“Brothers, thank you for coming,” I said. I had met these brothers several times over the years, our clubs often helping each other out when business demanded it.
Hal, the President of our Portland chapter, hugged me.
“I’m so sorry to hear about Jesse, Colt,” he said, his arm on my shoulder. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s all fucked up, man. It’s all my fault. Did Rusty fill you guys in?”
“He did. He also told me you aren’t to blame. Blaming yourself isn’t going to help anyone, Colt. Right now, it’s time to take care of business. We’re here to help in any capacity, anything you need, brother.”
“Thank you, Hal, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that.” I turned to the rest of the club and gestured towards the couch. “This is Sam and Seth. They’re going to hang out with you for a while. I need to go find Jett. Rusty and the rest of my club are going to be here soon to take care of Jesse. In the meantime, I’m going to need to borrow a bike so I can go look for Jett.”
“Of course, brother, here you go,” Hal said, handing me his keys. “We’re parked right out front. Mine’s the first on the right. You got a full tank of gas.”
“Thank you, Hal,” I said. “These two need to make some phone calls to cancel Jett’s tour, but under no circumstances are they to call the police or tell anyone about Jesse. Please make sure they’re monitored closely.”
“You got it, Colt, we won’t let them out of our sight,” Hal said, his huge hulking frame shadowing both Sam and Seth as they sat bewildered and quiet on the couch, “or earshot.”
“You’re just going to leave us here?” Seth asked, his voice full of confusion.
“That’s right. I’d suggest you’d try not to get away, either,” I replied.
“But I can’t stay here! I have work to do —,” he protested.
“Not anymore you don’t,” I said over my shoulder as I walked out of the room.
I stopped at the hotel lobby to ask for directions to Rhododendron, and five minutes later, I was on the back of Hal’s bike and flying down the freeway, the pouring rain pelting me relentlessly. I didn’t care. I barely noticed.
I had one thing on my mind, and one thing only.
I had to get to Jett. If it was the last thing I did, I had to find her. I didn’t have much of a plan, other than to drive down every fucking street in that stupid town, if that’s what it took.
Seth said it was an hour outside of town, but it took me over an hour and a half to get there with the heavy rain. Several times I felt the bike start to slip on the slick asphalt, but somehow I kept it upright. Not only did the rain make the roads slippery, but it was almost impossible to see.
I flew down Interstate 84, weaving in and out of traffic. Everyone had slowed down, but I didn’t have time for that. I knew it was dangerous, but I didn’t care. Jett’s life was on the line, and I had already fucked up so badly, I couldn’t afford to do it again.
My exit approached, and I followed the signs to Highway 26, driving through Gresham and then finally turning onto the highway. The clerk at the hotel had told me it was a straight shot from there, and for the next ten miles, I went as fast as the bike would take me. The road was open, wet, slick and dark. The thick forest on both sides of the road seemed to embrace me as I fought my way through the slashing rain.
By the time I had gone through downtown Sandy, I could see why Jett had fallen in love with this part of the country. It was lush, rugged - yet pristine - the forested landscape practically pulsing with life around me. It was peaceful, quiet. Definitely a place to escape to. A place to find the solitude that she must crave every day of her life.
She must feel awful, I thought. She must blame herself. But it’s not her fault, it’s mine. I should have known better than to leave Jesse out there alone. I should have at least stayed within earshot, but I didn’t. Instead, I let my horniness get in the way, and I gave in to Jett’s teasing. What kind of man was I that I would put my dick above the safety of the people I loved?
Loved.
I hadn’t loved anyone for a long time, other than my family of brothers. That was different.
Jett was different.
She wasn’t like any woman I had ever known. And I had known a lot. I had made up for time spent behind bars in a big way once I got out. I had hit puberty not long before the explosion, and was just beginning to understand how much pleasure could be found in a woman’s body.
If I was honest, I would admit that it had all begun with Jett.
From that first stupid kiss on the playground, to years later, when we would walk home from school together every day. I would often catch myself watching her, studying her. Watching the way she moved, the way her hips curved, or how her eyes sparkled when she laughed. She was like a chameleon to me. Always changing, always some new lilt to her laugh that I hadn’t heard before. Sometimes, I’d catch a whiff of her hair after she had used a new shampoo, and it would linger in my mind for days.
Back then, I think a part of me always knew we would end up together. But I wasn’t counting on the explosion. I wasn’t counting on being ripped out of my life because of a childish mistake I had made. I wasn’t counting on her becoming famous, or needing my help because of a fucking madman. I wasn’t counting on all the shit that would get in the way over the years. But now that they were there, I was determined to slay every one of them until there was nothing left between me and Jett but skin.
☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼
The rain kept pelting the top of the car. When Jett jumped in that car outside of the hotel, I was ready. I knew I needed to be in my car, ready to go, waiting. Waiting for my dirty girl. Even the rain wouldn’t wash her clean, no matter how hard it came down. It wouldn’t stop as much as I wished it would. I didn’t want to think about Mother right now. But the rain. The fucking rain. The tin shed. The yelling. Mother.
No!
I kept trying to shake it off, making myself count backwards from ten, to keep myself present, to remember that I wasn’t there anymore, but every ping of every drop landing on the metal roof as I followed Jett out of the city made me have to start over again.
Ten, nine, eight….it’s not real anymore, Jack, it’s all in the past.
Seven, six…ping, ping, ping….stop it, please stop!
Ten, nine, eight….Mother’s dead now, Jack, it’s all over.
Seven, six, five….yes, that’s it. Jett. Think about Jett. You’re here for Jett.
Four, three…ping! ping! PING!…The shed is still there, Jack, still waiting for you, Mother wants you to go in there, Jack.
Shaking, I gripped the steering wheel tighter, my eyes glued to Jett’s taillights in front of me.
Ten, nine, eight…
****
I approached him from behind. He was sleeping in a chair in the hallway. I knew how to come up on him silently, I had learned it in the war. I had learned it the hard way. The only way.
They tried to give you instructions, but you had to learn on your own, really. Nobody could tell you how to act in a moment like that, when you’re forced to choose between some stranger’s life and your own. You shoot, and you figure it out later. Or, you fight, and you figure out each move in the moment. Nothing about war is predictable, so you have to be prepared for anything. You learn, you adapt, and you find clever ways to kill people.
It’s part of the job.
Killing that biker had been part of the job, too. I had a mission. A goal. And he was standing between that goal and me. It helped that he was an easy target, dozing off in a chair with his back turned.
He didn’t have time to struggle, or fight, or even stand up. A quick slice, and he was gone - a bloody pile of useless, dirty flesh.
I could have gone into the room then. But I knew the other one wouldn’t have been so easy to take, and I wasn’t in any hurry. Jett was already filthy, time wasn’t really an issue. I had plenty of time. I knew killing this one would shake her up, more than an
y of my packages and letters ever had, and I wanted to see what would happen, how she would react.
So, I left him there, knowing they would find him as soon as they crawled out of their bed of sin. Let them have their night. After the entire scene at the strip club, I was disgusted with her anyway. She had acted like a whore.
I had sat at the bar for hours, watching in the mirror behind the bar at her antics with the strippers. She was shameless, that’s what she was. She needed a little humility. She needed to realize that she couldn’t just do whatever she wanted in life, and there not be any consequences.
She had people to think about. An image to uphold.
She had been my saint, my savior, my companion, in my darkest hours, the one sweet voice of hope singing in my ears as I killed man after man, their slick blood dripping off my hands as I closed my eyes and listened to my sweet love whispering in my ear.
If she had meant that much to me, I could only imagine what she meant to other people. Surely, there were other, darker souls out there than mine.
By cleansing Jett, I would essentially be saving humanity, giving the human race just a little bit of hope back. The world was a painful, dirty place, and it needed the kind of light that only my Jett could provide.
By the time she pulled off the highway onto a desolate, gravel road, we were the only two drivers under the dark, grey sky. I drove past her, continuing on the highway a half mile or so, where I pulled over and into a small turnoff. It was perfect. Quickly, I ran back down the highway to where she had turned off, and then hid back in the dense trees as I made my way down the side of the gravel road. The road went on for several yards until it finally veered off to the right and down a small hill. If it had been nighttime, I wouldn’t have been able to see the cabin at all. Hidden at the bottom of the hill, her car was parked right in front of it. I snuck up to the cabin, and peered in the window. She was standing in front of the fireplace, staring off into space. She had taken her shoes off, making me think she was probably going to be staying here for a while. It was perfect.
She was exactly where I wanted her.
As long as nobody else came along, I could put my plan into place perfectly.
My cock twitched as I realized just how close I was to her. I sniffed the air, a faint hint of lavender lingering in the air.
The rain had let up as I was looking through the window, and I hadn’t even noticed until now. Without the sound of that tin roof over my head, I could almost enjoy the rain.
☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼
The cabin was exactly as I had left it, if you overlooked the inch of dust on everything. It was almost as if I had never left. Only I had, unfortunately.
If I had never left, like I had fantasized about doing that weekend years ago? Everything would be different.
Colt wouldn’t have his life ruined.
Jesse wouldn’t be dead.
All those people that work for Jett, Incorporated - Seth, Sam, King, everyone at the label, the secretaries, the executives to everyone on the road with us, the roadies, the musicians in my band, the techs, my stylists, the production managers, the lighting guys, the sound guys, the merchandise managers, the tour manager, and all of their spouses and children? They would have all gone on to find other jobs by now. Jett, Inc. would be a distant memory to them.
Not a production that they depended on to feed their kids tomorrow night.
The cabin was amazing, better than I remembered it, actually. But I couldn’t shake the awful guilt, no matter how much I tried to feel peaceful.
Everything was awful, in so many different fucked-up ways, and it was all my fault.
I knew that I had done the right thing, though, no matter how much it would hurt people now. In time, they would re-build their lives, find another job, find another puppet to work for.
I had become nothing but poison, and I had to remind myself over and over that I was doing the right thing by just being alone.
Nobody needed to be subjected to my bullshit anymore. With any luck, the public would forget about me, too, and I could just go on with my life like a normal person.
I looked around the cabin, my fingers caressing the edges of the kitchen cabinet, and then the dining room chairs, and the charming, stone fireplace. I shuddered, realizing just how cold it was in here.
The fireplace was the only source of heat. There wasn’t any wood in there, but I remembered the shed out back that was filled with a cord of wood that had come with the place when I bought it. I had been so happy to have my own house for the first time, I smiled at the memory of the wood arriving.
I could have gathered it from the surrounding woods, but when I tried chopping it up myself, it was a laughable failure. In a moment of weakness, I had made a phone call and the next day a pick up truck had shown up with a handsome cowboy ready to load it all into my shed for me. Easy, and it came with the bonus of getting to watch his muscles dance as he heaved all that wood.
I pulled a hoodie out of my bag, and put it on, pulling the hood over my head, and my boots back on before I stepped outside. The shed was all the way in the back of the property, and with each step, my boots sank into the fallen, soaked pine needles that covered the ground.
Tall trees swayed around me, the wind whipping the rain through them ferociously as I approached the shed. The latch opened easily, and the heavy doors squeaked as I pulled them open slowly. Just as I remembered - a huge pile of dry wood just waiting for me to burn it up. I smiled to myself for the first time, and then immediately felt guilty for it.
Jesse was dead. I had no right to smile.
I sighed, and gathered as much wood in my arms as I could carry, and then kicked the doors closed with my boot. I was almost to the back door of the cabin when I heard a crunch behind me.
☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼
I searched all day, and once evening began to set in, and I still hadn’t found her, I started to lose hope. Fear began to settle deep into my gut, and although outwardly I tried to stay calm, I was becoming more frantic with each passing hour.
Rhododendron was part of three sister towns that encompassed Mt. Hood Village, a sprawling forested area that made up a huge portion of the foothills of the mountain. It was all densely forested, with endless roads that branched off the highway into the woods, with even more endless roads branching off of those roads. Some of them seemed to go on forever.
In the beginning, I had set out to methodically go down each and every one until I had covered every road, every tiny gravel road that disappeared into the woods and not turning around till I had reached a dead end. It was obvious that people were private and kept to themselves here. And the roar of my bike, of Hal’s bike, made it impossible to be inconspicuous.
Like the rain still pelting me, and the danger I had put myself in weaving in and out of traffic, I just didn’t give a shit. Several people walked out of their cabins when they heard my bike, but once I saw they weren’t Jett, I went on my way, and they eventually went back inside.
After a while, I lost my patience, and I started following my gut, without any pattern to my searching at all. If I saw a road that looked promising, then I’d go down it. If I didn’t feel it, I’d pass it up. I had gone down road after road after road, and my worry for Jett just kept growing. What if Crazy Jack had found her? What if he followed her? What if she wasn’t there at all and had gone somewhere else? She could have gone anywhere in the world. This cabin had just been a hunch. If I was wrong, I would have wasted precious time looking for her.
But what if I was right? What if she had headed straight there and Crazy Jack had found her? I didn’t even know what kind of a man we were dealing with, but if he had the strength to take down Jesse, then he wasn’t someone to take lightly.
There was no way I would be able to survive if he hurt her. Jesse’s dead face flashed in my head, and I felt sick with fear.
I pulled off another one of the many deserted roads and stopped under some trees for shelter to call Rust
y. They had arrived in Portland, and he told me he was handling everything there. He even had Seth doing a little digging, searching records, and trying to find an exact location on the cabin.
“It just took a little convincing on my part. It’s interesting what people will do when you use a little gentle persuasion,” he said.
I laughed quietly, thanked him, and after he assured me they would call me with any news, I hung up.
The sun had set hours ago, and it was pitch black now, the rain soaking everything and creating shiny puddles all over the ground. It was cold, and I wished I was wearing my jacket instead of my vest. The ride up had been brutally cold, and it hadn’t let up a bit. In fact, the rain, the wind, and the cold all seemed to be getting worse as the evening wore on. I hadn’t noticed I was shaking until now. I was soaked through to my underwear.
And I desperately needed to pee.
I wandered away from my bike a little, walking down the deserted, rocky road and into the woods a little. As I was zipping up, I looked through the woods to the left. A faint flicker caught my eye, and I saw another cabin through the trees, just like many others I had seen while I had searched all day. Most of these were on leased forest land, and the log cabin look was very popular.
This one was more secluded than the others, though, being the only one that I could see on this road. Usually, they were clustered together, sharing electricity and water sources.
I continued walking down the road, my boots waterlogged and sloshing through the rain. The trees whipped around me, their limbs flailing, shedding their sodden leaves. I looked up at the sky, a huge, bright moon clear between the clouds above me, the rain silhouetted against it as it fell out of the sky.
It was beautiful. I would bet it was even more beautiful when it wasn't raining, and you could actually fucking see more than ten feet in front of you. For the millionth time, I wiped the rain from my eyes as I approached the driveway that led down to the cabin.
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