Roderick

by Gadziala, Jessica

  "True," she admitted, unlocking the door to her building. "But I don't understand why we can't just talk to him over the phone."

  "It's illegal," I reminded her. "A lot of people who aren't in the lifestyle get paranoid about phones."

  "Stupid TV shows making it sound like everyone has their own personal agent assigned to their personal cell phone," she grumbled, tearing out of the elevator and into the apartment. "We have to go to freaking Virginia," she announced as soon as the door to the loft was opened.

  Cam's brows drew together.

  Astrid looked up from her laptop.

  "Ugh. Why can't it ever be like South Beach or something?"

  "Does everyone still have bags packed?" Liv asked, already in work mode. "It's a six hour and twenty-five-minute drive. Which is better than usual, but we should get a move on now. We can get rooms, some rest, then meet this guy in the morning."

  "Hey, just a thought," Astrid called, calm, but there was something about her voice that drew my attention to her face, seeing mischief there again. "Maybe only the two of you should go. Leave us here to work on some other leads if they pop up. It's not smart right now for us to put all our eggs in one basket, as the saying goes. We are on a time crunch, you know."

  "And why would it be me and Roderick to go?" Liv asked, brow raised, seeming to pick up on the dancing of her friend's eyes as well.

  "You and Cam would never leave me with a strange man. I might get ideas and start... toying around with him or something."

  I got the impression that the toying she was talking about was not the toying it sounded like, but I couldn't seem to understand the undertone, the implication that those around me clearly grasped immediately.

  "Well then you and I could go."

  "Don't you think Eddie would have given this new contact your descriptions? Just for safety purposes?" Astrid shot back. "What's the big deal? Is there some reason you don't want to go with Roderick? Alone. In a hotel. In a sort of high-risk situation where all the juices get flowing and..."

  "Fine," Liv cut her off. "Roderick and I will go. But I need you guys on your game then. Like you said, this could be a dead end. I need you guys to keep trying."

  "I was the one to suggest it," Astrid said in a way that implied duh.

  "Do you need to run this by your boss?" Liv asked, looking over at me, pointedly avoiding Cam who was clearly trying to catch her eyes.

  "I have free rein until my time runs out."

  "And that SUV you have parked outside..."

  "At our disposal," I agreed.

  "Good. Then give me five minutes to pack. Cam, I know, but come on," she told him, walking toward her room with her angry friend in tow.

  "Don't you just hate it when Mommy and Daddy fight?" Astrid asked, shaking her head.

  "Camden doesn't trust me."

  "In his defense, he genuinely doesn't trust anyone. At least not of the male persuasion."

  "You're his girls. And I am going to assume he has reasons not to trust men around you," I added , not prying per se, but it never hurt to get a little information whenever you could.

  "Find me a single woman who doesn't have reason to distrust men," she shot back, tone guarded. "One woman who doesn't jump at shadows when walking alone or have that gut-drop sensation when a guy on a first date gets pushy. Cam can't protect us from it all."

  "No. But he can damn sure try."

  "You have sisters, huh?"

  "Yeah. How did you know?"

  "Because you understand Camden. I guess it is because you have sisters, and know that over-protective feeling. How do you protect your sisters from so far away?"

  "They live not far from me. And when I'm away, they know they have the whole MC should they need them."

  Astrid said nothing to that, everything about her tensing up, making me wonder what I had said that had been so wrong.

  With nothing else to do, I fetched the sleeve of paper travel mugs I'd found when I had been cleaning up the night before, brewing a new pot of coffee, and pouring us each a cup, putting on the tops, waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

  I wasn't sure how the two managed to communicate, but that must have been what they were doing since Liv came out in a huff, her heels stomping harder against the floor than they needed to, a bag slung over her shoulder.

  "Cam wants you to know that if anything happens to me, he will personally hunt you to the ends of this Earth then slice you up piece by piece. Right, Cam?" she asked, giving the man a look that screamed Are you happy now?

  "I know how you feel about these girls. I won't let anything happen to her," I promised him, letting the conviction slip into my words.

  "There. All the manly chest-bumping is done. Let's hit the road. I will call you as soon as we stop. Come on. Before Cam changes his mind."

  "You shouldn't be mad at him," I told her, voice soft as we walked down the street toward my SUV. "He's just looking out for you."

  "I'm not mad at him. He's just... he forgets that I handled myself before he came into the picture too. It's sweet, but borderline insulting that he thinks he is the only one who can protect me."

  "Has he been with you a long time?"

  "Ah, I guess I was Astrid's age when he... joined up. Six years or so."

  "That's a long time for him to be allowed to be your champion. Then to suddenly tell him you don't need him."

  "I do need him. Just not to give me the disapproving eyes when I decide to go out of town for a day."

  "Well, at least you don't have to worry about Astrid while you're gone."

  "She is actually really good at what she does. She just hides her competence behind all that attitude of hers. If this ends up being fruitless, I'm sure she will have something by the time we are back." She fell into her seat, clicking her belt then letting out a long sigh, leaning back against the headrest. "I'm really starting to regret stealing from you."

  I turned over the car, flicking on the heat and the seat warmers, watching as she brought up the directions, placing her phone in the cradle attached to one of the vents.

  And as I looked over at it, catching a glance at her while I did so, I was pretty sure that I was finally starting not to regret being stolen from.

  Despite the cut on my arm that was both burning and itching, like it was somehow infected but healing at the same time.

  Despite losing the respect of Reign.

  Despite the never-ending shit I would likely get from all my brothers from here until eternity.

  Despite this wild goose chase that might not end up solving anything.

  I was not regretting it.

  Because I likely never would have come in contact with them.

  With her.

  And that would have been a damn shame.

  SIX

  Livianna

  Road trips were one of two things in my experience.

  They were long, tedious, exhausting endeavors. Or they were fun, junk-food and karaoke-packed adventures.

  With Cam and Astrid, they were the latter. Sure, Cam didn't sing, but when we would put on something that he deemed good enough - meaning no pop or stadium country or singer-songwriter - he would tap his fingers on the wheel along to the beat while Astrid and I belted it out. We ate things that only came from drive-thru windows. We slept all in one room like a bunch of teenagers. We made a good time out of a bad situation.

  A road trip with Roderick, this man I barely knew, yeah, unfortunately, it was the former.

  Mind-numbingly boring.

  By the hour mark, after shifting in my seat about two-thousand times, I decided it would be mildly less tortuous if I knew the man a little better.

  "So, when did you join up with The Henchmen MC?" I asked, half turning in my seat to watch him as he drove.

  "Couple years back. Just so happened to hear they were having a party, looking for new members. Went in to be surrounded by lifer bikers and cage fighters and various other badasses. Never thought there was a chance in hell they'd ta
ke me. But they did."

  "Not from a badass enough background?" I asked.

  "I was no saint. I did some shit. But I knew nothing about being a biker. I'd never even seen a biker TV show, to be perfectly honest. It was a shock when I was told I could go speak with the prez. And then he told me I could prospect."

  "From what I hear, Reign is particularly choosy about his crew."

  "I think after shit went down and he lost his men, he decided to build it up with exactly the type of men he wanted on the crew."

  "You mean no more scraggily-bearded, racist, misogynistic old men who think the purpose of life is to do as many devil's triangles as humanly possible?"

  "Now that is a great visual," Roderick grumbled, nose scrunched up.

  "Is he progressive enough to have any chicks on the team?"

  "He let Maze prospect years back."

  "But didn't let her join in the end," I guessed.

  "Something like that. It was before my time, so I can't say for sure how it all went down. How long have you been an arms dealer?"

  "About seven years."

  "Is that how you met Camden?"

  "Yeah. I met him on my third big gig. This was from then," I told him as we pulled up to a red light, reaching up to drag down the neck of my sweater to reveal an ugly, puckered scar.

  "He shot you?" Roderick exploded, angry for that young, naive me that no longer really existed.

  My smile went a little warm at that. "No. His friend did. He picked me up off the ground, got me out of the fire fight, brought me back to his place. I was losing blood so fast I was barely conscious by the time he got my shirt off, doused me in whiskey - along with his fingers - and then dug inside my body to fish the damn thing out."

  "Shit," Roderick grumbled, shifting in his seat.

  "I screamed so loud my throat bled," I admitted, not caring that it didn't make me sound like some badass. Even years later, just thinking about his fingers digging inside my body, pulling something out, then stitching me back together as best he could made a shudder rack through me. "I've had a lot of close calls in my day, but I don't think anything has ever hurt quite like Camden's ministrations."

  "Did you realize right away that he didn't speak?"

  "Within about a few hours of demanding he tell me basic things. Like where we were. What his name was."

  "How do you know his name?"

  "I don't," I admitted, shaking my head. It was probably the thing that irked me most in my life - not knowing the actual name of the man who meant so much to me. "I call him Camden because that was where we met. In the streets of Camden."

  "Your relationship is pretty unique," he told me, preaching to the choir.

  I couldn't help but wonder at times what my life would be like without him. More dangerous, surely. Less comfortable as well since he'd come to me with some contacts that I didn't have at the time. But also just much more lonely.

  I loved Astrid.

  She was like a little sister to me.

  But maybe that was it.

  Where Astrid was someone who looked up to me, someone who I protected and provided for, Cam was simply my peer, someone on the same page as me, someone sharing the same burdens of care with me.

  He was my sounding board, my closest confidant, my dearest friend.

  When we had come across Astrid, and I had this bone-deep need to take her in, brush her off, try to rebuild the broken pieces, he had been right there with me, helping me, doing drops when I was busy trying to help Astrid out of a hole, or bringing us dinner. Then, finally, when she was ready, showing Astrid that she could trust men, that there were some good ones out there still.

  Astrid referred to us as Mom and Dad at times. Which was mostly said in jest. As a lot of truth often was.

  We had been like parents to her.

  We sat up at night worrying about her if she was out.

  We nursed her when she was sick or hurt.

  We tried to build up her confidence, teach her life skills, then, eventually, show her how to be part of our lifestyle in a productive way.

  We were, for all intents and purposes, a little family of misfits. And as the hierarchy went - both by age and experience - we were much like the parents and she was like the little sister or grown ass daughter. If not for him, I never could have helped Astrid the way I had, never could have provided the safe, stable place she so desperately needed.

  And I would have been so, so lonely without him.

  I couldn't help but wonder, too, what his life would have been like without me.

  Sure, it seemed like he had some colleagues - as shitty as they were - so he had been able to come up in some ranks somewhere, get a reputation for himself. But would that have been able to continue? Would he ever have felt like he could let his guard down? That he had a place he belonged? A family?

  It had taken a bullet to bring us together, so that scar was something I wore with an odd sort of pride, with joy even. When I was on a job alone, I could catch myself touching it for reassurance, to show me that while I might have been alone in the moment, I was never alone because I always had him.

  "He seems like a good guy."

  "The best. We're lucky to have him. I'm sure your sisters feel the same way about you."

  To that, Roderick snorted. "I think my sisters feel about me all the time the way you felt toward Cam when he was mad about you going on this trip with me. They think I am too over-protective for no reason."

  "Because you shielded them from all the ugly that you are intimately acquainted with," I supplied.

  "Maybe that was a fuck up," he agreed, clearly not having had the luxury, even as a young boy.

  "It was well-intentioned. But I guess... if you always gate a kid from the kitchen to keep them safe, they never actually learn that it is because the oven is hot."

  "That's true," he agreed, nodding, thinking of all the times he had gated his sisters.

  "Do they know about you? About being a Henchmen?"

  "They call me a hypocrite," he agreed, rolling his eyes. "I protect them from everything while I am out breaking the law left and right."

  "Surely, they must know that you are doing it all for them, right?"

  "They think it is for our ma. And that is true enough. She slaved away for years for us. I wanted to make her life easier."

  "Yeah, but they're young. So by doing it for your mother, you did it for them as well."

  "Like you said... they're young," he said, giving me a knowing look.

  "When did we get so old, huh?" I asked, knowing that was what he was thinking. Wondering when the hell we went from being young and stupid ourselves to suddenly old and wise enough to look down on others and call them young and stupid.

  Though, I had a feeling that Roderick, much like me, never got much of a chance to be a kid, to be carefree and selfish.

  Maybe that was part of the draw to The Henchmen for someone who - from the outside - didn't seem to be cut from the biker cloth.

  A biker gang - especially an outlaw one - gave him the freedom to finally let loose a little. Be reckless. Drive too fast. Drink too much. Sleep around. He got to be free to have some fun while also making a living. And likely supporting his mother. If not fully, then mostly. And, I would imagine, his sisters a bit as well. Especially if any were in school or something.

  "What?" he asked, and I could feel his eyes on my profile.

  To that, I snorted. "I'm starting to really feel bad for stealing from you. You have a lot more going on than one would think for just some biker."

  "Think you'll find most bikers are a bit more than they look like, mami," he told me, shrugging. "What made you get into arms dealing, Livvy?" he asked after a long moment.

  "I can't claim it was intentional, really," I started, remembering those first few terrible months of nothing but hard work and uncertainty. And pain. There had been so, so much pain. "I sort of fell into this... group..."

  "Gang?" he corrected, wanting clarity.

/>   "They would like to call themselves that, yeah," I agreed. "They were certainly violent enough. But lacking the leadership and organization and planning necessary to really pull it off. But, yeah, I found myself with them."

  "How?" he asked, making me stiffen a bit. "If you don't mind talking about it," he clarified.

  Did I?

  With general people, maybe.

  People who were nice and normal, who didn't understand things like how one ends up wrapped up in criminal organizations.

  But I was in a car with an arms dealing biker. If there ever was a person who might understand, he was it.

  "I left home when I was sixteen. With no actual plan of course."

  "Comes with the territory of being sixteen, I think."

  "Yeah," I agreed, nodding.

  Though, really, it was more that I couldn't take any more of the screaming, the slapping around, the unfairly restrictive rules. There were only so many times you could cover angry red finger and palm-print marks on your cheek or pick chunks of your hair off the floor before you decided you were done, that if you had to endure one more attack, you'd lose it, grab the knife out of the block on the counter, and go all patricide on the person who got some sick sort of pleasure in beating you down day in and day out.

  So I followed that impulse, packed a bag full of what I thought were essentials - clothes, makeup, what little cash I had from birthdays or babysitting the kids on the block.

  I didn't think, however, to snag some of the things of worth in the house to hock for money to buy food. I didn't even grab the sleeping bag from the back of my closet.

  But once I was gone, there was no way I was going to go back.

  "There was a lot of cold and hungry in those days," I admitted, remembering clearly the gnawing pangs that kept me from sleep for days on end.

  And then I came across Eman.

  Eman was a good ten years older - too old, predatory even - but attractive, driving a decent car, offering to get me off the streets.

  Nothing - not even a full belly - was ever free in life, though. And there was not much kindness in Eman's heart to speak of.

  And young, pretty homeless girls didn't have much to offer.