Judge: Dead Legion MC #2

by Krane, Kasey

  “But it wasn’t,” I said dully and Turbo finally sat down, nuzzling up against my side, and I continued to pet him in long strokes, as if doing so would allow me to put the world back together. As if continuing to pet Turbo make everything okay.

  “I fell in love with the Dead Legion back when James was in charge,” I told Turbo, my voice flat. There was no emotion left in my world - Carmen had taken it out the front door when she’d left me. Left me for good. “Back when we really were clean and all we did was hold picnics and fundraisers and work on our bikes and transport legal cargo across the U.S. Back when we weren’t a 1% club. It just changed so slowly, ever so slowly, that by the end, we were up to our necks in shit that I never wanted to be a part of, and James was long gone, and Ghost was our fearless leader. I never should’ve voted to make him president. Never.

  “But Bishop told me it was for the good of the club; that it was the only way to keep it from splitting up because Ghost never would’ve agreed to be second in command. And he was right, of course, but what good did it do us? Years of illegal deals and worry about getting double-crossed and protecting our turf? Years of watching our backs as we got deeper and deeper into the drug trade, just sure we were going to get killed when our next deal went down?

  “And in the end, we still split up. There are two Dead Legion clubs now, you know. The other club members, the ones who chose to back Ghost? They’ve formed the Outlaws. Bastards. The cops told us that today. No leads on the Sangre, but at least now we know where the Outlaws,” I snarled angrily, “ended up.”

  I closed my eyes and let my head drop and hit the wall with a thud. Turbo whined again and sat up, giving me a few half-hearted licks on the chin.

  “She may never come back, boy. It may be you and me. And if you eat the leg off my favorite chair, I’d deserve that, too. Because I’ve destroyed the trust of the one woman I’ve ever loved.

  “And she’s never, ever going to forgive me.”

  And I sat on the floor and stared at the wall and the emptiness of the rest of my life laid before me and I had nothing left in me to care about it.

  About anything.

  23

  Carmen

  I awoke to sounds of pans banging around in the kitchen. At my groan, Turbo slowly got up and walked over, nudging my hand, begging for a petting. He must’ve spent the night on the living room floor, next to my feet, on the floor.

  “Poor boy,” I whispered, scratching him behind the ears. “You usually sleep on the foot of the bed. All night long on hardwood floors must’ve been hard on your bones.” He whined and I smiled at him sadly. “You’re not going to like how today goes. Sorry, Turbo.” With a final pat on the head, swung my legs off the couch and sat up, my head pounding. I felt like I had over-indulged on wine, but I hadn’t touched a drop. I cradled my head in my hands for a moment, trying to get my brain to steady.

  Finally, I stood up and shuffled into the kitchen, where Judge was cooking breakfast. The silence between us was hard. Frosty. I couldn’t bear to look at him. Couldn’t bear to see his naked chest, a towel slung over his shoulder. Avoiding even looking in his general direction, I popped a piece of bread into the toaster.

  As I waited, ever so impatiently, for the goddamn piece of toast to just pop up already, he finally spoke. “You want some breakfast?”

  “No, thank you,” I said, and the silence dropped between us again, as thick and impenetrable as a concrete slab. When the toast finally - finally - popped up, I pulled it out and munched on the dry bread as I left the kitchen. I couldn’t bear to spend another moment in the kitchen with him. With the man who’d broken my heart and then goddamn stomped on it.

  I wandered back into the living room and sat on the couch. As I ate my way through the stupidly dry bread, wishing I had poured myself a cup of coffee while I was in the kitchen but not wanting to go back in now, not when I’d actually managed to get out of it in one piece. I stared at the wall, unsure of what to do with myself.

  The Sangre still had not been caught. The girls - Maggie - were still out there with those jackasses, being terrorized every moment of the day. The Sangre would still be after me. I had no job - the school had closed down after the kidnapping, of course; no parent wanted to send their child to a school that “allowed” gang members to kidnap their kids.

  I supposed I should go down there and pack up, but then what? I had some friends that I could go crash with, but then I would be putting them in danger.

  I had thought the night before that everything would look better in the morning. As I managed to swallow the last bite of the toast, I decided that I was an idiot for thinking so, because fucking nothing looked better this morning.

  I heard the back door of the house open and close, and then Judge’s bike tear out of the driveway. I took a deep breath, some of the tension easing from my shoulders, while at the same time, trying not to cry. He’d left and hadn’t said anything and wasn’t I happy that he hadn’t tried to talk to me? Except I didn’t feel real happy. I mostly just felt utterly, utterly miserable.

  I shuffled into the kitchen and poured myself a cup of black joe, and then back into the living room to sit again.

  Quiet.

  Even Turbo had gone to sleep in the corner, apparently deciding that there was little chance of getting petted anytime soon.

  Painfully quiet.

  Finally, I turned on the TV, hoping to watch some news that didn’t include me. Even watching a report on the stock market would be better than a non-news story about how there was no news in the kidnapping case.

  But as the local TV station, Channel 7, flicked into view, I found that it was a new news day.

  And the report had nothing to do with the stock market.

  “—the police are saying that the Catholic schoolgirl showed up this morning at a local McDonalds, where an employee figured out who she was and called the authorities. The employee fed her a Happy Meal while waiting for the police to show up.

  “As soon as the family can be contacted, the police will be releasing the student’s name to the public. So far, no word on whether the child can pinpoint where she’s been held.”

  I sat on the edge of the couch, my body rigid.

  Was it Maggie? Just a quick shot of her face would tell me whether it was her or not. I just needed to know. Was Maggie safe? She’d always wanted to try McD’s, even though I had discouraged her, saying that there was much better food in America than McDonalds. But Maggie had wanted a Big Mac with cheese and a bedroom with pink curtains and a refrigerator with milk. She’d wanted to see the Statue of Liberty.

  She’d wanted so little, but for an foster kid she’d wanted so much.

  Really, Maggie had just wanted someone to love her.

  My chest got tight and my eyes burned and I stared at the TV, willing them to show me Maggie’s gap-toothed smile, her long straight hair swinging in the wind.

  “An update on the kidnapping case,” the news anchor said and I sat up and I didn’t breathe and I just stared at the screen.

  “The parents of the student who walked into the McDonald have been contacted,” no, no, no, no, no parents, Maggie has no parents, “and so the police have been given permission to release her name and picture to the public.

  “Jasmine Garcia, age nine, was one of the 30 Catholic schoolgirls kidnapped by the notorious Sangre—”

  But I couldn’t hear anymore.

  I fell apart.

  And the tears came.

  And I cried. I cried so hard I couldn’t breathe.

  I felt so terrible - such a monstrous human being - because the only thing I had wanted in the world was for it to be Maggie on that TV screen and the fact that I had cared so much that it was Maggie and that I wasn’t happy for Jasmine and her family made me a bad person. I should be happy because Jasmine had been a fine student. Quiet. Studious. And she’d always behaved and smiled politely and I didn’t love her like I loved Maggie and I knew I should but oh God…

 
I was bent over on the couch, crying, the sobs tearing through me and I couldn’t breathe and I didn’t know what to do. Or where to go. Or why I should even care anymore.

  Everything was gone.

  Even Turbo sat in the corner and whined, afraid of me in that moment and I didn’t blame him. I fucking couldn’t blame him at all.

  24

  Judge

  I stood quietly in the doorway to the living room, my arrival back to the house having gone completely unnoticed by my Carmen.

  Except, she wasn’t my Carmen any longer, was she? She had made that oh-so-clear.

  I stood there quietly, staring, as she cried, finally goddamned cried and she let it out, all of it, and I wanted nothing more in the world than to hold her but I knew she didn’t want me. I knew that she blamed me for this, and I knew that she was right.

  Goddamn motherfucking right.

  On TV, the news anchor prattled on but over my shoulder, in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, was a map with a large dot labeled “Playas.” I stared at the screen in surprise. Playas was about 20 minutes away; a small town off the main corridors that went through New Mexico, a town that had shrunk after the mines around it closed, and shriveled up into almost nothing when the freeway passed it by.

  Mines…

  It was only minutes away from an old mine that my family had owned, until the copper had played out and we’d closed it. It’d been several decades and no one probably even remembered it…except for me.

  What if the Sangre had taken the girls to the mine to hide? What if they’d decided to take them there while making arrangements with the buyers? It was the perfect hideout - remote, secluded, easy to defend. Only one paved road in or out.

  If those goddamn motherfuckers are using my family’s mine to hide those girls away, I swear to God, I’ll kill all of them, one by one, with my bare hands. I’ll squeeze the life outta them.

  I headed to my office, grabbed my bullet-proof vest, stripped off my cut, then put the vest on, adjusting the straps after Carmen’s use. Then the cut went back on and I grabbed my pack and began slinging ammo and guns into it. I had to go see. I had to go take them down.

  I had to prove to Carmen that I wasn’t Bishop’s lapdog.

  Finished, I walked back out into the main hallway, past the living room and I could hear Carmen sobbing, still sobbing, the first time she’d cried since she’d been kidnapped and I wanted so fucking badly to pull her into my arms and tell her it was all going to be okay, but much better than that would be to prove it to her.

  I backed my bike out of the driveway and then roared down the road, anger throbbing inside me in time with the rumble of my engine.

  How dare they? How dare they attack my Carmen and then take those girls to my family’s mine? If they’re there, I’m gonna pick them off, one at a time. I’m gonna make them wish they never lived. I’m gonna make them feel the terror that those girls have been feeling.

  I gunned the engine and sped down the road, relieved to finally be doing something. I’d gone for a ride that morning to clear my head but it hadn’t worked like it normally did. What could I do? How could I make things better? I’d had nothing to offer Carmen, no way to make up for my fuck-ups.

  Until now.

  With a start, I realized that I was almost to the mining entrance. The heat waves danced off the concrete, distorting the air around me. It gave the world a bit of that carnival-ride vibe, where everything was just a little bit off.

  And then the bullets started raining down on me.

  Well, I found the Sangre.

  Swerving off the road, I dove off my bike and into the sand and gravel, tearing up my left forearm on the unforgiving ground, the bike spinning out and off to the side. I crouched in the dirt behind a large rock formation and listened as the bullets popped and ricocheted around me. Finally, silence, and then a heavily accented voice spoke, taunting me.

  “You think you just ride up and take girls away? You grow big and dumb in America. I hear you coming for long time. You bike gives you away.

  “We got lots water and food. Do you have lots? Or you go to die in the heat? You puta madre, you just met your maker.” His laughter echoed and I closed my eyes, slumping against the rock.

  Twice. Twice I had done this - Rushed off without thinking. Rushed off to save Carmen in the hospital, Rushed off to save the students here at the mine. What the fuck had I been thinking? Had I honestly thought I could just ride up and save 30 little girls singlehandedly? I had been blinded by the need to do something, to prove to Carmen that I wasn’t a lapdog. I believed that I could redeem myself in her eyes, if I just played the part of a hero.

  But instead, I had just made matters worse. Again.

  Fuck, shit, piss, damn! I have really done it now. Think, Judge, think.

  The pack of guns had thankfully stayed on my back through the crash. I could defend myself if I could only see what was coming for me, but stuck as I was with my back to the boulder, facing away from the mine entrance, I had no way of knowing how many Sangre there were or where they would be coming from.

  I need more than one set of eyes. I should’ve at least told Bishop where I was going. I should’ve asked him and the rest of the MC for help.

  The sudden realization that no one knew I was there gripped me. I knew if I didn’t tell someone where I was, what I was doing, or what I had found, no one would ever think to look in Playas for me. Certainly, no one would follow the old mining road up into the mountains to check out my family’s mine that hadn’t been worked in 30 years.

  Fuck, I’ve worked really hard just to become coyote food.

  I patted my pockets quietly while listening for oncoming footsteps.

  “You still there, esé?” The voice called from a distance but closer than before. “Give up now and I only kill you. Make me come up there and I make it hurt, puta madre.”

  I lifted my hips off the ground straightening my leg so that I could free the phone from my pocket. The screen was cracked but not so bad I couldn’t make it work

  Call or text?

  I only debated the point for a second before calling. The Sangre knew exactly where I was. There was no point in trying to stay quiet.

  I could barely make out the ringing on the other end of the line over my beating heart.

  Pick up, pick up, pick up.

  “Where the fuck are you!” Bishop’s angry voice sounded like a gift from the gods.

  “I’m at that old mine just outside of Playas. The one my family closed years ago. The Sangre are here, but they have me pinned down. You’ve gotta get up here.”

  I knew I was pleading, but didn’t care. I could act calm, cool, and collected later. My life and anything after this moment rested on making this foolhardy stunt pay off. I needed my club.

  I could hear Bishop hollering in the background to the members to get going - he must be at the clubhouse, thank God - and then he came back on the line.

  “How many are there?”

  “I don’t know!” I said. “I’m stuck behind this boulder. They've got me pinned down. You’ve got to bring everything you have - based on the number of bullets coming my way; I think it may be the whole gang.”

  “Fuck! When this whole thing is over, you’re going to explain to me how you ended up at that mine without calling for backup or even telling me you were going.”

  “If I live through it, I’d be happy to tell you all about it.”

  “Well, do your best to stay alive, will ya?” Without another word, Bishop hung up, and I shoved my phone back into my pocket.

  I leaned against the rock, listening for movement. Where the fuck were the Sangre? I couldn’t have them sneaking up on me, but I also couldn’t pop my head out and take a look. I held my breath, trying to listen in the too-still air for something.

  Goddammit, it’d been too quiet for too long - it was making me more nervous than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. I reached into the small of my back and pulle
d out my trusty Desert Eagle. It was time to cause a distraction.

  I reached around the edge of the boulder and let off a clean six shots in the general direction of the mine’s entrance. A cry told me that I had either shot someone or a ricochet had done the job for me. Although I considered myself a fair shot, even I couldn’t hit something I couldn’t see, so I figured it was a damn good bet that it had been a ricochet that had gotten the Sangre.

  I could only hope that the Sangre’ greediness would make them choose to protect the girls rather than leaving them in the line of fire up at the front of the mine. Surely the Sangre would have the students hidden in the back of the mine shaft, around the corner from the main area, as a way of protecting their investment, right?

  I listened for footsteps, my heart thudding in my chest. How long had I been crouched there, hiding? Time had ceased to have meaning for me.

  “Come out, esé, and fight like real man,” Jesus called out. “Do not die like little child, hiding from the men.”

  Gunfire broke out again and I peered around the corner of the boulder, finally risking putting my head in view of the front entrance. I could see the members then - fanned out in a half circle, they’d taken advantage of the Sangre concentration on the road into the mine and had instead chosen to attack from the sides. Unlike me, they must’ve actually turned their motors off and walked up to the mine.

  Thank.

  Fucking.

  God.

  Pulling a Mac-9 out of my pack, I began picking off the Sangre in sight, one by one. The gunfire and the heat of the day all faded away to nothingness - there was nothing to look at or think about except which Sangre was going to die next. A part of me wished that I could make them suffer nice and slow before dispatching their souls to hell, but I knew that it was more important to get the girls out of harm’s way.

  Finally, there was no more returning fire from the Sangre and after waiting an interminable period of time, I heard a sharp whistle from Bishop. The men started advancing on the mine entrance, guns trained at the gaping darkness, ready.