by Hope Stone
“No, he didn’t. He was just there.” I clenched my jaw, my teeth grinding together from the bullshit questions I was enduring. It was a little white lie. I knew exactly why he was there.
“You were a part of the Outlaw Souls, is that right?” This officer was good. He was leading somewhere.
“I’m not saying anything without my lawyer present. That’s what I know. I’m going to call him now, and you can’t hold me here.” I knew better than to incriminate myself. It was going to be a long haul. I had a lot of calls to make, the way I saw it.
The officer gave me a silent stare. “All right, Colt. Don’t go anywhere. We are definitely going to need to speak to you again. You better get your lawyer.”
That night, I went home, thinking of all the things I wanted to build. I finally had a chance at life and something to live for, and it was all about to be taken away. Safe to say I had some dark nights after that. My mother tried to talk to me, but I didn’t want to speak. I went through the motions in getting Bella ready for school the next day.
The police forensics came along with the vet. My Palomino survived, but he would now have a lame leg, and nobody would be able to ride him. He would be put out to pasture to graze.
I waited with bated breath for the call to be taken in.
One day passed, and then another with no call. I engaged in endless talks with my lawyer about how it might go. I agonized with myself about calling Amber. We hadn’t spoken in a few days. I wanted to speak to her, but I didn’t want her to be implicated. The love I possessed for her made my stomach ache. I couldn’t lose her.
The day of reckoning did finally arrive. I was called back to the Merced police station. My lawyer, this time, was present. He was good, and I trusted him to help me. White walls surrounded me in the meeting room. My lawyer was dressed in a gray suit and was extremely corporate. I was dressed casually and saw no reason to act as if I was guilty. The officer had yet to arrive, and my nerves were so twitchy I wanted to jump out of my skin.
“Colt, let me do all the talking.”
“Okay,” I said quietly. My life was in this man’s hands. I had no other choice in my mind. I wasn’t a praying man, but I’d put my hands together on this day and asked for forgiveness for all my sins. It might have been a little too late for that.
The same officer that had sat across from me for the first round of questioning was the one across from me now. The officer came in and sat down. Today he seemed to be a little more upbeat.
“Thanks for being here, gentlemen,” he said and gestured to the chair in front of him. A water jug was present on the table along with a tape recorder once again.
“Colt, you’re a lucky man. I’m not one for delaying something if I don’t need to. All charges against you have been dropped.”
My lawyer looked at me with a wide-open grin, and I sat still in amazement. How the hell did they not link me to the Las Balas member?
“Good. My client and I are extremely pleased with the result.”
I wanted to ask why, but I knew that would lead to suspicion. I had an inkling of what happened. I nodded, giving the officer a blank face. “Am I free to go now?”
“Yes, you are. We don’t need anything else from you.”
The officer stood up from his chair. It took me a little while longer to come to my senses. As he opened the door to walk out, he turned to me with a pensive look. “I recommend you keep as far away as you can from any of your old affiliations. You don’t want anything coming to bite you in the ass.”
“Understood,” I replied solemnly. I planned to be nowhere near any of them. Now it was time to go get my girl back if she would still have me.
“Colt, congratulations on getting out of that one. It was a pure case of self-defense. They had no evidence against you. He threatened to shoot you. You had a right to draw your weapon on your own property, and he shot your livestock.”
“Thanks, Brian. I appreciate you being there even though I didn’t need you.” I’d paid a small fortune to have him attend. Brian charged by the hour. He was one of the best defense lawyers on this side of California. He was the same one that all the Outlaws used. He was more than effective.
Brian tapped me on the shoulder and gave me a crooked laugh. “Hey, well, I still got paid for it. It’s been a pleasure, Colt. I want to say I hope to see you again, but I don’t. Please take care of yourself. If you need me, you have my number.” He winked and walked out of my life with his black suitcase, slipping into his silver Mercedes Benz.
I looked after him, feeling numb. I just wanted to retreat for a while. I sat in my car for a moment and punched the numbers in to make a call. I tried to call Vlad and got no answer. I banged my steering wheel as I weaved through the Merced traffic back home. I knew my father would have questions. He would want to know everything. I felt the heavy weight of the life I lived sinking into my bones—all from selling illegal parts.
My phone buzzed, and I put it on speaker in the car.
“I called you from a burner phone. This is Mikakov. I understand you had some trouble at the farm. This was our fault. We couldn’t find the bastard. Sorry. We made sure no more charges could happen. He will be eliminated in jail. We will do the job then like we should have in the first place. We owe you again. But the police. They will never bother you again.”
“Mikakov, you should have told me there was another guy,” I spat out in anger.
“We saw no reason to tell. We deemed him no threat to you.”
“Mikakov, that is bullshit, and you know it.”
“Listen. Nothing to be concerned with. I have everything in hand. Enjoy your family time. We will guard the area and send word that we will shoot on sight if anyone else comes. They will listen. They have no reason to come near you. All debts have been cleared,” Mikokov explained in his broken Russian accent.
“I have to go. But yeah, thanks,” I said.
He missed the heat in my voice. “You’re welcome. Call if you get in trouble. You know where to find us.” The phone clicked. This was one of life’s moments where I deeply regretted the choice I made. The life of an Outlaw.
My father’s car was in my driveway. Time for me to face him. Bella was out front, spinning around in the yard like she didn’t have a care in the world. I watched it from a distance. My father was hard at work, putting the fence palings in like nothing had happened.
I shook my head and watched them. I had so much to lose. I should have finished Hosea when I had the chance. I put my car in park and stepped out to face the music. I knew my father would have something to say.
Bella ran to me with her arms out. “Daddy! You’re here. Where were you?”
“I had some things to take care of. I’m sorry. Did you have a good time at Grandma’s and Grandpa’s?” I picked her up on the upswing and held her in my arms. She was getting mighty big.
“I did. I beat Grandpa again. He’s not happy with me about it.”
“Really?” I touched her little button nose. I was so happy to hold my baby girl. “That’s good. Grandpa needs a run for his money.”
I let Bella down and walked to my father. He was wheezing a little as he put the next paling in the ground. He had pretty much set up all the posts around the arena. Now it was time for the horizontal timber slats to be put in.
“Hey, Bella, can you give Grandpa and me a minute?”
Bella squinted her eyes at me. “Okay. I’m going to check the horses.”
I placed my hand on the pinewood paling and tested its strength. I knew it would irk my father and cause him to look up.
“Don’t touch it, boy. I just set it in,” he said sternly without looking at my face.
He stopped and leaned on the wooden paling. I braced myself for the lecture of a lifetime. His worn face looked weary and full of worry. I noted the lines furrowed around his eyes.
“You know, I thought about what I would do if you had been shot in that barn. What it would be like for Bella to grow up with bot
h her parents gone. And I cried and cried for my boy.” My father shook his head as he took out his handkerchief and wiped the sweat from the back of his neck. “I said that poor girl is going to grow up without her father. She’s going to be an orphan. I don’t know what you’re into, Colt,” he said as his eyes looked back at me, searching for an answer, “but you need to get out of it and stay out of it. You’ve got the ranch. You got yourself a nice girl. You got this place. You got your daughter. What more can a man ask for?”
I looked heavenward and breathed out a sigh. “It was self-defense. The guy was on my property, and I had to do something. The charges were dropped. I served my time, and there’s no way I want to go back to prison, Pop. I’m sorry I let you down. All I ever wanted to do was protect my family. To bring in a little more money.”
My father broke into tears as if he’d been holding it in. It pained me to see him this way. He clutched on to my shoulder with his thick working-man hands. “Son, never do that to me again. I don’t want to lose you. Come here, boy.”
A trickle of water fell from my eye as I hugged my father. I didn’t let him go for some time.
“I love you, too, Pop. I promise I’m here for the long haul. I won’t let anything happen to me. Just an unfortunate incident from the past.” I unlocked from his embrace and faced him in the sun.
“Son, if I saw that bastard, and he was here when I was, I would have shot him with my rifle and blown his head clean off. Don’t worry about his ankle.” My father spoke with a viciousness I’d only witnessed a time or two. I laughed and enjoyed the moment of bonding with him.
“It’s over, Pop. I don’t know about the nice girl part. Amber might not want to be with me after this.”
My father had resumed marking the palings, so he whipped out his measuring tape and lined up his wood. He pulled a black marker out of his top pocket and marked it. “Why wouldn’t she? Not like it was your fault that the guy was here.”
My father shot me a look, daring me to confirm his statement. A feeling of guilt deep down left me feeling like it was partly my fault. I had to make a call to Amber.
“No, it’s not. She’s a good girl. She’s a social worker.”
“No such thing as a good girl. Did I ever tell you about the time your mother got caught with a pound of weed back in the day? This was in the seventies…”
The dread which loomed earlier transformed into storytelling between father and son. I found it hard to concentrate on what my father was saying. Amber was rattling around in my brain, looking for a place to land.
“Pop, I have to handle a few things. I’ll be down in the barn, okay?”
My father trotted to the next paling. “Okay, son.”
His look told me he understood what I was about to do next. I strode to the barn and found Bella talking to the horses. My special girl was humming to the horses, keeping them company. I scuffled up the dry dirt from the ground, making it past the barn. I wanted privacy.
“Hello,” a soft, delicate voice answered the phone.
“Amber, hi. Baby, are you okay? I wanted to call you earlier, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want you to be implicated.”
“I get it.” She sounded fed up and weary.
“No charges were filed against me. Not one. Hosea is in lock-up.”
Amber coughed uncomfortably. “We seem to cause one another nothing but pain, don’t we?”
Fear is not an emotion I had to wrangle with often, but it was rising to the precipice now.
“We have love, Amber, and there’s no way I want to live this dream out without you. I need you in my life.” I let out my heartfelt plea to her.
“I don’t know. This is a lot to deal with. I need some time to think, Colt. Can you give me some time?”
Devastated, I ran one hand through my hair and fought back the tears on the dirt trail path.
“Sure, Amber. Whatever you need.”
Amber
Hopelessly in love is not something I ever thought I would call myself. I did a lot for my community with my social work. I wanted the prison systems to be better. I wanted foster children to feel safe in the homes they were sent to. I wanted perpetrators to be sent to jail if they harmed them. I wanted domestic violence to stop. I fought for justice in a lot of different areas of my life, but never for myself. My relationship with Colt felt like an injustice. Like we would never make it.
I wrestled with myself as I sat on my porch, watching the sun go down. I recognized the guilt I had in my heart from putting him in the situation with Hector. If it wasn’t for me asking for his help, that guy wouldn’t have been in his barn. He was from that night that they wouldn’t tell me about. I put two and two together. I was good at doing that.
I sat silently, listening to the world at dusk, wiping my tears. Could we have a life together? Thing is, I loved Bella. She’d called me after Colt’s arrest. I flashed back to the call.
“Hi, Ms. Atwood. I wanted to ask if you would come to dinner soon? I haven’t seen you. I miss you.”
I gulped down silent tears on the phone. “I’m really busy, but I will try to come and see you really soon. How about that? We can go out for ice cream.”
“Yay!”
“Bella?”
“Yes, Ms. Atwood?”
“Don’t call me that. Call me Amber. We’re friends now.”
She repeated it back to me. “We’re friends now. Okay. I understand,” she said in that sweet little voice of hers. “Amber, can I ask you something?”
I sniffed on the other end of the line. “Yes, honey, what is it?”
“Are you sad about something? You sound like you’ve been crying.”
The set off the motion of another set of tears that I had to fight back. I had to get off the phone. “No, no, no,” I lied. “I just have bad allergies. I do have to go, but I will see you soon, darling.”
“I hope you come back real soon. Daddy is sad without you here.”
“Bye, Bella.”
I’d cried for hours after that. What the hell was I supposed to do? The wind picked up, causing me to shiver, shifting my hair over my face. I turned upward to the sky. It looked like a storm was brewing. Funny how California weather could just turn like that. My placemats started to fly off the little ramshackle table I had out front, and the wind began to howl. I wrapped my sweater around me, trying to keep warm.
“Dammit!” I ran after the flimsy cloth placemat into my driveway. I squatted to pick it up. My eyes landed on a pair of tan, detailed cowboy boots. They were attached to thick, toned, muscular legs, most likely from hard work over the years on the farm. I peered up. Colt. He put his boot over the placemat to stop it from flying away.
“Here, let me, little lady.” In his hand, he held an assortment of flowers, dainty and all different colors. His pale blue eyes met mine, even with my hair flying everywhere.
“Maybe we should go inside. It’s getting kind of windy out here now. A storm is coming in for the night. A bad one, too.”
All my doubts melted away as soon as I saw him. “Sure,” I called above the wind.
I opened the door to my quaint cottage and assessed him. He looked like something out of a Western. He even had his cowboy hat on. I wanted to leap into his arms and have him take me. The urge was incredibly strong, but I stood tall in front of him. Defiant, almost.
“Colt, what are you doing here? I told you I need time.”
Colt’s blue eyes blazed true. He saw right through me. He placed his hardworking hands on both sides of my face, taking hard possession over my mouth. I folded under the sensual penetration of his lips. I moaned desperately. We were intrinsically linked in a way I couldn’t fathom.
“Colt,” I breathed into his mouth as he continued.
“Amber,” he let out in an excruciating tone.
The erotic assault continued as he greedily explored the inside of my mouth with his tongue. I matched his passionate energy. I bit his bottom lip, not letting him take the upper hand in the pleas
uring. My hands made their way from feeling the hard outline of his tightly muscled chest to resting behind his neck. He wrapped his arms around my waist. We came up for air with the roof rattling from the wind and pelting rain.
“You don’t need a break. You need me, and I need you. Simple as that. I told you before, I’m not letting you get away from me like that. I want you to be a part of our lives. The trouble is over. We’ve made it together through all of this. We can’t turn back now. I have a dream of the horse ranch with you on it.” He took a breath, and I watched the shadow of his face in the dim darkness. I let him get it off his chest. “Now you don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to work on the ranch, but Bella and I will run it. I’m going to have the kids come from all over Merced to ride the horses. We have trails on the back of the property that run right into the mountains. You’re my family now.”
He stood back and ran his hands through his hair. My chest was rising and falling like the wind outside. The door was swinging. I heard it slam, and I jolted. I’d left it open to air out the house after work. Colt didn’t flinch.
“I love you so much that I would be okay if we were just friends. I can’t lose any more people that mean something to me. I lost Anna. I wasn’t there because of my own stupid mistakes. I can’t do that again. When I learned she died while I was in prison, it almost broke me. I wanted to hang myself with the sheet. But I didn’t. I had Bella to look forward to. Now you. You’ve made me a better human and taught me something I never knew was possible. True love.”
I watched in silence as this man poured his heart out to me. This big tough guy cowboy. “Colt Winters, I don’t want to be your friend, and I want to plain slap you for saying that,” I replied sassily.
“Slap me, baby. I would be fine with it,” he responded in jest.
The corners of my mouth threatened to turn up in a smile. “You’re an incredible man. I was just scared, is all. The thought of that guy trying to kill you, and it was my fault. It just drove me insane. I thought it might be best for you and me both.” I looked down at the outline of his boots.
