Damaged & Dangerous

by A. J. Downey

  Not for the first time, I thought to myself that he was a dangerous man. This time, though, it was for a whole different reason.

  Chapter 9

  Red-XIII…

  I had to watch myself around her at the club. She’d been absolutely right. Someone could have seen us and that could have been bad. Really bad. Shit was seriously starting to fall apart for the Suicide Kings this week, the week after my stolen kiss with Dani. I got a text on the SHMC burner that, once deciphered, meant only one thing. They’d caught their rat. I had to wait a day or two before I could dial in and get the 411.

  I was at my cabin and Dragon picked up on the second ring, “I figured you’d be calling in any day now,” he said by way of greeting.

  “Yeah, I figured something was going down when their council started having more closed-door meetings. With everyone present and accounted for, I figured you must have caught the mole.”

  Dragon grunted, “Shelly did, actually. She found some inconsistencies in ORG’s books. Darlene, the office girl, was skimming off the top. She’s got a sick kid, somehow the Suicide Cunts found out about it and offered her enough green to keep her kid breathing. Stupid bitch should have just come to me or Dray, we woulda kept her straight and flyin’ right,” he sighed and it was a sound that held the weight of the whole damned world in it.

  “Shit, a woman and her kid?”

  “Yep.”

  “Do I even want to know how we handled this one?” I asked. I knew how it would be handled in the old days, it wasn’t a situation that I wanted to think about too much. Didn’t matter your gender in the old days, you ratted and got caught the end result was the same. You got yourself perished.

  “We brainstormed, took a vote… Lucky, Zeb and Doc took her and the kid, they’re relocating them as we speak. Doc will be back middle of the week, next week. Lucky and Zeb are gonna stay with her ‘til we see this thing through.”

  “After that?” I asked.

  “She’s on her own. Far away from here. She darkens our door again, we got a spot all picked out for her with a nice view from Cicada Woods. Up to her on which way it goes,” he said. I nodded, more to myself than anything. Not like he could see me.

  “We can spare Luck and Zeb?”

  “Yeah, no problem. Duracell has Lucky’s special capabilities with a lot less of the luck part factored into it, so we should be good.”

  “Good.”

  “You still got eyes on you?”

  “Nope. Ain’t seen the van since Tuesday two weeks back,” I said, speaking of the cops who’d been surveilling the Kings since the attack on my club… “You?” I asked.

  “Nope. Moving into phase two the end of next week,” he said, then, “How’s that girl? You ever figure out what’s doin’ with her?”

  I explained about Dani’s special skillset, how she’d gotten in with the Kings in the first place and that she was most certainly not aligned with their way of thinking. I felt guilty as sin spilling all her closely guarded secrets to my Pres., but at the same time I had to if I had any hope of getting her out of there.

  “Sounds like one of the most fucked up situations I’ve ever heard of,” Dragon said disgustedly, “You think she’s got a clue about you or Doc?”

  I answered him truthfully, “D, she’s fucking smart as hell. I don’t think she knows where we come from but she definitely knows something ain’t right about me. She’s keeping her mouth shut, though.”

  “You think she’ll sell you out to save her own skin?” he asked. I hoped so, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.

  “Honestly? I don’t know. I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that.”

  “You see it headed that way, you gotta choose between her and maintaining your cover? You make the right choice, Thirteen. I do not wanna lose another brother to these assclowns. You get me?”

  I nodded, realized he couldn’t see it, and answered him, “I hear you loud and clear.” I answered.

  “Good. When do you think you can get me names and locations of these guys?” he asked.

  “Thought you was never gonna fuckin’ ask!” I felt a grim sort of satisfaction knowing that we were finally going on the offensive with this. I was getting tired of the game and I wanted to get Dani out of the life she was stuck in with these animals. Out from under Pig-Pen. Unfortunately I knew how these kinds of things played out. The more members my club shaved off the Suicide Kings’ roster, the more riled and hungry these guys were going to become, the angrier and more savage, and by default, the trickier the game would become to play. I hung up with Dragon feeling a mixture of marginally better and marginally worse. Better because things were finally in motion, worse because I was beginning to realize I was developing some serious feelings for Dani, and that those feelings could compromise me.

  I thrust those worries aside. There was no sense in wondering and worrying about shit that hadn’t happened yet. Focusing on what-if’s was a good way to get distracted from what was right in front of your face, which was a good way to get dead. I had no intentions of doing either of those things.

  None whatsoever.

  Chapter 10

  Dani…

  Things went from bad to worse over the next week. Neo, a young member of the club around my age that was so named for his resemblance to Keanu Reeves, got himself arrested dealing and had enough drugs on him that he would be spending a really long time in prison if convicted, which he would be because the club was flat broke. Neo would be stuck with a public defender and this was absolutely not Neo’s first offense.

  So not only was the club out yet another member, they were out most all of their drugs as well. Griz ordered Ace and Deuce to go on a run to the supplier after shaking down just about all of the club members for enough money to make another purchase. The Sacred Hearts blowing up the local meth lab had hurt Griz’s operation badly and I couldn’t help it… the thought made me smile every time.

  What didn’t make me smile was when Griz and Pig-Pen got into it over how much of the profits from the club’s drug trade Pig had smoked. He was officially cut off and hurting, which made him extremely temperamental and dangerous, a level of crazy I’d never before seen. I did what Thirteen told me to do. I stayed sharp, but staying sharp was only half the equation where Pig-Pen was concerned. In order to deal with him you had to have your crystal ball in perfect working order and unfortunately, I wasn’t a mind reader. Not at all.

  The twins, Ace and Deuce, were leaving on their run and both were intense and nervous. They were both tall and lanky, with brightly colored mo-hawks. They always did their hair in two or more tones and opposite each other so you could tell them apart, this time around Ace’s mo-hawk was red toward his scalp and yellow at its spikey end while Deuce’s was red at its ends and yellow towards his closely shaven scalp. I never understood how anyone mixed the two up when they had their cuts on near constantly with their name flashes prominently displayed, but I guess it was a testament to the level of some of these biker’s intelligence that it still happened all the time.

  “Okay we’re out of here. See you, Rac,” Deuce said, I forced a smile and nodded.

  “Ride safe,” I told them quietly, but silently I cursed them to death by road rash.

  Ace winked at me and I forced my smile just a little bit more. I turned back to mopping the floor, biting my lips together, trying to forget. Ace and Deuce were unbelievably cruel. Just unlike Pig-Pen, they were quiet about it. Well, not exactly quiet. They just seemed to be more selective about it, didn’t indulge in a constant trickle of small acts of cruelty like Pig but rather saved it up and when they finally tapped it… I was grateful I had never been on the receiving end. There had once been this girl, Marissa, a club slut who was pretty much in to anything once you got her high enough. She’d gotten high with the twins and they’d raped her half to death. Cut her face up so bad that no one would ever be able to call her pretty anymore.

  I wrung out the string mop and dropped it with a wet splat to the floo
r, swiping it across the dried beer spills that had gone tacky on the club room floor, and tried not to look at the Sacred Hearts cut nailed to the wall above the air hockey table. Those two had had their heads together for days, talking in murmured and low, reserved tones. Stopping cold their conversation anytime anyone drew near. Finally, a couple of nights later, they’d come in laughing and boasting and had presented Griz with their trophy, which reeked of their urine.

  Pig-Pen had praised them, Griz had nodded and quietly rewarded them with a new girl, who’d spent the rest of the night screaming. I closed my eyes, bile rising in a stinging acid wash in my throat. It had been Pig’s idea to nail the cut up on the wall. His idea too, to take a can of black spray paint and add three hash marks down and to the right of it. One for every dead Sacred Heart.

  I’d heard one of those hashtags was for an Ol’ Lady of theirs that had died when Joker, Rowdy, Snake, Danimal, Nord, and Reefer had gone to the Sacred Hearts clubhouse, guns blazing, expecting to find just one or two men and all of their women. I’d been frightened after I’d heard Gordy and Pipes talking about it. Fearful that The Sacred Hearts would come looking for an eye for an eye.

  Griz had seen the look on my face and had started howling with laughter and told me I didn’t have shit to worry about from the Sacred Hearts, then called them pussy-whipped and a myriad of other names implying that it was their women who really ran the show over there. I didn’t know what to make of that then, and I didn’t know what to make of it now. I’d pretty much kept to myself at the lake run, didn’t stray far from Pig for fear of what he’d do to me if I did.

  I finished cleaning the clubhouse, all the while trapped in memory. I didn’t realize that I’d had company as I’d worked. As usual, he was there, parked on the end of the couch, boots propped on the old, scarred, garage sale coffee table, only this early in the day he’d forgone the beer in favor of a bottle of water. Another thing that set him apart as ‘other’, to the rest of the guys beer was bottled water.

  I secreted a small smile in his direction and he secreted one back but we didn’t speak, we didn’t need to. Soon, Skid came around and our little private moment was in the wind, but that was okay. I knew that I could or would never be with Thirteen, but having him around had become a little ray of light in an otherwise darkened room. Maybe it was foolish to hope or to dream at this stage, but I couldn’t help but believe that with a guy like Thirteen around the club, maybe, just maybe, things could get better.

  “What you smiling about?” Skid asked me as he bellied up to the bar. I startled, had I been smiling? I glanced at the older biker and he raised an eyebrow under his faded black do-rag.

  “I don’t know…” I frowned and flailed helplessly inside my head for a convincing lie, “I was just thinking about a piece I was going to try and create. I think I have all the pieces now.”

  Skid chuckled, “It’s good to see you smile, Rac. How ‘bout you get me a beer? One of them ones with the orange dude on the label.” He turned on his stool and started talking to Thirteen, who had been grinning like an idiot behind his back but who quickly schooled his features into neutrality before Skid turned.

  I rolled my eyes at Thirteen behind Skid’s back and got Skid the bottle he asked for, popping the top. I set it on the bar by his hand and he picked it up and drank, never breaking his stride as the two of them spoke bike. I was simply nothing more than furniture again, which I didn’t like, but at the same time it was definitely the lesser of two evils.

  Pretty soon Gordy, Pipes, and Cooter came in from the front of the club and I was serving them up drinks when Pig-Pen and Griz made their arrival. The rest of the guys started to trickle in from the front or the back lot and girls started coming intermixed with the guy’s arrival. The party was in full swing, the sky dark outside when Gordy swore and pounded his fist on the bar.

  “God damn, fucking son of a bitch!” he bellowed, looking at the lighted screen on his phone. Griz shoved down on the head of the strung out broad sucking him off and she choked, struggling.

  “What is it now?” he demanded and let her up. She stood up, disgusted, and stumbled towards the bathrooms.

  “Trouble!” Gordy declared, “But if we all go now we might make it. Ace and Deuce are holed up at the North West safe house, says Sacred Hearts have ‘em pinned down, four of ‘em.” Griz stood up and tucked himself back in his pants, doing up his jeans.

  “Boys! We’re goin’ huntin’!” he yelled. A cheer went up and I swallowed hard. Thirteen stood.

  “Not you!” Gordy stabbed a finger at him. “Take Coon to your place and keep her locked down. She’s our last bet on making any goddamned money.”

  Thirteen raised an eyebrow. “I live in a cabin with no electricity!” he declared.

  “So fucking what!?” Pig-Pen called, “Don’t care if she’s comfortable so long as she can produce, you goddamned pussy!”

  Thirteen gave a shrug and I gathered my purse. The guys were all going out the back door to the parking lot where they kept their bikes; I could already hear some of them firing up. Dredd and Flyer were chasing out the club sluts, which truthfully there weren’t many left hanging around since the club’s drug supply started drying up. I came around the bar and Pig grabbed me by the elbow, hard.

  “You’re my bitch, so don’t be getting any ideas about spreading those whore legs of yers for Pretty-boy over there,” he muttered savagely in my ear, his breath washing over me, a fetid mixture of whiskey and cigarettes with an overlay of just plain rot.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.” I plastered on a fake-as-hell sincere smile, “I know who takes care of me,” I said.

  “Damn right.” And as if to prove his point, he shoved his mouth against mine and his tongue in my mouth, all the while looking daggers at Thirteen. I gave little resistance. I didn’t want or need any bruises except the ones that were likely imprinted on my arm from where he gripped me. Besides that, I’d learned a long, long time ago that resistance was futile and only hurt more in the end. Pig-Pen finally broke the kiss and thrust me in Thirteen’s direction before going out the door.

  “You good to ride?” he asked. I nodded grimly. I just wanted outside so I could spit. Thirteen grabbed my coat off the hook in the wall behind the bar and handed it to me, and I shrugged into it.

  “C’mon.” he put a hand on my shoulder and made like he was shoving me in front of him out the door, though his grip on my shoulder was light, not painful. He put on his helmet and glasses, sitting astride his bike. I put on the spare, and with one final brave smile at Pig, who was glaring at me and standing with Griz and Gordy, I got on behind Thirteen.

  I actually loved to ride. Didn’t matter who I was behind, the wind whipping my hair, the fresh air, the thrum of the bike up my spine and the feeling like I was just flying. It was the only thing that made me feel free anymore, the last illusion as delicate as a soap bubble but so full of vibrancy until the ride stops and the bubble pops and it was as if those rainbow colors had never existed.

  I spit the taste of Pig-Pen’s mouth out as soon as we were clear of the club and I felt the vibration of Thirteen’s laugh through his back, which I was quite snug against. It was still cold at night, the wind crisp and biting. As we went through town he pulled off into a fast food place’s parking lot as soon as, I think, he was sure we wouldn’t be seen. He tapped my hands, which were firmly on his stomach, in the classic signal for get off, and I did. He got up and dug in one of his saddle bags and, with a wink, handed me a bottle of mouthwash. I bit my lower lip and grinned and, laughing, took it from him. The burn and bite of the minty alcohol mixture was welcome and efficiently scrubbed the lingering bitterness of sour whiskey and ashtray off my tongue.

  I think I more than liked Thirteen in that moment, for knowing exactly what was in my heart and mind but mostly, for not judging me for it. For just… seeing me, the real me, and understanding. There was no pity from him, no derision, nothing to make me feel two inches tall… If anything, I got the
impression of silent admiration from him. Thirteen, the prospect, made me feel human again.

  “Ready to go?” he asked.

  “Yeah, thanks.” I handed back the mouthwash and we resumed our journey, only this time when I got back on his bike, he gently tucked my hands in his pockets to keep them warm.

  I was surprised at how long the ride was, at least forty-five minutes to an hour, if not more. We were winding along a lakeside road when he slowed and turned on to a pitted gravel track that led towards the water. I tipped my head and peered into the dark over his shoulder.

  “Your people, they welcome you!” he joked and I laughed lightly, two raccoons sat up on their haunches in the sweep of Thirteen’s headlight before dropping to all fours and trundling into the underbrush at the side of the narrow lane. I pulled my hand from his pocket and playfully slapped his shoulder. He laughed and hit the throttle just enough to throw me back a bit, I eeped and hung onto him. He laughed again and I found myself laughing, too.

  The narrow gravel lane spilled out into a drive in front of a small cabin that was built out over the water. The little front wrap-around porch clinging to land, a dock stretching out further past the building from the back.

  “You live here?” I asked.

  He shut off the bike and tapped my arm. I jumped down, careful of the hot pipes even though I wore jeans. I immediately went for the catch beneath my chin, unbuckling the helmet from my head. Truthfully, I sort of swam in it, so it was really more for appearances than any actual useful protection.

  “Yeah, I like the quiet. Wait here a minute, I’ll get some lights on and make sure it’s not a total sty.” I hung the spare helmet from his sissy bar and blinked at him.