Gambler

by KJ Dahlen

  Dusty wasn’t there. Gambler looked over at the window and found it opened wide. The breeze blew the curtains into the room and from the temperature in the room, the window had been open all morning.

  Gambler looked over at Paige and whispered harshly, “Where the hell is my son?”

  Chapter Four

  Paige stared at him. Her hand raised to cover her mouth as she gave him a horrified look. “I thought he was here the whole time,” she whispered. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

  “Come on we have to find him.” Gambler grabbed her hand as he dragged her down the hall and outside. They powerwalked all the way to the clubhouse. When he threw the door open he stomped inside dragging Paige behind him.

  Deke and Sam turned their attention to Gambler when he came inside. They were sitting at a table

  Max and Peggy were there in the kitchen getting things ready for the night’s supper for the whole gang. When they heard the loud entrance, they came to the door of the kitchen and gasped when they saw Paige with a very angry Gambler.

  Deke waited for Gambler to reach him before he asked, “What the fuck are you doing?” He frowned at the rough manner Gambler had dragged Paige into the club.

  “Dusty is missing and I don’t know how long he’s been gone,” Gambler announced to the room.

  Deke jumped to his feet. “What the fuck? Are you sure?”

  Gambler nodded.

  Sam swore then got to his feet and began issuing orders, “Get your brothers on their way here. Is your mom over at Raine and Cricket’s house?”

  “As far as I know.”

  “Then call Cricket and tell her to get her ass over to the clubhouse. We’re gonna need her here too.” Sam looked around and saw Wiley just coming in. “Wiley, get your ass over to Raine’s and stand watch. Dusty’s missing and we don’t know what’s going on yet.”

  Wiley nodded and Gambler made the call to his brothers.

  A few minutes later, Cricket ran into the clubhouse crying, “Gambler, where is my boy?” She rushed up to him and grabbed him by the shirt, twisting the material in her hands. “Where is my boy?” she screamed at him.

  Gambler grabbed her upper arms and held her away from him. He bent closer to her and said very carefully, “I. Don’t. Know,” he told her quietly but with meaning.

  “What the hell do you mean you don’t know?” she cried out.

  “We thought he went to his bedroom after breakfast, Paige got busy baking and I left for work. I came back early and we went to try and talk to him. When he checked his room, he wasn’t there. We found his window open but he wasn’t there,” he told her calmly, despite the rolling in his own belly.

  Cricket crumbled and would have fallen to the floor if Gambler didn’t have a hold of her. “He’s just a kid, where could he be?” she whispered with tears rolling down her face.

  Gambler gathered her close to him. “We’ll find him kiddo. I promise. We’ll find him.”

  “But he’s so little!” She wailed. Beating her brother in law on the chest she demanded, “What did you do to him that he would run away?”

  Gambler held her close, trying to calm her down. It wouldn’t be good if Raine got there and she was all upset like this. “We don’t know that he ran away sweetheart. All we know is that he’s not at home.”

  The roar of bikes was heard loudly as Raine, his brothers and father arrived. Two minutes later Raine, Hound, Judge and Black Jack rushed inside.

  Cricket left Gambler and rushed over to her husband Raine. She wept in his arms.

  Raine held her close but raised his head and glared at Gambler.

  “What the fuck is going on here?” Black Jack finally asked.

  “Dusty is missing,” Gambler announced. “Paige thought he was in his room all morning but when we broke in, he wasn’t there and the room was cold because the window had been left wide open.”

  “What do you mean you broke in?” Black Jack asked.

  “We had to break the door in,” Gambler explained. “He had it locked from the inside.”

  Cricket snapped her head around to glare at Paige. “Did anything happen yesterday or today that would upset him? He was too quiet all day yesterday. He wouldn’t even talk about it. He made a big deal about fitting in. He kept asking me if I would still love him now that I had my own babies to love.”

  Gambler groaned and turned to Paige. She rushed into his arms and he held her close.

  “What do you know Gambler? Why would he ask her something like that?” Raine wanted to know.

  “I have no clue,” Gambler admitted. “He’s got to know I love him. He’s my kid for Christ’s sake.”

  No one seemed to notice that Peggy and Max came out of the kitchen and made their way to where Gambler and Paige were standing. They were there to protect Paige if she needed them.

  Peggy’s eyes drifting to the photo Deke and Sam had been trying to run down. When Peggy got a good look at it, she gasped. Her skin paled and she began to shake. Max moved forward to frown at his wife. Then he followed her eyes and saw the photo. He growled and took Peggy into his arms.

  Paige peeked around Gambler’s body and cried out when she saw her mother’s face. “Mom, what is it?” she asked as she left Gambler’s arms to go to her mother.

  She looked into her mother’s face and saw the terror and the fear. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  Peggy pulled her into a hug and whispered, “I’m so sorry baby, so sorry.”

  “Sorry about what?’ Paige asked. She was getting scared now. Her mother had never acted this way before.

  Gambler turned and studied them all. “What’s going on here?”

  Max looked at Deke then at Gambler. Then he nodded toward the photo on the table. The photo of the button Raine had found yesterday. The photo they hadn’t identified yet. “We’ve seen that fucking button before.”

  Bones picked up the photo and studied it for a brief moment before he turned it over to show Max. “What do you know about this button? And where have you seen it before?”

  Paige turned and saw the photo. She paled and her eyes filled with terror. “No...” she whispered as her knees got weak. She would have fallen except that Gambler reached her and swept her into his arms. “Oh, god no...”

  “What the fuck?” he called out as he held her close. Snapping his head over to Max and Peggy he demanded, “What the hell is going on here? Where have you seen that fucking button before?”

  Everyone including Cricket joined the small group at the table. Cricket was wiping her eyes when the image came cleared. She gasped as well and Raine had to catch her too before she hit the floor. “What the fuck?” he called out as he kept hold of his wife. He turned her around in his arms and stared at the shocked look on her face. “What’s going on honey? Have you seen that button too?”

  Cricket nodded but didn’t say anything.

  “Will somebody please tell the rest of us what the fuck is the big deal with this fucking button and why it strikes this kind of fear into your souls?” Deke demanded.

  Bones motioned at the chairs around the table. “Why don’t we all sit down and you can tell us your story.”

  Max sat down and pulled Peggy on his lap. Gambler did the same with Paige, Raine sat down and tried to pull Cricket down with him, but she shook her head. “What about Dusty? He’s still out there all alone.”

  Deke shook his head. “I’ll get some of the boys together and send them out to search for him. They won’t come back until he’s found.” Then he motioned for her to sit. Walking to the front door, he spoke to the men standing around the parking lot.

  When he came back, he saw everyone else sitting there. When he took his seat, he looked to Paige first. He nodded at her.

  Paige wet her lips with her tongue and began her story, “Seven years ago I was sitting outside my school doing my homework when a biker stopped beside me. I tried to ignore him but he wouldn’t go away. He just sat there and stared at me. I couldn’t even see his face. H
e was wearing these mirrored sunglasses and a black leather jacket. He had long dark hair pulled back into a long ponytail and a bandana around the top of his head. He barely said a word to me but he stared at me as if he knew me. I got up to leave because I didn’t want any trouble but the man followed me. He only told me I couldn’t run, that he would always find me and that scared me. I asked him what he wanted from me and he told me he wanted me. He told me that the moment he saw me sitting there he knew I would be his. That I somehow belonged to him and him alone and one day soon, he would come for me and make me his. That freaked the hell out of me. I got scared and ran away. I changed my schedule so I was never alone but it didn’t help. Everywhere I went he found me. I got so scared I didn’t want to even go to school.”

  “She wouldn’t tell us anything about what was bothering her,” Max broke into the narrative. “Every day it was getting worse so I began following her everywhere she went. If someone was bothering her I needed to know about it.” He nodded then said, “One day I saw him. He wouldn’t take his eyes off her and I knew that wasn’t right. He was around thirty years old and she was barely seventeen at the time. It was—it wasn’t right. I followed them for a couple of days. Took pictures of the guy and then I called the cops. I made my case and they hauled him in for questioning. Because he hadn’t actually done anything, all they could do was warn him to stay away from her.”

  “Three days later he found me,” Paige picked up the story. “He chased me into a dead end alley and proceeded to beat the hell out of me. He told me the rules an MC lives by every time he punched me. He said this was the only time he would go easy on me but that I would need to learn to obey him every time he told me to do something. He told me the first rule in any relationship was never to piss him off and by calling the cops, I’d pissed him off. Then he told me he would always find me, no matter where I went or what I did, he would always find me and the next time he did, he would finish what he started and he would kill me then.”

  “I called the cops right away when she didn’t come home but the police didn’t find her for four hours,” Max told them. “She laid there bleeding and broken in that fucking alley for four damn hours. He broke her jaw and seven ribs. He hit her so hard she had a major concussion. He broke her arm and leg when he stomped her with his fucking steel toed boots.” In a fury all could see, he ran his fingers through his hair as he remembered the past. “She was unconscious for eight days. Eight fucking days when we didn’t know if she would ever wake up again or not!”

  In the silence that followed Max’s statement Deke shook his head. “Did you ever find out this fucker’s name?”

  Paige nodded. “Yeah when the police arrested him for assault, they already knew it. His name was Matthew Reno. After they found me in that alley, they arrested him again and this time, he was charged with assault. He went to trial and I had to testify against him. When they sentenced him to four years, he just smiled and told me he’d find me when he got out.”

  Everyone was quiet as they absorbed her words. Then it was Cricket who spoke, “His road name was Sinner when I met him eight years ago. Cordy and I had just left Maine and were moving around a lot, trying to find somewhere to live. We were in a small town called Mt. Holly, New Jersey at the time. Cordy was pregnant but not showing yet. She always liked to hang out with bikers so when she met him she tried to hustle him.” She shrugged. “It didn’t work this time. He could see what kind of woman she was and he kept pushing her away. Anyway, one night she came back with a bloody nose and a bruise on her cheek. She was pushing me to pack up our things. She told me we had to leave town and stay hidden for a while. When I asked her what happened she told me she ripped off Sinner and she knew he wouldn’t be happy with her when he woke up. I asked her what she meant by that and she told me she slipped him a mickey and then she robbed him. She had over two grand in her hand. I told her he was gonna kill her for that but Cordy didn’t care. We left about twenty minutes later with barely more than our clothes. We went to Providence after that and she hooked up with Hammer.”

  Deke snorted. “And we all know how that ended don’t we?”

  Sam picked up the photo of the button and studied it in detail. “Do either of you know what MC he was with back then?”

  Cricket nodded. “He was with the Unholy MC when we met him. They were just outside town and they were a scary bunch of guys. Their leader was a man named Guenther.”

  Deke nodded at this information. “Let me make a call and see what I can find out.” He got up and walked down the hall to his office.

  Deke shut the door of his office and went to sit down at his desk. He’d heard of the Unholy MC. And from what he’d heard it wasn’t good. If the rumors were true, one of their own had tried to betray them but the Unholy fought back. They won the battle against the rival MC but the battle cost both groups. In both men and resources.

  Shaking his head, Deke reached for his phone. He placed a call to his C.I. to get him the phone number of the Unholy President and hoped the rumors weren’t true. He had a feeling this dude Sinner had been the one who betrayed his old MC and if he was, the fact that Sinner was in Troy could very well bring the grudge to his town. That was the last thing Deke wanted.

  His phone rang a few minutes later. It was his C.I. and when he gave Deke the number for the Unholy, he also warned him that the Unholy was one percenters. Not exactly the news Deke was looking for at the moment, but he knew he had to make the call.

  When the phone rang on the other end a gravelly voice answered, “This is Reeves, who the hell are you and how the fuck did you get this number?”

  Deke frowned. “I’m looking for a man named Guenther.”

  “What the fuck you want with our President? Do you know who you’re talking to?”

  “Yeah, I know who I’m talking to and I only want to talk to Guenther.”

  “What business do you have with us?”

  “I want to talk about a man named Sinner.”

  There was a long pause on the other end of the call. After a minute, Deke growled, “Hello, is anybody there?”

  “Hold the phone, I’ll get the boss.”

  He could hear the sound of the phone being set down and there was the echo of footsteps walking away, then there was nothing for a few minutes then he heard the phone being picked up again. “What the fuck do you know about Sinner?” The voice that demanded the question was deep and almost whispery.

  Deke could almost hear the rage in the other man voice. “Do you know the man?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I fucking know the bastard.” The growl grew louder. “Who the fuck is this and why after eight fucking years are you calling me?”

  “My name is Deke Tory and I’m the president of the Sin’s Bastards in New York. I’m calling you because Sinner might be in our town here and I plan to stop him so I need to know what you know about the man.”

  “How do you know he’s there?” Guenther asked.

  “We found a button with your logo on it,” Deke told him. “One of our ole ladies knew him back in the day and she told me who he was with.”

  “He was with us back then but when we caught him stealing from the MC, we took his colors back and kicked him out of our territory.”

  Deke knew he was going to regret this but he had to ask, “How much did he take? I heard it was only a couple grand.”

  Guenther snorted. “What exactly do you know about it and how?”

  “I know he was involved with a woman around that time. I also know she ripped him off and left him to take the rap with you guys.”

  Guenther paused before he asked, “You know about Cordy then too? How is that possible? I thought the bastard was lying to us.”

  Deke closed his eyes and hung his head. Everything Cricket had told him was true. “Cordy is dead, she died by tribunal a little over two years ago now. It was her sister Cricket that told us about you guys.”

  “Yeah, I remember now she did have a younger sister. She was just a ki
d though back then. You ask her sister where our money is,” Guenther demanded. “That bastard stole almost thirty grand from the club not two. When we caught up with him the next morning he didn’t have any of it on him and he was just as pissed about that as we were.”

  They spoke a few minutes longer about what else Sinner was into back then before Guenther demanded, “I want that money back if there’s any of it left. That’s club property and if you are who you say you are you know what exactly that means.”

  “I’ll ask her and get back to you.” Deke promised before he hung up the call.”

  No one said anything while he was gone. About a half an hour later, Deke returned. He walked over to the bar and poured himself a drink of Black Velvet. Slamming it down his throat, he returned to the table and sat down.

  He looked directly at Cricket. “Your sister got a hell of a lot more than two grand the night she ripped Sinner off. He was carrying money he stole from the MC that night. She got close to thirty grand. Not only that but she left him to explain to his brothers what happened. They nearly beat him to death then took his colors for taking the money. Cordy made it seem like he’d spent the money on booze and drugs.”

  Cricket closed her eyes and paled. “Are they coming after me now too?” she whispered.

  Raine’s arms tighten around her as he glared at Deke.

  Deke shook his head. “No I convinced them Cordy was dead. They warned me about Sinner though. Told me if I had the chance I should shoot the bastard first and ask questions like... never. Guenther told me to just bury the body in an unmarked grave and forget him. They told him eight years ago to leave the area and never come back. If he did, they would kill him on sight. He’s a marked man and he knows it.”

  “Can you trust this Guenther?” Raine asked. “I don’t want my wife looking over her shoulder for the rest of her life again.”

  Deke shrugged. “Guenther told me he met both girls. He knew which one was going after Sinner and he said they warned Sinner about the girl who called herself Cricket. He said she had cold eyes. Then I told him the girls were sisters and the one he called Cricket was actually Cordy. I told him she’d taken her sister’s name before and she’d set her up again and again. Guenther actually remembered the real Cricket as being the nicer of the two girls and he said he wouldn’t come after her.”