by Zahra Girard
I stop, and I turn, and I kiss him.
“I love you,” I say. Three brief words light me up and have me happy despite all the madness in my life.
He puts his arms around me and pulls me into an embrace, kissing me deep.
“I can’t help but love a woman like you, Vi,” he says. But there’s a layer of sadness beneath the warmth of his words. “But I can’t be with you, either.”
It hits me like a punch in the stomach and I freeze, staring at him in shock.
“What do you mean?” I barely say those words, my heart is in my throat, choking me with anguish.
“I’m trying to protect you, Violet. If we stayed together, your life wouldn’t be the same. This isn’t something you half-ass. Once you’re in, you're fucking in, and you do not understand the danger you’d be stepping in to. Hell, you don’t even have a full idea of the danger you’re in right now,” he says. His words are cold, bitter, they cut into me and shock my grief into the background.
“I don’t know the danger I’m in now? What the fuck do you mean by that?”
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is, if we stayed together, this good life that you’ve built for yourself here would fall apart. You’d lose it, and you’d probably end up in Lone Mesa, and probably end up resenting me for what happened to everything you’d built for yourself in Carbon Ridge. And neither of us wants that.”
“No,” I say. “I will not let you just talk your way around my questions. Why are you saying I don’t understand the danger I’m in right now?”
“Two men broke into your house the other night. Death’s Disciples. They were after you and Josie.”
I stop, stare at him, my fists clench. “What happened?”
“I killed them. Well, I got one with your kitchen knife, Snake got the other. You want to know where those bruises on my throat came from? Well, there’s your answer. The deeper you get into this life, the more you can expect shit like that to happen to you. That’s what I’m trying to protect you from, Vi.”
I hit him. Not a slap, but a punch, as hard as I can swing and square in his jaw. I am full of rage and disgust; at what my life has turned in to, and at the things I’ve had to compromise on due to having this man in my life.
“You murdered two men in my house while I — and my best friend’s eight-year-old daughter — slept upstairs and you didn’t fucking tell me about it? That isn’t protecting me — that’s just fucked up. So fucked up.”
Then I hit him again, because my first punch hardly seemed to phase him. This next punch doesn’t do much, either. Nothing except make his eyes flash and make me angrier at my inability to hurt him.
“This is what I’m talking about. This is why I didn’t want any fucking messy local entanglements, this is why I wanted to keep this shit strictly to business instead of letting myself feel something for you, no matter how fucking good it feels — because once you open the door to anything else, shit gets messy. Real fucking messy. And people get hurt. And here I am, risking my life — along with the lives of my brothers and the mission I’m on for the club — in some hasty, half-cocked plan because you can’t fucking think straight.”
I try to swing at him again, but he catches me by the wrist and I fall off balance and drop my ice cream cone. Just fucking great. Another thing this cold bastard has ruined.
“You’re right, Crash. You are so fucking right. Let’s bring this back just to business. It doesn’t fucking matter that I loved you — yes, that’s right, fucking past tense — we’re going back to our original deal. Because who the fuck am I to entertain the stupid fucking idea of loving a cold-hearted bastard like you? I’ll call Max, tell him to finish the repairs on your stupid fucking truck and have it ready so that, tomorrow morning, once we have my friend back, I never have to see you again. And, out of everything — even getting my best friend back — being free of you will be the thing that brings me the most happiness. I hate you, Crash. I hate you so fucking much.”
“Good. Glad that business is settled,” he says. Cold and even, like usual. He sounds like he isn’t even hurting, like he’s relieved that we’re finally back on our original terms instead of foolishly thinking we could love each other. “I will go round up the boys, finish getting prepared. Meet you back at the bar at nine, and then we can finally settle this shit between us, and I can be free of this fucking nightmare.”
With that, he leaves me. He gets back on his fucking bike and he leaves me standing on the street corner, with nothing to show for it except a broken and bleeding heart and a dropped ice cream cone.
Chapter Twenty
Crash
“What the fuck’s gotten in to you, Crash? You look like you’ve just dragged your dick across a mile of broken glass,” Blaze says.
“That’s pretty fucking vivid, Blaze. You have experience in that matter?” Mack says.
“Hazing in the smokejumpers is no joke, Mack. I could tell you the kind of stories that would make your balls retract in fear,” he answers.
“Will both of you just stop talking about your cocks and get the fuck back to work?”
I throw open the back end of the cargo truck. Inside is a perfectly restored 1968 Alfa Romeo Spider. It’s a beautiful black machine, sleek, sexy, and every time I open the back of this truck, I feel like a kid on Christmas morning. I don’t normally give much of a shit about cars, but I’d have to be even more of a cold, soulless bastard than Violet thinks to not appreciate a car like this.
And we’re about to take it apart.
Well, just a part of it.
One quarter panel. Because, inside this beautiful machine — squirreled away in compartments, concealed beneath the leather upholstery, hidden all throughout this spectacular classic car — is a cache of weapons bound for our customers.
“Get those tools ready, I want this job done with quick. I want us in and out before anyone knows we’re here, because I fucking doubt Max would take kindly to us fucking around in his shop like this. And I doubt he’d also appreciate storing our guns for us, either.”
Mack hops up into the truck and starts to work. It’s a one-man job, which leaves me to stand around at the back end, watching impatiently and thinking about the one thing I have to look forward to: killing these Death’s Disciples and freeing Kendra so I can get the fuck out of Carbon Ridge and back to the job I should’ve been doing all along.
To hell with Violet. It doesn’t matter how she makes me feel, she — and her fucking messy life — are getting between me and my club.
As I watch Mack work, Blaze comes over to stand next to me.
“Seriously, what’s wrong, brother?”
“Nothing.”
“You know you can’t hide that shit from us, right? You look worse than when you broke things off with Rosa. What’s going on?”
“Hey, brothers, would you look at this fucking car? It’s beautiful. This town might suck, but I swear to god, when we’re done with this job, I’m coming back just to hang out with Max. He’s a fucking artist,” Snake calls to us from across the shop, where he’s admiring a cherry red MG sports car that’s sitting six feet high on a mechanic’s hydraulic lift.
“Snake, stay away from that shit and keep your hands to yourself. We can’t have Max finding out we were here. If we piss that old bastard off, he won’t finish fixing our truck no matter what Violet says.”
I stumble a little saying her name. It tastes so bitter in my mouth.
“You broke it off with Violet, huh?” Blaze says.
“When the fuck did you get perceptive?”
“Brother, I’m not. But even I can fucking see when you’re happy one minute — because she’s a fucking kickass chick — and then the next you're down as hell after you just came from seeing her,” he says. “So, what happened?”
“It was the right call, Blaze. Our lives just don’t fit together. And getting involved with her has put not only everything we’re doing at risk, but it’s also putting her life at risk. I care abou
t her, man, and so I had to cut her loose.”
“What’d she have to say about that? Because it looked to me like she fucking likes you.”
“She punched me a few times. If she had her bat around, she probably would’ve tried to take my head off.”
“Damn, what a woman. You sure you’re doing the right thing? A feisty one like that, with her brains and her body, doesn’t come around that often.”
“Being with her puts this whole mission for the club at risk, and I can’t do that to the MC. And what the hell am I going to do if being with me ends up getting her killed? No, it’s too fucking risky,” I say. It hurts to say that, and I have to fight like hell to keep myself steady. I know Violet is a one-in-a-million kind of woman, but my loyalty and my heart belongs to the MC, and I have to remember that. “Besides, she wasn’t happy to hear about the two Death’s Disciples that Snake and I had to take out in her house. If I hadn’t ended it, she would have.”
Blaze nods, but doesn’t respond.
“Got ’em. Boys, come in here and get your fucking guns, because tonight we will have ourselves a fucking enchanted evening in the forest, blowing the heads off these Death’s Disciples motherfuckers,” Mack says, removing a quarter panel from the car and extracting from it a few automatic rifles.
“Snake, stop playing with that car and get the fuck over here and grab a gun,” I shout across the shop.
Snake looks up from his spot at the control console for the mechanic’s lift, startled. And his hand, which was resting on the switchboard, jerks in surprise. He has just enough time to yell out, “Oh shit,” before the hydraulics on the mechanic’s lift release and the beautiful cherry red car falls to the ground with a thunderous crash.
Then the car alarm in the machine goes off. A high-pitched, ear-piercing wail that I’m sure can be heard for miles.
It’s not the only alarm to go off.
The booming crash and the scream of the MG’s alarm sets off the alarm in every other car in Max Paisley’s auto shop. In seconds, they fill the air with the chorus of sirens and it sounds like a World War II air raid is about to happen.
“Oh, lads, we are so fucked,” Mack screams.
“Mack, slam that panel back into place. We can’t leave any evidence. Blaze, you and I will grab the guns. And Snake, you will get the fuck out of my sight, right fucking now, before I shoot your fucking head off for being such an idiot.”
We scramble like our lives depend on it, racing to retrieve our weapons and cover up our stash while the sirens let loose their deafening screams. Guns in hand, heart pounding, I charge out of the auto shop, ready to get on my bike, get back to Violet’s bar for one last drink, and then do whatever I have to do to get the fuck out of Carbon Ridge — and away from Violet Cassidy — as soon as fucking possible.
There’s just one problem.
The second I shut the door to the shop behind me, I’m greeted by the bright flashing lights of half a dozen patrol cars.
Chapter Twenty-One
Violet
It sounds like a new World War is about to start. An unimaginably loud chorus of sirens cuts through the still Carbon Ridge night, echoing off every one of the innumerable mountains around town; it’s loud enough to pull me from my bar, where I’m sitting swimming in my dark thoughts, heartache, and sweet bourbon, to the window, where I look out just in time to see a bunch of sheriff’s vehicles go flying by.
I know where they’re headed. Just as sure as I know that, no matter how quickly Crash acts, he will be arrested. If it were yesterday, that thought would hurt, but now, I can only consider the selfish ramifications of his arrest — that it will be a lot harder for me to rescue Kendra from Switchblade and the rest of the Death’s Disciples without his help.
Crash is nothing more to me than a tool to effect the release of my friend.
A tool that I need.
And a tool that I will have to fuck up my life even more to retrieve.
It just isn’t enough for him to hurt my heart and get my best friend in danger, now he’s got to make me deal with getting him out of jail. What a cold son of a bitch.
But I’m not surprised. Because this really is the only way things could end between us: with me hurt even more and the sheriffs getting involved.
The sheriffs have hardly whizzed by my house before I’ve downed the last of my bourbon and hopped behind the wheel of my truck. There’s only one place I can go to find the help I’ll need to get Crash and his biker brothers out of jail, and he lives all the way on the other side of town. With my pedal to the metal, I fly out of the parking lot of the Timberline Tavern and chug my way down mountain roads until I get to the single-wide that BD Cooper calls home.
I leap out of my truck and fly up the walkway to his front door.
“Bowen Dale,” I shout as I pound my fist on his door. “Bowen Dale, I need your help.”
The door flies open and I’m greeted by one red-cheeked and ornery-looking old man.
“Violet fucking Cassidy, what the hell are you doing banging on my door when I’m in the middle of watching my shows?”
I peek around his shoulder to see the original MacGyver playing on his enormous flat screen television. Wearing an old bathrobe, slippers, and holding a glass of what smells like cognac, Bowen Dale looks to be right in the middle of celebrating some ‘me time.’
“I am so sorry to interrupt. I just have nowhere else to turn and I need your help,” I say. My voice is going about a million miles a minute and my heart is going even faster than that.
He sips his cognac. “Is this about saving your friend Kendra from the Death’s Disciples, or is this about getting your biker friends out of jail?”
“How do you know about that?”
“I play poker with the president of the Death’s Disciples, Roger Deacon, every so often. And he’s part of a WhatsApp message group that I’m in for like-minded people in the Carbon Ridge and Aspen area. He hasn’t come right out and said what happened to your friend but, from his hints about Switchblade and the fact that you and your friends have been picking up Josie from school the last few days, it wasn’t hard to put two and two together. As for your friends being arrested, well, you’ve showed up at my door just minutes after the biggest commotion I’ve heard in years. That can only mean one thing.”
“Can you help me?”
He laughs, swishes his cognac in his cup, and nods. “Of course I can. So, what would you like my help with?”
I raise an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
Isn’t it obvious why I’m here? I need help with Crash.
“Well, it seems to me like you have two problems: your biker friends getting arrested, and Kendra being in the hands of Switchblade.”
“And?”
“So, pick one. Do you want my help to get your friends out of jail? Or do you want me to get your best friend back for you?”
“You could do that?”
“Without breaking a sweat.”
Surprised, I wobble on my feet and have to catch myself against the door frame to keep from falling over. This could be my chance; I could let Crash deal with his own mess — that ‘business’ that he’s always going on about, that he prizes above anything else — and I could get my best friend back and try to forget the heartache and the pain that he’s inflicted on me. It would take time, but I think I could heal. I think I could come to forget about that man and the impact he’s had on my life.
As he watches me, and the struggle I’m sure plays out upon my face, Bowen Dale cocks his head to the side and his expression goes from businesslike to caring.
“Violet, if I can offer you a word of advice…”
I nod. I’m paralyzed by temptation, by the thought of leaving that cold bastard to rot in prison, and I’m worried that, if I speak, I’ll blurt out the wrong thing and send Bowen Dale on an errand I don’t want him to run. It will take a lot to work myself up to abandoning Crash, and I don’t intend to speak until I can say those words.
�
��Rescue that biker friend of yours,” he says.
“What?” I gasp. As tempting as he is — and despite everything that’s happened, there’s still a small part of my heart that he has his claws in, a part that is still tainted by the memory of how he could be if he would just drop that icy shell — the thought of giving up my best friend just to get Crash free shocks me. “Why?”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, Violet, but you and this Crash character have done more than a few illegal things together, correct?”
I nod.
“And it’s safe to say that you two have been seen together, on multiple occasions, by people ranging from the sheriffs, to the Death’s Disciples, to regular civilians. Am I right?”
Dread squeezes my heart. I nod.
“Now, if you leave Crash and his compatriots in the custody of the sheriffs, it will only be a matter of time before they uncover that cargo of theirs. And that sure will motivate them, and the Death’s Disciples, to take a hard look into the lives of anyone that Crash has been associated with. That includes you. Now, are you prepared to handle that? Because they will turn over every stone and go over your entire life — your home, your bar — with a fine-toothed comb. Who knows what they might find?”
Like a double-murder that took place in my home?
Screaming, I ram my fist into the wall. It hurts like hell and sends numbing pain jolting up my arm, but even as I shake feeling back into my hurt hand, I think about doing it again. This is just one more way that Crash is tearing apart my life; as much as I want to leave him behind, to save my friend and forget about him, I can’t, because we’re tied together by a bloody double-murder.
“Fine. I want you to get Crash and the others out of jail.”
“Excellent choice,” he says. Then, thinking, he swirls his cognac before taking a long gulp. “That’ll cost you fifty thousand dollars.”
