by Zahra Girard
“We should take the back entrance,” Trips says. “Out through the loading bay. It’s narrow and we’ll need to watch out for all the debris, but it should be safe. We’ll hit the access road outside of their search radius.”
“Hey, man, you really should let me look at that,” the woman says. “You need help. Please, I know what I’m talking about.”
“What I need is for you is to shut your mouth and get on my damn bike,” I growl. “Because no matter what you think, you’re my hostage. You can other come with me willingly, or I can tie your hot ass to my fucking back seat. And you should know, I fucking suck at knots, so there’s a damn good chance you’ll spring loose and fall while we’re going eighty-miles-an-hour. Now, what’ll it be, darlin’?”
With eyes as wide as dinner plates, she climbs onto the back of my bike.
“Thought so,” I mutter.
The three of us kick our bikes into gear and roar the hell out of there, barreling out the back loading bay entrance and into the alley.
It’s clear to me the second that we get into that back alley that something is seriously wrong; my bike feels like a wild animal between my legs and keeping up with Trips and Rusty gets more difficult by the second. Every turn sends bloody fire bursting up my shoulder and the vibration of the hundreds of horses between my legs makes my vision swim. In the dark and chaos of those back alleys and side roads, I lose sight of my brothers.
It’s just me and her now.
I breathe deep. Try to collect myself. Try to ignore the pain in my shoulder and the blood dripping down my arm. But it’s no use.
I’m not going to make it far. Definitely not back to the Twisted Devils clubhouse, which sits far on the other side of town.
By instinct — because thinking takes too much blood — I take a few corners and crank the accelerator with knuckles that have turned white from strain and blood loss.
There’s only one safe place near here.
My bike wobbles and it takes everything I have to right it again.
Just a few more blocks.
Familiar shapes, houses that shimmer like mirages, take form in my vision. Behind me, the woman screams at me to stop, that I need to rest, and she makes the damned-foolish offer to take over driving.
As if I’d let her.
Not on my bike.
But then, as I slow down in front of a house that looks familiar, I lose all control.
The world wobbles.
Or maybe it’s just me.
She screams.
She jumps.
She lands safe and sound.
I’d be impressed, if I weren’t crashing into the pavement.
And if the world hadn’t gone dark.
Chapter Two
Samantha
“What in the almighty hell is going on out here?”
An old woman’s voice is calling at me from the front door of the house we’ve crashed in front of. It’s wobbly — the way voices get when time finally catches up to the vocal chords — but still full of fire. And she’s slurring.
I look from the man, who’s passed out on the pavement in front of me, to the old woman. Most people would feel fear in my situation — and I’m sure I’ll feel that way later — but my instincts as an ER nurse are kicking in and pushing away every bit of fear and doubt in my mind. All I care about is assessing the man’s injuries and getting him somewhere where he can receive proper medical attention. Because he sure as hell needs it.
“You need to call 911. This man is injured and he needs an ambulance.”
She doesn’t move. “What happened?”
“There’s no time for that. This man took a bullet to the shoulder, and he’s probably got a concussion. We need to get him to a hospital.”
“No, no hospital.”
I blink, confused.
Maybe she thinks I mean take her to the hospital? It is late, and I can’t be sure what mental state she’s in. Maybe she’s sundowning.
“Not you. Him. We need to get him to a hospital.”
“I heard you the first time, dear. And, like I said before, no fucking hospitals.”
She steps forward. The light from her porch lamp shimmers on the dark steel of a small pistol clenched in her gnarled hand.
I take a step back. “Why do you have a gun?”
“Because it’s one in the morning, there’s two strangers in my driveway — one of whom is bleeding like a son of a bitch — and that’s not the kind of thing you fuck around with.”
Her voice might waver a bit from old age, but her hand doesn’t shake one bit holding that pistol. She’s got it aimed right at me.
“Are you going to shoot me?”
She comes closer. “If you act stupid, dear, then yes, I probably will shoot you. Don’t worry too much, this is a Kel-Tec PMR-30. It’s a .22. It’s got enough stopping power to take down a raccoon, but that’s about it. My wrists can’t take much more recoil than that. So, though I might shoot you, you won’t die right away.”
Maybe she intends that to sound reassuring, but it doesn’t do a single thing for me. Still, I can’t spend my time worrying about this old woman when there’s a man who needs considerable medical attention lying face-down on the pavement in front of me. Doing my best to forget about the old woman and her gun, I walk forward and I carefully flip the man over. Then, like I’ve done countless times before, I slide aside his leather cut and, with a grunt, rip open his shirt to assess his wound.
“That hardheaded motherfucker,” the old woman hisses. “Eli?”
I don’t take my eyes off my patient. And I hardly notice the muscles and tattoos that make his chest look like some kind of expressionist painting on the themes of power and savagery. The bullet wound is a through and through and, though the bleeding situation isn’t exactly what I’d call good, it’s much better than it could’ve been.
Still, he needs a doctor. That much is clear.
“You know this man?”
“You could say that. He’s my grandson.”
I’m not surprised that the man who just minutes ago was hurling Molotov cocktails in a seedy underground casino would have a grandmother who waves a pistol around in the middle of the night while she’s three sheets to the wind.
The crazy apple doesn’t fall far from the crazy tree.
“Well, your grandson will be in terrible shape unless I can get him to a hospital,” I say.
“What happened to him?” She says.
“He got shot. What does it look like?”
“Young lady, let me remind you of a few things: first, I have a gun and no compunction against using it and, second: you’re in a neighborhood that’s occupied by people who are my age or older. People who don’t have the best hearing. People who probably wouldn’t even wake up if I were to put a dozen bullets in you. So I suggest you not get smart with me.”
“Fine. He and a couple other guys in motorcycles got in a shootout with these other guys. I don’t know why, I just know that one minute I was minding my business and then the next he was grabbing me as some kind of hostage or something and taking me with him on his bike. Then, well, we wound up here and he crashed because he has a serious wound and needs to go to a hospital.” I say. I’m working as I’m talking to her, fashioning a bandage out of the sleeve of my blouse and applying firm pressure to his wound.
“That’s better. Now, you look like you have some training. Is that correct?”
I’m not even looking at her, but I can feel the gun pointed at the back of my head.
“Yes. I’m a nurse in the ER at St. Paul’s Hospital.”
“Then, Florence Nightingale, you will help me get my grandson inside and you’re not going anywhere until we’ve got him stitched up.”
“We need supplies. The kind you get a hospital. I need sutures and stitches and antibiotics and a whole load of other things. Oh, and we need a doctor.”
She doesn’t blink.
“Florence, I’m a seventy-year-old woman. I’ve had ever
y kind of sickness and injury in the book, not to mention the fair share of trouble that my husband and I got into in our younger days; I’ve got enough shit in my medicine cabinet to make whoever runs your hospital stockroom wet with jealousy. Now, come on, we’re going to grab my old wheelchair and get my grandson inside where you can work on him in peace. Well, it’s that or I can just shoot you and figure shit out on my own. Eli’s tough, he might make it even if you’re dead. Now, will you help?”
There’s nothing else I can say but: “Yes, ma’am.”
She nods, once, self-assuredly. “I thought so.”
Half-a-minute later, I’m lifting the burly and bloody body of a biker by myself as the old woman watches me intently, her gun aimed right at my chest.
Grunting, sweating, swearing, I get him halfway into the chair.
“You’re not going to help?” I say.
“I’m an old woman,” she says. “I’m sure you can handle this just fine. Besides, you’ve got the best motivation in the world.”
I stop and look at her, keeping my hands on the biker’s body to hold him in place. I’m too tired to do this a second time if he should fall.
“What’s that? You think I need more motivation? Because what I care about here is saving your grandson’s life. It doesn’t matter that he nearly got me killed — helping him is the right thing to do. So that’s what I’m going to do.”
The old woman chuckles a little and makes a circular motion with her gun. “I’m glad you’re so dedicated, dear, but that isn’t what I was talking about. It’s not just his life that’s on the line tonight.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you don’t save my grandson, I will kill you.”
Chapter Three
Razor
It feels like there’s a wrecking ball resting on my shoulders and my body aches and throbs like I’ve been strapped behind a Harley Fat Boy and dragged a hundred miles.
When I open my eyes, the light is a thousand tiny needles piercing into my brain.
I try to move. Something metal clatters to my right and there’s a weird tugging sensation in my arm.
“Eli, calm the fuck down and sit back.”
I blink a few times. The pain from the light eases and I look in the voice's direction. It’s familiar, but with the way my head is throbbing, I don’t trust any of my senses. I squint until I can make out a shape.
“Nana?” I say.
“Yes, Eli?”
So much about last night is a blank; I remember being outside that abandoned tavern, ready to collect the club’s due and deliver a little vengeance to those bastards for thinking they could even cross the MC, and then shit started going haywire and everything else is an adrenaline-smudged mess of half-memories and vague impressions. Except for her. That woman I stole stands out in the mess of my memory like a blazing comet in the midnight sky.
“What the fuck happened?”
“You showed me, yet again, that you have a hell of a knack for bringing women home in the absolute worst way,” she says dryly. “You were shot. You showed up in my driveway, crashed your bike, and passed out on the pavement. Then Florence Nightingale and I saved your life. You’re welcome.”
So that’s her name.
“And this?” I say, pointing at the IV stuck in my arm. My nana’s always had plenty of medical shit around — I’m sure she steals a little something every time she visits the doctor’s office — but an IV rig is too big of a thing for her to slip into her purse.
“Stitch put it in a while ago. Florence said you needed a lot of things owing to the fact that you got yourself shot and, after she stitched you up and got you stable, I had her make me a list. Then, once it was a decent hour, I called Stitch over here to take care of the rest.”
The throbbing in my head increases. “You called the club?”
“Of course. I wasn’t going to let you die. And besides, they should know everything that’s happened. It’s a damn rare occurrence when one of their own gets shot. Though it is not a damned rare occurrence for you to do something stupid. You’ve got to be more careful, dear.”
“You should’ve waited. I would’ve been fine.”
“She didn’t seem to think so. She kept urging me to bring you to the hospital. Not to mention that it would’ve been a long time to wait — you’ve been asleep nearly a full day.”
I sit up right away. And pay the price in pain. “A whole day?”
“About that long, yes. You took a bullet and you’ve got a concussion. Stitch said that you were lucky that the bullet didn’t knick anything vital — you should be recovered from that soon enough — but you still need to take it easy for a while. You got worked over last night. What were you up to that was so important you had to get shot doing it?”
The pieces of the other night’s memories are slowly assembling themselves in my brain. But there’s only one thing that matters to me: finding that woman. She was so out of place at that underground casino that there has to be more to her than meets the eye.
“Where is she? The woman I brought here. Florence.”
“I let her go after she got you stable. It was early — or late depending on how you count the time — and I was tired. I sure as hell wasn’t going to stay up all night keeping watch over her.”
“You let her go?”
“Yes. What was she to me? I let her go and then went back to bed.”
“Do you at least know where she went? If she was able to fix me up, she’s got to be a doctor or a nurse, right?”
“She is. She works in the Emergency Room at St. Paul’s.”
“She does more than that, nana. She was there last night. In the middle of the action, with whoever the hell it was that was in charge of the damn thing. I’ve got to go see her and find out what she knows.”
“I know she was there, dear. I knew she was hiding something the second she opened her mouth. I knew you wouldn’t have taken her unless you had good reason; she’s not your type, for one thing — she’s not blond and she doesn’t act like her parents named her after a confection or a mineral. But all of us — Stitch, me, and that lying nurse — agree that you need rest. You’re not going anywhere. Go back to sleep.”
I grab hold of the IV stand and use it to prop myself up.
My head is swimming a little less and I shake even more of the cobwebs clear. I’m got adrenaline in my veins and I’m determined to track this woman down. Someone is threatening my club’s territory, and it’s up to me to figure out who the hell they are and wipe them out.
“I need to go talk to her. Find out who the fuck those bastards were last night. They weren’t some usual nobodies trying to make a quick buck. They were well-armed. Professional. The club needs to know.”
“Grandson, unless you want the memory of having your ass handed to you by your elderly grandmother seared into your brain, you will sit back down and rest. You’re here at least until tomorrow.”
For a second, I think about challenging her, but then my vision gets blurry and I realize that, in this moment, she probably could kick my ass.
Resigned, I sit back on the couch and stretch out.
“Fine.”
* * * * *
“There’s the conquering hero, returned from the mighty sleepover at his grandmother’s house. How’s the head, Razor?” Mack, the MC’s enforcer, says as he gently raps me on the back of my skull.
I wince, but not nearly as much as I would’ve winced yesterday. A load of bed rest has turned the torrent of throbbing pain in my head into a dull ache.
It’s bright and early in the clubhouse. The morning light filters through the window a muted orange-gold, and the air is redolent with the smell of extra-dark coffee. It’s just Mack and me in here; most of the club is at the auto shop and trucking company that our club president, Stone, owns. Or they’re at home sleeping — and thankful they don’t have to get up at the ass-early hours of the day to work in the shop.
“My head was doing better until I
heard your fucking Irish accent. You ever think that the reason your people might be such alcoholics is that they have to listen to each other all the time?”
“Good to see you’re feeling better, brother,” Mack says, grinning.
“Yeah. Concussion isn’t as bad as yesterday and the shot I took was a lucky one. In and out. I still need some rest, but I’ll be ready for action soon enough.”
“How long until you can out-muscle your grandmother?”
“Twenty-six years and it still hasn’t happened. Maybe I’ll manage the day after she’s in the ground.”
Mack laughs. “Sounds about right. Stone’s looking for you, you know.”
“I figured.”
“He’s in back. Now’s probably the time to catch him — he brought the paper and a cup of coffee back there about ten minutes ago. He’s caffeinated and he’ll just be getting into the day’s crossword. You know that’s his happy spot.”
“Thanks, Mack.”
“You want a drink before you head back there, lad? Something to take the edge off your head?”
“No, thanks,” I say.
I pour myself a coffee from the burbling pot behind the bar and head to the back hallway leading to Stone’s office. As soon as the hallway door shuts behind me, it’s like I’ve stepped into a zone of pure silence; Stone’s had all these hallway doors sound-insulated to keep things extra quiet in the mornings. The man likes his silence and contemplation.
I stop for a second and sip my too-hot coffee while I enjoy the break from the noise. With my head pounding the way it is, this silence is pure gold.
But, after a minute, I get moving. I know he’s expecting me and only an idiot keeps Stone waiting.
Stone’s office is a simple space; wood walls, a big wood desk, a bookshelf filled with a mix of club ledgers and books on subjects like auto repair and hiking. On his desk and facing towards him are several framed photos of him and his family: his wife, Tricia, and his adopted daughter, Adella.
