by Davida Lynn
As she aimed a kick for the face, he grunted, “You fucking bitch,” and swung a leg of the end table into her ribs. Raven screamed, feeling the splintered wood rip through her shirt.
It gave Tanner the advantage and he cracked the cop in the jaw. It stunned him, and it was enough for Tanner to bring a knee up into the cop’s groin.
“Help me! I’m trapped!” Raven saw that Tanner had gotten the upper hand and went to find Charity. She stumbled down a hallway and saw the second door on the right was closed. As her heart sped to keep up with the adrenaline coursing through her, she turned the handle and threw the door open.
“Thank God. He’s had me trapped in here for hours. He’s a cop. I’m handcuffed to the bed. Please, please help me.” The girl sounded awful. Her voice was weak, strained, and Raven could see that she was handcuffed naked to the bed. The cuffs had cut into her wrists, and dark blood stained her skin.
Taking deep breaths, Raven stepped into the room. The woman turned her head away, overcome by the light shining in. She could hear Tanner and the cop still battling in the living room. Raven trusted her brother to take care of the job. She had to get the girl free.
“What the hell are you doing here?” The girl sounded disoriented. Raven could only imagine what had been done to her. She looked around for the key, but she couldn’t find it. Finally, she turned to help Tanner finish off the cop so they could free Charity.
“No,” the woman cried out. “Please, don’t go!”
Raven turned. “I need the key.” The cop had it on him, but he was still fighting hard.
The cop had blood oozing out of his mouth as he spoke. “Never would have figured you for jungle fever, Zane.” Tanner had him pushed up against the wall. He’d gotten in quite a few good shots. The cop’s face was swollen and bleeding from several cuts. Tanner brought his knee up again, this time knocking the wind out of the cop.
Raven ran and tackled the large cop. Hearing her brother’s real name scared her. How much did he know about them, about the club? She tried to wrap her head around the situation. It was something out of a nightmare. If the cop knew who they were, did another? If he didn’t show up to work the next day, would his partner know who to go after first?
Tanner stepped over the cop as he rattled off charges. “Assaulting an officer. Assault with a deadly weapon. Breaking and entering again, Zane.”
“Are you as good at shutting up as you are at lists?” Raven’s brother brought a fist down hard against the cop’s face. Teeth and blood leaked from his mouth, and he finally did shut up.
Raven looked at her brother. “Keys to the handcuffs.”
He looked at his sister and huffed. “Handcuffs?”
“Mhm. He’s got your girl in there cuffed to the bed.”
Raven and Tanner looked through the cop’s pockets. No keys. After searching through a few drawers, Raven spotted it underneath the TV. She grabbed it and ran back to the bedroom where the girl was trapped.
As Raven went to unlock the cuffs, the girl pulled away in terror.
“Hey, hey. We’re here to help.” She saw just how tight they were on the girl. They had cut into her all the way around her wrists. She needed the wounds cleaned up and bandaged. She turned back toward the door.
“Hey, Zane. She needs a med kit. The cop’s probably got one in the trunk of his car.” Raven knew they carried basic kits, but some of the Bakersfield PD were EMTs and carried larger ones. Looking at Charity’s wrists, Raven hoped this scum was an EMT. “We’re gonna get you all fixed up, Charity.”
From the living room, her brother called, “I’m on it.”
Raven turned her attention to the girl. She was beyond scared. The cop had done a real number on her face, too. A large bruise covered her cheek, partially swelling one of her eyes shut.
Raven could see that she was a pretty girl and had sweet eyes. Seeing her, even in the state she was in, made her realize that she meant a lot to Tanner. Her brother had fallen in love, and Raven couldn’t have picked a better girl.
Charity, real name Jenny, had thought that Raven was dating Tanner. Despite the grim circumstances, Raven laughed. It wasn’t the first time they’d been mistaken for partners, and it was always funny as shit. Raven assured Jenny that she was only there to help, and the girl relaxed.
They patched her wounds as best as the small med kit would allow, and Tanner took her outside. Raven waited inside and kept a watch over the asshole cop.
He wasn’t unconscious, but Raven could make a quick guess that he had at least three broken teeth, one broken hand, a major concussion, and at least one broken rib. He wasn’t going anywhere fast, that was for sure.
After five minutes, Raven heard Tanner’s old Mustang pull out of the driveway. The headlights painted an eerie glow over the destroyed interior of the home. Soon the rumble of the engine faded, and Tanner came back inside with a small gas can.
Raven’s eyes stared daggers at her brother, “Jesus, Tanner.”
“Put that back where you found it.” Raven shook her head. It was like talking to a child.
He took the can back out to the garage. While he did, Raven searched for the laundry room. When she found the trash can that was inside, she dug out a good handful of dryer lint.
Back in the living room, she told Tanner to close all the windows in the place. She situated the lint where it would do the most damage. She wedged it into the corner of the dining room, underneath a hutch that stood nearly as tall as the ceiling.
“You can smell gasoline even after the entire place has burned to the ground. It’ll get marked as arson right away. This way, we’ve got a week or two before they rule that it was suspicious.” Raven stood up and kicked the wall outlet next to the lint. The plastic cover shattered. She pulled the unit from the wall, leaving it dangling.
When she turned to her brother, he already had a lighter out and extended to her.
“Find me some olive oil or cooking oil.”
Tanner found some in the second cabinet he searched. He tossed the small bottle to her. Raven poured a few drops on the lint, then handed the bottle back to him. She bent down, lit the lint, and backed away.
For a second it looked like the flames wouldn’t catch, but then they began to grow, and the hutch and wall soon had the devil’s bright fingers climbing upward along them. Raven and Tanner backed away to the door. She headed out to the Harleys, but Tanner stayed in the doorway.
She knew he needed to be sure, but time wasn’t on their side. “Tanner, we gotta ride.”
She twisted the throttle back and he turned around.
Raven’s eyes were wide, and she ushered him away from the house. He finally took the hint. Tanner ran down the steps and swung his leg over the Harley. He brought it to life. They gunned it out of the driveway and cut to the right. Neither Raven nor Tanner looked back. There was nothing to see behind them.
A few miles away, they stopped speeding through red lights. The fire would be far behind them, and every cop and firefighter would be headed in the opposite direction.
As they sat there, bikes idling, Tanner leaned toward his sister. “I’m heading back to my place to take care of Jenny. Keep your head on a swivel, and keep the phone close.”
Raven nodded. “You good?”
“I’m more than good. You?”
“You know it. I like her, for the record.”
Tanner smiled. “Yeah?”
Raven nodded. Even for a girl trapped in a psycho’s house, Jenny had remained tough. Raven liked tough women, and seeing Tanner happy was something magical. She already liked Jenny, and after some cleaning up, she could only get better. Raven didn’t have many female friends, but she thought Jenny might be different.
The light turned green and Tanner peeled out to the left. Raven sat there for a few seconds longer before tearing off to the right. She laughed as the wind pulled her hair around her neck, feeling that sweet freedom of the road around her.
After one of the longest nights of he
r life, Raven took a few days off from the Rising Sons. She needed the time to catch up on precious sleep, and as Tanner had said, “You earned it, sis.”
Raven thanked God that she didn’t have a morning shift at the parlor, and she reveled in turning her alarm off. Flipping the switch on her nightstand lamp, she let out a sigh of exhaustion and bedded down.
Her rattling phone woke her up not two hours later. She reached for it, still blinded by the darkness. Her fingers found it and she pulled her head up. The club was calling. Of course the club was calling. It was never in the early afternoon or when she was already on her way. It was always in the dead of night, or when she was busy with some other part of her life.
Raven put the phone to her ear, talking through the deep sleep haze. “Yeah? What’s up?”
“A drug dealer in town kidnapped somebody. We need that somebody, and we need the dealer gone. Two birds with one stone. I’ll text you the rendezvous point. Be there in fifteen. Come locked, come loaded. This ain’t play.”
Thirty seconds after the call ended, her phone vibrated again with an address outside of Walker Basin.
By the time the text came in, Raven was already sliding the previous day’s jeans back up her legs. She slid a belt through them and threaded her holster through the belt. She dug a sports bra out of her drawer, anticipating the need for support rather than style.
She threw on her t-shirt and prospect cut. In the mirror, she forced her eyes open, exaggerating her facial features to try and spring them awake. Raven looked at the patch that read Prospect. She knew it wouldn’t be on there long, but she still hated it. She tried to tell herself that she was just starting out and that it wasn’t a black mark. Someday it will read “Raven,” and under that, “President,” she thought, her heart catching up to the realization that she was going on a run with the club.
Adrenaline kicked in and did more than any espresso ever would. She headed for the door, throwing on her worn motorcycle boots. Before leaving the house, she checked her Glock 40, a workhorse of a pistol. The 40 had no safety and could fire all day and night without a single jam. She ejected the magazine to ensure it was full, pulled the slider back enough to see that there was no bullet in the chamber, then holstered it.
She tried to think if she was forgetting anything. When her mind blanked, she stepped through the door. There was no turning back.
She made the ride to the address in less than ten minutes. It was an old gas station, the kind with full service and a discount when paid in cash—the same kind that closed down at midnight. Boss and six other bikers sat beneath the old sign with plastic plates that displayed the price for unleaded fuel. She could identify a few, but the dawn hadn’t yet given her enough light to see faces. She could tell Bear was with them. Gunner and his brother, Trigger, were sitting on their bikes next to each other, too. Trigger never missed out on a fight.
“I’m waitin’ on one more guy, then we roll.” Bear turned and addressed the bikers behind him. “We’re looking for one victim. Name’s Nick. Late twenties, early thirties. Probably looks like a burnout. He’s the only one I want left alive. Boss’ name is Beezer. Older, salt and pepper hair, not that there’s anything wrong with that.” Bear shook his hair, imitating a shampoo commercial. A few of the bikers laughed to break the tension.
“I want you,” Bear pointed out Raven, “on the rear. Make sure we’re not followed, and if anyone is coming back to the compound while we’re inside, you’d better fuckin’ let us know.”
She nodded. Raven had listened hard, trying to memorize every detail. It was her first raid with the Rising Sons, and she was determined to prove herself. She was as good a shot, and as good a fighter, as all the men around her. She might not have been as muscular, but she was fast, and sometimes that was what counted.
In this case, though, she wouldn’t be inside. She’d be at the edge of some driveway, looking for red and blue lights, her ears focused on the police scanner.
When they heard the deep roar of a motorcycle on the road in front of them, Bear fired up his own. The crew followed suit, and when the bike passed them with a full head of steam, the president pulled out.
Raven didn’t catch who was riding scout. It didn’t really matter to her; she’d be at the back of the pack. She didn’t want to spend her first raid outside, but for a prospect to ride into a fight with the Rising Sons wasn’t the usual. Raven wondered if it was Bear’s way of repaying her, since she had personally made sure he was freed from jail.
The bikers pulled out from the station, Raven letting the train of riders pass her before she twisted the throttle back. Her job was important, even if it wasn’t glamorous. She protected the bikers from the rear. Attacks from behind were the most vicious. Raven unsnapped the leather strap over her handgun and gave frequent checks over both shoulders.
She looked ahead to oncoming traffic, noting the few cars that they passed. If any of them turned around or stopped abruptly, she’d let the others know and do what had to be done to slow down any attackers.
Raven knew there wasn’t much to her position, but she understood that it was crucial, and she knew that it took time to work up the ladder. Soon she’d be a point man and lead a crew into a building. Until that day, she’d do her job and do it well.
They rode single-file and Raven followed. She had no idea where they were headed or how far it was. The sky was hinting at morning as they raced east and into the foothills. When Raven saw the rider in front of her, Trigger, put his hand out and push it down toward the ground with an open palm, she knew they were close. She dropped her speed more than those in front of her. As the road wound and began to climb, she felt confident that they were close enough that she could find a decent lookout spot.
When she crested the next hill, she saw that Bear and the scout, Cecil, had come to a stop and were parked just off the road. Bear saw her and pointed straight down. He wanted her to stay where she was. She nodded at him, but he had already turned back to the conversation with Boss.
After a minute or two, Bear turned to the bikers. “All right. Let’s do this. If you got a god, ask him for protection.” Bear waited as a few of the Rising Sons bowed their heads. When all eyes were back on the president, he fired up the bike again.
They took off, leaving Raven at her post. She listened to the pack of motorcycles trail off until she couldn’t tell what was the sound of engines and what was her imagination.
Turning to the east, she could see the sun just cresting the foothills. After just a few minutes, she had to raise a hand to block the sunlight. She couldn’t be blinded and on the lookout at the same time. She fired up her Harley and headed back west, looking for a stretch of road that gave her a view of both the northbound and southbound routes. Less than a quarter mile of backtracking gave her what she was looking for.
Raven killed the engine and turned on the scanner app on her phone. Her signal was weak, but she had enough bars to hear Bakersfield dispatch. With one earbud in she listened to the radio traffic out of Bakersfield, and with the other she listened for approaching cars or bikes.
The scanner stayed quiet, except for the occasional medical call. One dispatcher did request police assistance, but it was far on the north side of town, more than half an hour in the other direction.
Once the radio traffic went silent, Raven was left alone with nature. The only sound was the wind whispering through the trees and shrubs. The short night of sleep tried to wrap a warm arm around her, but Raven shrugged it off, keeping herself awake by imagining the scene at the drug dealer’s.
She knew that when she heard the engines coming back toward her, she’d need to be ready to ride hard. Raven knew they’d all come back. She just hoped they’d come back with someone riding bitch and no one injured.
Checking her watch, she turned back toward Bear Valley. It had been nearly fifteen minutes. She was getting nervous. Nothing had come across the scanner, but she hadn’t gotten a call or text, either. Her heart rate moved upward a
t a steady pace. She reached for her phone, certain that the club had been gone too long. As she was about to call Gunner, she heard it.
