Vicious: Steel Jockeys MC

by Claire St. Rose

The house gleaming like new, Ruby was sitting in the front yard crouched down in front of Kyle's Dyna Glide, methodically waxing it, top to bottom, in deliberate, intricate patterns. She knew if she were to let it wander for even a second, tentacles like a sea monster would come up to strangle her, memories of a nightmare she'd had days before. Visions of Joe lying lifeless on the pavement, amber-gold eyes staring up at nothing, as Kyle once had, a trickle of red blood. She'd cast her lot in with him now. If he were to never come back...she gritted her teeth and swiped again with the wax. Somewhere down the street, she was vaguely aware of a car pulling up and its door slamming.

  "Ruby?"

  She glanced up. George McCombs III, the ex-Jockey she'd met in Mexico, stood there, wearing one of his expensive plum-colored Hugo Boss blazers like armor. He pulled off his sunglasses, revealing his memorable blue eyes that looked so striking with his thick dark hair. But there were noticeable dark circles underneath, and a pinprick cut on his neck had been bandaged. Overall, he looked more haggard than he had when she had last seen him, as if his sleep had been troubled.

  Behind him was Tony, pointing a pistol, which offered her little comfort. She knew disarming Tony in his current state would be like taking a squirt gun away from a three-year-old, and George, though he looked disheveled now, was more experienced than his playboy persona suggested.

  "It's Joe," he said, and everything suddenly seemed to move in slow motion to Ruby, her companions’ faces blurry streaks as her heart pumped blood. Joe...

  "He's okay," explained George. "They had a dust-up with the Reapers, and he took a bullet."

  Ruby's hands flew to her mouth, but George held up a hand to reassure her. "They've got him in a safe house and they're taking care of him. But he's asking for you."

  Almost instantly, with one last surge of adrenaline, Ruby's heart calmed. Now was the time to be skeptical. "Why didn't any of the other Jockeys come? Are they...?" She thought fleetingly of Morgan and Holly, of the other women in the parking lot.

  "They're banged up, but okay. Joe got the worst of it. They're still waiting for the heat to die down. They thought I'd attract less attention," he said, pointing to his black BMW with tinted windows, parked a little ways down the street.

  "Why the hell should we believe anything you're saying?" Tony demanded.

  "I'm one of you," insisted George.

  "Used to be," said Tony.

  "Do you trust him, Ruby?" Ruby swiveled her head to the front door, relieved to glimpse Holly, all five-feet-nothing of her, standing there holding a gleaming kitchen knife, its point suspended on the tip of the index finger of her other hand. Ruby knew instantly it wasn't the one in the wooden block that she used for chopping onions. This one she kept honed for another purpose.

  "You hurt this girl, and you'll answer to us," Holly growled.

  "But I--"

  "We don't care who you are, or who you used to be. The Jockeys will ruin you. We will put a torch to your business, your house, to everything you own. To your goddamn dog. And when that's over, I will personally cut your nuts off with a rusty razor, and then feed them to you with ketchup."

  George nodded. A trickle of sweat ran down his face. "Got it."

  Ruby looked from Holly to Tony to George. But the only face she was seeing was Joe's. "I'm going."

  Just like that, Holly nodded and put the knife down. "That's all right, then." She came and kissed Ruby on both cheeks. "When you love an outlaw, you do what you have to do." She understood that caution, that reason, meant nothing when there was any chance that Joe needed her by his side.

  She turned to George. "But I'm going my way."

  "What do you mean?"

  She was already straddled atop Kyle's bike. "Hop on."

  ***

  Joe pulled into the alley a few blocks away, determined to approach quietly and on foot, in case someone had beaten him to the Curtis house. He crept up behind Colt's pole shed, the miscellaneous parts like deformed animals helping to keep him out of sight. A chickadee sounded from the orange tree. He kept one hand on the key in his pocket.

  Joe had never been able to figure out why Kyle had gone to the Stop 'n' Shop warehouse alone the night he was killed. It had been years since he'd worked there, and he had to have known it was dangerous. ATF was already breathing down their necks, trying to figure out where the sudden influx of Russian weapons was coming from, and their fellow Jockeys had started to ask questions. It was only a matter of time before Fox decided he was too much of liability and eliminated him, or at least hired one of his thugs to do it. But now Joe knew that Kyle, as oblivious as he’d seemed, hadn’t been totally ignorant of what was going down, and he’d had a backup plan. This key was it, the key to getting at whatever he had stashed at the Stop 'n' Shop in a place where only Ruby would think to look.

  This was why Fox had wooed her, plied her with clothes, money, and an entire college education. It wasn't only that winning her opened up doors to every racket in Northern California. It was that it literally opened a door. Not only power, but greed. Fox, all that time, had looked at Ruby's flushed cheeks and gray-green eyes and seen not a woman with astonishing courage and an achingly beautiful soul, but an object. A prize. It made Joe's stomach hurt to think that he might have put his hands on her. Some disgusted part inside of him told him that he had, or at least tried.

  It gave Joe at least a little satisfaction to know he'd thrown a serious wrench in Fox’s plans by taking Ruby away from him. But Fox hadn't given up. He was pretty sure the ex-Jockey had enlisted Aaron and Brenda to keep her trapped in Mexico, but hadn't counted on Tony being there to help her escape. Fox probably didn't want Brenda at all, Joe realized with a surge of adrenaline. He wanted Ruby. In fact, he wouldn't be surprised if the whole kidnapping had been staged; he didn't know if Aaron was in on it or Brenda was, but somebody wasn't telling the truth.

  But what it boiled down to was that Ruby was back at Colt's with no one but a debilitated Tony to protect her while the rest of the Jockeys were headed to the Harborview Inn on a wild goose chase. And Joe himself had been insanely, wretchedly stupid, he scolded himself as he edged behind the orange tree and along the fence bordering the neighbors’ property. There was no movement in the house, he remarked with a nervous swallow. Kyle’s bike was not where he had last seen it parked. What if--

  He felt somebody grab his jacket from behind and jerk him backward, and the familiar click of a pistol cocked. The last thing he saw before he blacked out was a greasy-haired man with acne scars, holding a gun to his throat.

  CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

  "How much farther is it, George?" she called behind her, not daring to turn her head from the hairpin curves she was taking quickly but cautiously. They'd already seen a sign for the Harborview Inn a mile or so back, but since then there'd been no further indication of where they were. About an hour northeast of Madelia, Shadow Lake, which was popular with anglers and recreational boaters, was reached on a dirt road that ran alongside the water, which gleamed between the cedar trees lining the road. Nestled up high in the trees on the right side of the road were a few small, unimpressive-looking vacation cottages.

  Though she could feel the pressure of the man's body against her, through the material of the leather jacket she'd borrowed from Holly, he sat like a motionless stone, dead weight. "George, what's wrong?" she asked. "Are you okay?" He squeezed her shoulders so hard it hurt.

  "Pull over," he shouted.

  "But what about--"

  "Pull over!" Ruby watched her white knuckles of her bare hands squeeze the handlebars as she edged the bike on the shoulder as carefully as she could, heart pounding.

  Ruby leaped out of the saddle. "What the hell?" She'd kept her mouth closed through the whole ride, insects spattering against her mouth and wind angrily whipping in her hair, but she'd done it. Determination and grit had been her co-pilots; the discomfort was worth calling the shots if it got her closer to Joe's side. His face was all she could think about – his staring
eyes and parted lips, his face in pain. God knew he'd already been through enough.

  She turned to George, who looked absolutely stricken, a ghost of the man he had been swaggering into Aaron Beeson's pool party a few days ago. Sweat, or tears, were running down his face. George spun away from her, looking frantically around the next bend in the road, as if they were in the center of two armies closing in and there was already no means of escape. He could barely stand up straight, like he was on his way to his own execution. "What about Joe? You said--"

  He took his hands between his own, stroking her fingers, trying to choke out words. "Listen to me, Ruby. What I told you about Joe; it wasn't true. I was supposed to take you to him."

  "Take me to who? What are you talking about?"

  But George was looking up at something slightly beyond the next bend in the road. "This whole thing, it's a--

  "A trap," said a voice behind them. “She already figured that out.”

  "I was afraid this might happen, so I had one of my guys follow you," said Fox Keene, descending from behind a ridge of tamarack, through grass up to his knees. He was flanked by three humongous, tattooed guys in head-to-toe-black. Although they wore leather jackets, the insignia on it looked unfamiliar – or did it? "Anyway, I'm a little disappointed in you, George. I go out of my way to bail out your precious Christmas tree farm when your deadbeat dad pissed it all away, and you can't even do one simple fucking errand for me?"

  "How the hell was I supposed to live with that on my conscience, Fox?" demanded George. "I'm so sorry, Ruby. It's just, I couldn't repay, and he threatened to ruin me." He reached for her, but she batted him away, looking at Fox, whose chiseled features were not an ounce less impressive than they had been when she and Belen had mooned over him schoolgirlishly back at the dealership. Along with his iceberg blue eyes and gelled-up fauxhawk, he wore a vintage washed maroon t-shirt tight to his torso, a Cole Haan brown leather jacket, and $800 Frye boots. He would have looked like a runway model, except that he was holding a rifle with a silencer attached. But on his arm was the ultimate accessory: Brenda Weston, looking calm, chic, and very un-kidnapped.

  "You told me you wouldn't hurt her," George growled at Fox.

  Fox waved off George like he was picking lint off a pair of his designer skinny jeans. "Did I say I was going to hurt her? Ruby and I are old friends. We're just going to go up the room I reserved at this quaint little inn, have a nice conversation with our friend Aaron Beeson, and send everybody home happy. Right, sweetie?" He turned to Brenda, who squeezed his bicep and nodded. Ruby felt like something was eating her from the inside. She wanted to vomit.

  "Where's Joe? The Jockeys?" Ruby demanded. "George said--"

  "Ruby, I’d take everything George says with a grain of salt from now on. After all, he did try to set you up. Get him out of my sight," he said to one of the thugs, who cocked his gun and hustled George off. "Anyway, just relax and follow me."

  The two thugs cocked pistols at them, and soon Ruby found herself being marched up the hill to the Harborview Inn, a whitewashed six-room motel that had seen better days. The thugs let her through the empty parking lot, past the empty motel front office, and into the last room on the left. Ruby, though her heart was pounding in her ears, managed to steal another look at the two humorless leather-clad men. One of them had a frizzy gray goatee and earring, and the other one had greasy black hair and acne scars.

  "Ruby, you know Rafferty here, who paid you a visit a few weeks ago," said Fox conversationally. “And if your boyfriend were here, I'm sure he'd want to be the one to introduce you to his old friend Nando," he said indicating the guy with the acne scars, "who sent him on a three-day all-expenses paid vacation courtesy of our friends in Contra Costa County."

  "You set that up?"

  Fox unlocked the door of the motel room grandly, as if he were arriving in his honeymoon suite. He looked around at the dingy room and its 1970s-era decor with a look of satisfaction. Aaron Beeson had been sitting sullenly in an armchair by the far window, having ditched his gum in favor of chain smoking Camels, the smell of which had permeated the room already. A briefcase sat at his feet, though there were no signs of his Mexican henchmen; with a gulp, Ruby wondered whether Fox had disposed of them. When Aaron saw Brenda, he dropped his last butt and drove it into the carpet. His face lit up and he made a dive for her, but the guy named Nando grabbed him before he could get an inch closer. So that was real, at least, Ruby thought. He really did think she'd been kidnapped.

  "Well, technically Aaron Beeson did. Nice work, man," Fox replied, patting a sullen Aaron on the shoulder. "You played your role like an Oscar winner."

  "Keene? What are you doing here? What the fuck is going on?" Aaron patted his jeans pocket, clearly reaching for his weapon, though none appeared. His eyes looked desperate, and a bit crazy. "Brenda? Baby?" Brenda stood expressionless, even cruel, a little roll of her eyes.

  "But it's time for your curtain call. But thanks to Nando, I got what I want, so it's time to get rid of what I don't." He bounced a tiny gold key in his hand. Like he expected her to recognize it.

  "What--what is that?"

  "So it's true," mused Fox, flipping it up into the air and catching it. "You really didn't know about this all that time? Figures. After all, I only found out it was in here thanks to Brenda's detective work during lunch the other day. And I guess if you did, you wouldn't have hung around answering phones at my dealership for as long as you did. I guess I was just hoping you liked me. Oh, well." He reached into his other pocket and pulled out something else. She sunk to her knees as if she’d been punched.

  She now had the sinking feeling that Joe and the rest of the Jockeys may not be coming, ever. That she and Fox and the thugs in this hotel room might be the last thing she'd ever see. That he'd won; that the time he'd laughed in her face when she told him she was cursed had been nothing but a bitter and tragic irony.

  "Oh yeah, you can have this back. Although like the rest of the junk your dad hawked, I doubt it's even worth pawning." He chucked the necklace toward Ruby like garbage, where it slid across the floor and landed at her feet. “Rafferty, go warm up the bathwater.” The other man disappeared into the bathroom, and Ruby could hear the tub filling with hot water, steaming up the mirror, warming the room. It caused prickles of sweat to break out on her neck.

  "Where's Joe? What did you do to him?"

  "Like I said, he and Nando are old friends," he said, gesturing with his thumb. “If there's some bad blood between them, that's none of my business. Anyway, despite everything I said about that kid not being worthy of you, you still had to go and get involved with him. It’s not my fault that outlaws have a tendency to get killed." Aaron looked from Fox to Brenda, whose long, tan hand curled over the vintage logo on Fox's chest, her other hand caressing his blonde fauxhawk. "I also know the money in that briefcase Beeson gave me isn't worth as much as the paper I use to wipe my ass."

  Aaron's cool facade turned purple. He tried to run at Fox and Brenda. "Goddamnit, you bitch, you sold me out!" The thugs grabbed him. Ruby sunk into the floor, her eyes on the matted tan carpet, her limbs too weak to hold her. This was her life. This was her curse: to have her eyes opened, briefly, sweetly, by a young man, who loved her despite her every mistake. "This was not our fucking deal, Fox,” said Aaron.

  "Well, maybe not yours," he remarked. "Hand me that knife, will you, Nando?" As if he were cracking open a beer, Fox reached behind him and slit Brenda's throat from ear to ear. Ruby wished she hadn't had to see the horror in Aaron's eyes as her body slumped to the ground like an unzipped dress. Ruby had difficulty breathing herself as she turned her head away. Aaron, however, rushed toward Fox. An explosion from Nando's gun sent him sprawling, but Ruby could barely hear it; her heart was pounding so loud, water rushed into her ears as if she'd been dunked under cold water. She was going to die. She was the last one.

  Fox knelt down and put her arm around her the way he used to when they were working together bac
k at the dealership, back when she thought it was okay because he was hot and he wanted to take care of her, and she'd been so ignorant of what other beautiful things were in the world. Her mistake was in thinking she could have them; that she deserved them.

  "Now that we've tied up the loose ends," he looked dispassionately at the two bodies on the floor-- “We're going to take a little trip uptown, so you can show me what little spider hole your brother stashed the money he stole from me in before I ordered him killed."

  "What money--? I don't?"

  Nando reached down to manhandle her.

  "Hands off, Nando,” Fox barked. “Nobody touches her but me.”

  "Wrong. Nobody touches her, period.”

  "What the--?" Fox looked more annoyed than really angry, but Ruby didn't even have to see Joe to recognize his voice. A white wave of relief passed through her. He was alive, and it wasn’t a dream or a desert illusion. He looked like he'd been in a car accident. He was missing his jacket, his jeans were torn, his blond hair mussed and matted, blood oozing down from multiple wounds on his head and neck. He was brandishing a gun she’d never seen before, but the guns of Fox’s two thugs were trained on him. Toward his heart. In his eyes was mixed up apology, fear, and something she had never dared hope to see. She hung her head again, breathing harshly. “Ruby, look at me. It’s okay. I’m okay.”