I grin. It feels so damn rusty.
I shove my phone in my pocket as I jog back to the room.
The door’s open.
My shoulders slump.
There’s a wet towel and a box of condoms on the floor. My shirt and the bottle of SoCo are missing.
The girl is gone.
“Church!” Mikey hollers, way too loud. I try to punch him in the side of the head as he trots by, but he’s too fast. “Church in five!”
Damn prospect. It’s only nine o’clock in the morning. Shouldn’t he be passed out under a pool table somewhere? Not prancin’ around, chipper, like some coked-up town crier.
What’s Heavy doin’ callin’ church this early with no notice, anyway? And on a weekday.
I groan. I searched for my ghost girl high and low before I gave up. I showered, I’m on my second cup of coffee, and my headache is back with a vengeance.
I should’ve never left the room. Kept my eyes on her. I don’t even know her name.
She didn’t get her jacket. It’s warming up. It’s fifty-eight now, but tonight, it’ll get down into the thirties. Why don’t she have a jacket? For that matter, why did she need my shirt? Where’s her clothes? Goddamn.
“Coming?” Grinder slaps me on my back. My head pounds.
“Yeah, man. After you.”
Grinder’s my dad’s age, but we’re both doing the old man shuffle toward the boardroom.
“Rough night?” I ask.
“Ernestine put me out.”
“She gonna stop cookin’ again?” Ernestine runs the kitchen. She makes a mean brisket.
“Probably not. She likes y’all.”
“She’d like you too if you didn’t fuck the club pussy.” That’s like tellin’ a man like Grinder to stop breathin’, but it’s true.
“Hey. The club pussy fucks me.”
“Fell into it, did you?”
Grinder grins. “It was the damnedest thing.”
Oh, shit. What if he knows my ghost girl? My stomach sours. He’s too old for a girl like her. Hasn’t stopped him the past. And my girl seemed desperate.
“You ever seen a girl around here, twenty or so, long black hair. Smile tilts funny?”
Grinder gives me the side-eye. It ain’t like me to inquire after a woman. Engine parts and vehicles, yes. Females, no. I’m a mechanic. What can I say? A man don’t ever get over his first love. God don’t make nothin’ as perfect as a shovelhead.
“Can’t say that I have. She do you right?”
I shrug as we file into the boardroom. The table’s only half full, not surprising considering the day and time.
Boots and Eighty are down at the old-timer’s end of the table. Boots has nodded off in his wheelchair. Par for the course. Most of the time, he only bothers to wake up when Grinder needs him to pass a vote.
The club’s in a weird place right now. We voted in Heavy as president when his old man passed, right after I got out of the service. Heavy’s a few years younger than me, and he’s got his crew: Charge, Scrap, Forty, Nickel.
Nickel’s the only one present, pacing by the window. Charge is probably on a job site. Scrap’s upstate, has been for the past six years. He’s doing a dime bid for manslaughter. Forty’s on deployment.
So, Heavy’s the man, but he don’t always have the numbers. He’s gotten us out of running cigarettes and doing bitch work for the Renelli organization up in Pyle. Now we’re in construction and vehicle mods. That’s how I spend most of my time, rigging out cars and bikes like Q from James Bond.
See, our clientele is interested in a little something extra. And one hundred percent discretion. Rooms that don’t show up on blueprints filed with the county. Compartments and defensive equipment that isn’t apparent to the casual observer.
We do your basic construction projects, too, and that’s bringing in more and more cash, but at the beginning, it was the vehicles we modified for the Renellis and shadowy dudes from overseas that paid the bills.
The old-timers are pissy about the change. Eighty don’t want to wear any kind of helmet, hard hat included. They don’t trust anything new. Heavy’s crew backs him unconditionally.
That leaves us guys in the middle—me, Jed, Wall, Pig Iron—to break the ties. Thankless fuckin’ position.
I take a chair, and Heavy ducks through the door. He’s got his laptop. I still can’t get over the fact he went to college. I wonder how many times he got security called on him. Once, at night, he was in the yard, and I mistook him for a bear.
Heavy lowers himself and turns the laptop to face us. There’s a screensaver of a cherry-red Road King. Sweet.
Grinder takes the seat to Heavy’s right, and Gus shuffles in, beer in hand.
“All right, brothers,” Heavy begins.
“We don’t have a quorum,” Eighty pipes up from the foot of the table. Three years ago, dude didn’t know a quorum from his asshole, but Heavy’s big on proper procedure, and so Eighty picked it up right quick so he can be a dick about it.
“Don’t need a quorum,” Heavy says. “We ain’t voting on a motion. We got a problem.”
Shit. I was hoping to get home, get some work done on the sportster. Big George has us working out of our home garages while he renovates the Autowerks, another part of Heavy’s master plan. We’re getting a new hangar out back to do custom jobs. It’s gonna be epic.
“What problem?” Grinder folds his hairy arms. Grinder’s the kind of guy that if he don’t know about it, it can’t be a thing.
“We got an uninvited house guest.” Heavy clicks the mouse pad, and there in grainy black-and-white is my ghost girl, sitting on a parking stop out in front of the clubhouse.
She looks even younger than she did this morning. Her hair’s in pigtails, and her knees are tucked to her chin. Her face is tight. Worried.
My heart rate kicks up.
“Since when we sticklers about random pussy hangin’ out?” Eighty snorts.
“Since she rode in on the back of Chaos’ bike,” Jed answers.
Oh, fuck.
The mood gets stone cold sober in an instant. Chaos is—was—a hang around. A dude we rode with for years. About a week ago, the night of the rager, Pig Iron busted him in Heavy’s office in the dark, hunched over the blueprints for the facility we’re building for the Wade Group up by Pyle, phone out, taking pictures.
Of course, those were the papers filed with the county. The real schematics, the one with the subterranean storage rooms, those are in the vault. Still, if he knew enough to look at blueprints, he knew something.
Maybe the Feds got to him.
Maybe the Rebel Raiders did. The Raiders have been feuding with Steel Bones since the clubs split back in the 90s.
Maybe he came up with his own scheme to blackmail the Wade Group. The family owns half of the state.
Heavy’s working it out. The why wouldn’t have changed anything, though. At church, the vote was unanimous. He betrayed us, risked our livelihoods, our freedom.
Chaos is gone. His bike is at the bottom of the Luckahannock. No loose ends.
Except my ghost girl. I slump, my heart sinking. Goddamn. If it ain’t one thing, it’s another. Nothing can ever be easy.
“Who is she?” Jed asks, glaring at the screen. Jed’s an enforcer. Takes his job very seriously. Kind of a bitch, in my opinion. Weak chin. Wears a lot of camo, but he never served, and he don’t hunt.
My muscles tense. She’s a tiny slip of thing. He don’t need to be staring at her like he’s gonna shank her.
“Deb says her name’s Fay-Lee,” Pig Iron says. Deb’s his wife. She does the books, fusses over the sweetbutts. Her and Sharon never got along. “From Kentucky.”
Heavy taps the computer, zooms in on her face. You can see the scar on the corner of her lip. “We’ve got video of her in the yard. By the garage. All hours.”
Heavy’s sister Harper, the club lawyer, don’t allow CCTV in the clubhouse. She says if we want to document our crimes, we should get social media like normal
Americans. There’s surveillance all over outside, though.
“Fuck.” I close my eyes, bend my head.
“You see her?” Heavy asks.
“Shit. This the bitch you were lookin’ for this morning?” Grinder snorts.
Now everyone’s lookin’ at me.
“I woke up. She was comin’ out of the bathroom.”
“Where?” Heavy swings the door open, snapping for a prospect.
“My old bunk. This was hours ago. She’s long gone.”
Heavy barks at Mikey to get some boys and go clear the rooms upstairs.
“Who is she to Chaos?” My blood courses faster through my veins. Chaos was not a good dude. Even before the spying. He had a dog, Spiro. German Shepard. When he tried to start over in Florida, he left the dog, didn’t tell no one. Hobs ended up takin’ him in.
Pig Iron shrugs. “Not clear. But she’s got to be wondering where he got to.”
Chaos is buried under a sapling at the top of Half Stack Mountain. Heavy, Nickel, Bullet, and I planted him three days ago. Saw a twelve-point buck on our way down, and we brought our bows for a cover story, but none of us got our license yet this year, so we had to let him go.
“Was she in on it?” A bitter taste fills my mouth.
“That’s not clear, either. It’d be strange for her to hang around if she was. Unless the price placed on those blueprints make the risk worth it.” Heavy readjusts the laptop, sizing her up. My shoulders tense. “We’ll find out when we catch her.”
That really sets my hackles off. “Where’s she hidin’ out?”
“Don’t know. She’s been slippin’ in with other folks. On occasion, she walks right in.” Heavy taps the space bar and flips to a picture of her waltzing in the back door. “Deb thought she was friends with Angel. Angel thought she was with Creech. I spent an hour of my life havin’ Who’s on first? conversations with sweetbutts this morning.”
“How do you know she’s squatting here? She could be couch surfing with a hang around. Did you talk to all the sweetbutts?” Eighty asks. He’s not gonna miss an opportunity to play devil’s advocate. He can’t stand that a brother his kid’s age wears the President patch.
“Matter of fact, Ernestine brought it to my attention,” Heavy says.
Grinder’s ears perk up.
“She’s complained to me three times this week that someone’s been in her kitchen.”
“We’re in her kitchen all the time,” Eighty observes. Grinder casts him a dirty look.
“We eat her food. We don’t steal her can openers,” Pig Iron points out. “And none of us is short enough to need an overturned milk crate to reach the shit on the top shelf of the pantry. I asked Crista to eyeball the bar just now. She’s missing a bottle of vodka and a bottle of SoCo.”
I don’t feel the need to say shit about the Southern Comfort. Dues come out of my paycheck, same as everyone else.
“Holy crap,” Boots cackles. He must’ve woken up at some point. “We got a Goldilocks infestation! Who’s been drinkin’ my hooch? Who’s been openin’ my cans?”
That earns a chuckle. My chest eases. That sweet little thing who spread her pussy lips for me ain’t a threat. For all her bravado, no one could mistake her for hard. If she’s involved, she was put up to it.
“She’s probably down on her luck. I mean, she was ridin’ with Chaos.” I still don’t fuckin’ like that.
“We’ll find out when we catch her.” Jed cracks his knuckles.
The fuck you say. I push back from the table, and my chair screeches. “No one touches her.”
Heads swivel, eyes blink at me. Yeah. I ain’t one to speak up at church. Or anywhere else, really. I’m a fairly mild-mannered man, and I don’t generally have opinions about shit other than engines and craft beer. It tastes like piss.
Everyone’s gawking at me like I got two heads.
“She’s mine. Anyone finds her, they bring her to me.” I push back from the table and stand. I couldn’t say why I’m so sure about this. But ain’t no other man here gonna lay hands on her. That’s just crystal clear in my mind.
“You know her?” Jed asks.
“No.”
“You got some kind of claim on her?” he pushes.
“What just came out my mouth? You wanna go?”
There’s a ripple of whoa’s and holy shits.
“You ever see the boy fight?” Boots whispers to Eighty, loud enough the whole room hears.
“Can’t say I have. Fifty bucks says he knocks Jed out in one.”
Boots shakes his head. “Sucker bet. Ain’t takin’ that.”
“You want to weigh in on this bullshit, President?” Jed sucks his teeth.
Everyone looks to Heavy. He’s studying me, brow furrowed.
Folks say we look like brothers. We got the same wavy black hair and wiry beards. I’m big—six foot two, two hundred forty pounds—but he’s got four inches and thirty pounds on me. It might not be coincidence. Parties got wild back in the day. Still do.
Regardless, I don’t doubt for a minute that he’ll back my call.
That’s what guys like Eighty and Jed don’t quite get yet. Heavy Ruth ain’t his dad. He don’t live for the club. He lives for his brothers. And there’s a difference. He don’t always know what’s right, but I have never once had cause to doubt his motivations.
We might or might not be blood, but we’re family, without doubt.
“All right, brother,” he agrees. “You gonna lead the hunt?”
Blood rushes to my cock, an image of that sweet ass jiggling as she lifts her knees high and sprints away, her laughin’ brown eyes sparklin’. A jolt of adrenaline puts my hangover on mute.
Then, I remember. The kids. “I got to get the boys by six.”
“Okay. Until then, you work with Nickel and organize sweeps. I’ve called in the prospects. We’ll set them up on the perimeter, cordon off the search grid.” Heavy’s in his element. He fuckin’ loves logistics.
He carries on, arguing with Grinder about who should pay a visit to the sweetbutts to see if they have a houseguest.
My eyes are drawn back to the laptop. My stomach tightens, and my cock pulses. I ain’t felt like this in a long, long time. If ever.
Excited.
Alive.
And ready, willing, and eager to beat the ass of any man who dares lay a hand on the pretty girl in pigtails.
I’m not that guy. I go along, get along. Mind my own business. If the pussy’s easy, I don’t say no. Don’t go lookin’ for it either.
But I don’t let no man touch my bike. Or mess with my kids. And, apparently, I got a similar view about my ghost girl.
“Hey,” Boots interrupts. “Dizzy? Ain’t that your boy?” He’s pointing at the laptop screen.
Well, I’ll be damned.
Heavy’s zoomed out on the picture of my girl sittin’ in front of the clubhouse, and there’s Carson in the background, dangling from the edge of the garage roof, about to fall on his ass.
I’d like to say I’m surprised.
But I ain’t in the slightest.
Even though I already did, we check out every nook and cranny on the property. When we don’t find her, we start sweeping the woods. Truth be told, Heavy’s directions get taken more as suggestions as the day wears on and everyone gets bored and then smashed.
There’s no sign of Fay-Lee before I got to go get the boys. I leave with the understanding that if she’s found, no one touches her ‘til I get back.
I’m unsettled. She’s real thin, and the sun’s goin’ down. There’s a bitter wind kickin’ up. My plan is to bring the boys back, let ‘em loose, and resume the search. They’ll be stoked. My boys are drawn to trouble like bugs to a porch light, and there’s no end of shit they can get into unsupervised at the clubhouse. Ain’t a problem. No one would let ‘em come to any real harm.
I roll up to Steve’s place at the same time as Sharon. The boys spill out of her white Suburban, iced coffees in hand.
&nbs
p; I wait by the truck as the boys come runnin’.
“Dad!” Carson bumps my fist. “We gonna watch Rocky tonight?”
“That’s the plan.” I tousle his hair. It’s stiff. There’s gel in it. What the hell? He goes to hop in the cab. “Hold up. Not ‘til you finish that.” I nod at his drink.
I’m not cool with a seven-year-old chugging fancy coffee, but I’m even less cool with cleaning it out of my upholstery.
Parker runs into the house for something as Sharon makes her way over, bags dangling from her elbows. She goes up on her toes to peck my cheeks. She never did that when we were married. I think she picked it up from bein’ in real estate.
“Thanks for watching them, Dwayne. You’re a life saver.”
I ain’t “watching” them. They’re my kids. But as a rule, I do not start shit with the mother of my children if it can be helped. She can put things however she wants.
Parker hurries back outside, letting the screen door slam. He’s got his gaming console, wires dangling. It’s gettin’ harder and harder to tear him away from that machine. He’s always been interested in how shit works, so I can keep him off it if we’re workin’ on dirt bikes or swappin’ out the HVAC filter. He don’t ever want to throw a ball around, though. As soon as there’s no project to work on, he’s back click-clackin’ those buttons.
Carson’s the opposite. He’s a real physical kid. Uncoordinated but thick-skinned, like I was.
Parker piles into the back. I shut the door and head for the driver’s side. Sharon lays a hand on my arm.
Fuck.
“I need just a minute, Dwayne.” She guides me away from the truck.
This ain’t good.
“What’s up?”
“Listen. You remember how I was telling you about that new development that the Wade group’s putting up outside of Hazleton?”
I do not remember, but that don’t mean she didn’t tell me.
She rolls her eyes. “Fifty single family homes on three acre lots? Starting in the low five hundreds?”
We bought our house for two hundred when I got back from my final deployment. Paid cash.
“I told you how Baker and Coyne are going to be the exclusive agents? We’re doing a blitz? All units sold before the New Year?”
Dizzy: A Steel Bones Motorcycle Club Prequel Page 3
