Lock and Key

by Cat Porter

  I can’t remember a time when our parents got along.

  Our little brother Jason was nine when he got run over by a car while out riding his bike on our street after school. He died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital while my mother held onto his broken arm. Jason was her baby, and he was the apple of Dad’s eye. His death was devastating for all of us. Ruby and I tried to ignore Jason’s empty chair at the dinner table each night. Dad stopped showing up for dinner. Mom stopped cooking altogether. In fact, Dad never seemed to be able to pull himself out of his pit of shock, grief, and anger.

  Mom took the stiff upper lip route to new heights, but her drinking gave her away. Our parents would only exchange information and do their own thing, bumping into each other in the house on occasion. Ruby dealt with the delightful harmony at home by getting loud and wild, and I did the opposite. I didn’t want to be in my parents’ faces or make any waves. I kept quiet in the background and concentrated on school.

  The first time I met members of the One-Eyed Jacks was because of Ruby. We were in high school then, at a keg party out on a ranch in the hills. A lot of people had shown up and the beer had finished early. Ruby and her friends had mouthed off about it, of course. Loudly. Tim Squiers, a football player whose advances she had rejected earlier, came after her during all the commotion she had instigated.

  I was on the other end of the property with my girlfriends, trying to keep clear of the impending chaos. The yelling intensified, and Ruby’s name was being tossed around. My friend Tania and I went running. Panic and horror were words too weak to describe what jolted through me at the sight of Ruby kicking and screaming, being dragged off by Tim with one of his pals holding onto her legs, their buddies cheering them on.

  A few bikers had shown up to sell some weed. I knew in my gut they were my only hope of saving my sister from those bastards. I took off and Tania yelled after me, “Grace, come back here, don’t you dare!”

  But I did dare. I had to save Ruby. I ran like hell.

  Three bikers were perched on a group of large boulders around a fire drinking from whiskey bottles, the fumes of pot and tobacco clouding over them.

  “Hey, excuse me guys, can you help me?” They stared at me. I rattled on like a windup toy. “Those jerks have got my sister! He’s slapping her around, and all his friends are laughing. They’re gonna take turns with her. You’ve got to help me! Can you stop them, please?”

  “Is that what all that ruckus is about?” A young, attractive biker with light brown hair jumped down in front of me, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He wore a leather jacket over his cut. I couldn’t see his patches. Big brown eyes frowned at me. “They got your sister?” he asked.

  “Motherfucking football assholes!” hissed another, taller one. He hopped down from his perch. His long hair was in a braid down his back. He rubbed his hands together and let out a cackling laugh. “Time to kick some school-boy ass. We got this, little girl.” His fingers tweaked my chin. The name “Jump” was patched on his leather vest.

  I stumbled after them, and with a roar they pounced on Tim and his friends, beat them to a pulp until they bled all over their varsity letter jackets and begged for mercy. It had been quite a tornado-like display. There was no hesitation on their end. The bikers knew how to take a punch, even dead in the face. They seemed utterly unfazed by any pain. Fighting was obviously not simply a hobby or a sport to them. It was serious business.

  The brown-eyed one delivered a shuddering Ruby straight into my arms.

  “There you go, little sister,” he said, his voice low, his eyes glued to mine.

  “Oh my God, thank you. Thank you so much, thank you.”

  One of his brothers stood next to him and wiped the blood off his face with his sleeve. He had vivid green eyes and very long brown hair. He let out a ringing laugh. The name “Boner” was on his cut.

  “Hey, it was a good time,” Boner said winking at me.

  “Glad we could help,” the brown-eyed one said. “You keep out of trouble, you hear? And get her to do the same.” He jerked his chin in my sister’s direction.

  “Yeah, I know, thanks again.” I swallowed hard.

  His deliberate gaze remained on me. “I bet you don’t get into much trouble though, do you?”

  “No, not really.”

  Big Brown Eyes tilted his head at me and grinned. A shiver snaked through my insides.

  That was new for me. The thrill of the unknown, of temptation, of something wicked perhaps. A thrill, not fear. I let that sensation dissipate in the air between us.

  “Too bad.” He jerked his chin up at me. “See you.”

  Big Brown Eyes and his brothers left us and got on their Harleys. They revved up their bikes and thundered off one by one.

  My father went over to the One-Eyed Jack’s compound first thing the next morning. He shook each and every one of the members’ hands, looked them in the eye and expressed his sincere gratitude for standing up for his girls. He told them that he had struck a deal with Tim’s father. Dad wouldn’t press charges against Tim and his pals, if they didn’t press charges against the club members who beat up the boys. Outlaw justice had been served, and that was good enough for Dad.

  The men appreciated his show of respect and gratitude. All of this left me speechless. Ruby only laughed, even though it hurt her broken rib. It was probably the nicest thing Dad ever did for us. Then he went back to tuning us out.

  Our father was a long-distance trucker who was gone most of the time. One day, the week after my eighteenth birthday, he just didn’t come home. The divorce papers arrived in the mailbox soon after. Our mother decided to celebrate her newfound liberty from “the pig,” as she fondly called him, by going on a three-day bender at the nearest Native American casino with her girlfriends. Yet she returned home more bitter than ever.

  She calmed down somewhat over time, but the rancor remained. Almost two years after the divorce was finalized, she got killed driving drunk on the interstate. She had lost control of the car, drifted into oncoming traffic, and crashed into a truck. It was a startling sight, and one that Ruby and I had insisted on seeing, much to the policemen’s horror. We needed to see it in order to believe it.

  Ruby had tucked my hand in hers as we stood on the edge of that streak-marred asphalt. Silent tears rolled down my cheeks, my chest was bursting. A sudden primal need for my mommy, the mommy I hadn’t had in years, ripped through me. Ruby squeezed my cold fingers.

  “That’s it then, little sister. It’s just you and me now,” she whispered in a choked voice. I hiccupped in air and glanced up at her. Her eyes were glued to the crumpled mass of twisted metal, her face stony. I looked down at the scuffed and worn tips of my only pair of leather cowboy boots, and my vision blurred all over again. She silently led me back to her car, and we took off.

  I was twenty at the time and Ruby twenty-three. Ruby moved back in to the house with me after having deserted boyfriend number who-knows-what. Thankfully, the house had no mortgage, as it had been our father’s parents’ house. With basic expenses covered by our procession of odd jobs, we got by.

  Ruby’s immediate life plan of course was to have lots of parties. And we did. I would often get stuck with the nightmarish cleanup while Ruby took off with her friends or some new guy and disappear for days. Eventually she’d come back, usually more strung out than the last time.

  This went on for a couple of years. In the meantime, I stuck to my life plan, and after saving a bit of money, I had registered at Western Dakota Tech in Rapid City to study business management. I also worked nights at Pete’s Tavern, a local bar in town that Ruby had frequented since she was fifteen. Naturally, she had gotten me the job.

  One look at me, and Pete knew I was more dependable than my sister. At first I cleaned up in the kitchen, and within two weeks graduated to wiping down tables and clearing empties. Finally, Pete put me out on the floor one night when one of his regular waitresses didn’t show. I got to serve drinks and rake
in real tips.

  Life was good; life rolled on. I enjoyed my extremely busy routine. Ruby, however, became utterly unpredictable. She would be gone for longer stretches at a time. When she would be back, it would be with a crew of people, mostly bikers and their “bitches” who would park their phenomenal shiny, massive Harleys in the driveway and crash all over our house.

  Many of them I knew from Pete’s. However, I took to locking my bedroom door. Too often I would find a trio of them screwing wildly on my bed, another couple on my floor. On those occasions I would take off and spend the night at Tania’s house to try to get some sleep. Luckily, my quilt fit into the washing machine.

  Then stuff around the house started disappearing. I ignored it at first, but it got harder and harder. It started with the stereo, the small television in my parents’ room, my dad’s tools in the garage, my mother’s gold cross and then my grandmother’s pearl bracelet. That infuriated me. That was all we had of grandma, other than the house. Ruby wouldn’t listen. She’d see the look on my face and either laugh, give me a hug, or start a conversation about nothing at all. Or if she was in one of her deeply sullen moods, she’d act like she couldn’t see me anymore. It broke my heart.

  Early one morning I had found used syringes in the bathtub as I was getting in the shower, and it knocked the air right out of me. Suddenly Ruby dabbing makeup on the inside of her left arm the other day made sense to me. The small plastic baggies I kept finding stuck in the sofa and the garbage, and the coffee grinder that seemed to be a new permanent fixture on the coffee table, also made horrible sense.

  The numbness I used to feel when my mother would have her drunken tirades seeped through me once again. When I had pulled up alongside the curb after work at four that morning, Ruby was getting on the back of Jump’s bike. She had shot me a quick grin, and they had roared off into the dark. That was the last I would see of her for over three weeks.

  “She’s having another round of tests again. Could be a while.” Alex frowned. “Have a seat here Grace, and we’ll wait.”

  I slumped down on the hard plastic chair in the brightly lit hallway in front of Ruby’s hospital room and dumped my bag in between my legs. I had resuscitated myself as best as I could in the bathroom with splashes of cold water followed by a bit of eye pencil, mascara and coverup. My head fell back against the wall, my eyelids sank, and memories flooded my brain again.

  His hand burned into my wrist.

  “You’re the little sister, right?”

  I let go of the glass I had just set down on the table in front of the One-Eyed Jacks biker. Pearl Jam pounded over Pete’s sound system, and I had to bend down close to the attractive guy who sported a hint of a goatee and caramel-colored hair which just grazed his shoulders.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re Grace, right?” he asked in a hypnotic, gravelly voice.

  I wrenched my hand away from his, propped my tray up on my hip and scowled at him. “Who wants to know?” I asked.

  He grinned at me, a wicked, sexy grin that sent butterflies fluttering in my belly. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his hand along his handsome face, big brown eyes smiled up at me. The angles of his jaw seemed to widen as his lips curled at the edges.

  Holy crap.

  It was Brown Eyes from the keg party drama four years ago.

  I hadn’t seen him much since that night. A few times here at the bar, but never at the house with Jump and his buddies. A Sergeant at Arms patch was sewn on his leather cut along with a number of other colorful patches marking his warrior victories and wild sex-capades no doubt. Pete had once explained the patch thing to me. He had said they were like medals of the life, their colors and symbols only translatable by other brothers.

  “Oooh, an officer?” I asked. “Are you a gentleman, too?”

  I liked sassing. It was my defense mechanism when I was scared, and it also charmed people, because I had a feminine, sweet face, and they never expected it from me. Ruby’s face wasn’t so delicate, and she was all attitude, all the time. People always expected a smart mouth from her, at least that’s what Mom always said.

  His brown eyes flashed at me, and he grinned. His friends cackled and snorted. At his side Boner, the green-eyed one with the long hair, muttered, “Watch it, little sister.”

  Brown Eyes only jerked his chin at another one of his compadres who was in the chair behind me. The guy jumped up right away. With his foot Brown Eyes yanked the chair up against the back of my legs.

  “Sit.” His voice rumbled through my chest.

  “I’ve got work to do,” I said. My voice quaked, but I kept up the scowl anyway.

  “Sit down,” he said and rubbed his hand over his abs. His suede brown eyes never left mine. One of his eyebrows arched high on his forehead. My breath snagged in my chest. I guess people always did what he told them.

  I sat down, my back straight, my knees glued together. Brown Eyes leaned forward, his elbows on his thighs. His eyes were actually the color of syrup; their golden flecks glinted at me.

  “I’m Dig.”

  “Grace.”

  “I need to talk to you about your sister, Grace.”

  “Okay.” My shoulders tensed.

  “Not surprised, huh?”

  I shook my head, my lips pressed together. “Is she alright? I haven’t seen her or heard from her in over three weeks at least. Do you know where she is?”

  “Your sister’s making problems for us, and these problems gotta get gone,” Dig said.

  My pulse thudded in my neck, and my mouth went dry. “Okay,” I said.

  “She’s been hanging with my boys.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. “I’ve seen lots of you at my house.” My eyes darted down the table at the other men who had already finished with the pitcher of beer and were waiting for me to bring them their shots.

  “Ruby works for the club from time to time,” Dig said. “At the Tingle.”

  I blinked up at him.

  It all made sense now. The Tingle was the strip club just outside of Meager that the club owned. Ruby slept in pretty much all day every day, but was up and out all night every night. That had to be where all her cash was coming from lately. She had been leaving me plenty of money the past few months for the bills and my weekly run to the supermarket, even extra for clothes shopping.

  “Great.” I glanced around the bar. I hoped Pete wasn’t aware I was yakking with a customer while I should be taking orders. The place was filling up fast, and I needed to end this quickly with Dig.

  “Listen up, little sister,” he said. His fingers went to my chin and brought me face to face with him once again. “She got involved in a deal that went south. Smart bitch, but a little too eager. She got herself arrested today with one of my brothers.”

  My stomach buckled. “Where is she? Can I go see her? Was she with Jump?”

  “Yeah. Calm down, peanut.” Two of his fingers curled around a strand of my hair and twisted it into a coil. “I need you to do something for me.”

  “Me?” I let out a squeak. My life flashed before my eyes. Dig was probably going to tell me he was dragging me back to their clubhouse to turn me into a club slave or house mouse or skank, or whatever the hell they called it, to pay for Ruby’s wrongs.

  My jaw slackened. The room spun.

  In one quick and efficient maneuver, Dig took the tray from me, pulled me into his lap and dropped the tray onto the now-empty chair. His hard chest was a solid, impenetrable wall against the side of my body. His tobacco scented breath filled my nostrils.

  One of his hands stroked my back while the other on which he wore a variety of heavy silver rings, most notably a large gleaming skull, clasped my thigh. His firm grip coursed right through my jeans like an electric current. I shuddered despite my earlier determination to play it cool, especially when his nose stroked the line of my jaw and up my cheek.

  Holy crap.

  “Little sister,” Dig’s low husky voice dripped over me like
melted chocolate. “What I need from you is to talk to Ruby. I need her to understand a few things so she can say the right thing to the cops. She’s actually in a perfect position to help us resolve a few important issues. And if she does this for the club, we’ll help her, and we’ll look out for you.”

  “What do you mean—help?” My heart pounded outside my chest.

  “We always help our own.” His hand squeezed my thigh tighter.

  “Your own?” The back of my throat stung. “Is Ruby yours?”

  Dig shook his head. “Not mine,” he said. “She’s done a couple good deeds for us here and there. The club is prepared to help her out now in her time of trouble with lawyer’s fees, and whatever else comes up, like maybe rehab once she’s out. We’d also look out for you, peanut.”

  I bit my bottom lip. “Why do I need you to look out for me?”

  “You’re going to be on your own in that house, going to school, working here,” he said. He seemed to know a lot about me. His hand continued its conquest of my flesh.

  “There are people who know your sister, and they aren’t the nicest kind of people. They aren’t happy with her or with us right now,” he said. “We’ve got a slim window of opportunity to make it right, and I want to take it. The club needs to do this in order to keep the peace, but that will only happen if Ruby does this thing for the club. Otherwise, we’re going to have a serious mess on our hands, and you’ll both be flapping in the wind. It won’t be pretty for any of us.”

  “Oh.” I squirmed in his lap.

  Oops. Not a good idea.

  His erection jutted against my rear, and my back went rigid. Dig only tightened his grip on my leg to steady me. His other hand slid up my back to my neck and pulled my face in closer to his.

  Crap… this is what Ruby meant by “alpha male maneuvers.”

  His full lips were only a breath apart from mine. His spicy cologne and tobacco-laced manly aroma hinted at an alien world.