“You must’ve been a saint in a previous life, then,” Andy said with a grin.
Chiz laughed at her joke. Still half-smiling, he asked, “You ever gonna let me use this stuff on you again?”
Andy tilted her head from its resting place on his chest, so that she could look him in the eyes. “Sure, when I’m confident your head’s in the right place. If I’m not, then no.”
Chiz dipped his head, and kissed the tip of her nose. “Doll, I think it’s time we got me a collar, ‘cause you are definitely holdin’ my leash.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Four weeks after the shootout at the industrial compound, the Priests were back on the road, and heading east. This time, however, their business was personal.
Kong and Fletch were minding the clubhouse, but Morse had felt well enough to make this trip, although he was driving the van. It was his first journey of any length since he’d been shot, but the club had a vested interest in this excursion, and he hadn’t wanted to miss it. Crash, too, had been determined to join them, and since it wouldn’t be as long a distance as their business runs, no one had had the heart to tell him no, even though it would be completed in the space of twenty-four hours and would require immense concentration on his part to complete the ride without accidents.
Today, they were riding to claim justice against the First Church of Christ.
Chiz knew that should they be caught, their mission would be termed ‘revenge.’ It was all fucking semantics as far as he was concerned. A group of fanatics, under the guise of religion, had murdered eleven people. The law would not make them atone for their crimes, but the MC would. That hurt had been committed against someone that they now considered on of their own.
That was part of the reason that Crash had been so adamant about joining them. Elmo might not have wanted kids, but she’d managed to acquire a fully grown son, in the shape of their scarred resident technical geek. Chiz thought it was more than a little skeevy. Crash had a habit of referring to Elmo as ‘Mistress Elmo,’ which seemed at odds with the fact that Elmo was the one that Crash went to for advice about pretty much anything. He wasn’t that much younger than her, either, only around five years, but Elmo appeared to have made it her mission to see that the boy ate at least one meal that wasn’t junk food each day. Chiz was keeping an eye on that shit. It wasn’t a crush, and he wasn’t jealous, but he absolutely did not want to play ‘daddy’ to one of his brothers.
Hand in hand with his growing affinity for Elmo, Crash had made it his mission to perfect the setup of their trip. It had involved some hacking that would add to the list of federal felonies that they were about to commit, but it would be worth it.
First, they had a package to collect.
As they had planned, it was dark by the time they rolled across the state line. Their first destination was the motel that Chiz knew so well now. Morse, having not traveled outside of Absolution for some time, and without his colors, since he was driving the van, was the one to rent a room. He came back with the key for the one they wanted, the one furthest away from the clerk’s office, in the darkest reaches of the complex.
They parked their bikes in a line outside the room, and reversed the van as close to the door as they could. The equipment they needed was in the van, but it did not need to be unloaded yet. The seven men entered the room. Inside, they checked that they had their personal weapons where they wanted them, and they removed their kuttes. Morse opened the back doors of the van, and tucked the bundle of leather to one side, before six men in nondescript dark clothing, with their faces and heads now covered, piled into the cargo space.
From the pitch dark of the bowels of the van, Chiz heard Morse lock the motel room door, then his footsteps as he rounded the van, the click and bang as he opened and shut the door, and then they were moving.
Their first stop was a trailer park.
There was no need for the full group to pile out of the van and draw attention. Shark and Chiz were the only ones to jump down after Morse had opened the doors. Morse returned to the cab of the van. Chiz and Shark mounted the steps to the door of the trailer that they had parked alongside, and pushed open the door that they knew would be unlocked.
So far, so good. The plan was working perfectly. Inside the trailer, Shane stood next to the bound body of a woman. Tricia Pendleton’s eyes were as wide as saucers, and filled with terror, but she managed to find a new level of fear when the two strange men entered her home. She couldn’t make a sound, though, past the duct tape that covered her mouth. Chiz nodded at Shane; only the big man’s eyes were visible between the hood covering his head, and the bandana around his face.
Chiz leaned out the door and checked that the coast was clear before Shark and Shane lifted the struggling Tricia and loaded her into the back of the van. Chiz closed the door to the trailer securely as Shark and Shane climbed back into the van. He did another sweep to check for nosy neighbors. Satisfied that there were none, and that there were no signs of anything amiss, he climbed into the van and pulled the doors shut behind him.
No one spoke as the van began to move again. The silence was only broken by the muffled sobs and whimpers of the woman on the floor at their feet. This next section of their journey was slightly longer, as it took them well out of the city limits. This time, when the van stopped, everyone emptied out into the night.
Morse had parked in the location that Chiz had scouted the week previously. Their destination was an old storage warehouse, just visible beyond the copse of trees that was camouflaging their vehicle. Shane hefted the sniveling Tricia out with him. She couldn’t move under her own steam, as he’d tied her wrists and ankles with cable ties. The big man lifted the woman as if she weighed nothing, and settled her over his shoulder.
Terry, Sinatra and Morse were the first wave. The moved almost silently through the copse, and began to spread out before they reached the edge of the trees. Their posts had already been assigned. A series of whistles informed the men still waiting that the plan was still progressing as it should.
Crash had spent the better part of the last six weeks posing as a potential investor in the Church. He had created an identity, that existed only online, by which to contact the pastor. Over the course of an extended email conversation, interspersed with several bank transfers of nonexistent money from a nonexistent bank account, he had built up a trusting relationship with Pastor Will McCabe. The final carrot had been to offer to fund the conversion of a suitable space into a compound for the Church, a place in which they could live and pray as they pleased. It would basically become home to a cult, although that word had not been used by either man.
The building that they were looking at was one that Crash had chosen and suggested specifically, because its isolated location suited the MC’s purposes as much as it suited the Church’s. Crash’s online alter ego had suggested a meeting to discuss some finer details of the deal. The pastor, blinded by his greed and supposed good fortune, hadn’t seemed to think there was anything ordinary about meeting a virtual stranger in the middle of nowhere after dark. Chiz supposed that the pastor was trusting that God had his back. God would be looking the other way this night.
The signals given by Morse, Terry and Sinatra had signified that the Pastor was inside and alone as planned.
Chiz and Shark, who was carrying the lumpy duffle of supplies from the van, headed down to one of the entrances to the warehouse, Samuel and Crash to the other. Shane followed at a distance, carrying Tricia with him. They wanted to trap the pastor in the building, and did not want the small noises that Tricia was making to alert him to anything amiss. Terry, Sinatra and Morse would keep lookout outside.
The pastor only became aware that his night was not going to go as he’d planned when four men, who he had very definitely not been expecting, walked in through the only available entrances, simultaneously surrounding him and blocking his escape.
“Who are y’all? What’re you doin’ here?” the pastor demanded. He wa
s full of confidence and bravado, until Shane walked in, came right up to him, and dumped the struggling Tricia at his feet.
The pastor dropped to a crouch. “Tricia? That you? Honey, what’s happenin’? Have they hurt you?” He was asking the questions as he tried to pull the tape from her mouth.
Shane reached forward and grabbed the pastor’s wrist, pulling him upright and away from the woman.
“Hey! Let go. I don’t know who the fuck y’all are but you’ve no right…”
Samuel stepped forward and spoke. His voice was muffled by the bandana around his face. “On the contrary, my friend. We have every right.”
“What do y’all want? I have money, I can pay.”
Will McCabe wasn’t a short man, but he was skinny. His badly-fitting cream-colored suit hung off his shoulders. Shane was easily twice his width, and had no problems keeping ahold of him, even though the pastor was struggling hard enough to send the party element of his mullet flying.
At a nod from Samuel, Shane caught both the pastor’s wrists, and brought the man in front of him. The pastor struggled some more, but he didn’t make what Chiz would have considered a serious attempt to free himself. He didn’t even attempt to back-heel Shane in the shins. Chiz wondered if the man simply hadn’t comprehended yet how much trouble he was in.
“We don’t want your money.” Samuel rumbled.
“What do you want then?”
“Retribution. ‘Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.’”
“I don’t know what y’all’re talkin’ about. What’ve you done to Tricia?” Fear was forcing the pastor’s voice to a higher pitch.
“Nothin’. Yet.”
Samuel turned to Chiz. Chiz stepped forward and pulled Tricia up from her position on the floor. He dragged her to the empty space in between Samuel and the pastor. She was struggling frantically again, so Chiz slapped her. The shock and pain took the fight out of her. Shark stepped forward, and dropped the duffle he was carrying by Chiz’s side.
“’And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away,’” intoned Samuel.
“I don’t know what y’all’re fuckin’ talkin’ about!” Will McCabe shouted. “What the fuck’re y’all gonna do to Tricia?”
“Your friend here planted the bomb that killed eleven people at a club near the city a couple of months ago. She will be punished.”
At those words, the pastor stopped struggling. “Who are y’all?” The question was little more than a desperate whisper.
“We are your judgment,” Samuel responded.
Chiz had finished extracting the items he needed from the bag. What she saw caused Tricia to whimper in fear. She started to twist and writhe again, but Shark grabbed her shoulders. Chiz unsheathed his knife from his hip. He reached around Tricia and sliced through the cable ties that bound her wrists.
Shark’s fingers dug into the terrified woman’s shoulders. But Chiz wasn’t looking at the fear and pleading that was naked in her eyes. She had ceased to be a human being to him the moment that he’d seen her walking out of the Pumpkin Patch on the security film, a half hour before the building exploded.
He grabbed her right arm and pulled it out from her body. He reached for the medical tourniquet first. He slipped it around Tricia’s forearm, and yanked it tight, then he forced her arm down against the cold concrete floor. He reached for the tools he’d laid out, selected the large Bowie knife, and in a swift movement, brought it down on Tricia’s wrist. The knife was heavy and razor sharp, and the cut was clean. Tricia screamed behind the duct tape as she stared at the bleeding stump of her wrist. When Chiz reached for the small blowtorch, she passed out. She did not regain consciousness while he cauterized the wound.
From the moment Chiz had cut the woman’s hand off, the pastor had started screaming “No! No, no, no, no!” The words ran together in a continuous litany. When Chiz turned to him, he was whispering them like a prayer.
Chiz picked up the Bowie knife and wiped the blade clean on the pastor’s suit. The pastor had tried to pull away when Chiz approached him, but the mountain that was Shane behind him was a solid wall, and he could not escape.
Chiz returned the large blade to the bag. He took his own knife and cut a lock of hair from the pastor’s mullet. He twisted it into a knot, and tucked it into the pocket of his jeans. Then he nodded wordlessly at Shane. This revenge would be his.
Shane let go of the pastor’s arms. The groaning man slumped into a pile of flesh and bones, still whimpering, “No, no, no, no, no.”
Shane dug into the duffle. When he’d been consulted about the plan, and had been offered the chance to exact justice on behalf of Andy and their dead friends, he had requested some very specific items. His shopping list had raised a few eyebrows, well, except for Shark and Chiz. They’d seen the list and gotten a little giddy.
Shane forced the pastor to kneel. The man must’ve been heading deep into traumatic shock. He’d lost all of his fight. The small roll of razor wire that Shane pulled from a box had caused the most consternation. Shane wrapped the vicious line of barbs around the pastor’s hands, forcing them into a pain-filed parody of prayer. The pastor seemed almost not to notice that pain, but when Shane squirted gasoline over him, he tried to get to his feet to run.
That was when he felt the agony of the razor wire in his hands as he struggled to gain his balance. Before he could run, Shane fired up the blowtorch, and lit the trail of gas that he’d left on the concrete as a fuse. The flames whooshed along in shades of yellow, white and blue. The pastor exploded into a screaming fireball.
Samuel allowed him to feel the pain, to know the torture, then he drew his gun, and shot the pastor in the head. It wasn’t mercy, it was simply a necessity to prevent the flailing body from careening into anything he could set light to. Shark pulled the small fire-extinguisher, the only item as yet unused, from the duffle, and swiftly put out the flames that were still consuming the body of the pastor. The smell of burnt flesh was thick and sour, and Chiz knew it’d be a couple of days at least before he would be able to be around cooking meat without being reminded of this scene.
No words needed to be exchanged between the brotherhood. They left the body of the pastor in the warehouse. Shane carried Tricia back to the van. They dumped her relatively close to a hospital. She wouldn’t be able to tell anyone anything. She hadn’t seen any faces or identifying marks.
Dawn had finished breaking by the time they arrived back in Absolution. Exhausted, but at peace, Chiz stripped and climbed into bed next to Elmo. She stirred slightly in her sleep, but did not wake. Chiz pulled her close, and buried his face in the sleep-tangled mess of her hair. The scent of her body, and the lingering fragrance of her almost too-sweet perfume, went some way to mitigate the stench of burning flesh that clung to the inside of his nostrils.
He was tired to the marrow of his bones, and initially he thought to do nothing more than close his eyes and sleep. But he was wrapped tightly around the body of the woman that he cherished in a way he’d never thought possible. Desire gave him a shot of energy.
Chiz tucked Elmo even more tightly into the cocoon of his body and ran his lips over her exposed shoulder. She was so soft, so delicate, and she was his. She murmured sleepily and shifted slightly in his embrace. Chiz wondered whether his touch had become a dream, and he smiled to himself. He smoothed his palm over her hip, across her belly, over her smooth, naked mound, and between her legs.
Elmo shifted again, trying to turn onto her back, but Chiz still didn’t think she’d woken; she didn’t say anything. Her movement had opened her thighs to him. He took advantage of the access to cup her mound more fully in his hand. He ran his fingers along her slit, which swiftly became wet at his touch.
“Baby, you’re home.” Elmo’s voice was thick with slumber, and she hadn’t quite opened her eyes yet.
Chiz figured she was maybe half awake at best. He shifted, finally allowing her to
roll onto her back, but he stayed close, and kept his hand where it was, never slowing the movement of his fingers.
“Yeah. I‘m home, doll.”
She snuggled her face into his chest even as she spread her legs further apart.
“You’re okay?”
“Better than perfect, doll.”
He couldn’t wait any longer. His cock had been hard since his skin had first made contact with her naked body. He moved to lie over her and pushed into her slick pussy. Her hot flesh enveloped him completely. This was all the home he needed, that he would ever need. Chiz began to move, slowly drawing almost all the way out, and inching back in by agonizingly slow degrees. He wanted to take his time to savor the feeling of closeness, of the world being no more than the two of them in this bed at this moment.
Elmo arched, trapped between the bed and his body, and came fully awake.
“Oh. You are home.”
“Who’d you think it was, doll?”
Breath on the Wind Page 28
