by A. J. Downey
“Shhhit! Fuck!” came over the line softly, it sounded like the phone was being jostled and the man on the other end changed his step to Dragon’s tune in a really big damned hurry.
“I had no idea man! Is she all right?” He asked and maybe the drugs made me a little fancy free but I couldn’t help it.
“No I’m not bloody well all right! He shot me!” I blurted. Some low chuckles swept the room and Dray’s hand descended on my shoulder. He gave me one of his burning scowls and placed the index finger of his other hand to his lips in the classic sign for shhh.
“When and where you wanna meet about this?” the man on the other end sounded pissed. Hard to tell at who or what over a phone though.
“This afternoon. Neutral ground.” Dragon said.
“Sounds good, you know the camp ground off state route 62?” the disembodied voice asked.
“Yeah.” Dragon said.
“Can you do it in an hour?” Spark’s voice asked.
“Make it two. No more than three men.” Dragon ordered.
“Just gonna be me and my VP,” the man said, “No weapons. If one of my guys did this, and I’m pretty sure I know which one you’re talkin’ about, last thing I want is a war with your boys. See if we can make this right.” the grip on my shoulder eased marginally and I breathed out. Well that was something.
“Two hours. We’ll be there.” Dragon said.
“Two hours.” Sparks said and Dragon disconnected the call.
“Trigger, Dray, you’re with me. Get ready to roll.” Dragon said and finished his coffee in one large swallow.
“Prospect, Hang arounds, you got anything immediate you need to be doin’?” Dragon asked.
“Don’t need to open shop until two.” Zander said.
“I make my own hours.” Loyal supplied.
“Good. You’re stayin’ here with Ev. Keep her comfortable. What about you?” he leveled his gaze on Squick.
“Nowhere until two, like Zander says.” Squick explained.
“You’re her errand girl then.” Dragon said. He looked at me.
“You need to square anything with your school or whatever, send Squick.” He said. I nodded a little too rapidly.
“Thank you.” I said.
“Mmm.” He got up and Trigger and Reaver made to follow, but not before Trigger kissed Ashton soundly.
“Be careful.” She whispered against Trig’s mouth.
“I’ll be in the hills or the trees Baby. No place safer.” He smiled a one sided smile and went to get ready. I looked up at Dray and he looked down at me. He kissed me.
“What do you want Baby?” he asked.
“I don’t want anyone fighting, if his people didn’t know what he was up to… I mean, it’s really bad to be kicked out of a club right?” I asked.
“The worst.” He said.
“That’s what I want. He gets kicked out of his club and goes to jail and I’ll be happy with that.” I said. Dray smiled down at me.
“Reasonable girl,” he said and sighed, “I want his balls on a fucking plate but I’ll do it your way.” He leaned down and kissed me and it was full of heat and promise.
“Just be careful.” I said.
“Trig will have our backs. Don’t you worry about nothin’.” He kissed me one more time and moved off back towards his room for clothes. I watched his muscled, well defined back as it departed and let myself mope that he had to go. Ashton came over and sat down with me and Mandy.
“They’ll be fine.” She said with certainty and winked at me, her golden-yellow eyes full of sunlight and confidence. Mandy looked at us both dubiously.
“You need anything from your school or from Dray’s?” Squick asked me.
“I need my phone from Dray’s room and to call my school before anything.” I said. He nodded, head bobbing eagerly and disappeared.
“You need anything Sugar?” Zander asked.
“I don’t think so.” I said and shook my head.
“K, we’re here if you do.” Loyal put in, and they took themselves just inside earshot from our group of girls. Doc had disappeared, as had Data. Doc presumably to sleep and Data back to where ever it was that he went.
Squick came back with my phone and wandered over to where Loyal and Zander sat. I called my school and spoke to my professors about why it was that I had missed class the day before. They were very understanding, and I say that with total sarcasm. The head office explained to me that as soon as I agreed to and supplied a doctor’s note, the absence would be excused. I was fuming by the time I got off the call. They wouldn’t let Squick or Mandy pick up my school work either. I had to come in. Well fucking fine!
“Mandy help me get dressed.” I said.
“Sweetie I don’t think you have any clothes here.” Ashton said gently. Well then by fuck I’d wear something of Dray’s!
I got up on my own. My anger propelling me upward and onward. My crutches loud as I hobbled down the hall. The boys and girls following me like helpless little lemmings, trying to stop me and talk me out of my temper. Well, all except for Mandy. She knew better than to try when I got like this. I pushed open Dray’s door with my crutch and he turned towards me, rubbing a towel over his wet hair, shirtless and barefoot and totally delicious in just a pair of boxers and his jeans.
“I need to borrow some clothes.” I said.
“The fuck you do Babe! You need to rest.” He said incredulously. I started going through things. I picked up his discarded lounge pants and threw them over my shoulder. They had a draw string waist. They would work. I found a clean black, if faded, short sleeved Henley of his and picked that. Mandy was explaining to him what had lit the fire under my ass and he was glowering.
“Prospects,” he said, giving my three appointed guardians the title, “Take my girl to her school, help her get shit done and get her ass back here so she can heal.” He ordered. I nodded in his direction and he came over and kissed me gently.
“Give ‘em Hell.” He said and I nodded resolute.
“You too if you have to.” I said. He smiled at me and ducked out into the hall, he’d finished dressing while we’d talked.
“Out! Unless you want an eyeful.” I ordered the boys. Squick damn near tripped over himself. Zander and Loyal grinned at me.
“At least one of you is a gentleman.” Mandy snorted.
“Nah, Squick’s gay.” Zander said. Loyal looked at him with wide eyes.
“I am not you douche bag!” Squick shouted from the hall. Zander’s grin got bigger.
“Watch it puddin’! I’m still your boss!” he called out and he and Loyal left the room, closing the door behind him. Ashton was frowning.
“He is.” I said softly, “I saw it when Johnny started talking at the dance studio, he was interested.” Ashton looked a little stricken and sad.
“Not our secret to tell.” Mandy said and sniffed.
“He doesn’t want anyone to know, he’s afraid they won’t let him patch in.” Ashton said.
“I’d be more afraid of lying.” I stated dryly. Dray had caught me up on a lot of the club politics and how things worked in the last couple of weeks.
“I think more people know than he realizes, they’re just waiting on him to come clean.” Mandy said.
“Something Zander told you?” I asked her and wrinkled my nose and smiled at her. She pursed her lips.
“Say no more Sis.” I told her and Ashton held the pants for me. I stepped into them carefully. I didn’t care how wrecked I looked. Hell the worse I looked, maybe the better I’d be off when I showed up at the school. Fucking assholes! Once satisfied Squick’s secret was indeed safe with us, Ashton slipped out. She was going after my doctor’s note before Doc got too far into sleep. She said he was likely reading, that he never crashed right away. Mandy helped me finish getting dressed. She slid a shoe onto my foot and tied the laces.
“Something there?” I asked her.
“I don’t know,” she hedged.
“Well
if there is he better treat my bestie right or I’ma find him and kick his ass.” She laughed at me.
“He’s twice your size!” she exclaimed.
“I’d cheat.” I told her.
“I believe you Ev.” She said laughing.
“I know you’d do it for me too.” I told her and she smiled impishly.
“Heard me last night?” she asked.
“Yup.” I said, popping the ‘p’.
“Meh, I love you. Don’t go getting all emo and shit over it.” she said and we both laughed. When it was just me and her and no one else, Mandy lost a lot of her shyness.
A half hour later I was in my school’s office raising ever loving hell about their shitty bedside manner flanked by Loyal and Squick, Mandy and Zander. Ashton had stayed at the clubhouse to clean up the breakfast mess. I got my school work and assignments for the rest of the semester, an assurance that my absence the day before wouldn’t be a mark on my otherwise perfect attendance record and the okay from my professors to have either Mandy, Shelly or Squick come and turn in my work until I was able to get around better. In short, I gave the college Hell and then some for me having to drag my ass out to it the day after being shot in the leg!
Afterwards I was exhausted and all I wanted to do was go home… home being the clubhouse for the time being, I suppose. Loyal and Zander helped me into Mandy’s car, a cute little blue Ford Focus that had been a gift from her parents on graduation day. Squick had ridden with us and folded himself into the back seat. Zander and Loyal had ridden, both in front of us. It was strange having a biker escort but I was simply too damned tired to really ruminate on it too much.
I went straight for the recliner the moment we returned to the club house. I needed clothes. Real clothes and not skimpy nightgowns… all though the satiny material had felt really nice on my skin. It had made me feel both beautiful and cherished when Dray had told me he’d bought it for me. Shelly was at the club when we got there and she dropped into a chair beside me.
“I suppose now is as good a time as any to catch you and Red here up on statistics seeing as you can’t run screaming from it.” She joked. I glowered at her.
“What? Too soon?” she asked with a grin. I opened my mouth and Mandy covered it with her hand with a laugh.
“Watching you do math on drugs. Sounds like fun times!” my best friend said looking down into my face from her standing position. She took her hand away from my mouth and I frowned at her. I frowned harder when she handed me my glasses. Ashton floated over with a glass of water and another half of a pain pill. I debated for a moment.
“Don’t we have just like Tylenol?” I asked meekly. Ashton smiled serenely.
“I’ll find some.” She said but left the pain pill nearby in case I changed my mind.
“Thanks.” I sighed out in relief. I needed a break from the effects of the pain killers. Oxycodone was so not my idea of a good time. Shelly and Mandy broke out the text books and calculator and I felt mutinous. Ashton returned with the Tylenol and I took it but finding a way to comfortably sit and do math homework was almost as futile as trying to understand the math homework its self.
Reaver came out of the back and raised an eyebrow at his cousin who was enthusiastically untangling the mess that was statistics for me and Mandy. I think I fell a little in love with Shelly. When she explained things they made sense. At least one thing other than Dray was going well for me in recent history. I sighed. I missed him and I was beginning to worry the more that time dragged on. I hoped he was okay.
Chapter 18
Dray…
This time of year, the middle of the week, the campground was deserted, making it pretty ideal for our little meet and greet. Trigger was set up somewhere in the hills. I’m pretty sure that knowledge alone is what caused the itching between my shoulder blades. I wondered vaguely to myself, how many times now I’d been in his scope? How many times could he have ended me with a twitch of his trigger finger? How many times had he wanted to but refrained?
It was a morbid line of thinking. Once upon a time I wouldn’t have cared. He could’ve put a bullet in every major organ in alphabetical order and I wouldn’t have given two shits about it. Now there was Everett... Em, who loved me with everything she had. Me. Broken twisted fuck that I am, she loved me and wanted to be with me and I’d almost lost her before I’d ever really had her because of one of the brotherhood that was walking across the expanse of pine needles towards us.
“Easy boy.” My father said in that low and controlled way of his. It was like slipping a leash on my anger, immediately bringing it to heel. I’d seen him use it on more men than just me and I wondered briefly if it was a trick I would ever learn. The thought was fleeting, because the men of the hour, Sparks, the president of the Suicide Kings and his VP were drawing up within feet of me and my father.
Sparks was a lanky bald guy that had been around a block or two in his lifetime. His jacket was worn but I noted that his cut looked relatively new. His president’s patch wasn’t even worn. My dad and me, our cuts looked ancient in comparison and they probably were. I don’t think Sparks had been in his even a year yet. He had blue eyes that weren’t anything to write home about, not the steely blue like my girl’s. He did have a wicked looking scar that ran from the corner of his right eye back over his ear to disappear around back of his shaven head. Whatever it was had taken off the top of his ear and it gave him this feral alley cat look.
His VP was a big bear of a man. No joke the dude looked to be close to three hundred pounds. It was fat, sure, but you could tell there was a shit ton of hard muscle underneath the padding. He had a yellow bandana wrapped around his forehead sweatband style in a wide swath and his hair hung long down his back in a curling salt and pepper pony tail. His beard hung full and rounded at the bottom to his mid chest and the name patch on his denim cut declared his road name to be Grizzly. He looked like a Grizzly bear. Like his president, his patches looked new but the denim they rode on was hardly fresh off the rack. It was dirty and as road worn as the leather jacket underneath. His chaps and boots spoke of a hard life on the back of the bike and I caught myself wondering what the fuck he was doing following the younger bald man.
“These two fucking kidding?” it was a rhetorical question that growled low in my ear and came from Trigger. My Bluetooth was on an open call to him and hidden up under my hair. He was waiting for a signal from me or my pops in case something happened down here that he didn’t see. Which, truth be told, wasn’t fucking likely. Trig had eagle eyes. We squared off across from the Suicide Kings men and spent a minute getting each other’s measures.
“Your girl the one Spaz shot?” he asked me. I inclined my head and gave him my hardest withering look.
“Dray.” My father warned.
“Now I don’t mind him bein’ hostile with the looks, so long as that’s as far as it goes. Not sure I’d be so understanding if it were me in his place.” Sparks said.
“I ’preciate the understanding.” I said and managed to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. Grizzly chuckled.
“Look, the shit Spaz pulled wasn’t sanctioned by me or mine.” Sparks said and put up his hands.
“Your girl lose the leg?” Grizzly asked.
“No. The dipshit shot her with a .22 long rifle round, must have been packing a Derringer or something. Doc says she’ll be okay in a couple of months with some intensive physical therapy, but she’s a dancer. Not sure if she’ll be able to do that again.” I lied about the last part but I wanted my girl’s terms met.
“Which club?” the big man asked.
“Jesus Griz does it matter?” Sparks asked with a scoff.
“Not that kind of dancer friend.” Dragon growled, and it was when he growled like that he was Dragon my Prez, not my pops.
“Mind me askin’?” he asked.
“My girl’s Irish, she does that Riverdance shit. She was good at it too.” I sniffed and crossed my arms. Sparks grimaced.
“We don
’t want any trouble with your crew,” Sparks said, “You got a rep and it’s a rep we don’t want no part of. We just set up shop outside your territory and were hoping to meet you and yours when the time was right…” my dad interrupted him.
“That was your first mistake then. Never should have ‘set up shop’ so close without contacting us first. You know the first thing about runnin’ a club son?” My dad pinned the younger man with a stare, though the dude wasn’t that much younger… maybe forty something to my dad’s fifty something.
“Told yah Sparks.” Griz grunted under his breath.
“What the fuck over?” Trigger muttered in my ear. He had that right.
“Fair enough. I deserved that,” Sparks said taking the insult in stride though you could see by his sour expression he didn’t much like it. My pops was the master at this shit. Knowing just how many licks he could get in before a dude would blow his stack. It was a skill we shared. Sparks wasn’t at his limit by half, still my old man took it down a notch. “What can we do to make this right?” the King’s President asked.
“Heh, don’t ask me, ask the boy. It’s his girl you shot!” my pops crossed his arms and Sparks looked at me. I think he was expecting something unreasonable here’s to hoping my demands weren’t what he’d consider out of pocket.
“I want him dead, but!” I stopped him when he opened his mouth, “My girl is a lot more lenient and the slug was dug out of her leg, so I asked her what she wanted.” Griz laughed under his breath. Probably thought I was whipped. I didn’t give two shits what he thought. “She wants him to go to jail, which, let’s face it… That part is out of all of our hands.” Sparks looked at me shrewdly.
“That all she wants?” he asked suspiciously.
“She wants him Out Bad with your crew.” Sparks and Griz exchanged looks. I’d talked it over with my pops… Telling another crew how to conduct their business was pretty much the height of rude and enough to start a war over but seeing as why we were here… it was a fair trade. My dad spoke up.
“Way I sees it, your boy, Spaz you call him?” Sparks and Griz nodded carefully, “What he done is a pretty hard betrayal of your brotherhood. Now I don’t pretend to know your business but if what you say is true and you don’t want a war… I’d consider it a pretty reasonable trade. Seein’ as our reputation precedes us an’ all.” The two men exchanged shrewd looks.
