Mad Delights Read Online Free

Dax suspected it was the Shanks spying on them. The gang operated all over the Midwest, from Arkansas up through Iowa. They’d slowly been infiltrating their drugs into the MOH territory, but they were small and poorly managed. The Mercedes, however, worried him.
    He tensed as the sensation of being watched stole over him. He might not be able to see the person who stared at him, but he felt the inspection nonetheless.
    “Coming, Dax?” Romeo called.
    He glanced behind him and nodded to his club president. As always, a measure of guilt washed over him. He’d let his duties as an enforcer slide with Shepard, and the man had turned out to be a fucking psychopath with delusions of grandeur. He wouldn’t slip again. When he looked back, he watched the car drive away, nothing but tail lights in the night.
    “Yeah,” he said. He turned and followed Romeo into the dark bar. Posh it wasn’t. The sticky floor kept sucking at his shoes. The low lighting forced him to squint, the band sucked, and the drinks were barely chilled. But the girls were smoking hot. The Whiskey Lick Her was located right off the interstate and the flashing neon sign that read A Lot of Girls was a magnet for truckers. The Men of Hell made a nice little profit, and, in return, they provided muscle and protection for the whores.
    The manager, Creole Jack, greeted them with a nod toward the back room. He and Romeo headed there immediately while the other Brothers, Babyface and Hawg, took up position outside the door. A minute later, Creole Jack entered with a towel draped over his shoulder.
    “Let me open this safe and I got your money here waitin’,” he said. His accent was thicker than his mud-like coffee. “You know, I had two men come in here the other day, askin’ about y’all.”
    “Shanks?” Romeo asked.
    Creole Jack shook his head. He’d moved to Bair back in the seventies, leaving his home state of Louisiana behind. The darkness of his skin made the whites of his eyes stand out in stark relief. He pulled out a red money bag and handed it over. Romeo unzipped it, thumbed through the stack of twenties and nodded in satisfaction.
    “No, weren’t no cops neither,” Creole Jack said. “They weren’t wearing cuts but they smelled like leather and they looked like bikers.”
    “What questions did they ask?” Dax asked.
    “Askin’ about the town. About you. They were real curious about the feud between you and the Shanks.”
    Romeo folded his arms across his chest. “What’d you say?”
    “I told ’em I was just a manager.” Creole Jack shrugged. “Told ’em I didn’t know nothin’ about the Men of Hell.”
    “All right,” Romeo said. “If you see them again, call me.”
    “Of course,” Creole Jack said.
    “Would you give us a minute, Jack?” Romeo asked. Creole Jack nodded and left the room, closing the office door behind him with a soft click. “What’s up?”
    “There’s been a Mercedes following us,” Dax remarked.
    “Then that leaves the Shanks out. No one in their organization drives one of those cars. So who the fuck is tailing us?”
    “I don’t know.” Dax held out his hand. “I don’t like it. Give me the money bag and I’ll take it straight to the club.”
    “But I’m the one that takes it—”
    “We need to change up your routine,” Dax told him. “You’ve become a little predictable.”
    “You think that’s necessary?”
    “I do. So let me run it back to the club and you go find a way to let off a little of that restlessness you’ve had for a while. I’ll be gone twenty or thirty minutes, tops.”
    “We should go together.”
    “I’ll be fine,” Dax insisted. “Change up your Friday night, okay?”
    Romeo frowned, but he handed over the red money bag. Dax shoved it into his cut’s inner pocket and held up his fist. Romeo bumped it with his own.
    “See you in a bit,” he said.
    “I’ll probably be in the back.”
    Translation—he’d be with the whores.
    Dax left the office