by Loren, Celia
Rich and Jo walk to the rear of her car and he gestures at the light. They talk a little more, and then he turns and heads back to his car. She watches him leave for a moment, and then turns around herself and heads back to her open driver's side door. I begin to relax when a flash of white zooms by on my left. I almost lose my balance on my bike in surprise. It's a white van, and it pulls up with a screech next to Jo. Rich calmly gets into his car as Jo flies around in shock.
I gun my engine, but I'm too late. The van's side door slides open and Fish jumps out. It looks like he stabs her with something—maybe a syringe?—and she wobbles. His arms are around her and he tosses her like a ragdoll into the van and climbs in after her. Son of a bitch. I'm just ten feet away from the van's bumper, but I slow down and give it some room as it lurches forward.
My knuckles turn white as I grip my handlebars and let a couple cars pass me, putting a little distance between me and the van as the cop car fades into my rear view mirror. I don't want to alert Fish to the fact that I'm following him. He might freak out and do Jo right there in the van if he thinks I might be able to stop him. I need to take him by surprise.
I keep back as much as I dare, watching Fish weave through traffic calmly. He's not acting like someone who knows he's being watched. I follow him through several intersections before he turns onto a quieter road and I decide to switch off my headlight so he won't see the single light behind him, a dead giveaway for a motorcycle. I know this road, and I think I also know where he's headed. It runs parallel to the highway, ending in a small wilderness preserve outside of town. The perfect place to dump a body.
As we drive on, the cars thin out even more until we're the only ones around. I grit my teeth as I'm forced to drop back even further so he won't be able to hear my engine. I wonder what he injected Jo with. Something to make her easier to handle, probably, after the way she fought back last night. I wonder if it would be better if she's completely unconscious right now, so she can't experience the fear of being incapacitated in the back of the van.
Signs appear on the side of the road announcing the preserve, but Fish bypasses the first access road. I wonder if I was wrong, if he's headed somewhere else, but he slows down as the third one approaches. Probably wanted somewhere as quiet as possible. I watch him turn in, and I decide to pull over to the dirt shoulder. I can't risk pulling in behind him on my bike. I kill my engine and hop off my bike. As I approach the trees to cut through to the lot, I decide to take off my boots. They'll be too noisy, and the woods are near silent at night.
I leave them on the grass just before the tree line and then step as quietly as I can into the brush. Even from here, I can hear Fish turning off the van and stepping onto the gravel. At least I have a lot of experience moving through the woods—as I kid, it was always where I went to get out of my house and away from my parents. I dart as quickly as I can between the tall pines. I wish it had rained more recently; dry twigs and leaves are crunching underfoot.
"Move!" I hear Fish yell at Jo, and pause to peer toward them. The moon is full, but hidden behind a back of clouds, and I can just see Jo stumble before Fish grabs her arm and pulls her upright. My adrenaline spikes as I see that Fish has a shovel over his shoulder, and a fog of fear and anger cloud my brain. The grim reality that he's going to kill her out here hits me full force. I pull my semi out from the back of my jeans and click the safety off before heading after them.
The only benefit to Jo's incapacitated state is that she's making a lot of noise, tripping over roots as Fish pulls her along. I grimace as I hear her emit a low moan. I wish I could tell her that I'm coming for her.
I miss my footing in the darkness and step down on a thick twig. It snaps and I freeze.
"Shh!" Fish whispers to Jo, and looks around. I duck into a crouch.
"Please…"
"Shut up!" he orders her. There's a silence that feels like it stretches on for ten minutes, though it's probably less than one. Finally, I hear them start moving again. I pause, letting them get a little further away, before I start creeping after them.
Panic begins to seep under the edges of my brain, worming its way into my thoughts. She's getting too far away. This is all my fault. I could have told her the truth weeks ago and taken her away, somewhere safe where Fish could never find her. It was stupid of me to think I could keep the situation under control.
I hear a low cry and pause, listening.
"Kneel," I hear Fish say.
A wave of horror washes over me and I have to push my way through it to get my legs to work. I'm too late. I don't care about noise now, I just have to stop him.
I see his startled face as I launch into the small clearing. With a flash of his crooked teeth, he grins at me and points his gun at Jo, who's kneeling across from him. I throw myself into the air toward him and hear the gun go off.
It feels like I've been speared to the ground by a white hot poker. I land with a thud on the earth and the air is knocked out of me. I try to push myself up, but my arms are like lead weights. I struggle to move my head around, searching for Jo, but I can't see her, and my head rolls to a stop.
I stare up through the trees to the night sky. Western white pine, looks like. The moon finds a hole in the clouds and silvery light streams down for a moment onto the clearing.
A black shape moves above me. Jo. She's inches away but for some reason I can barely hear her, though I think she is crying. Despair crashes over me. Jo, I failed you.
My body starts to shake and I'm helpless to stop it. A taste of iron overwhelms my mouth. I dimly realize that's a bad sign. The bullet must have struck an organ and now I'm bleeding internally. I feel Jo's hands fumbling over my torso, trying to help me, trying to bring me back. I try to speak, to tell her to run, but I cannot.
I know that I'm dying, and I can accept that. But I would give anything to be able to save her.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Jo
"Holt! Holt! No, no, no," I sob, as I try to cover the wound on his torso. The bullet struck him just under his ribcage on his left side, and blood is flowing out unchecked. My limbs still feel like rubber from whatever Fish injected me with, but I manage to pull off my shirt and press it down onto his wound. "Please, please call someone!" I beg Fish. "You didn't want him. He's your brother!"
"Actually, this is pretty convenient for me," Fish muses, scratching his leg with the barrel of his gun as his throat clicks once. "I've been trying to undermine him for a while now so that Bark wouldn't choose him as his successor, but this is much more straightforward."
"They'll know. They'll all know it was you."
"I doubt it. Without bodies, it'll be easy to convince them that you two ran off together. I'll dump your car, make it look like you packed a couple bags in a hurry, and that'll be it."
"His friends know he would never do that. They won't let it go. Please, just kill me and then help him!"
"Maybe you're right. Many of my brothers have gotten too soft," he thinks aloud as his Adam's apple clicks twice. "They don't have the stomach to do what it takes anymore, like I do. But once I'm president, they'll toughen up, or they'll be out."
"They don't kill in cold blood, so they're soft?! Maybe they're just not monsters like you!" Holt coughs under me and I take one hand and smooth it over his forehead, trying to comfort him. "It's OK, it's OK," I murmur to him. "I'm here." I grasp his shoulder, trying to tell him that I'll stay with him. I realize it's tilted up at on odd angle.
"It's fascinating to me: doctors can bring someone back from getting shot in the head nowadays, but a shot to the torso, internal bleeding? You're pretty much fucked. Modern medicine," he says with a shrug.
I brush my hand under Holt's shoulder and feel the butt of a large gun. His semi-automatic. He must have fallen back on top of it. I inch my hand under him until I'm able to grip the handle, all while staring down at Holt's pale face so that Fish can't tell what I'm doing. I might as well try, though I'll only be able to get off one sho
t, and my body still feels sluggish and unresponsive. The conditions couldn't be more different than when Holt took me to the shooting range.
"I already contacted the police," I lie, trying to buy time to work the gun toward me so I can lift it quickly. "They'll be looking for me."
"No, you didn't," Fish says, his high giggle echoing against the surrounding trees. "Rich would've heard it on the scanner and told me." I wrap my finger around the trigger as I look up at him, remembering what Holt told me about keeping my thumb down with a semi. The gun is as close to me as I can get it without Fish seeing it. His own gun is lowered against his leg still. He thinks he's not in danger. It's now or never.
"I can see why Holt liked you," he continues. "You're…scrappy, I guess is the word. But you had to be in that gas station. Just dumb luck I—"
I raise the semi and squeeze the trigger. The kickback surprises me, sending me off balance and onto my back. I struggle up to my knees, the drug in my system still working against me, and I see Fish gasping in shock as he sways standing up, leaning on the shovel. I got him in his right shoulder, causing him to drop his gun.
"You fucking—" he snarls at me as he leans down, going for his gun again. I brace myself and fire again, and again. I hit him in the torso now. He drops to his knees. Blood that looks purple in the moonlight rapidly covers his shirt. His eyes roll back in his head. He drops face first onto the ground.
I keep the gun pointed at him, my arm beginning to shake. Is he dead? I hurry around Holt and peer down at Fish. I don't think he's breathing. I don’t want to fire this gun at someone laying on the ground but I'm also not going to take any chances. I take his gun from the dirt as I hurry back to Holt.
As I kneel beside him, I realize I know what I'm going to do. He just saved my life, and there's only one way to repay him. As I press one hand back down on my shirt over his bullet wound, I pat his front pockets with my other to find his cell phone and pull it out. I flip it open and see a missed call from the person I need. I hit "Call" and bring the phone to my ear.
"We need to talk," Bark's rough voice greets me.
"This is Jo. Holt's been shot. He needs help. Now."
Chapter Twenty-Four
Holt
Gunshots. Cold. Jo crying, out of reach. Voices. I'm lifted and surrounded by brightness. Pain. Movement. Jo. Then darkness. I try to move my hand, but I can't. I think I hear Jo near me, but I can't speak. Darkness again.
A wall of pain hits me. I groan, and try to open my eyes. The light overwhelms me, and I close them again.
"Holt?" I hear next to me. It's Wilkes. "You awake?"
I squint my eyes open. Christ, it's bright in here. I try to talk, but my mouth feels like it's filled with cotton balls.
"It's OK, it's OK," he says, and I feel his hand on my arm. "You in pain? Let me get the nurse. I think one of these things is morphine." I move my eyes toward him and see his back disappearing through the door.
I move my head to look around me and feel a shot of pain down my neck that radiates throughout my torso. Fuck. I stop and use just my eyes to glance around. I'm in a hospital room. The bed next to me, closer to the window, is empty. Light streams through the window, hurting my eyes. I try to work a little saliva around my mouth but it's dry as a bone.
The door opens back up and I jerk my head over to see who it is, forgetting the pain. I let out a sharp cry.
"Try not to move," the nurse says. "I'm going to increase your morphine."
I close my eyes as a sensation like warm liquid moving through my veins quiets the pain.
"I'm going to get the doctor—he'll want to examine you. Here are some ice chips, OK? I'm giving them to your friend here. One at a time, alright?"
I open my eyes again as she leaves. Wilkes picks up the plastic cup and moves it to my mouth, carefully tilting it until I feel one ice chip against my lips. I take it and feel it melt on my tongue. I glance up at his face. He looks exhausted.
"Jo?"
He pauses and my heart feels like it stops again.
"She…well, I don't think she knows what to do."
"Alive?" I gasp.
"Alive," he grins back at me. "Way more than you. She called us—"
He breaks off as the doctor walks in. He introduces himself and pulls open the front of my gown.
"How bad?" I croak.
"Well, we had to remove part of your spleen that was damaged by the bullet. You lost a lot of blood. We had to restart your heart on the operating table. You were legally dead for almost a minute."
"Fuck," I murmur as I glance down at the angry line crisscrossed with stitches over the top of my abdomen.
"Actually looks pretty good. No pus," he says, then moves down to my toes. As he moves to my arms, making sure I can move all my extremities, I see a flash of silver on my wrist. Handcuffs, attached to the bed. The doctor clears his throat awkwardly, then finishes his examination by shining a light in my eyes. "We'll have to keep you here for a while—you went through major surgery. Not as though you have a choice. I believe the police want to speak with you." He walks out, and I glance at Wilkes.
"We cleaned up the scene, but you know they have to report gunshot wounds. Plus they know you're a Hell Hound, so they're having a hard time buying the story."
"Which is?"
He tips another ice chip into my mouth as he responds. "You and Jo were out in the forest because she always wanted to have sex there, and then some psycho came along and robbed you. You tried to resist, he shot you and ran off."
"Jo's never going to go along with that."
"Jo's the one who thought of it."
My eyes snap to him. This morphine must be playing tricks on me. "Jo's protecting me? Us?"
"More you than us. She called Bark after Fish shot you and she shot Fish."
"She shot Fish?" I almost yell, forgetting to keep my voice down.
"Oh, shit, sorry. Should've said that part. After Fish shot you, she used your gun to kill Fish, then she called Bark. She said that you saved her life, and she knew that you wouldn't want the club to get in trouble. So we got Fish's body out of there and cleaned up before the ambulance arrived. Wouldn't have made it in time except we were headed to round you two up anyway. Figured you were both sitting on Jo's place, and we were right."
"Where is she?"
"Waiting room down the hall."
"All night?"
"Well, all last night, and the day before. You were shot two nights ago. You've been out for a while."
"Shit."
"She won't come in to see you, but she won't leave either. Also refusing to talk to any of us except Cara, which is understandable."
"Since we were maybe going to kill her."
"Yeah, that."
"You ask her to wear your cut yet?"
"Was about to."
"Well, like I said, she didn't leave, but she didn't come in either," he says with a shrug.
"Can't believe she killed Fish. How is she?"
"According to Cara, not talking a lot, pretty shaken up. You taught her well, though. Took her three shots, but still, it was dark out. We got rid of the gun and the gunshot residue on her hands." He jerks his head to the door as we hear voices outside. "That'll be the cops. Rich is nowhere to be found. Just tell them, you guys were about to get into it in, this guy comes up to you, about six foot, gray beard, baseball hat. Couldn't get a good look because it was dark."
"Got it," I say, as he slips toward the door. I can't believe Jo would do all this for me, after all that happened.
I spend the next hour talking to the police until the nurse comes in and asks them to leave.
"That's enough for today. He went through a lot of trauma yesterday."
The cops reluctantly turn for the door and the nurse heads after them. I can feel my exhaustion and the morphine starting to pull me under, but I have to see Jo.
"Miss? Would you mind, there's a girl in the waiting room…Jo...blonde, pretty…will you see if she'll come in?"
<
br /> "Oh. When I told your group in the waiting room that you were awake, she left." She wavers at the door for a moment. "Sorry."
Chapter Twenty-Five
Jo
Even though I'm exhausted when I get home, I make myself call Dale before I go to sleep. He picks up on the fourth ring.
"Hey, it's Jo, from Evergreen," I say.
"Oh, hey, 'sup."
"I just wanted to let you know, Holt had an accident, so he's going to be out of commission for a while."
"How long?"
"Mmm, maybe a month. He asked me to call you and say that you should keep going with the jobs you have lined up. You're in charge until he's ready to come back," I lie. I didn't see Holt while he was in the hospital, but I know he wouldn't want his business to go to shit while he's recuperating, and I'm not sure if anyone else would think to call.
"Fuck, OK. Well, we got that job tomorrow morning at 9…You'll be there, right?"
"Yeah, I'll be there."
"Well, that's good at least. It'll be tough without Holt, but we'll make it work, I guess. He gonna be OK?"
"Yeah, in time."
"Well, just tell him I say, you know, feel better, and all that," he adds awkwardly.
"Will do," I reply and hang up, knowing I can never tell him the real details of what happened. I pull off my clothes as I walk into my bedroom. I feel so stiff and tired my bones should be creaking. With a sigh, I pull the covers up to my chin.
Maybe it's weird to go back to working at Evergreen, but I'll go crazy if I just sit at home, and I think of that as my work now. And I know Holt won't be there, so I won't have to deal with whatever I feel for him. I'll just do my work, outside, using my hands, with a bunch of guys who don't know anything's wrong. Sounds like a relief to me.
