by Wolfe, Layla
Once again, Maddy didn’t want to be found.
Surely, she had listened to his voicemails by now. She knew that he didn’t blame her in the slightest for the stories Tonya and Faux Pas had related. It was nothing new that Cropper was prone to that sort of shit. Ford could easily fix it so that Maddy never had to lay eyes on Cropper again. If Ford had his way, he would never have to look at the baboon, either.
“Where are the beaners now?” Ford asked.
“Bloodgood’s driver took them off the ranch property. I watched on the security feed as he herded them into their truck like fucking cows. I wouldn’t want to leave them lying around Mrs. Jonas’ place, anyway. What the fuck should I do, Ford? I mean, what the fuck? Bloodgood’s driver is supposed to transfer the suministros to our Illuminati truck in the loading dock of the Patagonia mall just as we discussed. Only one detail was left out, Ford. The suministros need air, food, water, and to take a serious bath. What the fuck, man? We’re not set up to deal with this.”
“It’ll take me five hours to get down there.” What the fuck would Ford even do once he got there? The beaners were a deal cut between Cropper and Bloodgood. No one had copped to seeing a hide nor hair of Cropper since Ford had whaled on him at Speed’s patch party. Of course, Riker hadn’t been seen either. “Turk, you’re going to have to track down Bloodgood within the next five hours. Tell him we don’t fucking traffic in human cargo. The fucking Baal’s Minions can have the contract back if Mrs. Jonas will accept them, but we don’t want anything to do with it. I won’t have time to stop off at the archery range and kill Slushy for not telling us.”
“Yeah. I’ve already left two messages with Bloodgood. Nothing, of course.”
Ford knew what Turk was thinking, so he might as well say it. “And did you leave a message with Cropper?”
“Yeah,” Turk admitted. “I was up against a wall, Ford. I mean, I’ve got a truckload of human cargo I’ve got to transfer in two hours.”
“Listen. Change the meeting spot with Bloodgood’s driver. I’ll text you some new coordinates that’re off Gas Line Road, off eighty-two in the boondocks. We can’t take those fucking people in the truck Wild Man’s got. I’ve got a feeling the ‘provisions’ might have to be returned to sender and there might be a scene. If Cropper wants to take them off our hands, fine, but we’re not touching them.”
Ford was planning on making Turk his Veep the next time the Bare Bones had church. Everyone knew it, and everyone would vote in favor of it, because Turk was well-liked. He was probably the most polite patch holder the Bare Bones had ever seen. But this new business with Slushy omitting to tell them what their cargo consisted of—well, Slushy just might get demoted to managing a Cinnabon, watching Anthony Bourdain, and having ugly sweater parties, just like he wanted.
That was how Ford came to have a Mexican standoff with Cropper in the middle of the Sonoran desert. He rode exactly four miles above the speed limit the entire way. He turned off onto Gas Line Road, the twisties smoothly hugging the rounded undulating rises of desert. The sun had dipped behind the horizon and the land was a prickly silhouette of ocotillo, yucca, and the long arms of saguaros.
He had stopped once to call Turk. Turk hadn’t raised Bloodgood or Cropper, although he’d texted Cropper the new coordinates. That was an hour ago, and now Ford thought it best if he just kept riding.
He was already uneasy, of course. This entire human trafficking deal was exactly something Baal’s Minions would do—and exactly what the Bare Bones had stayed away from all these years. He could only see about fifty yards until the next little rise. He became much more uneasy when, cresting one of these ridges, he saw the flash of tailpipes. Another biker, riding the same direction he was.
Turk and Tall Peril should’ve been there already, hours ago. The fishtails he’d just seen could’ve only been Cropper or Riker, or both.
Ford hit the throttle to catch whoever it was before they got to the trucks. Fucking Cropper taking control of the beaners was the only possible outcome of this clusterfuck. The moment Ford crested the last rise, everything seemed to happen simultaneously.
The Bloodgood truck parked off to the side in the dry wash absolutely detonated. Ford couldn’t tell what sort of IED it was from here—and he’d seen some doozies in his time—but it had been remotely fired, that was for sure. Stunned so heavily his heart nearly stopped, Ford pulled to a stop next to Cropper, hardly caring that he wanted to bury the guy anymore. Both men watched with their jaws hanging loose.
He had seen Tall Peril, a short and stocky former fireman from the Sierras, heading for the Bloodgood truck to open the latch, probably to give the beaners some water or air. Tall Peril was immediately vaporized, along with the entire box truck. Within seconds, the force of the explosion started to clear, revealing the flaming hulk of the truck, and the realization that not one person could have survived that blast.
As pieces of twisted metal and hunks of gore rained down around them, Ford turned a stony face to Cropper. “What. The. Fuck.”
“Don’t look at fucking me.” Cropper sounded angry too, holding up a leather-clad arm against the downpour. “That was some valuable cargo.” His apelike jaw set with anger, Cropper sped down the hill, zigzagging to avoid flaming pieces of bodies.
Now that Tall Peril was history, Ford’s next concern was Turk. He followed Cropper’s trail downhill through waves of diesel fuel and burning flesh stench. He didn’t bother picking his way around most of the body parts. He just rode over them in a straight beeline to reach the Illuminati truck, where he hoped to fuck Turk had been secreted during the explosion.
Turk emerged from around the back side of the Illuminati truck, safe and sound, peering around as though he’d never seen it rain limbs. Ford motioned Turk to stay put when he came to a stop next to Cropper. The fiery hulk of Bloodgood’s trailer was already burning out, having nothing much in the way of flammable material to burn. The cab had been sheared off by the force of the blast and Ford could see through it to the opposite rise, where two new bikes appeared.
Mack and Slit.
It was those two bastards who had tried to manhandle Maddy at the rally. Two of the motherfuckers who had been involved in the crew screw last week.
The riders must have been following the Bloodgood truck since the suministros pickup at the tunnel’s end. No doubt they were highly angry at losing the contract and at Cropper’s betrayal in stealing it from them. The explosion was just their way of pissing in the Bare Bones’ mouth, and now they were here to revel in their glory.
Without forethought, Ford dismounted his bike and whipped his Sig Sauer from his waistband. He was easily accurate at twenty yards, and his rage powered him. He squeezed the trigger and popped off one of the riders—Mack, he thought. Mack went down like a turd in a punch bowl, his bike toppling on him like a slo-mo low-side. The other asswipe hung a sudden U-ie in an effort to do the James Brown out of there, so Ford’s round just hit him in the shoulder. He recoiled and the bike tweaked, but he kept sashaying out of sight down the other side of the hill.
Suddenly not caring about the Minions, Ford turned his full fury on his father. “The club talked me out of burying you when it came out what you did to Maddy.”
Cropper’s expression was exceedingly calm for someone with Mexican entrails stuck to his front tire. This seemed to be a sign of his increasingly erratic behavior over the years. In his youth, Ford had been blind to so many things. People usually ignored strange things their own parents did. But when he returned from overseas it had been much more crystal clear, as though he viewed Cropper through a powerful scope.
Maybe being detached physically from his father for so long had given him this remote viewing ability. Now, having worked closely with him again for so many years, it had just been becoming more and more evident. Cropper was seriously whacked, like a crazy old survivalist stockpiling insane shit like Frisbees and Nintendo games.
It had never been more obvious than now. Cropper didn�
�t care that a reliable old patch holder had just been ground into asphalt tacos before his very eyes. He didn’t even congratulate his son for putting a hated old friend or enemy—whichever Mack was—into the ground.
No. Cropper said mildly, “Of course the club stands behind me. The club never turns against its brothers.”
Ford rattled the Sig Sauer in his hand as though testing its heft. Cropper had his own Glock in his hand, and he did the same. “So there’s nothing from you. No apology. No excuse for why you had us trading in human lives.”
Cropper shrugged. “You’ve got to get a little dirty to feed the treasury.”
The blood was rising in Ford’s vision. “No ‘sorry, son, that I raped your old lady.’ Seriously. Nothing.”
“Hey. Respect the man who has seen the dark side of riding and lived.”
Turk stood behind Cropper, wide-eyed and white as a sheet. He slunk off to one side so as not to be in the line of fire.
“Why’d you never tell me that I had a brother who died at age four? Blind, deaf, unable to walk?”
“What good would it have done? Put it all in the rearview, son. That’s what I did with Rebekah and whatever the kid’s name was. Never do less than forty miles before breakfast, that’s what I say. You need to put the whole Madison thing in your rearview too, son. So it happened. We had a few laughs. I don’t apologize for a fucking thing. Never have, never will. Madison’s a delicious cunt. You inherited your good taste in women from your father.”
Ford seethed, “Live free or die, motherfucker.” He shot Cropper in the forehead.
It was just like that time he’d shot the father who was coming after Cropper for molesting his daughter. The body dropped before the eyes could even roll up into the skull. Only this time, Ford was getting rid of an actual pervert instead of an innocent man.
Ford took three steps up to the body and loomed over it. He was the powerful victor now. Turk, too, stepped up, but he was only waving his hands in a warning.
“Ford, Ford. We’ve got to get the fuck out of here.”
In the distance a siren whined.
Ford stuck his piece back into his waistband and exhaled. It felt as though he’d been holding his breath for a long, long-ass time. He almost felt like smiling when he finally looked full-on at his best friend.
“You’re right about that, bro. Let’s get trucking away from that siren. Leave these two wastes of human life to cancel out each other.”
EPILOGUE
MADISON
“And the time came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” ~ Anaïs Nin
It was May Day, and without a doubt the best day of my life, in retrospect.
Dr. Petrie, I know you’re going to say I was happier when I was away from Ford. I’m saying I needed that break to sort out my head, to mature so that I could finally resolve most of my issues.
Everything was finally starting to come together for me. I had never suffered through a New York winter before, but that day the thermometer outside my friend Anna’s window actually hit seventy. It was so blissfully warm I even ventured out into her greenhouse to mess around. She owned an old farmhouse in this bucolic village up the Hudson River. Anna used to actually babysit Bobby—excuse me, Speed—in Cottonwood, that’s how I knew her. She somehow wound up living this idyllic life, also as a registered nurse, but on the opposite side of the country.
And talk about an opposite life. Anna had married some university professor whose specialty seemed to be sitting around being a moody jerk and writing poetry reviews. What a different world than the one I’d been attached to for so long. I had wanted to move out and get my own place, of course, but then Anna had become pregnant. She wanted me to help babysit and I didn’t exactly have enough money to rent anything other than a parking attendant’s shed in the Hudson Valley, so I’d just stayed on, lingering.
And boy, was it bucolic. Anna must’ve had ten acres with an actual rock fence. I mean a fence made out of old Mohawk rocks or something, and a graveyard with headstones dating back to the 18th century. She had chickens and a cornfield and the greenhouse that looked like something Emily Dickinson would hang out in. What a sea change from my world of bikes, leather cuts, and people behaving badly. I still didn’t feel that I fit in, but I figured the new, prissy, orderly world just needed to rub off on me.
It was me who needed to change to adapt to the new world.
“So Marcus comes home and immediately goes and makes himself a martini,” Sabrina was saying over the phone. I had taken the phone into the greenhouse with me to finish our conversation. We always had long talks. She was my BFF, as they say. “Only it was about ninety-eight percent vodka, and two percent vermouth.”
Sabrina had met her boyfriend Marcus at an AA meeting. Only thing was. She’d stayed sober. Marcus hadn’t. She seemed to love this wild, disgusting, unpredictable guy. I knew the feeling, so I never criticized Marcus. I just laughed. “Sounds like a lot of guys I used to know. Marcus has a good heart, though.”
“Oh, yeah,” Sabrina agreed cheerfully. “His heart’s in the right place. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
There was an awkward pause then. Maybe Sabrina realized that she had just accidentally not described Ford Illuminati.
We rarely discussed him anymore. What was the point when I was doing my best to stay hidden? I started out being afraid to face him. Not after what I’d been through. I couldn’t. It had just steamrolled from there. Maybe it was my self-preservation coming to the forefront, but I put one foot in front of the other, and soon I found myself licensed in the state of New York to practice nursing.
I was lonely. Yes, I was. My job filled most of my waking hours, Fidelia the rest. It wasn’t as though I was ever, ever bored. But I was deeply lonely on an existential level.
I pined for Ford. I knew I was probably always going to pine for Ford. Ryan Gosling could come by, sweep me off my feet, and take me to his castle in the south of France, and I’d still pine for Ford. Ford was in my blood, in my chemistry, in my very cells.
But I figured that the less Ford’s name came up, the less he would haunt me. It did seem to be working. I could go an entire hour now without a spectral image of his stunning aquiline nose, his glossy black hair, or his creamy skin popping into my head. An entire hour.
Now Sabrina had ruined that track record again.
“Speaking of not hurting a fly,” Sabrina barreled ahead. “Speed called again the other night.”
“Oh.” If I told Speed where I was, he’d be obligated to tell Ford. The end result would be one of two disasters. A, Ford would come and find me. Violence would ensue, and I couldn’t have that in my life again. Or B, Ford would not come and find me, in which case I’d be insulted, offended, and lonelier than ever. No. I hadn’t told Speed where I was. We talked once in a blue moon, but I had a new Arizona cell number. Even if he was tech-savvy, like I knew Ford and Turk were, he’d need my actual phone to put any sort of GPS tracker on it.
I sighed deeply. “I was thinking of telling Speed where I am.”
Sabrina gasped. “Seriously? Oh my God, Maddy. I think that would be the best thing in the world.”
I hurried to say, “You know what that means, though.” Just the merest thought of it was making my heart race. I was trying to dump out a dead plant from a flowerpot with one hand, banging it against the edge of a potting sink. “It means he’s going to be obligated to tell Ford.”
“Not necessarily. If Ford doesn’t know that he knows, it would never occur to Ford to ask. I know what you’re afraid of, Maddy. Your worst nightmare is that Ford doesn’t care enough to even look for you.”
“Yes,” I admitted tersely, and picked up another pot to bang against the sink. It turned out there were bulbs buried deep inside the pot, so I’d just killed them. They just hadn’t been watered inside the greenhouse all winter. They lay in the sink like stale marshmallows. “That is my worst fear. But I do miss feeling close to my
brother, being able to be honest with him, telling him about my life here in New York. If he could know where I was, I could share with him details about my life.”
“Fidelia,” Sabrina pointed out. “You could tell him about Fidelia.”
“Well, let’s not get carried away. We could maybe reminisce about the babysitting days when he used to watch Anna change her shirt, even though Anna’s still flat as a board.”
Instead of laughing, Sabrina sighed, as though she pitied me. Her voice was now tinged with the shadow of her mother’s pedantic counseling tone. “Maddy. Fidelia is Speed’s niece. She’s his family. He’s going to kill you when he eventually finds out he’s got a niece and you never bothered telling him.”
We’d been over this a thousand times. “If I tell Speed about Fidelia, he’s really going to be obligated to tell Ford. And then Ford really will come rampaging out here.” Or not, as the case may be.
Or not, because he could care less about me. Or the child he might fear has Tay-Sachs Disease.
I could tell Sabrina was pursing her lips now. “It’s his child, Maddy. He has every right to know.”
I was sort of glad that Anna’s pale-skinned form was coming from the side kitchen door now. She was pointing frantically in the direction of the street. Sometimes I envied her petite ballerina’s body. I’d never be confused with a ballerina. I was chunky, big boned, “curvy” if you had to use a euphemism.
“Oh, Anna wants something. She’s coming from the house.”
“Nice way of not addressing the issue.” Sabrina changed gears then. “Well, as usual, it’s up to you, Maddy. But that’s a good sign that you want to tell Speed where you’re living.”
“Don’t tell him I said that, though. Let me do it at my own speed.”
“Own Speed.” Sabrina giggled. “Good one.”
I rolled my eyes as Anna stuck her head into the greenhouse door. “Hey, sorry to bother you,” Anna said politely.
“No problem. What’s up?”
Anna waved her arm. “Well, there’s a guy down there on the street. He’s been there about an hour, and it’s starting to bug me.”
