Blood Brothers: Austin Conrad, #1

By Dusty Sharp

A hardened criminal. A gut-wrenching revelation. Loyalty, brotherhood, and honor will be tested to the breaking point.

A decorated war hero turned jaded enforcer for a ruthless outlaw motorcycle club, Austin Conrad is a man with a checkered past and a conflicted conscience.  Now, the honor he once had is jolted back to the surface with a devastating discovery about the club that was his home, and the men he called his brothers. Can this hardened criminal look the other way, or will honor drive a wedge between him and the brotherhood that embraced him?

Ride into the gritty, criminal underworld that runs beneath the surface of Southern California's glamorous facade. A fast-paced novella, Blood Brothers is the gripping introduction to Dusty Sharp's action-packed Austin Conrad thriller series.  Download it today and find out why readers are hailing Austin Conrad as "Jack Reacher meets Sons of Anarchy!"

Warning: contains violence, profanity and irreverence, in equal measure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dusty Sharp
• Release date: Jul 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386160380

Dusty Sharp

Dusty Sharp lives in Southern California with his wife, Stephanie, and four English Mastiffs.  He enjoys exploring the back-country of the desert southwest, and driving or tinkering on his Early Ford Broncos.  Dusty enjoys good cigars, better food, and great beer.  He has had a lifelong interest in the history of California and the west, and is a proud brother of E Clampus Vitus, Billy Holcomb Chapter 1069.  His professional background is in marketing, having worked for many years in the RV and off-road vehicle industries.  No Time To Bleed is his first published work of fiction.

Book preview

BLOOD BROTHERS

An Austin Conrad Novella

by

Dusty Sharp

Copyright © 2018 Dusty Sharp

All rights reserved.

For Harry Bush, and all the other bikers I’ve had the pleasure of knowing.

Please forgive me my trespasses.

One

The sun was dipping below the ridge at the far end of the canyon, casting the small clearing in gathering shadow. I shifted on the seat of my Harley and looked around.

Frosty was sitting on his bike, next to mine, picking his nose. An old Indian shack made of crumbling adobe with a rusted tin roof sat behind us at the far end of the clearing. The place was nestled deep in a ravine on a remote section of the reservation, surrounded by manzanita and scrub oak. Me and Frosty had arrived just before dark, after spending a couple of hours at the nearby casino.

Frosty was one of my brothers in the Rattlers Motorcycle Club, though I wouldn’t exactly call him a friend. You’ve probably heard of us if you’re from Southern California. Or anywhere in the western states, for that matter. The Rattlers MC has been on the front page of your local fish-wrap a time or two. Or in your social media news feed, such as things are these days. Frosty and I belonged to the Riverside chapter. Riv wasn’t the mother chapter of the Rattlers—that distinction belonged to Barstow, of all places.

But Riverside was the biggest. Some might say the strongest. Others the meanest. Much of that rep was owed to Tillman, our chapter president. More on him later. But it wasn’t a stretch to say that Riv was the dominant force in the club, whose 23 chapters sprawled across most of the western United States.

Ain’t never been to this drop before, Frosty said as he looked around, flicking a plump booger into the dirt. He spoke with a subtle hillbilly drawl, probably from Arkansas or southern Missouri. He was a stout man in his early fifties, maybe five years or so older than me. He was just slightly taller than average, at about six foot, so I had almost a half foot on him in height.

I wasn’t sure if his nickname was borne out of his ill temperament, or if it was a tribute to his pale skin—uncannily smooth and unwrinkled for a man his age—and unkempt snow-white hair. If he’d had an icicle hanging from his nose he’d have looked like the Snow Miser. But I never asked where the name came from. Didn’t know if it was something that might trigger him. And he triggered easily. Frosty had a well-deserved reputation for being cold-hearted and quick to anger, so that seemed a good enough explanation of the nickname for me.

He was an old-timer in the club; he’d prospected in right before my old man passed away back in ‘89 while I was off to the Army. I never knew Frosty back then, since I’d enlisted a year before that, fresh out of Raincross High. Go Ravens.

I finally came home for good in ‘02, a bit jaded from my time on Uncle Sam’s payroll. After bumming around for a few years I finally found a home right back there in the MC. Like father, like son I suppose. Tillman sponsored me in, said he was returning the favor for my old man, who had brought him in so many years before.

But Frosty was already a fixture around the club house by then. He hazed me a bit more rigorously than the rest of the brothers while I was prospecting, so I guess I just always thought he was an asshole. And he’d never done anything to change my assessment of him. But after I’d patched in he never really fucked with me again. Turned out he wasn’t as dumb as he looked.

But he was never ambitious. Frosty seemed content to just plug along in the rank and file, never really distinguishing himself other than just being a fucking prick. So I passed him up pretty quickly in the club’s unofficial hierarchy, even though I never became an officer. I didn’t have the time or patience for meetings and politics and all that bullshit. But I was known as someone who could Get Shit Done, so I was handy for all sorts of odd jobs. And a good tool tends to get used frequently.

That’s why I was the point man on this particular operation, and Frosty was bitch.

We were sitting on our bikes in the middle of the clearing, waiting for the drop. We were facing the dirt road we’d come in on, with our backs to the old Indian shack. The road entered the clearing through a gap in the trees. One way in, one way out. The clearing was about a mile and a half up a rutted dirt path from the paved road that ran through the reservation. Our voices were the only sound other than the ticking of cooling engines and the incessant buzzing of the cicadas.

I’ve been here a couple times, I said as I pulled a shaggy, bent cigar out of my vest pocket and lit up. I favor the cheap ones for work like this, since I tend to go through ‘em like shit through a tin horn. So its usually a foil pack of Backwoods or Ugly Coyotes, or even Swishers if I’m really slummin’ it. I took a drag, then looked around as my eyes re-adjusted to the growing darkness after the bright flare of my lighter. The Indians don’t come up here much anymore, I said. It’s a good spot. Secluded.

The club moved these drop locations around, never using the same one twice in a row, though we might come back to a spot after a month or so if it still seemed clean. There were a handful of places we used for work like this. A hunting cabin out near Palomar. An abandoned nursery over in Bonsall. An industrial building near downtown Escondido. I liked that place best, even though it was in town. It was huge, empty and on the market, so we could pull everything inside to make the transfers behind a closed roll-up door. All of these drop spots were situated in northern San Diego County, conveniently close to the interstate but far enough off the beaten path to make a short run up the back roads to circumvent the border patrol checkpoint out on Interstate 15.

Yeah well these fuckin’ Injuns give me the willies, Frosty said, looking around nervously.

I laughed, coughing a bit on cigar smoke. What do you think they’re gonna do? Come pouring out of the bushes in feathers and warpaint? Scalp us for the $43 you beat ‘em out of in Blackjack?

Fuck you, Austin. It’s just creepy out here. He was rubbing the palms of his hands together like a boy scout at a campfire, his eyes darting back and forth as the light faded.

"Well you creep me out, I told him, truthfully. A herd of bloodthirsty savages ain’t got nothin’ on you."

Fuck you, Austin, Frosty said again, as the sound of a truck engine began to rise from the direction of the dirt path. Let’s just get this shit over with and get the hell out of here.

I’m all for that, I said as I stood up from the bike, dropped the stub of the cigar and mashed it under my boot. These exchanges usually went smoothly, but out of habit my hands performed a silent inventory of my weapons. My trusty old Loveless chute knife was strapped to my boot, underneath