Rustling on the other side of the dumpster gave me pause. The adrenaline spike of not knowing who was there froze my breathing, and fortunately my sobbing, as I tried to stay as quiet as possible. It was a well-honed survival instinct. The only thing I’d find in this part of town at this hour would be trouble.
“Easy now, Patty-boy. Partners don’t give or take orders. You wanna try that again?” Billy Bones’ voice was clear if slightly distracted by whatever he was doing on the other side of the dumpster. “Yeah that’s what I thought. All right. That makes sense. I’ll let my crew know.”
Billy must’ve been with Monica for a late night call. That part made sense, but what the hell was he doing skulking around out here? He was all Gucci and Lamborghinis, to say this was slumming it was an incredible understatement. Then the unmistakable sound of urine hitting the pavement cleared everything up. He was just taking a piss before he left and figured he’d knock a few birds out with one stone.
“Yeah, it’s me. You with Chico and Sal?” Billy exhaled at being able to relieve himself. “Just talked with the pussy-peddler. We’re finally moving against his faggot biker club. Let the boys know it’s going down in one week when we take out those spicks at their restaurant. We’re going to let the bikers go in first, then catch them in the cross fire. Cut ‘em to fucking pieces. Fucking teach those cunts to steal shit from my family home! That’s my shit!”
Billy punctuated the last sentence with an abrupt and loud punch to the dumpster that would’ve startled a scream from me if I’d been able to. Billy began wrapping up the conversation with the time, address and all the other logistics the job would require from his guys. I didn’t catch all of it because he started back for his car when he finished peeing, but I heard enough to get a good idea of how it was all going to go down.
That dirty, back-stabbing asshole!
They were going to be ambushed! Caught in the middle between two gangs like that there was no way he or his MC could possibly survive! My first impulse was to write down everything I heard and let Wreck know immediately, but there’d be no way of reaching him that Patrick wasn’t monitoring. I racked my anxious, racing mind with a need to figure out how to warn Wreck that wouldn’t get me in trouble. Tomorrow, I decided. I’d tell him tomorrow when he came and picked me up. I knew the inner workings of Billy’s crew from all the research Patrick had me do before he reached out to them initially. Maybe together Wreck and I could figure out a way for the MC to avoid the double-cross or somehow use it to their advantage.
Then it hit me like a sledgehammer to the chest.
Why should I tell him?
In a little over one week I could be free. I could see my family again. All I had to do was…nothing at all. When Wreck and his MC were out of the picture I would be able to go back to my old life. Wasn’t that what I wanted? Wasn’t my family worth sacrificing everything for? That’s why I originally did what I did when I tried to have Patrick arrested. Back then when they were only dating.
Guilt swelled in me, then shame, then acceptance that I was a bad person. I had to be that way to survive in this world. The Devil Kings were a notorious one-percenter motorcycle club. I didn’t have to research all that hard to see what some of their members were convicted of. I was sure that Wreck and his crew must’ve done terrible things too so maybe they deserved what they got. Maybe I was actually doing a good thing by letting whatever happened happen.
I couldn’t stomach that particular self delusion for very long.
No, by doing nothing I was just as guilty as the men who eventually pulled the trigger and killed Wreck. I sucked in a deep breath and stood in silence on that dark night for what felt like hours arguing back and forth with myself. Exhausted and defeated on virtually every level, I went back inside.
I knew what I was going to do and because of that decision I knew exactly what kind of terrible, terrible person I was. My punishment would be to spend every day this next week with the person I was going to let die. I was a monster, but soon I would be free.
15
Wreck
“For a guy who's an expert marksman, sniper and bow hunter...” Yoga lined up his shot, exhaled slowly and sank his dart into the bulls-eye for the second time in a row. “How're you so shit at this?”
“I blame the good Lord.” Dreamer smirked unfazed at the jab and at losing the game. He drained the rest of his beer and raised a finger to the waitress to bring him over another. “He gave me one flaw so I didn't make men everywhere too jealous.”
Sarah's face puckered in a snicker at his boast then she rolled her eyes in mock exasperation. She sat with me at the high top table by the dart board as we watched Yoga wipe the floor with Dreamer. Curling a strand of hair behind her ear her amused smile began to fade. Sarah casually doodled in her notepad in between the short written-out replies and questions. Seeing her small half-drawings made me realize she hadn't fully sketched anything in almost a week.
The Sarah I'd come to fall for was there only in flashes lately. She'd been more reserved since the museum several days ago and whenever I asked about what was going on with her she'd become even more withdrawn. With a doubt it was somehow Patrick's fault, but it frustrated the shit out of me because I didn't know what he did to her this time. Physically she looked fine, no new bruises that I saw, so it must've been something he told her or forced her to do.
Was he still making her whore after I dropped her off in the evenings? When I asked Sarah about that directly she'd just shook her head with sad eyes. It was a look that said I wish that was all it was. It drove me crazy trying to guess what game that motherfucker was now playing with her-with all of us.
“We got next game,” I announced, not wanting to sour my mood for the night thinking about that fucking prick.
“Fuck no you don't,” Yoga replied clearing the chalk score from the board. “It's winner's board. Who's my next victim?”
“Ok,” I agreed, taking a chance on a hunch. “Winner and loser versus me and Sarah.”
Sarah's eyes widened as she started to shake her head with her hands up, mouthing the word no over and over.
“Oh, so it's a two on one game you want then?” Yoga replied, but smirked at Dreamer who just flipped him off with a comically forced smile. “Losing team picks up the tab.”
“Sorry, girl, you're on the hook now, it's out of my hands,” I said with an innocent shrug. She was resistant at first but after a bunch of playful goading eventually she let me drag her off the stool. Turning back to Yoga, I gave him my best Clint Eastwood sneer. “You got a deal, punk. Get ready to be pounded.”
“Let's be clear. I'm the one that pounds,” Yoga retorted pointing an outstretched finger at me with an overly-serious expression.
“We all know you're a power-bottom at best,” Dreamer shoved Yoga, spilling his glass. “And Sarah and I aren't paying shit for either of you swinging dicks, even if you are only drinking seltzer water...like a little bitch.”
“My body's a temple. Yours is a doughnut.” Yoga ripped the darts free and divvied them out. “Sarah, you're up first. Show us whatchu you got.”
Hesitantly Sarah lined up her shot mimicking the way Yoga did it. That wasn't too surprising. Maybe it was because she couldn't talk and spent most of her time observing life around her instead of actually being part of it, but the girl had an incredibly keen eye. She was definitely a visual learner. The first dart missed the board entirely, but the second and third honed in on what she was aiming for allowing her to score at least a point before ending her turn.
“All right, I see how it is. I get stuck with a dude who doesn't know which end of the dart to throw and Wreck brings a ringer.” Yoga cracked his neck to either side then shook out his hands. Dreamer distractedly flipped him off between sips of his newly dropped off drink then then went back to watching the football game on one of the bar’s many flat screens.
By the end of the game Sarah scored two more points than I did. Despite Dreamer only really half playing
Yoga still nabbed the win although just barely. Not wanting to push his luck he loudly proclaimed he was officially retiring from darts for the night as the undisputed king. Needing to switch it up from the sting of that last second loss I brought Sarah over to the pinball machines and challenged her to a game of highest points.
“What's next for you after all this?” she signed slowly as I loaded my quarters into the machine. That was at least one thing that hadn't changed these past several days. If anything we spent most of our time together practicing sign language. I know she enjoyed teaching it, but I think the real reason we did it so often was so she could avoid having to have any painful conversations.
It killed me that I didn't know what changed! I wanted to find a way to help her but she obviously didn't want me to, which frustrated the fuck out of me.
“I don't know. Move on I guess.” I shrugged, working the game cabinet's paddles. “That's the nomad lifestyle. Wind at your back, live for the moment, all that shit.”
“I thought the Devil Kings didn't have nomad chapters?” Sarah signed just before I pulled the knob back and released my second ball into the game.
“Someone's been doing their homework.” I snapped a quick side glance to her. The nervousness on her face at me calling her out felt out of place. Didn't she know I was only joking? “Yes and no... It's complicated. We're probably the only chapter that is still nomad, especially after the changing of the guard.
“We had a falling out with our shit-bag national president, Snake Eyes, back in the day so we went nomad. I hear the new pres, Bravo, is decent enough. I thought about reaching out a few times just to touch base, but Dunk doesn't want any part of him. Dunk heard Bravo killed Snake Eye's kid, Ricky, then ran off and became a member of our biggest rival at the time, a gang called Diablo Riders. Then it gets a little muddy. The Diablo Riders murdered Bravo...sort of. Some people say he faked his own death. No one knows for sure what happened, but one way or another Bravo came back and orchestrated a coup. Killed every last one of the parent chapter. Everyone except Snake Eye himself, who -if you can believe it- Bravo just let walk away. I hear the motherfucker hung himself in a motel down in Reno,” I said as my final score flashed letting me know I was out of balls and the game was over. “Beat that.”
“Jesus!” Sarah mouthed the word, looking staggered for a moment by the absurdity of it all.
“Yeah, not the typical way things are done in MCs. Needless to say Bravo's rise to power pissed a bunch of people off.” I put in two quarters for her and stepped out of the way.
“Why not join another club?” she signed. Sarah placed her phone on the glass of the machine.
Normally I'd never tell anyone all this, but it was the most engaged and interested I'd seen Sarah in days. Maybe this helped her take her mind off whatever was bothering her? Maybe this would help her open up a little more to me about what was going on in her life...what new bullshit Patrick was up to with her.
“We thought about it,” I continued, leaning against the pinball machine and watching the way the bright flashing lights played off her face. She was already at half my score with the first of her balls. Sarah had such incredible focus which was why she took to darts and games so quickly despite probably not having much experience with them since working for Patrick.
“When the changing of the guard happened Dunk reached out to the Hell Knights, a splinter group consisting of all the angry bastards who weren’t happy about the new policies coming down from Bravo. In the end we voted against it after meeting up with the Hell Knights president. We figured out pretty quick that they were made up of all the shittiest members of the Devil Kings. They just wanted to watch the world burn. We decided not to play on either side and just do our own thing.”
“Why keep using the Devil Kings name?” Sarah mouthed the words while never breaking concentration from the game. “Why not create a new club?”
“It's hard to explain.” I paused, watching Sarah double my high score and showing no sign of stopping. I struggled to organize my thoughts. The club was the club. The why of it all wasn't something I'd ever had to think about before. Shifting my focus to nothing in particular on the far side of the room I tried to put it all into words for the first time. “We all have the ink on us. It becomes part of you. Kinda like asking why not stop being an American after you found out about the Trail of Tears? You believe in what it should represent not what the assholes currently in charge of it are doing. My uncle, Mac, was one of the founding members of the Devil Kings back in the day. The MC was originally founded on a set of ideals that he still believed in, that we all still believed in.
“I guess we belong to the Devil Kings. It doesn't matter that the Devil Kings don't belong to us anymore. It's the only home we have, even if we can never actually go back there.”
Sarah touched my arm, snapping me out of my introspection. The music and background bar noise made it so that I didn't know when she stopped playing. There was a warm empathy in her eyes that told me she understood the loss and yearning I might be feeling.
“I'm probably not making any damn sense.” I rubbed my hand across my forehead, then dragged my fingers through my beard. “Never been very good with words.”
“Words are overrated,” Sarah signed with a small but earnest smile. “Beer?”
“Now that I am good with!” I put an arm around Sarah and started toward the bar. Remembering her phone on the glass I turned back to give it to her but she beat me to it, having stuffed it in her back pocket at some point. “Now Dreamer, that motherfucker is a poet. I mean that literally.”
Sarah raised an eyebrow at me. Dreamer was by far the most reserved member of the chapter so I doubt they'd spoken much to each other.
“He's got something like three books published in Mexico, all in Spanish of course. Mexicans love his shit apparently. At least enough that his family can survive off that alone.”
“Why not publish here?”
“He can't. He's been here since he was two but he's not a citizen. It's a long, messy story that's not mine to tell. Let's just say he's here and his family isn't. The system fucked them all in the worst possible way.”
I sidled up to the bar next to Buck who was on his phone. I thought about having a beer, but ordered the three of us a shot of whiskey instead. Beer wasn't going to cut it after the past few heavy conversations.
“You man enough for a shot?” I asked Sarah with a smirk after the bartender poured them out.
“What do you think?” Sarah narrowed her eyes at me in sassy defiance to my challenge, then downed both hers and mine one after the other. She slammed the second glass down victoriously and raised her eyebrows at me. Well? Then completely broke bravado and gagged at both the taste and sheer volume of alcohol.
I bent forward over the bar, and died laughing. Buck tucked the phone between his shoulder and ear, brows furrowed with a look of newfound respect and gave her a standing round of applause.
“You alright?” I asked, rubbing Sarah's back.
“No!” That was a terrible idea!” she signed emphatically. “But totally worth it.”
I laughed again. After a tough week of something weighing on her heavily it was really good seeing her enjoy herself. Fuck it, for the next few hours we were going to kick it and just enjoy ourselves like normal people. Like we didn't have a care in the world. I put my hand up to get us three more shots, but Sarah was quick to stop me. When the bartender came over I just made it the two knowing Buck finished his without needing to check. Buck drank as much as his brother Yoga didn't.
Buck barely gave the bartender time to pour before he drained the new shot. Ending his call, he pounded his chest twice to release a trapped belch then stood up.
“Rally the guys, Wreck.” He fished two hundred dollar bills out of his wallet and laid them down on the bar. “Timetable got pushed up. We hit Patrick's last rival tonight.”
“You're shittin' me...” I groaned. So much for a night of normal-people debauche
ry. “Yoga's gonna be the only sober one of us there.”
“Like usual. Let's go. Gotta meet up with the old men at the clubhouse to gear up. Shit's going down.” Buck whistled to Dreamer and Yoga, twirled his finger in the air and thumbed to the door. We all knew what that meant. It was time to go. He turned back to me, clasping a happy hand on my shoulder. “This time tomorrow we'll be riding the fuck out of this cesspool with fat fucking pockets, bro!”
Tomorrow? My expression darkened. We couldn't leave already. We weren't ready yet, the club had too many loose ends to wrap up. But that wasn't really what bothered me. The truth was I wasn't ready yet. I looked back at Sarah who was listening anxiously. I wasn't ready yet to leave her.
“I'll drop Sarah off at the laundromat and head right over,” I said, reluctantly rising off the bar stool as if it were my lifeline to a normal evening with Sarah. Fucking hell. I was just starting to get her to open up.
“No time,” Buck replied through another burp and a round chest pounds. “Fucking rum and cokes... Leave her. Patrick will just have to send someone to pick her up. He's the one that pushed this mission forward a few days.”
“Fuck that. There's no way I'm leaving her in this sketchy-ass neighborhood and hoping that Patrick gets around to sending someone.” I paused, as Buck turned to me with squinting eyes.
“No. Absolutely fucking not,” he preempted me, knowing me too well to not know what I was thinking. All it took was me to just raise my eyebrows a tick for him to get his confirmation. “God dammit, dude! We've got rules.”
“She'll be with us the whole time. Who's she going to tell? Besides, like you said, we'll be out of this cesspool tomorrow anyways so what does it matter?”
“Fuck,” Buck sighed, knowing he couldn't convince me otherwise or physically stop me. “It's your funeral. Dunk is going to be pissed.”
Buck gave me one last displeased look that spoke volumes, then walked off to let his brother and Dreamer know what I'd decided. He was always convinced that my ridiculous sense of honor would be the death of the club. I hoped to hell he was wrong. Looking at Sarah I knew that this was the right call. I couldn't just leave her here, she deserved better than that.
Outlaw's Ride: An MC Romance Page 11
