Collateral

by Blakeley Wilde

He bit his lip. “My dad said it was cancer, but I have reason to believe otherwise.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “I think a rival gang put a hit on her,” he said. “What better trophy to have than the blood of the wife of a rival MC President?”

  “Do you have proof?” I asked.

  “I’ve heard stories,” he said. “And I did find an article about a suspicious death that happened the day she died, only it didn’t name any names since the investigation was still pending.”

  “Weird.”

  “The way that person died, their age, the location,” he said. “It all seems to point to my mom. And I don’t have any recollection of going to a hospital or seeing her sick or anything. You’d think I’d remember something like that, right?”

  “I’d think so, but then again you were only five,” I countered. “It’s hard to say what you can and can’t remember from that age.”

  “I just remember that one day she was there, and the next day my dad said she died,” he said with a far off look in his eyes. “I remember the way she smelled. Like jasmine and gardenias. And her smile. We even had the same blue eyes. She had wild, bushy blonde hair. And I remember her laugh. How can I remember those things about her, but not remember if she was sick?”

  “Maybe she tried to hide it from you so you wouldn’t be upset?” I speculated.

  “Maybe,” he said. “I mean, I hope she wasn’t killed. I hope she died in her sleep or died so doped up on morphine that she didn’t feel a thing. That would be great. I guess I’ll never know though.”

  “You can’t worry about the past too much,” I said. “Don’t let it consume you.”

  “I know,” he sighed.

  “Did you have an okay childhood otherwise?” I asked.

  “I was raised mostly by my grandparents. After my mom died, my dad took off with his gang. I saw him a few times a year, but I think my grandparents knew he was into shady things. I was a shithead of a teenager though. Put them through absolute hell. When my dad came knocking on my 18th birthday, I jumped at the chance to join his gang,” he said. “I guess I just wanted to prove something to him. To myself. I wanted my dad to love me, and I figured it was the only way.”

  “Aw, Raze,” I moaned. He was more broken than I ever could have imagined.

  “I’ve never told anyone this stuff before, Mia,” he said. “No one.”

  I pretended to zip my lips. “Don’t worry.”

  “Nah, I mean it just feels good to get it all off my chest,” he said. “It’s kind of freeing.”

  “Good!” I leaned down and kissed his smooth chest. I looked up at him and for a split second saw an innocent little boy who’d been through the school of hard knocks instead of a grown man covered in tattoos who could chew nails and spit them out like no one else could.

  “Enough about me,” he said as he attempted to change the subject. “I’m tired of talking about my shitty childhood. What was yours like?”

  “Let’s see,” I began. “My mom was a stay at home mom with four kids. I had a brother and two sisters. I was the oldest. My dad worked in a factory. Sometimes temporary layoffs were a part of life, which really sucked. I remember back to school shopping at Goodwill one year. We lived in a two bedroom trailer until I was seven, then we moved to a four bedroom, run down house that my parents fixed up over the span of several years. By the time it was all fixed up, I was almost out of high school.”

  “So you came from a working class family,” he said. “Parents still married?”

  “They are,” I replied.

  “That’s good that you had that,” he said. “I always wondered what it would’ve been like to have that typical, all-American family growing up.”

  “Oh, we were far from typical. Trust me,” I laughed. “It might sound good from the outside, but you didn’t see my dad down a case of beer each night and pass out by seven. You didn’t see my little sister coming home knocked up at fifteen years old. My brother was arrested three times by the time he turned nineteen. My mom was so doped up on anti-depressants she was nothing more than a shell of her former self. We were far from all-American.”

  “How come you never left for college or anything?” Raze asked. “You seem like a bright girl. Why work at that sleazy motel?”

  “I did go to college for a semester,” I said. “It wasn’t for me. I got homesick. I fell behind. I didn’t want to graduate with a mountain of student loans I’d never be able to repay, so I left and came back home and got a job.”

  “Do you think you’ll ever go back?” he asked. “Like what do you want to do with your life?”

  “I’d like to be a nurse,” I said. “I know nursing school is hard, but if I could just find the right one, I think I’d make it through. I want to be an E.R. nurse. I think it’d be exhilarating and exciting and fulfilling. I want something fast-paced.”

  “You should do it,” he said.

  “What about you? What do you want to be?” I asked.

  “Honestly, I never thought about it. I always thought I’d be in the MC the rest of my life and then take over when my dad died,” he said as he stared up at the popcorn ceiling above us.

  “Well, time to start thinking about it,” I said.

  “No kidding,” he snorted. “I don’t know. I guess I probably don’t see myself going to college or anything. If I could find a steady job at a factory or plant or something, I could do that. I just want to be a provider. I don’t care if I hate the work or not.”

  “You say that now,” I replied. “But when you go to the factory day in and day out and are told what to do, when to do it, when to piss, when to shit, and when to leave and all of that, it’ll get old.”

  “I never thought about that,” he sighed. “I guess I could start up my own garage or something. I could fix cycles.”

  “Perfect,” I said as I rubbed his smooth chest. “I could totally see you doing that.”

  A genuine smile spread across Raze’s lips, and I knew for the first time in a long time, he had some sort of hope for the future.

  “We’re going to have a great life together,” I said. “We can build it just the way we want it. We’ll go after whatever we want, and we won’t let anything stop us. No dream will be too big or too small.”

  He turned his head towards me and looked me straight in the eyes. “I’ve never told anyone this before, but I just want an ordinary life. I don’t want to hurt people. I don’t want to have to constantly check over my shoulder anymore. I want a wife. A couple of kids. A dog. I want to go to work. Come home at five. Eat dinner with my family and play catch in the yard with my kids.”

  “I think that sounds amazing,” I said.

  “I’ve never wanted anything so badly in my life,” he continued. “It’s the one thing I’ve never had – stability.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “I think it’s what my mom would’ve wanted for me,” he said. “I don’t think she’s looking down on me and beaming proudly about how I shot a guy in the desert and left him for dead or how I smuggled a bunch of drugs over the Mexican border at twenty years old.”

  “You shot a guy?” I asked. I assumed he’d done bad things, but to hear him speak so casually about it was something else.

  “I’m speaking hypothetically,” he said, though I found it a little hard to believe. “I’m just saying, if I could have a nice, normal life, I think it would make her happy.”

  “I’m sure it would,” I agreed. “But ultimately, you have to do it because it’s the life you want, not because it’s the life you think your mom would’ve wanted for you.”

  “I know,” he replied. “But can’t it be a little of both?”

  “I guess,” I said. “I don’t see why not.”

  My eyelids were growing heavy. I wanted to continue our conversation so badly, but I couldn’t fight the urge to pass out any longer. I had gotten Raze to open up, and the conversation had gone much deeper than I anticipated, but my fatigue was setting in har
dcore.

  “You can barely stay awake,” Raze whispered. “I’ll let you catch some sleep. I’m going to jump in the shower.”

  I dragged myself up and threw on a pair of yellow pajama pants and a thin, white tank top. I flicked off the lights so that the room was pitch black except for the light escaping around the cracks of the bathroom door. I crawled underneath he cool sheets and rested my weary head on the flat, hotel pillow. Within seconds I was out cold, which was why I was startled to be awoken shortly after with someone’s hand covering my mouth.

  CHAPTER 11

  I tried to scream, but any sounds I attempted to make were muffled by the salty, hairy hand of the heathen that was attempting to pull me out of bed. I flailed my arms and kicked my legs, but I was powerless. This guy was huge. He was a brute. And he was quickly overpowering my small frame.

  With his hand covering my mouth and part of my nose, I could hardly breathe at all. I was sure I was going to pass out if I continued fighting any harder, but my instincts refused to let me give up.

  It all seemed like a blur. One minute I was sound asleep in the bed, and the next minute I was out in the hallway with this guy being drug down the carpet against my will. I hoped and prayed with every fiber of my being that Raze would emerge from the shower within seconds, see the bed empty, and go looking for me, but I knew it was a long stretch. If only life operated that way.

  The guy finished dragging me down the hall until we got to an exit door that lead outside to the parking lot. It was the back lot, one that seemed to be seldom used, and waiting just mere steps away was a rusted, blue pickup truck with another man sitting in the driver’s seat. The passenger door was already open, and the other guy kicked it wide once he saw us. My kidnapper flipped the seat forward and threw me in the back seat.

  “Lay down, bitch!” he yelled.

  For the first time, he wasn’t behind me anymore and I could see his face. It was the blonde biker. The one who had attacked Raze, and the one who we were pretty sure we’d seen in the diner the night before.

  I glanced around the backseat of the truck. There were no doors or windows. There was no way I could escape.

  The second the blonde biker hoisted his big, burly body inside the truck, we peeled off and out of the parking lot. I’ll never forget the piercing sound of squealing tires and the smell of burning rubber. They couldn’t have gotten out of there any faster.

  “Whoo hoo!” the driver yelled with a huge grin on his face. “We did it, Shark!”

  Shark must have been the blonde one’s name.

  They were dressed in jeans and flannel this time. They must have traded in their cuts and leather chaps in order to blend in a bit more. I wondered how the hell they found us all the way in Reno, and I’d determined they must have been much smarter than we assumed.

  “What are you doing with me?” I asked. I tried to sound strong, but I knew they could hear the shaking in my voice.

  “Don’t worry about it, pretty lady,” Shark said. “You’ll see soon enough.”

  I felt a sick, twisted feeling in the pit of my stomach. I knew this wasn’t going to end up good for me. I remembered Raze’s comment about his mom being a trophy for a rival gang because of his dad’s position of power, and I hoped this was nothing like that. My mind began wandering and envisioning being tortured by these men, but I put a stop to it as soon as I could. I didn’t want to panic yet. I didn’t want to play all my good cards and let them know I was scared. I had to be smart about this and hope that Raze would get to me in time. I refused to give up hope. Not yet.

  We drove. And drove. And drove. I tried to check the clock on the dash as much as possible, but every time I’d peek my head up, I’d get yelled at.

  “Knock that off, you dumb bitch!” Shark would yell as he’d reach his arm back and smack me across the side of my head. “I told you to keep down!”

  It took everything I had to keep my composure. All I wanted to do was curl into a circle and bawl my eyes out. I wanted to be anywhere but there. I glanced around on the floor of the backseat, looking for some sort of tool I could bash them over the back of the head with. I remembered my dad always kept tools in the back of his truck. But the truck was clean. There was nothing back there. Not a wrench. Not a soda can or beer bottle. Nothing.

  I laid back and closed my eyes, pretending to be on a warm, sandy beach with Raze by my side. It seemed completely ridiculous to think about that given the circumstances, but I had to keep calm.

  The last time I looked at the clock, it read 12:15am. I remembered it being a little past ten when I’d first looked at it. If I had to guess, I’d say we were in California by now, that is, if we were headed west. I didn’t know which way we were headed to be honest.

  “Let’s pull off over here,” Shark said to the other biker.

  I was trying to stay awake as every once in a while they’d talk to each other, but it was getting harder and harder. At first the jolt of adrenaline coursing through my veins had kept me wired and alert, but now my body just wanted to surrender to the soft drum of the truck engine and the sound of the wheels against the pavement below me. It was lulling me to sleep, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  By the time I awoke, the sun was out. It was the next morning. That was the only thing I knew. We had driven all night long, and the sound of crunching gravel beneath the tires told me we were coming to a stop.

  “Wait here,” Shark said as he climbed out of the truck.

  “Don’t you do anything stupid now, girl,” the driver said. “Stay down until we tell you to move.”

  I said nothing.

  We waited for what felt like forever before Shark climbed back in the truck.

  “Got us a room for later tonight,” he said. “Two beds. Check in is at three.”

  I saw him wink at the other guy as he nudged back at me, and I wanted to puke.

  “So what the fuck are we going to do all day?” the driver asked.

  “Chill out, Rip,” he said. “We’ll figure it out. Boss wants us to stick around here for a bit anyway.”

  “Why?” Rip, the driver, asked. “What the hell for? I thought we was supposed to go to Maynard with the girl next?”

  “Who the hell knows with him,” Shark said. “We just gotta do what we’re told.”

  Rip sighed. “Well I know one thing. I’m fuckin’ starvin’.”

  The truck peeled out of the parking lot of what was apparently a motel and made a bee line for a local McDonald’s. As we approached the drive thru, I could smell the fresh coffee, eggs, and pancakes wafting through the windows. I didn’t know how I could eat at a time like that, but my stomach was rumbling loud. I knew I needed to eat something.

  “Yeah, I’ll take a number one with a coffee,” Rip said. “What do you want, Shark?”

  “Give me a number four,” Shark said. “With an orange juice.”

  “And a number four with an O.J.,” Rip said.

  “Will that complete your order?” the employee asked.

  “Yep, that’ll be it,” Rip yelled out.

  I couldn’t believe they weren’t going to feed me.

  “What if I wanted something,” I piped up from the back seat. I had hoped maybe they’d just forgotten about me.

  Rip let out a loud cackle and exchanged glances with Shark.

  “Oh, honey, we don’t have enough money for you,” he said. “You’re going to have to make some money tonight if you want to eat.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “You didn’t think we wouldn’t put ya to work, did ya?” Rip asked as he turned around. “You have to earn your keep if you’re going to be tagging along with us. We don’t have enough money to go around, baby doll.”

  They pulled up and got their food, throwing a ten dollar bill at the window server. The car immediately filled with the sweet and savory scent of fast food breakfast, and my stomach gurgled even louder. I watched them devour their sandwiches and shove their hash browns
into their greasy mouths, slurping their drinks loudly and laughing.

  “I’m so full,” Shark lamented as he patted his belly a short time later.

  “That was so good,” Rip replied. “Man that was good.”

  I was pretty sure they were just saying that to torture me. These men were a lot smarter than they looked, and I knew they were up to something.

  I laid my head down, hoping the smell of their food would soon leave the air, and tried to ignore my hunger pangs. I tried not to think about my empty stomach or the fact that I was completely and utterly powerless. I tried not to think about what they were going to do with me that night or what I’d have to do to “earn my keep”. I closed my eyes tight and thought about Raze. I thought about everything I’d been willing to do to be with him, and I hadn’t come this far to give up now. I was a fighter. I was going to keep fighting. I was going to do whatever I had to do to get back with him, even if it damn near killed me.