by Paula Cox
Trent leans down, face close to mine. His eyes are wide and crazed. He has a cokehead look about him. I’ve seen it countless times in my office. The manic, wide-eyed, overly energetic aspect to his twitching movements confirms this. “I want a kiss,” he says quietly, almost shyly. I feel vomit slide up my throat as his blue eyes glance at the floor, a sickening caricature of a boy nervous to ask a girl to a school dance. “I wanted a kiss the first time I saw you, cunt, but that big Neanderthal ruined it.”
You’re wrong, I want to say. I tried to tell myself he was a Neanderthal, but I was wrong. He’s so much more than that. He’s a lover, a protector, a friend and the father of my child.
But all I can do is swallow bile.
He leans in closer, and his eyes flit to mine, a nervous-boy smile on his lips. He thinks this is a romantic moment, I realize. Drugs, madness, twisted perception…something in his fucked-up head is making him see this as a romantic moment. Perhaps he doesn’t see the zip-ties, the rope, the chair. Perhaps in his mind we are sitting in a candlelit restaurant, not a bulb-lit abandoned office.
“I am the President of a new club, pregnant whore. The patches are being sewn as we speak. The Crooked Edge. You are talking to the President of a club, not just a lowly enforcer. I know, I know …” He holds his hands up as though we are having a friendly debate over dinner. “Your Rust has a fair amount of pull in The Damned. A tough man, a respected man. A man who can do a great deal of harm to a newfound club…but not when we have his little slit-slut, no, no, no.” He whips his hair, flashes his teeth. I feel like I am inches from a wolf. “So,” he whispers, leaning even closer to me, “how about that kiss?”
When he pouts his lips, something inside of me snaps. I feel the social worker Allison rising up inside of me, almost as though I have a split personality. One side of me is the frightened pregnant woman, driven by fear and the need to protect Bump; the other side is disgusted that this sickening man would presume to lean into me like this, to threaten me with a kiss. Time slows as he leans closer and closer. I try and tell myself to just kiss him, peck him, just do what is necessary to get out of this alive. Just do what I have to do. But the social worker side of me—the side which changed her major in college, which left home and came to Motor City—will not accept this. This side of me is outraged, haughty, proud, and furious.
And before I even know what I am doing, this side of me has leaned back in the chair, hawked, aimed, and spit at his face. The spit lands on his cheek, a big globule of it. For a moment, both of us stare at each other.
And then Trent goes tut-tut and stands up. He wipes his face with the sleeve of his leather, and then leans back down. “That was a stupid fucking thing to do,” he says. He pulls his hand back, clenches his fist. “That was a very stupid fucking thing to do.”
“No, wait, no!” I scream, but it’s too late.
Trent punches Bump savagely, so hard that my belly cramps up and I puke all down my shirt.
Chapter Twenty-One
Rust
Zeke and Joseph are shooting pool when I stumble into the bar. Shackle and a couple of his lieutenants sit at the bar, sipping whisky and watching football on the wall-mounted TV. A pledge sweeps the floor. It’s a slow February day. Maybe it’s the pain in my head, or maybe it’s the fact that Trent and the unpatched are out there with my woman and The Damned are in here doin’ fuck all, but I get angery the second I set eyes on the scene.
“Shackle!” I snarl, pacing to the middle of the room. “Trent—the unpatched fuck—has kidnapped Allison. He’s fuckin’ taken my woman. So we need to gather every single one of our men and do a sweep of all his known hideouts. No more playin’ it safe waiting for him to show himself. No more careful stakeouts. He’s taken us for fools and it’s time to change that.”
Joseph, a bit more meat on his bones since he joined the club, his head shaved, wearing a black bandana and looking all in all like a different person from the strung-out druggie I met a few months ago, lays his pool cue down and walks toward me. Zeke picks up his leather from the back of a chair and does the same.
The lieutenant sitting beside Shackle is a tall, thin man with a sharp nose and bowl-cut brown hair. He snorts. “You don’t give the orders,” he says. “Shackle is the boss—”
“Keep talkin’,” I snarl, “and I’m going to shove a knife so far down your fucking throat you’ll be shitting blood for weeks. He has my woman, so right fuckin’ now I don’t care who’s in charge.”
“Calm.” Shackle rises to his feet, waving a hand at his lieutenant. “When did he take her?”
“Just now—fifteen minutes ago. You all need to learn to answer your fucking phones.”
Joseph looks at me uncertainly. “I think you need to go to the hospital, Rust.”
“Hospital? Fuckin’ hospital?” I wheel, feeling crazed, anger infusing me. “Shackle, mobilize the men. I’m takin’ Zeke to the warehouse—you know the one, the one we think he’s using as his main base of operations. If any of the men find him somewhere else, call me on my cell.” I turn to Zeke. “You with me?”
“’Course,” Zeke says without hesitation. “Let’s go.”
“Still trying to give orders,” the lieutenant mutters.
I don’t think. I just pace across the bar and stand over him, fists hanging at my sides. “Listen,” I growl. “I don’t give a fuck about the command structure or any of that shit. All I care about is getting the mother of my child away from that psychotic fuck. So if you think I’m tryin’ to step on your toes or I’m gunnin’ for your job, you’re wrong. I just want to stop a woman from being hurt. Do you fucking understand? Not everything is about the club. But if you’ve got a problem, fucking come at me now. Come on!” I slam my hand down on the bar, causing his glass of whiskey to lurch into the air. Spit slides down my chin, blood weeps down my neck from where the bat struck me.
The lieutenant shakes his head. “No,” he says, voice becoming hoarse. I must look pretty damn crazy to make a Damned lieutenant’s voice go like that. He turns to Shackle. “Are we looking for her?”
“We are,” Shackle says. “Selling drugs is one thing; kidnapping one of our enforcer’s women is another. You taking the warehouse, you said?”
I nod. “Yeah.”
“Alright. Go—I’ll rally the men.”
I turn at once and make for the door, Zeke at my shoulder. As we push out into the snow, Joseph jogs after us. “I’m coming, too,” he says.
“No,” Zeke says. “You’re not ready.”
I don’t stop as they can have this talk. I just keep walking toward the pickup. I’m about to climb in when I realize I’ve forgotten something.
“You can come, kid,” I say, ignoring Zeke’s look of surprise. “But first, back inside, fast. Ask Shackle where the guns are. Bring some rifles. Don’t take longer than three minutes. Go, now!”
At once, Joseph wheels one-eighty and sprints for the clubhouse.
I sit in the passenger seat and Zeke takes the driver’s seat. We do this without discussing it. Zeke doesn’t need to ask to see that I’m in no state to drive; it’s a miracle I wasn’t killed on the way here.
“Are you sure about this?” Zeke says. “Taking the kid, I mean.”
“I don’t care about anything but Allison,” I say, meeting his gaze. He winces. Looking past him, I can vaguely see my reflection in the car window. The sky is darkening, the winter afternoon cloudy, so the windows are partially reflective. My nose has swollen to twice its original size, one of my eyes is bruised and purple from where I slammed into the snow, my heard is soaked and dripping from melted snow. I look back to Zeke. “You once told me there was more to family than the club. You used to talk about having a woman, kids. And I never believed you. I never thought it was meant for men like us. Well, I was wrong. You were right. I’ve found that, Zeke, and I’m not letting it go. So if the kid wants to go, if he wants to make our two guns three, I’m not going to stand in his way.”
“You love
this girl,” Zeke says quietly.
It’s not a question, so I don’t offer an answer.
A couple of minutes later, Joseph comes running out of the clubhouse with a duffle bag over his shoulder. I’m still shocked each time I look at the kid; it’s like looking at a different person. And all ’cause of Allison, I reckon: all thanks to kindness, her willingness to check in on him, keep him motivated, all ’cause the mother of my child is the kindest woman I’ve ever met. Joseph climbs into the back seat and places the duffle bag between us.
“Drive, Zeke.” I grip the handhold. “Drive fuckin’ fast.”
“How do we know he’s at the warehouse?” Joseph asks, raising his voice to be heard over the noise of Zeke screeching out of the parking lot, the snow kicking into the air.
“We don’t,” I reply. “But it’s the best place to look first.”
Zeke slams the pedal down and sends us hurtling through the city. The kid’s question stabs at me as we drive. He’s right, I know. Trent could’ve just taken her to some field somewhere and killed her…or he could be doing other things to her, to the goddamn mother of my child. Perhaps he’s driving her out of the state. But no, I can’t think on that. I have to believe he still wants his petty club, even if he is a psychopath; I have to believe there’s some logic in his lunacy. Zeke drives with skill and speed, getting us to the warehouse in about fifteen minutes. He parks just across the street, under a broken streetlamp, and the three of us step out into the semi darkness.
Joseph drops the duffle bag in the snow and we kneel down.
“Good, kid,” I say, taking an automatic rifle and a few ammo clips. I shove the ammo clips in the pockets of my leather, and then I take a snub-nosed pistol and put it in my boot for backup.
Once we’re all armed, we start walking across the street toward the warehouse. The building is large and long, a building that was once a factory, which became a warehouse, and now is nothing but a large abandoned cavern. It sits on the outskirts of a built-up industrial estate, ignored, with a few working factories a quarter-mile down the road. Zeke and I have been here a few times to stake it out. We’ve watched men walking to and fro, leather-wearing men, but we’ve never seen Trent here. But still, this is the place he would come if he had any kind of plan. We’ve seen more of his men here than any of his other locations combined. The plan was to raid all his places at the same time in a coordinated hit. But that’s out the window now. I don’t give a shit about the big plan; the big club-versus-club battle can sort itself out. All I care about is getting Allison back.
We make our way down an alleyway, the ground slushy beneath us. I hear the kid breathing heavy, hefting the gun in his hand, and I want to turn to him and tell him that everything is going to be okay. But I can’t think about anything other than Allison and Bump. I never knew emotion like this existed. I never knew a protective urge like this existed. It’s crazy to me. I never knew a man could care this much: that a man’s mind could be completely consumed with two people, one a woman he could not live without and one a child he has not met yet. I used to look at men who were in love and wonder what the hell had come over them, wonder why they didn’t just fuck and move on. And now I can’t understand how I used to think that; I have a deep ache in my chest when I think of my family, terrified and alone, waiting for me to save them. I think of Bump, my son…or my daughter. Right now, as we approach the small door which was once used for the workers of the factory, I don’t care if Bump is a boy or a girl. I just want my child to be safe, the mother to be safe: my family, in my arms.
I wipe snow and blood from my face, the pain still sharp. I ignore it as we gather outside the door, Joseph and Zeke on one side, me on the other. Zeke tries the door, but it’s locked.
“Alright, let’s smash this fucker down,” Zeke says, hefting the butt of his rifle and aiming at the handle.
“Wait,” Joseph mutters. “Wait a sec.”
Zeke, holding his gun ready to strike, raises an eyebrow. “Huh?”
Joseph reaches into his pocket and brings out a small black pouch, similar to a wallet. He unfolds it and reveals lock-picking equipment. “No reason to be loud when we don’t need to be,” he mutters.
Zeke directs his arched eyebrow at me.
I shrug. “If he’s quick, I don’t care.”
“Where did you learn this, kid?” Zeke asks, as Joseph kneels down and starts fiddling with the lock.
“Junkies learn lots of useful stuff,” Joseph says. “Problem is, we forget most of it. Luckily I didn’t forget this.” He fiddles with the lock, and after about twenty seconds, there’s a click and the door opens into a dark passageway, creaking on its hinges.
“Okay,” I say, aiming my rifle and walking into the building. “Stay alert, watch the corners, listen. Be careful, and be ruthless if you have to be.”
The three of us creep into the passageway, rifles aimed ahead of us, me in the front, Joseph in the middle, and Zeke in the rear. Zeke and I don’t need to discuss the details; he’ll watch our backs without us having to talk about it. We’ve been doing this long enough so that speech isn’t necessary. We walk through the building for a few minutes before coming to a large factory floor. I hold my hand up, meaning for everybody to stop, but Joseph walks into my back.
“Sorry,” he says, too loud. His voice echoes into the rafters above, his sorry reverberating around us.
We all freeze as the echo gets quieter and quieter and finally becomes silent. Alright, nobody heard. I point forward, and we keep walking. I guess we’ll scout the factory floor, and then move up the staircase which is off to one side, barely visible in the darkness: the only light being the waning sunlight which shines through slit windows set high in the wall, near the ceiling. The factory floor is dotted here and there with disused equipment and crates.
We’re walking by a large, squat metal machine when gunfire explodes from the top of the staircase and across the room, clanging off the metal and peppering the floor at our feet.
“Get the fuck down!” Zeke roars, and the three of us jump to the floor, ducking down behind the machine.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Allison
I sit in silence, not daring to speak, after Trent punches me in the belly. Terror like I have never felt before grips me, feeling like hands inside my belly, twisting and hurting Bump, cruel, powerful hands doing things nobody should ever do to a growing baby. Tears sting my eyes, slide down my cheeks, but I can’t sob; if I sob, he will hit me again. I keep staring at Bump, because something is not right. It feels wrong. Something feels out of place. There is the pain, but there is another element, too, almost like a dislocation in my stomach. I bite down. I want to scream for help. I want to scream for a doctor. What if he’s killed my baby? What if this evil man has killed my child?
He sits at his desk, looking at his monitors, every now and then muttering something under his breath. He hasn’t tried to kiss me again, which I am thankful for, but I am also furious with myself for letting my pride harm Bump; I should’ve just kissed him. I should do anything he wants to protect my baby.
Now…I wince as my belly cramps up, something churning deep inside of me, a feeling like flesh tearing. It reminds me of dry-heaving, the tightness in my belly. The fear grows and grows until I am on the verge of panic. I need to get out of here. I need to get to a doctor. Miscarriage…I try and close my mind to the word: an evil word; a foreboding word. But I cannot. The possibility is too real. Maybe the baby is already dead. Maybe the life I have been tending these past four months is already dead inside of me. I bite my lip, but still a whimper escapes me. The whimper sounds pitiful and small compared with the panic and fear which attacks me. It sounds far too weak.
“Shut up,” Trent says casually, without turning. “You could’ve made this so much easier, you pregnant slut. You could’ve made everything so easy. Why didn’t you just give yourself to me, that day in summer, eh? Why didn’t you just be a good whore and give yourself to me? That’s wha
t you whores never seem to understand. You don’t get it, do you? You’re not meant to flap your stupid fucking lips every time a stupid thought enters your stupid head. No, no, you’re not meant for that. Why not just shut your cunt mouth and let me do the thinking for you, huh? Oh, god, I hate whores like you. Ungrateful, pathetic whores. And you’re the most pathetic whore I’ve ever met, easy. No question about that. No way.”
He turns, stands, walks over me to. “Look at you,” he says, disgust in his voice. I don’t look up at him, but stare down at my feet. I don’t whimper. I hold my breath. I do nothing which could give him cause to strike me again. I close my mind to pride, I close my mind to the woman who was somehow able to stand up to him that day in summer. I close my mind to all of that and become the meek, obedient woman I would’ve been had I stayed in my parents’ pre-planned suburban life. I become less than nothing; I become a shadow. I make myself so small and meaningless that it would seem like a chore to harm me—or my baby.
