Raising Riker (Hells Saints MC)

by Paula Marinaro

  Gia laughed. “She told me that too. But she still answers.”

  “Did I show you this?” Riker held out his hands palms up. They were red and peeling in places. “I’m getting dish pan hands from changing what feels like a million diapers a day. What the hell are we feeding that boy to give him mass quantities of purple baby shit?”

  “It’s the beets. He’s been a little constipated, so I’ve been mixing a tiny bit of mashed beets in with his rice cereal, Rourke loves it, but I have noticed lately that it goes right through him.” Then she began to rummage around in her purse. “I have lotion for your hands. Here, this stuff works miracles. It has lavender healing properties.” Riker went to grab the tube but stopped mid-air and shoved his hand back in his pocket.

  “What’s the matter?” Gia held the hand cream out to him.

  “Jesus. I just went straight from being a tough mother fucker to girly man mode.” Riker gave her a look of horror.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I used to hang around at these parties talking about the newest Glock out on the market, or how to cover up road chips on a crash helmet. Now I’m sitting here with my woman discussing colored baby poop and putting lavender lotion on my dishpan hands. I went from talking badass to talking baby shit.”

  Gia smiled as she put her arm around Riker’s waist and rested her shoulder against his chest. “Nothing more badass than beet colored baby shit, Riker.”

  Riker let out a low laugh. “You could be right darlin’.”

  Prosper ended the awards ceremony like he always did with a tribute to the Armed Services and a pledge to the flag. The crowd was just about to disburse into the yard to start up the bonfires and tap the kegs when a loud whistle sounded out through the microphone.

  “Aww Christ.” Riker scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “Here we fucking go.”

  Gia looked up at the stage where an obviously drunk guy had climbed up on the stage. He had a long greasy ponytail, a big beer belly and a Hells Saints Cut on. He was holding a beer in his hand and waving it in the air.

  “Hells Saints! Hell Yeah!” The man bellowed out in slurred words. Then he did this odd jig across the stage that made him look like a demonic leprechaun. “Been with this damn club fifteen fucking years putting up with all you assholes’ bullshit. Where’s my fucking award? You ain’t got no damn award for me? But hey, how’s about I give you something instead?” Then he grinned with the malice of Lucifer, whipped out his dick and began pissing all over the stage.

  A hush fell over the shocked crowd and for an instant nobody moved. Then all hell broke loose as every man wearing a Hells Saint cut galvanized into action and rushed toward the platform.

  “Let’s go. I want you out of here.” Riker grabbed his wife’s hand and began to pull her towards the exit gate.

  Gia pulled back and stood rooted to the spot as she watched the man with the demented smile run helter-skelter across the dais.

  “Gia? You okay?”

  “Riker, that man up on the stage. I know him. Well, I don’t know him exactly, but I’ve seen him before.”

  “No doubt. That’s Drummer. He’s a brother. But won’t be for long. Not after this stunt.” Riker told her as he continued to move her away from the fray.

  Gia kept looking back at the stage. Drummer, who still had his dick out and a huge piss stain on his pants had managed to avoid his pursuers by waving a nine millimeter haphazardly towards the crowd.

  “Wait! Please Riker, listen to me.” Gia stopped him just as they were about to go through the gate to the parking area.

  “I saw him. I was at this little out of the way rest area where I stopped to use the bathroom and I saw him.” She stood still.

  “So, he stopped for a piss at the rest area, just the same as you did. Not sure why that’s a big deal, Gia. Come on, babe. Things have a way of going to shit real fast when the guys get riled up and they are definitely riled. I want you out of here and I’m not going to say it again.” Riker now had his hands on his wife’s shoulders, ready to push her out the gate if necessary.

  “No. Riker! Will you stop it!” She twisted out of his grasp and said with insistence. “Drummer wasn’t there to use the bathroom. He was sitting at one of the picnic tables with an ATF agent. One of the ones that raided the house.”

  “What?” Riker stopped cold.

  “Drummer was sitting at a picnic table talking to ATF.” She repeated.

  “ATF? You sure?”

  “I’m sure. The agent caught my eye because he’s a ginger.”

  “A what?”

  “A ginger. It’s another name for a red-head. The agent I’m talking about has this full head of orangish- colored hair. Hard to miss. I saw them together sitting at a picnic table. I’m positive.”

  Riker scrubbed his hand over his face. “Christ, Gia. Did he see you? When you saw him, did he see you too.?”

  “He did.” Gia whispered fearfully. “And there’s more.”

  “More?” Riker raised a brow.

  “He was there at the accident, Riker. He caused the accident. It was his motorcycle that ran through the stop sign and caused that poor boy to cross over the median and hit me. I think maybe he followed me, maybe he meant to cause the accident. Maybe he didn’t want me to make it home to tell you what I saw.”

  Riker didn’t waste another minute. He dug into his back pocket and pulled out a key ring.

  “Here, take the keys to the truck. Go home and stay there. Tell Dolly to stay there with you.” Riker put the keys in Gia’s hand. Then he lifted his chin to a recruit walking by. “Prospect, I want you to follow my woman home and camp your ass out on my front porch until I tell you otherwise.”

  The Prospect sent Riker a look that said he was relieved to be doing something more agreeable than cleaning up piss, vomit, shit, or blood. “Sure thing. I’ll get my bike and meet her down at the gate, boss.” Then he was off.

  Riker gave Gia a hard kiss on the mouth before letting her go. “Drive safe and be careful.”

  “You be careful too, Riker.” She frowned at him. “I’m sorry I didn’t remember sooner.”

  “Nothing to be sorry about. I’ll handle this.” Riker watched until Gia got into the truck and drove down to the gate. When he was satisfied that the prospect was following his instructions, Riker shook his head at the now empty stage.

  Drummer, what the fuck have you done?

  Riker headed straight for the clubhouse.

  Hal and Reno had just started a game of pool and Jules was sitting at the bar watching the last few minutes of The World Cup on one of the oversized flat screens.

  Jules lifted his chin to Riker, then leaned over the bar and set a cold beer on the counter next to him. “That was some weird shit, huh? Did you get Gia outa here?”

  “Yeah. Guessing you did the same.?”

  “Didn’t have to. Glory, Raine and Claire all came together and left together. They don’t stay too long anymore at these things anyway, but when that ass wipe pulled out his poor excuse for a cock? No damn way the girls were gonna stick around after that, and no way I was gonna let them. When a night starts like that, not telling how it might end.” Jules shook his head and took a long pull on his beer. “Fucking distasteful is what it is. Grown man whipping out his dick and pissing his own pants.”

  Riker nodded. “I’m heading in to see the boss.”

  Jules shook his head. “You’re gonna want to wait on that, brother. D is in there and he’s fit to be tied. He’s fucking had it with Drummer and he wants to use his executive privilege to take Drummer’s patch. The two of them are in there now discussing if we’re gonna put it to a vote, or just move on executive say- so. Don’t matter either way, there’s not a brother here that’s gonna vote to give Drummer a pass after that little show tonight. No one likes his stinky ass anyway.”

  Riker walked over to the bar and grabbed a beer. He opened it and guzzled it half way down.

  “Drummer acting like a lunatic on the stage a few m
inutes ago triggered a memory for Gia.”

  “What kind of memory?”

  “The kind that’s gonna get a man killed.”

  Jules turned his full attention to Riker.

  Riker gave Jules a hard look. “She saw him at the rest area out on Route 91. She says he was sitting at a picnic table with a federal agent when she stopped to use the bathroom.”

  “Jesus.” Jules muttered. “A rest area. Rooster kidnapped Valentina from a rest area. What the hell is it with these women and rest stops? Why can’t they just piss at a goddamn gas station like everyone else?”

  Riker nodded. “I hear ya brother. But I gotta tell you, my blood ran fucking cold when Gia told me. My first thought was he could have capped her right then and there.”

  “Fucking Drummer. She know who the agent is? Got a name?”

  “Gia said she recognized him ‘cause his hair is the color of gingerbread or some shit like that. He was one of the feds that raided the lake house.”

  “That’ll be easy enough to find out.” Jules scrubbed a hand over the bottom of his face. “Anything else?”

  “Afraid fucking so.”

  “There was no way that Drummer had his colors on when he met the agent, so there was no way of Gia identifying him as a brother. And she hasn’t been around the club often enough to get to know anyone, except a few of the boys. Gia’s brain still ain’t clicking on all eight. She still gets real bad headaches and has problems remembering shit. But she’s getting better. And like I said, seeing that ass-clown making a goddamn fool out of himself triggered Gia’s memory in a way that hasn’t happened before.”

  Here Riker paused. His jaw went rigid and his body tensed with barely controlled violence.

  Jules looked at Riker, then surmised “That fucker caused the accident.”

  “Drummer rode his Harley ride across the road in front of her.” Riker growled through clenched teeth. “Cock sucking motherfucker looked right at my woman then pulled out in front of that young kid driving that huge ass truck. The kid swerved to avoid Drummer, lost control and hit Gia instead.”

  “Let’s go bring this to the boss.” Jules was already off the bar stool.

  Just then, Daisy Zamboni, a Saints party whore, came screaming into clubhouse. Riker’s first thought was that she looked like one of those chicks from a zombie apocalypse movie. Except that instead of walking in that slow, jerky undead- sort of way, Daisy was running towards them and shrieking at ear splitting decibels. No one knew what the hell, she was saying but it was a miracle she was saying anything at all. Her clothes were torn and one of her eyes was beginning to swell shut. Her arm hung limply at her side and was twisted at an odd angle and there was a large bite mark on her shoulder. Worst of all was the way her face was all sliced up. She had bone deep cuts on either side of her mouth that curved up to her cheeks and formed a grotesque joker-like smile. Jules ran towards her with a pile of clean bar cloths just as Prosper and Diego came bounding through the door.

  “What the fuck is goin….?” Prosper stopped dead in his tracks.

  “He cut me! He took a knife out and cut me! Oh, my god. Oh, my god. Drummer cut me.” Daisy was shaking violently, her eyes had started to roll back in her head and blood was everywhere. Jules reached she was about to collapse to the floor, by the looks of it she had already begun to go into shock.

  “Call an ambulance!” Jules yelled out as he threw Diego a cell. Then he called out to Reno to put pressure on the knife wounds while Jules covered her and began to treat her for shock. Riker took off at a run towards the bunk house. As he ran across the year, fireworks thundered and lit up the sky. The club was celebrating Saints style, clueless as to what was happening just a few feet away from them.

  Riker entered the kitchen house and hesitated just outside the hallway that led to the bunker wing. He moved carefully and quietly. He wished that he had stopped long enough to grab a firearm but with the way he was feeling, he figured he could bring that fucker down with his bare hands anyway.

  Riker stopped just outside Drummer’s room. The door was slightly ajar and there was the sound of sniffling coming from the room.

  Soundlessly, he kicked the door slowly open with the toe of his boot.

  Drummer sat in the middle of the room. He was naked, shivering, and covered in shit and blood.

  He had the barrel of a nine- millimeter pressed under his chin.

  “I fucked up, Riker, I fucked up bad.” He sniveled.

  You mother-fucking piece of shit, you bet you did Riker wanted to shout out to him. But his next thought was that he had to stop Drummer from killing himself. It was too painless, too quick, too easy, and something that Drummer did not get to decide.

  “Hey brother.” Riker choked that word out. “We all fuck up.”

  “Not like this. Not like this.” Drummer whined between sniffles.

  “She’s gonna be okay.” Riker told him. Even as he said it, Riker had his doubts that Daisy was ever going to be okay.

  “Who?” Drummer looked confused.

  Who? WHO?

  “Daisy.” Riker snarled out. “You cut her up pretty bad.”

  Drummer huffed and tried to focus his bloodshot eyes. “Yah? You like that Glasgow grin? Cut the bitch from the corners of her mouth to the ears⸺ perma-smile. Next time a brother wants her to take it up the ass, she’ll be smiling the whole damn time. I did the boys a favor by slicing her up.”

  Drummer let out a high pitched giggle that made Riker sick, then he took the gun away from under his chin and began to wave it around in the air.

  “I fucked up with the club. Sold my brothers out for thirty pieces of silver. I am a fucking Judas Iscariot.” Drummer whined.

  “We’ll go to the boss, together. You tell him what you gave up to the feds, we’ll figure it out and it’ll all be good. What you give us will put the end of the shakedowns and you’ll be a goddamn hero.” The words tasted like poison in Riker’s mouth.

  “Yeah, yeah.” Drummer’s eyes filled with less crazy and more cunning. “That might work. You helping me out now ‘cause I helped you out, brother?”

  “What did you do to help me out?” Riker’s jaw clenched, and he clamped down on his teeth so hard, he felt his back molars crack. He moved slowly and deliberately. Drummer still held the gun in his hand and was punctuating the air with each word.

  “Tried to get rid of that bitch who’s going around telling everyone that kid she’s carrying is yours.”

  Riker moved towards him. “Yeah? You sure it wasn’t because she saw you talking to ATF?”

  “Yeah, well there is that too.” Drummer said casually as he held the gun pointed at Riker’s chest. “But you just wait. That mob bitch is gonna fuck up your life in ways you didn’t think possible. Just like Deirdre fucked up mine. That cunt has been wishing me dead for years. Even talked me into taking out a life insurance policy on my damn self. At the time she said it was on account of the kids, with the lifestyle and all she wanted to make sure they’d be taken care of, but now I see that for what it was. She knew somewhere along the line some asshole would do me in and ….cha cha ching! Bitch would be able to collect on that. But insurance don’t pay if it’s a suicide.” Here Drummer cackled merrily. “You’re gonna find a way to kill me anyway for causing that accident. Even if I kill you first, the club ain’t gonna let me get away with selling them out and I’m too old to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. But if you think I am going to let that ass bitch ex -wife of mine benefit from me being gone from this world? Not fucking happening.”

  Then Drummer put the gun to his head and blew his brains out.

  It was a few moments later that Riker entered the clubhouse. It seemed like hours and hours had passed, but in reality, it was just a few minutes. Jules and Reno were still on the floor applying pressure to Daisy’s wounds. The pile of blood soaked towels was growing exponentially as they attempted to staunch the flow of blood pouring out of her shredded face and prevent her from going into fu
rther stages of shock.

  Riker gave a dazed glance toward the monitor on the wall. One of security cameras situated on the outer perimeter had picked up an ambulance, a firetruck and a cruiser heading towards the club house.

  Riker was bleeding from one ear and there was what looked like gray matter and visceral blood splattered all over him.

  “Drummer’s dead.” Riker explained to the stunned room. “Blew his own brains out.”

  “Holy shit.” Reno shook his head as the sirens sounded out closer and closer.

  Just then Daisy’s body started shaking on the floor like a broken wind- up toy.

  “She’s seizing, how close are they?” Jules yelled out.

  “They’ll be at the gate in about three minutes.” Prosper looked at the monitor again. Then he depressed the button on the intercom and called out to the prospects on guard duty. “I want both gates opened now so the ambulance that’s coming down the road now won’t have to wait and I want you boys to escort them up.” Then he pressed another button that controlled the speaker system on the grounds. He turned off the music and turned on the mic. Then he tapped it three times and the noise in the yard quieted immediately. He spoke into the microphone. “Law enforcement and EMT on grounds. Keep to the lower five and keep outa the way.”

  Then he looked at Riker. “Come with me.”

  Once they were in the meet room, Prosper rummaged through a stack of boxes and threw Riker one of the tee shirts the club kept on hand for civilian helpers when they did charity runs. “You’re covered in gore, brother. Take that shirt off and put this one. I’m gonna burn the shirt and put your cut in the safe for now. We’ll worry about cleaning that bone and brain matter off the leather later.” While Riker stripped down, Prosper threw him a key ring.

  “Go through the back door and take my sportster. It’s parked right near the old shed. Take the utility road through to the highway and down that back road that winds around the wooded area to the lake house.”