Roped by SJD Peterson

of the other members, but he clenched his jaw shut, keeping the protest from escaping.
    “Alright, let’s get this shit done,” Rocco added and brought his gavel down on the table, effectively ending the meeting.
    As they shuffled out of the room, Jamie pushed up close to Tek and whispered, “You need to stop trying to protect me in front of the others.”
    “And you need to learn to trust me,” Tek countered and walked away.

 
    I was so eager to please, to fit in. I wanted to be like the others, accepted. I was ignorant in my youth. Fitting in meant becoming cold-blooded. The cold is unforgiving. It wraps itself around a man, penetrates his very core, freezes the very blood within his veins.
    Heat is required to forge anything. Without it, life cannot exist.
     
    Tek Cain

The Calm Before the Storm
     
     
    J AMIE ROLLED his shoulders and tried to do his best to stretch his aching legs in the confines of the VW bug. He’d been sitting inside the cramped space for the last two hours staring at the front door of the Lucky Strike Saloon that the Westside Bangers used as a clubhouse, watching doper after hooker after junkie going in and out. A man his size was not made to be in such a small vehicle.
    Jamie turned and frowned at Buck. “Did you have to borrow the smallest car you could find?”
    “Borrow? Hell, this is my car,” Buck sniffed.
    “Seriously, dude? You bought a yellow bug on purpose?” Jamie shook his head. “Where are your balls, my man?”
    “I have to keep them in the trunk,” Buck chuckled.
    Jamie glanced toward the back of the car and arched a brow.
    “No, dumbass, up there,” Buck corrected him and nodded toward the front of the car.
    Jamie shifted in his seat, wincing at the pain in his ass, and resumed watching the front door of the bar. “Another reason to hate this car. Not only is it small, it’s bassackward,” he huffed.
    “It’s cute,” Buck defended.
    Jamie snapped his head around and gaped at Buck. Buck wasn’t as big as Jamie—standing around five ten—but he was stocky, well built. His long scraggly hair hung to his waist when he didn’t have it braided, which he often did along with the beard that hung halfway down his gut. His arms were covered in tattoos: skulls, pinup girls, devils, weapons, manly shit. All that, plus the fact the man could tear down a car engine and put it back together in record time, and he drove a goddamn bug?
    Jamie gave up on trying to puzzle it out and slumped down in the seat. “You are seriously one weird dude,” Jamie stated and turned once again to his target.
    “I can live with that.”
    Figures. But Jamie didn’t say it out loud, his attention suddenly on a man dressed in a long leather trench coat who rounded the corner heading toward the bar. Jamie sat up straighter and studied the guy. He didn’t recognize the middle-aged man with short salt and pepper hair, but whatever he was up to, it was nothing good. No one wore a heavy coat like that when it was eighty degrees out.
    “Heads up,” Jamie informed Buck and nodded toward the stranger. “You know him?”
    Buck studied the man for a second and then gasped. “Oh fuck, that’s Jimmy Saunders.”
    “Who?” Jamie asked, not taking his eyes off the newcomer.
    “Jimmy Saunders,” Buck repeated. “He was a big-time defense attorney about fifteen years ago. He’s a crooked son of a bitch. Went down for a shitload of shady dealings including witness intimidation, tampering with evidence, and attempted murder.”
    “Okay, so he’s a crooked attorney, not like that’s a rarity. But why would he be hanging with the Bangers?” Jamie inquired. “Better question is, why in the hell is he wearing a trench in this weather?”
    “I don’t know,” Buck admitted as he fired up the car. “But Rocco has some meets to set up.”
    “Why? Maybe he’s just looking to score some dope,” Jamie surmised.
    “Yeah ’cause everyone wears a fucking trench coat in summer to buy dope,”