“Okay,” he said. He reached up and dried my cheeks, too. “I’ll be brave.”
“You’re always brave, and being scared doesn’t make you any less brave. Being scared and still keeping on fighting, that’s real bravery. You know that,” I smiled and gave him a kiss. “Have I told you how proud I am of you?”
“Yes,” he answered. “Many times.”
Tommy leaned over and gave Felix’s temple a kiss. “You’ll fight this, Champ, and you’ll have me and your mom in your corners, fighting with you. We’ll beat it.”
“Yes,” Felix said with a determined nod.
We stood up again, and Felix took our hands and we started walking through the hallway again. Mom and Dad were waiting for us, and when Felix saw them, he let go of us and ran ahead.
I flagged for Dad’s attention. When he nodded at me, I clenched one hand into a fist and slammed it a few times quickly into my other palm, and then held up two fingers. Dad nodded.
“Did you just do the ‘out of action’ signal to your dad?” Tommy asked.
“I use it all the time for when I need a moment,” I said, and pulled him around the corner, out of sight from Felix. “Sort of, out of action as parent.”
“Clever,” Tommy smiled when I pushed him against the wall. “What’s this?”
“I need to tell you that I love you, and that…”
“That?”
“More than anything, I wish that I’d contacted you immediately. You’re amazing with him, and with me, and I don’t deserve—”
He interrupted me by kissing me, and I leaned closer to push him back against the wall. It was quickly getting out of hand, so I took a step back.
“Don’t think we need to do a rerun of the last time we were in bathroom together at this hospital,” I mumbled while trying to gain control of my body.
“If you’d help up five fingers instead of two, we would have.” He grabbed me and pulled me back against his chest. “I’m sorry, too.”
“For what?”
“I know you, and I knew you back then, too. If I’d thought about it I would’ve known… that you were as messed up as me. I shouldn’t have let you push me away.”
“I’m pretty stubborn, and there’s just no fucking way I’ll let you take any of the blame.”
“I’m not really, I just wanted to say it. But I understand why you did it, and I’m not angry about it, so please… Let’s leave it behind. You’ve raised a great kid. And I love you.”
“Yeah, I guess that helps,” I said.
“Nothing else you wanna ask?”
I knew what he was after, and I would’ve liked to ask it. If he was sure about it, if he really would donate his kidney, but if I asked, he’d get pissed.
“No. Or… yes. Is it true that Bucket grew up on a cattle ranch?”
“Yeah, he did,” Tommy laughed. “Think our two minutes out of action are over.”
“I think so. I love you, Tommy.”
oOo
TOMMY HAD LEFT THE Jensens at their house, and he continued past the clubhouse too, since Brick had said he’d be waiting for him at home. When he got off his bike in front of the house, he saw Mac and Dawg’s trucks along with Bear’s bike outside.
Mel, Vi, and Eliza were in the kitchen.
“Is Felix here?” Travis yelled from the top of the stairs.
“No, not today.”
“Think I can visit him this weekend?”
“I’ll talk to your dad,” Tommy answered. He had no idea what kind of mood Felix would be in.
“Have you ever used a rocket launcher?” Eliza asked, and the questioning and… kids were starting to get to him.
“Um… yeah. Why?”
Tommy had always been slightly freaked out by Eliza. Or not so much by her, but by the fact that she’d had something like a crush on him for a while, and he’d seriously feared for his health. He’d avoided her just to make sure that Brick never for a second thought it was something Tommy would take advantage of.
“It’s for a play. You’ve used a lot of big weapons and stuff.”
“Yeah.”
“Think we could interview you about it?”
“Like all of you in a group? Sure.” That was a lot better than just her. “I need to talk to your dad.”
“On the deck.”
“Thanks,” he said and went outside. Brick, Bear, and Dawg were all out there, but he didn’t see Mac. He guessed Vi might’ve come alone. “Your daughter wants to interview me about rocket launchers.”
“Yeah, I told her to talk to you,” Brick said.
“Should I be worrying about a feminist revolution?” Bear asked.
Eliza was a raging, borderline crazy, feminist, who didn’t look like one. She was blonde, with sort of big tits (even if that was something Tommy really avoided thinking about) lots of curves like her mom (something else he avoided thinking about), and pretty as a picture. Bear had on more than one occasion called her and her theater group, The Green Kittens, for ‘the lipstick feminist mafia,’ something they had picked up and seemed to like.
When Tommy wasn’t terrified of his interest being misinterpreted, he liked Eliza, though. She was one of those people who was always about to laugh, and she had an amazing sense of humor. The dry, smart humor that all the Baxters seemed to share.
“Naw, no feminist revolution. They’re thinking about doing some war play. Not sure what it was,” Brick answered. “Told her to talk to Tommy. Hope that was okay.”
“Don’t pretend like you care what he thinks about it,” Dawg laughed. “You were way too eager to get her off your back.”
“I can’t fucking sit in front of her theater group and talk about advance anti-tank weapons and war,” Brick said. “Officially, we’re motorcycle enthusiasts, so I figured it was better to send in Tommy. Besides, they’ll think he’s hot, so it won’t be as scary as if I tell them what it looks like when you blow a man’s head off.”
“Think your daughter might need new friends if that’s what they’ll ask,” Tommy muttered. “I got a date for the surgery. Next Tuesday.”
“Finally some good news,” Brick smiled. “And you’re out of commission for four to six weeks?”
“If we’re unlucky. Might be less.”
As good as it felt to have a date for it and that Felix had a good chance at getting well, it didn’t feel good to be out of service with the club. They were all on edge, and had been for a really long time, since what they were doing should send ripples through the underworld, someone should react, but so far there had been nothing. Brick didn’t take that as a good sign, quite the opposite. If other clubs had come forward to either congratulate them or argue about what they’re doing, it would’ve been a lot better than the dead silence surrounding them now. Silence meant plotting. In this case probably plotting against them.
Tommy was scared the attack would come when he was at the hospital and unable to help—either the club or Billie.
“You need to take your time and heal,” Brick said. “You’re no fucking use to us if you cause yourself permanent damage. Or worse damage than you’ve already got.”
The injuries he’d sustained when Zach died had been pretty bad. He’d gone to physical therapy for years, but mostly to keep it in control. Long rides still fucked up his shoulder, but he kept it in check by working out. The leg hurt sometimes, but nothing he couldn’t handle, and it was as strong as the other one. To some extent, he was in better physical shape than he’d ever been. He didn’t have the same stamina and flexibility he’d had as a Recon Sniper, but he had more muscles. Some of the others, mostly Sisco, had teased him about all his training, but others had started joining in—like Bucket. In Bucket’s case it had initially been more about getting his mind off his shitty home situation, but he’d kept it up, and these days he was as addicted to it as Tommy was. Tommy did it to make sure the damage he’d caused his body wouldn’t cripple him.
“Where are we with the Ghouls?” Tommy asked.
> “US or Dutch?”
“The Dutch. Do we know when they’re coming?”
A few of the members of the Dutch Ghouls were to be smuggled into the country. The smuggling part mostly to make sure that the US Ghouls didn’t know they were coming. All they’d known so far was that they were on their way. The cartel would get them over the border, and since Brick was the one who was in contact with the cartel, they would be coming to Greenville first. Tommy was hoping that they’d arrive before Tuesday, and he was in luck.
“Sunday. We have church on Friday to prepare. I think it’s mostly to show us respect for what we’ve accomplished so far, but it’s also to let us know what they have planned.”
“Don’t we already know that?” Tommy asked.
“I’m more interested if they have a timeline for this,” Bear said. “We need time to make the club stable. We can slap a patch on a bunch of guys and call them brothers until we’re blue, but that won’t make any fucking difference if they don’t stay loyal once fucktards starts shooting at us.”
The conversation halted for a second when Mitch came out on the porch and sat down, but after a nod to him, Brick continued.
“We’ll find out what they’re here for, and hopefully what they have planned,” Brick said. “No point in speculating. We’ll find out soon enough.”
“If they’re coming now, when they know we’re not finished, they’d have to be stupid fucks to start up some shit,” Dawg said and turned to Tommy with smile. “They’re not stupid, so I’d say you can do the surgery and be back in business by the time shit gets started.”
Sounded nice to Tommy. If shit was going down, which he believed they would be, he wanted to be there. His main use in the club was as a soldier, and besides the time when he used his sniper skills to save Mitch’s old lady, he hadn’t had the opportunity to really show his worth. It would really suck if he was out of action when he had the chance.
“Don’t sweat it,” Brick chuckled, as if he could read Tommy’s mind. “You’ll get your chance. You’ll see fighting before this is done.”
Mitch looked at him, too. “Do you remember your first big battle?”
“Yeah,” Tommy nodded. “Everyone does.”
“Like the first time you fucked,” Mitch said with a big smile. Obviously reminiscing that moment in his life. “Everyone remembers that.”
“I don’t. Or… I might,” he said.
“Might?” Bear asked with a raised eyebrow. “Drunk?”
“Yeah. If it was the time I was drunk, I don’t remember. Otherwise I might. I fucked that girl the week after, so I know who popped my cherry, at least.”
It was kind of embarrassing, neither of them had been sure if they’d had sex or not. They both remembered making out, but not the actual sex.
“That sucks,” Mitch said.
“I don’t know,” Tommy smiled. “Might not know the first time I had sex, but I remember the first time I wiped my own ass.”
There was a deafening silence for a few seconds before the others all started laughing. It was true.
“First time you wiped your own ass?” Bear laughed.
“Yeah. I was five or six. Mom was sleeping and I went to the bathroom.” His mom had been more or less unstable already at that time, and waking her up from her morning nap was perfectly possible, but something that should be avoided as far as possible. But Tommy’d had to go, so he went, and he’d wiped his own ass. He’d been so proud afterwards, which was probably why he remembered it as well as he did. “When you gotta go, you gotta go.”
“Very true,” Bear chuckled. “At least you remember one important first. Two with the first big fight.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Show Us
oOo
LEAVING MILITARY LIFE FOR a civilian one had not been a smooth transition for Tommy. It wasn’t just the injuries or missing his friend. It was leaving a life full of routines, clear orders, a clear chain of command, and most of the friends he’d ever made.
Getting out had been like being slapped in the face by reality.
He’d been completely lost for a while, and shortly after Zach’s funeral, he’d gone up to live with his brother, Dwayne. He’d just needed somewhere to land, a place where he could figure out what he wanted to do. Once his leg was healed and his shoulder was working okay, he’d bought a Harley, and he’d spent six months fixing it. To some extent, he’d been fixing his bike while he was fixing his own head.
A lot of things were a big fucking mystery to Tommy, but engines were not one of them. There wasn’t an engine or machine built and destroyed that he couldn’t fix or just make better. That was why he’d ended up as first driver in the convoy with Zach next to him. When shit wasn’t working, and there was a lot of shit that wasn’t working, he could fix it. Marines make do.
While he’d been working on his bike, he took a job at a garage, but as soon as the Harley was rolling, he took off. He didn’t really have a plan. He’d ended up in Greenville and took a job at the Marauders’ garage. That was how he’d become a hang-around, and later a member, of the club. When asked if he wanted to prospect, he hadn’t hesitated for a second. It was the first place he’d felt like he belonged since leaving the Marines.
Being a military kid, packing up and leaving people behind was something he’d done his entire life, and he didn’t mind much. He’d never been rooted, and the only constant outside his family had been the Jensens. In a way the Marauders had been his new Jensens, a constant he knew he’d have there no matter what happened, and he wanted Billie incorporated in his new family. He didn’t want them separated.
He’d managed to convince Billie to spend the Friday night before the surgery at the club with him, because he wanted one night, the full night, with her before the surgery. He’d mentioned it to the others, and some of them had talked to their old ladies, so Mel, Kathleen, and Anna would be there, too. It would make it a little easier for Billie, Tommy hoped. He wouldn’t want her accompanied by nothing but sweetbutts and hang-arounds while she waited for him. That wasn’t a good way to introduce her to parties at the clubhouse.
Tommy’s thoughts about Billie made him even less present during church, but in all honesty, there wasn’t much being said that hadn’t already been said at least five times before. This was a part of the club business that he was getting increasingly tired of: the endless repetition of information they all had heard at least ten times before with just a smidge of new information added to it. Smoking used to make him less annoyed about the repeats, but he couldn’t smoke anymore. He’d figured it was a good time to stop completely, but if the excruciatingly boring meetings were going to continue after the surgery, he would definitely pick up smoking again.
“I have some thoughts about it, but I’d like to hear what you want said or clarified by the Dutch when they arrive,” Brick said.
“I want it really fucking clear that we’re not going to become Ghouls, or any other patch they might come up with when they detach from them,” Mace muttered. “I know we’ve said it to them, but I don’t think that can be emphasized enough. I’m not patching over.”
There were some nods around the table.
“I wanna know how informed the cartel is, and if they’re planning on pitching in,” Sisco said. “This is the kind of situation where it would be awesome if the fact that we’re working with a cartel paid out.”
“The Dutch are currently providing the cartel with weapons, so I don’t think they want them gone, and I doubt they’ll want to deal with the US Ghouls any more than we do,” Brick answered Sisco. “I’m sure they can get weapons even without the Dutch, but so far they’re really fucking pleased with what they’re getting, so I think they’ll help however they can. Probably not directly, but indirectly.”
“Wouldn’t that depend on who the US Ghouls are working with on the other side of the border?” Mitch asked. “Would it be worth starting a war over?”
“That’s a good point,” Bear said. “
The cartels are allied to left and right. I’m not sure they know who their friends and enemies are at any given moment.”
“Probably depends on what friend they need the most,” Mac said. “So we should get that cleared.”
“I got the impression the cartel was pretty stoked on the idea of the Dutch leaving the US branch behind. Did I get that wrong?” Bucket asked and looked at the ones who were usually more informed.
“Yeah.”
That made Tommy think of something. “So, at the moment we’re the ones transporting the cartel cargo from them and up to New York for transport to Holland, and the US Ghouls are transporting the cartel’s weapons from Portland and down to them. After the break, we’re transporting stuff mainly up to Portland and they’re not going to work with the US Ghouls anymore?”
“That would be right,” Brick answered with a smile. “I see what you’re getting at.”
“We’re gonna transport the weapons?” Tommy flat out asked.
“They haven’t asked us yet.”
“And if they do?”
“Club vote,” Bear answered.
“All charters?” Sisco asked.
“At least the charters involved.”
Tommy didn’t exactly have a moral problem with muling weapons. Given the quantities of pot they were transporting at the moment, they’d probably simply repack the trucks with weapons instead of pot. It would mean cargo both up to Portland and back, which he assumed was more efficient and more money, but it also meant double the risk.
“Wouldn’t this mean that the charters who are currently in our pipeline would be cut out?” Dawg asked.
“Not completely. If we increase the rides and the volumes we’re gonna need to spread out the risks,” Brick answered. “It might mean less work for them, but we’re going to try to work something out. Financially, it probably won’t make much of a difference for them.”
A few years earlier, there had been complaints from charters in the pipeline that they weren’t getting big enough cuts. The complaints had died down when it turned out that one of the treasurers had been skimming money. It was Hump, the member who later kidnapped Anna, since he thought it was Mitch’s fault that he was caught and thrown out of the club. The entire situation and the aftermath had been an efficient lid on all complaints from other charters, but Tommy had a feeling it might start up again if their cuts became even smaller. That could become really nasty if they went into a war and not all the other clubs were loyal enough to stand by them. But if he’d thought of that, he knew for a fact that Brick and Bear had, too.
Resonance (Marauders #4) Page 17
