by Ryder Dane
Charlie’s Heart by Ryder Dane
Charlie’s Heart
Burning Bastards MC
Book Three
by Ryder Dane
© Copyright March 2015 JK Publishing, Inc.
ISBN# 978-1-311-83531-4
All cover art and logo © Copyright March 2015 by JK Publishing, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Cover by Jess Buffett
Published by JK Publishing, Inc.
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Dedication
To the Veterans of the Vietnam War
Table of Contents
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
Books by Ryder Dane
Teaser from the new book Rain Falls
Excerpt from Integrity Has No Bounds
Excerpt from Two Worlds Collide
JK Publishing, Inc. Authors
Chapter One
Charlie rode his scoot into the parking lot and parked the ancient machine next to Big Dog’s bike. He wondered what the deal was tonight, Big Dog had left three messages on his cell phone, and all of them said he was needed at the clubhouse pronto.
He saw a couple of vehicles that looked like cop cars, but many of the brothers bought old cages at auction if the interceptor motors were still under the hood and customized the ugly fuckers into sweet rides that sold for a pretty profit. So it didn’t overly concern him much.
He didn’t want to be here, hell, he didn’t want to be much of anywhere lately, at least not for a few months now. Ever since he’d let Selma fly in fact. He had always been a lobo, free from shackles and baggage. No woman could hold him for longer than a few months at a time. Those times were damn good ones, at least from his point of view, but sooner than later the females started demanding permanency, and that was not in his vocabulary. Until early last year, when he met Selma, she was everything he wasn’t.
She was an educated woman, a lawyer in fact. She was beautiful in the way a mature woman who knew her worth was beautiful. Selma made him feel like a better man. Like he was smarter than he actually was, and she rode his prick like it was a trick pony any time, and just about anywhere the notion hit them. She was younger than he was by fourteen years, but it didn’t make no never mind to either of them. She looked damned good perched on the thick cushioned bitch seat he’d bought for her little ass to sit behind him on while they enjoyed feeling the wind on their knees and the joy of freedom as the wind whipped past their cheeks.
He’d been avoiding the clubhouse, and his old pastimes held no interest for him. He had a pack of smokes in his pocket nowadays instead of his sugar packets. Why worry about dying of lung cancer if nobody was around to care anyway. He wasn’t ready to hang himself, but the days after letting his lady loose, well that hanging idea hadn’t seemed like such a bad notion.
She got elected to her dream job of being a circuit court judge, and he was happy for her, more happy than she probably would believe. She wanted to make a difference, and he let her go so she could. Oh she started out wanting him to continue to be part of her life, but the demands of that were too much for a man like him to concede to.
He wasn’t a show horse, never had been, and when she asked him to wear a suit and tie, he’d almost laughed his ass off. Next request was to cut his hair to a more acceptable style for the image of a judge’s escort to appear. He’d flatly refused both of her requests in a harsh and uncompromising way.
“I ain’t no tamed whipped pup, woman, you can’t rope the wind or cage a wild thing like me. I’m a biker tramp, and I ain’t got no want to wear fancy clothes and sit down to dinner holding my pinky up while I have to drink some watery fuckin’ tea or some shit like that.”
He had regrets, but there was no way he would have missed knowing her even if he could. She was the bright spot in his life, and he was beginning to acknowledge that she’d taken a big ol’ chunk of him when he’d made love to her the last time. He’d put everything he had in that last session, he wanted her to always remember him.
He walked into the club and stopped short. Big Dog was lookin’ concerned, and the place was about as quiet as he’d seen since the funeral for Farley a couple of years ago. Two men in funeral suits were sitting at the table with Big Dog. Fuck, this was some kind of setup. The big man gave him a slight nod, and Charlie took a couple of moments to center himself. He hated fuckin’ cops.
Tiny handed him a beer as he walked by, and he nodded to the man in thanks, and kept on moving. He stood behind the suits and said, “Hey, Big D, what’s going on?”
The two men tried to crane their necks to see the man they’d come to see, but the prez waved him into a chair on his right side. Charlie hesitated for a few heartbeats and sat down. No one spoke. He didn’t like the way the cross-eyed fuckers were staring at him. He drained his beer and slowly placed it on the table in front of him bef
ore folding his hands and looking directly at the bigger of the two men.
“Okay, I’m here, there must be a reason for this unsolicited visit. Let’s get on with you tellin’ me what you think you can accuse me of doing, and I’ll deny it. Go ahead, I’m not in a bad mood or nothin’.”
The two glanced at each other and the short one nodded. “You are Charles Vernon?” Charlie nodded, not bothering to answer verbally, what would be the point?
“I’m Agent Hill, and this is my partner Agent Scott. We’re here to ask you a few questions about a woman that we believe you know.” He opened the file in front of him and passed over a glossy eight by ten of Selma. Seeing her made his guts tighten, but outwardly he nodded.
“Yeah, I know her, she’s a good woman and a fair judge.” Seeing the agent fingering the file, he got a tingle up his spine. “Why dontcha just come out with it? I need another beer, but since I don’t drink with strangers and people I don’t trust. I have to wait till you’re done beatin’ around the fuckin’ bush. Is there a problem with me being her friend?”
Both agents shook their heads and looked at Big Dog before continuing. He shrugged his shoulders and folded his hands across his belly as he continued to lounge in the chair.
Agent Hill cleared his throat and sighed. He blew out his breath and blurted it out. “The Honorable Judge Selma Pearson has disappeared, and we have reason to believe her life is in danger.”
Agent Scott took up the conversation from there. “Judge Pearson was last seen on Friday, January twenty-ninth. She has been missing since approximately eight thirty pm. If you have been keeping up with the news during the past year, you would know that the area has had three high profile child endangerment, and abuse neglect cases.
“Two weeks before her disappearance, she began getting threats, at first they came through the switchboard at the courthouse, then the threats were sent by mail. One such letter demanded the writer’s children be returned to them or she would pay for taking the children. The problem here is that we have three names of families that could be behind this entire thing. All of the cases were related in that the cousins and aunts and uncles were all from the same clan of people and all of them deny any knowledge.”
At first Charlie felt poleaxed, Selma was missing? His woman was probably in the hands of people cruel enough that their children had been removed from the homes? He shook his head at the picture that was conjured in his brain. “Who has her?” The Agents both shrugged their shoulders.
“Mr. Vernon, I’m afraid we cannot tell you the names of the families, we came here because of the judge’s phone records. We had a small hope that she was with you because of the many phone calls she has made to your cell phone in the last two weeks, and she has called your number at least twenty times during the past months before that. We have to search out every clue, sir. It appears we have drawn the wrong conclusion concerning your relationship.”
Charlie stood before they could move from their seats. “I asked you for a name, I don’t give a shit what you think about anything.” His voice was low and deadly as he put his fingertips on the table. “I asked you nicely once, I won’t ask again and you fuckers better get ready for an asswhippin’ if you’re gonna protect the people holding my woman.”
Big Dog intervened by snatching the folder from in front of Agent Hill. “Cool your shit, gentlemen, you won’t make it out of the room without giving us a name, this way, you are not culpable if someone was to find out who you suspect right? The folder fell open on the table and someone might have seen your list of suspects, simple and non-violent. Ah, well I’ll be a motherfucker, there’s a few names we’ve heard of before. You boys better take some heavy firepower with you when you go into them hills. Those people are a different breed of human.”
He slid the folder back toward the agents, with the cover open where Charlie could see the information he wanted. “Thank you for stopping by and we hope you find the judge real soon. She has friends here at the club, and if the Burning Bastards can help you in any way, we’ll be sure and let you know what we find.”
The agents were at least smart enough to know they had been dismissed, and Preacher escorted them to the door, watching to make certain they left the grounds safely, with no detours.
Behind him in the room, Big Dog and Charlie had the table they had been sitting at flipped up to check for listening devices. The table was clean, but the chair Agent Scott had been sitting in had a small black disc adhered to the underside. Big Dog grinned and took the chair outside & set it next to his Harley. He started the motor and revved it several times just to fuck with the agents. The laughter coming from the men that came out of the building lightened the mood for a few minutes.
Agent Hill’s chair was clean, but it was taken outside too. Preacher began quoting scripture when Big Dog shut down the powerful engine and walked back to the door of the club.
He made a detour when he saw Charlie walk around the corner of the building with his cell phone in hand. He hesitated to disturb the greybeard, but Charlie was listening to the receiver and yanking on his hair at the same time. He finally closed the old cell, and from the way the older man’s shoulders slumped forward, Big Dog couldn’t help but make his presence known.
“Hey, what’s going on?”
Charlie didn’t want to talk, he wanted to eat his .45. “I swore I wouldn’t bother her again, I swore I wouldn’t pick up the fuckin’ phone when she called. She kept calling, Big Dog, she kept calling me for help and I was too fuckin’ thick headed to pick up the goddamned phone. She needed me and I fuckin’ let her down.”
Big Dog looked at his old friend with pity. “Charlie, if you can hang on for a few I’ll call a few of the guys to go with you, or I can call Future and let her know I’ll be late. You should have company on the trip.”
Charlie shook his grey head, “No, I know the people that have her. Old Birdsong has a bad case of isolationism. I don’t dare bring anyone with me. That fucker would start shooting before he ever asked for a name.”
He slapped the prez on his arm, “It’ll be fine, if things go well, I might even bring you back a quart of the best shine you ever tasted. I should be back in a week or two, much over that and you can give my stuff to Pressley.”
He nodded again and started walking to his bike. The old sled never failed to soothe his torment in the past, and he hoped he could count on the same healing tonight. He had to think, and the agent’s words about her disappearing from the area hit him, nothing prepared him to hear her begging him to come and save her from the people before they took her.
“Please, Daddy, you said you’d always be there if I needed you, I need you. I am so afraid. Please answer the phone.”
“I guess you were just saying the words you thought I wanted to hear. If you really loved me you would be here.”
“Birdsong and Juanita won’t stop. They have been driving past my place over and over, I don’t dare turn on my lights at night. The police are patrolling more, but they seem to know when the cops aren’t around. They want the kids back, but, Charlie, I swear, those children were in such bad shape that I couldn’t send them back. We had to send the kids out of the area because their parents tried to kidnap them from the hospital.”
“I wish you were here to talk to, this job is great, but I had to trade the man I love, and my best friend, to get it. Oh yeah, I bought a gun, I just hope I have the guts to pull the trigger if I need to.”
A few of the messages were random thoughts, like she was either drunk or sleep deprived. His bet would be sleep deprivation. His mailbox was full, so he deleted five of the more inane messages, just in case she could call him if she got the chance.
Charlie knew who Birdsong and Juanita were. He’d bought a few quarts of grade A shine from the man, and a leather pelt cover for his sled’s seat a few years back.
Birdsong Johnson was a hill country man with a serious case of mean. He ran a corn liquor still, and shot at anyone who showed up close to
his homestead. How in the hell the authorities got their hands on the kids had to be a miracle because those hill folk were not the kind of people that believed in education.
Charlie could only imagine the case of mad Birdsong had going on with the fact a split tail judge had taken his kids away. It would have been bad enough for a male judge, but a female, well that would have gone straight to the old boy’s pride.
Juanita Johnson was the most browbeaten woman Charlie had ever seen. She must’ve whelped her first born around fourteen years old. She was the daughter of another hill country family. The last time he’d seen her she still looked too young to have three brats hanging on her skirts. That had been a few years ago. Who knew how many kids were in the litter by now.
The first thing he needed to do was to go home and get some cash, old Birdsong didn’t take plastic, and Charlie understood the man’s refusal to negotiate prices for his product. Thankfully he’d been a customer before so it wouldn’t look suspicious when he showed up.
He left the Indian at the bottom of the wooded hills and shrugged on his camping gear. It took a while for the old familiar cadence of moving without thinking, one foot in front of the other, to give him a sense of peace. His attention was on the woods and downed logs as he went deeper into the inclining landscape.
He’d changed his plans from showing up to purchase some of Birdsong’s moonshine, mainly due to the fact he had time to think about what a man used to secrecy would do if he had kidnapped someone important.
He could have rode the scoot up on the two track that passed for a road to the enclave where the clan lived, but he knew the mentality of Birdsong, Selma wouldn’t be kept at the homestead for the authorities to find so easily. Strangers, even familiar strangers, would never know there was a kidnap victim nearby, and no one but Birdsong himself would speak to visitors.
