by Jessie Cooke
“I started to, but...” Wolf waited, trying to be patient, but when she didn’t go on after quite some time he said:
“It’s okay, Michael is my friend. I just want to make sure he’s okay. I don’t want to cause trouble for anyone, especially his neighbors. He likes living here. Please tell me why you didn’t call the police, why no one did.” Wolf knew they hadn’t been called. If they had, the place would still be crawling with them...especially once they found out who Granite was. Wolf let his guard down for a second and the door was suddenly pushed closed. He heard the latch and cussed under his breath before starting to move on. That was when he heard the chain being taken off, and the door reopening. A short woman, about five-foot-tall with dark blonde hair and light blue eyes, stood in the doorway. She was cute, like a little imp, thin and wiry.
“A man took him,” she said, blurting it out like she was in a hurry, or afraid to be talking about it. “He told me if I called anyone, he’d kill him, and come back and kill me too.” A tear ran down her face and she was shaking all over. “I’m sorry. I hope he didn’t hurt Michael...he’s my friend. I was just scared...”
“It’s okay,” Wolf said, as softly as he could manage. “You did the right thing. Did the man have a gun?”
She nodded and said, “And it was pointed straight at Michael’s head.” She wiped a tear off her cheek and went on, “He looked really mean...like he’d really back up what he was saying.”
“Can you describe him to me?...I’m sorry, what’s your name?”
“Jessica.”
“Jessica, it’s important that we find Michael before the man that took him hurts him. Can you tell me what he looks like?”
In a shaky voice, with her arms crossed and hugging her shaking body, Jessica gave Wolf a description of the man that took Granite. He had no idea who she was describing until she said, “He had a tattoo on his neck...some kind of bird. It went all the way from the front of his throat to the back of his neck.”
“Shit!”
She jumped. “I’m sorry!”
Wolf held up a palm as she backed away from him. “No, I’m sorry. I think I know who has Michael and I’m going to get him back. Do me a favor, though, if the police do show up, will you just tell them you weren’t home or something?”
“Okay,” she said, softly. “Will you let me know...if he’s okay?”
Wolf could see the concern in her eyes. For a long time, he’d thought that Granite was gay. He never had anything to do with the club girls and Wolf had never seen him with a woman. He’d thought that was part of his “alone” time. But it was obvious that this woman was in love with him. His odd little friend wasn’t gay, he was just faithful to one woman. “I will,” he told her softly. “We’ll find him.”
She went back into the apartment and he looked up and motioned at Bruf, who was five apartments down on his side. When he got close Wolf said, “Mouse.”
“What the hell?”
“The girl says the guy who took Granite had some kind of bird tattoo on his neck.” When Coyote, Wolf’s father, was president, and Wolf and Bruf were prospects, there was a man that went by the name of Mouse that rode with them. Mouse spent five years in prison after a gun buy went bad, and while he was in there, he’d dumped the club. In the meantime, Coyote died, and Wolf took over. Mouse wasn’t ever considered a threat to them, and Wolf wasn’t a stickler for the blood in, blood out rule. If brothers didn’t want to be brothers, he let them go...as long as there was no reason to worry they were taking any animosity with them. Wolf had Mouse watched for the first year he was out, and that’s the only reason Wolf even knew about that tattoo. He’d had it done in prison, trying to change his persona. He ran with a rough crowd, skinheads, and Wolf would be willing to bet that it pissed him off that they still called him Mouse. But nothing Mouse or the Brotherhood of the White Owl, as they called themselves, were into had anything to do with the Skulls and didn’t infringe on their territory...so after a year, he dropped the surveillance and Mouse was forgotten. That was almost two years ago. It seemed that maybe Wolf had jumped the gun on that one.
“Mouse? What the fuck would he want with Granite?”
Wolf made a face. “Means to an end,” he said. “My money is on revenge.”
4
Blair woke up, dazed and confused. It was dark...pitch black...and she wondered if her electricity had gone off. She tried to turn her head to see the clock on the bedside table, and that’s when she realized she wasn’t in bed. She was sitting upright, and she couldn’t move her limbs...she was tied up. What the hell? She struggled, but whatever was holding her wrists and ankles didn’t budge. It felt like she was straddling a chair and hugging the back of it. The darkness, she could tell now, was not the room, but whatever her face was covered with. The light touch of the fabric against her skin hurt, like her face was bruised. Her head was pounding, and every single muscle in her body was aching. She wasn’t sure what had happened, but she knew it was bad...really, really bad.
“Is anyone here?” Her voice sounded small, and raspy. She listened closely, but the only sound she thought she could hear was breathing. Is someone watching me? That thought gave her the creeps more than the idea of being kidnapped and tied up. What happened? How did I get here? She focused on what she could remember, fighting through the pain as she tried to grasp at the thoughts just on the periphery. She remembered getting up that morning, like any other. She had showered and dressed, and before she left for work, she called her dad. She almost smiled at that memory now, and would have if her face didn’t hurt so much. She was glad she’d called him; it might be the last time she got to talk to him.
On her way to the office, she had stopped for coffee, at the same place she always did. Her assistant Susie was waiting for her when she got to the office, ready with a cheese Danish and a pile of files. There were no surprises in the files. Most of them were just regular clients that she saw every Friday, or every two weeks, or even once a month. The only person she was seeing that she’d never spoken to before was a referral from Richard. Damn! That was it...the guy was a skinhead, a member of a creepy gang that spent most of their time in the mountains, talking about taking over the government and making meth while they waited for their opportunity to do just that. Richard had dumped him on her. If he were here right now, she’d punch him in the face. Punched in the face...that was it...the man had punched her in the face, knocked her backward, and knocked her out. There was no one around to see him carry her out. Susie had already gone home. Shit! What does this guy want with me?
“Hey!” she yelled, as loudly as she could, voice cracking and tears running down her face from the effort.
“Shh!” That sound was quiet, almost inaudible. Had she really heard it? As quietly as she could, but so she could still be heard she said:
“Hello? Please, I don’t know where I am, or what’s going on. Please talk to me...”
“Shhh!” That time the shushing was louder, and more abrupt. She started to say something else but changed her mind. She should save her breath and her strength—for what, she wasn’t sure. “You’re fine,” a man’s voice finally said. “We’re just waiting on a couple of friends.”
“Friends? Please tell me why I’m here. Why are you doing this to me?”
Blair felt more than heard him move close to her, and suddenly the hood was pulled off and she could see spots and shadows. He stood there in front of her while her eyes adjusted to the light. She could only see his silhouette, but not his features. She moved her eyes around as far as she could. It looked like she was in a basement...Oh, God! She was in her own basement! The fucker grabbed her at work and was now holding her hostage in her own home. She was trying to think again of how she could get out of this mess. Maybe her next client had been in the parking lot when he carried her out. Who was that supposed to be? Damn. She couldn’t remember. Some of her clients might be willing to help her, and others would have just gone home, glad they dodged the boring, manda
tory therapy session that most of them had no desire to attend in the first place. If that was the case, it was likely that no one would even notice she was gone until Monday when Susie came back in to work.
Blair didn’t have any plans for the weekend, so no one would question why they didn’t see her. She’d spoken to her dad and told him to tell her mother “Hi” just that morning, so they wouldn’t worry if she didn’t call. Her best friend Lana was out of town. Blair was supposed to be meeting her in Vegas the following weekend but had already been working on reasons why she couldn’t make it. She had planned on waiting to call her later in the week, and since Lana was in Utah visiting her family, she wouldn’t expect to hear from her before that. Lana was only going to Vegas, before coming back to California, because while she was home, she had won tickets to some MMA fight. Blair had no desire to see that. She had witnessed enough violence on the yards of the prisons she traveled to. She didn’t want to watch two grown men beat the pulp out of each other. But Lana was always telling her that she worked too fucking much and sometimes she needed to play. Blair had agreed that day, just to get her off the phone, but now she wished she hadn’t. Lana would still be calling and texting and bugging her about going and she’d notice that Blair wasn’t returning her calls. As it was, Lana was her only friend close enough to even worry. The rest of them heard from Blair on occasion, but other than a birthday, an anniversary, the birth of a baby, or a wedding, they rarely saw her. Lana was right—she worked too fucking much.
She blinked several times trying to get her eyes to stop burning and adjust. The only light in the room was what was coming through the small slats of windows all along one side. She knew they led out to her backyard, and her mind was already working, trying to formulate a plan...an escape plan. She wasn’t a big woman, but she was in good shape, muscular, thanks to her religious trips to the gym. She wished now that she hadn’t done so many squats...there was no way her butt and thighs were fitting through one of those windows. She finally refocused on the man in front of her. It was definitely her newest client, Mouse. She recognized him from his prison photos.
“You know who I am?” he asked. She nodded and he said, “Good, because as much as I want my friend to get the credit for your murder, I’d like for you to at least be thinking about me when you die.”
“My murder? Why would you want to kill me?”
“I don’t, particularly,” he said. “But in planning this, I had to decide on a victim. For quite some time I had my eye on a waitress at this diner I go to a lot. She seems kind of sad, and I was sure no one would miss her. But once I found out that Richard was only pretending to be my friend, and he was going to betray me, I decided to make your boyfriend suffer for what he’s done to me. I want them to all suffer. There’s no one in the world that means more to him than you...now, he’ll have to live without you.”
“My boyfriend?” Who is he talking about? “I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“Don’t play with me,” he said. “Your boyfriend...you know, the one that wimped out on telling me that he was recommending an extension of my parole. He referred me to you instead. How does it feel knowing that he had so little balls that he referred a man he deemed too dangerous for free society to see you...so he didn’t have to? Don’t feel bad, though, he pretended to care about me more than that as well.”
“Richard?” Shit. He thinks Richard is my boyfriend? Richard was slightly unstable, and she knew that after only one date. She’d had to deal with his practically stalking her before he finally got the message and left her alone. The only contact she’d even had with him in the past month had been an email telling her that he was ill and couldn’t see this client...Mouse. Shit.
“Yes, Richard,” he spat out the name. “My therapist...my confidante...the man that I thought was my friend. But he’s just like the rest of them. He was just pretending. He didn’t care about me at all. He was willing to turn his back on me, the way the men I thought were my brothers did. He was going to throw you under the bus too...but I still think it’ll hurt him to know it’s his fault that you’re dead.”
He thought she was Richard’s girlfriend and he thought he and his prison-appointed therapist were friends...what a fucking mess. If Richard told him they were together, he was more delusional than she thought...and then there was this guy...
With an almost wistful look, he said, “Richard told me everything about you, Blair. I used to live for the days he came to the prison and told me about the things the two of you did together, the games you played. You sounded like a strong, confident woman and now here you are, playing the weak, confused female. It doesn’t suit you.”
“I’m not playing,” she said. “Honestly. Like I said, maybe it was hitting my head. I’m in a lot of pain and not thinking straight. But Richard is not my boyfriend. We went on one date. We never had sex...”
He grabbed his head. “Stop it! Stop lying! He told me all about you. We would talk for hours and then I’d go back to my cell and I’d picture it while I jacked off...only I’d pretend that it was me. It’s going to be me, today. We have some time, before the others arrive, and you’re going to give me one hell of a sendoff, Blair.”
She felt her stomach roll. “Please listen to me! Richard is disturbed. None of what he told you is true. If you do this, you’ll go back to prison for a very long time. My assistant saw you come in this morning. If I turn up...” She couldn’t even say “raped.” “...dead,” she finally said, “they’ll know it was you.”
He smiled, which sent a chill down her spine. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’ve thought about this for a long time. I almost let the police shoot me that day eight years ago, and then about a year into my prison term, I almost took my own life, but I had a dream that night. I dreamed that the men who abandoned me, the men that I thought were my brothers, were the ones behind bars...serving time for something they didn’t do. I woke up a new man. I didn’t feel sorry for myself any longer and I finally had something to live for. They let me rot in prison, and now it’s their turn. They’ll pay, Richard will pay, and me...I’ll finally be free.”
He was planning on killing himself, which made this all that much worse. That meant he didn’t care what happened. Nothing she said would scare him enough to get him to change his plans. But if he was going to rape her, he was going to have to kill her first. Her heart was pounding, and she could feel sweat trickling off her brow. She was tied up. There was no escape no matter how much she wanted to believe there was. He could do anything to her, and there would be nothing she could do about it. She wondered if someone was helping him. Surely he didn’t think he could get the MC here and be able to control them all? They were going to be her only hope. Her life depended on the same men she might have been responsible for putting away at one time. She heard a groan that brought her out of her thoughts. There was someone else in the room!
“Oh, my other guest is waking up. It’s about time.”
She tried to turn her head, but the way he had her tied to the chair prevented it. The groaning was coming from behind her, and now whoever it was, was cursing as well. “What the fuck? You motherfucker! Wolf is going to fucking kill you!” The “guest” was definitely awake.
“Language,” the man that had just told her he was going to rape and kill her said. “There’s a lady in the room.”
“I’m serious, man, Wolf will kill you for this.”
He chuckled and said, “I know, and it’ll just be one more murder he serves time for.”
“You’re a crazy son of a bitch,” the other man said.
Blair nearly had a heart attack as the chair she was sitting in was suddenly grabbed from behind and spun around. She was looking at a man, lying on the floor, hogtied. “You two get to know each other. I’ll be back.”
The man on the floor went off on another tirade of cuss words, some of which Blair had never even heard...and she thought she’d heard them all. While he cussed and sweat, she looked him over. He had
short, finger-styled blond hair. The right side of his head was matted with blood and there was blood on his shirt, but otherwise he was clean-shaven, thin and wiry, and he even looked manicured, not like a biker at all. When he finally calmed down she said, “Who are you?”
His head didn’t move but hazel eyes landed on her face. “Name’s Michael Parker, they call me Granite. Who are you?”
“Blair Newman. I’m a therapist with the California Department of Corrections and Rehab.”
“Shit,” the man on the floor said. “I know why he’s pissed off at us—what did you do?”
“I went out to dinner with the wrong asshole,” she said.
5
After leaving Granite’s place, Wolf and Bruf stopped by the last address the club had for Mouse when he first got out of prison. He wasn’t there, and Wolf had no reason to not believe the Hispanic woman that lived there now with her two kids wasn’t telling him the truth when she said she didn’t even know him. The low-rent houses in that neighborhood changed renters often, and probably ten or more people had rented it since Mouse left. They spent some time knocking on doors around it, but the neighborhood was shit and that pretty much meant no one was talking to anyone about anything. Wolf was frustrated, but he didn’t blame them. They were in a neighborhood where talking about your neighbors was a good way to get yourself or your family killed.
They were getting back on their bikes to head for the clubhouse when Bruf’s phone dinged. He looked at it for a long time and then at Wolf. Wolf could see something in his SA’s green eyes akin to sadness, or anxiety. They weren’t emotions Bruf wore often. “What’s up?”
“I got a meet with the General of the White Owls.”
“What the fuck? How the hell did you do that?” The Brotherhood of the White Owl was not only a racist, skinhead group, they were a paramilitary organization who were rumored to live on a compound deep up in the Sierra Nevadas, that no one was granted access to without going through some kind of secret initiation. Wolf thought they were a bunch of weirdos, but that was as far as his interest in them went since Coyote determined that Mouse’s affiliation with them wasn’t going to affect his club.
