Hard Rider

by Lydia Pax

“Cops are on you, you oughta know,” said Ace. “They got people out there looking for you. Ain’t none of us said shit, but eventually they’ll get around to looking here.”

  It felt good to know that Ace had his back. They had been through any number of scrapes together, and this might have been the worst of all of them. Ram felt part of the load lifted from his shoulders, knowing Ace was on his side.

  But still, he saw the truth in Ace’s words. That truth had been hounding him for days now as the trouble piled up.

  “How come you got so high on this girl, man? It ain’t like you.”

  “If I wasn’t…if we didn’t get together, I was afraid I’d get suspended from the club.”

  “Suspensions end.”

  “It’s a respect thing. You know how it is. Guys get suspended and come back, everybody’s hands up around them, walking on eggshells. I didn’t want that.”

  “People already walk on eggshells around you, man.”

  “Me?”

  “Shit. You ain’t noticed?” Ace laughed. “I love you, brother, but you got a mean streak the size of the motherfucking moon. You’d fight anybody that looks at you crosswise and then you’d fuck his woman.”

  They both laughed a little at that.

  “I don’t know,” said Ram. “Shit. I guess I didn’t want to disappoint anybody, you know. It sounds stupid, but I feel like you look up to me. I’d feel shitty if I was suspended. I didn’t want to look like a bad leader.”

  “And all this death, this chaos,” said Ace. “How’s this make you feel? How’s this make you look?”

  Ram didn’t have an answer for that.

  “You’ve got to leave town,” said Ace.

  “What?”

  “You’ve got to.” He stood up and resumed his place at his table beside his guns. He began to strip down another one, cleaning each piece as he unlocked it from the whole. “Too much heat, man. You’ve got to leave.”

  “What the hell did they want me to do?” Ram was getting angry now. “What did you want me to do? Did you want me to let the piece of shit just walk away after what he did? He killed Mikhail. He killed one of us. I’m supposed to let that stand, now?”

  Ace shook his head. “No man. You ain’t supposed to let it stand. But you do this shit the right way. You do it slow. You do it composed. You can’t rush in, broad daylight, in the morning, beating a man half-to-death on his front lawn. That’s stupid, Ram, and that’s why Howitzer wanted you to learn some sense.”

  “That’s bullshit, man. You know it is. He deserved it.”

  “One of these days,” said Ace. “You’re gonna learn that there is a big difference between something done right and slow and something that’s right done sloppy and right away. Hell, you were trying to tell me that in front of the bar when Beretta rolled up with my girl Sinclair in pieces. And I should have listened to you. Know why? Because that shit is what makes sense.”

  Ram didn’t want to hear that. He didn’t want to hear it, and no wonder. It made almost everything he had done for the past several weeks look foolish. Dangerous. Hotheaded. Idiotic. All the terms pulled out when his father talked about him.

  He changed the subject.

  “There’s the meeting, though, the vote. I want to—”

  “You’re not hearing me, man,” said Ace. “You’ve got to go. Today. The vote’s not happening. If you’re lucky, they’ll call it off forever. But it’s shelved for now while we all lay low and wait for what’s coming.”

  “What’s coming?”

  “Hell, brother. Hell, with that motherfucking sheriff leading the charge.”

  Chapter 41

  They let Ram stay in the clubhouse until dawn and then it was time for him to move out. With the cops after him, they risked too much by letting him stay for very long. Everyone assumed it was just a matter of time before a warrant was issued on Shovelhead’s. Men had been clearing it out of guns and drugs all night long.

  Ace gave him a couple of guns from his ever-growing stockade and enough ammunition for both—two semi-automatic pistols—and then he was sent out on his own.

  He had no real sense of a plan. All his life he’d relied on the club to help him solve his problems. He could be as reckless as he wanted and he knew the club would be there to back him up.

  Now, they wanted him gone. They’d had enough of his shit, and he couldn’t blame them. The cops were likely going to tear the Wrecking Crew apart for the crime of being associated with Ram. It’d be an all-out war and it would be his fault.

  Men would die, most likely. Many of them his friends. The Wrecking Crew wouldn’t give up without a fight. It wasn’t in their blood.

  And it would be his fault.

  That struck raw with Ram as he drove down the highway, trying to achieve some semblance of serenity. Usually speeding down the open road let him free his mind, clear his conscience, but all he could think of was how he was to blame.

  Ram kept an eye out for cops—quickly exiting the highway if he saw one approaching, changing directions at will. He had no particular place he needed to go, and so long as he wasn’t noticed by police, he would be fine just wandering for a bit and thinking.

  He ached for June, wished he could hold her in his arms. He wanted to be inside of her again—not just for the pleasure, though goddamn there was plenty of it—but for that endless sense of time stilling, just for the two of them. That complete absence of worry or care as he held her naked body against his. Wished the two of them could tell one another that somehow, some way, it would be all right.

  There was no sense in telling himself she didn’t matter to him anymore. On paper, that might have very well been the story—he was kicked out of his club, pretty much kicked out of the town. The only reason he’d gotten together with June was to stay in the Wrecking Crew. He could disappear, she could annul their marriage, and that would be that.

  But that wasn’t good enough for him. Wherever he went from now on, he wanted June with him. That was as plain as day to him—and he’d just beaten someone in her family half-to-death.

  Would she understand? Would she forgive?

  There was only one way to find out…but he wasn’t ready for that conversation yet.

  He pulled into a gas station and filled up, grabbing a few snacks for the road. Ram was hungry something terrible and he hadn’t eaten for more than a day. As he sat back down on his bike, he felt a funny shape in his pants pocket.

  The note from Beretta was still there from the day before.

  Nothing gets done in the present by living in the past. Wasn’t that what his father said?

  There was something to that note. Maybe a trap. Probably not. Too elaborate to be a trap. Beretta had gone through all the trouble of beating the hell out of him just to drop a note in his shirt to meet him some place later…for another brawl?

  No. It was legit.

  After two hours of driving east, he had made it to the hunting cabin where Beretta was staying. They had gone there a dozen times together or more, taking down deer and knocking back beers. It had been a sort of tradition for them. When Beretta started getting deep into drugs, the tradition faltered…and then it unraveled completely like everything else.

  The cabin was small and quaint, but it did the job. It was at the top of a long road up a very tall hill in the middle of a patchy forest. Inside the cabin were two main rooms—a sort of living and sleeping area and then a kitchen with a small table. A single furnace kept it warm in the winter; there was no air conditioning. Not far was a stream, providing fresh water. It had five windows built into the heavy logs. Beretta’s two-door truck was posted in front of the cabin. Seeing it shook Ram for a moment before he remembered that he was the reason why Beretta couldn’t ride his bike.

  He greeted Ram under the front door, holding a rifle in his hands. It was pointed at the ground.

  “Heard you coming from a mile off,” said Beretta. “You scared off all the deer.”

  “You couldn’t shoot any of t
hem anyway.”

  Ram had always been the better shot of the two. Most of the dinners they had eaten at this cabin had been Ram’s kills.

  “Lot’s changed in two years,” said Beretta. “You never know. You armed?”

  Ram nodded.

  “All right, well. Just don’t shoot me until we’ve said our piece, okay?”

  He walked back inside the cabin with his rifle still in his hands. Ram followed him in, uneasy, looking for signs of an ambush. There were none.

  Inside the cabin Beretta sat at the table with a pot of coffee between them. His rifle lay across his lap. He poured a cup for himself and then Ram.

  “Sorry, no booze,” said Beretta. “Gave it up when I gave up the junk.”

  “Am I supposed to congratulate you?”

  Beretta ignored this, sipping his coffee.

  “I recognized your girl from the brawl the day before. Where she was, I knew you weren’t far behind. So I got the note ready. I’d wanted to talk to you anyway, I think.”

  “What?”

  “I figured you’d ask how I knew to give you that note,” said Beretta. “So, that’s how.”

  “I saw you still saw fit to punch me in the fucking jaw.”

  “Had to make it look real, didn’t I?” Beretta smiled. “You motherfuckers stole my bike and all.”

  “You don’t seem too upset by that.”

  Beretta shrugged. “I don’t like it, I’ll tell you that. But I do see how it makes us even.”

  “Big of you.”

  That was all Ram had to say. Something dark and exhausted in him was telling him to be angry with Beretta—to yell at him, to kill him. Avenge Madeline, finally, at last. But all that rage had been spent on Theo. And maybe it wasn’t dead, but it was too drained to do anything except simmer and fire off the odd insult into the front of Ram’s brain.

  The coffee tasted good. It was smooth and dark, and immediately went to work on Ram’s tired mind.

  “Maybe,” said Beretta. “We can talk about that some other time. Right now I got bigger things on my mind.”

  At this, Ram raised an eyebrow. Bigger than a biker losing his bike? Big enough to not cause violence at the sight of the man who stole it?

  That was big indeed.

  “So I see.”

  “I’ll get straight to it. I think there’s men in the Flags working with the cops. I think it goes right to the top, for both organizations.”

  Ram took this with some surprise. If there was one thing that even blood rivals like the Wrecking Crew and the Black Flags could agree on, it was that cops were scum—and that working with them was reserved only for the lowest of the low.

  “You’ve got rats?”

  “I think it’s more than that. I think I’m more of a rat than they are right now. You understand me? I think that Acero has close ties with Colt and his crew.”

  That was a surprise. As the leader of the Black Flags, Acero was known for a whole hell of a lot of reasons, all of them bad, and none of them included working with cops.

  Ram stirred a sugar packet into his coffee and took a sip. It wasn’t bad. “What makes you say this?”

  “The other day, when we started that shit at your clubhouse. The cops took us off in the paddy wagon. Towed our bikes off with them.”

  “I remember.”

  “Well, you’ll remember too that they only kept us in holding for maybe half-an-hour before letting us go. Said that they didn’t want to see that kinda thing again, that it was our lucky day.”

  Ram leaned forward. “They did what?”

  “They told me they had it taken care of. I was like, ‘Taken care of? I punched a cop in the fucking stomach when he was arresting me!’ Told me to stop asking questions. I’m bad at that.”

  “I know you are.”

  Beretta took a long drink of his coffee and set it down empty. He and Ram looked at each other in silence for a moment.

  “We don’t get along, but that? That’s bullshit. And you know it.”

  “Yeah.” Ram couldn’t help himself. “Doesn’t surprise me, either, with you fucking cowards the way you are.”

  “Cowards? Like stealing a bike in the middle of the night?”

  “I was thinking more like shooting a cop from behind.”

  “Mm,” nodded Beretta after a moment. “That. Yeah, that was one of ours.”

  The admission stunned Ram.

  “The fuck, Beretta?”

  “The guy lost his head during the fight,” said Beretta. “Or, at least that’s what he says. Who the fuck knows. He’s off his rocker. A lot of guys in the Flags are. It makes me uneasy. His name is Cadillac, the one who killed the cop. Acero swore me to secrecy about it. I thought it was a little odd, but whatever. I follow orders. Then this shit with the cops blaming your crew, and then we get out of jail easy…it all points to Acero colluding with the cops.”

  “Motherfuckers.” Ram didn’t know what else to say. “Motherfuckers.”

  If they hadn’t covered it up…if it had been clear from the beginning, then Theo would never have gone after Ram. Mikhail would still be alive.

  But he was dead—Mikhail was dead because Acero was a scum fucking rat that deserved to be crucified upside down.

  “Here’s my point, said Beretta. “My proposal. If the Flags are working with the cops, then both sides are too fucking corrupt to exist. I want to take them down and I want the help of the Wrecking Crew. If that gets done, then the Crew and the Flags can set up an alliance, split up the town between the two of us. We’ll give you access to our contacts south of the border, and everybody profits.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a bad plan,” said Ram. “But I can’t do shit about it. They’ve pushed me out. I beat a cop half-to-death. They want nothing to do with me.”

  “How the fuck did you end up doing that?”

  Quickly he summed up the story—of June, of the charade, of the marriage, of the assault and Mikhail’s death.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” said Beretta. “Mikhail was a good man.”

  “What the fuck would you know about it?”

  Beretta looked hurt. The scar across his cheek tightened. “I was his friend too, Ram, for a little while. I don’t make a big fucking deal about it, okay? But when you pushed me out when I lost my old lady—when she died in my arms, not yours—you made me lose all the other friends I had in the world too.”

  “She got into that junk ‘cause of you,” said Ram. “I didn’t want you to have a single fucking thing in this world. Friends, life, nothing. You’re lucky your social circle is all I took.”

  Beretta stood up. “This is going nowhere. I thought you could help me out. It’s clear you can’t. We got nothing to talk about except digging up graves, and I’m no fucking gravedigger, Ram. You should go.”

  Shame, hot and heavy, filled Ram. He suddenly didn’t feel like he had the patience for this feud with Beretta anymore. Not after just sitting and talking with him. But it was hard to admit, hard to confront—how much time could have been saved, how much pain and anguish, by just a few simple conversations.

  Ram could see the pain on the man’s face when he brought up his sister, his drug usage. That was a different kind of man than he used to be, that was clear. The old Beretta would have fought with Ram at about seven different points in this conversation so far. This Beretta was patient, calculating, open.

  “Would you tell me something?” said Ram.

  “Sure.”

  “Why me? You could have picked anyone to tell this. Probably people without all our shit history.”

  “I guess so,” said Beretta. “The thing is, even with all that, there’s nobody I know who I’ve got better history with either. I guess I hoped maybe given the circumstances, some of that good would outweigh the bad.”

  It wasn’t a terrible thought. An optimistic thought. Outside of what had been blossoming with June, Ram had a hard time recalling an optimistic thought he’d had for his life as an outlaw.


  A memory floated up through his brain, sparked by the coffee. He remembered sitting down in his small house with Beretta and Madeline, the two of them holding hands and letting Ram know they were dating. Asking, in a way, for his blessing—though of course they weren’t really. The way they had loved each other, whether Ram had said okay or not was inconsequential.

  But of course he’d thought it was the best thing that could have happened to him at the time. His sister—the woman he looked up to more than any other—was in love with his best friend? Hell. That sounded like a good deal to him. They’d be stuck with him for life; nobody going anywhere, a reassurance that no matter what, Ram would have family that would stick by him.

  It was more assurance than he’d ever had in his life.

  He still wasn’t raging at Beretta, though he still could feel that same part of him trying to be. But more of him wondered how much he actually wanted to be angry with Beretta; how much he wanted to carry on this vendetta.

  Nothing he could do to Beretta would bring Madeline back. And nothing Beretta could do would bring her back either. The two of them were stuck together, on the outside of the outsiders, whether they liked it or not.

  Maybe Beretta had already figured that out.

  “What are you gonna do?” Ram asked.

  “I don’t know.” Beretta stood up and looked out the window. Very suddenly he looked quite tired. “I’ll figure something out. But I ain’t resting in with no fucking rats, I’ll tell you that.”

  Ram nodded. “Well. I don’t like that either. And I sure as shit don’t like that fucker Colt. You come up with a plan…let me know. I’ll keep the grave digging shovels at home.”

  Chapter 42

  It was June’s idea to meet at her house.

  They arranged it via texts. Her parents were gone—her father at the station, and her mother somewhere out in the town visiting Theo’s family and associates. The duties never ceased for either of them.

  Ram entered and June led him past the hallway and into Colt’s office, shutting the doors behind her.

  “If anyone comes home,” she explained, pointing, “the window there is the easiest way to get back onto the street without anyone seeing.”