by Jessie Cooke
Gunner wasn’t sure why Zack was trying to be nice suddenly, but a beer sounded good. “Sure, thanks.”
Zack went out into the bar and came back with two beers. He sat Gunner’s down in front of him and then twisted off his own cap and took a long drink before sitting back down. “Did Tammy tell you we talked the other day?”
Gunner was about to take a drink of his beer. He put it down and said, “About what?” He didn’t want to admit to Zack that she hadn’t told him, but he wanted to know what they had to talk about. Tammy had yet to tell Gunner about their history. He waffled back and forth about whether he wanted to hear it or not.
“About you. She was pissed off at me for taking you along on the ride the other day.”
“Why was that, Zack?”
“Why was she pissed?”
“No. Why was I there? What was the purpose of that?”
He raised an eyebrow. “So she didn’t tell you.”
“Can you not be a dick for five seconds and just tell me yourself?”
“Look, no matter how much hell Randall and Tommy bring into Tammy’s life, she’s never going to walk away from that mess without a hell of a lot of encouragement. Someone is out to destroy her family…put them all in an early grave. Going back there just paints a target on her forehead.”
“So that’s what you talked about? You told her this?”
“In so many words.”
“And what did that have to do with taking me to Kentucky with you?”
“Everything. You have your sights set on riding with the Southside Skulls one day. I travel a lot. I’ve been to that ranch Dax Marshall has set up out there and it’s a damned fine place. He’s taking that club in a direction that will keep the deaths and arrests to a minimum. That’s the kind of place Tammy needs to be.”
“Again, what does that have to do with taking me to that bar?”
“I wanted you to see what your life would be like riding with the Head Hunters. My father is a cruel, ruthless son of a bitch. He has no qualms about ordering someone dead, and once he does that, they’re dead. He lives for the power and glory that bloodshed brings him. If you’re a part of his club, you have to learn how to be as ruthless as he is.”
“I saw you shoot a man between the eyes and not even break a sweat.”
“Like I said, you have to learn to be cold and ruthless. I learned from the best, at an early age. Did Tammy tell you why I left?”
“No. I heard her and Mona…your mother…talking about it one day. Your mother seems to think it was because Tammy broke up with you.”
He shook his head. This was the first conversation Gunner had with him where he wasn’t smiling. The look on his face when Gunner talked about his mother was eerie, and Gunner wasn’t sure he liked it better. “She’s full of shit. She knows why I left, she just doesn’t want to admit it. She’s as cold-hearted as he is. It’s why they’ve been together for thirty years. I started riding with the club at sixteen. I was a prospect at eighteen. It was all I’d ever known. I loved motorcycles and the idea of being this badass biker. For the first couple of years I wasn’t privy to most of the club’s business, but when I turned twenty and I had my patch, Dad sent me on a run with some of the guys. My understanding was that we were delivering guns and picking up a payment. When we got there, these guys…a gang out of the city…they were told to go to the back of the van to see the merchandise. The doors opened and the gunfire almost completely deafened me. They killed six men. When it was over, the sergeant at arms and road captain took the cash the guys had brought, and ordered the rest of us to get rid of the bodies. I won’t go into details, but nobody will ever find them. That was my initiation. It only got worse from there. My father’s way of doing business is at the end of the barrel of a gun, and if anyone objects to that, he disappears just like those bodies did that day.”
Gunner had lost his appetite as he listened. He wasn’t naïve about club life, but he hadn’t imagined that Tamara lived around that kind of violence. She’d talked about patching up gunshots and stab wounds, but she hadn’t let on how often she had to do that. Zack drank more of his beer while Gunner searched for something to say. Finally, Zack went on:
“Tammy and I became a ‘thing’ when she got out of high school and lived permanently at the compound. My dad and Randall were both thrilled. I think they’d planned that since we were babies. When she was twenty-one she decided she wanted to go to nursing school. I tried to discourage her from doing that. I knew if she did, they’d just use the hell out of her and she’d never be able to leave. We got in a big fight over it and I got drunk and I fucked her best friend. That’s why we broke up. It wasn’t her fault. It was about six months later that I watched my father kill a woman. She was a club girl with an expensive addiction, and he caught her stealing. While I agreed she deserved some kind of punishment, I did not agree with the punishment he chose for her. She was tied to a tree in the woods, raped, and murdered. I left the next day. Look, Gunner, I think my father is behind these attacks on Tammy’s family. I want you to convince her to stay out of Texas. I want you to take her back east with you. If Randall dies, trust me, the world will not mourn. Tommy’s not so bad, but his fate is already hanging in the balance. But Tammy is better than that. She’s better than all of them. You’re her chance to escape. Don’t fuck it up.” Zack drained his beer while Gunner tried to process all of that. He stood up then and, morphing back into the Zack Gunner had come to know, he smiled and said, “Just so we’re clear, I really don’t like you. I’m looking forward to Saturday for more than one reason. I want my money, but I also can’t wait to see you get the shit kicked out of you.” Gunner watched him walk away. He picked up his beer and then put it down before picking up his paper plate and taking it over and depositing it in the trash. He had no idea how to talk Tammy into not going back home. She called the hospital every day and checked in with her dad as often as she could. She bitched and moaned about them, but they were her family. Coming from a place of not having one, Gunner could appreciate how hard that might be to give up. With a sigh, he tossed his beer bottle in the trash too and headed back to their room. He had three days to convince her she was in love with him and couldn’t live without him. He smiled and thought that it was a damned good thing he was so hot and good in bed. That was something to build on.
43
Zack sat on a stool in a dive bar in Memphis, drinking his beer and waiting for his contact to arrive. The guy was late and Zack was beginning to get pissed off. He was in one of the worst areas of the city and the bar smelled like piss. When he ordered his beer, the bartender started to pour it in a glass. Zack stopped her and grabbed the bottle. No way he was drinking out of anything in the nasty bar. Just sitting on the stool gave him the creeps. He kept feeling things crawling on him. He wasn’t sure if it was his imagination, or if there really were bugs crawling around. A couple of times he saw a different guy head to the back with a woman that could only be described as tore up from the floor up, and come back five or ten minutes later. It was obvious that she was handing out hand jobs or blow jobs, and he shuddered to think what kind of presents were getting passed around that might not show up until much later. If this guy didn’t make it in the next fifteen minutes, Zack was out of there. This Spider guy had reached out to the Invaders with a proposition, not the other way around. If he wanted to do business with them badly enough, the asshole could figure out how to show up next time.
He finished his beer and looked at his phone for the tenth time. His president had sent him here to meet with this guy, or he would have left already. He was pressing in the number he’d used to contact this Spider guy before, when the front door burst open and a woman, holding something in a blue blanket in her arms, ran into the bar. It might have been a baby, but Zack had to wonder what mother in her right mind would bring a baby into this hellhole.
Boredom, curiosity, and the fact that even though she was slightly disheveled, she was hot, made Zack sit up and take notice. She had lon
g brown hair and huge hazel eyes. Her nose was long and slim and she had dark red, full lips. She looked clean, but she was wearing a pair of cutoff jeans that looked like they had been washed a hundred times and a faded peach-colored t-shirt, stretched out around the collar and sleeves. On her feet, she had a pair of flip-flops that looked like the kind they sold at the dollar store, and the blanket that whatever she was carrying was wrapped in was well worn as well.
Zack became especially interested in what was going on when he saw that the guy who raced in after her was wearing a Defenders patch on his kutte. The guy that Zack was there to meet belonged to the Defenders. Zack’s president was trying to set up a relationship with them so they could move guns through their territory without getting shot in the process. Zack folded his arms across his chest and listened.
“Don’t walk away from me, bitch.” His voice was loud, but Zack was the only one in the bar who was obviously paying attention. He instantly disliked the man. There was never any reason to call a woman names like that, especially in a public place. He looked around again and still, he was the only one watching the show. It was probably thanks to that Defenders patch the man wore. That club was the closest thing Tennessee had to the Head Hunters in Texas, and people with half a brain tended to avoid them. Zack may have underestimated the collective intellect of the people surrounding him.
“We’re finished, Spider, okay? Why can’t you just accept that?” The woman’s voice was lower than his and she was looking around the bar like she was embarrassed, and maybe afraid. Zack was trying to mind his own business, but when Spider stepped up into her face with his fists clenched, he stood up.
“Spider?”
The man spun around and the woman’s pretty hazel eyes were suddenly on Zack. “Dude, you must be Zack!” He held out his hand, but Zack just looked at it and then back at the woman. She was clutching the blanket tighter and Zack could see something moving in it. Ignoring Spider’s greeting altogether, he looked at the woman and said:
“Everything okay here?”
“Everything is fine.” Spider answered for her. “This is my old lady.” He said that like it was a challenge. Zack finally put his eyes on the other man’s face and smiled.
“Funny, I could have sworn I heard her say it was over between the two of you.”
Zack could see the change in the other man’s face. His dark eyes narrowed and the fake smile on his face fell away. “I’m not sure how y’all do things up in Clarksville, but here in Memphis, we mind our own business.”
Zack kept the smile on his face as he said, “Back in Clarksville, we talk to our women with respect…and if we don’t, we expect the ass-whoopin’ we’ve got coming to us.”
Spider looked like he was barely containing his temper. He breathed in and then out slowly before pasting another fake smile on his face and saying, “You know what, you’re right. I got angry and said things I didn’t mean.” He turned back to the woman and said, “You go on home now, we’ll talk later.”
“How am I supposed to get home now?”
“Take a cab,” he said, almost dismissively, as he turned his back to her again.
“You rushed me out of the house without my purse or his diaper bag. I don’t have money to take a cab.” Spider gave Zack a look like they were on the same side, and they both thought she was an idiot, before sighing heavily and pulling a twenty out of his pocket. He tossed it at her and she tried to catch it, but it floated to the floor. The woman clutched the blanket with one arm and bent down to get it, but Zack already had it in his hand. Their eyes met halfway up and he handed the money to her. She gave him a half-smile and said, “Thank you,” almost in a whisper. She glanced once more at Spider and then stepped around him and started for the door. Spider looked at Zack with that plastic smile stuck to his face and said:
“Excuse me, I just want to make sure they get into a cab safe. I’ll be right back.” Zack watched him follow her out, and he couldn’t miss the nervous look she gave Spider over her shoulder when she realized that he was following her. Zack tried to stay where he was, but something told him that the woman was going to suffer for the anger Zack had provoked in Spider. He went over and pushed through the heavy bar door. The couple was standing a few feet away and Spider had his hand on the woman’s arm, gripping it so tightly that even from where Zack stood, he could see the blanching of her skin around his fingers. He also saw a chubby little arm and a tiny little hand reaching up out of the blanket and touching her face. The scene made his blood boil, and he didn’t give a shit if he messed up this deal with the Defenders or not. He walked up behind Spider just in time to hear him say, “Don’t be stupid, you need me.”
Zack said, “Get your hand off her.”
Spider looked around at Zack and rolled his eyes. “Hey…dude…she’s my old lady. With all due respect, stay out of this, okay?”
“It’s okay…” the woman started to say. Zack stepped in closer so his chest was nearly pressing into Spider’s arm.
“Let. Go. Of. Her. Arm.” Zack could see Spider’s chest rise and fall. The look on his face told him that he was weighing the pros and cons of getting into a parking lot fight with a man who belonged to a club that his needed. He dropped the woman’s arm. It already looked like it was bruising, and Zack wanted to knock him out just for that. The fact that he smelled like an ashtray and sour whiskey only intensified the feeling.
The woman looked up at Zack. The look in her eyes was grateful, but Zack wasn’t offended by the fact that she didn’t thank him out loud. It would probably just get her into more trouble later. “You okay to get home?” Zack asked her.
“Okay, that’s fucking it! Who do you think you are, talking to my woman…”
“I’m not your woman, Spider.” That time Spider didn’t control himself. He turned back to the woman and, using his open palm, he smacked her on the side of the head. She let out a little cry and he said:
“Shut the fuck up and go home!” Zack had been caught off-guard by the smack Spider gave her, but before he finished his sentence, Zack had hold of the front of his vest with one hand and in seconds his fist connected with the side of the piece of shit’s head. As soon as it did, the man’s knees buckled and Zack let go of him with a little shove. He fell backwards onto the pavement, and his head hit it and bounced and hit it again. The first time it hit, Spider was looking up at him in shock; the second time, he was out cold.
“Oh my God!” the woman said with her free hand covering her mouth. “What did you do?”
Zack drew his brows together and as he rubbed his sore knuckles he said, “I was standing up for you.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t ask you to do that. Do you know how pissed off he’ll be when he comes to?”
“So what? You just let him treat you like shit so as not to piss him off?”
“You don’t know anything about it. I left him. I was finished with him…”
“Right, and how did that work out for you?” His eyes went back to the blanket. The baby was wiggling a lot now and making soft whining noises. “Seems to me that being dragged into a roach-infested bar with your baby in your arms might be a clue it’s not working out.”
“I’m not sure who you are…or…”
Zack smiled and interrupted her. With his hand out he said, “Name’s Zack. Pleased to meet you.”
She just looked down at his hand and then back at his face with an indignant look and said, “Please, just mind your own business. I’m going to get out of here before he wakes up.”
“And when he comes knocking on your door later?”
“It’s really nothing for you to be concerned about.” She sighed and said, “But thank you. I have to go now.” The taxi that either she or Spider called had pulled up along the curb. She put the now fussing baby up on her shoulder and headed over to it. Zack followed her. He wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t like the idea of never seeing her again. He pulled the door to the taxi open for her and she gave him another ann
oyed look before sliding inside. Before he closed the door, he looked at the cabbie and said:
“You have a pen, man?”
The man handed an ink pen over the seat. Zack pulled a dollar bill out of his pocket and wrote his name and cell number on it. “In case he gives you any more trouble,” he said, holding it out to the woman.
“I don’t need…”
“Me. I know,” Zack interrupted her. “Will you take it anyways, for my peace of mind?”
The woman took the dollar out of his hand. When their fingers touched, Zack felt a zing of electricity that landed right in his crotch. What is it about this woman? “Thank you,” she almost whispered. She pulled the door handle and Zack stepped back as she closed it. He tapped on the window as soon as she did. She rolled her eyes but lowered the window a crack.
“What’s your name?”
She sighed, but said, “Nicole,” before rolling the window back up and dismissing him. Zack watched the taxi drive away until it was out of sight. When he turned back toward Spider, the other man was beginning to stir. He had another vision of the asshole smacking Nicole in her head. The asshole wasn’t as big as Zack, but he wasn’t small either. He was about six foot tall to Nicole’s five-five or so, and 175 or 180 to her 125 soaking-wet. Zack was suddenly pissed off again. He crouched down and said:
“Hey, Spider?”
The other man looked disoriented and tried to lift his head up off the ground. “Huh?”
“Don’t fuck with Nicole again.”
Proving he didn’t have half a brain, Spider struggled to sit up, rubbing the back of his head as he said, “Or?” Zack smiled as he hit him again. That time he’d probably be out a lot longer. Zack got to his feet and walked over to his bike. Fuck the Defenders. They didn’t need to be associated with lowlifes like that.
44
Every muscle in Gunner’s body was screaming, and when he looked out into the front row and saw Zack sitting next to Tammy, grinning and giving him a thumbs up, he wanted to kill the son of a bitch. He’d already won two fights, the first one by a knockout and the second one by finally getting the guy to tap out, right before his opponent’s shoulder snapped. He only had an hour between number two and three, though, and he was fucking beat. Raymond had sent a masseur in to rub him down while he stood by and gave him a litany of everything he could have done better in the second match. Gunner tuned most of it out. He knew what he needed to do better; it was just a matter of having the strength left for the final two fights to do it. The first round of fight number three had already been hell. This guy was going after him with everything he had.
