by Lynn Burke
We lingered in our physical connection, the lousy choice of music from the overheads muffled in my brain. Digger. Blondy.
My night was about to get a hell of a lot better. Fuck the guilt eating at my stomach.
Digger
Her damn cell rang, and I released my hold on her hand so she could pull the phone from her back pocket.
She glanced down at the screen, her brow furrowing. “Excuse me for a minute.”
I nodded, gaze glued to her swaying hips as she made for the bathroom.
Capone groaned. “Fine piece of ass right there.”
Some sort of agreeing noise escaped my throat. A simple touch of her hand had swelled my cock again to the point I felt sure a zipper imprint would tattoo my length. That’s what I got for going commando.
“So, what’s up with Maci?” I asked as the bathroom door closed behind her. “You liking this one?”
“Not sure.” Capone leaned on the pool table, arms and ankles crossed. “She’s easygoing—low maintenance. Wants to have a good time.” He shrugged. “I’ll keep her around a while.”
I scowled while running a hand down over the whiskers I grew in an attempt to hide my scar.
“Why?” Brow cocked, he peered at me.
“She’s fucking hot,” I said while dropping my hand, my attention once more swinging toward where she’d disappeared.
“She’s also up for a threesome if you are.”
I jerked my head toward Capone. “No shit.”
He grinned and glanced at the bathroom. “She’s more your type than mine, really—wants to get tied up and spanked.”
“Goddamn.”
His grin widened at my groaned word, but his smile quickly faded. “Here she comes. Doesn’t look happy, though.”
Maci strode across the club, a frown marring the smooth skin of her forehead. A few of the club whores—Shelly especially with her limp, blondish hair—shot daggers at her with their eyes. Jealousy, plain and simple. She outshone each and every one of those bitches with her moonlight-like locks and unlined face.
“I gotta get going,” Maci said, glancing at Capone then me. “My mom is sick. Long story.” She expelled a long breath as my excitement deflated.
“I’ll take you home, darlin’.” Capone grabbed her hand.
“See you later, Digger,” Maci murmured, a question and hope in her star-lit eyes.
“Definitely.” Hands shoved in my pockets, I stood and watched the two of them head out the door. I wouldn’t get to touch her body that night, but the future sure as fuck sounded promising.
****
“Fucking FBI is watching my shop.” Hawk tossed a wrench to the workbench with a scowl.
“The fuck?”
He nodded toward the garage door closing us off from the rainy fall day. “Down a block. Other side of the street.”
“Same assholes watching the club?” I strode toward the door and peered through the dreariness. Sure enough, a dark sedan like the one that had been outside of the club over the weekend sat facing Hawk’s garage, the shadow of two people in the front seats.
“Same fucking car.”
“Sure it’s the FBI?”
“Who else would be watching us from a fucking sedan for Christ’s sake?”
I couldn’t make out the two men for shit through the tinted windows. “Fuckers.”
“The club is understandable with the questionable shit we pull, but here?” He tossed another tool onto the workbench. “I don’t deal jack shit outta here.”
I turned and leaned against the garage door, arms crossed. “If it is the FBI and they had anything on you, they’d have already nabbed your ass.”
“Yeah.” Hawk wiped his greasy hands on a rag and moved my way, glancing out the window with a scowl. He used his tongue to roll his toothpick from one corner of his mouth to the other. “Freaks me the fuck out, though.”
“My past is ten times dirtier than yours. You got nothing to worry about.” Even though Hawk was our Sergeant at Arms, I tended to do away with the threats that needed to disappear. He’d never taken a life, and as long as I was around, he wouldn’t have to. Gun, knife … hell, bare hands worked just fine if a fucker needed to be done in.
I’d only been fifteen when I learned the truth about the night my mom got pregnant with me. First time I’d held a knife with the intent to kill, I told the fucker he’d gotten my mom pregnant with me the night he’d raped her. Three years later, I knocked off the other two involved in the gangbang just to be sure I ended the life of the man who had sired me.
Silent Demons. All three of the bastards. The final one at least got a slash of his own knife in, slicing me from ear to mouth. Even though his body rotted in a deep grave out in the middle of nowhere, my fucking brain always whispered that I’d somehow lost that fight. Marred for life, ugly as shit … that’s why I spent so much damn time in the club’s gym. Making myself stronger. Harder. Closing myself off to vulnerability.
Fitting that a man who could possibly be my father sliced my face the way the Joker’s had. Fitting too, that I would join the SD’s arch rivals a few years afterward. The Fallen Gliders didn’t rape. Didn’t kill for shits and giggles or deal in sex trafficking we’d heard whispers the Demons dabbled in. Sure, we dealt drugs, but if we didn’t, someone else would. Might as well make a buck.
I glanced at the sedan again. “Think Nicky would talk?”
Hawk glared at me. “You on crack?”
I shrugged. “He left—”
“Because his sister OD’ed on the shit we deal, not because he’s a fucking snitch.”
A heavy exhale, and I nodded. Nicky had been our Sergeant at Arms before Hawk had taken over the spring before, and we both missed the fuck out of him. He’d rarely smiled—same as me. Had taken care of business without hesitation—same as me. “Think he’s happy?”
“Wouldn’t know. Bastard doesn’t return my calls or texts.”
“Same.” Scowling, I went back to work on an old ’46 Knucklehead I’d picked up a few months earlier. I hung out at Hawk’s shop more than I did the club, getting my hands greasy and shooting the shit. Made the late morning hours go by before I opened my tattoo shop a few blocks from the club.
Nicky had found a younger woman after handing in his colors and never returned. At least Hawk hadn’t taken off after he’d hooked up with Janie. Leaving the Gliders wasn’t in the cards for me. No woman—or fucking FBI agent—would tear me away from my brothers. Lifer with the “67” tattooed on my neck, I would be working on bikes and inking people until I breathed my last.
A couple hours later, I held onto the office door jam and leaned into the room. “Want to hit the club for a burger?”
“Heading home to Janie.” Hawk leaned back in his old black swivel chair that didn’t swivel anymore.
“She okay?”
“Crashed again.”
“Damn.” The poor girl had been riding a high for close to a month, repainting every room in Hawk’s house when she should have been sleeping.
“New meds don’t seem to be working with the swings, but at least there weren’t any tears this morning.”
“You’re a good man, Hawk,” I said, not for the first time.
He huffed a sarcastic laugh. “Just love the woman. Has nothing to do with being good.”
Jonny had publicly accepted Janie as Hawk’s old lady the morning after the whole run-in with her father, so she now sat beneath my protection. “Still. Tell her I asked about her.”
“Will do.”
I strode out the shop’s door, shoulders hunched against the rain, noting the black sedan in my periphery. The fucking car pulled out behind me as I drove off. “Motherfuckers.” I grabbed my cell and dialed Hawk. “They’re on me, not you,” I said when he answered.
“Like you said, if they had anything on you…”
“Yeah. Better keep my nose clean for a while.”
Hawk chuckled, and I hung up. My past didn’t have loose ends—I made sure
as fuck of that. The one man who’d thought to blackmail me a few years back ended up as shark bait, teeth and all. Hadn’t been a clean kill, but it wasn’t Gliders’ business, and no one had been around to witness it.
I glanced in my rearview. Sure enough, the sedan followed. Didn’t keep me from heading to the club, though, since the FBI—if that’s who they were—already had an eye on the place.
Scowling and soaked from the downpour, I entered the club while the sedan that had followed me took up its place where the fuckers had been over the weekend.
Same fucking car, Hawk had said…
“’Sup, Digger?” Capone grinned at me from behind the bar. “Burger and beer?”
I nodded and made my way toward Jonny’s office door which stood open at the club’s far end.
“What’s on your mind?” Jonny asked as I strode in, sure my thunderous scowl gave my shit mood away.
“Got a tail.”
One of his eyebrows rose, and he sat back in his chair. “Fuck.”
“As far as the law knows, I’m clean as a fucking whistle.”
“No loose ends,” Jonny murmured my usual statement after cleaning up a brother’s mess.
“Not one.” I sat in the chair across from him. “Think they’re just fishing, hoping to get lucky?”
A muscle in his jaw flexed as he glanced at the open door behind me. “I think it’s the FBI, and I also think they have someone inside.”
I straightened, my brow furrowing. “What?”
“The shipment we sent up north this morning?”
“Yeah?”
“Car got pulled over. Searched, and not by the cops whose pockets we grease.”
“Fuck.” I ground the word out. “No fucking way that was happenstance.”
“Nope.”
“Any idea who?”
Jonny shook his head. “I’d vouch for every single club member.”
“One of the whores?”
“Only way they’d know jack shit is if one of the Gliders told them—something they know better than to do.”
I nodded, remembering how I’d watched Nicky cut out a man’s tongue for spilling club secrets before slicing him open ear to ear. Messy as shit, but the man had it coming, brother or not.
“What about those fuckers who left us earlier this year?”
“They hadn’t been in long enough to know jack.”
I nodded, wracking my brain. Two younger brothers had handed in their colors right before Nicky left, and three others while we’d been in Sturgis. No new initiates had come through our doors since the winter before. Numbers dwindled nation-wide, though, something the presidents had discussed while we’d been in Sturgis.
I expected—along with Jonny—that the motorcycle gangs had lost appeal. While the seventies and eighties pulled people in like flies to shit, the law cracking down had certainly put a damper on our ways. Sex trafficking had some of the mafia and other clubs raking in the cash, but our pockets and contacts didn’t compare to theirs. Jonny would never deal in flesh, anyway.
“What can I do?” I asked, leaning forward, elbows on my knees.
“Just keep your fucking eyes and ears open.”
“Always.”
Lips pursed, Jonny dipped his head, and I returned to the bar a few minutes later.
Capone handed me a bottle of beer. “Just texted Maci.”
The shit in my brain disappeared in a blink. “Yeah?”
“Asked if she wanted to hang out tomorrow night.”
“And?”
“She hasn’t texted me back yet.”
I took a long pull from my beer. It’d been too long since I’d enjoyed a little pussy. Been even longer since Capone and I had shared a woman.
Fuck the no self-invite rule. “You up for a threesome?” I asked, leaning my folded arms onto the bar.
He grinned, his pearly whites flashing from the beard he’d started growing a few weeks earlier. “Always.” Still grinning, he moved off to refill another brother’s beer.
Pretty boy Capone with his baby blues and black hair—the whores swooned over his young ass when he’d joined the Gliders five years earlier. Still sent them into a tizzy when he smiled their way.
Ten minutes later, Capone set my burger in front of me. “Heard back from Maci.”
“And?”
“Her mom’s not doing well. Said she’d get in touch with me sometime next week.”
“Fuck. I’d been hoping for some good news. Haven’t had any for a few days.”
Still grinning—I swear that’s all the fucker did—Capone ambled off to grab someone else a beer.
I dug into my burger, the caramelized onions melting in my mouth. If his pretty face couldn’t land him an old lady, his cooking skills sure as fuck would.
Maci
I sat beside my mom’s bed. She lay unmoving, same as the previous five days. ALS was a bitch—a royal asshole that had been slowly taking her from me. One walk at a time. One smile. One word, until nothing remained of the woman I used to know.
She’d refused a ventilator early on, letting me know she would go when her body wanted to. Hospice had taken over, so it was only a matter of time before I would take care of her final wishes.
I’d cried all the tears. Dealt with the grief I’d been facing—dreading—since Mom’s diagnosis years earlier. She’d lasted a hell of a lot longer than expected, for which I was glad, but…
I needed a fucking break, and the guilt over my selfish thought twisted my stomach.
Hanging with Capone the week before had been rejuvenating, a couple nights that had given me hope life would go on once Mom died. Not just the fucking, but the promise I’d seen in his friend’s eyes. The connection I’d felt to a man I didn’t even know.
Capone had texted me a handful of times wanting to hook up again, but without going into detail beyond Mom being sick, I’d turned him down.
Being a caretaker sucked ass. Bad enough Dad had been taken from us years earlier than expected. My sister found herself a wealthy young Californian. She had lit out for the west coast once I’d assured her I could care for Mom on my own.
At least one of us could have a happy, carefree life. I’d made the call a few days earlier, telling her to come home if she wanted to have the chance to tell Mom goodbye.
I slid my gaze down over Mom’s supine, shrunken form. Pink fluffy, her favorite fleece blanket lay over her legs and tucked around her waist. Gurgling noises sounded as her chest struggled to rise. Blue lips parted, she let out little exhales of breath her body managed to suck in. Morphined as much as possible, she wouldn’t feel death settle over her. At least she lay in her own bed, in the apartment that I would soon find lonesome—especially since her passing would offer me freedom.
Again, the guilt festered. Ate away at my stomach.
I prayed to fucking God that I didn’t end up like her when my time came, an invalid in need of constant care. A burden, stealing someone else’s life along with mine. A grimace twisted my mouth—stealing? My head sure knew how to be a selfish bitch sometimes. And, a burden? My eyes burned, and I whispered an apology to Mom in my mind.
I held her thin, cold hand, my gaze on her chest. Time between breaths lengthened as I fought off my demons. I glanced over at my younger sister, who held Mom’s other hand. At least she had a fiancé to see her through the grief on our horizon.
“I’m going to get some coffee,” she murmured. “Want some?”
“Nah.”
A spitting image of me, Mari had been mistaken for my twin more often than not even though I had five years on her. Once she quietly shut the bedroom door, I squeezed Mom’s hand and leaned down to talk in her ear.
“Quit fighting, Mom.” I struggled for a smile even though she hadn’t opened her eyes in over five days. Damn woman defined the word stubborn. “Mari and I will be all right. We’ll get through together.” Swallowing against the tears, I shifted on the chair, needing to tell her what I’d been holding in until Mari lef
t me alone with her. My sister wouldn’t have agreed with my thoughts. “It’s okay to go,” I whispered, my gaze caressing Mom’s face, knowing my words didn’t come out of selfishness. “I love you.”
A shuddering sigh rippled past her lips. I stared at her chest for a full minute before drawing a breath of my own and leaning down to kiss her cool forehead. “Fly free, Mom.”
I inhaled until it hurt. “Mari?” My voice broke as I called out for my sister.
She rushed into the room, her gaze flying to our mother. “Oh, Mom…” Tears coursed down her cheeks, and I stood to pull her into my arms.
****
The coroner took Mom’s body away. She wanted to be cremated, her ashes scattered around the lake where we’d gone camping as a family before cancer had taken Dad ten years earlier. I’d promised to do as she’d asked, but didn’t think Mari would be up for a camping trip. With it being so damn cold, we’d have to wait on those plans anyway.
Six on a Friday night, and I sat alone in the apartment I’d shared with Mom for the previous five years since her diagnosis. Every trace of medical equipment had been sent off, all of Mom’s things boxed up by the front door, ready to be donated to the Red Cross.
My first moment to myself in a long damn time. A moment to breathe.
An incoming text dinged my phone, and I lifted my head off the back of the couch.
Capone: Got any plans for tonight?
I snorted. Getting drunk and forgetting life.
Capone: Sounds like fun!!
I chewed the inside of my lip, contemplating. Less than a week after Mom’s death, and all I wanted to do was party the night away in hopes of numbing the grief shrouding my life. “As if anyone would care,” I muttered, my fingers flying over the screen. Care to join me?
Capone: I already have plans. How about you join ME?
What kind of plans, I texted.
Capone: The secretive type
A lick of adrenaline seeped into my blood stream, reminding me I still lived. Count me in.
Capone: I’ll pick you up at 8
