Lead (The Brazen Bulls MC, #8)

by Susan Fanetti

  There was no way, at that distance, she wouldn’t hit her mother, too, if she got off a shot with that thing. And the way she was shaking, who knew how wide the shot would fly.

  Nobody knew Becker was there. But the risk was, if he shot, even if he shot into the ground for a distraction, he could startle the guy into firing, and that revolver was still in the woman’s mouth.

  No, wait. The guy had his finger off the trigger. It lay along the guard. He was trained in guns, then, and even now wouldn’t touch the trigger until he was ready to shoot. Becker was right; he was angry and bluffing.

  Asshole. All he wanted to do was terrorize this woman. Becker fired and took a piece of the bastard’s ass off.

  The man flew back, screaming himself now, and the woman rolled to her hands and knees, crawling to the guy who’d just had a gun in her goddamn mouth, screaming “Denny! Denny! Baby!”

  The girl with the fucking sawed-off Mossberg? She’d turned it on Becker. Well, wasn’t that a kick in his Good Samaritan.

  He held his free hand up and turned his gun away from the scene, not about to let it go but wanting her to see he wasn’t a threat. “Easy, shortcake. It’s okay. Not gonna hurt you.”

  She gave him a look like an old prospector in a movie Western, all squinty eyes and suspicion, and finally turned the gun up—she wasn’t ready to let it go, either.

  Becker strode in, keeping his eyes on everyone, and got the revolver off the lawn. He emptied it, pocketed the bullets, and gave the gun to the girl. “You seem like the one to trust with this.”

  “Thanks,” she said, lifting enormous brown eyes—this was what people meant by doe eyes, though these were surrounded by thick black makeup—up to him. “I mean, you know, thanks.”

  “You son of a bitch!” the girl’s mother squawked behind him. “You shot him!”

  Becker rolled his eyes and got a piece of a smile from the girl, then sighed and went to the woman and her beloved asshole, Denny. With his boot on Denny’s hip, he shoved the guy over, onto his belly—he liked the agonized moan he got for that—and took a look. A graze, as he’d intended, leaving a long gouge through jeans and flesh. It was bleeding like a mother, though.

  “He’ll live.”

  This wasn’t a neighborhood the cops rushed to, but a total of three shots had gone off, so they might make their way around here eventually. Scanning the yards around them and seeing no one watching, he crouched beside the pair, who were having their own white-trash reenactment of the Pietà.

  “You know who I am, right?” he asked the woman. When she nodded, getting a fresh hit of the fear he was hoping to see, he added, “Cops’ll probably be here soon. I was not here. You”—he shoved at the moaning asshole—“shot yourself on accident. Any other story gets me over here with much more firepower and a fuck ton more rage. Got it?”

  Denny the Brave Beater of Weak Women nodded. “Got it,” he rasped.

  Becker stood up and turned his condemnation on the woman. She was a battered mess, her face and neck flowering with fresh bruises, while old marks still tinted her skin yellow in places. “You oughta throw his weaselly ass out on the street, but I’m sure you’ll help him in and kiss his booboo for him. I know you don’t give a fuck how you get treated, but keep your shit away from your kid, lady.” He kicked the asshole in the sore ass cheek and grinned when he screamed.

  When he looked over, the girl was grinning, too.

  With a nod and a wink, Becker headed to the back of their yard and jumped the fence to his own.

  ~oOo~

  Riled up after that adventure in unwanted chivalry, Becker went back to his workshop, re-holstered his Sig, turned the game up nice and loud, yanked off his t-shirt and wiped the sweat from his face and body. Tossing the shirt on top of his Sig, he got himself another beer and stood staring at the dismantled Chief. Getting back into the work would clear this new gunk out of his head, put him back in tune.

  Maybe he should just let that shit go on in the house behind him. His assistance obviously wasn’t wanted, and usually he knocked himself around after, when the stupid woman threw his concern back at him. But he’d lived through two stepfathers who’d treated his mother like that, and he was not wired to let it go. Even after eight and a half years in the slam for what he’d done to Stepfather Number Two.

  It really torqued him that the daughter had been in the middle of this one. That little thing—what was she, sixteen?—holding a big old Mossberg in her shaking hands, trying to defend her mother, who didn’t even care to defend herself. At least before, the woman had made sure the girl wasn’t around.

  His mother had tried to keep him out of her mess, too, but she hadn’t always managed it. When he got old enough, he’d made sure she couldn’t manage it. He’d put himself between her and hurt. Maybe this kid had tried to do the same thing.

  That was a good way to get hurt. Or put away. Or both.

  A light, sharp rap on glass. “Knock knock.”

  Not at all expecting to hear a woman’s voice at his workshop door, Becker turned. The daughter stood there, shoving her hands into her jeans pockets.

  He’d never gotten a real good look at her before today. The jeans were faded and ratty, sliced open at the knees and worn to white threads all over, almost as if the tatters were intentional. She wore them pegged, with the rolled cuffs meeting the top of a pair of badly scuffed maroon Doc Martens. A faded black Ramones t-shirt, also tattered, covered her top half. It was knotted at the waist, and the way she had her hands shoved into her pockets, pulling the waistband low on her belly, he saw the ink there. Her arms were covered, her hands, and tendrils of the edge of a piece showed at her collarbones, too. All of it was black and grey; most of it was patterns and designs rather than images. It was beautiful work, but the girl was on her way to being a sideshow-freak kind of inked.

  She had to be older than sixteen, then, right? Under eighteen, she’d need permission from her mom to get tattooed. That could be forged, of course. Or maybe her mom just didn’t care that she was making permanent decisions before she was old enough to know what she wanted to live with. Still, what artist would do this much ink on somebody so young?

  Her hair was straight and bluntly cut, just past her shoulders, and almost true black. Bangs covered her forehead and brushed dark, heavy but shapely eyebrows that arched over those huge dark eyes. She had a silver ring in her nose, at the side of her right nostril.

  She was short, not much over five feet, and slight. He thought she was probably pretty, under all that black makeup and ink. He was into smaller women. But not little girls.

  “Hey,” he said, before he’d spent too long checking her out. It made him feel like a creeper just giving her a once-over. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” She stepped into his workshop and looked around. “I just wanted to say thank you.”

  “You already did, shortcake. We’re good.”

  “Is all this stuff for one bike?” Eyeing his stock, she wandered to the far worktable and heaved up the custom straight pipe that had been delivered for the Chief a couple days ago. She hefted it like a branch she’d grabbed up off the ground and not a two-thousand-dollar custom piece made to fifty-year-old specs.

  As impressed as he was that her little arms could lift that fucker, he snatched it from her and set it back on the table. “You mind?”

  “Sorry.” She obviously wasn’t the least bit sorry. “What is it?”

  “A tailpipe. And no, this is not all for one bike.” He had three different bike rebuilds going; he got bored if he worked on one project at a time. “Can I help you?”

  She was standing beside him; her head didn’t even come up to his shoulder. He wanted to grab her and pull her away from the table before she caused more mischief, but he didn’t want to touch her and have her misconstrue it. Plus, he didn’t want his own self to misconstrue it. He was having some inappropriate feelings that he very much wanted to stop having.

  As he stood there trying to work that out,
she touched him. He felt her hand on his back, a swirling sweep of soft fingertips, and he pulled away and twisted out of her reach. He’d forgotten he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Shit.

  “That’s good,” she said, seeming not to notice his discomfort.

  “What is?”

  “The ink. Good work. Where’d you get it done?”

  His club piece. It covered most of his back. “Iron Spike.”

  “Oh, cool. Who does you? Marla does my work.”

  “Craig. Kid, what’re you doing here?”

  “I told you. I want to thank you. I think he might have killed her tonight.”

  “Done. We’re square, and I’m busy, so ...”

  His rejections rolled right off her back. She strolled over to the radio—the game was over, and they were on to sports talk bullshit now—and looked around it, as if she had a specific target in mind. “What kind of music do you like?”

  “Why?”

  She turned and shrugged at him. “Just trying to be neighborly. Is it country? You like country, don’t you. George Strait and Randy Travis and all those white-bread dudes.” The face she made clearly indicated her feelings about country music.

  “Metal,” he answered, feeling defensive. Jesus Christ, he was well old enough to be this kid’s father, and she had him flinching and backpedaling and defending his tastes.

  With a smirk that telegraphed her disbelief, she popped a hip, set her hand on it—worn black polish on her fingernails—and said, “Top five favorite bands?”

  Any sensible forty-four-year-old man faced with a smartass teenager in his way would have told her to clam up and get gone, and made sure it happened. Becker, standing here shirtless, his sick fuck of a cock almost hard enough in his jeans to make the fact obvious, answered her question as if it mattered what she thought.

  “Motörhead. Metallica. Pantera. Sabbath. Zeppelin.”

  He’d impressed her, and he felt more pleasure in that than was decent.

  “In that order?”

  “Depends on my mood.” And he finally understood why this little thing had him so discombobulated. She wasn’t just a kid looking for mischief. She was actively flirting with him. His subconscious was picking up on that, catching her pheromones or whatever, and his body was down with her plan.

  But no fucking way was that ever going to happen.

  He grabbed his shirt off another workbench and yanked it on. That felt better. Everything about him calmed down once he was fully dressed.

  But he’d exposed his Sig, and she went straight for it. He caught her hands before she could pull it from its holster. Jesus, she was like a toddler. Or a kitten. Maybe a baby chimp.

  “That is not a toy.” He pulled the gun away, shoulder holster and all, and let go of her hands.

  “Will you teach me how to shoot?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t know you.”

  With another impish smirk, she held out a tattooed hand. The work was excellent, dots and swirls in an intricate, symmetrical pattern, like that thing Indian women did when they were about to get married, but permanent. It went up to her fingers, curling around her ring finger, and over her wrist to blend into a looping vine of thorns and flowers around her arm. “I’m Sage. Now you know me.”

  Strange name, if he’d heard her right. “Sage? Like the herb?”

  “Like the herb, sure. Or, like, a wise one. And you are?” She bobbed her hand, but Becker ignored it.

  “Way too goddamn old for you, shortcake. You need to go.”

  The smirk became a grin. “Wow. Conceited much? Who says I’m into you?”

  He shrugged. “Good. You still need to go.”

  “Okay.” She sauntered to the door, putting some sway in her hips. At the door, she turned back and showed that smirk again. “I’m twenty, by the way. Totally legal. You don’t need to soak that semi-stiffy you’re sporting in bleach or anything. Grandpa.”

  And then she was gone.

  Becker sagged against the nearest workbench and stared at the open door.

  What the fuck?

  CHAPTER TWO

  Sage rolled over and opened her eyes. One minute before her alarm was set. She flung her arm out and turned it off before it could start beeping; it usually didn’t wake anybody else up, but after the debacle that was last night, she didn’t want to risk starting her day with round two. She had both jobs today and couldn’t afford to miss either shift.

  Tossing the covers back and turning off her box fan—something she slept with every night, no matter the season or temperature, so she didn’t have to listen to Denny grunting over her mom—she stretched once, pushing her fists into her lower back and arching over them until she got the pop she was looking for. Then she went to her dresser and eased open her t-shirt drawer. The top one was a particularly ratty New York Dolls tee, and she had the library this morning, so she dug a little deeper and found a comparatively sedate, plain bright orange one. She got a fresh pair of underwear and—sigh, library day—a bra, found a pair of jeans without holes from the pile on her old footlocker, bundled everything up, and headed to the bathroom, creeping like a thief all the way.

  She most definitely did not want to face Denny this morning, seeing as she’d pointed his own shotgun at him last night.

  Her mother had slapped her for that, after she’d come back from the hot neighbor’s house last night and Denny was all patched up and pouting.

  It was days like yesterday when she thought long and hard about going to work one day and just not coming back. It wasn’t like she’d be running away. She was an adult and could do what she wanted, and she earned enough to live, carefully, on her own. What she wanted more than anything was to be away from the sewer that was this life.

  But her mom didn’t work. She had nothing of her own, no way to take care of herself but the men she let abuse her while they paid her bills. If Sage left, she’d be alone with Denny—or, when he was done with her, the next winner she’d bring home and let take over.

  Sage wasn’t ready to give up yet. One day, her mom would want to stand up for herself, and she needed to be there to help her when it happened.

  Meanwhile, she lived under constant siege, trying to keep her mom from getting killed, herself from getting hurt, and her meager earnings from getting stolen. Most of the people she knew hated working and complained nonstop about the drudgery of gainful employment, but the best parts of Sage’s life were the hours she spent at the Maxwell Park Library, or at The Spin Bin. It was coming home she hated, not going away.

  ~oOo~

  After the quietest possible shower, she got dressed in the bathroom and crept back to her room. Her hair was nothing but straight no matter what she did, so she did nothing with it, just let it air dry. She put her makeup on and crammed her bag with everything she’d need to stay away from the house all day.

  Her mom would be okay today. Sage had lived this cycle her whole life; the pattern was carved into her psyche: after last night’s explosion, there would be a little while, a week, maybe two, sometimes as long as a month, of quiet and maybe even something like peace.

  There was a new wrinkle this time—in addition to Sage’s own part, the neighbor had shot Denny and hurt him. All last night, her mom had fussed and cooed and fluffed his pillows, kissing him with lips swollen by his punches, while the jackoff had moaned about his sore ass and talked a big game about how he was going to pay it back.

  Right. Denny Gibbons was going to get payback on the neighbor. The Brazen Bull. Who’d jumped their fence and shot him without taking much time to dither over it.

  The seriously hot Brazen Bull neighbor with the insanely bright blue eyes.

  He was old, like probably as old her mom, but he was the Paul Newman kind of old. He wasn’t grey at all, but there were lines on his face—across his forehead, around his eyes and mouth—that showed some age. And damn, those eyes.

  Also? That body. Sage had practically swallowed her t
ongue when she’d come around to the front of his bike shop room thingy and seen him in there without a shirt on. Just his back, the muscles rolling under that big bull, had been worthy of a diary entry, but then he’d turned around, and been all cut and pretty and just the right kind of not-too hairy. Sheesh.

  He’d been into her, too, at least a little, and had felt all kinds of awkward about it. That was pretty cute, and had been a rush.

  And she’d met him because he’d jumped the fence to save her mom. She liked the idea that they had a guardian back there.

  She thought maybe, for all stupid Denny’s big talk, the jackoff might have figured out they had a guardian, too. Maybe he’d have another think the next time he thought it would be a good idea to drag her mother into the back yard by her hair and shove a Colt in her mouth, all because she’d made pork chops instead of the fried chicken he’d asked for.

  At any rate, she thought things would be quiet today and for a while, but she still wanted to get out of the house before they woke up. There could be more fallout from her pulling the shotgun, and she didn’t want to be around for it.

  Checking her wallet and seeing nothing in there but an unused Cain’s Ballroom ticket, she got down on her hands and knees, turned back the moth-eaten rug under her bed, and lifted a loose floorboard. In every house they’d ever lived in—and that number was well into double digits—she’d found a hidey-hole for her most important possessions. When she was little, she’d kept her few most special toys or mementos in it. Since she was fourteen and had started earning her own money, she kept her savings and anything of actual value hidden.

  When she was sixteen, she’d tried to open a bank account, but they’d wanted her mom to be a cosigner, with access to the account. Anything her mom had access to, her man would have as well, so that was an absolute no-go. Sometimes, she thought about opening an account now that she was an adult, but the lurking sense that she’d check her balance one day and it would be empty scared her too much. She liked being able to touch her money, to have it in her hands when she wanted or needed to. And her mom’s men were not smart enough to find her stash; not one of them had ever found any hiding place she’d had.