by Nicole Fox
“You’re a good rider, Jack. Go and find him by yourself.”
“I need fuckin’ backup!” he snarls. He kicks something. Everything goes quiet for a moment.
And then Jackson speaks. “I understand that you’re angry,” he says. “But this kind of rage is useless. I am not your enemy.”
“You’re not my friend right now either, sir.”
“Is that what you think?” He sounds wounded. How can he have the gall to sound wounded right now?
“If you were, you’d find a way to help me. I can’t go out there and tell her there’s no hope. I just can’t. This is her kid we’re talking about. Yeah, he’s mine too. But he’s hers. She carried him. She gave birth to him. She’s been with him every damn day since he was born. And you’re gonna make me go out there and tell her that it’s over.”
“You don’t have to tell her everything,” Jackson says. “You don’t know her.”
“Don’t be stupid,” he says.
“Careful,” Jackson warns. “I’m still your president.”
“Will you help me?” Jack asks plainly, after several moments.
“I want to,” Jackson says. “Of course I fucking want to, kid! I’ve been helping you your whole life! I’ve been helping you ever since we met! What have I spent my life doing, if not helping you? Ever since I picked you up, I’ve been on your side.”
“So why aren’t you on my side now?” Jack sounds almost desperate. It’s odd hearing him that way. He sounds far younger than thirty.
“Like I said, I want to. But there are things in motion. Things I can’t even talk to you about. The club would be, let’s say, adversely affected if I did as you wished.”
It’s that phrase that gets me: adversely affected. Like we’re discussing a risk assessment for an office job or something. Like this is a humdrum, everyday occurrence which can be described in those simplistic terms. I charge at the door, shove it open with my shoulder, and pace into the office.
Jackson is a sinewy, balding man. He reminds me of a vulture.
“This is my son!” I snap, pacing right up to the desk and staring at him. Jack tries to tug me back but I shove his hand away. “This is my baby you’re talking about, don’t you get that, you sick old man? This isn’t about business or your club. This is about my child! I didn’t make an enemy of these Lady’s Death people! I didn’t do anything to them! The only reason they took Jimmy is because of you!”
Jackson watches me silently for a few long moments—moments which seem to stretch on into an abyss—and then folds his hands over his sunken belly. “There is nobody on this planet that talks to me like that, girl. Nobody.” He chews his lip, takes a drink of water from the desk, and then goes right back to staring at me.
“Jackson,” Jack says from my shoulder. “Her son is gone. She’s not thinking.”
“Don’t talk for me,” I snap, glancing at him and then back at Jackson. “I know exactly what I’m saying. I have never, at any point in my life, run across these Lady’s Death people. I have not offended them, or hurt them, or given them any reason to dislike me. So the only explanation is that the war between the Lady’s Death and the Devil’s Kin is what caused the man to take my child. Like you said, you’re the president of the Devil’s Kin. What’s a president’s role if not to take responsibility when something bad happens?”
“Gloria,” Jack whispers in my ear. “This ain’t the way to go about this. There are rules here, goddammit.”
“I don’t care about the rules,” I say out of the corner of my mouth, my eyes fixed on Jackson the whole time. “If the rules stand between me and Jimmy, then fuck the rules!” I slap my hand down on his desk, lean forward, and face him with not one shred of fear in my body. There’s too much adrenaline for that. “Jackson—sir—I am asking you with all sincerity to help me get my son back, because otherwise what choice will I have but to go to the police?”
“She doesn’t mean that,” Jack says.
“I do!” I hiss. “I really, really do!”
Jackson unfolds his hands with a sigh. “That would mean his death without question, so I advise against it. As for all of this being my fault, perhaps you are right, girl. Yes, perhaps there’s some truth to it. But there’s a way things are done in this world, and screaming at a man, whining at him, ain’t the way you get things done.”
“What if I shot you in the face?” I snarled.
Jack grabs me by the shoulder and tugs me back, forcefully but not painfully. “She don’t mean that, sir. Dammit, Gloria. God-fuckin’-dammit.”
“Wait.” Jackson holds his hands up, looking at me with narrowed mole-eyes. I don’t like the look of him. I don’t like his skinny, haggard face, or his sunken eyes, or the gears that are turning behind his eyes. I don’t like how he looks at me like I’m just a piece on a chessboard and he’s trying to figure out the best way to maneuver me. He turns to Jack. “You can take Butcher and the Kid from their day-to-day duties and use them for your investigation.” He nods; that’s the end of the matter.
“Two people? How many people are in this club, anyway? I bet it’s more than two!”
Jack speaks close to my ear. “This really is enough now,” he says.
“Listen to him,” Jackson says. “I’m impressed with your stones, girl, and that’s why you’re gonna get Butcher and the Kid. But don’t push your luck.”
I’m about to say something else when it hits me that he could just as easily take these two people away, so I nod and mutter a difficult thanks and allow Jack to lead me outside. We walk in silence through the clubhouse and out into the parking lot.
“That wasn’t very smart,” Jackson says when we’re standing near my car.
“Not very smart!” I scream it at the sky and then swing my gaze back down to him. “Jimmy is missing, and he sits there—”
“I know,” he interrupts. “I didn’t like that either. I didn’t like it at all. But he’s the boss. It’s the way it goes.”
“He doesn’t care about your child,” I mutter. “Doesn’t that seem odd to you?”
He shrugs. “Neither of us knew I had one: me until last night and him until just now. Maybe it’ll take a while to sink in.” He doesn’t sound sure, though.
“We haven’t got a while. These men he mentioned, the Butcher and the Kid. Are they going to be enough?”
“I hope so.”
I turn just in time for the vomit to push from my throat and slap against the tarmac, landing with a flower-like pattern. Jack rubs my back.
I wheel on him, wiping my mouth. “I need you to promise me, Fury.” I use his biker’s name. I don’t know why. Perhaps to remind him that this is hard business and he’ll have to be hard. “I need you to promise me that you’ll find our son.” I take his face in my hands. “Promise me.”
He swallows, and then nods. “I promise,” Fury says.
Chapter Ten
Fury
“It was the strangest thing,” Butcher is saying. He’s all amped up, the way a man gets after a gunfight, or a near-gunfight in this case. I can tell I’m not going to be able to get a word in until he’s told the story a second time and smoked another cigarette. “I went to the gambling den ready to do war, Fury, for war. I went on my own, ’cause I heard there were only a few Lady’s Death there and I had the element of surprise. But as soon as I got there, some bastard swiped me over the head and the next thing I know they had me in the middle of the room with all of them standing around me: ten of them, or more. They were going to torture me for information and then kill me.
“And then the strangest thing happened, Fury. They had me right there, trussed up like a Christmas turkey, and then their leader got a call and it was from Big Loco. I could tell from the way the man’s talking. And then they let me go, untied me, and kicked me to the curb.”
He shakes his head, sucking down the last of his cigarette. We’re at the tracks. He looks at me like he’s only just noticed that I’m here.
“Shit, Fur
y. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
So I tell him, all of it.
By the time I finish he’s off his bike, pacing up and down, wringing his hands. “Holy shit,” he says. “Holy fuckin’ shit. They just took him, just like that—the same day they let me go, just like that. Do you reckon that’s a coincidence or what?”
“I don’t know, Butch,” I say honestly. “I hadn’t thought of connecting ’em, but that’s not what really matters. What matters is getting that kid back. You should see her. Goddamn. One second we’re acting like children, all that romantic shit—don’t look at me like that, I don’t understand why it’s different with her either—and then the kid is gone. The boss has given me you and the Kid.”
“That’s it?” he snaps. “The fuck is that about?”
“He said the club couldn’t afford to take anymore men off their duties.”
“Might be true,” Butcher mutters.
“Might be? What do you mean?”
“It seems to me that we’ve lost half our business since this shit started and putting more men on this kidnapping would focus ’em some, as well as pitting more troops against the Lady’s Death.”
“He has a reason for it,” I say, defending him on reflex. “He wants to help me. He said so himself. He just can’t, not right now. Remember, there are things happening in the club all the time that we don’t know about.”
Butcher stares at me with that all-seeing gaze. “All right, Fury, all right. The fuck did you let me sit here whining for, anyway?” He climbs back onto his bike. “Shall I go see the Marine?”
“That’s why we’re here,” I tell him. “Go see the Marine and tell him I’ll pay premium for him to find the kid double-speed.”
“Why didn’t you just call, man? I wasted your time.”
I reach into my pocket and take out a piece of paper. I hand it to him.
He unfolds it. “Cute kid,” he mutters. “He’s got your eyes, Fury. And your hair.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that. You really need to get a new fuckin’ phone.” He carries around an old-fashioned brick ’cause he finds smartphones too confusing.
“I know it.” He puts the picture in his pocket. “I’ll call you when I have something. Should be before the end of the day. You know how the Marine works.”
“All right.” We bump knuckles. “Keep me posted.”
“What’re you gonna do?” he asks, his bike rumbling beneath him.
“Go back to my place, make sure the lady isn’t pulling her hair out. Work fast, Butch, faster’n ever. I don’t know how long she can take this for.”
Butcher rides away, already pushing eighty by the time he leaves the tracks. I get on my bike and ride home, the sickness in my belly not going away. It rises up to my throat and down again, but only with an effort. This is fucked, and now I have to go home and tell Gloria that the only thing we can do is wait for news from the Marine.
“What do you mean we have to wait?” she snaps. She sits on the couch with three empty beer bottles in front of her on the table and a half-empty one in her hand. Her feet are crossed at the ankles and they tap up and down nonstop. Her whole body trembles. “You want me to just sit here and wait and think about what could be happening to him! Some sick things are going through my mind right now, Jack. Some really sick things. You promised me you’d find him.”
“That’s what I’m doing,” I say. “But the only way to do that is to be patient, because yeah, sure, I could spend today running from place to place like a headless chicken. But all that’d achieve is tipping them off, or getting myself killed. We need to do this smart. Targeted. The Marine is a pro at this, Gloria. He’s been doing it for years. He could find a gold-tipped needle in a stack of copper-tipped needles, he’s so damn good. There ain’t no better man to find your son than him.”
“So why didn’t you go to him?” She stands up, drains the last of her beer, and then walks unsteadily to the kitchen.
I follow her. “I wanted to be here with you. Make sure you’re okay.”
“Okay?” She cackles madly. Screws the lid off the whisky. Sips straight from the bottle, just like I do. She coughs and her eyes water, and then she takes another sip. “I don’t know what that word is supposed to mean right now, to be completely honest with you. You should be out there, trying to find our son. Not in here, pandering to me.”
“I’m not trying to pander to you,” I say, reminding myself to be patient. “This is my world. This is what I know how to do. So if I tell you that the Marine is the best way, the Marine is the best way. Butcher’s more’n capable of setting the Marine on a search mission.”
“I thought you’d care enough to do it yourself,” she mutters, pushing past me and returning to the living room. Her words are heavy with alcohol. Her eyes water with each sip of the whisky and then I realize it’s not the whisky; she’s crying softly. “What are we meant to do, huh? Play Scrabble?”
“It shouldn’t take long. By tonight, I reckon.”
She takes out her phone. “It’s four p.m.!” She tosses her phone onto the couch and takes another swig of whisky. “In what world is that not taking long, Jack? You want me to wait hours to hear that my son, maybe, is okay. I should just call the police. Are you even telling the truth about that? You could be lying to protect your club.”
“Listen to me.” I go to her, kneel down next to the chair, and stare into her eyes. But she won’t look at me. She stares only at the neck of the bottle. I sigh. “I promise you that if I thought going to the police would help find Jimmy, I’d go to the police.”
“Liar!” she suddenly cries, leaping to her feet and hurling the bottle at the wall. She flinches when it shatters, as though she didn’t expect it to do that, and then goes to the other side of the room and paces in a small circle. “You care about that mean, old, sick, fucking man. I saw it, back there in his office. You were bending over backwards to try and stop me from upsetting him. It’s all about him for you, isn’t it? I bet if he asked you to kill me, you’d do it. I bet you wouldn’t even think twice about it!”
“Don’t be stupid.” I approach her slowly.
“He said it himself! You don’t know me! Hell, you said it, didn’t you? You don’t know me, so who cares? Why bother trying to help our son, right? I’m just some lady. I’m just in the way. I know what, Jack.” She lowers her voice and licks her lips. She stumbles drunkenly for a moment and then catches herself on the wall. “Why don’t you just slit my throat now and let them keep Jimmy, huh? I bet that would make things much simpler for you. What’s the point playing this game, pretending that you care?” She lowers her voice even more. She sounds ill. “You could always rape me first, seeing as that’s the only thing you really care about, you fucking animal!”
“Stop this.” I press my fingers down on my temples, forcing myself to speak calmly. Though I don’t feel calm. “This ain’t helping anything.”
She paces right up to me. “Don’t pretend you want to help!” She punches me in the chest. Punches me again. Stands on her tiptoes. “I bet you want to hit me,” she whispers. “I bet that’s going through your head right now, isn’t it? It’d be so easy for you to just punch me in the face and shut me up. Then you wouldn’t have to face reality: the reality that you care more about that ugly old man than you do about me and our son.”
“I’m doing everything I can to find our son,” I say, turning away from her.
She snorts. “Oh, now I feel much, much better. Why didn’t you just say so?” She pauses, and then breaks out: “How can you expect me to be calm right now, or to relax, or whatever it is you want me to do? I’m not some robot, Jack. I can’t just turn off my emotions because you say you’re doing everything to find our son. I like how you said our son this time, at least; you remember he’s yours as well.”
“Of course I remember that.” I go into the kitchen, place my hands on the counter. I want a whisky badly, or a beer’d do it. But I need to keep my head clear for when Butcher cal
ls me up. “I’m on your side. I’m not your enemy.”
“Sure.” She goes to the couch and throws herself on it, hugs her knees to her chest, and weeps violently. “Whatever you say!”
I go to the couch and kneel down and wrap my arms around her. But then she shoves me in the chest and springs to her feet, running to the other side of the room. “Get your fucking hands off me!” She leans from side to side, as though she could fall over any second. She’s clearly not used to this much alcohol. “If you touch me again …”
I go to her, hands raised in peace. “Just relax—”
Then she leaps on me, kissing me clumsily and aggressively on the lips. I kiss her back—more out of reflex, instinct, my body reacting to hers—and then I find myself lifting her off her feet and hugging her close to me, my groin squashed up against her groin. I try to break it off but she grabs my head and kisses me harder, biting my lip, moaning loudly as though she can drown out the sound of her grief. And then she slaps me across the face and slides to the floor.
