He blinked in confusion, then kept his face neutral as he raked his gaze over her once more. At least the parts of her that weren’t hidden behind the bar.
Fuck. He now remembered Pete having a girl. He’d seen her more than a time or two before her mother took her and left town in a hurry when the club began to fall apart. Back then, she had long hair, but it was a light brown, not black. And, of course, no tattoos or piercings. Plus, no attitude to boot.
She’d been sort of sweet on him from what he could remember. Followed him and Sig around like a fly on shit. She always wanted to hang with them, but they had chased her away since they hadn’t been at the age yet where girls were important. Back then they had been just a nuisance.
He couldn’t remember her name, though. If the woman standing before him was even her. Pete could’ve had other kids with someone else after his ol’ lady hit the bricks.
Though, this one looked about the right age.
“Remember me, Trip?”
“No,” he lied.
“I remember you.”
I remember you.
The hair on his arms and neck stood.
Fuck. Did he do something bad to her? Did he hurt her in some way?
He might have pushed her down once in his haste to get away from her. To get her away from him and Sig. To get her to stop bothering them. He closed his eyes for a second and the cries of a little girl came back to him. In pain. In rejection.
He did that. He caused that.
He reached out and snagged the large letter “S” that hung from a long black leather cord around her neck before she could stop him. He studied the silver pendant in his palm and wracked his brain trying to remember her name. But it slipped from his hand as she quickly stepped back out of reach, putting not only the width of the bar between them but an invisible wall.
“Stella,” he whispered, lifting his gaze to hers.
She didn’t answer, but he could see it in her face he was right.
Stella, the one that used to chase him around the warehouse and the courtyard insisting she was going to marry him. And he’d yell back right in her face, “Get lost, you crazy bitch.”
Memories began to crash around him. Taking him back to that time he thought he’d forgotten.
It started when he was about ten and she was probably six. And ended that last time when he was about fifteen and she was eleven when he finally snapped. She tried to kiss him, and he shoved her away so hard, she stumbled back and cracked her head against a concrete block wall.
He didn’t mean to make her bleed like that. His intent wasn’t to hurt her. He just wanted her to stop bothering him. But it had pissed off her old man, which in turn pissed off Trip’s when he heard what happened. And Trip got his ass kicked so hard by both Pete and Buck that he couldn’t move for two days afterward.
He learned his lesson that day to never put his hands on a female in anger. The painful bruises were also a good reminder for weeks afterward.
It wasn’t long after he hurt her that the club imploded, so he never saw her again. Her mother split, taking Stella, and so did Trip’s, taking him along with her.
A twelve-year-old Sig was left behind because Trip’s mother didn’t want anything to do with him. Not surprising, but still...
It was the last time he saw Stella. The last time he saw who he discovered later was his brother.
And the last time he was in Manning Grove until recently. Until the day after he walked out of SCI Huntingdon. The day after he earned his freedom ten months ago and vowed to never be caged like a fucking animal again.
“I’m thinking you remember now,” she said softly.
Trip pushed from the stool, grabbed his cut and muttered, “Sorry your pop’s dead.”
With that, he turned and shoved his sunglasses on, not just to protect his eyes from a late April’s bright afternoon sun, but also to hide his regret from her.
He walked out of Crazy Pete’s, shrugged on his cut, mounted his bike and rode the fuck out of town.
Chapter Two
As he turned the key to cut the engine of the old Ford, the exhaust backfiring sounded like a gunshot, causing Trip to jump out of his skin and his heart to seize.
Fuck. That had brought him back to his fucked-up time in the Marines when his unit was being targeted by not-so-friendly fire.
He sat stiffly in the seat waiting for his heart to stop racing and his narrowed vision and arrested breathing to return to normal. Once it did, he glanced out of the windshield to see he’d drawn some attention.
No shit.
Speaking of shit, he needed to check his fucking pants after that.
Four men stood in one of the open bays of Dutch’s Garage, staring at him. The oldest one had his greasy hands planted on his hips over his just as greasy gray coveralls and was shaking his salt and pepper head, heavy on the salt.
The driver’s door on the old rusty 1948 Ford wrecker squealed like a stuck pig as he opened it and climbed down. A little WD-40 would fix that right up. It would have to since he didn’t want to spend the dough right now to restore the tow truck.
“That ‘48 looks familiar,” the old man shouted across the parking lot. His grin quickly disappeared as his gaze dropped to Trip’s cut. He had removed it, flipped it right-side out and shrugged it back on as soon as he’d stepped onto the concrete. “Fuck. That looks way too familiar, too.”
Trip eyed up the foursome cautiously, not sure which way this encounter would turn yet. “It should, old man.”
“Who you callin’ an old man, boy?”
“One whose face has deeper cracks in it than my ass.”
The old man stepped forward, breaking out of the line of thoroughly confused men. “Recognize that truck, recognize the colors, tryin’ to recognize your ugly mug. Strugglin’ though, must be my old, addled brain.”
“Or inhalin’ too many gas fumes.”
Trip approached him and they met halfway between the old Ford and the garage. Dutch’s eyes dropped to Trip’s name patch and his dull brown eyes widened.
“Fuck,” Dutch muttered under his breath. Trip’s own shoulders dropped a bit when he saw the old man relax. “Sorry ‘bout your granddad. Good man. But what the fuck you doin’ here? Thought you were off fightin’ for my freedom to drink beer and eat pussy.”
Trip guessed word hadn’t gotten back to Manning Grove that he’d been fighting for his own freedom. Maybe his granddaddy kept it quiet, since his own son had ended up dead over stupid shit and then both his grandsons ended up in prison over doing stupid shit, too.
Like father, like sons. Clyde Davis had probably been far from proud of the rotten fruit that fell from the family tree.
“I inherited the farm.”
Dutch yanked his grimy baseball cap off his head and slapped it back on with a jerk. “No shit. Gonna sell it?”
He guessed Dutch hadn’t heard Trip had been back in town permanently for the past couple of months, either. Trip must have done a good job keeping low. Plus, he’d bought the motel under a business name and sold the warehouse quietly to a developer who was going to rip it down. It probably also helped that the Amish certainly weren’t hanging out in town gossiping. “No.”
His thick salt and pepper bushy eyebrows rose. “Gonna farm it?”
“Fuck no.”
“What’re you gonna do?”
“Bring back the Fury.”
Dutch scowled and sputtered, “Well, that’s just plain fuckin’ stupid, boy.”
Trip ground his molars. He figured he’d get some resistance. But so far, he was two for two.
“What’s the point of that?”
“Wanna rebuild my father’s club.”
Dutch jabbed a crooked finger in his direction. “See? That there’s a fuckin’ big problem. The Fury wasn’t your father’s fuckin’ club. It was our fuckin’ club. All of ours. That was one mistake Buck made. It was supposed to be a brotherhood. He was not the goddamn king.” Dutch shook his head, muttered a
curse under his breath and said, “Need a goddamn beer.” As he strode away, he waved his arms at the three men still standing there listening to everything that had been said. “Get the fuck back to work. I ain’t payin’ you to stand around and scratch your fuckin’ nuts.”
The three guys grinned and disappeared back inside. Then Trip heard, “You fuckin’ comin’, boy?” from the open garage door.
Trip guessed he was having a goddamn beer.
Not ten minutes later, after two goddamn beers and at least a dozen loud belches between them, Dutch was still shaking his head with his grimy boots kicked up on a desk that probably hadn’t been cleaned off in at least ten years.
Trip was slouched in another chair on the opposite side of the desk in a cluttered hole of an office. He had a can of generic piss water hanging from between his fingers and held between his spread knees. Because men with big balls like him needed to give his sac some room. Or at least Dutch had told him he had big balls by resurrecting the MC. Trip took it as a compliment. Dutch probably didn’t mean it as one.
“Where you gettin’ the scratch to do all this, boy? Clyde’s life insurance couldn’t have been that much.”
Trip took a long drag on his hand-rolled, then let the smoke roll out of his mouth toward the ceiling in rings. “It wasn’t. Only twenty grand. But it gave me a down payment for The Grove Inn.”
Dutch choked on his mouthful of beer. He coughed a few more times before asking, “You bought that fuckin’ dump?”
“Yeah. Gonna fix it up when I get more scratch and use it for a steady stream of income.”
The old man shook his head and made a noise that Trip could interpret as “stupid fuck.” But the actual words that came out of Dutch’s mouth were, “Good luck with that.”
“Also sold all the farm equipment in the barn and shed. Got a nice chunk of change for all that. Turned around and used what I got from the sale of the warehouse to restore the barn and add on to it.”
“You sold that rusty ol’ tin can? What are you gonna do for a chapel?”
“Just said I invested it in the barn. Makin’ that the Fury’s new church.”
Dutch didn’t say anything for the longest time, he just studied Trip. But he could see Dutch was taking a short trip down memory lane. And probably not a good one.
“Prolly for the best. That warehouse don’t have any good memories left.”
“And it’s at the edge of town near the pig pen.”
“Yeah, twenty years ago the pigs were in the old township buildin’ on the other side of town. They weren’t clear up our asses. Good call on that.” His rheumy brown eyes hit Trip’s. “Still don’t know why you wanna unbury what’s dead.”
“Got nothing else. Only got what Granddaddy left me. That’s it.”
“You’ve been gone twenty years, boy. Gotta have more than that.”
Trip shook his head. “Everything I had, what I worked for was taken away from me.”
“Why?”
“Fucked up. It cost me. Still payin’.”
Dutch pursed his lips making the wiry hair on his upper lip and chin stand out like a black and white porcupine. Then he dragged his hand over his beard. “Not my business,” he finally grumbled.
“Needed a place to land, needed a place to start fresh, and my grandfather handed me that opportunity.” At the right fucking time, too. Not that he wanted his grandfather to die. He’d been the only family he’d had left beside Sig.
Dutch squinted one eye at him. “Ain’t startin’ fresh. Startin’ with rotten ground beef and tryin’ to make it a strip steak.”
Just like Stella, Dutch thought what Trip was trying to do was a fucking joke.
Well, he wasn’t laughing. “Got a motel that needs a little work to start helpin’ fill the coffers, got the barn restored, gettin’ a bunkhouse set up for prospects or members who need a place to crash. The farm’s got plenty of space for the club to grow. Also gonna build a big-ass pavilion and have plenty of parkin’. And best part is the fuckin’ farm is outta town so it’s private. Pigs won’t be breathin’ down our fuckin’ necks. Townsfolk won’t be nosey, either. It’s perfect. Want the chance to fix what my father fucked up.”
“He wasn’t the only one who fucked up, boy.”
Maybe so.
Dutch jerked his chin up. “Who you got?”
“You.” And Trip hoped like fuck he did.
Dutch shook his head, ripped off his cap and threw it on the desk. He scratched the sweaty mess of gray hair that had been hidden underneath it. “Don’t fit in my cut no more. Put that away twenty years ago and haven’t looked at it since.”
“Time to dust it off, Dutch. You’re one of the Originals. Need you.”
“Need to leave all that shit to the younger generation. The men who still got piss and vinegar in their blood.”
“No, Dutch, need you.”
“Without me, who else you got?”
“Just me.”
“Fuck,” Dutch dropped his head and shook it. After a few moments he lifted it and looked out of the open office door toward one of the men who was leaning against a fender of a car, not even bothering to pretend not to eavesdrop. “That boy’s got a sled.”
“Yeah?”
“He’d fit in my cut.”
“You’d still need your cut, Dutch.”
“Damn, if you ain’t a persistent fuck. Just like your pop.”
Trip smiled. “Tell you what, when you get a chance, stop out at the farm, look at what I’m doin’. Decide then.” He tilted his head toward Dutch’s mechanic. “Bring him. And whoever else is still around. Spread the word.”
“None of the Originals are around. Even Pete’s gone.”
“Know it. Went to Crazy Pete’s yesterday lookin’ for him.”
“Yeah. Real fuckin’ shame. The cancer got ‘im about a year ago. His daughter’s runnin’ the joint. Or tryin’ to. In the last few years, Pete let it go to shit, he was so sick.”
“Saw that. Ran into her, too. She’s a piece of fuckin’ work.”
Dutch grinned and took another swig of beer. “Just like Crazy Pete.”
Right. “Gonna be recruitin’, too, so if you think of anyone...”
“Yeah, ‘bout that...” With a groan, he dropped his feet to the floor and pushed himself out of his office chair. “Gettin’ old sucks.” He jerked his head toward the door. “Let’s get you a couple bodies.” Dutch lumbered out to the garage bays with Trip on his boot heels. “Heard all that?” he asked the guy, who looked about in his late twenties.
“Heard it.” He was studying Trip.
“Whadya think?” Dutch asked the guy.
Even with his tattooed arms crossed across his chest, the man shrugged. “Maybe. I gotta prospect?”
Trip spoke up. “Been thinkin’ about that.”
Dutch turned toward him. “What you been thinkin’?”
Trip had given this a lot of thought. Especially since he was tired of being a club of one already. “Any Originals are welcome as long as they don’t hold any grudges. Long as they’re willin’ to start fresh. For now, any blood of Originals will be patched in, too. Anyone without any ties, gotta prospect first. Maybe do six months. Once the coffers are full and we got enough members, they gotta prospect for a year. But for now? Gonna be a little lenient.”
“There you go, then. Got your first member. Prolly don’t remember this one,” Dutch said pointing to the guy. “Younger than you. Ol’ lady kept my boys away from the warehouse as much as possible.”
Trip’s eyes slid from the guy to Dutch. “He’s your son?”
“Yeah.”
Trip turned to the guy who still hadn’t straightened away from the car. He had his ankles crossed, too, like he was comfy right where he was at. He was also wearing a smirk Trip wasn’t sure he liked.
“Got a sled?”
“Dutch told you I did.”
Trip smiled, but it wasn’t a friendly one. “Yeah, he did. But since you’re a man, you nee
d to speak for yourself just like a real man would.”
That got the guy on his feet and his smirk wiped away. He dropped his arms and planted his hands on his hips covered in greasy jeans. “Got a ‘75 FLHF Shovelhead.”
If it was in good shape, it was probably a sweet bike. “In good workin’ order?”
“Fuck yeah.”
“Want in?”
“Depends...”
“You want in, you’re patched in since your Dutch’s blood. Only offer you’re gettin’. Don’t accept it now, then you’ll need to prospect.” And Trip would make sure to have fun running him through the damn gauntlet.
“I’m in.”
Trip dropped his head, stared at his boots and once he could wipe away the grin, he lifted it again. “Thought so. Got a road name?”
“Cage.”
“Cage? How the fuck d’ya get that?”
“I gave it to him. Taught the boy to work on sleds. Prefers to work on cages,” Dutch grumbled.
“Pop thinks there’s an endless supply of bikes to work on. The garage would go outta business if we only worked on sleds. This ain’t the old days.”
“Hopefully that will change,” Trip murmured. “I’ll get you your colors. Get your mommy to buy you a cut and sew them on for you.”
Cage’s jaw went tight. “Don’t got a mommy, but there’s a fuckin’ tailor in town. Get me my colors and I’ll get ‘er done.”
Trip gave him a nod. “Good.”
Cage gave him an answering nod, then sauntered away.
Before he had gone too far, Trip called out, “Cage... One more thing...” He waited until Cage stopped and turned his head to look at him over his shoulder. “Gonna be your president.” He met the man’s narrowed blue eyes. “Might not want to forget that.”
“Know how it works,” Cage grumbled, then continued on his way.
“Doubt you do,” Trip muttered under his breath.
Trip turned back to Dutch, who was grinning. “Not sure where he got his attitude, musta been from his momma.” Dutch shook his head. “Was great at suckin’ and fuckin’ my cock, but the rest of the time, the bitch was impossible to live with.”
“His mother wasn’t Bebe?” Trip remembered Dutch’s ol’ lady. In fact, he remembered Dutch having a son around Sig’s age.
Blood & Bones: Trip (Blood Fury MC Book 1) Page 3
