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“You’re not going to make this any easier, huh?” Sky whispers my way.
“All these rules and no room for fun? Hell, no,” I shoot back.
Spike chuckles softly and leans forward. “How about a beer, Randy? It’s past noon.”
“I am not legal yet,” I say, loud enough for some of the customers to hear me. I know I’m pushing all of Sky’s buttons with this one, but I’m entitled to emotional compensation, at least, and making him look bad feels oddly appropriate.
“Ginger ale for the kid,” Sky plays along, then looks at me. “Have a look around. Tell me what you see.”
I do just that, taking in everything and hoping there’s a grain of salt for every detail that might make me like these people more than I should. I’m still a prisoner here, after all. I just don’t want to spend the rest of my captivity locked up. “Club members,” I mumble. “Do they know who I am?”
“Nope,” Sky shakes his head, and I find myself genuinely surprised. “Only Kendric, Raylan, Spike, and Shiloh are aware of your presence here. To everyone else, you’re my out-of-state friend, Randy.”
“Friend,” I can’t help but giggle.
“The fewer people know, the better,” Sky replies. “The club members wouldn’t have a problem with what we’re doing, to be honest. Hell, we got the idea from one of them. Chances are, some of the members will recognize you if they get close enough, but they know how to keep their mouths shut and their noses out of our business. These are tough times. They understand.”
“Wow, sounds like quite the conspiracy,” I say.
“It’s not. It’s just people trying to look out for other people, but we can’t exactly do that while the mayor of Everton insists on vilifying us on a daily basis.”
I offer a mildly uninterested shrug, not wanting Sky to know that I’m actually enjoying my time out of the cage.
“See that guy over there?” Spike asks, nodding at an older gentleman in club attire while pouring my ginger ale into a tall glass. “That’s Harry. His father was mayor in the early 60s. He works at the local DMV branch. He loves building model planes. Kendric actually orders these super-rare, special-edition plane models from Europe for the old guy every month, just to bring a smile to his face.”
I stare at the guy for a while, wondering how my brain is able to switch its perception so quickly. At first glance, Harry struck me as a big, burly, and likely dangerous man with sleeve tattoos and a penchant for violence. With Spike’s information added, however, I can absolutely see this man in a pale blue shirt, stamping forms at the DMV every day, then spending his weekends in the shed behind his house, building a new coffee table for his old lady.
“Okay,” I murmur, trying to wrap my brain around this information until I spot another club member whom I would absolutely consider calling the cops on if he so much as looked in my direction. “What about him?” I nod his way.
He’s tall, lanky, and covered in tattoos and piercings. Even half of his face is inked up, and a clump of shaggy black hair hangs over his forehead while he bends over the pool table to hit the eight ball. His friends cheer him on while his opponent glowers at the kid, waiting for the shot.
“That’s Elmo,” Spike says, “one of Kendric’s distant cousins. We picked him out of a county jail a couple of years back. The kid was a mess, but the club turned his life around. He was a prospect until last autumn, when we made him a full-fledged member. He earned his tresses and then some.”
“What does he do for a living, then? Florist? Cashier at a bank?” I snort a dry chuckle.
Sky gives me a hard look. “He works at the Everton Community Center down on LaSalle,” he says. “A government employee, I might add. Deals with at-risk kids, doing his best to place them in better foster homes while their parents go through the legal system for various wrongdoings.”
“Oh.” I feel like an asshole.
Something tells me that my privilege is starting to show. I’ve only ever had my father’s version of events, along with whatever the media said about the Steel Knights. What if my father hasn’t been entirely truthful about the club? Or maybe he’s just gotten it all wrong all this time?
I could blame the media. Easily.
“Your father knows,” Sky says, as if reading my mind.“He knows who we are and what we do. He also knows what we had to do, at least in the beginning, just to get the club off the ground and gain access to the more dangerous territories in Everton.”
“You have no idea what the city was like before we came up,” Spike adds with a furrowed brow. “You were just a kid, Randy.”
“Oh, I remember the news,” I reply.
“But you weren’t out in the streets,” Sky says. “You had a silver spoon in your mouth and didn’t give a shit about anyone else. Besides, the media isn’t always truthful, often reporting what they feel will make the best story, not what actually happened.”
It’s hurtful to hear that. True, but still hurtful. I retort with the only thing I’ve got. “At least I don’t go around kidnapping women.”
“We’re doing whatever we can to turn the tide back in favor of the people,” Spike says. “Your father has only been serving his own interests, not the community’s. And in the process—”
“He’s been slinging mud at our name over and over,” Sky says, then points at a couple sitting in one of the booths. Both of them are elderly and clearly in love after plenty of years while they share a milkshake and a large basket of sweet potato fries. “See those two over there?”
I nod once.
