Blacklisted (Loveless, Texas #3) - Jay Crownover Page 0,22

place, huh?” It didn’t look like anything special, and there was no effort to hide the Confederate flags that decorated the exterior. They weren’t being subtle, that was for damn sure.

I pulled down the black face mask I’d worn on the ride from Loveless. It was a pretty drive out to the small town located near Lake Travis, but oddly desolate and empty once you got through all the subdivisions. It was a good place for both a clubhouse and a dive bar catering to a group of less than desirable individuals to set up shop.

When we got word from another club that Jed Coleman was hiding out in the bar, I’d gathered a handful of my most trustworthy and lethal guys and hit the road. We didn’t really have a plan in place, other than to grab Jed Coleman and make him pay for what he’d done to me and the club. It still burned deep down in my gut that we’d lost two of our brothers because of Coleman. Once we had our hands on Jed, I’d figure out a proper punishment.

“You can count on pretty much everyone inside the bar being armed, and a lot of them know how to fight. Last time my club clashed with them, a couple of my guys ended up in the ER. One lost an eye, and another lost a couple fingers on his hand. They play dirty.”

The youngish Hispanic man who called himself Rocker and who was the president of the other club sounded rightly furious over the previous encounters.

Heavy is the head that wears the crown, or in this case the PRESIDENT patch on the front of his cut. I sympathized with the man’s ire. It was hard enough to worry about your own well-being and if the decisions you were making were the right ones. That weight was exponentially more when you have twenty to thirty guys willing to follow you to hell and back. Guys who trusted you implicitly and who were willing to risk it all just because you asked them to. It was our job to keep everyone as safe as possible, and when we failed, the loss was crushing and often impossible to shake off.

I grunted and narrowed my eyes as a young man with a shaved head, complete with a swastika tattooed on the back, came out the front door and lit up a cigarette.

“We play dirtier. You sure the guy I’m looking for went in there?” So far, I hadn’t laid eyes on Coleman, and I wasn’t about to force my way in without verified information. As much as I’d taken away growing up at my father’s side, I’d also learned many valuable lessons while I was in the military. It was a combination of both brutal educations that made me great at what I did, and it was the main reason I had so many willing to follow my lead.

“I’ve had eyes on this place since I first contacted you to verify your guy has been hiding out here. He’s definitely in there.” The younger guy rubbed his fingers over his goatee and frowned. “We’ve tried to figure out another way besides the front door, but we haven’t come up with anything. Even though the bar is supposed to be open to the public, they keep the place as secure as Fort Knox. My guess is they run meth through there.”

I made a disgusted noise low in my throat. I wasn’t what anyone would consider a good guy, but I had a deeply ingrained sense of what was and wasn’t an acceptable way to make a living on the wrong side of the law. Drugs were a hard no when it came to my club and the people I did business with. I hated how dependent and unpredictable they made people. I also didn’t like the chain of command involved when it came to narcotics. If you cut off one head, it was likely three more dangerous versions would grow back in its place.

Turning my head, I looked at Top, who still had a bandana with a skull wrapped around the lower part of his face. He held a pair of very expensive, very high-tech infrared binoculars to his eyes as he intently watched the bar down at the bottom of the hill where we were parked.

“How many people are inside?” I kept my voice low as I started to ponder the best way to gain entrance to the bar while