BIKER’S GIFT

by Claire St. Rose

  “Not a chance in hell,” Mindy said. “I need to go out there and be with him. It’s important. I’ll stay sitting, I promise; I don’t want to be on my feet any longer than I have to either. But he needs me there to look strong. If I’m not there, they’ll wonder why. I need to be.”

  “Goddamnit,” Joanna said. “If you weren’t pregnant, I’d sedate you.”

  “But I am pregnant, so you can’t.” Mindy stuck her tongue out at Joanna, who laughed.

  “Now I’m definitely staying,” she said. “Have to keep an eye on my patient.”

  Mindy stood, steadying herself on her feet. She felt good, better than she had in weeks, but barely walking for days at a time would do a number on anybody’s sense of how to walk.

  Bodhi had said he’d take care of everything, and as she made her way down the hallway in her maternity shirt and elastic waist jeans, feeling more like an uncomfortable sea mammal than she’d ever thought she would, she was so grateful he’d gotten everything set up. All she had to do was sink into the comfortable chair he’d pulled out, put her feet up on the ottoman, and relax. He’d put a table nearby with snacks and water. Ostensibly it was for everyone in the area, and there were more chairs placed around, but it was still a considerate thing to do. She’d heard that some of the other girls were joking about how they should get knocked up too, get some of that relaxing treatment. There was a point in time where Mindy thought she might have made that joke as well.

  Now, with swollen ankles and clogged sinuses and the boredom of bed rest, she would give anything in the world to be done with this whole process. As long as the baby was safe.

  Chapter Thirty-Two Jack strode through the front door of the clubhouse, and at least one knot in Mindy’s back eased. He’d gotten back safely; that was the first step. The next would be getting through this meeting; the last would be seeing the hostility actually dial back. Those were her three key wishes. She was sure they would come through because, without them, she didn’t know how to make things okay.

  The rest of the Gang honor guard came in the door, followed by the Wardens who had come with Lauren, and then finally Lauren herself. The woman wore a very different expression than she had in the hospital when Mindy had seen her. There, she’d been half smiling, almost sardonic. Now she was tight and cold, an expression on her face that Mindy couldn’t help but read as fear. No wonder the Wardens weren’t following her; if she’d picked up one thing from Jack in the past few weeks, it was that you can’t ever let them see you shake. Fear was for other people, or maybe for later, in your room, alone, in the arms of your wife. Never, ever, where the club could see you. This was Lauren’s opportunity to make a show of strength, in a relatively safe environment. She was completely terrified.

  She glanced at Joanna and saw that the other woman had the same read. Joanna looked like she wanted nothing more than to go to her lover and wrap her up in a hug. That would have made Lauren look even weaker, however, and so Joanna held back. Mindy wanted to take her hand and squeeze it, say she understood, but it wouldn’t have helped anyone, and it probably would have made Joanna feel worse, so she held back too.

  As soon as Lauren walked into the clubhouse and Mindy saw her face, she felt sure that it was just a matter of time until the Wardens, led by Wester, attacked. But even then, she didn’t anticipate that it would happen so fast. Jack had pulled the conference tables out into the main room so that the peace talks could be open to anyone who had chosen to come along. He’d barely even gotten to the table before there was a huge booming sound outside of the clubhouse. Some of the men yelped, some of the women screamed, but everyone reacted in fear. Absolutely everyone. Jack recovered quickly, however, and bolted for the door. Mindy tried to rise to her feet and was stopped by Joanna’s firm hand on her shoulder. Bodhi followed Jack, and Lauren hesitated for a long moment before going after them.

  That was when Joanna’s grip released, as she went to follow her lover; Mindy went after Joanna, barely slowing down at all. She felt a sharp twinge in her belly, but that had been more common since she’d been getting bigger; standing up could be painful. Round ligament pain, Joanna had said. Mindy put it out of her mind and kept moving.

  She wasn’t sure what she thought she’d be running into. Guns? Fire? Someone’s hand around her throat? It didn’t matter. Maybe it made her a bad mother, but she had no hesitation; Jack was outside, and she absolutely had to be with him, no matter the cost. She couldn’t even think of turning and running away. It made no sense; there’d never before been a situation where she’d been willing to put her life on the line in this way. She’d always understood that she was fighting for herself, just herself. But she also believed, with her whole heart, that walking away from Jack would kill her just as dead as any bullet. So, she rushed out there, skidding to a stop as soon as she could, and would be able to see what was happening.

  Some of the Wardens had come out of the door after Lauren and arrayed themselves around her. There was a cluster of Chain Gang patched around Jack as well. And facing them was the man Mindy remembered so clearly from the diner, and from the most frightening night of her life. Wester. He had his arms crossed over his big chest, and a gun was clearly visible in a waistband holster. Was it the gun that had shot Cook? Jack had done his best to dig up information for her, but he hadn’t been able to track anything down. He hadn’t said so, but they were both terrified that the man had been dragged out into the desert and left for the animals. It would make sense, after all, as much as she hated to say it. If he hadn’t died on the spot, why leave a witness?

  Cook had tried to sell her out to save his own skin, but she didn’t want to think of him as dead. She just wanted to be safe. She wanted all of them to be safe. For one, long moment, she wished that Jack had never pulled her free from Wester that night in the diner. She could have put up with his mauling, it wouldn’t have been the first time it happened, and it definitely wasn’t the last. Jack grabbing her hand and her running out into the night with him, it hadn’t helped anything; it just made things worse. She should have stayed away from him, known from the way that the other waitresses talked that Jackdaw, Mr. Big, was nothing but trouble. She should have kept herself safe like she had all the years before.

  But then she pushed away all of those thoughts. What was done was done, and she had thrown her lot in with Jack. There was no escaping it now. She took a stance just as strong as those around her. The only one who looked tired and already beaten was Lauren.

  “Nice to see you, Wester,” Jack said, his tone making it very clear that seeing the other man was anything other than nice. “I’m surprised you chose to come out here with your goons, armed to the teeth, given that your president is here to talk peace between our groups.”

  Wester spat on the ground, the moisture aimed to land just shy of Lauren’s too-shiny boots.

  “She ain’t our president,” he said. “You killed our president, and another one ain’t been chosen.”

  Mindy could almost feel Jack waiting for Lauren to answer, but she didn’t seem to have the words she needed. Or any words at all. Her feet were planted, and her arms were crossed, but somehow there wasn’t any real commitment to the pose. She was just… present. As if that was all she could manage.

  “Wester, you keep insisting that I killed Grim, but you don’t have any evidence. No more than I have that you killed him. For all we know, the old bastard tripped and shot himself in the head. After all, no one seems to have been there to see it happen. And the Gang here is tired of having Warden blood on our hands.” Jack cracked a mirthless smile. “After all, blood and brains are awful hard to get out of leather. As you know.”

  Lauren filled with fire at all of that; perhaps Jack had known that she would. She braced up a little bit, and Jack glanced at her, seeming almost surprised that she had finally found some motion. “Wester, I know you don’t respect me. I don’t care. I’m the elected president here, and if you’re not going to fall in line, then we’ll run you out
of town.”

  Mindy managed not to groan; most of the assembled patched members looked like they were about to start giggling into their hands. In the first place, Lauren sounded like a bad western. In the second, she was maybe 150 pounds soaking wet; she wasn’t running anybody anywhere unless she had some amazing hand to hand fighting skills. Maybe she’d been a field medic in the military or something. But other than that… no, there was no way. And if there was anything Mindy had learned about big, vicious men, it was that you never made a threat you couldn’t back up with every ounce of your body. If you gave them an inch, they’d take a mile, as the old saying went. And Lauren had just handed Wester a country mile.

  He threw back his head and laughed. Jack tried to hide his wince but didn’t quite manage it.

  “Wow,” Wester said, his voice like gravel scraped over rock. “For absolutely no time there was I scared of you.” He took a menacing step towards Lauren; to her credit, the woman didn’t give ground, but there was also absolutely no way that she was going to win any kind of confrontation.

  Chapter Thirty-Three She knew it was going to happen in the moments before it did. She knew it would, and she used everything in her heart and soul to try and make it stop. It didn’t stop, though, and she wasn’t actually surprised. Jack stepped between them, protecting Lauren with his body, just like he’d protected Mindy once. Just like he kept protecting those who were weaker than him. It seemed to be just who he was and how he knew to be. She loved it about him, except for right now. Right now, she hated it all the way through herself. But she managed not to scream his name, or fling herself at him, or do any of the things that would make him look even weaker in front of Wester. Protecting one woman was more than enough.

  She swayed on her feet, her belly aching. She didn’t remember the last time she’d stood for even this long. Joanna grabbed her arm and helped support her weight. Mindy found herself wishing for a chair, anything to sit down on. Someone brought something, and she let herself collapse, all thoughts of showing weakness gone. There was a pain in her belly, a dull ache that wasn’t fading like it should. She forced her face to be calm and steady. She would be alright. She had to be alright. Whatever was about to happen, Jack needed her to be there, watching, silent, supporting him. If she disappeared, he would be distracted, and if he were distracted, a man like Wester wouldn’t even pause before he killed. She could see it in his eyes, in the way that he shook his head, looking down at Jack.

  “Just can’t help yourself, can you?” Wester asked. “Can’t stop yourself from stepping in where you don’t belong.”

  “You think you’re good enough to be their leader?” Jack bristled, but his voice was low and soft. Mindy had to strain to hear him. “You think you’ve got what it takes? Fight me. You think they’ll follow you if you fight a woman and win? Man, come on. You fight me, that’s a real victory. You hear me?”

  Wester looked down at the six-foot plus frame of the man the Chain Gang called Jackdaw and rumbled a laugh. “Come on, shithead. Let’s dance.” He threw a punch before he said another word, or gave any kind of notice. Jack’s first move seemed awkward and ungainly until Mindy realized what was happening. He was pushing himself out of the way of Wester’s punch, but more importantly, he was pushing Lauren back with him, getting her out of the way. Then, the fight began.

  Wester was big, throwing solid punches that Mindy thought could probably kill a man, rocking his head inside his brain so hard that he’d die of the internal bleeding, or breaking his nose up into his brain and killing him that way. She wasn’t sure she’d ever thought of Jack as particularly nimble; he was tall and broad, but compared to Wester, he looked like a boy playing with sticks in the backyard. He dodged and dove, ducking punches and landing his own blows against Wester’s solid form, but none of them seemed to make much of a difference. Without the ability to make much of an impact on the bigger man, it was only a matter of time.

  Jack didn’t dodge fast enough, and Wester caught him in the face. Jack jerked, hard, and then fell to the ground, blood gushing from his nose and split lip. Mindy heard herself scream, and wasn’t sure how much of the noise was because of Jack’s bleeding face, and how much was from the rising tide of bright red pain from her own belly. Something was wrong, something was seriously wrong, but she couldn’t tell someone or ask for help any more than she could have sprouted wings and burst into flight.

  Wester laughed, standing over Jack’s groaning body like every bad movie villain ever. He lifted his huge, steel-toed boot, ready to drop it onto Jack’s head—and then he twitched hard, once, twice, and a third time. Maroon flowers bloomed on his gray shirt, underneath his leather vest. His hands clutched at the flowers, his mouth twisting in an O of pain as he toppled, down to his knees and then backward. Mindy could see him heaving in one breath after another as the blood drained from him, turning the sandy dirt beneath him into a toxic kind of mud.

  Lauren lowered the gun in her hands, still smoking, and took a few steps forward. The Wardens who had come with Wester stepped back, their eyes wide as they looked at their leader. Apparently, she had bigger stones than any one of them, Mindy thought, because every single one of them gave up instead of even trying to meet her eyes.

  “Now hear this,” Lauren said, and Mindy heard the firm voice she remembered from the hospital, from the overheard conversations with Jack. Something had changed inside that woman, and in a way that made Mindy find a little bit of hope. “The Wardens and the Chain Gang are at peace. Councils will meet to divide up the territory within Providence and come to an understanding about boundaries and other details. But there will be no more fighting.” She cocked the gun again, and then aimed down, putting a bullet into Wester’s head without a pause. Just the way Grim had been killed, Mindy thought to herself. Only he’d still been on his knees. “We’re done with this, with spilling each other’s blood. It ends here. Are there any questions?”

  There was silence all around. Jack was working hard to pick himself up, and the tide of blood from his nose seemed to be slowing.

  Lauren spun in a slow circle. “If you don’t think you can handle cleaning up this club and running things the right way, you can be out of Providence by dawn. Or you can kneel down in the dust here, and we’ll settle this like men. I don’t much care which option any of you choose, but this is done. My father was wrong about a lot of things, and from here on in, we’re doing things differently.”

  No one ran. No one knelt to get a bullet to the brain. And Lauren looked entirely different. She looked strong, confident, powerful. She looked at Mindy and Joanna and flashed them a little grin. Jack looked at them and smiled, lighter than Mindy had ever seen him.

  And then she felt that same, terrifying gush down her thighs. She looked down and thought, My God that is an awful lot of red, and then things went very dark.

  Chapter Thirty-Four If her entire middle hadn’t hurt so goddamn much, Mindy would have curled into the tightest ball she could manage and sobbed her heart out. But the IV pain meds she’d been given during the emergency C-section were wearing off, and her entire abdomen burned every time she tried to adjust herself in bed or move at all. They’d given her some pain medication to take, but it hadn’t kicked in yet, and she felt like she was going to die. Everything was terrible.

  Her baby was small and fragile, and even though he was doing “well, for a preemie,” that qualifier made her sick. She was absolutely sure she’d done something wrong; if she’d been better, done things better, gone to more appointments, she was sure she would have made it through all this.

  She didn’t remember the ambulance ride or much of the admission. She knew vaguely that Lauren had called ahead, explained what was happening, and there had been an operating theater open as soon as they arrived. Mindy remembered the mask going over her face, and then there had been nothing until she woke up. She hadn’t been allowed to hold her baby yet. Jack wasn’t there. She was alone and terrified, and she wanted to go to the NICU to see him, b
ut no one was there to take her, and she couldn’t turn over in bed, much less hike her butt over to wherever the hell the NICU was. So, there was nothing to do but try to keep as still as possible while she cried.

  She didn’t know how long it was before the door to her room opened. She looked up hopefully, but while she was happy to see a familiar face, Jack’s was not the face she’d anticipated seeing. Lauren stood in the doorway, a quiet look of sorrow on her face.

  Mindy braced herself emotionally and then asked the most terrifying question she could imagine. “Are you here to tell me my son died?”

  Lauren’s eyes flew open. “What? God no. Fuck, no, absolutely not. Honey, I’m so sorry.” She hurried across the room and took Mindy’s hand in hers. “As far as I know, the baby’s fine. They didn’t want to tell me anything, but I lied and said I was your sister, so keep that up if anyone asks, okay? Everyone’s real surprised that I have a sister they’d never heard of, but they’re going to let it go as long as you don’t argue.”

  “Where’s Jack,” Mindy asked, pushing past the other questions. They didn’t matter right now; she needed to know the most important thing.