That stillness now came with a price.
I stood over her, staring down at this strange woman, and wondering what the hell I had stumbled upon. Who was she? A hooker? His lover?
I rifled through the El Camino, and found nothing but a bottle of lube in the glove compartment and a few condoms under the front seat. Two joints were in the ash tray, which I pocketed. No purse, though. I walked over to the dead guy, taking him in briefly before looking through his pockets. I wasn’t much on fashion, but even I could tell his suit was cheap by the thin, rough fabric and his shoes, while very shiny, weren’t even real leather. His stringy black hair was slicked back away from his ugly, pock-marked face.
I found his wallet, with an ID that said he was Franco Javier Corona and had an address in Gresham. Three hundred and fifty-seven dollars in small bills, and two hotel card keys, and not much else. I pocketed the cash, and tucked his wallet back inside his suit jacket.
I looked at the girl again, and shook my head. Something wasn’t right. She was too healthy, too pretty to be a hooker. Way too fucking pretty to be the dead guy’s girlfriend. Her skin, while bruised and scratched, was smooth and toned, with a perfect bronze sheen to it. Her curvy hips swelled away from a taut, strong core of perfect ab muscles that I could see a flash of because her black tank top was pushed up against the swell of her full breasts. Every hooker I had ever seen was emaciated and ravaged from drugs and other various abuses, and the girl laying in front of me looked as healthy as a prized horse.
A prized, knocked-out, completely unconscious horse.
I realized then I needed to work fast. She would just have to tell me who she was when she woke up. But for now, I needed to get her out of here, and clean up this mess.
I took a step towards her, and my eye caught a slight movement to my left. I looked over in the shadows, and couldn’t believe my eyes.
An owl. The owl. No, it couldn’t be, I thought. But he was a dead ringer for the damned owl that had appeared only twice in my past. And just like before, he sat there, staring at me, his huge eyes blinking, calm and noble, looking as if he owned the fucking forest. Could it really be the same one?
If it was, then I knew this was a terrible omen.
The first time he appeared was so long ago, it almost felt like a dream. Twenty years ago and it was the last and only time I had ever loved a woman. I was a naive twenty year old, and I couldn’t wait to marry Julie. Young or not, naive or not, I knew she was the one I needed to spend the rest of my life with. We got married on the Oregon coast, both of us wearing black leather and huge smiles. After a year of love-drenched bliss, she died in a senseless car crash coming home from work. The night I lost her, this damn owl showed up as I stampeded through the forest, screaming at the moon in a drunken rage and grief-filled bout of insanity. He sat perched on a rock, his huge golden eyes blinking at me, his eyes filled with what I perceived at the time to be understanding.
The second time was ten years later when my dad died, leaving behind an empty seat at the head of the table at the clubhouse. There was nobody else qualified to fill it, so there I sat, the middle of the night, all alone, listening to my old man’s favorite Waylon Jennings record. It was a hot summer night, and the windows were open, the blackness of the forest quiet and inky beyond the window. The owl appeared out of nowhere, landing on the windowsill in a soft, sweeping flap of his feathery wings, scaring the ever-loving shit out of me. We sat there for several long moments, staring each other down in the quiet stillness of the night. Again, he blinked over and over, and my blood went cold when it dawned on me the last time I had seen him was when Julie had died.
And now here he was again. Only this time, he was sitting in the grass, the moonlight falling over his body as he gazed up at me. Something about him was different, but that didn’t dawn on me right away. Later, I would realize he looked friendlier, curious almost. Not so serious, perhaps. But tonight, just like before, he filled me with terror just by appearing. So much so that it abruptly jarred me out of my daze and I quickly set into motion.
Gently, I lifted up the girl and placed her in the El Camino. She didn’t budge even slightly, worrying me even more. I threw the man’s body in the back of the El Camino, thanking him out loud when I saw the tarp already back there, just waiting for the perfect dead body to come along and wrap itself up in it.
“What a thoughtful piece of shit you are,” I said to him as I closed the tailgate.
After parking my bike on the side of the road, I hopped in the driver’s seat, turning on the ignition. My eyes locked with the owl’s once again, who had been silently watching my every move.
“Shit,” I muttered to myself.
I started the car and headed down the road back to the clubhouse, watching the owl grow smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror behind me.
CHAPTER FOUR
Grace
The fog wouldn’t lift. As much as I tried to swim through it, as hard as I tried to muster every ounce of strength in my brain, I couldn’t break the surface.
The searing pain was gone, but the darkness remained. Foggy, black, heavy, like a storm cloud that never broke open. It was as if I carried it, far in the back of my mind, while it continuously threatened to spill itself. The promise of light remained merely inches away, a constant nagging anticipation, a longing that I could see but couldn’t touch.
Where was I? What was I supposed to be doing? The limbo of uncertainty haunted every second, every breath that managed to scrape its way out of my lungs was a question. But there were no answers. The light never came.
I floated, aimlessly searching the corners of my mind for some tidbit of knowledge that might give me even a tiny twinge of insight as to who I was, where I was, why I was.
And still, the light never came. Only the promise of it, like a word on the tip of my tongue that I never remembered, that I couldn’t even remember if I used to know.
Everything was just gone. My past. My future. My present.
All of it. Wiped clean.
Empty.
CHAPTER FIVE
Ryder
I sat at the edge of the bed, my gaze trailing back and forth between her closed eyelids, her lips and her chest. I rubbed my swollen, tired eyes, my body begging me to go to sleep. But I couldn’t. Even when I had forced myself to lay down, I was haunted by thoughts of her. It was no use. I had spent three days now searching for any sign of her waking up, but nothing had changed. It was the middle of the night, the clubhouse partying having died down once again. Stillness fell over the room, nothing but the faint sounds of country music playing in the background and her breath dancing with mine as I watched her, remembering, waiting, waiting, waiting.
“How long can she live like this, Doc?” I had asked Doc that first night. I was so grateful for him. If it wasn’t for Doc, I would have had no choice but to take her to the hospital, and I surely would have been blamed for her condition. Doc was a retired Army medic, who just happened to be one of our long time brothers in the MC. It was convenient for times just like this. Although, we had never actually dealt with a situation exactly like this before. We weren’t in the business of saving random women and killing random assholes. The most intense thing Doc had dealt with for the club was a gunshot. This was a whole different thing.
“Well, indefinitely, Ryder. Long as she’s got the IV, and her brain doesn’t swell any more, it’s really up to her when she wakes up. We’ll just have to wait.”
And wait we did. And wait some more. And wait more and more and more. It was fucking excruciating. Three whole days and no sign of her stirring anytime soon.
It was like some beautiful stranger just barged into my life, and decided to take a big, long, epic fucking nap in my bed. I was starting to get past the point of intrigued and fully into annoyance mode now.
There wasn’t anywhere else to put her. The clubhouse wasn’t huge, and my room was the only room that was anywhere close to clean and off-limits to everyone else. The re
st of the clubhouse was a mess and always in an unbelievable state of disarray. Cleaning wasn’t high on anyone’s priority list.
I sighed, stood up and walked outside. A slight breeze refused to allow me to light my cigarette, and I turned towards the house to shield the flame. When I did, I saw the damned owl again. Perched on the porch railing, absently cleaning himself as if he belonged there.
He had been hanging around every night now. He didn’t leave like he always had the other times I had seen him. Every time I went out to smoke at night, there he was, watching me, waiting with me.
I had begun to wonder if he knew more than me. Did he know what was going to happen? Was she ever going to wake up? Was he waiting for her to die?
I hoped like hell she didn’t. I didn’t need two dead bodies on my hands. And, I had to admit, annoyed or not, I was totally intrigued. I wanted to know who she was. She was beautiful, despite the fact she had been beaten up. The swelling had gone down, and only light scratches and fading bruises remained on her perfect skin.
I leaned against the front of the house, staring off into the tall pine trees that surrounded the house. The owl sat next to me, cleaning himself, licking each feather over and over before moving on to the next.
“I’m glad you’re so comfortable, little dude. Making yourself right at home, are you?”
As usual, he just looked up at me briefly, blinking his eyes a few times before he went back to his bath.
I put my cigarette out after only a few draws on it. I hated smoking. I had stopped long ago, but after all this fucking waiting, day in and day out, my nerves were raw and on edge, and I needed something, anything, to do with my hands while I continued waiting.
The screen door to the clubhouse swung open, and Cherry walked out. Scratch that, she sashayed out, it was the only way she knew how to move.
“Can I bum one?” she asked, pointing to my pack of cigarettes.
I handed her one, and lit it for her. She inhaled deeply, her eyes squinting at me curiously.
“So, Sleeping Beauty hasn’t woken up yet?” she drawled, a curl of smoke slithering out of her smeared red lips.
“No,” I said.
“Well, shit. It’s been a while, huh? You must be exhausted, holding court at her bedside like that.” Her voice was laced with jealousy, but I ignored it. “Did you kiss her yet?”
“What the fuck? Why would I kiss her, Cherry? She’s fucking unconscious,” I snarled.
“Fuck, relax, Ryder. I was making a joke. Sleeping Beauty, Prince Charming, get it? Fuck, you’re tense,” she said.
She was right. Any other night, I would have laughed along with her. But this whole thing had me wound up so tight, I didn’t even realize she was joking. I was usually a lot more easy-going than this.
Cherry sidled up to me, her hand sliding up my arm as she pressed her tits into me.
“Is there anything I can do to help you relax, Ryder? Maybe you just need a little release, huh?”
I cringed. Fucking Cherry was the last thing I wanted to do right now. I shrugged her off of me, and turned on my heel.
“Fuck this.” I threw the butt in the can on the porch step, and walked back inside the clubhouse, leaving her alone on the porch. As soon as the door swung shut, I heard the low swoosh of the owl flying off into the dark night.
I walked back down the hallway, doing my usual dance of zigzagging through the maze of articles of various clothing, sleeping, naked limbs, beer bottles and spilled alcohol.
“Someone’s gotta clean this shit up,” I muttered to myself as I walked back into my room, shutting the door on the chaos behind me.
The lights were dimmed, and I walked straight to the chair beside her - my - bed. It had become routine. Wait. Smoke. Go wait a little longer.
When I sat down, and I let my gaze fall on her, I almost jumped out of my skin.
Huge green eyes blinked silently at me. Blankly.
“Where am I?” she whispered, her voice rough, scratchy…undeniably sexy.
Stunned, I stared back, speechless as a shy school boy.
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