Judge: Dead Legion MC #2

by Krane, Kasey

  Tats had held that position for years now, but he’d left, along with Butch and Pug and all the rest of the guys. My heart twisted for just a moment at the thought that Tats wouldn’t be coming back through those doors. I wouldn’t be goading anyone into a eating contest, or sitting out on the back porch when a monsoon came sweeping in. I would miss Tats most of all.

  But Knight was a good choice. He was a damn good shot, and kept a calm head in tough situations. Knight nodded once in acceptance, and Bishop nodded back.

  “Okay, so now the hard part. We have to figure out what to do with Carmen. Judge, why don’t you fill the whole club in on what happened yesterday and this morning at the hospital?”

  I launched into a summary without missing a beat, but couldn’t help but be surprised by this opening. Bishop was actually going to give me a chance to tell my side of the story. There was no way I was going to goddamn waste it.

  I spent the next few minutes getting everyone up to speed.

  “I had to bring her back here,” I finished the story with a shrug. “I didn’t know where else to take her or what to do when I saw that Sangre standing there. Those goddamn police were obviously not going to protect her. If I hadn’t been there, Carmen would be dead.”

  “And that may be true,” Bishop said, finally speaking for the first time since I launched into my story. “But did it ever occur to you that by kidnapping Carmen - and that’s exactly what everyone is going to think happened, including her father - the police may think that you did it because you wanted to take out the only living witness to the abduction of those kids? If you’d thrown her on your bike and driven to the nearest police station, they probably would’ve believed you when you said you were just trying to protect her. But you didn’t. You drove her an hour away to a known MC. The El Paso police don’t know that we started cleaning up our act four days ago, and they sure as hell won’t think that kidnapping a victim is a great way to start down the road to legitimacy.”

  I stared at him, a sick feeling of dread spreading through my stomach. No, I really hadn’t realized that’s what the police would think. I’d taken Carmen, and I’d run to the only safe haven I’d ever known. I’d taken her to my home, where I knew I could protect her. Anyone who knew me would know that I would never intentionally hurt Carmen. Never.

  But the El Paso police didn’t know me. And I really had fucked up.

  8

  Carmen

  I rolled over with a groan. It felt like someone had stuffed my mouth with gauze. I blinked, trying to get my eyes to focus, when I felt the bed shift beside me. I turned my head gingerly; trying to figure out who the hell was in bed with me, when my eyes found Jules’s smiling face.

  Oh. Right. Bishop’s girlfriend. Nice chick, even if she has questionable taste in men.

  “How’s your head feeling?” Jules asked through a yawn.

  I reached up and probed gently at the wound on the side of my head. I didn’t think I’d reopened the scar forming there, and when I pulled my hand away without any blood on it, that theory was confirmed. Thank God, because I really didn’t want to go check myself into another hospital. They weren’t on my favorites list at the moment.

  “Uhhh, good,” I said belatedly, realizing I hadn’t actually answered Jules’s question. “Why are you here? It’s like…” I cast my eyes around the room and realized there was no clock to be found, “way early in the morning. Why did you come with Bishop to the clubhouse?” Based on my admittedly limited knowledge of sheep or old ladies or whatever the hell Jules was, they weren’t usually involved in the meetings in the chapel. Sure, Bishop had called her his girlfriend, but I was damn sure that I must’ve just misheard him. Bishop didn’t do girlfriends.

  “Well, when Bishop got the phone call from Judge this morning, it woke us both up, and I figured why stay behind if I can come where the action is?” She shrugged and grinned. “Plus, it’s kinda hard to keep my hands off Bishop, so there’s that.”

  I could think of one place I’d like to place my hands on Bishop - wrapped tightly around his neck - but I didn’t think Jules would appreciate hearing that, so I kept my mouth shut.

  “And anyway, the Dead Legion are going to go after the Sangre to try to get the little girls back. No doubt Bishop will want to interrogate you about the kidnapping, to see what he can learn.”

  I tried to contain my groan at the thought but good God, the idea of having Bishop question me was just…terrifying.

  Jules looked at me appraisingly. “Listen, Bishop and I are…pretty new. Together. We haven’t been dating long.” She stopped, drew a deep breath, and started again. “We haven’t had a lot of time to swap our deepest, darkest secrets with each other, but this morning, after he hung up with Judge, he told me why he was so worried about Judge bringing you back here.

  “The police are going to think Judge kidnapped you, Carmen - against your will.”

  I just stared at her in shock but even as I opened my mouth to protest it - Judge would never hurt me, never! - I realized that it was true. Judge hadn’t told anyone about the Sangre, and the guy was well hidden under a pile of dirty laundry. Who knew how long it would be before the Sangre was found? It had just been instinctual - do what Judge thought was best. No matter how much of a jackass he was about the Dead Legion and Bishop and Deming, he would also lay down his life to protect the person he loved.

  Or used to love.

  I tried not to think very hard on that topic.

  “This kinda fucked the Dead Legion, Carmen,” Jules said softly, drawing my eyes back to her. Focusing on the present. On what to do now.

  Oh God, what did I do now?

  I stared at Jules, beautiful and warm and welcoming, and tried to come up with a plan, some way to fix this. Goddamn it, I’m a schoolteacher, not an action-adventure heroine!

  A small part of me was surprised by how intelligent Jules appeared to be. Unlike the Bimbos of the Day that Bishop had dated our senior year, there was something about Jules that impressed me right off the bat. She was self-confident; the kind of person that it felt natural to rely on.

  “What if,” Jules said, slowly, feeling her way through the idea, “you called your father - only your dad is in the picture, right?” I nodded, wondering where the hell this was going. “What if you called him and asked him to lie for you?” I cocked an eyebrow, not wanting to reject the idea without hearing her out but really not liking where it was going.

  Jules continued in a rush, wanting to get it out before I could tell her no. “The Dead Legion can do a lot better in trying to find your students if they don’t have the police breathing down their necks every step of the way. They’re not bound by things like laws and shit,” she said with a grin and a casual wave of her hand in the air, brushing away those pesky laws. “Last time the Sangre kidnapped a bunch of little girls, they got off on a technicality.”

  “Last time??” I echoed in horror. “This happened before?!”

  “Yes, and they got off because the police screwed up. Didn’t follow the proper procedures and the judge had to throw the whole case out. It was a royal fuck-up. The whole gang was deported back to Mexico and told to never come back, but…” She shrugged. “You can see how well that worked out.

  “Anyway, the Dead Legion want to make sure that this time, they don’t get off scot free. But if the police are busy investigating the Dead Legion, then the Dead Legion won’t be able to investigate the kidnapping. Which is where the brilliance of my plan comes into play.” She grinned at me in triumph and I smiled back, unable to resist her enthusiasm and excitement, even if it was leading in a direction I really wasn’t sure I wanted to go.

  “If you call your dad and convince him to lie to the police and the media for you, say that he arranged for you to be moved overnight because of security concerns and that he intentionally didn’t tell anyone because he wanted to keep it all a secret. Then the police will have to back off and quit giving the Dead Legion the stink eye. Judge will be able to
continue to protect you because obviously the police were doing a fucking awful job of it when they were in charge, so you definitely don’t want to go back to them, and the Dead Legion will be able to find those motherfucking Sangre and whoop their asses.”

  She smiled triumphantly at me, obviously pleased with herself and her plan. I turned it over and over in my mind, trying to find the flaws in it, the reason why it was just the worst idea in the world, so I could go back to burying my head in the pillow and sleeping. Anything to avoid calling my dad and telling him that I was with Judge again. He was going to like that about as much as Bishop liked it.

  But then I remembered Maggie Lara’s face and like a punch in the gut, panic shot through me.

  God, I hope you’re okay. If those puta madres try anything, knee them between the legs and run. Fuck, I never taught you self-defense moves. I never thought you’d need them. Not when you’re ten, for God’s sake. Goddamn it, I was supposed to protect you, and I didn’t. I let you down.

  “I’ll do it,” I said. I had to. Maggie needed me.

  Jules handed over her cell phone. “Thanks,” I said, tapping in my dad’s cell phone number. The phone rang and rang, and then went to voicemail. I hit the red phone icon and stared at the screen, biting my bottom lip with worry. “Dad is a heavy sleeper and this whole thing hit him hard,” I said, unnecessarily explaining the problem to Jules. I knew Jules didn’t need to know, but the words spilled out of me anyway. “Dad tried to remarry once - that’s how Judge and I found each other, actually, was at their wedding - but it didn’t work out. They got a divorce just months later. I’m Dad’s only child and he may’ve spaced on raising me and actually parenting me at times, but I never doubted that he loved me. This whole shooting…thing threw him for a loop.”

  I took a shuddering breath and then looked back up at Jules. “Okay, let’s try it a second time.” The phone rang and rang, then voicemail. Goddammit.

  “So how did you and Bishop meet?” I said, trying to change the subject while we waited. Waited for my dad to wake up or get out of the shower or whatever the fuck he was doing. I shifted impatiently on the bed, wanting to just do it and get it over with - beg my dad for his help, and listen to him list the 947 reasons why being around Judge again was a godawful idea and hopefully, eventually, talk him into helping me anyway.

  “It’s a long story,” Jules said with a laugh. “I’m from New York, which I’m sure you could’ve guessed from the accent.”

  I grinned at her, and said drily, “Yeah, I may have caught on to that.”

  “Well, anyway,” Jules waved her hand in the air, waving all of that away, “I came here to do an interview and fell in love with Bishop. I know you two don’t get along, but he’s a hell of a guy, truly he is. Maybe if you got to know him better…” she trailed off hopefully.

  I wanted to laugh. Get to know Bishop better?! We were inseparable the last year of high school. If you were going to date Judge, you damn well better be okay with Bishop being on every date with you, because they did everything together.

  Okay, so maybe Bishop didn’t join us in bed…

  But I knew everything there was to know about Bishop. I knew he was the reason why Judge didn’t choose me. He was the reason why Judge didn’t leave Deming. He was the reason that I had been lonely for the last 13 years, a deep loneliness that never went away, no matter how many people I was around.

  ‘Knowing Bishop better’ sure as hell wasn’t going to solve a damn thing.

  “Let me try my dad again,” I said instead. I couldn’t bring myself to burst Jules’s delusion that Bishop and I were going to become best buddies if only we shared a beer or something. As if…

  And thank God above, my dad actually answered this time. “Hello?” he said, his voice scratchy. Tired. Sleepy.

  “Hi Dad, it’s me, Carmen. Look, I, ummmm…I have a favor to ask you.”

  9

  Carmen

  I walked into the chapel without knocking. I ignored the anger that flashed across Bishop’s face and announced to the group, “I’ve called my Dad. I believe he’s calling a press conference right now. I saw a TV out there - I’d like to watch and see what he says.”

  I turned and walked out into the main part of the clubhouse, not checking to see if anyone followed me. Not even Judge. I was going to watch, and they could choose whether to pull their heads out of their asses or not - it was up to them.

  I found the remote on the bar and began flipping through the channels until I found Channel 7, the local TV station. Since I was international news, according to Jules, I figured the local station could probably find time in their programming schedule to work in a press conference about me.

  “…about to start. The daughter of the local Williams family has been missing since early this morning, apparently the victim of a second kidnapping in less than a week.” Breaking News in brilliant red font was scrolling across the bottom of the screen. I bit my lip as I watched. The whole thing was so surreal; it was hard to even fathom they were talking about me. I reached up and felt the bandage, covering where the bullet had grazed my skull. Thank God that Sangre had such shitty aim!

  And then there was my Dad, standing in front of a group of reporters and I felt my heart swell up with pride. Even as tired as he looked, he was handsome, as always. I felt an arm slip around my shoulders and I gulped back a yelp of surprise. I looked up at Judge, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was watching my dad on the TV, and I wondered for a moment how he felt about my father. Maybe he felt the same way about my dad that I did about Bishop.

  What a weird thought to have. For the last 13 years, I had been sure that Judge was wrong, Bishop was wrong, James was wrong, the club was wrong. Maybe, just maybe, I’d been a little bit wrong, too. The world tilted a little at the thought, and I leaned gratefully into Judge’s side. He caressed my arm and I felt tingles shooting up my arm at his touch.

  God, I’d missed him. I hadn’t realized just how much.

  “This morning,” my dad said, starting the press conference, giving me a welcome interruption to my conflicting thoughts, “around 3 a.m., I arranged to have my daughter moved to a private facility.” He was serious, he was believable, and if I didn’t know any better, I never would’ve guessed he was lying his ass off. “I had reason to believe that her life was still in danger, and I wanted her moved in the middle of the night without telling anyone, including hospital staff, so as to make sure the transfer was completely safe. She has gone through enough in the last week; I could not bear to have anything further happen to her.”

  The reporters began shouting questions and Dad held up a hand to stave them off. “In all other ways, the hospital did an admirable job of my daughter’s care. It is not often that a case like this comes through, and I believe that there was simply no protocol in place to protect her like she needed. I would be happy to meet with hospital officials later, in private, to go over my concerns so that in future cases, the patient is as protected as they need to be.

  “Finally, I ask for privacy during this trying time. Carmen is recuperating from a gunshot wound she received while attempting to protect the lives of her students. I believe that she deserves the privacy she needs to recover from this incident. Thank you.”

  He turned and walked away with a couple of cops escorting him inside of the hospital, ignoring the shouts of the reporters.

  “Well, that was certainly a turn of events none of us were exp—”

  Bishop hit the power button on the remote and the TV went dead.

  “Again!” he yelled, turning, glaring at me. My eyes widened and I stared back at him in shock. I’d expected him to be happy. I’d solved the problem, hadn’t I? I’d had to beg my father to trust me and overlook Judge’s involvement in the whole thing. He’d seen what our first breakup had done to me, and hadn’t exactly been thrilled with my plan, but being the supportive father that he was, he got on national TV and lied his ass off anyway. How dare Bishop get angry about that!
>
  Judge pulled me up against him protectively. “Now hold on a—”

  “Again, you made a choice that affected my club,” he jammed a finger into his chest, advancing towards me like an avenging angel, “and didn’t even fucking bother asking me about it!”

  “Bishop, I’m the one who told her to do it,” Jules jumped in, placing her hand on his arm. He stopped and looked down at her and then back at me. I could see the wheels turning in his mind - was it true? How could he manage to stay angry with me but not get angry with Jules? Because he sure as hell didn’t want to think anything but the absolute worst about me. That would’ve been obvious to a blind man.

  “I told her what your concerns were, and we came up with that plan,” Jules said, and finally, painfully, Bishop relented.

  “Well, it does solve a couple of the problems,” he said begrudgingly. I fought to hide my smile. I’d never seen Bishop act like that around a girl before. Jules really did have him wrapped around her pinky finger.

  He stared at me a little while longer and finally said decisively, “Judge, take her back to your house. She needs a place to recuperate that isn’t a clubhouse or a hospital that doesn’t give a fuck about its patients’ safety. I’ll call our contacts at the Deming police station and arrange for them to meet you two at your house to take her full statement. That way we can get the police off our backs. I’ve got shit to do; I’ll come over when the police show up.”

  He turned and walked away, pulling Jules close to his side as they walked, and I heard Jules’s laughter spill out as Bishop whispered something in her ear. I was pretty sure his “shit to do” included fucking Jules, and based on Jules’s grin, I was also pretty sure that this was a permanent item on Bishop’s to-do list.