DADDY AT THE ALTAR

by Claire St. Rose

  “Motor and I talked some yesterday,” she said, trying to draw him out as she had with Stilts. Talking about Stilts seemed to help him, maybe talking about Motor would do the same. “He seemed like a good guy.”

  “The best,” Hammer said, staring at the food on his plate. He looked up at her. “Thank you.”

  “For?”

  “For dinner. For stopping me from pulling a repeat of Stilts.” He paused. “For caring.”

  “It’s what friends are for. We help each other when the going gets tough. Tell me about Morgan.”

  Hammer pushed the noodles around on his plate. He should eat, and he knew it, but he had no appetite. “He was like my dad. I don’t know what else to say about him. I care, cared, more about him than I do my own father.”

  “I could tell he really cared about you too. He told me how you two met—how he helped you with your jujitsu.”

  “Yeah. He never married, never had kids. He kind of adopted me.” She saw his eyes well with tears. “I don’t think he knew what he meant to me.”

  Lily felt her own eyes flood. Hammer was in pain, a pain deeper and more profound than he was with Stilts. She’d seen the anger in his eyes then, but all she saw now was bottomless sorrow.

  “I think he knew. When he talked about you, I could hear the pride in his voice.”

  “You think?”

  “Yes, I really do.”

  He whimpered, and then his face hardened. He shook his head and took a deep breath, fighting off his grief. He was crumbling right in front of her, his pain from the loss of Motor overwhelming him. She pushed back from the table and went to him, pulling him out of his chair and into her arms.

  He fought against his tears, afraid to let them fall, afraid to let his grief wash over him in case it consumed him, but her warm embrace leached the pain from him, ripping and tearing it from his soul. He shuddered as her warmth and compassion tugged at him. He had to be strong for his brothers, but with her, he could admit how much losing Motor hurt, how he felt as if a part of him had died with his mentor.

  He gasped and heaved, struggling with his grief, and she held him. After a moment, she heard his soft sobs as his shoulders shook. His arms pulled her in tight, his hands grasping her, clinging to her as if she were the most valuable thing in the world. She remained quiet, knowing nothing she said could say would ease his pain. She gave him the only thing she could offer, the comfort of another human’s touch.

  He held her tight for a long time, allowing her embrace to ease is pain as another wave of grief wash over him. Motor had been the only person he could truly talk to. He’d always been able to admit his fears and let his guard down around him. But here Hammer was, allowing his fear and pain to pour out of him as he held Lily, vulnerable, as he had only allowed himself to be with one other person. He wanted to bottle up his grief and be strong, but now that the wall had been broken, he couldn’t stop the pain.

  After a long moment, his embrace relaxed, and he became still, then he sighed and straightened. She met his gaze, and he sniffed, then smiled at her with more tenderness than she’d ever seen before.

  He wiped his eyes with the back of his hands. “Fuck. Some badass biker I am. I’m going to blame it on the Jack and being drunk.”

  She smiled back at him, feeling closer to him than ever before. She reached up to touch his face. “I told you before, your secret is safe with me. You just lost, if not your dad, at least someone you cared about deeply. You can’t keep that inside, or it will destroy you. You have to let it out. I’m glad I could help.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, well, I’m not used to wearing my feelings on my sleeve.”

  “I hardly call crying over the loss wearing your feelings on your sleeve.” She smiled at him and decided to give him an out. “I told you that you’d had enough to drink. Here, eat before the food gets any colder.”

  They returned to their chairs, and he tasted the food. It didn’t look like spaghetti, but it was still good. He told her so.

  She nodded in thanks, but said nothing, hoping the lengthening silence would draw him into talking about Morgan. It was a cop trick as old as the hills, but it didn’t work on Hammer.

  “What did Morgan think of you joining the army?” she finally asked to try to start him talking.

  He smiled, staring at his plate. “I joined because of him. He served during Nam, and I wanted to be just like him. As soon as I finished high school, I joined up.”

  “You didn’t want to go to college?”

  “No, not really. I made decent grades, but school really wasn’t my thing.”

  “I assume he was proud of you for joining up, then?”

  Hammer shrugged. “I guess. He didn’t say much one way or the other. When I got out…”

  She saw a shadow pass over his face. “What?” she asked.

  “When I got out, he gave me a prospect patch for the Souls.”

  “Okay,” Lily said, her voice softer, sensing there was more to it than that.

  Hammer looked at his plate again, poking at the last few bits with his fork. “He said I did the right thing, but I always wondered if he really meant it. Motor, he valued loyalty above all else.”

  She held her tongue, waiting to see if he would continue. He didn’t.

  “What happened?”

  He met her gaze. “This shit is bringing back some bad memories. When I was deployed, I was paired up with an army unit that was in the thick of it. I was green as shit, but you learned fast, or you died. I did some door to door, but not long after I got there, one of the snipers lost his spotter. I got tagged as his replacement.”

  “What’s a spotter and what happened to his old one?”

  “A spotter watches the sniper’s back. Think of it as his bodyguard. While the sniper is busy killing bandits, a spotter’s job is to make sure someone isn’t crawling up his ass from behind. We also help him pick targets and confirm his kills. He’s an asset, and our job is to protect him or die trying. His old one was rotated back to the States after they took incoming fire and he got some stone fragments in one of his eyes. They were concerned he was going to lose his sight in that eye and needed more care than they could provide in the field.”

  “What happened?” she asked, still keeping her voice soft. Whether it was the Jack loosening his tongue or he needed to get something off his chest, she didn’t know, but she didn’t want to interrupt him.

  “I started going out with Finger. That was what they called him. Finger, as in the Finger of God. He… what he was doing didn’t set well with me. He was taking shots that were way outside the ROEs. We were supposed to—”

  “What does ROE stand for?”

  “Rules of Engagement,” he clarified. “Our ROEs were to target only enemy combatants, people who were clear threats, but he was totally ignoring that. I talked to some of the other spotters and found out that sometimes they had to make a judgment call.” He looked at her, his eyes haunted. “In war, things are not as clear cut as people might think. A kid picks up a rifle. Is he now a combatant? Is he a threat?”

  Lily swallowed hard, not liking where this was going, but said nothing.

  “I could see their point, and I could even support it. But what he was doing was worse. Much worse. He was taking a shot, and when I would protest it wasn’t a clean kill, that it was outside the ROEs, he claimed to see things. A grenade, a weapon. I tried to talk to him, but Finger wouldn’t listen. I finally reported him to the brass.” Hammer shook his head. “They opened an investigation, and based in part on my testimony, eventually pulled him out.”

  “That’s why you only did one tour?”

  “Yeah. I was the noob. I came in and had one of their own tossed out. The troops, they knew he was operating outside the ROE, but they were loyal to their unit and the men in it. My career was done. I did my stint and didn’t re-up.” He looked at her. “The only person I ever told that to was Motor… and now you.”

  She reached across the table and took his hand.
It felt cold. “Motor said you did the right thing, right? I think you did the right thing too. I can’t speak for Motor, but no matter what he thought, he was still proud of you, Hammer. When I was talking to him yesterday, I could hear it in his tone and see it in how he smiled when he talked about you.” She gave his hand a squeeze. “You said he never had kids? I think you’re wrong. I think he had a son. You.”

  Hammer’s face crinkled up, and he tried his damn hardest not to blather like a little bitch again. “I’m going to miss him,” he said after he gathered himself.

  “I know. I wish I had the chance to get to know him better.”

  He nodded. “He taught me everything I know that’s important. Duty. Loyalty.” He had to stop before he said too much. It was Motor that had put the club in the business of righting certain wrongs.

  Lily could see how much Hammer admired Motor. “I’d like to hear more about him. Will you tell me?”

  He looked at her and then bowed his head. “Yeah, if you’d like to hear.”

  “I would.” She pushed back from the table again. “This can wait,” she said as she waved her hand for him to follow her.

  They returned to the living room and settled onto the couch. She snuggled into his embrace. They sat in silence for a long time, Lily giving him as much time as he needed to start. When he finally did, she listened as he talked about his friend and mentor, the man that most influenced his life. She heard his voice thicken with emotion several times, but she pretended to not notice.

  After several hours, he fell silent, his stories complete, and she had a better sense of him and what he valued as important. Despite his bad boy biker persona, Hammer was a good man. He cared about those around him and had a clear sense of right and wrong.

  “Are you ready for bed?” she asked, curled up in the nook between his arm and chest. She was super comfortable and in no hurry to move.

  “Yes,” he said, his tone gentle.

  “Want me to stay?”

  “I’d like that.”

  She would have to leave early in the morning so she could go home, shower, and change before work, but she wouldn’t leave him alone tonight. “Take me to bed?”

  He kissed her on the forehead before she levered herself off the couch. He rose with her and held her hand as he pulled her along to his bedroom. They brushed their teeth, and under her orders, he took four ibuprofens and drank all the water he could before he joined her in bed.

  After he’d slid in between the linens, Lily snuggled in close. She heard the slow, heavy thuds of his heart and he sighed as he kissed her on the head again.

  The faint apple smell of her hair was intoxicating and the warmth of her body against him comforting. She stirred and tilted her head up, offering her lips. He took them, and then she settled into his embrace again.

  They were still and quiet, their only movement was their hands in slow caresses, each lost in their own thoughts. Hammer closed his eyes as he thought of Motor and what the older man had meant to him, and then what Lily was coming to mean to him. He couldn’t explain it, but she seemed to be able to comfort him when nothing else did.

  He smiled into the darkness, as her slow caress of his chest stopped, and her breathing became slower, deeper and more regular. The faint smile on his lips was still there when he, finally, joined her in the darkness of sleep.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “What do we know?” Hammer asked. His head was aching, but he could imagine how much worse it would have been if Lily not cut him off last night when she did and given his system a chance to process out the alcohol.

  “Shit,” Mike said. “We know shit.”

  “Goddammit. How can this guy just disappear like this? Nobody knows anything?”

  Mike shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “How many more brothers are we going to lose before we get a handle on this motherfucker?” Hammer snarled. He knew what the club was up against and how effective and difficult a trained sniper would be to defend against. He’d witnessed it firsthand for six months.

  “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to change our patterns. We’re going to start avoiding the places we normal go as much as possible, and that includes the clubhouse. If he knows where we’re going to be, we’re a target. These guys are trained to be patient. He’ll be willing to wait hours to make his kill.”

  “How are we going to do that? I have kids in school. I can’t just pack up and leave,” Goose protested.

  “He may not target your kids, but do you want to take that chance?” Hammer replied, meeting and holding Goose’s gaze. “Look, I know what I’m talking about. None of us are safe.”

  Knife nodded. “I think I’m going to send Shelly to her mom and dad’s for a while.”

  Hammer agreed. “I recommend that everyone do something similar. Do it in the middle of the night. Park your car on the next block and go out the back.”

  “Is it that serious?” Hilt asked. “You make this guy sound like he’s super-human.”

  Hammer’s eyes hardened. “Not super-human, but… Do you know what they call a sniper in combat? A force multiplier. One sniper on overwatch can make your ground troops two or three times as effective. Ten guys are suddenly as effective as thirty. I can’t stress this enough. If he can see you, he can kill you. You’ve seen what guys like him can do. Do not underestimate this guy or you will die.”

  There was a long pause as what Hammer said sank in. “Is that what you did in Iraq? You were a sniper?” Wheels asked.

  “No. I wasn’t a sniper, but I was part of a sniper team for a while. I know what I’m talking about. Pass the word and gather your shit. We’re not coming back here until this is settled.”

  The eight men broke up and spent twenty minutes putting the clubhouse into a semi-mothballed state.

  Inside the clubhouse, they were safe. The Immortal Souls clubhouse was an old grocery store the club had purchased years ago, and over the years, they’d renovated and upgraded the property to suit their needs. One of the changes was bricking up the glass front to the height of about eight feet. The high windows still let in plenty of light to the large common room, but the brickwork kept prying eyes from seeing inside, including those of the man hunting them. It was outside the clubhouse that was the killing field. They’d dug up part of the parking lot and replaced it with grass and landscaping, but there was still plenty of open tarmac where they parked their bikes that was a perfect kill zone.

  After the brothers had finished putting the clubhouse into hibernation by turning off the water, throwing out perishable food, and turning back the temperature on the water heater and heating system, they locked the building up for the duration of the crises and turned to their bikes.

  ###

  The shooter smiled as the crosshairs settled on the chest of the fireplug of a man. He had been waiting all night for this opportunity. He knew with the killing of Morgan, Corporal Grimes and his friends would probably rally to their clubhouse to discuss how to find him.

  The Souls clubhouse was in an older part of town—an area that was sliding into neglect as the affluent moved to newer neighborhoods. What was left behind were small homes full of families that couldn’t afford to move, failing businesses, empty storefronts, and empty, weed-choked lots.

  He’d set up in one of the empty lots last night, lying under his ghillie net among the weeds four blocks from the Souls’ clubhouse. It was another long shot, much longer than the shot he’d made last night, and difficult with a narrow field of fire. He’d set up in the extreme corner of the lot, the only place he could see the clubhouse, but even with the difficulty of his sub-optimal location it was still a shot he could make. He breathed out slowly and held his breath as he squeezed the trigger.

  The Browning 30.06 bucked, its report loud as it echoed off the buildings. Because he knew the sound of his shot would be impossible to determine he quickly worked the bolt, ejecting the spent cartridge and feeding a new round into position. He shifted
his focus to his next target as the men scrambled for safety but it was too late. Far too late. He smoothly squeezed the trigger again, and another life was snuffed out.

  He worked the bolt a second time, but the men were down using their motorcycles as a screen. He scanned the area through his scope, watching for movement, but saw none.

  Stealth and camouflage were his friends now.

  There wasn’t enough movement for him to blend in; he’d to wait until there was sufficient confusion to allow him to escape. As soon as the Souls were occupied, he’d slip through a hole he’d cut in the fence and walk to his car parked in the parking lot of a business one block over.