by Brook Wilder
I hated it. It should have been me. He should be standing there, receiving my body now.
A black car pulled up and I swore under my breath when the door opened and Will’s parents stepped out, dressed in black. His mom ran to the coffin at the edge of the plane and threw her arms over the flag, her sobs filling the air. His dad, a big strapping man who was a veteran himself, seemed to collapse on the ground next to the car, unable to hold up his own weight.
I knew who was next and I couldn’t watch her come out of that car. I couldn’t see the pain etched on her face, knowing I had put it there.
So I kept my eyes straight ahead, saluting the coffin as Elisa joined her mom at the coffin, her sobs filling the air.
Not once did I move, not even allowing them to know I was there; not until I was sure they had gotten back into the car. Only then did I help the crew load Will’s body into the back of the hearse and shut the door, watching it drive away with my best friend in the back.
The pain. There were no words.
***
I shook out of the memory, realizing Elisa was eyeing me warily. Dammit, she probably thought I was strung out on drugs or something the way I was treating her. “Sorry,” I forced out. “I’m ready whenever you are.”
Just when she opened her mouth to speak, one of the prospects burst into the room, skidding to a stop when he saw me. “Machine Gun, there’s a fight in the front.”
“Dammit,” I swore, striding to the door angrily before realizing I wasn’t alone in the room. Turning back, I tried not to focus on her face. “I’ll be back. I… just don’t move.”
“Okay,” Elisa answered in a small voice.
I gave her a curt nod and headed out of the room, growing angrier by the minute that I was even dealing with this shit.
Not Elisa, but the prospects. I was getting too old for this.
Chapter 3
Elisa
I couldn’t believe it. Damian was here, in Castillo, and I had run right into his arms.
Well not right into them, but I would have given the chance.
No, scratch that. I wouldn’t. He had abandoned me and my family when we needed him the most and for ten years I hadn’t heard anything from him.
Nothing.
Blowing out a breath, I cringed at the smell of smoke still emanating from my ponytail. I had traveled hours to get here, to find some help and maybe a place to stay until I could figure out what had just happened to me. I couldn’t go home. I was too afraid someone had seen me, that one of those men knew who I was and would track me down, putting my parents in danger.
Besides, they had been through far too much over the years for me to even remotely entertain the idea of telling them I was in danger like this. As far as they knew, I worked at a hospital in Dallas.
In reality, I helped establish free clinics across the border. It was a dangerous business and my team was constantly running into the government or the cartel who didn’t want to see anyone helping the poor of their country.
I had been shot at, nearly burned alive in my own tent, and escaped the approaching bad guys more than I cared to count.
But today, today was the first day they had targeted their own in my presence.
A shiver ran through my body and I rubbed my arms, still hearing the screams in my mind. I had lost everything. My medical supplies, my equipment, and all my clothes, leaving me just the messenger bag with my notes and my personal effects that I had barely slung over my shoulder before I started running.
That, however, paled in comparison to what that village lost along with the friends I had lost with it.
Tears burned my eyes as I thought about my team scattered on the ground, their bodies the only thing left of their existence. I had hand-picked them, and for the last four years, we had saved countless lives over the border.
No longer. I wasn’t going to see Josh’s smiling face, or Lucy’s cheery disposition no matter where we had ended up.
I wouldn’t hear Grayson’s laugh or another one of Susan’s stories about her grandkids.
They were all gone and I was the only survivor.
I was the only one who knew the truth.
So I had done the only thing that had made sense. I ran, ran toward this club Josh had sworn would take me in and listen to my story. He had said the president was a friend of his, but instead of finding the president, I had found a blast from my past.
The absolute last person I thought I would ever see again.
I still couldn’t believe Damian Gibson was here. He looked older, as I was sure I did as well, but he still had that same dark hair. It was longer than I would have ever imagined he’d grow it, but his hazel eyes were unmistakably Damian Gibson’s.
Just the mere presence of him had sent me back to the last time I saw him.
The day my world crashed down around me.
***
I stood solemnly next to my mother, attempting to keep her upright as we watched the coffin be pulled out of the hearse by the soldiers, the flag still draped over the shiny oak. It was perfect for my brother, the type of coffin that is, as simple as he was.
But I still didn’t believe he was in there. I still didn’t believe he was dead, that he wasn’t coming back to tease me or to give me those bear hugs I pretended not to like.
Now I would give anything to have one.
Mom let out a sob and I tightened my arm around her, my own tears streaming down my cheeks. The day those two military representatives showed up at our house had been the day my life had ended. I could still hear my mom’s screams in my ears, my father’s shock as they told us Will had been killed in action. Six months. He was only gone six months and now he’d come home in a box.
It wasn’t fair. Over and over again I had asked why, wondering why God picked Will to be killed instead of the others in his regiment. It was wrong, I knew that, but I wanted my big brother back.
The funeral procession made its way to the gravesite and my dad took my mom’s arm, patting her hand lightly as they moved to the crowd gathered for the burial. I trailed behind them, my heels sinking in the soft ground with each step. I felt numb, as I had been for the last month since we’d been told of Will’s death. There had been a whirlwind of activity around us, numerous visits by the military to sign documents to get Will back home and to settle his estate.
It was like every bit of my brother’s storied career with the military was wrapped in those few documents.
A steady stream of family and friends showed up at our house as well, so many that I wanted to hide in my room and make the world normal again.
The world would never be normal again. At least not for me.
A figure dressed in black caught my eye and my steps slowed when I realized it was Damian standing on the fringes of the crowd, his hands shoved into the pockets of his long coat.
He was here. I knew he was back. His parents had come to visit not long after we found out, letting us know Damian had come back wounded but giving no other details. I had waited for him to come pay his respects. Will had been his best friend, almost like a brother, and we had loved him just as much.
But he never showed and I was hurt he hadn’t. Didn’t he care about us anymore? I wanted to know the details of Will’s death, if Damian was even there when it happened. No one was telling us anything about it, only that he died in the line of duty.
That wasn’t enough for me. Suddenly I was angry at him all over again, wanting to rail at him for abandoning us like this. We needed him.
I needed him.
“Elisa.”
I tore my gaze from Damian to see my dad looking at me, concern on his face. He had aged over this last month, the grief cut into his features like a knife to butter. I knew this had been hard on him. Mom might not know it, but I heard him crying at night, attempting to smother his sobs as he watched sports on TV.
And now, he was looking at me like I was going to be the next one to leave him.
Though I really
wanted to go after Damian, I reached out and grabbed his arm, allowing him to pull me the rest of the way to the gravesite.
I would get to Damian eventually and he’d better have all the answers to my questions.
***
“Sorry.”
I shook out of the memory as the man of my thoughts walked back in, a disgusted look on his face. God, it was hard to believe he could still steal my breath away like this, even after all these years.
“Um, no worries.”
He took a seat this time, his arms crossed over his chest, and I didn’t know what to say. This was much more than just the ordeal I had endured. Years of pain filled the space between us, of hurt I wanted to dump on him, to let him know I hated what he had done to me and my parents.
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t go there right now. I was a bundle of emotions, not sure what to do next.
The rest of my feelings I would sort out later. Right now I had to get things done. “I need to tell you a story,” I started, forcing myself to look at him.
He arched a brow. “Alright.”
So I did. I told him about the free clinic we had set up in a tiny village south of the border, nearly fifty miles from where I sat right now. How Josh and Susan had worked with the local elder of the village to have the people come into the clinic so we could do basic medical checks for them. I told him how we had given out all our antibiotics and shots to the children, soon after enjoying a modest meal at one house then the next as the villagers started to trust us.
And then today, the fateful day, it had all been smashed to bits.
Damian’s jaw clenched as I told him about the camouflage jeeps that had shown up, with machine guns attached to the top bars, that had scattered the villagers immediately.
Then, the gunfire. Despite the tears in my eyes, I kept myself together as I told Damian about how my team fell around me, the bullets buzzing around my head while I ran for cover. I had reached the edge of the rocky outcropping when I smelled the smoke, realizing they were burning the village.
The screams, I would never forget those screams.
“Shit,” Damian swore, pushing away from the table and standing, as if he couldn’t sit any longer. “Did you- how the hell did you get here?”
“I hitchhiked for the most part,” I answered, thinking of the nice couple who had picked me up and offered me clothing so that I didn’t have to wear the torn, dirty clothes I had escaped in. “Once we got to the border, I showed them my documents and they let me pass.”
“And you came here?”
I nodded, tucking a stray hair behind my ear. “Josh, he had talked about Rex Harper and his bike gang. It wasn’t hard to find y’all.”
Damian stared at me for a long minute. “I can’t believe you escaped. Are you hurt?”
My very soul, yes. “No,” I answered instead. “I’m not hurt.” My scars ran far deeper than the surface.
“Shit man, what the hell have you done with my club?”
Another man walked through the door, his boots ringing on the floor. A blonde followed close behind, her tattoo sleeves peeking out from under her t-shirt. They both stopped when they saw me, the woman’s mouth forming in an ‘o.’
“Hi,” she said. “Sorry Machine Gun, we didn’t know you had a visitor.”
Machine Gun? My eyes flew to his face and he seemed to… is he blushing?
“She’s not,” he started, stepping further toward the door. “She’s here to see you actually, Chains.”
This was Rex Harper? I took in the biker, trying to picture the docile Josh next to him and completely failed. Josh had been our interpreter, breaking the languages barrier between us and the villagers so we could get to work sooner.
Realizing they were all staring at me, I swallowed the lump in my throat and pushed forward. “Josh Tolson sent me here.”
“Josh?” Rex said, his eyes widening. “Really? Where is that fucker?”
“Who’s Josh?” the woman next to him asked, her hands on her hips.
“He’s a guy I know,” Rex answered, a grin on his face. “God, I haven’t seen him in two years at least.”
I didn’t want to tell him the truth, but the look on Damian’s face told me I should. “We were working in a medical clinic and the village was attacked, set on fire. Josh and my entire team were amongst the victims.”
Rex’s grin faded as the news sank in, the woman gasping next to him. “Dead?”
I nodded, the emotion rising once more. “I came here because he talked about this place, about you. I’m sorry. I have nowhere else to go.”
Damian made a sound and I didn’t want to look at him. I couldn’t deal with the fact that he was here, my one link to Will, and that he had let me down.
This had nothing to do with my previous feelings for him. No, this had to do with the fact that he hadn’t faced me after my brother’s, his best friend’s, death.
“Well you can stay here,” the woman finally said, looking up at Rex. “We need more details about who attacked the village. I’m afraid it might be the same people we are trying to eliminate.”
“Yeah, of course,” Rex echoed, clearly struggling to deal with the news I had given him. “Machine Gun, she’s your responsibility to keep safe, alright?”
“Why me?” Damian blurted out.
Rex’s gaze narrowed and he looked over at me, likely seeing the flush on my face. “Is that a problem or something?”
Damian stared at him for what felt like forever and I held my breath, waiting to hear what he was going to say. Surely they didn’t know about our past, what little past we had outside of Will. Besides, why would he talk about me? I was just the kid sister, the one he had rejected the night before they went overseas.
There was nothing between us but hurt.
“No,” he finally said, shaking his head, causing his hair to fall around his face. “It’s not a problem.”
“Good,” Rex said slowly, his eyes still on me. “Come on. We want to show you some pictures to see if you recognize your attackers.”
I drew in a breath and stood, wiping my damp palms on my borrowed jeans. This was not about the past that had been long ago buried. This was about the present, about the deaths of innocent people, my team among them.
I needed to find justice for them all, to bring down the ones who had done this horrific act.
That was my main focus and not Damian Gibson suddenly appearing back in my life.
Without a backward glance, I followed Rex out of the room, glad Damian couldn’t hear my heart beating loudly in my chest.
Lord help me.
Chapter 4
Damian
My hand collided hard with the punching bag, the sound reverberating throughout the semi-quiet room. It’d been hours since my world had been turned upside down by Elisa’s arrival. I had stayed the hell away from her while she and Rex went over the details of the massacre from the village.
What Elisa didn’t know was that I had ridden to the village myself, flanked by two other Jester members so I could see firsthand what she had escaped.
The sight sickened me. The place had been ransacked, anything of value taken by looters loyal to the cartel. The buildings sat in piles of smoldering rubble, the smell of charred flesh heavy in the air. There were bodies everywhere, young and old, just splayed out in the dirt where they had fallen, riddled with bullets.
I couldn’t take it.
Together, we did the best we could, burying the dead in mass graves so the buzzards wouldn’t pick at what was left of their flesh. The Americans we buried together, marking their grave so they could be taken home later and returned to their families. I didn’t like seeing so much blood spilled in the dirt, the frozen looks of horror on their faces.
It brought back too many memories from the past.
I opened my hands in the gloves, wincing as my boxing wraps rubbed on blistered skin. My hands were sore from digging all day, but my mind was forever imprinted by what I’d seen today.
I couldn’t fucking imagine what Elisa had gone through back there, but just the thought of her being in danger had me attacking this bag.
Way past midnight now, I was still punching away in the gym at the clubhouse, my arms sore from the self-inflicted brutal assault on my body. The music would drift through every once and a while from the main room, across the courtyard and to our makeshift gym. I’d never been one for the partying after I joined the club, though I had did have my fair share of drunken nights trying to drown out some memories.
