Sons of Anarchy opened on Tuesday night with Jax (Charlie Hunnam) waking up in bed, hyper aware that Tara (Maggie Siff) is no longer on the other side and that he had found her dead down the hall in the kitchen just weeks ago. Meanwhile, Juice (Theo Rossi) has Unser (Dayton Callie) bound and gagged in a bathtub and Wendy (Drea de Matteo) has arrived at Gemma (Katey Sagal) and Nero’s (Jimmy Smits) where they’re discussing paying for Abel’s preschool over coffee.

Sons of Anarchy Recap

At Wendy’s, Juice ominously wields a knife as he goes over to Unser. But, instead of finishing him off he cuts him free. He then explains to Unser that he’s hiding from the club and Unser realizes that it’s Gemma who is hiding Juice. Unser decides to try to help Juice, knowing that Jax is looking to kill him and that the ex Sons member is reluctant to get out of Charming.

Meeting up with August Marks (Billy Brown), Jax tells the suited-up gang banger that he’s hooked up the Chinese and the Irish. Though August wants to help Jax find revenge for Tara’s death, he cautions him against waging war in the streets. If he were to do so, it would bring too much attention to the gangs and result in the downfall of the gun expansion. Jax does not like what he hears.

At the same time, Tig (Kim Coates) and Rat (Niko Nicotero) are staking out Lin’s (Kenneth Choi) crew which is about to move the guns. In their boredom, the pair starts trading barbs. When the Chinese finally start to shift the guns, Tig fears that they’ll be spotted. To prevent getting caught, he pushes Rat’s head into his lap and pretends to be engaging in some paid-for roadside action.

Jax and Bobby (Mark Boone Junior), following the August Marks meeting, rendezvous with Sons of Anarchy’s Indian Hills charter president Jury. Jury wants to know the details of Jax's plan. He’s informed that the idea is to cut Lin off from all of his business associates and friends, paving the way for Jax to make a move to befriend him. Eventually, Jax will let him know he’s responsible for his virtual ex-communication and ask who he wants spared. Whoever Lin declares he wants spared will be the first Jax will kill. Lin’s slow and painful death will only come after he endures the pain of loss.

After getting in contact with Rat and Tig, Jax and Chibs (Tommy Flanagan) learn where the Chinese are. Jax and Chibs jump into the bed of the truck of two of Jury’s muscle men and ride up in a three-car caravan. While the exchange is going down, Jax opens fire, taking down one of Lin’s men at a time. When one of the Chinese hops into a delivery truck and tries to make a fast getaway, Jax chases him down, crashes into his truck and shoots him in the head after learning that the heroin in the brief case is Lin’s. In the end, SAMCRO splits the guns and heroin they took from the trade 50/50 with Indian Mills.

Unser, upon leaving Juice back at Wendy’s, heads off to see Sheriff Althea Jarry (Annabeth Gish). He wants to help her find out who killed Tara. She agrees to have him join her team and gives him the title of consulting investigator. Though he’ll only receive part-time pay, Unser, who is battling terminal cancer, will get full medical coverage. He’s prepared to give Jarry all of the details she needs about Juice, Jax and the rest.

Unser then went to pay a visit to Gemma, who had just broken down into tears after Abel asked her about how she knows Tara is up in heaven now. Unser tells Gemma about his time with Juice and expresses his fear that she’s putting her personal friendships before SAMCRO rules. Naively, he mentions that they’re both tired of counting bodies. When he falls asleep, she opens up his file on Tara.

Gemma, after looking over the pictures of Tara’s crime scene and the investigative work Unser has begun, heads over to see Juice. She informs him that she fingered a Chinese guy from Lin’s crew as the one responsible for Tara’s murder and that Jax fell for it. She believes that killing that one man will give her son the closure he needs, unknowing that he has launched an attack on the entire gang. To get Juice to leave town, she gives him more than $4,000 and a burner phone and tells him to head to her dad’s house. He sets out as Gemma told him, but winds up back at Wendy’s.

Chatting in the car together, Nero and Wendy bond over their past addictions, as well as the sense they get of being the healthy ones when they’re around Gemma and Jax. After they stop and visit Abel’s school, the two head out to Stockton where Nero sits down the Mayans’ president and Barofsky (Peter Weller) to talk about the “coffee” business. On their way back, Nero and Wendy get cornered by Lin. Lin tells them that some of his men and customers are missing and he has a feeling that SAMCRO is responsible.

Nero helps Lin set up a meeting with Jax, who flat out denies any involvement in the disappearance of the men – and the products that they were trading. Lin agrees to give Jax until noon the next day to get his men and product back and threatens to bring some violence to Charming if he doesn’t succeed. After the meeting, Jax , Chibs and Bobby go visit the two local muscle men and shoot them dead. They then frame them, dropping the heroin and a gun into the room. Bobby then puts a call into Lin to report what they “found.”

After his latest pair of kills, Jax goes to Gemma’s home. Somberly, he bids Wendy goodnight, strokes a sleeping Thomas’s face and gets into bed with Abel, where he sheds a tear.

Sons of Anarchy airs Tuesdays on FX at 10/9c.