Free

by Kristen Ashley

  “Right,” I replied.

  “You see anyone come, go, anything around Diane’s house when you pulled up, walked to the door, sat in the car waiting for the police?” Hank asked. “Anything, Rebel. A car, someone walking by, movement in any of the other houses?”

  I had to shake my head again. “No, and I was looking. I was freaked. I was freaked sitting in my car in her ’hood and waiting for the cops. I was freaked about what might be happening with Diane. So I was hyper-alert. I still didn’t see a thing.”

  Hank and Chavez glanced at each other before they looked back to me.

  “That’s all we have now, Rebel,” Hank said. “Drink your water. Freshen up in the bathroom. Eddie and me need to have a chat. Then we’ll head out to see Diane’s parents.”

  I looked between them both and stood up.

  But I ended my look on Chavez.

  “I’ll tell you what I told Hank. That wasn’t her, what was in her house tonight. She was good. Diane Ragowski was a good person. A good woman. A good friend. A good daughter. Until she wasn’t. But that part was always with her. It was just who she was. It was the drugs that made her something she wasn’t.”

  “She doesn’t have to be good for me to work my ass off to find out what happened to her, Rebel,” Chavez replied. “But I’m glad to know she had people who loved her and at one point in her life, earned that.”

  She had that.

  People who loved her.

  Okay, time to deep breathe again.

  “Thanks,” I mumbled.

  And having said my piece, I decided to let them have their chat so we could move on to the next bodacious part of this fabulous late-night party.

  “Bathroom?” I asked.

  “I’ll show you,” Chavez said, pushing off the desk again.

  He showed me. I drank my water, threw the cup in the trash in the bathroom, freshened up as best I could, went out and met them again at Hank’s desk.

  Then I led them to Paul and Amy’s house and we moved on to the next bodacious part of this fabulous late-night party.

  It was seven million times worse than what had come before.

  It was also a time I’d never forget.

  And then there’d come a time I was glad for that.

  Because I would need to remember just how hideous it was in order to make sure I got the job done.

  Hank had been right.

  I surprised myself with the stuff I could do.

  The good.

  And the bad.

  You Got Balls After All

  Chew

  Seven months later . . .

  He stood with his shoulders against the back gate. She’d come out. He’d watched. She always came out, pissed off and grumbling to herself because her man did not keep things the way she wanted them kept, and that was somehow her man’s fault.

  Chew did not get that shit.

  If a bitch wanted something her way, she should just fucking do it. Don’t ride your man’s ass about it. He doesn’t want it that way. He doesn’t give a shit the trash was taken out every night so you wouldn’t smell it. Who gives a fuck?

  You don’t like the smell, haul the trash out your own self, bitch.

  Well, she did. And there she was, looking ticked as shit and grumbling about what a loser her man was.

  Sure, it was the middle of the night after a long shift at a roadhouse. She was probably tired. And her man hadn’t shown for work, as usual. Chew had staked it out and he’d seen. So she was probably seriously tired since she had to do her shift and his.

  But it was her that wanted the trash out, for fuck’s sake.

  She’d run a bar for decades.

  It didn’t take her but a couple of steps down her walk to sense him in the shadows.

  Her outside light had a motion sensor, but it didn’t kick in because the bulb had blown. Something else Chew had noted when he’d scoped out where this was going to go down.

  She was probably ticked at her man because he hadn’t changed that too, when the woman had two working legs, two working arms, and all ten fingers were functioning, and she could change the damned bulb.

  She stopped and looked through the dark, right at him.

  “Well fuck me,” she said snidely. “You got balls after all.”

  Okay.

  He was done.

  He lifted the gun in his hand, aimed and pulled the trigger.

  She fell flat on what was left of her face. Dead before she hit the ground, the barely filled white plastic bag of garbage drifting to the ground at her side like a big, sad, deflated balloon.

  Chew pulled out his little Maglite, searched the ground, found the casing, picked it up with his gloved hand and palmed it. The metal was too hot for him to pocket just yet.

  He’d dump it somewhere nowhere near there.

  He saw a light go on next door, doused his Mag, shoved the flashlight in his back pocket, turned and slipped through the gate.

  He stayed close to the shadows cast by the back fences in the alley until he hit the street where Harrietta’s car was parked.

  He got in, started it up and drove off like he had nowhere to be.

  And he did all of this not thinking of the body he’d just left behind.

  Not that first thought.

  Harrietta

  Harrietta Turnbull listened to the phone ring.

  Then she listened to what she’d heard a fucking million times over the last coupla months.

  “You got Rush. I know you, leave a message. You’re tryin’ to sell me something, fuck off.”

  Beep.

  “You want to talk to me, asshole,” she bit into the phone. “Call me back.”

  Then she took it from her ear, hit the button to disconnect and threw it across the room.

  The phone slammed into the wall and dropped to the floor.

  Tarantulas all over the place scattered.

  She shivered at the sight despite having seen it a fucking gazillion times over the last too many fucking years.

  “Where is that asshole? It’s fucking four in the morning,” she snapped at her phone on the floor.

  Goddamn it, it had to be Chaos that took Chew down.

  If Chaos was behind it, the years he’d rot in prison would eat him alive.

  He’d hate it, motherfucking hate it, if she gave him to that girl. That Tallulah. It’d drive him crazy if some pussy turned him over to the cops.

  And it was getting tough to string that bitch along.

  She wanted done with porn, Valenzuela, the whole gig.

  Harrietta didn’t blame her.

  She wanted done with all that shit too.

  But it had to be Chaos.

  Harrietta didn’t think on the fact she took it in stride that not only had Chew been stepping out on her, stepping out with a girl that was only slightly older than Harrietta’s own daughter, a daughter Chew helped raise (if you could call it that) then got murdered, but also, he’d ended up getting rough with her (his norm, the sick fuck) and killed the snatch.

  No, she didn’t think about what it meant, taking that in stride.

  She had to admit, it sort of stung the bitch was a porn star junkie with a cunt so used, half the skeeves in America had seen it in close-up.

  But even if he didn’t do it, he was going down for Cammy’s murder.

  He was also going down for that other bitch, Natalie’s murder, and he didn’t do that either.

  And he was going down for the porn junkie’s murder, something he did do (she was relatively sure seeing as those two cops that kept showing at her other place told her his fingerprints and DNA were all over the scene, cripes, how stupid could the dickhead be?).

  Last, he was going down for killing whoever those two skulls belonged to that had been in the body bag with that Natalie chick, and Harrietta didn’t even know who those sad, dead fucks were. She just knew Chew did and it had something to do with his years with Chaos.

  Oh yeah.

  He was going to go down
for them too.

  Harrietta was going to see to it he took the fall for all of it, went away for good, not that first shot at getting out.

  And she was going to see to it that not only Chaos took him down, but in the end, he’d know it was her that brought him low.

  So, Rush fucking Allen had to return her fucking calls.

  Or she was going to have to figure something else out.

  The door opened and she turned to see Chew walk in.

  Christ, she couldn’t even stand the sight of him.

  She thought that, but she didn’t think about the fact he now had to hang in this pisshole, what he called his “safe house,” but she actually didn’t have to hang there.

  Her name was the only one now on the lease at the old place they still had.

  Her name was the only one on anything now.

  That said, she had no idea whose name was on this place. She just knew no one had found them there.

  Though her name was not on the apartment they used to have across the street from Chaos. When shit went ballistic, Chew had done the same and she’d paid the price with her flesh. But after years of her using that place to spy on Chaos, with the cops and Chaos all over it trying to find him, they’d had to let the apartment go.

  That hadn’t made Chew happy either.

  And she’d paid for that too.

  Harrietta could attest to the fact that Chaos was also not super pleased to learn the news that Chew had eyes on their island of motorcycle club wonder for years.

  She could attest to this because she’d spoken directly to the big man himself.

  Kane “Tack” Allen, the mighty president of the Chaos MC, had come calling with five men at his back.

  Not one of those men had been Rush.

  It took no time at all before Tack Allen had seen right through her.

  This was why he’d said approximately one point five minutes into their chat, “You want him taken out maybe more than we do. All you gotta do is give him to us.”

  But Tack was tight with a coupla cops, and Harrietta had no screaming desire to wear orange for whatever they might wanna pin on her. Even if she’d done dick. Chew would drag her down with him without a blink. And the animosity clouded the air, those Chaos boys were so choked with it (it was probably the spying, she really couldn’t blame them, she still had no urge to wear orange and be made somebody else’s bitch, so fuck that).

  She needed a slice of Chaos she could manipulate, and Tack was absolutely not that.

  It had to be a young one.

  Icing on the cake was that it would be an Allen.

  Chew detested Tack.

  If Tack’s golden boy son led to Chew’s downfall, Chew’d choke to death on that, but it would be a slow death since he’d be choking for the rest of his days.

  Harrietta liked that idea.

  With two sets of cops after him for a variety of crimes, Valenzuela wanting his ass, Chaos wanting his ass, and the Bounty MC wound up in this mess and maybe finding out it was Chew who got their asses swung out there, he had to lay low. His movements were seriously hindered.

  He still went out at night because he was a dumbfuck.

  And she still was at his safe house when he got there, as ordered.

  Harrietta didn’t think on this, so she hadn’t come to the realization it came from years of conditioning.

  She could run.

  This time, he could not follow. He had some money left from what he thought were the “Glory Days of Chaos.” The days before Tack cleaned up the Club, when they pimped and ran guns and sold pot. But he had no leverage left with the players he used and left hanging to try to bring down Chaos.

  What he did have was cops and criminals alike wanting him taken out, one way or another.

  But she did not run.

  She stayed instead, because that was what she’d always done.

  But now she did it while she plotted.

  He’d taught her that. The plotting.

  He’d lived years for vengeance, and Harrietta had lived them with him.

  So she’d learned that real good.

  But now it was her who was living for vengeance.

  Vengeance for Cammy.

  Vengeance for years of putting up with his fucking creepy spiders.

  Vengeance for years of taking his shit.

  “Bed, bitch,” he ordered, slamming the door shut behind him. “I’m in the mood to fuck.”

  She stared hard at his face.

  Shit.

  He’d done something fucked up.

  He only got that worked up when he’d done something psycho.

  This was gonna hurt.

  In the end, he took her ass unlubed.

  When he was done and snoring, she was in the bathroom, bleeding.

  Not the first time.

  Yeah, it hurt.

  But she was used to it.

  And in the end—Harrietta vowed to Christ—he’d hurt worse.

  Way worse.

  Those boys in orange might not bother with raping some washed-up biker.

  But maybe, just maybe, they would.

  And when they did, maybe, just maybe, he’d think of her when some big built guy with a huge dick was driving up his ass, tearing him apart, making him bleed.

  Or maybe, just maybe, he’d think on Cammy. On whoring her out. On all he made her do.

  On how he got her dead.

  No, Harrietta didn’t think about the fact she’d put her daughter in that position, not when the abuse started, also not when Chew breathed life into his revenge fantasy, not ever did she protect her girl.

  She didn’t think on that at all.

  She thought about Chew taking it up the ass and the pain he’d feel that she knew all too well and how he’d hate, absolutely hate, being made someone’s bitch.

  And on that thought, like only that kind of thought could do for her, Harrietta Turnbull smiled.

  Rebel

  The next day . . .

  Everyone had gone home and I was sitting in my director’s chair on the quiet set, script in my hand, going over my notes for the shoot the next day when my phone binged.

  It was in my lap.

  I picked it up.

  The bold text was a bogus name I’d made up in case someone who shouldn’t see my phone saw it.

  The text under it ticked me off.

  I opened the message just because I was in the mood to be pissed.

  Not tomorrow. I’m working on it. Give me time.

  Harrietta.

  Useless.

  “Stupid bitch,” I muttered then jerked when my phone rang in my hand.

  I also felt my heart squeeze when I saw the name of who was calling.

  After swallowing mountains of their vitriol, all of it I hid from D, I really, really wished I could block them all.

  Except her.

  I couldn’t do it to her.

  I didn’t know why.

  Maybe it was because she was my mother and I held hope, since she was Diesel’s mother too, that she’d come around.

  God, she would just love it if she knew I was taking a call from my director’s chair on a porn set.

  “Hey, Mom,” I answered.

  “Rebel, I need you to speak to your brother,” she snapped.

  That snap indicated she was not calling to ask me to speak to D so she could pave the way for our mother to make things right with her son.

  Nope.

  It was the same old shit.

  God.

  Again.

  This time, she was on about a family Thanksgiving.

  That being the “family” she would accept for Thanksgiving.

  Shit, it wasn’t like she didn’t know. She couldn’t not know.

  The denial was ridiculous.

  When would this end?

  My back went up. “Mom—”

  “Your father and Gunner are all set up to drive out to Phoenix—”

  Shit, fuck, shit, fuck, shit.

 
That could not happen.

  “Mom, do not let them do that.”

  I could actually hear her lifting her chin in obstinacy when she said, “I’m at the point where I don’t mind they beat some sense into my boy.”

  I blinked at the floor in front of me.

  Did I hear that right?

  Beat some sense into her boy?

  Beat some sense into him?

  “Rebel, did you hear me?” she called. “It shouldn’t be me who has to ask my son to come for Thanksgiving. He hasn’t been home in years.”

  Oh God.

  That would not go well.

  “Mom—” I tried.

  “You know,” she whispered, and I tensed at the way she did. “It isn’t like I don’t know. A mother knows.”

  Oh my God!

  “He needs to come home,” she carried on. “He needs to be away from that man. He needs to be with his family. He needs to talk to our pastor. I hear there’s programs—”

  Oh no she didn’t.

  “Shut up right now,” I snarled.

  We weren’t going to go where we needed to go about fifteen years ago and do it like this.

  No fucking way.

  And it wasn’t me who could do this. It was Diesel’s to do. I didn’t get to do this for him.

  I wanted to do this for him. I wanted to take this from him.

  But it was his, and I couldn’t jump that line.

  Though with Mom harping on Thanksgiving, I had to give him a heads up. I had a feeling this was going to come to a head and he had to be in the right place to deal with it.

  It was time.

  Long since time.

  But I wasn’t going to share with my brother about programs or any of that whacked-out shit.

  That’d cut D to the bone.

  As usual, I had to finesse this. Take my brother’s back how I could and soften whatever blows they might land . . . however I could.

  And last, hope at least Mom came around. I was a woman. I hoped one day I’d be a mother. And I hoped when I was, the kind of mother I’d be was one who might not agree with everything their child did in their lives, but she’d love and support her children no matter what.

  “I . . . what did you just say to me?” my mother asked, sounding shocked, pissed and wounded.

  “You tell them not to do that, Mom,” I warned, my voice vibrating with fury. “You tell them not to get anywhere near Diesel. He might take it. He might. He’s that guy who’d have trouble lifting his fists to his father. Gunner, he probably wouldn’t mind taking Gunner out. But Dad, he’d have a problem with that if only because he’s old. But either of them laid a finger on Diesel, Maddox would tear them apart.”