Damaged & Dangerous

by A. J. Downey

  “Okay,” she agreed and I silently held her, stroking her soft skin until she fell back asleep. Only this time, when she went, I went with her.

  The next morning, and by morning I really meant sometime after the noontime hour, we were woken by the shrill ringing of one of my cells from my jacket. I got up and dug through the pockets and pulled out the burner I used for the Suicide Kings and answered it.

  “Hello?”

  “You plan on bringing my bitch back here any time today, Prospect? Or you two been fuckin’ and I need to kill your ass?” Pig growled into the line.

  “I ain’t been fucking your woman, Man! I got mad respect for you Bro and I wouldn’t do you like that. We were both up late is all, ain’t been talking or nothing just couldn’t sleep. She’s not used to a place like mine and was jumping at every damned animal sound out there.” Pig-Pen’s laughter boomed through the line.

  “She enough to drive you nuts?” he asked. I forced a laugh as I stared into Dani’s sorrowful blue eyes.

  “Yeah Man, yeah. I’ll get her ass up, we’ll be on the road inside ten minutes. Be about an hour or so after that. That cool?”

  “Yeah, just both of you get your asses back here,” he said.

  “Copy that, Man.” He hung up on me, which was nothing unusual. Dani was already getting dressed.

  “All good things must come to an end,” I heard her murmur and I couldn’t agree with her more. With a heavy sigh I pulled on my clothes from last night, too. We didn’t speak, and she was stiff at my back the whole ride back to the club. I kept stealing glances at her in the side view mirror and the closer we got to the club, the more withdrawn and shut down she became. That was good, as much as I hated to admit it. The guys wouldn’t suspect anything if we didn’t give them anything to suspect.

  It started to rain. We were ten minutes from the club and I had some gortex rain gear but there was just no point. We were soaked inside a minute and I would have honestly just given it to her. It was better just to make the final push to the club and just neither of us wear it. We pulled into the lot and around to the back and dashed through the downpour, through the fire exit door, into the bar. Just about all the guys except for the council were sitting around, grim.

  “What’s the deal?” I asked, “What happened?” Skid turned and looked over above the air hockey table where Grinder’s cut was supposed to be. Instead, Ace’s and Deuce’s cuts were hanging and the hash marks had multiplied to ten in all. A message was scrawled along the back wall.

  Keeping score? We’re ahead. We’re going to finish this.

  “Oh my God.” I heard Dani breathe.

  “Prospect, yer goin’ with Pipes and Flyer tonight to finish what Ace and Deuce started. Coon, bring us the Hennessy’s.” Griz ordered from the doorway before disappearing back into the front of the club and the Suicide King’s little round table council meeting. I stared at the cuts with cold fury.

  I was absolutely sure D had nothing to do with them; he was too smart for that. Now I was going on a run with the club’s enforcer and one of Griz’s lackeys that I knew he was absolutely sure of. Dani slipped off to serve the council their Hennessy.

  “This is some fucking bullshit,” I muttered and Flyer looked at me.

  “Yeah,” he stated flatly. I was suddenly glad I’d donned my body armor under my clothes when I’d dressed that afternoon. I’d asked Dani if it would make her feel better if I had some when I’d seen her side eyeing me, worried. She’d thought I would need it to protect me from The Sacred Hearts. I knew different, but I’d humored her. Looks like the man upstairs was finally paying her some positive attention and I’d won out by default.

  I settled in and waited for Pipes to come out back and tell us we were moving out. I had a feeling it’d be a couple of hours, that we wouldn’t be doing anything until dark. In the mean time I waited to see if anyone would divulge anything about where we were going or who we were seeing. The men’s silence told me more than anything that I was in some serious shit. I just had to go along with it, though. Nothing else I could really do for now, not without leaving Dani behind, and I wasn’t going to do that to her.

  Nope.

  Fuck me.

  Chapter 12

  Dani…

  I was a shadow again. Thank God for that, because if I hadn’t been forgotten, I never would have heard what they were planning. I put the Hennessy on a round tray with enough shot glasses for the men at the meeting and carefully went to serve them. I set the tray on the edge of the table and slid it more fully onto its scarred metal surface. I retreated to the deepest shadows of the hall, and listened. They were deep in to it and didn’t check to see that I’d fully gone.

  Gordy, a big, bald man with a steel gray goatee down his chest, was talking, “I say the overlook. Yeah, it’s open, but no one travels that pass this time of year, too early yet. We can have ‘em pull off into the picnic area here, tap our rat, and git. I’ll be waiting for ‘em, Pipes and Flyer can bring him, and we can call those Bleeding Heart bastards to come pick up their trash.”

  My breath caught in my throat. I’d heard all I needed to and somehow I needed to warn Thirteen, but I didn’t know how. I drifted off and away before anyone came looking for the bathroom and caught me eavesdropping. I wanted to know more but I just couldn’t risk it. I spent the next half hour trying to carefully catch Thirteen’s eye with no success.

  Finally I managed to, and I gave him a pleading look, I begged him with my eyes in that silent way we had, not to go. He looked stricken for a moment then his handsome face settled into lines of grim resignation. His eyes, which were back to that blue of the storm-swept Atlantic, tried to reassure me that everything would be fine, and then he looked away, breaking our link. I felt my heart drop, plummeting into the pit of my stomach.

  “Do you think Pig would mind if I went home and got some dry clothes?” I asked Skid softly. He looked me over.

  “I ain’t about to go ask him for you,” he said. Finally he let out a heavy sigh and lit the end of his cigarette. I didn’t have to try too hard to look soggy, uncomfortable, and downright pitiful. He nodded, finally, “Go on, git gone but make it quick! Get your ass back here. With as much dope as he’s done? I doubt he’ll even notice, ‘less he wants a drink or something.” I nodded and grabbed up my purse and jacket along with my keys.

  “Thanks, Skid,” I murmured. He looked me over in that way he sometimes got, eyes glassy with drink, like he was seeing an overlay of someone else where I was standing.

  “My daughter was still alive, maybe I’d be a better man. Maybe I’d be more like them Bleeding Hearts,” I think I heard him mumble, but I couldn’t be sure. I skirted around the end of the bar and slipped out into the back lot. I found my car against the back fence where they’d parked it, and got in. It’d stopped raining, the afternoon showers having moved off to let the sun shine through. It was still cold out, though.

  I didn’t really have a plan, but I did. It was half cracked at best, and at worst was downright suicidal, but Thirteen had hit the nail right on the head. Some things were just worth the risks. If I had taken a risk like this years ago I might well have been free of the MC, or I might be dead. Either way, I was beginning to realize, had its ups and the same end result. Freedom.

  I drove home, threw some clothes into a bag, and scraped every bit of precious I could back into a Crown Royal bag. If we managed to live, we’d need everything I could get. I didn’t bother changing my clothes for real. I only had a certain amount of time to do this. Enough time that it would take to change clothes, get down to my car and get back to the club.

  I stopped. I wasn’t thinking about this clearly. If I was going to do this, make a break for it, really run, I didn’t need to go back to the club. I mean, I needed to go back, but not inside. I only needed to be there long enough to watch where Thirteen went, to follow them. I didn’t have a fucking clue what I was going to do after that but I was a smart girl. I had to be, with as much as I had gott
en over on Pig and the lot of them over the last three years. I had survived this far without help from anyone. It had taken last night for me to realize just how much more I could have been getting away with.

  I think what it really boiled down to was my conversation with Thirteen, about when I’d been sick and what I’d said, that crystalized it for me. He was right. I’d given up. I may not have been brave enough to commit suicide outright but The Suicide Kings had pushed me to that point. When I’d gotten sick, I really hadn’t done anything to take care of myself. I just let myself get sicker and sicker and had prayed for my own inevitable death. Then Thirteen had saved me. Now it was my turn to do everything I could to save him.

  I drove back to the club and parked in an alleyway up the block, out of view. My phone had started ringing and I’d dropped it, stomping on it in my black and white Chucks with all the might my small frame possessed, until it was so much shattered plastic and broken glass.

  No tracking me now, fuckers! I thought triumphantly. But that didn’t assuage the uncomfortable pounding my heart was doing in my chest. I coughed some, the last vestiges still hanging on from my being sick even though I’d obediently finished all of the antibiotics that the doctor had left me. It was dark. Time kept marching on and the sick feeling in my stomach grew with every passing hour.

  Thoughts like, what if I missed them? or, What if they killed him inside and I’m already too late? plagued me as I waited but finally, close to midnight, I heard the roar of bikes split the night air. I watched as three headlamps, one in front, two in back, pulled around the clubhouse. Pipes was in front, and yes, Thirteen and Flyer were behind him. I ducked back as they passed the mouth of the alley I’d hidden myself in. I got in the car and I waited for three minutes before starting it and pulling out after them. I knew where the overlook picnic area was. My granddad and I went there in the summertime when I was a kid. He would pan for gold in the riverbed while I played in the water and caught frogs.

  I caught up to the three of them and tried to be smart. The men of the Suicide Kings MC never thought I was listening. But when I had little else to do but shamelessly eavesdrop for my own mental entertainment, well, I’d learned a few things over the years. One of those things was what to look for when you were on a run and how to detect if you were being tailed. I knew all of the rules and I broke every single damned one of them as I followed my quarry, so they wouldn’t know they were being followed.

  So far, so good. It helped that I knew where they were going. It really did. The hard part would be when they got there. I chewed my bottom lip and did something rather impulsive. I held my breath and when we hit the highway, when we were about halfway to the overlook from where we’d got on it, I passed them, along with a couple of other cars. My heart was in my throat as I glanced at their faces through a curtain of my hair but none of them looked at me or seemed to recognize my car as being mine.

  With my heart pounding in my chest and the three motorcycles in my rearview, I drove on. I sped. I had to if I was going to do what I needed to do, which was drive up past the overlook a short ways and pull off so I could get back to the overlook on foot. I was taking way too many gambles here for my liking, but I figured it this way from what I knew so far.

  One, Gordy was already at the overlook waiting. Two, the guys had no intention of actually going over the pass and completing this run. If Ace and Deuce had fallen and it was so important to keep me safe and on reserve, then the Suicide Kings were out of money and out of options. This so-called run was just a ruse to separate Thirteen and take him out. Three, Thirteen had to be what they thought he was… a rat for The Sacred Hearts. I knew he was different from the men of the ‘Kings. I could feel it to my very bones and last night had proven to me beyond any doubt that he was.

  I passed the overlook and saw Gordy’s bike parked there. He was sitting on a picnic table, smoking a cigarette, and startled when my headlights swept past him. I didn’t slow, I didn’t accelerate… I kept it steady and kept on driving. I didn’t know how much time I had until the boys got to the overlook, but I planned on being set up and ready when they arrived. I still hadn’t a single clue on what I was going to do when they got there.

  I pulled over and threw it in park, bailing out and pulling the keys with a silent prayer that once done with whatever they were going to do, Gordy, Pipes, and Flyer wouldn’t come this way. I had pulled around the bend in the road where it curved into the mountain and stopped there. I was hidden from the overlook, but a ways from it by foot. I took off at a trot down the hillside and when I was sure I could, streaked across the pavement and into the deep ditch, almost deep enough to be considered a culvert on the side of the road the overlook shared. I kept low and moved as quietly as I could, the tall grass and low shrubs swishing entirely too loudly against my legs.

  I was getting close to the overlook. My heart was beating an erratic staccato in my breast and I honestly thought I was going to have a stroke! I was close enough to see Gordy, and he turned in my direction. I froze and it seemed that luck or God or whatever was on my side, because just as he took a step in my direction to see what was going on over here, the distant roar of approaching bikes had him turning away from me. I let out my breath slowly and silently, and crouched even lower as the three of them turned into the overlook’s lot.

  The ditch was wide here and they’d buried one of those big metal pipes in it and paved over the top. The bikes went over it and I stayed low in the bushes growing tall to either side, using the rumble of the machines as cover to move over to the pipe and take refuge inside. It was more than big enough. I settled and listened as the three of them parked and shut off their engines. The low mountain night was suddenly filled with the steady tick of cooling engines and the low voices of men greeting each other.

  I risked a look when their voices grew distant, standing on tiptoe to peek over the edge of the culvert, across the blacktop surface. They’d wandered away from the bikes, closer to the picnic tables. Gordy had his hand on the back of Thirteen’s leather coat and I silently prayed he wouldn’t feel the bulk of the body armor he was wearing under his black tee shirt.

  Suddenly Gordy said something sharply and he kicked the back of Thirteen’s leg. Thirteen cursed sharply and went to his knees, Flyer and Pipes grabbed him by his arms and stretched them to his sides. He struggled, but stilled when Gordy pointed his shiny gun at him. Gordy kept talking, asking questions, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying from here. I pressed both my hands over my mouth as Gordy paced further and further away from Thirteen.

  I felt tears slick down my face, hot and wet, tightening my skin with their salt as they dried there. Maybe he wouldn’t shoot him. Maybe they would believe whatever he told them. Thirteen was brilliant, had been with the club for months, maybe – my thoughts were interrupted by three bright flashes, the foothills echoing with three catastrophically loud reports. I jumped and watched in horror as Thirteen jerked back between Flyer and Pipes, his head hung limp, and the two men let him go. He fell forward into the gravel and lay there, limp, not moving.

  I ducked back into the pipe and huddled there, shaking. I had to wait for them to leave! I prayed hard and harder, and heard the crunch of their boots as they came across the gravel of the lot.

  “… get back down to the club, we’ll wait an hour and call the Bleeding Hearts to come pick up their trash,” I heard Gordy say.

  “Too bad about his bike, I would have liked to have that,” Pipes remarked.

  “Keys are in his pocket.” Flyer shot back.

  I heard Pipes snort, “I ain’t giving up my baby! The fuck you thin…” his voice trailed as they moved out of earshot. A short time later the bikes started up. I jumped and held very, very still as they rumbled overhead, praying, praying, praying, please go left, please go left, please go left!

  They turned left, and my shoulders slumped in partial relief. I waited several heartbeats after the silence returned, knowing that with every pulse they put mor
e distance between us and them. Finally, I scrambled out from under the huge steel pipe and clawed my way up the embankment.

  “Thirteen!” I cried and flat-out ran in the direction of his prone body. I skidded to a halt on my knees and struggled to turn him over, the tears running down my face even faster when my hand encountered a patch of wet, high on one shoulder.

  “Thirteen! Chris, Chris! Please, oh my God please!” I screamed and about threw up with relief when he groaned. Oh my God, he was alive! He coughed weakly and I kissed him. I kissed him hard.

  “Wait here, oh my God, wait here, I’m coming back. I promise you, I’m coming back!” I eased him off my lap and onto the ground where he groaned, and leapt to my feet in a flat-out run up the side of the highway, to my car. I had to bring it closer! I couldn’t wait for The Sacred Hearts to arrive, it would take them too long. I had to get him in my car! I had to! …or he might die.

  Chapter 13

  Red-XIII…

  Dani drifted back from delivering the President and his cabinet their booze, and she was a whiter shade of pale. I felt my heart drop into my stomach but made no outward signs of it. I guess my fate was sealed. I had no fucking idea how I was going to get out of this or what I was going to do. Bandit was talking my fucking ear off as usual and I had to engage. I couldn’t let these fuckers know I was onto the fact that they were on to me… I swore to Christ if I got out of this I was beating every single one of Grinder’s bros’ asses.

  She moved, quiet and reserved, from behind the bar, and I could see her trying to catch my eye. Finally there was enough of a lull in attention on both me and her that I could meet her gaze. Her eyes were full of pain and pleading and screamed at me please, just go, just get away from here! But I couldn’t. Not only did I have to see this through for myself and for my club, but I had to see this through for her. I’d made up my mind as she’d slept in my arms that I wasn’t done saving Dani Broussard just yet.