by Bourne, Lena
“We’ll set up a meeting and offer him his sons back for ransom,” Cross says, finally breaking the long silence that followed me telling them what I learned, and everyone else in the room weighing in on the situation. “We’re gonna play it as though it’s just Ace behind the kidnapping of Griff’s sons.”
Cross’ voice brings me back to alertness. Time was when I could go for three days straight on no sleep, but I’m not a young man anymore, and I doubt I was ever very sharp when running on no sleep. My twisted luck saved me more than once in times like that. Just like it saved us all now.
“Then we’ll take all three of them out, along with whoever comes with Griff to ransom his sons. We’ll pick off the other execs Piston named, one by one. We’re gonna do it so no one knows it’s us, so it could take us awhile,” Cross says in a voice that suggests he neither has nor wants to give that time.
“I see no other way. Do any of you?” he scans the room, his eyes glancing off mine too, even though I’m no kind of decision maker for the club. I prefer it that way. I’m no good making life and death calls. The last one I made resulted in my cousin bleeding out into the dirt in my arms. Which is also the last thing I want to think about right now.
“What if we got as much as we could out of Griff first?” Ice suggests. “Maybe dangle the lives of his sons in exchange for information about the snitching.”
Tense silence follows his words, so thick and dark it’s kinda hard to breathe.
“We don’t have the time to waste,” Cross says. “I tried to do this quietly and efficiently, that’s why I sent Ace in, but this thing is too dangerous to risk that kinda approach any more. Griff and his sons must be removed. The Knights want their revenge too, and we’ll help them get it when the time is right.”
Another silence follows, the tension in it broken with the inevitability of the situation this time. I’m not looking forward to another killing spree. I thought those days were behind me, and I liked that. But I am what I am, and we are what we are. Professional killers. If you can look at it that way, keep the killings separated from your conscience, you live. If not you either drink yourself to death, or make careless mistakes that eventually get you killed.
“I don’t see another way either,” Tank says. “We gotta come down on them ruthless-like. But the more info on the cops and feds they’re reporting to we can get out of them, the better.”
The silence this time is sharp and black, fraught with the danger of taking on an enemy as huge as the feds and local cops working together.
“We better make it fast,” Doc breaks the silence. “One of the sons, the one you hit in the temple, needs to either be in a hospital or for us to finish this job. Otherwise you’ll be trying to ransom his corpse.”
“Tonight, in the desert,” Cross says, looking at me. “You’ll make the call, Ace. All Griff knows is that his sons are missing, not who took them. Tell Griff you’re willing to trade his sons for money because you need it.”
“I doubt the old man’s gonna believe I fought five of his guys and won,” I say. “I mean, if it was just Horse and Piston, he’d buy it, but there were three others.”
“Say the Knights attacked you,” Tank offers. “And that the sons fled and then you overpowered them.”
Cross nods at him slowly. “Yeah, that’ll work. We’ll keep it simple.”
“Now get some sleep, Ace,” he tells me. “We’ll work out the details and come wake you when it’s time to make the call.”
I nod and leave the room before he can change his mind. I think that maybe I fell asleep before I even reached my bunk.
* * *
Stormi
Misti went into the doctor’s office by herself. It’s been almost half an hour now since the door closed behind her. I’m sitting on a wooden bench that lines the walls of this hallway, just next to the door, biting my nails, my hands so sweaty they’d soak my dress if I tried to wipe them. So I don’t. The camera crew wasn’t allowed to film in the hospital, but they tried very hard to convince me to give an interview out in the parking lot. I know Misti would appreciate me doing that, but as soon as we walked in through the sliding doors of the hospital, the familiar smell of old linoleum floor, paint, and bleach assaulted me and flooded my mind with familiar childhood fears. The dread I grew up with, the absolute terror that one of these hospital visits would be the last one, the one my sister doesn’t return home from, crashed against my burning hope that she’ll finally be cured for good. That’s my lifetime hope, the hope I’ve had since I understood how sick my sister really was, the hope that might finally come true today. That last intensified all my fear and turned my mind into such an electric, volatile mess that I didn’t dare hold onto a single thought, afraid I’d lose my mind. I certainly couldn’t speak more than one or two word sentences.
My mother and the pastor went out to the parking lot to give an interview. I’m sitting here wishing my Grandma was still alive. She’d be sitting right beside me, telling me to stop biting my nails, telling me it’s not my fault that Misti’s sick and I’m not, telling me to relax, to not take on more than was my burden, comforting me in that blunt, no nonsense way she had that always worked to make me feel better. We play the hand we’re dealt the best we can. That’s what she’d always say, to me and Misti both. That’s how she lived her life and how she raised us. I think it was her wise, blunt advice to me growing up that prevented me from losing my mind while I was with the Sinners. That and Ace.
I had lost all hope for a better future in the last six months. Lost all hope of ever seeing my sister again. Seeing her get well. Little by little it dried up and flaked away from my soul. Meeting Ace, knowing his kindness and strength, stopped the last of it from falling away. It burns now as it heals, as I regain hope for a better life. For myself. For my sister. Hope for a life worth living. It’s getting sucked away again in Ace’s absence, in the fear that this last chance my sister has will turn out bad.
I wish I’d gone into the doctor’s office with her. This waiting is driving me insane.
I wish Ace would call. I wish he was here to hold me, to anchor me, to show me that I’ve won, that I have all I ever wanted and all I’ll ever need. Did I mess up telling him I was leaving town the night the Sinners caught me? He didn’t like hearing it, I saw that clearly in his face when I told him. Is that why he isn’t calling? I told him how I really felt, I told him I was sorry, I promised him I’d never do it again. But did he believe me? Is he ever gonna call?
My mom walks up to me, handing me a cappuccino in a flimsy paper cup. She takes a seat across from me and starts sipping her coffee.
“You don’t look well, Stormi,” she says. “When was the last time you slept?”
I take a sip of my cappuccino. It’s so hot it scalds my tongue. I hate it when that happens.
My mom stands up, leaves her coffee cup on the bench and comes over, sits down next to me and wraps her arm around my shoulders. The perfume she’s wearing is cloyingly sweet and flowery, and her nails are long and frosty pink, matching her dress.
“I’m happy you’re home, Stormi,” she says, squeezing me tighter as I lean against her. “I was afraid you disappeared because you wanted a life away from your sister and her illness. A life of your own.”
I jerk away from her, spilling about half my cup of scalding coffee in my lap, but I hardly feel it. “You thought that? Of me? How could you think that?”
She bobs her head up and down, the look in her eyes sorrow and shame. “You took care of your sister all your life, and you always put her first. I thought you wanted a break. Like I did.”
I can feel color rising in my cheeks, all the pent up resentment and anger at my mom a balloon swelling in my chest, pushing away all my fears and sadness and doubts until all I know is how pissed off I am at her for abandoning me and my sister when we were six, because she couldn’t handle Misti’s illness. I’m even angrier because she thinks I did the same.
“I’d never do that, Mom, ne
ver,” I hiss at her, trying hard to keep my voice down. “I’m not like you. I was…I was…”
She looks hurt, tears filling her meticulously done-up eyes. That’s one reason I stop talking. The other is the door to the doctor’s office opening. Misti is talking to the doctor in the doorway, thanking him in an excited, breathless voice. Good news? Oh please, let it be!
Mom and I both get up to greet them, and Misti’s smile is bigger than I’ve ever seen it. The smile covers her whole face, makes her light blue eyes and her pale, bluish skin sparkle like diamonds. Mom goes to speak to the doctor, while Misti slips past him and joins me.
“He thinks he can fix my heart. I’m older than his oldest patient so far, but he’s confident I’m a good candidate anyway. He’ll know after he does more tests, but from what he can see in my file it should work. It should work, Stormi!” She takes my hands and squeezes, smiling wide while she tries to regain control of her breathing. “I can have a normal life! Well, more normal than now!”
Her face is the color of a glowing winter sunset, purple and white and blue. Gorgeous.
I’m sure I’m beaming too, I’m sure of it. I just smile back, the too many things I want to say a jumbled mess in my brain. I hug her tighter than I normally would, because of her frailty, but I can do that now, because she’s going to be healed. She’s going to live.
We just stand there like that for a long time. I can hear my mom and the doctor talking, I can hear the pastor walking up and congratulating my mom on the good news. But all that is background noise. All I really hear is my sister’s heartbeat.
“Is this real? Are you finally going to be healed?” I ask, my voice shrill and loud enough to get me a bunch of stares from everyone around. But I don’t care. I’ve been hoping and waiting and praying, while I still did that, for this moment to come since I could understand that my sister was ill. She’s smiling at me and nodding, the tears gathered in her eyes adding a rainbow to the sparkling beauty already in them.
The woman filming the documentary comes over.
“That is such great news, Misti,” she says. “Do you have time to give an interview?”
She looks at the doctor as she asks it, as does Misti.
“I’d like to get her admitted as soon as possible. And keep her as calm as I can. ” The doctor says. He’s a man in his early forties, with a crop of wavy, dirty blonde hair and crows feet wrinkles around his eyes, which grow deeper as he smiles. “But I suppose that’s too much to ask in light of this news, which you’ve all been hoping for. So a few more minutes of basking in it won’t hurt.”
My mom starts talking to him, while Misti agrees to the interview and takes my hand to lead me away with her.
The film crew set their equipment up in the parking lot, in the shade next to the sliding doors, and as I listen to Misti talk about what this news means to her, how the doctors gave her twenty years to live at most when she was born, how she’s already seven years past that, how she lived this last two years in fear that any day could be her last, tears start flowing down my face unchecked, like two cool, salty waterfalls.
She pauses midsentence as she notices me crying, then walks to me, hugs me again and says into the camera. “My twin sister Stormi has always been my rock, my anchor. She never let me give up. I might have given up many times, I wanted to, but she never let me. She was the one who found out about this doctor and this procedure, and she sacrificed so much to get me in for this consult, which could give me the future that no doctor has ever promised me.” She turns to me and wipes my tears away with her palms. “I love you, Stormi. I love you so much. Please don’t cry.”
Of course I start crying harder as I hug her and bury my head in her shoulder. “I love you too,” I mumble in a thick voice amid my sobs, and I don’t know if she heard me, but I think she did, because she pats my back and tells me she knows and that everything will be alright now. I’m crying for all the years I spent in fear for her life, but also for the strong, confident Stormi I lost when I let myself get enslaved by the Sinners. But maybe she’s not gone at all. Maybe she was just hiding.
Then the nurse interrupts the whole scene by bringing out a wheelchair and telling us that Misti needs peace and quiet now for all the exams that need to be done on her heart before the procedure.
The whole thing is suddenly very real to me. This is a very experimental procedure, and it’s never been done on a patient as old as Misti. It’s not an invasive procedure, but the operation will last anywhere from five to ten hours and her heart will have to be slowed down almost all the way for it. There’s no guarantee they’ll be able to start it up again afterwards. No guarantee at all. None.
My heart’s racing so hard my chest hurts.
“You OK?” Misti asks as I walk beside her wheelchair into the hospital holding her hand.
“Yeah,” I say in a croaky voice, but she can see the lie all over my face, I’m sure.
She squeezes my hand harder. “This is what we hoped for, Stormi. A fighting chance. It’s my one and only chance. Whatever happens Know that we did all we could. Know that you did all you could.”
My sister has very pale blue eyes, but they are deep and vast, like the summer dawn sky over the desert. She sees well. She’s always been able to see me perfectly. Sometimes better than I see myself.
I nod, not trusting my voice not to break if I try to speak.
“The doctor would like me to be as calm as possible for the tests and the procedure,” she says apologetically once we reach the elevator in the hospital. “So he thinks I should be alone for it.”
I take her hand and squeeze, nodding again. I wish I could stay with her, be by her side through the night and through the procedure, and I’m sure she knows that.
“I’ll keep you in my thoughts,” I tell her. “I’ll be sending you good energy and good thoughts all night.
I smile weakly and she mirrors it. This is something I’ve told her over and over again since we were small—that I’ll give her as much of my energy as I can, all the time. Then I’d spend hours focusing on sending her that energy. It’s not actually something I can do, but I’ve never stopped trying.
“Thank you for everything,” she says and squeezes my hand again.
Then they wheel her into the elevator and her pale pink little smile and sparkling, diamond eyes are the last thing I see. I want to be with her, I want to talk to her all night, tell her everything I couldn’t on the phone, tell her all about Ace, all about how good he was to me, all about how I’ve never meet anyone like him, how he protected me and how he’ll keep us both safe from now on.
But the doctor’s right. All that would make her too excited, and her heart needs to be calm for the procedure to succeed.
* * *
Ace
I called Griff at four PM. The almost liquid heat of the afternoon sun beating against my neck wasn’t effected at all by the hot desert wind that blew as we spoke. He had a bunch of questions and curses for me, but I didn’t respond and didn’t answer any of his questions, just told him where to meet me and at what time. Midnight. In the desert where Horse and Piston planned to kill and bury Stormi and me. Griff knew the place just fine, making me wonder how many bodies he’d already buried there. I didn’t ask. I told him to come alone. He said he will.
It’s almost midnight now. The place we chose for this is a basin in the desert, surrounded by hills on which the best sharpshooters from among my brothers are lying in wait, night vision goggles and sniper rifles at the ready. Down in the basin, in the meeting spot, it’s just me, Cross, Tank, Ice and Scar waiting. Piston and Horse are tied up and gagged in the wide open back of the white van that belongs to the Sinners. Horse can’t sit up, but he’s glaring at me. Piston looks scared and concerned more than anything else. I want this to be over.
“They’re coming now,” Cross informs us after getting off the phone. “Ten of them with Griff in the lead.”
None of us are surprised Griff didn’t follow my in
structions to come alone. Why the fuck would he? He thinks I’m one man, alone in the world and hunted. Arrogant as he is, he’s probably sure he can handle me, get his sons back and kill me. We’re gonna let him think that right up until him and his party ride up to me here.
The Devils spent all day staking out this area and making sure they have all the entrances and exits covered. They also spent all day following Griff and several of the execs around. He didn’t meet with the feds, which doesn’t mean he didn’t call them. But so far, the desert is as quiet as the grave. The grave it will soon become.
Horse had trouble holding onto consciousness all day, and he’s been out cold for most of it. Piston was making a big fuss over the state his brother is in, so we drugged him, but the drugs seem to be wearing off. He’s gagged, but he’s trying to speak despite it.
“As we discussed,” Cross tells me once the rumble of bikes approaching grows loud. The others fall back to stand in the darkness the bright headlights of the van and bikes can’t touch, so I’m the only one visible to the oncoming bikers. Horse and Piston both start struggling in the back of the van, but all they can do is thrash around and grunt so I doubt Griff will understand the warning they’re trying to give him.
Griff could arrive with guns blazing, and I’m very aware of that as the rumble of the bikes grows louder.
He doesn’t though. He’s spearheading the procession of bikers, and rolls to a stop a few feet before me. The others all stop behind him. He casts a glance at the van, his face growing darker as he sees his writhing sons in there, then fixes his glaring, angry eyes on me. Piston and Horse are going crazy trying to get his attention, but he ignores them.
