by Blair Grey
Not that I wanted people to get hurt just so I would have something to do, but I had gone into nursing because I wanted to help people, not because I wanted to chitchat beside the coffee machine for the whole time I was on duty. Other people didn’t seem to understand that.
Probably had something to do with my upbringing. There were plenty of ways that Dad and I didn’t see eye to eye, but he had raised me to be a hard worker, and I appreciated that now I was older.
I jumped in my car and headed straight over to Rachel’s house.
Rachel and I had been friends for over two decades now, ever since we were little kids and met on the playground. We’d been together through everything, good times and bad. She was the only person who really understood me at all, even though we were pretty different. But she knew my complicated background, and that was more than I let most people get to know.
When Rachel answered the door, the first thing she did was give me a huge hug, like we didn’t see each other nearly every day. The second thing she did was to eye me critically, clucking her tongue at me. “You look like shit,” she said as she stepped back to let me in. “Worse than a new mother, even.”
I snorted. “Well, it’s a good thing I’m not a new mother on top of everything else, I guess,” I chirped.
“Another night shift?” Rachel asked. “How many is that now, this month?”
“I’ve lost count,” I said breezily, falling onto her couch.
I was exhausted, I had to give her that. I probably did look like shit, too pale and with bags under my eyes. In fact, sitting on this too-comfortable couch had me close to falling asleep already. I grinned as she sat down across from me and shook her head.
“I don’t get it,” she said, not for the first time. “Why do you keep putting yourself through hell like this? I thought that was all going to stop once you turned your internship into a full-time position. It’s not like you need the money or anything.”
“I don’t,” I agreed. I shrugged. “You know why I do this, though. I didn’t get into this job just for the money.”
“I know that,” Rachel sighed. “But if you drive yourself into an early grave, it’s going to severely limit the number of people you can help over the course of your lifetime.”
I laughed, leaning back against the arm of the couch and putting my feet up on the other seat. “I may be wearing myself out, but I’m far from driving myself into an early grave,” I protested. “Besides, I enjoy what I’m doing. I enjoy helping people. And so many of the other nurses don’t want to work the night shifts. Someone’s got to be there for all the poor fuckers who come in after regular hours.”
“Probably true,” Rachel said. “But everyone needs to pull their weight.”
“Says the wife who has no one to help her out with raising her son while her husband is away on business,” I teased.
Rachel laughed. “Touché. But I’ve got you, at least.”
“Where is Gavin anyway?” I asked.
“Just put him down for a nap about half an hour before you got here,” Rachel said. Her eyes twinkled. “Hopefully he doesn’t hear you and come running out; he’s been getting pretty cranky when he doesn’t get his full nap in.”
I laughed. “We’ll keep it down,” I promised.
“Did you come straight over from the hospital?”
“Yeah, had one of those long double shifts,” I told her. “Why?”
“You hungry? I could make us some lunch.”
My stomach growled as if on cue. “That would be great,” I said. “You know I try to steer clear of the cafeteria as much as I can. I managed to sneak away to that little bakery near the hospital during my break this morning, but that was a while ago now.”
Rachel shook her head. “You’re not helping me believe that you’re not driving yourself into an early grave,” she teased. “Come on.”
We went into the kitchen, and she started pulling out different sandwich fixings, laying them all out on the island. We each assembled sandwiches for ourselves, and then I watched as Rachel made one for Gavin for when he woke up. Then, we took our sandwiches out onto the back deck so that we could sit in the sunshine.
“You know, you really need something in your life that isn’t work,” Rachel mused as we munched.
I laughed. “I have plenty of things in my life that aren’t work,” I protested. “I have you, for one thing.”
Rachel rolled her eyes. “But I’m just me. I wish you had exciting things in your life. So that I could live vicariously through you.”
“But I’m too busy vicariously living the mom life through you,” I joked.
“You really need to get yourself a man,” Rachel said, eyeing me consideringly. “A good romance would definitely spice your life up. I could help you get dressed up for dates and everything. It would give us plenty to gossip about, too.”
I laughed and shook my head. “I don’t have time for spicy romance,” I told her. “Besides, you know my standards are too high. No man would ever measure up. Especially not with you looking out for me. He wouldn’t just have to impress me; he’d have to impress you as well!”
Rachel giggled. “That’s true,” she agreed. “And we all know that there’s no one in the world who is good enough for you. But you should at least be having a little fun with things. You’re turning thirty soon.”
I snorted. “And what, there’s no more fun once I hit the big three-oh?”
“What if there isn’t?” Rachel asked, widening her eyes with mock innocence and making me laugh again.
The screen door slid open behind us. “Aunt Leila!” Gavin cried, running around my seat and climbing into my lap.
“Hey, Gavin!” I said brightly, my heart warming as it always did by Rachel’s four-year-old son. “How was your nap?”
Gavin wrinkled his nose. “It was boring,” he declared, giving his mom a look. I had to bite back a laugh.
“Do you want some lunch, baby boy?” Rachel asked.
“Uh huh!” Gavin said. Then, he turned back to me, biting his lower lip. “But can we play Frisbee after lunch, Aunt Leila? Mama’s no good at throwing.”
“I think Aunt Leila is tired and might need to go home,” Rachel said, giving me a look that said I didn’t have to agree with his request. “Maybe you and I can go to the park instead.”
Gavin’s face fell, but I was already grinning at him. “Don’t worry, buddy. I have enough energy to play Frisbee, at least for a little while. As long as you don’t make me work too hard!”
Gavin cheered, and I smiled over at Rachel, glad as always that she let me spend so much time with both of them. At this point, they were almost like my own family.
Almost. Despite everything I had said to Rachel, and despite the fact that I really did love my job, it would be nice, sometimes, to have someone there with me. Someone who really knew me, someone to stand by my side through thick and thin. Someone to help me relax at the end of these long shifts, to ease me back into the real world again.
But this was no time to dwell on that. I put a smile on my face as I waited for Gavin to finish lunch, and then he and I ran around the backyard chasing after his Frisbee.
3
Marcus
Thursday
A few days after our meeting with Ray, Cameron and I arranged to have lunch at one of the local businesses that paid the MC for protection. It wasn’t my favorite burger joint in Las Cruces, but they’d look twice before listening in on any scheming that Cameron and I might be doing. They knew what kind of trouble we could cause, and they didn’t want any part of it.
Smart people.
“You know,” Cameron said, chewing thoughtfully, “I have to wonder why you’re the one thinking with your fists instead of Ray.”
I laughed. “What do you mean?”
Cameron shrugged. “We all know you’re smart. Jesus, I don’t know if Ray ever even went to college. If he did, he keeps quiet about it.”
I grinned. “He studied medicine,
actually. It came up once in passing, while we were drunk. Back when I was just talking about getting my master’s.”
Cameron shook his head. “Fuck, I never would have guessed that,” he said. He thought about it for a minute. He almost looked like he wanted to say something about it, but then he shook his head again. “Anyway, it just seems like you’re the smart, rational one out of all of us. If anyone should be preaching patience and deliberation and fact-finding, it seems like it should be you.”
I rolled my eyes. “I may have my degree, but remember my role in the club,” I said. “I’m an enforcer. I’ve been trained to think with my fists when it comes to club business.”
“It’s something more than that,” Cameron said.
“I have anger issues?” I suggested.
“Bullshit,” Cameron said. He munched on a fry. “Tell me why it’s so important to you that we go after the Unknowns right now.”
“Because the longer we wait, the stronger they’re going to get. The more of a foothold they’re going to get here. The bolder they’re going to get.” I paused. “We had the perfect chance to strike when Ray and Willy met with Lex and his thugs out in the desert. Ray and Will kicked their asses, but they didn’t finish the deal. Ray’s stupid idealism, I’m sure. He wanted to give them the chance to turn their backs and run. Instead, they ransacked the fucking clubhouse.”
“Right,” Cameron said. “And what, you think they’re going to recruit more people the longer we sit and wait?”
“I don’t know what they’re going to do,” I said frankly. “I’m not arguing with Ray about the fact that our information regarding the Unknowns is a little limited. I might even agree that it’s dangerously limited. I don’t think it’s a smart idea to rush into something that we only partly understand. I just think it’s an even stupider idea to keep waiting, month after month, when it’s clear that the only way we’re going to get more information about them is through how they move in on our territory.”
“Weren’t you having luck with some of your sources?” Cameron asked. “Willy said you were getting loads of information about who was involved and everything.”
“I was, at first. It was pretty easy to get names and stuff. They weren’t careful. But it didn’t take me long to find out that those names were fake. They didn’t lead anywhere.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I ran them through the system,” I said. “They don’t exist. Lex Ralston just showed up in the system a couple months before we first heard of the Unknowns. He registered a car in his name, under a license that’s probably a fake. There’s no birth certificate, no school record, none of that.”
Cameron’s eyebrows were almost in his hairline. “Jesus, what the hell kind of stuff do you do in your free time that you have access to that kind of information?”
I smirked. It was no secret that no one in the club knew the kinds of things I really was involved in. Oh, it was nothing major, more hobby stuff than anything else. But I definitely knew how to hack into a system, and let’s just say I had a certain level of security clearance due to some of the contracting work I did on the side when I wasn’t busy with Red Eyes business.
Cameron snorted. “You don’t seem like the evil-mastermind type,” he said.
I had to laugh at that. “I’m not,” I said. “But come on, you’re not exactly the type to be involved in a motorcycle club, either.”
“You know why I’m involved,” Cameron said. He paused. “But honestly, why are you involved in Red Eyes? No one’s ever been able to figure it out. And I’m not saying that you don’t make a damned good enforcer when you want to. At least you fit the mold for a biker. Just seems like if you went to all that trouble of getting your master’s, maybe you might have done something else with your life.”
“I thought about it,” I answered honestly. “But I didn’t exactly choose this for myself. Situations, you know.”
“What kind of situations?” Cameron asked, frowning. “Like with Willy?”
“Nah, I had other places to turn. My dad didn’t turn his back on me.” I laughed and shrugged. “Actually, that’s exactly the reason: my dad didn’t turn his back on me.” I could see that Cameron didn’t understand, so I finally told him that crucial tidbit, the one that no one in the club, other than Ray and myself, knew: “My dad and Ray were partners, once upon a time. I was pretty much brought up as a member of the club.”
“Shit, how didn’t I know that?” Cameron asked, looking surprised. When I didn’t answer, he narrowed his eyes. “So what did you really want to do with your life, then?”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “I’m in the business now. And even though Ray and I don’t always see eye to eye, the guy is practically family to me. I could never turn my back on the club.”
It wasn’t as though I had never considered doing something different with my life. I had other interests. And I was almost jealous of Will, able to put the club to one side so easily. He had decided he wanted to go back to school, and he had. He was pulling back from the club more and more. I could tell, with each conversation that we had, that he was less interested in the club issues like the Unknowns or the local businesses. Sure, he still did what his father-in-law, Ray, asked him to do. But it wasn’t the same.
Yet as much as I envied him for that, I also just plain didn’t understand it. I had managed to find a balance between what I wanted to do with my life and what I owed to the club. I knew Will could probably do the same if he just tried. But, to each their own.
Just then, there was a commotion at one of the other tables. It was a pair of bigger dudes. Thugs, maybe, if they had been part of Red Eyes. Tattooed and muscular, but young and stupid. The owner, Pete, had just brought over their check, and they were laughing and jeering. One of the men crumpled up the piece of paper and threw it in Pete’s face.
Pete, for his part, wrung his hands, looking like he didn’t know what to do. He was a small, wiry man. No match for these two. He glanced back over his shoulder at our table, and that was all the invitation I needed to get involved.
I stood up swiftly and went over to their table, leaning casually against it. “Is there a problem here, boys?”
“Nope,” one of the thugs said brightly, giving me a toothy grin. “We were just explaining to Peter here that—”
“That you’re going to pay your bill, plus add a thirty-percent tip to make up for your behavior?” I interrupted.
“Hell no, man!” the guy on the left said, laughing and looking at his friend like, can you believe this?
They clearly didn’t know who I was, and they clearly didn’t have any idea what they were getting themselves into. Didn’t stop me from slamming the one guy’s head down onto the table. There was a sickening crunch, his nose breaking maybe. I raised an eyebrow at the other guy, who scowled at me.
“So you weren’t explaining that you were going to pay your bill, plus add a forty-percent tip?”
The guy stared at me for a moment, and I actually thought he might be stupid enough to continue to fight over it. But then, he rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure, whatever,” he snapped. “We’ll pay our bill.”
“Good,” I said, releasing his buddy’s head and going back over to Cameron. “You done?” I asked, throwing a wad of my own cash down on the table even though we didn’t have the bill yet.
“Yep, sure,” Cameron said, wiping his mouth with his napkin. I could tell that he was fighting a grin.
My eyes trailed the two thugs as they walked to the counter to pay. The one had a napkin shoved up to his nose, stemming the flow of blood there. I felt no small amount of satisfaction over that. It wasn’t even exactly what I’d been going for, but hey, hopefully it meant the lesson would stick. You didn’t fuck around on Red Eyes territory, and especially not with the business that paid for protection from us.
Kids these days…
The guy paying the tab narrowed his eyes at me as he waited for Pete to make change. “You’ve just ma
de an enemy,” he informed me.
I had to laugh at the movie-style dialogue. “Seriously?” I asked. I spread my arms wide. “You want to have a go at me, let’s take this outside. What I did to your buddy, though? I can do ten times worse to you.”
“It’s not just me,” the guy spat. He jerked his thumb at his bloodied companion. “This kid’s the nephew of the leader of the Unknowns. You must have heard of them; they’re the most powerful biker gang around Las Cruces.”
My blood boiled at that, but I kept from leaping at the guy. He wasn’t the guy I really wanted, even if he was going around spouting off about how the Unknowns were the most powerful MC around. I wanted to say something about how they didn’t seem very powerful at the moment if the two of them couldn’t even take me on without being forced to pay their bill.
I wanted to say something even more snarky, about the fact that Lex and his goons had been no match for Ray and Will during that stupid meeting of theirs.
But instead, I narrowed my eyes at them. “Yeah, you think Lex is going to be pissed at me?” I asked nonchalantly, as though I couldn’t care one way or the other. I smirked at his surprised look. “You didn’t think I’d know who you were talking about, did you?” I asked. “Because Lex really hasn’t made that much of a name for himself.”
The kid sputtered. Cameron put a hand on my shoulder, a warning. It would be so easy to jump these two, right here and now. But they weren’t the ones I really wanted. They were just stupid, entitled brats.
I took a step closer to the thugs, but I didn’t raise my fists for a fight. “Next time you see Lex, you tell him that I’m coming for him,” I said. Then, I turned and stalked out, Cameron following behind me.
4
Leila
Thursday
I held up the tiniest pair of shoes I’d ever seen, my internal clock practically squeeing with how cute they were. Rachel laughed beside me. “He’s not that little anymore,” she said, gesturing at Gavin, who had run off down the aisle in search of some light-up shoes, or maybe some superhero shoes, or maybe… He wasn’t exactly sure what he wanted and watching him get excited over pair after pair was just as squeeworthy.
