“I’ve been working undercover on an investigation of a motorcycle club in North Georgia. The ATF is trying to nail them on several different things, the two main charges being selling bootlegged alcohol without a license and gun running. The actual charges are quite a bit more complicated than that, but that’s the five-second version. I need any evidence the ATF can use against them erased from the tapes. The job has to be clean so the ATF won’t realize the tapes have been tampered with.”

Erik gives me a confused look.

“Wait a minute. Back up. You’re on the biker gang’s side?”

“It isn’t as bad as it sounds,” I explain. “They live in a dry county, which is hard to believe in this day and age. Basically they bring alcohol and cigarettes in from other states, mark it up fifty percent, and sell a ton to the locals. Their volume is equivalent to a large metropolitan package store, and they’re doing it without paying excise or sales taxes. The ATF has been watching them for a while. A local preacher turned them in for bringing sin into the county. His words, not mine.”

“I’ve heard of worse things,” he says. “It’s not as if they’re killing people.” A concerned look crosses his face. “They’re not, are they?”

“Oh no, of course not,” I say.

I’ll keep my suspicions about that to myself. There are certain lines of right and wrong that Erik would never cross. Even for me.

“What about the guns?” he asks with a frown. “That’s a major problem no matter how delicately you want to spin it. Guns are bad news.”

“I know,” I say. “To be honest, I don’t know much about the gun running, which is good because that means no one else at the ATF knows anything either. Just in case, if there is anything on the tapes about guns of any kind, I want it gone. As in completely erased or dubbed over. And anything else that sounds the least bit illegal. The case against the Steel Infidels needs to go away. I have to do this for them. They’re not bad people.”

Erik raises his eyebrows. “I’ll take your word for that,” he says. “In any case, this should be an easy enough job. Time consuming, but technically uncomplicated.”

He walks over to instruct his crew on what to do while I put on a pot of strong coffee.

It’s going to be a long night.

Things will be okay.

Erik is here now.

I trust him with my life, and more importantly, with Sam’s.

***