Season 1, Episode 4
"Patch Over: Clean Lines, Dirty Hands"
The morning smelled like road dust and choices. Teller-Morrow's lot was a line of Harleys angled like teeth. Clay walked the row with a president's cadence—boots slow, eyes fast—while Gemma ghost-checked saddlebags like a woman counting parachutes.
"Indian Hills," Clay said. "Devil's Tribe called. Jury's got pressure on him and not enough friends."
"Then we make him some," Tig grinned.
"Or we make him us," Bobby said, patting his kutte.
Gemma fixed Jax's collar with one hand and stabbed a look through Cian with the other. "Keep him intact," she told Clay but meant the boys. "And don't bring meth stink home."
"No meth," Jax said, like a vow he'd already taken somewhere private.
Clay's smile had gravel in it. "We'll be… persuasive."
Cian slung a compact radio pack onto his back—the little mesh he'd built from scrounged parts and boredom. UHF, local scanner, a piggyback on a Nevada highway maintenance channel, and a phone that could pretend to be five other phones. He tapped the cases once like knocking on wood, then glanced at the Reaper on the wall. It grinned back like it knew where they were going.
Unser limped in from the street, hat low, eyes reading the day's weather on their faces. "Indian Hills PD is half-decent and half for sale," he said, passing a folded note to Cian. "Numbers you don't call unless you plan to pay."
"Plan to avoid," Cian said, slipping the list under the radio band.
Unser looked at Jax. "Keep your boy's name outta any report that leaves Nevada."
"I'm trying," Jax said.
Unser looked at Cian. "Keep trying for him."
Cian saluted with two fingers. "I brought manners."
"Bring mercy," Unser said, turning away. "You're gonna need it."
They rolled.
---
The highway opened like a throat. Wind took what you didn't want and threw it behind you. Cian rode two back from Jax, eyes measuring distances, ears full of a chorus only he could conduct: Clay, Tig, Bobby, Chibs on net; a CHP car's idle at the county line; a maintenance truck broken down five miles up—"broken down" because he'd scheduled it so—forcing cruisers to pick a lane that wasn't theirs.
On a fuel stop outside Fallon, Jax stood with a plastic coffee and the desert turning everything honest. "You got the Tribe pegged?" he asked.
"Jury's proud," Cian said. "His boys are thin and out of friends. Pressure makes bad math look right—like meth."
"Then we change the math."
"Or the men."
Jax's mouth twitched. "You sound like Dad."
"Hope not. I'm uglier on the page."
Clay called them up with a chin. "Let's go meet family."
---
Indian Hills was sunburnt and stubborn. The Devil's Tribe clubhouse looked like a VFW that had learned to swear. Old bikes leaned at angles that told stories. Men looked up when SAMCRO rolled in—wary, relieved, insulted. All three could live in the same face.
Jury White met them in the doorway—gray beard, cut that had been mended twice and refused to retire. He hugged Clay like two old wars shaking hands. He shook Jax's hand like testing grip and future. His eyes landed on Cian and stayed a beat too long—the lazy blue, the Teller patch.
"Kid looks like home," Jury said.
"He's trouble," Tig offered helpfully.
"We brought trouble," Jury said, trying to smile and not making it. He jerked his chin toward the back. "Come inside."
The meeting room smelled like coffee that had seen a thousand fights. Maps on the table, a grainy satellite print of scrubland, and a photo of a half-finished subdivision: Hampshire Development, sign bright like a promise. Jury tapped it with a knuckle.
"They want our land," he said. "Mayans want our roads. A county supervisor wants his pocket filled. I'm keeping boys out of jail with duct tape and prayer."
Clay nodded like the world had confirmed his worldview. "Patch over," he said simply. "You fly our crow, you get our friends and our enemies. Gives you a bigger gun either way."
Jury's jaw worked. "You want me to fold my history into yours."
"I want your history to keep breathing," Clay said. "Under our oxygen."
Jax leaned forward, elbows on wood. "No meth," he said. "If you patch over, that dies. Now."
Across the room, a younger Tribe hitter—Dawes—snorted. "You patch us over and then tell us what sins we're allowed? Cute."
"Not cute," Jax said. "Policy."
Jury looked between them, old eyes calculating loyalties. "We'll talk," he said. "But we got a nearer problem. Hampshire hired a private security outfit that thinks badges come in bulk. They lean on us. Mayans lean on them. I got boys getting squeezed between a checkbook and a cartel."
"Which is why your phone called ours," Clay said, and stood. "Let's go introduce ourselves."
---
Cian rode tail with Juice through a patch of dirt lot that had decided it was a road. The Hampshire site hulked in the scrub—model home skeletons, stacks of drywall wrapped in plastic, a trailer with a portable air unit wheezing in the heat. A white Tahoe sat nose-out, two men in polos pretending to be the law.
"Mall cops with ARs," Tig said. "I love America."
Cian flicked his audio to catch county security chatter: lots of numbers, little training. He ghosted a text to a freeway patrol unit with a "stranded motorist" six miles away and watched the Tahoe's driver decide his back-up was suddenly alone.
Clay rolled in slow, Jax to his right, Jury to his left. No guns out. Yet.
"Afternoon," Clay said.
"Private property," the taller polo said, hand on the rifle he shouldn't have been carrying where people could see.
"Good to hear," Clay said. "Because my friend's property is pretty private too."
Jury's voice had rusted pride in it. "You're trespassing on my life, son."
The polo sneered. "Your life got rezoned. Go file a complaint. Bring your own pens."
Tig grinned, delighted. "I brought mine." He didn't move. The grin was the weapon.
"Look," Jax said, patient the way a decent man makes himself be. "We don't give a damn about your drywall. You keep Hampshire's people off Tribe land and out of Tribe faces, and we won't make you a story you tell your grandchildren about the day you peed yourself."
The shorter polo laughed and looked at the tall one for permission. The tall one forgot he was a human and remembered he was a uniform. "You threatening a licensed—"
Three dirt bikes crested the scrub like bad weather. Green bandannas. Mayan rockers. A pickup rattled behind them with two in the bed, rifles low. They saw the cluster of men and peeled wide—circling, reading, deciding. Alpha moved his bike into a slow idle and let the engine talk.
Clay didn't turn his head. "You invited friends?" he asked the Tahoe.
"Must be your fan club," the tall polo said, delighted to not be the biggest deal anymore.
Cian exhaled once. "Positions," he said in the ear. "Three bikes, one pickup. Two rifles in back. One driver, one passenger. Alpha on the red with a bent clutch lever. He favors left." His voice stayed lazy; his brain stretched tight as wire.
Jury's boys shifted. Dawes' hand twitched toward the pistol at his back.
"Don't," Jax warned without moving his mouth.
Alpha smiled without teeth. "Heard the Tribe was making new friends. Thought we'd stop by with a welcome basket."
"Basket's empty," Clay said.
"Yours will be too," Alpha said. He nodded at the model frames. "Be a shame if some accidents slowed down the dream homes. Be a shame if somebody's wife got scared by fireworks when the power went out." He let the gasoline in his words vaporize in the heat.
Jax smiled back, slow. "Be a shame if your bikes got a taste for sand."
Alpha's smile failed a fraction. He tipped his chin to the pickup. The passenger in the cab set his hand on the door in a universal ready.
Clay's eyes didn't blink. "This is the last polite we do today."
Cian saw it break before it broke—the pickup lurch, the rifle in the bed coming up too quick, the polo flinch like he'd never been in a live room. He stepped left into shadow and cleared his line. Time did what it always does in bad places: got thin and loud.
"Left bed," he said in the net, and his pistol bucked once, twice—first round shattering the rifle's rear sight, second chewing the man's shoulder. The shooter fell into the bed with a whine. Alpha yanked his bike hard; Jax moved with that new clean he wore when intent replaced doubt and put a round into the pickup's grille. Steam hissed—hood popped—driver swore and cranked wheel.
Tig laughed and dove; Chibs cut a tire; Bobby's shotgun thundered dust off a frame—rock salt only, because they had to live here next week. Jury's boys finally remembered which way to aim.
Cian tracked a second rifle coming up in the bed—a kid, scared and angry. He sighted and felt the space between kindness and necessity vanish. The shot dropped the rifle into the truck bed, harmless metal, and the kid froze with eyes wide and future still in his chest. Cian didn't pull a second trigger.
"Move 'em," Clay barked, voice bright with the joy of a solved equation, and the yard exploded—men, engines, curses, sand.
Alpha tried to thread the model frames to flank. Jax cut him off and their fronts kissed in a shower of bad decisions. Dawes charged a Mayan and learned why charging was for stories. The tall polo finally raised his rifle and nobody noticed because this wasn't his movie.
A Mayan peeled wide toward Cian—the one with the bent clutch lever, as advertised. The bike fishtailed; dust turned the world into brown water. The man lifted a pistol one-handed. Cian didn't think. He let the line draw itself: elbow, breath, squeeze. The Mayan folded off the bike like laundry. The body thumped the sand; the pistol went quiet ten feet away.
Time snapped back hard. The bike toppled and kept its back tire spinning like it couldn't accept events. Someone yelled. Someone else laughed the way men do when they can't admit their hands are shaking.
Cian stood where he'd shot and did inventory. Hands steady. Breath fine. Noise normal. He looked at the body—the angle of a neck that didn't quite belong to the living, the dust on eyelashes, the heat already pulling smell out of skin. He felt nothing, then something delayed—a weight in his throat that didn't rise or sink, just sat.
Tig jogged past, saw the body, saw Cian. He bumped Cian's shoulder. "First clean," he said, not unkind. "You okay?"
"Define okay," Cian murmured.
Tig grinned. "Welcome to the punchline."
Chibs's voice cut in their ears. "Truck's running. Driver's not. We've got sand and silence."
Clay stood in the middle of it like a pagan idol, the kind that had seen this ceremony before. He looked at the fallen Mayan, then at Cian, then at Jury.
"Patch over," Clay said again, quiet as a knife. "Because this is what family does. It puts bodies on the right side of the line."
Jury swallowed history. He looked at his boys—thin, scared, proud. He looked at Mayan dust on his boots. He nodded once. "We'll fly your crow," he said. "We kill the crank. We keep the land."
Jax's eyes flicked to Cian. The look said we save who we can. The heat made everything shimmer.
Sirens coughed far off—the real kind this time. Cian checked his mesh—CHP already tangled in his maintenance detour, county unit answering a "domestic" two exits north he'd queued when they rolled in. He could buy them minutes, not hours.
"Wrap," Cian said. "I can keep dumb busy for eight."
"Wrap," Clay echoed. "Jury—burn your trash, scrub your guns. Dawes—you ride with Tig, learn manners. We'll talk charter paperwork after we don't get arrested."
They ghosted the yard—rubber gloves, brass policed. The tall polo stood with his rifle finally pointing at dirt, eyes big. Jax walked by him and took the mag, tapped it against the man's chest, then handed it back. "Point this at drywall next time," he said. "Not people."
They rolled out slow, dust swallowing tracks. In Cian's ear, the county scanner hiccuped and coughed—units confused, reports crossed, a traffic light failing two miles away like a guardian angel with a sense of humor. He liked when his lies did their jobs without complaint.
On the road, wind took blood out of his nose. The body behind them stayed where it fell, and the future in front of them got one decision heavier.
Jax pulled alongside and knocked his helmet with his knuckles—a brother's inventory check. Cian returned it. He stared down the ribbon of highway and let the heat tell him a truth he could live with.
Control is a lie. Chaos tells the truth. Sometimes the truth has a face you'll see again at night.
He twisted throttle and kept pace with the only family that made sense.
"Patch Over: Clean Lines, Dirty Hands"
Indian Hills wore its history like sunburn—thick skin, red underneath. By dusk the yard filled with bikes and men, old Devil's Tribe rockers sitting heavy on denim like the past refusing to stand. Jury laid a folding table with whiskey and a church-sized coffee urn. Somebody killed a radio before the speeches. Dust floated like incense.
Clay took the center with quiet that pulled eyes. "Family doesn't fix history," he said. "Family keeps it breathing." He held up a Devil's Tribe cut, edges mended three times. "You don't burn what made you; you carry it forward."
Jax stepped beside him, voice level. "One line we draw today: no meth. Not on the patch. Not near the patch. You want to breathe with us, you keep that poison out of your house."
A murmur—agreement, resentment, resignation—three brothers sharing one throat. Jury nodded, jaw tight. "We bury it," he said, and meant more than product.
The ceremony moved like an old song: Tribe rockers unstitched with careful knives; Reapers sewn by steady hands that had done this in other towns with other fires. Blood pricked thumbs, pressed to leather. The first Devil's Tribe cut became SAMCRO, the Reaper grinning like it had already known the ending. Men cheered because they were relieved to have one.
Dawes got patched last. He tried on the weight and couldn't hide the way it made his shoulders square. He met Jax's eyes. "No crank," he said, testing the words in his mouth like hard candy.
"No crank," Jax repeated, and didn't blink.
Cian hung back, lazy posture, eyes counting corners. He watched the needles bite denim, watched old pride make room for new rules. He didn't clap. He didn't have to. The room did it for him.
---
The lesson came an hour later behind the clubhouse, where a single-wide leaned in the scrub like a bad habit. Dawes had a key he shouldn't have had. Jury had given it to him before the patch, back when "temporary" had turned into "oops." The air around the trailer smelled like cat piss and chemical lies.
"Let's finish the sermon," Jax said.
Dawes' face said he'd already had his come-to-Jesus; his hands said he needed a second one. He opened the door and stepped inside to the sight every cop, cook, and paramedic knows: glassware, a camp stove, a blue cooler, a stained mattress that had held too many bargains.
Cian stood in the doorway, one shoulder on the frame, and watched Dawes go human. Shame first, then fear, then that quick calculation men do when they realize the thing they've been using is about to use them.
"I'll clean it," Dawes said. "I'll—"
"You'll burn it," Jax said. "And you'll do it careful, so the ground grows something here again someday."
Clay stayed outside because presidents don't kneel if they can help it. Jury walked in, old boots on linoleum, took a long look, and took responsibility the way real men do—silent, complete. He grabbed the cooler. "Chibs," he called, "you do the safe part. I'll do the right part."
They cleared lines, flooded tanks, moved anything that would make a crater. Chibs bled off propellant with hands that had patched men and bombs. Cian pulled a length of hose through a cracked window and set a drip that ate flame instead of feeding it. Dawes stacked the glassware in a plastic bin like it was a funeral, then carried it out into the night and smashed it with a ball-peen until the desert swallowed the sound.
They lit the shell just before midnight—diesel and distance, a fire that burned hot and brief. Dawes stood with the heat on his face and didn't look away. Jax watched him like an officer teaching a private how to bury his mistakes.
"No meth," Dawes said again into the fire, a vow this time, not a line.
"Good man," Jury said, and meant it.
Cian let the flame paint his eyes and listened to the way the night changed when a bad thing left it. He didn't believe in cleansing. He believed in removing fuel.
---
ATF poked the state line with a smile you could hear. Stahl didn't bother with a roadblock; she borrowed a Nevada car and a Nevada face, then parked herself behind the pumps at a desert Chevron where the cameras all worked and the clerk talked too much.
Cian saw it on his mesh before he saw her—two plates that didn't belong to tourists, three radio IDs sharing a single call sign, a dispatch note that read like a flirt: Hwy Interdiction—Routine.
"Eyes up," he said into the net, amused. "Feds in a hat."
They rolled anyway. The convoy cut through heat shimmer toward the gas station, SAMCRO in the lead, Devil's Tribe in the pocket. Stahl leaned on the hood like a catalog model for Poor Decisions, sunglasses high, smile higher.
"Afternoon," she said when Clay killed his motor. "What a coincidence. Road trip?"
"Patch party," Clay said.
"Cake?" Stahl asked.
"A kind of dessert," Tig said.
She let her gaze slide over Jax, then past him to Cian. "You were hard to find in high resolution," she said. "Your good side's shy."
"Both sides are terrible," Cian said. "Saves time."
Stahl smiled without joy. "A man died at a housing tract an hour from here."
Jax didn't blink. "Men die everywhere."
"You're economical with truth," she said. "I appreciate efficiency. My colleagues in Reno appreciate it less. I've borrowed their patience. Do you want to donate some of yours?"
Clay leaned a forearm on the bar. "If you had anything, we'd be behind that car eating dust." He tipped his chin toward the Tahoe. "You're fishing."
"Sometimes fish jump," Stahl said.
"Not in this desert," Chibs murmured.
Stahl let the beat breathe, then went in the way she liked—below the ribs. "Congratulations on the new nephew," she told Jax. "I hear preemies do well when the home is peaceful."
Jax's jaw made that small movement Cian had named don't give her the blood she came for. He nodded at the pump reader. "You paying for gas, Agent, or just stealing oxygen?"
"Send me a receipt," Stahl said, and stepped back. She didn't move the car. She didn't need to. The camera had what it wanted: faces, patches, the math of which men stood near which men when the questions got sharp.
Cian tapped his phone and slid three maintenance tickets into the highway system like coins in a slot—lane closure, downed sign, a cow trespassing on dignity. The scanner coughed alarms in three directions. Stahl's driver looked at his radio, then at her. She sighed like an artist whose muse had called in sick.
"See you back in Charming," she said.
"Bring cake," Tig called.
They rolled. Cian watched her in the mirror until the heat haze swallowed her. He hated that she was competent. He loved that she loved herself more than her cases. Men like that left seams.
---
They stayed in Indian Hills long enough to bless a future and drink the right amount. The patch-over toast tasted like victory diluted with worry.
"You did good," Jury told Jax, clapping his shoulder with a father's pride one step removed. "Your old man would've liked the way you talk."
Jax accepted it without letting it own him. "We'll like the way we live," he said.
Dawes found Cian by the fence. He had a new Reaper and ash on his boots. "Thanks for not saying it in front of everyone," he said, voice rough.
"It's not a sermon if the whole town can hear it," Cian said. He tapped the edge of the man's patch. "Keep this clean and it'll keep you."
Dawes nodded, eyes bright with a future he'd decided to keep. "You killed that Mayan clean," he said. It wasn't a challenge, but it wasn't a compliment either.
"Line was straight," Cian said.
"How do you sleep after?"
"Badly," Cian said. "And then like a baby. Then badly again. It's an accordion."
Dawes huffed something like a laugh. "Yeah."
Cian watched him walk back into the light and felt the weight in his throat settle a millimeter lower. He wasn't proud. He wasn't sorry. He was heavier. He could carry that.
---
They hit the state line at dawn, bikes throwing shadows long as sins. Charming smelled like home and old oil. Gemma had coffee and questions ready. Clay wore satisfaction like a jacket he'd stolen because it fit. Jax's mouth had a line in it that said more pages read. The crates were still where they'd left them. The cut-steel crow Alvarez had sent leaned in the office like a punchline that refused to age.
Juice met Cian at the bays with a sheet of paper and no grin. "The runner, Cody," he said quietly. "He didn't show at work. Didn't go home."
Cian's gut went cold. "And?"
"Found him out by the aqueduct," Juice said. "County scanner called it a suicide, then changed the call to 'pending.' Unser's sitting on it."
They rode with the siren off. The aqueduct cut the valley like a silver scar. Two county units. Unser's Vic. One tarp in the grass, late light making the plastic shine like skin. Unser waved them down and didn't say turn around because he knew who he was talking to.
"Tell me it isn't Cody," Cian said, already knowing.
Unser's eyes were old. "You know better than to ask me that." He lifted the tarp a corner, priest-gentle.
Cody Mendez lay on his side like he'd been set there, not dropped. His hands were zip-tied wrist to wrist in front, because somebody thought that made this kinder. His mouth was stuffed with a ring of brass cylinders—lock cores and blanks jammed between his teeth like a joke for men who didn't laugh. A key hung on a string around his neck. His face was purple where truth had been choked into him. The kid still wore his ball cap. It sat crooked, like he'd tried to adjust it when he couldn't use his hands.
On his chest, taped neat, a white carnation. Under it, block letters in black marker:
> CLEAN YOUR SIDE.
Cian stared until the words blurred and Cody's cheap little life tried to make itself smaller on the ground. He felt something old stand up inside him with a knife.
"Alvarez?" Jax asked, voice flat as concrete.
"Prospects with a sense of humor," Unser said. "Or somebody who wanted me to think that. No prints that aren't smudged to hell. No tire tracks that aren't the world's. County'll rule 'gang-related' because if they don't, they have to work."
Gemma wasn't here and Cian was grateful. Clay was and Cian wasn't. Clay looked down at the carnation, at the brass, at the key on the string, and his face didn't change. Presidents don't let their faces change at scenes like this. Fathers shouldn't have to either.
Cian crouched, slow, and lifted the carnation with two fingers, like defusing a bomb. He slid the key off Cody's neck and put it on his own chain next to the blank dog tag. He didn't make a speech. He didn't make a promise. He stood.
"Message received," he said.
"Which message?" Clay asked. "The 'stop looking' or the 'we can touch your kids'?"
"Both," Cian said, and tucked the carnation into his pocket like a fuse he'd light later.
Unser sighed a life out. "Take your grief home," he said. "Don't take this scene. You boys walk away clean and let me write my report dirty."
Cian nodded. He wanted to hack God and ask Him for a replay. He settled for the county grid. When they got back to the shop he would redraw the map of Charming so that any road a Mayan chose would take longer than they thought and feel worse than they remembered. It wouldn't bring Cody back. It would make aiming uglier.
They rode away. The tarp settled. The aqueduct kept pretending it was pretty.
---
Night draped itself over Teller-Morrow. The air smelled like gasoline and moral accounting. Gemma put plates on a table and fed men because that's what you do when anger hasn't decided where to sleep. Jax slipped into the office, took John's pages out of the box, and read until the lines ran together. Clay sat out back and smoked a cigarette down to the filter and didn't win anything by doing it.
Cian stood in the hallway where the hidden drive slept, the wall warm under his palm. He could feel the little sin humming. Warehouse men, Mayan patch flash, the rehearsal in the dark. Cody's key tapped his sternum in a sad rhythm. The carnation in his pocket bruised and went brown like the truth does when you hold it.
He took the micro DVR out and set it on the desk. He looked at it and looked at the door and looked at the Reaper on the wall that never stopped smiling. He put the drive back. Not tonight. Not yet. He was angry. Angry men feed the wrong fires.
Outside, the scanner coughed: Unit request—Fun Town—vandalism at the gate. Juice grabbed the remote for the pole cam. The monitor showed a fresh welded shape hanging on Teller-Morrow's front chain: a steel crow cut from a fender, polished mirror-bright. Taped to its beak, a single brass key.
Cian walked out to it and took the crow down gently, the metal heavy and cold. On the back, scratched with a nail:
> KEEP AIMING. LET'S SEE WHO TIRES FIRST. —A
"Polite," Tig said.
"Never was," Cian answered, quiet. He hung the crow on the wall inside the office, right beneath the painted Reaper, like a mirror facing a mirror.
Then he sat at the bench, opened the laptop, and went to work on Charming's veins—cameras, patrol routes, light cycles—teaching chaos a new set of manners. Not order. Not peace. Just worse odds for anyone driving toward them with a flower and a joke.
He kept at it until the moth found the dark again, and the night learned a new shape with his name on it.