by Loren, Celia
“Fuck.”
“Why don’t I meet you back at your house?” Hollywood suggests.
“Yeah, be there in ten,” I reply. I know he wants to tear me a new one, and I deserve it, too. I tuck my phone into my front pocket and gun the engine, heading for home.
I pull into the driveway and notice Marcus’s car parked out front. Hollywood’s headlight cuts through the darkness as I step off my bike and walk up to the house. He parks at the front curb and cuts the engine as I unlock the front door, and silently makes his way up the walk. Kalb and Scout run to the door, barking, and jump up on my chest to greet me.
“Hey, boys,” I murmur, rubbing their ears before gently pushing them off. Hollywood steps in and closes the door behind him. “Violet?” I call out, walking into the living room and flipping on the light. No sign of her. “Marcus?” I glance around the clean kitchen and walk into the hallway leading to the bedrooms, pushing open the doors as I pass. I finally make it to the empty master bathroom and frown, then return to Hollywood, who is sitting in the living room on the couch, eyeing a half-finished joint on the coffee table.
“You mind?” he asks, nodding toward it.
“Go for it.”
He leans forward and lights it contemplatively. I take a seat in the armchair. Hollywood joined the club while I was on one of my tours, and I didn’t know what to make of him for a long time. Alternately arrogant, loyal, and funny, it wasn’t until this past year that I really got to know and like him.
“Marcus here?” he finally asks.
“No, don’t know where either of them are. Though his car’s here.”
“Maybe they got the munchies,” he suggests, flicking the ash into a mug on the side table.
“Violet and Marcus don’t do anything together,” I say, shaking my head.
“She picked him up at The Tease that time,” he says with a shrug.
“What time?” I ask, frowning.
“When you were on that run to Utah,” he replies, as though he’s reminding me of something I already know about.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Hollywood eyes me for a second. “Marcus was high, causing trouble, she came to pick him up. Stopped me from beating the shit out of him.”
I shift in my seat. I don’t like not knowing about what’s going on between people in my own house. “Neither of them mentioned that.”
“Huh,” he replies, taking another slow drag.
“You got something to say to me?” I ask, leaning forward.
He blows the smoke slowly out of the corner of his mouth without looking at me.
“I just wanted to get a look at you for myself. Rumor is that you haven’t been sober in weeks. Cherish says you and Violet are on the rocks.”
“Cherish should mind her own fucking business,” I snap.
His eyes flick toward me. “I’d watch what you say to me right now. You don’t have that many supporters left in the club.” He tosses the butt of the joint into the mug. “You even know where she is right now?”
I pause, glaring at him, then shake my head.
“I better call Flint,” he says. “Wanted to see where your head was at first.”
He stands, taking his phone out and crossing to the back door. He slides it shut behind him and I watch him raise the phone to his ear.
That reminds me. I take my phone out of my pocket and scroll through my voicemails with a sigh. Six unheard ones. I press play.
First one’s from Bean, telling me I’m late. Second one’s from Hollywood, telling me I’m really late. Third’s from Violet. It’s hesitant, and I feel a pressure on my chest at the sound of her voice. She heard I wasn’t at church, says she’s worried about me. Fourth is from Flint. I press the volume down as his yell threatens to pierce my eardrum. Fifth is from Hollywood, gruffly telling me to call him. Sixth is from Violet again.
I turn the volume back up. Sounds like a bunch of static. I glance down at the time on it. Nearly eight minutes long. Jesus. Did she butt dial me? I put it on speaker and lay it on my thigh. I glance out at Hollywood, but the light from inside reflecting off the window makes it hard to see him. I wonder what Flint is saying.
My attention snaps back to the voicemail. Was that Marcus’s voice? Something about cards…suddenly I hear him very distinctly: “What the fuck?!” he yells. My muscles go tense and I bring the phone up to my ear, still on speaker. I can only hear every other word… “forgive…debt…” I press the volume button again, but it’s already all the way up.
Hollywood pulls the door back open and steps inside. “What’s up?” he asks, taking in my behavior.
“Got a weird voicemail from Violet…I think you’re right, she is with Marcus, but I can barely hear it.”
Suddenly the message stops. Hollywood walks over and sits on the arm of the couch nearest me. “Play it again,” he suggests.
I press play, holding the phone out between us. We both stare at it as though we could see through to the voices on the other side if we tried hard enough. Every now and then we glance up at each other as we acknowledge a few words that we’ve both heard. Again I reach the part in the message where Marcus clearly yells, “what the fuck,” and Hollywood frowns.
We lean in a little closer. I couldn’t hear this part earlier because Hollywood walked in. I hear Violet’s voice again.
My heart constricts.
“What did she just say?” I whisper, hoping I went momentarily insane.
“She said, ‘you’re pointing a gun at me,’” Hollywood murmurs, standing up. “We better get to the clubhouse.”
Chapter Nineteen
Drifter
Present Day
I glare at the new prospect, wanting to punch the shit out of him, but knowing that won’t make him any better at his fucking job. When we lost our tech whiz, Twitch, last year in the shootout with the Devil’s Army, we struggled to replace him. And this dumb motherfucker was the best we got.
“Breathe, Drifter,” Flint says warningly. I turn around and punch the wall behind me. “Or do that,” he adds drily.
The Sons’ are gathered in the office behind the garage, where all our tech equipment is. When word went out that Violet might be in trouble, everyone gathered quickly. I’m still in deep shit with them, and I know they’re really here for her, not for me.
“Wait, wait, I think I got it,” Bran murmurs, frowning at his computer screen.
I take a deep breath and rub my hand as he fiddles with a speaker. The space is suddenly filled with the sound of Violet’s voice, the static now pushed to the background.
“So, Marcus, do you remember the name of the bar yet? Where Drifter is, I mean?”
The brothers around me still as we listen, rapt.
“No, just keep going down this way. I’ll tell you when to turn.”
“What’s…what’s your favorite card game? …Just trying to get your mind off your injuries. I’m sure you’re in a lot of pain, right?”
“Yeah…It’s poker…my favorite card game.”
“I like poker. But I’m terrible at it…You have any luck with it lately?”
“Not really, no.”
I look over at Flint as he frowns at me in confusion. I shake my head. I don’t know why she’s asking Marcus about card games either.
“This looks a little familiar…wait, is Drifter at that bar where I saw you? The Double Eight Bar?”
“Yeah, yeah, the Double Eight Bar, that’s where he is. You’re right. I completely forgot the name of it.”
I hear Marcus laugh. What’s the Double Eight Bar? Why is he telling Violet I’m there? My hands tighten into fists as I hear a screech of tires over the tape.
“What the fuck?...the fuck are you trying to pull?”
“Marcus, please…I can’t…”
My stomach clenches as I hear the fear in Violet’s voice.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“I’m having a panic attack.”
�
��Well, just…calm the fuck down.”
“You’re pointing a gun at me. Maybe you could not point a gun at me.”
I see the brothers shift around me as they process this information.
“Sorry, I have to deliver you.”
“Deliver me? What does that mean?”
“I won for a while…but then I got on a bad streak…I’m in debt…there’s no way I can pay them back…”
Oh god, Marcus…
“The skinheads? They’re the ones who beat you?”
“They were going to kill me, but their leader, Vince, he said he’d forgive the debt if I delivered you.”
“What does Vince look like?”
“Um, tall, really dark beard, shaved head. Why?”
“Marcus, please, you don’t have to do this. We can pay off your debt, Drifter will sell the house if he has to.”
“No. No. This way, Drifter will never know about any of this. You’ll just disappear, and I’ll have a clean slate, for once in my life. Besides, he owes me.”
“Ace—Vince, he’s going to kill me. Marcus, I know you’re not a bad person.”
“Sorry. This is the only way. Get out.”
There is a shuffling noise on the recording and then it shuts off. My head spins. I know what I’ve just heard, but I can’t believe it.
Flint leans forward from the wall where he’s had his hand pressed into his beard.
“So, what do we know?” he asks the room.
“Marcus is turning her over. For a gambling debt,” I answer, my voice hollow.
“To some skinheads. Or more specifically, Ace. Formerly of the Devil’s Army,” Hollywood adds, glancing at Flint.
“He escaped that night. It was a mistake for me not to share that information,” Flint replies gravely, looking around the room. “A mistake I mean to rectify tonight.”
“And Marcus is injured. They beat him,” Bean adds from the corner. “He told Violet he was taking her to Drifter.”
A dozen pairs of eyes turn to me. I know what they’re all thinking. This is my fault.
“They can’t be far. They were in a car, and the message isn’t that long,” Tag pipes up. “But Violet said they were going to the Double Eight bar, and I never heard of that. And I’ve been to every bar in this county.”
There’s silence in the room. He’s right. Violet’s close, but I have no idea where.
“If her cell phone’s still on, can we track it?” Green asks.
Flint shakes his head. “Greeley’s on suspension. He’s our only contact in the force right now.”
We might be rebuilding our technological capabilities, but we definitely can’t track a cell phone without some help from our cop buddy.
“Marcus laughed when she said ‘double eight.’ Like she said something dumb,” I say quietly. It’s strange to be dissecting the conversation of the two people closest to me in front of my whole club.
“So that’s not the name of the bar?” Tag asks, trying to follow my logic.
I shrug helplessly. “I don’t know…but didn’t it sound like that? Maybe she got the name wrong.”
A short bark of laughter escapes from Bran’s mouth. Everyone turns to gape at him and I lunge toward him.
“You think this is fucking funny, you little prick?” I growl, as Flint steps between us.
Bran holds his hands up defensively. “No, no, I’m sorry. I just…I just got it. Double eight, I mean.” He leans forward and types quickly on his computer, and then turns the monitor to the rest of the room. The screen is filled with images of two number eights sitting next to each other. “It’s a skinhead symbol. It stands for ‘Heil Hitler.’”
“Fuck, he’s right. I saw some guys with that tattoo in prison,” Tag says. “‘H’ is the eighth letter in the alphabet. It’s an abbreviation.”
“I’m sure they don’t call it the ‘double eight bar,’ that’s why that guy was laughing,” Bran continues.
“But Violet called it that, so she must have thought that was the name of the place,” Flint points out.
“And she was smart enough to turn her phone on, so she must have said the name of it for a reason,” Bean says. “If it’s an underground gambling place, maybe that’s the only thing identifying the building.”
Bran has turned the computer back toward him and continued typing. “So if the drive was 15 minutes or shorter, based on the length of the message and when Violet decided to call Drifter, and we rule out certain neighborhoods where an underground gambling place would be too obvious, we don’t have that much area left.” He turns his computer monitor back around. There’s a red circle emanating from my house, and the brothers gather around to look at it.
Finally Tag sticks his finger on the screen. “There,” he says, “this area is industrial, lots of abandoned buildings. That’s where I’d put it.”
“He’s right,” Flint says. “No time to waste. We’ll split up into two groups, one starting at the north end and one at the south. Look for a building marked with a double eight.”
Everyone heads for the door. I spot Tag adjust his shirt over the gun in his belt, hiding it while he’s out in public. I start toward the door, too, but Flint’s hand on my chest stops me.
“I think you should stay here,” he says quietly.
“Violet’s in trouble—I’m not going to just sit around,” I reply, shocked he’d even suggest it.
“She’s in trouble because your brother kidnapped her. If—when we find her, you really ready to deal with the consequences?”
My stomach turns. In my shock over the events, I hadn’t thought as far ahead as Flint had. Marcus will have to pay. I bring my gaze up to meet Flint’s.
“I’ll do what I have to do,” I say. Flint looks into my eyes for a moment, and then removes his hand and nods.
“Alright, let’s ride.”
Chapter Twenty
Violet
Present Day
“Good job, Marcus. Even when you texted me, I wasn’t sure you’d really show,” Ace says.
I glance sharply at Marcus. He must have lied when he said he was texting Drifter. Ace was expecting us.
Ace’s eyes flick down to the slight bulge in my sweatshirt pocket. He roughly grips the front of my sweatshirt and grabs my phone with his other hand.
“You fucking idiot…they can track her,” he growls at Marcus, then drops the phone onto the ground and stomps on it, sending shards flying across the sidewalk.
“Bring her to the back,” he continues, pulling the door back open. Marcus grabs my arm and pushes me forward. I walk toward Ace, who grins wolfishly at me as I pass into the dim interior. I keep going, toward the door through which I saw Ace and Marcus the last time I was here. It’s open now, and I walk through.
The card tables are pushed to one side of the room, revealing a dirty cement floor. A single chair is sitting in the empty space. I hear the door shut behind me and fight to keep breathing. I can already feel the tingling in my hands and feet that tells me that I’m hyperventilating.
“Sit,” Ace says, as I turn to face him. I obey. He walks toward me, one hand slowly reaching into his jean pocket. He pulls out a pair of handcuffs and I stiffen in fear. He shakes them at me, delighted by my reaction. “Just like the ones you used on me. Except these are much stronger.”
He walks behind the chair and cuffs my hands together tightly. I can smell his B.O. as he leans close to me, his breath blowing across the back of my hair. He crosses back into my vision as I try to circle my hands. He’s locked them so tightly that I can hardly move at all.
Ace holds his hand out, palm up, to Marcus. “The gun.”
Marcus pauses, looking at me, then lowers his eyes and hands Ace the pistol. Ace checks the safety and tucks it into his pants at the small of his back.
“I don’t know about this new look, Ace,” I say, with more bravado than I really feel. Maybe I can buy some time before Ace does whatever he’s going to do to me. Time in which Drifter might be able to
find me.
“No?” Ace says, running his hand across his shaved head.
“No, you always had such nice hair.”
“The skinheads really seem to like it.”
“You say that like you’re not one of them.”
“Truth is, I don’t give a fuck what they think about blacks or Jews as long as I get a cut of what they’re bringing in,” he admits, spreading his arms wide. “As Marcus here learned, eventually, everyone loses at cards. It’s funny watching them sit in here, the excitement on their faces. Each of them is convinced that they’re special, that somehow they’re going to beat the odds, and so they’re always so shocked when they lose. It’s like their God has abandoned them! As though He’d ever poke His head into a place like this.”
“Are you trying to tell me that you’re a non-racist skinhead?” I ask, cocking my head slightly.
“I’m telling you that when your fucking boyfriend killed my best friend and every one of my brothers, I was left with nothing.” He starts advancing on me. Oh, shit. “I’m telling you that I needed protection, a new brotherhood. And I that’s what I got.”
“I didn’t mean…”
“Do you have any idea what I’ve had to do to get in with these guys?” He suddenly whips around and pulls up the back of his t-shirt. Where his Devil’s Army tattoo once was, his back is now covered in thick scars. “That wasn’t even the initiation.” He begins to laugh, a sick, dry, chortle. “That was just so that I could be considered for initiation. And then to rise through the ranks as quickly as I did? You have no fucking idea.” He spins back around and spits out the last sentence at me, just inches from my face.
“Ace, I never meant…”
He pulls his face back and I see his hand coming toward me just a second before my head is snapped to the left from the force of the blow. I close my eyes as my vision blurs and a buzz begins behind my eyes. I’ve been hit before, by my ex-husband Rooster. I know it will go away in a minute, and I know Ace isn’t done yet.
As I pull my head back, his hand hits me from the other direction. I think the first blow was with an open hand, but this was definitely a fist. The chair teeters back and I feel Ace’s foot on my knee, pressing the front of the chair back to the floor.
