by Lydia Pax
“Good enough,” said Beretta.
“Wait,” said Helen.
She grabbed him. It was the hardest thing in the world to resist the urge to kiss him.
“Be careful, okay?” She swallowed hard. “I don’t entirely want you to die, all right?”
He smiled small. “We’ll see.”
Chapter 34
Helen and Locke carried Ace’s prone body into the SUV and they headed toward the hospital. He was losing a lot of blood, and Helen worried about him. Night approached fast and the street lines hummed on as they sped down the road. Cicadas sang loudly, their chorus louder in some places than the sound of traffic.
She didn't like Ace very much, but she didn't want him to die. He had fought for her during the heist when he didn't have to; he wasn't anything like a good man, but that didn't mean he deserved to die bleeding out in the back of a van.
Locke was some help, but not a lot. She suspected he had a heavy concussion of his own from breaking through the door. His eyes were glassy and his words slurred, like he'd had a night of heavy drinking.
“Sorry again,” he said. “Sorry. For you know, for my miscue the other night. I really didn’t think you and Beretta were together, otherwise...otherwise I never would have hit on you.”
His language was thick and syrupy. “On you” was pronounced like “onnou.”
“I’m not that kind of guy. I know I have, you know, I've got a reputation. But, but, I go for single women. I don’t need the complications of other people’s attachments. I mean, mostly. Unless she's really attractive. And she's advertising herself.”
They stopped at a red light. Helen briefly considered running it until she recalled that, Ace bleeding or not, the van was carrying three outlaws who had been involved in a military-grade shootout that day.
God, she was an outlaw too, now, wasn't she? Her anger with Beretta in insisting that she come along had blinded her to that fact. There was a line that had been crossed.
It didn't feel all that bad, honestly. It felt sort of right.
“Well,” she huffed. “You weren’t far wrong anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“Pretty much right after that, he told me he wanted to...I don’t even know. Whatever we had, whatever I think we had, he said—”
Locke laughed, knowing. “It was never real. It was just something he said to make you feel good.”
“How do you know what he said?”
“He says that...shit, that fucker.” Locke sat up on his chair, winced, and then pushed himself back down. “See, I get to hear everything objective 'cause of how I came into the gang so late. People talked about Beretta a lot behind his back because hardly anybody trusted him. So people tell me the facts and I get to piece 'em together. He blames himself for losing that girl of his, Marilyn?”
“Madeline.”
“That's the one.” His laugh was high-pitched and strange. “Yeah. Except, I think now he’s the only one who does. Everybody saw her fall coming, to hear the gang tell it. The only one who didn’t was her brother Ram, and that’s what fucked Beretta’s head up about it. Ram got so mad at him that Beretta wasn’t able to believe anything else about himself except for what Ram thought. Funny burden, being a brother.”
They drove on without Helen saying anything. The hospital was in sight now. Locke seemed to not like the silence, or perhaps he was so concussed he simply didn't know how much he was speaking.
“Anyway, he’s pushed away a few girls doing that shtick now. Saw him do it once or twice in Marlowe, then once or twice here. Maybe three girls in all? I thought you were different, though. Those other chicks never seemed too close to him. But you, though. He dug you. I could tell.”
“Then why did you hit on me?”
“Well,” Locke smiled. “A fella’s gotta try his luck somehow. I figured we were gonna die today anyway. Why the hell not?”
“Are all of you outlaws such assholes?”
“Pretty much,” he admitted. “But we’re so full of roguish charm that you just can’t help yourself, can you?”
“Oh my god, shut up.”
They pulled up to the hospital emergency room entrance. It was brightly lit, red paint on the archway overhead. There were two paramedics waiting outside, smoking cigarettes.
“Move him out,” she told Locke. “I’ll catch up with you inside.”
Locke gave her a mock-salute, but did as she said, calling the on-hand paramedics over and loading Ace inside. She watched him pointing to his own head as they worked, no doubt asking about what to do about his head trauma.
Good for him. He'd need something for it, that was for sure.
She drove up into the parking garage and found a space on the third floor. The thing to do, she knew, was to get out and go check on Ace.
But then the other workers there would see her. Georgetta would see her. They would ask questions, probably. Why was she with these men? How did she know them? Had she been involved in any of their activities?
She had the day off from work, but she didn't have the day off from her life. Not for the first time, she wished there was another hospital in Stockland.
Maybe the nurse and doctor would believe that Ace had just fallen; maybe not. If the wounds were too suspicious, if they couldn't be cast as anything but assault, then the cops would get involved. And if the cops were involved, then the Copperheads would be coming.
She wished very suddenly that Beretta was there to help her, to protect them. He thought he was doing the right thing by splitting them apart when they were weak—taking his strongest pieces and putting them in play against the Furnace. But that was just making the vulnerable members even more vulnerable than before.
There was a knock on the back of the SUV. A deep, heavy thump, the kind that Beretta gave when she was in the motel bathroom and he wanted in.
That was why—hoping maybe to talk with him again, her feelings strengthened by talking it out with Locke—that she didn’t even stop to look around in the car's mirrors before she stepped out. If she had, maybe a whole mess of problems could have been avoided.
Because outside was not Beretta.
It was Randall. He had duct tape and a gun in his hands.
“Hello, Helen. I missed you.”
Chapter 35
Beretta and Tank were staking out the Hell’s Belle, the one place they knew Ivan had to appear at. Sooner or later, they figured, he would show up.
With the strip being so closed in on top of itself, it was easy to climb up the wall of a liquor store about a block east from the Belle and use Tank's binoculars to spy.
Obviously they couldn't go inside. There were too many men with guns on the outside and inside of the bar. Beretta hated that he couldn't go inside, hated that he couldn't stroll right in and kick in the chest of the first man he saw. He hated that he couldn't rip the next man's head off and then bash in someone's head with the detached skull.
Beretta was angry.
They had taken his money.
They had threatened his life.
They had endangered his brothers.
They had endangered Helen.
That wouldn't stand. Not for a second. The very first opening he and Tank saw, he was going to swoop in and pay back Ivan for every dollar stolen.
The thought wasn't lost on him that somewhere out there was Rattler, thinking the exact same thing about the Wrecking Crew. But Rattler was a tyrant and Ivan was a double-crossing snake, and even if Beretta was an outlaw, at least he had a code about himself.
There was something in him that knew he'd been thinking about this the wrong way this whole time. Trying to prove himself—trying to prove that he was good enough for the Wrecking Crew to trust again. He couldn't quite put his finger on it. It was something to do with how he'd been acting, though. Wanting to prove himself—wanting himself to be right at the expense of the others.
He was more of a man than that, wasn't he?
“I don't know, boss,�
�� said Tank. “If I were him, I'd hole up good and not come out until I knew we were out of the city.”
“He'll come out,” said Beretta. “Snakes gotta come out of their holes sometime. They need food like the rest of us.”
“Sure,” said Tank. “But you think we'll get him before the Cartel gets us? We've got a limited window, here. We can't just wait him out.”
Beretta frowned. He understood for a moment why Ace was always doing it. Everyone underneath you always thought they had the right idea, but really what they had was half of a right idea, and the other half was what would make all the parts come together—but nobody knew what it was yet. He sighed, wishing he had something to munch on. His stomach rumbled; his last honest-to-god meal felt like years ago, and any chocolate he'd had felt like decades before that.
“Well, fuck me,” said Tank. “Speak of the devil. There he comes now.”
Ivan rolled down the road on his Harley, flanked by two other men with shotguns across their chests.
This was their shot.
It was a hell of a bad one. They'd have to approach and somehow get close enough so that the men posted on the top of the Hell's Belle didn't pick them off. Then, once they were close, they'd have to out-shoot Ivan and his bodyguards.
It reminded Beretta a whole hell of a lot of the shot he'd tried to take against Rattler just a few days before. Just because the opening was there didn't mean he should take it.
But what choice did he have?
“Okay,” said Beretta, trying to formulate some semblance of a plan. “Two man job, here. You distract them from the left. I’ll sneak up behind and—”
His phone buzzed urgently. He wanted to ignore it—but when he dismissed the call, it immediately started ringing again. It was Locke.
“What do you think he wants?” he asked Tank.
“I couldn’t tell you.”
Beretta opened the phone. “Make it quick.”
“Quick.” Locke breathed hard, scrambling the audio. “Quick. Okay, uh...shit.”
“Tell me your fucking news, Locke. I’ve got Ivan on the line here.”
“You’re talking to him? Oh, you mean...like in your sights? It’s just that, when you’re talking on the phone, you create a context of words, so your meaning starts to obfuscate when you come to certain phrases, and—.”
“—Locke!”
“It’s Helen, sorry. Some guy took Helen. I put Ace in the hospital and came out to look for her in the parking lot. Some guy was stuffing her into the back of his car. I followed them in the SUV.”
Beretta only thought he was angry before. Now his rage was all-encompassing.
Somebody had fucking taken Helen? Somebody had kidnapped his old lady?
No. No, oh no. This motherfucker, whoever it was, was not going to get away with that.
“Can you get her back?”
“I’m all fucked up, man. I think I have a concussion. I threw up three times on the way here, and I don’t have a weapon besides. I want to help, but I could barely drive this thing. I got them located, though. They’re at that storage facility on the edge of Browning and Tenth.”
“Stay there. I’m on my way.”
Beretta swore. There was no way Tank could handle Ivan on his own. Now, they were missing their one and only shot.
“We can find another way,” said Tank. “I’ll sit here and try to think of something. He’s not going anywhere without us knowing. Get to your woman.”
Beretta clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Thank you.”
Chapter 36
“It was pure hell tracking you down, I’ll have you know.”
Randall sat down on a chair in the small dark space. Helen was across from him, tied to a different chair. He dragged his heels along the concrete, eyes fixating on Helen's body—her breasts, her mouth, her hips—and in all the ways that made her feel dirty and exposed.
“Real hard time. I don't like talking to people. I've told you this again and again. I don't like making phone calls. But you know, it’s amazing what a phone call does these days. People don’t expect them. They think emails, texts. That's how it's done.
“But, you call every motel in town, and you start to build a lead, you know? Those people are lonely. Nobody talks to them. It was easy to see which one had a group of bikers come in over the last few days. If that hadn’t worked, I probably would have started in on bars, maybe slipped a couple hundred to a police officer, something like that. I’m a stubborn man, baby. You’ll remember that about me.”
Helen screamed through her gag, swearing to rip Randall’s balls off so hard that he wouldn’t have a front to his torso anymore. Being gagged, of course, her voice only came out in garbles. Her arms were taped behind her back, shoulders positioned around the chair back.
“Hey there, sweetling. You hold up on that, now. You’ll hyperventilate. You need to take long, deep, slow breaths. Or else we’ll have to get some medical attention.”
He chuckled as if telling a great, deep joke. Helen knew no medical attention was coming.
She was somewhere dark and unfamiliar. She guessed some kind of garage. There was a thick metal door on one end of the room that opened vertically. Everything else was concrete. A storage unit? He had dumped a bag over her head in the parking lot, leaving her in the dark—literally—as he drove here.
Now, the only light came from a small flashlight he had set up in the corner. It worked as a lantern, shining out light from its cylinder instead of the lens.
“You’re going to listen to me, now,” he said. The gun in his hands was large and heavy. It would put a hole in her body the size of a marble. “I have so much to tell you, Helen. So many things.”
Again she screamed through the gag. She had a lot to tell him about.
“See? That’s what I’m talking about. Whenever I tried to talk to you before, you would just scream at me. Say nasty things. I don’t like that. I don’t like the sound of a woman’s voice raised at me. It is not pleasant. And then—then—you set your fucking ape on me. Are you seriously fucking him? That’s seriously what you go for?”
She nodded now—hoping it was clear in her eyes how much she enjoyed being fucked by an “ape” like Beretta. Randall slapped her, knocking her to the ground. Her shoulder took the brunt of the fall, and pain shot through her right side.
As she landed, she felt something hard and plastic jab into her side.
The box cutter. She'd picked it up again after Ivan's men had left it; she didn't know why. The way you packed an old magazine you'd read twice already when you traveled, just because it was there.
The box cutter was closed, of course, otherwise now she'd be stuck and bleeding. But the fall had knocked her loose off the chair just enough, maybe—her hands were tied tight with the duct tape, but if she could just slip her fingers around...
“Now, see? See?” Randall turned into the corner, as if disgusted with her. “That is your fault. Yours. Taunting me like that. Rubbing it in my face. Fucking...fucking making kissy-face with him after he assaulted me.”
There. Had it. She slipped it tight into her palms, squeezing them tight. Randall turned back around and bent over her. She remained still as a rabbit.
“That is fucked up, Helen. You’re fucked up. But I can help you, see?”
He set her back upright, fixing the chair underneath her. Fingers like talons squeezed into her thighs. “I can help you. It’s my calling to set you straight.”
The rhythm to his speech was easy to follow. During his longer syllables, she clicked the box cutter out, exposing the blade to the rope. Then she set to work. It ate through the tape easily—the blade was sharp.
“You and I will be right again.” He stood up, walking around, pacing and thinking. “It’s all going to work out fine. You just have to do what I say, okay? And no more backtalk. No more sass. I do not like that.”
She was desperately close now. Just a few more slices on the tape...
It wouldn’t work if he was
far away, she realized. She couldn’t just charge him. He would shoot her. She’d have to keep him close where she could do damage.
Slicing still, she worked her head to the side, nodding. Mock crying. She made contrite sounds—trying to push “I’m sorry,” through the gag.
“Aw, honey,” he shook his head. The gun was pointed down, now, at the ground. “Honey, you’re upset, aren’t you? You see? All this fighting. This wild living. That’s not you. You’ve been acting out, but I can help you.”
She tilted her head up. Really? She hoped to be miming. You can help?
“Of course I can help.”
He slid a hand around her face, her neck. His face leaned into hers, clearly moving to kiss.
She slit the tape all the way open and jabbed the box cutter upward, catching him in the side of the shoulder. It cut through him easy, slicing through muscle and into bone.
He screamed, stumbling and falling backward. The box cutter flew away into the darkness. His gun fired once, twice, three times. Helen didn't know if she was shot or not. She leapt on top of him, kneeing him hard in the balls. They wrestled for the gun for a moment, and two more shots went off. She wished she knew anything at all about how many bullets it would have.
Slowly, underneath her, he began to overpower her. He pushed back and up, his hand snatching at her face, ripping her gag out. When she tried to bite him, he shifted his grip to her throat, squeezing hard.
Gasping, struggling, she did the only thing she could think—slamming her fist into the wound on his shoulder. He wailed in pain and she dropped an elbow on his chin, then another, and then another.
Finally, she took the gun from his hands and leveled at his chest.
Fear, bright and true, entered Randall's face. It shamed her to admit it, but the sight of him afraid made Helen feel good.
“Now—hold on, Helen,” he said. “You don’t want to hurt me. Think about this. You don’t want to...don’t want to kill me, come on.”
