Vulnerable (Barons of Sodom)

by Blake, Abriella

  “I know.”

  Whether it was intentional or not, Bridie pivoted her hips on the motor block. She bent low from this vantage towards the waiting toolbox, supplying Tuck with a full, lovely view of her ass. His heart skipped a beat. He leaned forward, almost involuntarily.

  “Where did you come from?”

  “My mama, just like you.”

  “Oh, so she's a little smart aleck.” Tuck stood again, all but launching off the makeshift seat. He moved a few paces in Bridie's direction, waiting for the inevitable moment when she'd recoil. He loped towards her slowly, stopping only once he was hovering over her supple, smooth body. Close enough to see the pores on her skin. The tiny, fine hairs raised on her arms and legs.

  The thing was, Tuck was used to his women behaving a certain way. On one end of the spectrum lay the sisterly Athena, with whom he could spar and joke easily, just as he could with the other bikers—and way away on the opposite end were the concubines. The Lolas, the Izzys, the Chantals. These women had dutifully feigned the sweet, virtuous Madonna act—at all of those truck stops, in all of those bars, at all of those rowdy parties—but had also, dutifully, spread their legs wide for him when the time came. They'd thrown back their lovely heads of hair and moaned, ached for his kisses and the rhythmic thrusts of his cock, and as a matter of course he'd left all these women wanting more in rented rooms. Some of the other bikers spoke of old ladies who'd “gotten away,” but Tuck had never known what it meant to crave a particular woman, any more than as good fuck. For all the lieutenant's relative morality in the group, the combination of his fearlessness and dashing good looks had made him little more than a manwhore.

  Yet, this girl was different. He stood close enough to her now that he could smell her hair and skin—both fresh, he presumed from a recent washing by the outside well. It would have been easy to place a rough hand around her chin, snake eager fingers down her thin neck and into the hot plunge of her cleavage. It would have been easy to cup Bridie's breast and press hard into the flesh there, to make her tilt her raven head back and moan...well, he told himself it would have been easy. Only now his conquest swiveled her head up, meeting his gaze full on.

  “Excuse me. You're blocking the box,” she said. There was the faintest trace of annoyance in her tone.

  “Little girl, do you know where you've landed?” Tuck heard himself say. In his head, it was a joke—but the line arrived in space like a threat.

  In response, Bridie drew a breath. She set her lovely chin. Then suddenly, improbably, Tuck doubled over—something had thwacked him hard in the shin.

  “I'm sorry,” Bridie chirped, in the least sorry voice he'd ever heard. “Just my wrench, there. See I told you: you're standing in the way of the box.”

  Before Tuck could elect to let his fury or his shame produce a response, he turned on his heels and left the shop. His leg flared with every step. “Fucking bitch,” he murmured to the flat air, through gritted teeth. Athena and whatever her name was just laughed and laughed at his retreat.

  Chapter Twelve

  BRIDIE: Hahaha—(pronounced, long bout of laughter). Yep, that was the smooth operator's first attempt: “Little girl. Do you know where you are?” Dumbshit said it all deep and sexy, like Batman might've. I remember thinking after that first encounter: okay, I can handle these slobs. If this is the worst of ‘em, they've still got nothing on Aunt Caroline's suitor-army of monsters. And I figured then and there that the Lieutenant wasn't hard on the eyes, shall we say. It was actually kind of an awakening moment—even Mr. Reginald, the most handsome man I thought I'd ever seen up close, he was really attractive in a Dad way. I think I fell for him because of how grown-up he seemed to be. But Tuck? Oh, I fell for Tuck because he was even more lost and afraid than I was, and I didn't think it was possible for a man to be that way. I shouldn't say that—he wasn't afraid. He was tough as anything. But he did have this aspect of a little boy about him. From the way he'd play with the long coils of his hair to the way he'd puff out his big chest, like a peacock. I could just see right through the doofus, you know?

  And I already felt better, having something to do. Praise God for Athena Sark, wherever she is now. It was funny; fixing cars and bikes came pretty easy to me, the way that certain games or activities come easy to other people. I looked at an engine and thought I could understand it pretty quick, which was this incredible feeling after those two nights in the clink—here I was, able to understand something. I could do something useful with my hands! Something other than chop up shitty meth or make shitty projects for my deadbeat aunt! It's the little things you've got to celebrate.

  DET. RAMIREZ: But what about Tuck? Did you like him already, that first day you met him?

  BRIDIE: Well, sure, I liked him. What do you mean, detective? You investigating LaRouche or something?

  DET. RAMIREZ: Not at all, just curious. You would say though, that you were attracted to Tucker LaRouche? From the get-go?

  BRIDIE: Well, a man walks into a movie starring Julia Roberts, what's he supposed to say? Tuck was—is—a perfect man. He had the muscles of a marble statue, the golden skin and thick hair of everybody's Adonis. So yes, some shall-we-say thoughts of love crossed my mind. I knew I shouldn't have been thinking about sex or boys or anything frivolous in the middle of my very-precarious situation with the MC, but yes, Detective. I have a heart that pumps blood. I wanted him bad.

  Does that answer your question?

  (Laughter)

  Chapter Thirteen

  Officer Gil Cannon clicked the door of his blue Cadillac shut. The ring of metal on metal seemed the only sound for miles in the hot country air. Flicking a pair of RayBan aviators across the elegant bridge of his nose, the policeman took quick survey of his face in the side mirror. Dapper, as fucking usual, he murmured to the forest.

  Officer Cannon made quick work of the half-mile of paved road leading up to the main house of the Barons of Sodom, and from there he took stock of the property: the big house, the campfire meeting ground, a garage with rooms above it, a wellspring...all lay exactly as his commanding officers had said. Cannon then reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a crushed pack of menthols. He drew one wimpy cigarette from the frayed end of the box and lit it with a pack of matches. He squinted, already uncomfortable, up into the opaque windows of the fortress. His suit was a plainclothesmen’s' beige linen, and he'd already begun to sweat through it in this intense heat.

  The officer heard the sounds of a scuffle coming from a room above the garage, followed by the loud slam of a door. A real pork chop of a rider with a walrus moustache and handfuls of fat spooling from the restrictive band of his leather pants came clomping out into the sunshine. The biker shielded his eyes from the sun and then peered at the stranger, planting his feet in the dry earth. “Who the FUCK are you?” he called out.

  Cannon said nothing, merely pulled his badge from the same crumpled inner pocket where his cigarettes rested. He was the kind of man who had to shave twice a day, and the sweat pooling already by the tips of his earlobes was tickling down over the stubble on his cheeks. How does that fat piece of shit stay cool in leather, he thought to himself. But at the wide rider, he merely smiled. He smiled a smile that showed all of his perfect, shiny white teeth.

  Officer Cannon had been told all his life that he bore more than a passing resemblance to a certain beloved movie star, and that comparison alone had been sufficient for paving his charmed way through the social spheres of Waco, Texas. Cannon was also a tall man—tall enough to be a moderately successful defensive basketball player with an inexplicably poor jump shot—and that height also lent him the air of an intimidating person. He had big, muscular arms from spending hours at the shooting range. His brown hair was impressively thick, and as it grew as fast as his beard, often falling into his eyes. He was nearly barrel-chested (like his movie star doppelganger, who was best-known for playing a Roman gladiator in an epic movie many years earlier), indicating strength, but his pearly white
s could disarm most women. In short, he wasn't accustomed to being fucked with. It just didn't happen that often.

  “Pfff. Like I give two shits about the law,” drawled the biker. “This is private property, Krupke. Whyn't you mosey back to your government teat.”

  Turning on his pudgy legs, the biker started to lurch back up the hill toward the source of the argument that had apparently driven him outside. But before he'd taken a third step, the dry earth around his feet was crackling with gunshots.

  “JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!” called Spivey, dancing on his toes to avoid the spurts of rubble and bullet. The officer was firing a full load into the earth, just like one of those hard-ass Western big shots who tell their victims to “dance” before they shoot them full of holes. Being unathletic, the biker couldn't meet the challenge—he ducked and rolled over the earth away from the spray, winding up in a sweaty, heaving ball at the base of the wellspring. Panting, he glowered up at Officer Cannon with fresh eyes.

  “So the Law, huh?”

  Cannon nodded.

  “What do you want? Money? Drugs? Cause if you want a Rider to roll over on a deal, you're gonna need a bigger gun.”

  “They brought a girl here yesterday. I need to see her.”

  “Ha. Shoulda figured.”

  Cannon reloaded his gun and pointed it lazily at Spivey's shaking head. “Where is she?”

  “She's around here somewhere.”

  Cannon cocked the pistol.

  “Jesus, officer. Try the garage. And if she's not there, she's probably breaking in the bed in the big house.”

  Though Cannon was already trotting in the direction of the garage, Spivey called to his back: “Beautiful tits! The one with straight hair! Can't miss her!” Then he fully collapsed against the spring.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Cannon rapped twice on the wall outside the garage before he sauntered inside. A short, squat woman with a curly head of hair was rummaging noisily through a box of ball bearings. Not likely his target. Then he saw her: a slender, slightly gawky young girl perched on an abandoned bucket seat, studying a heavy book by the light from the cracked skylight. Closer inspection revealed that the book was a user's manual: Basic Motorcycle Repair.

  “Excuse me,” Cannon said, quietly at first. Neither woman looked up, so he cleared his throat for emphasis: “I'm looking for Bridie Calyer,” he said. The girl's eyes flicked up, startled. He saw her searching his face for some sign of recognition. It was true, what the asshole outside had said. She did have a great rack.

  “And who the hell are you?” called the short one, her whole carriage a picture of irritation. She looked like a woman who'd already been trifled with a few times that day. Cannon couldn't help but respect a woman like this: she reminded him of the other ladies on the force. Women who'd been told all their lives they'd be lucky to carve out a woman's space in a man's world, and in response said: fuck you.

  “Bridie Calyer,” Cannon repeated. “And I know that's who you are, little lady. I'm Officer Gil Cannon, from the East Side precinct. I've been assigned to be your liaison with the Sheriff's office. Gonna keep an eye on you while you're visiting these...outlaws.”

  The short one narrowed her eyes and started to wipe her greasy hands on a red kerchief in likely echo of some intimidating gesture she'd seen in a movie. Cannon couldn't help but notice that she, too, had an impressive set of tits. A nice figure all around, really. It'd been too long since he...

  “What are you talking about? A man from the precinct dropped me off just the other day. I wasn't told I'd be getting any kind of watchman.”

  “Liaison.”

  “Whatever.”

  “All I know is they sent me. I'll be here every day, and you can check in with me if anyone's bothering you. I'll be watching you to make sure they don't.” Cannon then strode into the garage and began to pick up pieces of bric-a-brac as he found them, looking entirely at ease. There was something decidedly unofficial about the way the man moved—his actions were too studied. Like a con artist, Bridie thought.

  “Who's garage is this?” he asked, his voice languid.

  “I'm Athena Sark. I look after all the bikes here.”

  Cannon extended a hand to Athena, but she kept her fist balled firmly in the red kerchief. He recoiled at the slight, before sliding his aviators up the bridge of his nose and onto his head. Then he paused where he stood and turned his gaze to Bridie.

  “Look, babe. I don't give a damn where you go or what you do. All I know is I'm a police officer, I'm on assignment, and you're a hot little piece of ass who may or may not have witnessed the biggest murder in this county in the past nine years. You can 'whatever' till the cows come home, but if I were you I wouldn't be fool enough to turn away anyone offering protection right now.” Without waiting for a reply from either woman, Cannon spit into the cool dark of the garage and turned on his heel. The women listened to his loafers crunch away in the dust.

  After a long pause, Bridie turned to Athena. “You think he was telling the truth? Or full of it?”

  “Don't trust the law, kid.”

  Bridie bit her lip. “But if it is true. That I saw a crime. I...I need to trust the law eventually, don't I?”

  “In my experience, they never seem to have your best interests at heart.” Athena went back to rummaging, casting the handkerchief aside as quickly as she'd taken it up. Both women worked in silence for a few minutes, Athena making huffy noises of irritation as she began to scrape the bottom of her box. Finally, she spoke again.

  “Bridie, I know you're scared. Whatever has happened, I'd be, too. But remember: as shitty as all these Barons seem to be, they're all hard as nails because they've been through hell. You go through hell and keep going, you get hard like that. And the only upside to pain is that it can make you so strong you learn to protect yourself, you learn to protect the people you love, and you stop being afraid of any-fucking-thing.” She clanked the lid of the toolbox shut with excessive force. “You just stick with me. I'll show you.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Far earlier than it seemed it should have, a red, rosy sunset began to fill the camp. The morning birds traded places with the scuttling rodents of evening, and listless Barons began to light little fires around the camp—both as signposts for travelers and to ward off the infectious mosquitoes.

  Most of the men, Bridie had discovered, spent their days shifting from room to room in the camp, or finding excuses to come by the garage and bother Athena. It seemed that the Barons of Sodom were more lost than any collection of bikers she'd heard about before. In the hours since morning alone, the young apprentice had learned all the biker's nicknames, associated with their various engines, each in various states of disuse-related disrepair. Most members of the MC preferred a Honda ride, she'd learned. Yet some of the men had souped up bikes with trendy paint jobs, while others rode older, verging-on-vintage makes. One especially lovely blue and white racer, made in 1970, hung from a ceiling rack in the Sark space. When asked about its origin, Athena—for once—shut her mouth tight. “That one's for God. We don't fuck with it.”

  Some of the Barons had given her shit—Spivey, Yak, a doughy-faced kid called Bo Diddly—but largely it seemed that God's word had held fast. Athena was pleased—she was certain that, had she not intervened, Bridie would already have been conscripted into the concubines by now. She was also surprised to discover how handy a mechanic Bridie was. The young girl had a natural eye for overseas engineering.

  And no sooner had the head mechanic pronounced the day's work done than a rumor began around camp: there was to be another party tonight, this time at a podunk bar off the highway. God had apparently done some good turn in the past for the bartender at Dixie's, and the manager was paying it forward now by hosting a brouhaha.

  “What do you say, kid? Feel like going to a biker party?” Athena asked her ward as they trotted towards the meeting space for dinner. Unexpectedly, Bridie set her chin. “Yes,” she answered, her voice clear.r />
  As they munched over the grim selection of hotdogs and hamburgers that Z had prepared for the club, Athena took stock of her fellows: Tucker had disappeared at some point in the afternoon, likely on another amble around the plains. God, as was his usual tack, hadn't left his property for most of the day. The mysterious Officer Cannon was nowhere to be seen, but his crisp-looking Caddy was still at the bottom of the hill.

  “It's weird around here today. I'm thinking a bit of bacchanalia would do you good, babe,” Athena agreed, forcing down a bite of rubbery hot dog. “Come on. Let's get you dressed.”

  Though Athena's quarters were largely bleak, Bridie was surprised to discover that the older woman had a veritable treasure trove of dresses and jewelry—all of them colorful and somewhat exotic. She kept these goodies stuffed into a trunk at the foot of her sour-looking cot.

  “You ever wear any of this stuff, A?” Bridie asked, as she drew a length of plum-colored silk from the drawer.

  “Not much use for girly dresses in an oil-spattered garage,” Athena said. Then, for what felt like the first time in their whole, slow day together, the other woman laughed. Without knowing quite what was funny, Bridie joined in.

  Together, they played an improbable game of dress-up under the harsh industrial light. Athena attempted both an electric blue pantsuit with a deep V-neck and a tiny floral tube top with a flamenco skirt—both of which revealed the constellations of tattoos striping the mechanic's back and arms. Bridie, eager to play, settled on a black halter dress made of light linen, with a ring of embroidered stars dancing around the hem. When she wandered out from behind the thin curtain separating the bedroom from the rest of the garage, Athena drew a breath.