’ve got a pool running on how long it would take you to come by asking questions about your new roommates. It’s no secret that Spence, Ford, and Ronin are knee-deep in controversy and shit. So just tell me what’s on your mind.”

I sigh and then try for vagueness so I don’t involuntarily let out any new secrets. “OK, let’s start with the murder charges. True or not?”

“True,” Veronica says. “At least the charges part is. I have no idea if they actually did it, but everyone knows the state dropped the charges because of a procedural technicality.”

OK, that I figured. Obviously, since it was in the paper and all. “How about drug-dealing?”

Veronica snorts at this one. “That’s a first for me. Who says they deal drugs?”

“My math tutor had a print-out of a file the FBI is keeping on Ronin, and it said something about dealing coke, grand larceny, and…” I look around, then down at Tiny, who is all ears, just soaking up my girl gossip. “And something else that I won’t repeat.”

“Do you think Ronin’s dealing coke? I mean, you’ve lived with him for a few months, right?”

“I can’t see it, Veronica. I can’t see any of it to be honest. He seems like a really good guy. You saw that party he gave me. And yeah, Spencer throws that danger vibe at times, but he’s pretty normal as far as I can tell.”

“How about Ford?”

She stops the tattoo machine and then all four of the Vaughn brothers appear in her doorway and the place is suddenly very quiet, like everyone wants to hear my answer. I shake my head nervously. “I’m not talking to an audience, guys.”

Vic steps forward. He appears to be the oldest and he’s definitely the biggest, so maybe he’s like the family ringleader. “Hey, you came here to talk to us. Not the other way around.”

“I came to talk to Veronica.”

“Veronica is a package deal. You talk to her, you talk to us. Besides, she’s been dating that fuck Spencer for years now, and I’m curious about these guys. So tell us what you think of Ford.”

I guess that’s fair. At any rate, I don’t have a lot of room to negotiate. Either I give him what he wants so I can get their opinion on things, or I walk out. And I really need a second opinion on things, even if it is over a tattoo machine instead of coffee. “Ford’s good to me and we spend a lot of time together. I like him a lot. But there’s just some weird shit going down and I’m trying to figure out who to trust. I don’t need to know the specifics, Veronica. I just want to know if you think they’re OK.”

“Well, aside from Ford, I’d say yeah. Ronin and Spencer are good guys. But Ford…” She shakes her head at me. “I’m sorry, Rook. You saw that display at your party. He keeps those girls as his pleasure slaves.”

I swallow hard as Ford’s words come back from the exit interview for the pilot show. I’m not a good guy, Rook. I’m not even close to a good guy.

This cannot be happening. Seriously cannot be happening. “Against their will? Does he keep them against their will? Or is it mutual? He took her to the party, surely it must be mutual?”

Veronica shrugs. “How should I know? You’re his friend, do you think he keeps them against their will?”

I’m not sure. In fact, I have no idea whatsoever. I’ve never seen Ford outside our little friendship sphere. I only found out his last name because Gage blurted it out last week. “Well, that’s all I needed, I guess I’ll go.” I get up to walk out but all four of the Vaughn brothers are still standing in the doorway. Blocking it. “Excuse me,” I say nervously. The hard bodies part and I slip through. I walk quickly down the hallway, round the corner to the front reception area, and I’m just about to break through the door when a hand grabs me from behind.

“Hold on, Rook,” Vic says softly as his grip loosens. “I’d like to give you my opinion.”

I shake my head. “No, I’ve heard enough, Vic. I’m not interested.”

“Well, you’re gonna get it anyway. So, for what it’s worth, I like Spencer. Just don’t tell him that because we have this whole ‘I’ll kill you if you fuck over my sister’ thing going.” And then Vic smiles down at me and my heart slows a little at his unexpected quiet voice and gentle touch. “You know, he plays tough guy. And he’s got the shit to back it up. And maybe that reputation he has is even halfway true. Maybe he did kill that guy? I have no idea. But I let him take my sister out, so you know, I think he’s OK.”

Vic releases my arm and I push through the door, mumbling out a ‘thank you’ as I slip into the darkness.

Maybe Spencer killed that guy? That’s even a possibility?

Holy fucking shit. I’m sure Vic thought his words would make me feel better, but they don’t. Because I never, not for one moment, really believed these guys actually murdered someone.

Until now.

Just when I think my day could not get any worse it starts to rain.

I walk hastily down the sidewalk, look both ways, wait for a car to pass, and then head towards my truck. I fish my keys out of my pocket, look up, and then stop dead in the middle of the southbound lane of College Avenue.

Wade fucking Minix is standing six feet away.