Intemperance X - the Life We Choose
Copyright© 2026 by Al Steiner
Chapter 19: Get On Your Bad Motor Scooter and Ride
Fiction Sex Story: Chapter 19: Get On Your Bad Motor Scooter and Ride - INTEMPERANCE X is the tenth and final novel in the main Intemperance series. As the band headlines its biggest moment yet, decades of music, loyalty, and hard-earned love converge on one unforgettable night—where everything they’ve built is tested in front of the world.
Caution: This Fiction Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Fa/Fa Consensual BiSexual Fiction
The Campus.
February 25, 2005
The run-through of Descent Into Nothing shook The Campus to its bones.
It was their oldest song—the one that had founded the empire, their Plymouth Rock, the first Intemperance hit, first played live twenty-five years earlier at D Street West in Heritage, California. Jake hadn’t even been old enough to drink that night—not that it had stopped him—but he’d been old enough to know this was what he was born to do. A couple of cheap amps, sticky floors, cigarette haze, and a crowd that screamed like they understood before anyone else did.
Now, a quarter century later, the same song still burned.
Jake drove the rhythm on his Les Paul, shoulders squared, the guitar’s weight solid and familiar. His voice cut through the mix, roughened by age but truer for it. Across from him, Matt wrung fire from a Stratocaster, his rehearsal stand-in for the Strat, its single-coil bite sharp enough to carve through stone. Nerdly filled the space from behind his baby grand, lid closed tight, microphones inside to keep the bleed down. Every chord rolled out rich and organic, a counterpoint to the grind of electric strings. Charlie anchored it with his Brogan bass, low end so heavy it pressed against the chest, and Coop hammered his double-kick Yamaha kit with absolute authority, metronome—steady but full of life.
They’d expanded Descent for the Tsunami Sound Festival—a two-minute finale designed to leave no air left in the venue. The tempo climbed, harmonies stacking: Jake on lead, Matt above, Nerdly and Charlie beneath, all four voices locked in perfect alignment. The blend was unmistakable. Intemperance harmonies—rough, human, and flawless.
Matt stepped into his closing solo, his Strat singing like an open wound.
The song peaked, tension wound tight, then broke into the stop-time hits they’d added for the festival.
Matt struck the final high note and held it, coaxing it to sing on the edge of feedback. Jake pressed the last chord underneath, the two sounds trembling together. Nerdly’s closing chord rang once and faded. Coop’s cymbals sighed themselves to silence.
Jake could see it in his head as it would be at TSF: no smoke, no explosions—just the band, five silhouettes against the lights, the music carrying everything that needed to be said. No tricks. No distractions. Just them.
Despite many attempts by record company suits to choreograph their live performances—they arrogantly thought they knew better than Jake Kingsley how concerts should be performed—Intemp remained simple in concept up on stage. They just played, improvising the physical performance in the moment instead of planning it out in advance. And that had always worked for them, had given them the reputation of best in the world to see live.
Matt reached down and rolled his volume button to silence. The hum vanished.
All five of them tugged their in-ears free, allowing the first outside air to touch their eardrums since the set break. The outside sound rushed back in—the creak of stands, the faint buzz of power, someone exhaling.
Jake rubbed the edge of his ear and said, “Crowd cheers wildly. We take our bows. We leave the stage. We get high and crack some beers.”
Matt grinned. “Fuck to the yeah!”
The laughter that followed was easy and warm. Coop tossed a drumstick into his case; Charlie unplugged and stretched. Nerdly told the sound guys to save the board settings, then opened the piano lid with a careful hand.
One by one the tech crew—who were now rehearsing right along with the band—powered down amps and muted channels until the only noise left was the cooling tick of electrical components. The mock stage looked bare again, but the charge still lingered in the air—proof that after twenty-five years, Intemperance didn’t need fireworks. The music was enough.
They dismounted from the mock stage like soldiers coming off a long drill.
The stage layout was an exact replica of Stage 3 at Indian Springs, Nevada, where they’d close out the Friday and Saturday nights of the Tsunami Sound Festival twenty-nine days from now. Every riser height, every monitor position, every taped mark had been measured to the inch. Even the trusses overhead matched the festival’s.
The air inside the rehearsal hall hung thick and heavy. The old winery storage building had no windows—just concrete walls, a high, raftered ceiling, and a double bay door at one end for load-ins. The ventilation system moved air but not much relief, and after a full run-through of the entire set the place smelled of sweat, hot electronics, and the faint sweetness of dust baked out of old wood.
It had been a long, punishing afternoon. Jake wanted these rehearsals to be harder than the real thing so that the festival would feel easy. Having to do the entire set three times each rehearsal day certainly accomplished that.
They were all dripping and glassy-eyed, but the conditioning showed. The band had leaned out and hardened up over the last month; even Matt, who’d abused his body enough over the years to be a poster boy of why you shouldn’t do that. He’d added a few pounds of muscle, his tone had sharpened, and even his hair had lost its dull, stringy slump. His rehearsal Strat had sung all afternoon, and his smile after that last note was pure satisfaction.
Owen waited offstage with his usual quiet readiness. Three large ice chests sat against the wall, packed that morning under his direction: one full of water bottles, one of Gatorade, and one now chilled with beer. He moved down the line, handing out towels that were cool from the fridge. Each band member took one automatically; it had become part of the ritual.
Owen looked nothing like the uncertain kid who’d been taken in by the Nerdly family. His frame was still thin, but there was confidence now in the way he moved. The new tattoo on his upper left arm drew the eye immediately—fresh colors, still faintly glossy under the lights. It was his first ink, and it meant something to him.
The design filled the space from shoulder to mid-bicep: a Mars symbol—the circle with the small arrow pointing diagonally upward, the classical emblem of manhood—set between two Venus symbols, the circles with small crosses beneath them that represent womanhood. The three signs were joined at their edges, forming a single balanced emblem, the Mars symbol centered and dominant, the two Venus symbols flanking it like companions in orbit.
Unlike the women, the Mars circle was empty—just a clean green ring, simple and bold, the unadorned symbol of maleness itself. But the Venus symbols were alive with character. The one on the left bore a female face framed by short brown hair, the left half of her face shaded red and slightly puffed, as if from a bruise, yet her expression remained open and content, almost proud. The other Venus, on the right, had bright purple hair and a cartoonishly playful expression, her tongue sticking out in triumph. The contrast between them made the design feel like both a joke and a confession, a story told in symbols.
Beneath the trio, the date 02/05/05 was inked in neat black numerals—the night that had inspired it, the private memory that had already become public legend inside The Campus.
Matt had flown his favorite tattoo artist up from L.A. for a long weekend at the rental house in San Luis Obispo and covered the entire bill—five grand by the time it was done. Owen had nearly cried through the sessions but never stopped the needle. Now he wore sleeveless shirts proudly, showing it off like a medal.
Everyone at The Campus knew the story behind it. Not from Owen, who had played it cool and said only that “both ladies went home satisfied,” but from Tif, who had told the tale in brilliant, unfiltered detail. The story had spread faster than a nuclear explosion. Matt called the tattoo the Threesome Commemorative. Jake called it a testament to debauchery.
Owen grinned when he caught Jake’s glance, a little shy but proud.
“You guys burned it down today,” he said.
Jake hefted his bottle, took a long swallow, and nodded. “That’s the idea.”
He looked around the warehouse—the cables coiled neatly, the stage dimming as the tech crew moved through their shutdown sequence. No windows, no view of the outside world, just the sound of cooling amps and the smell of sweat and electricity. It was a factory for music, and the machine was running perfectly.
They were ready.
Jake drained the last of his Gatorade and tossed the empty bottle into the recycling bin beside the stage.
“All right,” he said, voice echoing off the walls. “That’s it until Monday. We go live with the video crew then. Until then—have a good fuckin’ weekend.”
A tired cheer rippled through the hall. Someone popped the first beer; a few others followed. The day’s tension lifted in a long exhale.
Jake rolled his shoulders and looked at Nerdly. “Shower before the meeting?”
“That would be aesthetic of us.”
They headed for the back of the building, past the storage alcove and down the short hallway that still smelled faintly of oak and spilled wine from its previous life as a winery. The locker room had been carved out of an old maintenance space: cinderblock walls, fluorescent lights, and eight shower stalls divided by metal partitions. It served as both the men’s and women’s locker room. They just used it separately—most of the time. There had been incidents, of course.
Jake and Nerdly were both dressed for work, not display. Jake wore running shorts, a tank top, and old tennis shoes, every inch of him soaked through and streaked with dust and stage grime. Nerdly had basketball shorts, a faded Pink Floyd T-shirt, black socks, and sneakers, a combination that made him look more like a grad student than a rock star. Sweat darkened the fabric down his back; the collar of his shirt clung to his neck. Both of them smelled like they’d been locked in a furnace.
They stripped down and found open stalls. The pipes moaned, and a second later the room filled with the hiss of water and the rising cloud of steam. Jake sang classic rock while he showered. Nerdly recited classic physics equations, his voice calm and methodical, the counterpoint to Jake’s melody. Between them it was half concert, half science lecture, and somehow exactly what passed for normal at The Campus.
When they finished, they toweled off, pulled on jeans and polo shirts and stuffed their soaked laundry into the mesh gym bags they kept in their lockers for the ride home. Both men looked much fresher, and felt much more human once the grime was gone. Jake’s hair was wet and combed back; Nerdly’s was neat and already drying into its usual pattern of obedience.
They left the locker room and walked the short hallway back toward the main rehearsal floor. The smell of beer hit them first, followed by the low thrum of laughter. The serious energy of the day had given way to the easy chaos of the coming weekend. A joint glowed its way around the circle of musicians; bottles of IPA and pale ale lined the top of an amp case. Coop was drumming on his thighs, Charlie was telling a story, and Matt was pretending not to listen while doing exactly that.
Owen stood near the end of the group, a half-finished IPA in one hand and the joint in the other. He took a decent hit (he was still a rookie when it came to pot), exhaled, and was still smiling when Jake’s voice cut through the haze.
“Hey, GM. You know you’re with us for the meeting, right?”
Owen blinked. “Uh ... no,” he said. “Nobody told me I was going to the meeting.”
Jake glared at him. “It’s your responsibility to know when you’re expected at meetings. Especially if no one told you in advance.”
Owen got flustered but he held his ground—kind of. “How am I supposed to know about a meeting I’m going to if no one tells me or emails me?”
Jake continued to look sternly at him. “Are you suggesting I’m being unreasonable here?” he asked.
Owen looked terrified but he did not back down. “Uh ... well ... yeah, kind of,” he said.
Jake smiled. “Lesson learned, GM,” he told him. “Don’t let some asshole convince you something is your fault when it’s not. Stand up for yourself. Good job.”
“You were testing me?” he asked, eyes wide.
“Just doing my part to guide you on your journey,” Jake said.
“So ... I’m not really going to the meeting then?”
“No, you’re still going. Me and Nerdly want you there.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because you’re the fuckin’ studio runner,” Jake said. “You’re part of the production.”
“I am?”
Jake gave him a look that could have scraped paint. “Just because you scored yourself a threesome that put two women in the hospital with sex-related injuries doesn’t mean you get to slack off. Of course you’re part of the production. Now pass that joint and don’t ever let me catch you toking out before an important meeting again.”
Owen nearly choked on his beer. He coughed, wiped his mouth, and thrust the joint at Coop like it was radioactive. “Sorry,” he muttered.
Jake clapped him on the shoulder. “Good answer. Now let’s go, Two-For-One. Time to earn your keep.”
Owen set his bottle down and followed, still red-faced, as Jake and Nerdly led the way toward the man-door for the walk to the main building. Behind them the laughter started up again, the sound of a band and crew sliding happily into the weekend.
They stepped outside, the air cooler and fresher after the stale warmth of the rehearsal hall. The path between the warehouse and the main building ran past the gravel lot where the crew parked. The sun was low enough to hit the cars at an angle, glinting off windshields.
Owen fell in beside Jake, still trying to read the mood. “So ... are these video people KVA employees?” he asked.
Jake shook his head. “Nope. They’re independent contractors. Small outfit out of Burbank. They’ve been with us a while.”
“How long?”
“Since the Millennial Tour,” Jake said. “Back in 2000, when I did nationwide and Canada. We tried a few companies before them—too corporate, too many rules. These people knew what they were doing. They handled the IMAG feed—the live video for the big screens—and shot everything for archival. They don’t just work for us; they’re one of the top touring film crews in the country. Big names hire them. But KVA gets priority. We pay for it, but they earn every penny.”
Owen nodded, trying to absorb the business angle. “So they’re not, like, full-time on staff with you?”
“Not even close,” Jake said. “That’s the beauty of it. We don’t have to maintain trucks, camera rigs, or payroll. They own their gear and show up ready to work. We know each other’s language by now. The owner handles contracts and billing—he’s not here today—but the producer and lead camera operator will be. They’re the ones we actually deal with day to day.”
He looked around the lot as they walked. No unfamiliar vehicles, just the usual mix of band cars and crew vans. He checked his watch. 3:53.
“They’re not here yet,” he said. “Still have seven minutes.”
The three of them reached the main building and stepped inside. The bottom floor was empty as usual: white walls, polished concrete floor, the faint hum of air conditioning. They crossed the open space and stopped near the receptionist desk by the window. There was no receptionist here—Barb worked out of Santa Clarita—but if they ever needed one they had a desk for her. Jake pulled out a chair and sat, elbows resting on the back. Owen lingered by the wall, hands in his pockets, trying not to look out of place.
“Can I ask something?” Owen said.
“Sure,” Jake said.
“Who actually owns the recordings when you do a show like this? I mean—the audio and video stuff.”
Jake looked up from his watch and smiled slightly. “That’s a good question. Most people never think to ask.”
He leaned back and explained it the way he would to anyone on the business side.
“The Tsunami Sound Festival is organized by a promoter called Music Alive. They handle the venue, the lineup, ticketing, and all the logistics. Normally, a promoter like that would claim partial rights to anything recorded on their property—live feeds, press footage, soundboard tapes, all that. I don’t play that game.”
“So how does that work?”
“I negotiated it into the contract,” Jake said. “Music Alive gets the right to broadcast or livestream the general festival footage—crowd shots, the other bands, whatever. But when it comes to our performance—Intemperance—KVA owns everything. Audio, video, multitrack masters, raw footage. They even turn off their recording rigs while we’re onstage. Only our own people are allowed to roll cameras or record sound.”
Owen frowned. “Why would they agree to that?”
“Because we sell tickets,” Jake said simply. “Music Alive needs a headliner that draws a hundred and twenty thousand people each night. They get the box office and the beer money; I get control of my art. That’s the trade. And it’s worth it to them.”
Nerdly had been quiet, scrolling something on his tablet. “It’s a clean system,” he said without looking up. “We pay the video company directly. KVA owns the masters. The festival gets their show. Everybody’s happy.”
Jake nodded. “When it’s over, we’ll have a full multitrack audio recording and a multi-camera video capture. We’ll take it back to The Campus for mixing and editing. If we ever release it, it’ll be a KVA product—our label, our control.”
Owen whistled softly. “So no one else has a copy?”
“No one we don’t want to,” Jake said. “The raw media goes into our vault. The only thing the festival keeps is the memory of what they heard live.”
He checked his watch again. 3:57.
“They’ll be pulling in any minute now,” he said. He stood, stretching his back. “You’ll get to meet them. Pay attention. They’re the best in the business.”
Owen nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Jake smirked. “Do not call me ‘sir,’ GM. This isn’t boot camp. I’m ‘Jake,’ remember. And this is just a meeting. But it’s how we make history, so keep your eyes open.”
Sunlight reflecting off expensive vehicle flashed briefly across the front of the main building. A silver Mercedes sedan rolled into the lot and came to a stop near the entrance.
“Right on time,” Jake said. “I like that.”
The driver’s door opened and Mitch Helms climbed out, tall and broad through the shoulders, wearing jeans and a dark T-shirt from the Never Say Never tour with faded cities and dates performed there on the back. His hair was trimmed short and his sunglasses stayed on even in the shadow of the awning. He didn’t carry a briefcase or clipboard—just a travel cup and his phone. Julie Smith, known to everyone as Jules, got out on the passenger side, dressed just as casually: cargo pants, a gray Henley, sneakers. They looked more like a couple of techs arriving for setup than the producer and lead camera operator of one of the best video outfits in the business.
“Jake,” Mitch said as they came through the door, extending a hand. “Bill. Good to see you both again.”
“Glad you made it,” Jake said, shaking hands. “How was the drive up?”
“Uneventful,” Jules said. “We hit SLO right at lunch and didn’t get stopped once. The hotel in Pismo Beach you recommended is quite nice.”
Jake gestured toward Owen. “This is our studio runner, Owen Olson. He’ll be helping coordinate between you and the audio guys all weekend.”
Owen offered a polite handshake. “Nice to meet you.”
Jules shook his hand, then looked down at the tattoo on his upper arm. The corners of her mouth pulled up. She hung with musicians and roadies. No one needed to explain the symbolism to her. “Way to go, brother.” She held out her fist.
Owen laughed and bumped it, a little pink in the cheeks. “Thanks.”
Mitch raised an eyebrow. “I’m missing something here.”
“It’s his tattoo,” Jules said. “The Mars and Venus trio. You know what that means, right?”
Mitch squinted at Owen’s arm. “Looks like gender studies homework.”
Jules pointed. “That one in the middle’s Mars, the guys’ symbol. Two Venuses on either side. Venus is the female symbol. Date underneath. That means our boy here had himself a threesome on February fifth this year.”
“It was my first one,” Owen said. “Matt said I should commemorate it with my first ink.”
“Matt flew his man Sleaze up here from the OC to lay it on him,” Jake said. “It’s badass, isn’t it?”
She looked at the ink again, closer. “What’s up with the eye on the Venus on the right?”
Owen rubbed the back of his neck. “There was ... you know ... a semen incident that resulted in a significant allergic reaction.”
Mitch blinked once. “A semen incident?”
Owen nodded. “Yeah. You know how it is.”
Mitch crossed his arms. “If you didn’t finish the threesome because of a semen incident, that’s false ink. They’ll kill you for that in prison.”
“We finished,” Owen said evenly. “She hung in there until the end.”
Jake cut in, his tone matter-of-fact. “Both women had to go to the hospital for sex-related injuries after GM got through with them.”
Jules’s eyes went wide. “Both women?”
“Both women,” Owen confirmed. “But there was no violence. Just an allergic reaction and a back spasm from bending over.”
Mitch stared for a second, then let out a low whistle. “How far did you bend her over? Are we talking the jackknife maneuver?”
Owen shook his head. “It was just gravity and bad timing.”
Jules laughed. “Jesus Christ. You’ve set a high bar for musician debauchery, kid.”
Jake looked at Owen. “Congratulations—you’re now officially part of the production mythology. You can tell the crew your story while they’re setting up tomorrow.”
Owen groaned softly. “I was kind of hoping it would die out.”
“Not a chance,” Mitch said. “That’s folklore now.”
Owen nodded as if displeased—he really wasn’t, but knew that manhood required him to act as if he was—and then something got through his skull. “Wait a minute. Tomorrow? Tomorrow is Saturday.”
“It’ll be an overtime day for you,” Jake said. “Triple time really, when you come down to it. Time and a half for weekly hours and another time and a half for weekend work. Now ... you are free to turn it down if you want.”
“I’m in,” Owen said immediately. “I don’t want to let the team down.”
And strangely, Jake knew that was his actual prime motivator. Triple time was nice, but not why he would do it. Owen had grown up a mousy computer geek in a domineering patriarchy of a family. He had never belonged to anything that could be called a team before. And now he was. A valued member even. Sure, it had started out as just a busy-work position funded by the Nerdlys to keep him on his feet and non-suicidal. But he had proven his worth time and time again and made them wonder how they had ever gotten along without a studio runner. He had proven himself so well that he was now officially on KVA’s payroll and his money no longer came from Nerdly’s account. Jill didn’t like it. But if they did things to keep Jill happy none of them would have nice houses, cars, airplanes, or wine collections.
The four of them sat around the long conference table, the low hum of the HVAC mixing with the clack of Mitch’s coffee cup. Jules had her yellow pad open; Nerdly was scrolling through a checklist on his tablet. Jake leaned back, one ankle over his knee. Owen sat near the end of the table, notebook in hand, trying to look like he belonged.
Mitch began. “Here’s how we’ll handle integration week. We’ll run our full capture rig—eight cameras total. Four fixed, two handhelds, one dolly, one portable jib. Same configuration we used for the Brainwash/V-Tach tour.”
Jake nodded. “Good. Keep the footprint small. I don’t want half the room blocked off by tripods.”
“Already planned for,” Mitch said. “Fixed cameras go on short risers at front-of-house and the wings. The dolly’s only ten inches off the deck. The jib’s a fifteen-foot portable rig, matte-black finish, light enough to move between takes. Nothing gets in anybody’s way, especially you guys.”
“That’s the idea,” Jake said. “These rehearsals are for us, not for show.”
“Exactly,” Mitch said. “Tomorrow we’ll bring in the truck and offload the gear—switcher, router, waveform monitors, HDCAM decks, comms, everything. The producer’s cubby goes behind the stage wall. My people will run power and signal lines while Jules sets the camera marks.”
Jules looked up from her pad. “We’ll use the same Sony HDC-900s as last time—1080 interlaced, best for motion. Progressive looks arty but won’t track your lighting fades. We’ll do a full calibration Monday morning before the first run-through.”
“Video path?” Nerdly asked.
“All SDI,” Mitch said. “Every camera ISO to the router, then into the HDCAM SR masters. No compression, no proxy files. We’ll lock timecode to your Pro Tools clock.”
“Audio split stays the same,” Nerdly said. “Every input on the stage will pass through the KVA distribution unit before it hits the house console. That gives you a clean feed for record and Sharon control over signal integrity.”
Mitch smiled. “That magic box of yours still impresses people. We’ll take our lines off its secondary outs—no extra patching.”
Jake said, “And remember, once we get to the TSF, there’s no live sound check after the gates open. So everything we do here has to translate perfectly. We’ll mark every knob, switch, and fader. Festival engineers will clone our settings in advance.”
“Got it,” Mitch said. “This run is our rehearsal for the real thing. We’ll treat The Campus like a live venue—same spacing, same camera calls. My crew needs to know every cue before we hit Indian Springs.”
Jules nodded. “We’ll run playback rehearsals first, then full live passes with the band. I want to see how the lights hit the lenses and how Matt’s guitar finish reacts to the follow spots.”
Jake looked at Owen. “You’re going to be in the thick of it. Learning and doing whatever Mitch and Jules tell you.”
Owen straightened. “What kind of things?”
“Anything they need,” Jake said. “Cables, batteries, lens wipes, coffee. Watch how they work. Ask when you don’t understand. By next week you’ll know the system.”
Mitch said, “He’ll do fine. Once we’ve got the marks and line routes locked, this place will run like a stage show. Saturday and Sunday we build. Monday we go live with cameras and band. We’ll spend the week chasing perfection.”
Jake stood. “That’s what I wanted to hear. You two know the layout—I trust you have your access passes. The place is yours for the weekend, though come upstairs at your own risk. We’ve got Charlie and a couple studio musicians staying up here, not to mention a scumbag paparazzo we’re protecting from American Watcher thugs.”
“Really?” Jules asked.
“Really,” Jake replied, in the same tone he would have used in confirming that showers and a bathroom were available.
“Okay then,” she said, filing that away. She worked with traveling musicians for a living, often the only female in the roadie bus or at the venues. Nothing much fazed her.
Mitch gathered his notes. “Pleasure as always, gentlemen.”
Jules looked at Owen as they left. “See you in the morning, legend. Bring gloves. Gaffer tape eats fingerprints.”
Owen grinned despite himself. “Yes, ma’am.”
When they were gone, Jake looked at him. “Welcome to the next level, GM. Monday we stop practicing and start rehearsing for real.”
Mitch and Jules left the building, heading for the rehearsal warehouse, leaving the main studio building quiet again. The scrape of chairs and shuffling of the remaining people was still in progress when the main door opened and Matt stepped inside with Coop trailing him. Both of them still smelled faintly of pot and beer.
“Hey, Jake,” Matt said. “You might want to call the gate.”
Jake looked up. “Why?”
“Because the Rough Riders are inbound,” Matt said. “Tater just texted me. Says they’re bringing something for GM.”
Jake’s brow lifted. “Bringing something?”
“That’s all he said. Could be some ganja, could be a bomb. Hard to tell with those guys.”
Coop grinned. “Maybe they’re coming to collect GM’s soul.”
Jake stood, unconcerned. “All right,” he said, pulling his phone from his pocket. “Let’s save everyone some paperwork.”
He dialed the gate directly. It rang twice before a wary voice answered. “Front Gate, Bivens here.”
“This is Jake Kingsley,” he said. “We’re about to have some visitors. They’ll be a group of motorcycle enthusiasts riding Harleys, loud ones. Not sure how many. Doesn’t matter. They’re friends. Let them in.”
There was a pause. “Sir, we’re supposed to log all incoming—”
“I know what you’re supposed to do,” Jake said evenly. “But not this time. No IDs, no plate numbers, no clipboard heroics. Just open the gate and let them roll through.”
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