by Christa Wick
Scoping the clinic's parking lot and street for security cameras, I kept silent. With a club nickname of Hatchet, Burch was a bona fide sociopath. Still an outsider to the group, I had seen him return to the clubhouse covered in blood, some of it from the dogs the club fought, some of it from the human cage matches that were rumored to occur.
"You!" he shouted, a thick finger poking in my direction. "You get that bitch's name?"
"Badge was stuffed in her pocket," I answered, voice terse as I tried to keep my rage from boiling up. That Hatchet didn't already have Delia's name was the one thing keeping him alive.
Shoving the phone in his jacket, Hatchet started his motorcycle. "Gotta round up some brothers, knock their heads together, then get their asses out here to follow the bitch home and find out who she is."
I stared, seemingly bored while my sphincter crawled up my esophagus. Delia was more than an innocent civilian. She was family now. There was a time I hoped she might be something more. But she had a husband then, one she loved dearly. With all I had done in the last few years, she no longer considered me a friend.
Deep down, I was pretty certain she had grown to hate me.
"You're coming with me," Hatchet growled. "About time you did more than hang around the fucking club house."
Laughing to piss the man off, I blew him a kiss and batted my lashes in his direction.
"Baby, I thought you'd never ask."
3
Delia
Finished with my next patient, I tiptoed to the employee locker room. Finding myself alone, I sank onto an empty bench in front of the lockers and buried my face in my hands.
Emerson had left the clinic about an hour earlier, but I couldn't stop thinking about the man. Seeing him had been a gut punch that really slammed home the last three years since he and Maddy had left the Boston field office for Montana.
Feeling a fast approaching onslaught of tears, I pulled my hands from my face and balled them into fists. I wanted to be angry, but was too damn exhausted.
I could feel every ounce of the weight I carried. Not the real weight that clung to my bones in curves touched only by my own hands for far too long. It was a metaphorical weight pushing down at me. Mother, widow, a nearly friendless woman living in a new state. A woman trying to start over professionally and terrified every morning I woke up that there would be some setback with my son that would leave me starting over again and again.
"I can do this," I told myself, fists balling tighter until I could feel the bite of the nails I had cut short at the start of clinicals.
Tears still threatened. I pawed clumsily at my face as the door swung open and the clinic's senior nurse entered.
"You okay, sweetie?" Janine asked.
A Registered Nurse for the better part of four decades, Janine called everyone "sweetie" unless they were a doctor or a jerk. She was polite, firm, with flashes of true caring when she let her professional mask slip. She was everything I expected a career nurse to be—everything I wanted to be when I finished my degree.
"Just worried I didn't handle myself well enough with this morning's patient."
It was a lie, but I could hardly spill the details of my existential crisis to Janine. No doubt the woman would lend a sympathetic ear, but I didn't want Janine's sympathy, just her approval and respect for the job I was doing.
She flapped her hand. "Doc Franklin said you were a rock. I've been at this a long time and I can see that part of the reason you're good at the job is that you’re hard on yourself."
Coming over to the bench, she offered a sad smile.
"I wish that's all I had to tell you, sweetie, but I don't think your day is going to get better." Extending her arm, she gestured at the door. "There was a man at the front desk asking for you. Wouldn't give his name. Tall, muscular redhead. I won't embarrass myself telling you how damn sexy he is."
"Sounds like my brother-in-law, Sutton." I jumped to my feet, my stomach flashing hard as I mentioned his name. "What did he say? Has someone been hurt?"
"Calm down, sweetie." Janine wrapped her hands around my shoulders and gave a gentle squeeze before she took a few steps back. "He said there’s a family emergency and you need to leave with him now."
Family…
Sutton came from a large clan, but he wouldn't show up at the clinic on their account. Heck, the Turks practically owned their own emergency care facility in Willow Gap. And, despite them proving to be so very kind and generous, I knew I existed only along the perimeter of their world. So Sutton had to be there because something had happened to my son Caiden or Maddy—or to the baby growing inside Maddy's womb.
The ground beneath my feet went soft. Janine rushed forward, arms maneuvering to catch me. I waved away the assistance, the woman's certainty that I was about to kiss the floor eliciting a rough laugh.
"I'm okay," I said. "But I definitely prefer clinic emergencies."
She chuckled. "Pretty sure we all do, sweetie. But your brother-in-law didn't look distraught, just intense. He said he would be waiting for you outside the staff door. Let me go with you just so I know he really is your relative. After those characters we had this morning, I'm not trusting anyone for a few days…or months, maybe."
"Agreed," I said as I jerked the door open and stepped into the hall.
With Janine following close behind, I hurried toward the exit, heart beating maniacally against my ribcage. Even though the woman didn't think Sutton looked distraught, she didn't know him. He was eerily calm under pressure. Only thirty-years-old, he had already endured more than most people would in their entire lives. Last year, it was a pair of hungry cougars. Before that, while still in the Army, he had parachuted into enemy territory and been shot down. More heartbreaking was the loss of his father and only sister in the same terrible accident that defined so much of his family's recent past.
My whole world could be falling apart at that exact moment and I wasn't sure the strain would show on Sutton's face.
Reaching the staff exit, I swiped my badge and threw open the heavy metal door. Sutton stood a few feet beyond its arc. His truck was just behind him, the engine running.
"Caiden?" I blurted my son's name. The boy was thirteen and had Asperger Syndrome. Sutton was one of my emergency contacts with the school. But Caiden wasn't in the truck and someone should have called if he had experienced a meltdown in class.
"He's fine." Sutton opened the passenger door. "I'll explain on the way."
"Oh, your purse!" Janine said, her touch lighting upon my arm.
I changed directions.
"Right, I keep it in my trunk, I'll—"
Grabbing me, Sutton steered me toward the open passenger door.
"I really need to collect you right now."
"Tell me before I go crazy," I snapped.
Janine stepped forward, her body wedged between me and Sutton. Her spine straightened, only her head tilting back so she could study his face.
All his tight-lipped mystery had turned the woman suspicious again.
"You look like a hard man," she said after a few seconds of inspection. "But not the kind that hurts women."
He grunted.
"I'm the one who hurts men like that."
Something in his gaze must have convinced Janine. She nodded at me, gave me a gentle push. "Best get moving. I'll log you out and square it with Doc Franklin."
"Thank you!"
I jumped into the truck's cab, my impulse to hug the woman smothered by the stern line of Sutton's mouth and the way his muscles remained coiled. By the time I finished pulling the seatbelt across my torso, he was behind the wheel, slapping the stick shift into drive.
"You're the family emergency," he explained as we pulled away from the clinic's parking lot. "Maddy got a message from Emerson that said to 'acquire Mays' immediately."
My mouth dropped open. I snapped it shut.
"Caiden—"
"Is also a Mays," he cut in. "Maddy is en route to pick him up. She will send a
n agent for your car."
I nodded, my heart's heavy, erratic pace calming now that I knew my son was protected. My mind cleared a little from the earlier panic.
"Emerson must have meant me. He was in the clinic today…undercover, I guess. He was with this really awful man who needed stitches."
Sutton's grip tightened on the steering wheel.
"Did you out Emerson?"
"No," I answered, then reconsidered. "I don't think I did. How do we know he's okay?"
Merging onto the highway, Sutton answered.
"When he shows us he's still alive."
4
Emerson
Sitting in the clubhouse that evening, I bounced a tennis ball against the side of a stolen vending machine. The machine was plugged in, its selection buttons taped over and covered with black Sharpie to indicate beer brands instead of soft drinks. The beer was free, a pallet's worth wheeled in weekly as part of the protection money the local businessmen paid to keep the bikers from busting up their convenience stores and bars.
On the opposite couch, Hatchet held an ice pack against his sutured cheek. The other hand worked his phone.
"Seven fucking hours and the bitch still hasn't left work."
I waited until I caught the ball before responding with a bored roll of my eyes.
"Looking for trouble we don't need."
It wasn't noticeable in the flow of my speech, but I took note of the tone of each word as it left my mouth. As much as I cared about Delia's safety, I couldn't let anyone in the clubhouse see it in my face or hear it in my voice.
Hatchet barked his disagreement.
"Your pussy ass can let her disrespect you, but no one disrespects this!"
He slammed his fist against his riding vest. The blow landed on the patch proclaiming his exalted status as the club's Enforcer.
I gave the ball another disinterested bounce.
"Not the same as grabbing some mouthy waitress when her shift ends. Clinic has cameras inside and out. Not to mention a sample of your DNA in a medical waste bag."
Hatchet's lips peeled back in a snarl.
"Get me a beer, pussy."
My gaze never leaving the man, I bounced the ball off the machine, caught it, bounced it again. The staring contest could have gone on for hours, but Hatchet's phone chirped. Bringing it to his ear, he answered.
"You spot her?"
Hatchet lowered the phone, stabbed the screen twice then growled. His face purpled as he brought the phone up and screamed.
"I said she was fat and a real blond. Why the fuck you showing me a dye job with an itty-bitty waist and big tits?"
I caught the ball then tapped it lightly against my lips. For the better part of a month, I had spent most of my time living with these animals, listening to their filth, watching them treat the women at the club worse than garbage. I had to sit placidly, even grin, as they drunkenly reminisced about murder and rape while they pushed sloppily in and out of the club's sweetbutts then sent the women out to trade their bodies and sell drugs.
Whenever I did slip away, I had to meticulously regurgitate the lurid details in reports I filed.
Finished screeching into the phone, Hatchet tossed it down the couch. Face stretched into a sneer, he pointed a thick finger at me.
"You're a pussy or a queer."
The sneer relaxed into a greasy smirk. Hatchet snapped his fingers at a sweetbutt waiting against the wall. Like the other women, she was emaciated and scantily dressed in a halter top and shorts. Someone had cut the shorts until they covered nothing more than a pair of panties would, maybe less.
Scabs covered his exposed arms and thighs. I had seen the woman pick at the wounds with long, fake fingernails frequently re-attached with Super Glue. I had witnessed with stomach-churning detail the way the nails would stray back and forth, combing through oily hair, scratching at the arms, then the thighs, then returning to the hair when she was in a meth-induced fugue.
Without intervention, she would be dead in a few months or sold off to an even worse group of criminals who would profit from her body by letting sick clients torture her.
"Suck his dick," Hatchet ordered.
Before the woman could stand, I rose from the couch. Three steps later, I stood in front of Hatchet.
"How about you suck it?"
The biker turned beet red. I watched the man's hands, not his face. They balled into fists but didn't reach for the snub-nosed revolver Hatchet kept tucked down the back of his pants.
The front door to the clubhouse burst open then slammed shut, daylight blinking once before the low-lit gloom reasserted its dominance. The booming voice of Junker, the chapter's president, echoed off the concrete walls.
He swaggered over to the couch Hatchet sprawled on. Hatchet made himself smaller, started to slide to his right to open a wide space for Junker.
"Freeze, fucker."
Junker's gaze bounced between me and the other biker.
"Which one of you is gonna tell me what the fuck is going on?"
My attention flicked from Junker to Hatchet then back. The club's president hit all the criteria for being a malignant narcissist. Grandiose, sadistic, aggressive—he unloaded on club members without provocation. The more theatric his behavior, the bigger the hammer he had hiding behind his back.
Flicking my wrist, I answered with an exaggerated lisp.
"Hatchet was about to suck my dick."
Red flooded Junker's face. Eyes bulging, he roared with laughter. Just as quickly, he turned off his amusement.
"Seriously, what's the fucking beef?"
Hatchet pointed a finger at me. "This pussy let a bitch at the clinic shit all over him."
I rolled my lips, reminded myself for the thousandth time in the last month that I could not put my fist through the biker's face.
I had to carefully craft my words. I had to sound like one of them all the time. Mumble mouth, small vocabulary. Answer with a grunt or a snort as often as not. A word with four syllables could get me shot unless I was talking about bike parts or the necessary chemicals and processes for the meth they were manufacturing somewhere offsite.
"Got a loose cannon, Prez." I gestured at Hatchet's swollen cheek with its crisscrossing of thread. "First he gets in a fight with a civilian at the bike shop, now he's talking shit about kidnapping a nurse at the clinic—with his face and mine on every fucking camera inside and out."
Hatchet rubbed his palm over his groin then squeezed. "Bitch needs a train pulled on her."
Balling his hand into a fist, Hatchet raised it in the air then pumped his arm.
"Toot, toot. All aboard the bitch!"
I pictured the man face down on sun-baked asphalt, hands cuffed, a sharp knee pressed hard against his spine as Miranda rights were read. After that, it would be life in prison for Hatchet. The image had its intended effect. My muscles remained prepared for a fight, but the stinging fury that filled them evaporated.
Junker slammed his fists in the air. Holding them aloft, he shook his massive body, feet pawing at the ground like a pissed-off bull before he threw his head back and screamed.
"Cage match!"
The smile dropped off Hatchet's face like a bowling ball landing on a toddler's foot. He shot a nervous glance in my direction.
"You know me, Prez. Get me in the cage, I might kill pretty boy."
Junker said nothing, just grinned like a maniac as his gaze ping-ponged between the two of us.
Hatchet squirmed. His mouth bobbed open and shut with excuses I knew he wouldn't voice until he could find one that didn't make him sound like a complete coward.
"Could fuck the deal we got with his people."
"They're not 'my people,'" I reminded Hatchet. "I'm just facilitating the exchange."
I finished with a smile I felt all the way to my toes. Nothing would blow the deal, not even my death. For close to a year, I had been slipping in and out of deep cover, taking over another man's identity after locking him in a cell. In
just ten days, half a million in illegal firearms and another two-hundred-thousand in pills would be exchanged between members of the Steel Tide and a separatist militia group hiding out along the border of Montana and Idaho.
Junker scratched his chin for a few seconds then slapped his hand on my shoulder and gave it a hard squeeze.
"Don't die on me, Reaper. Least not 'til I get my money."
5
Emerson
I ricocheted around the delivery van, hands bound, sight stolen by the black bag covering my head. Transported like so much raw meat to where the Steel Tide held its cage fights, I should have been pissing myself. But it was my first opportunity to directly observe this segment of the club's operations.
Federal law enforcement had shut down the east coast chapters of the Steel Tide a year prior. The fights in the west went underground after that, the events limited to members of the surrounding chapters and their old ladies. Losing more than half its audience put a squeeze on the club's finances. This, in turn, allowed me to infiltrate the Billings chapter by offering a major cash deal for guns and drugs.
Instead of terrified, I was excited.
Giddy, almost.
The driver braked without warning. The van shuddered to a stop. Rough hands grabbed me by the arms, jerked me to my feet. My head hit the vehicle's interior roof. Growling, I swung my left leg forward then whipped it back. The heel of my boot cracked against the knee of the guy holding me on that side.
"Asshole," the man hissed, his nails digging into my arm.
I recognized the voice. It belonged to Tribble, one of the club's prospects. "Prospect" was an odd word for what the man really was. Thirty-two, with a felony record, this particular biker wannabe spent most of his time at the clubhouse mopping up piss and vomit. Yet Tribble somehow operated under the delusion he held a higher status than Reaper, the very real criminal I was masquerading as.
"Watch what the fuck you're doing," I suggested.
Hearing the side door open, I braced for a second blow to my head. Other hands took hold of me instead. Smelling the heavy menthol undertones of Aqua Velvet aftershave, I knew that Junker was the one unloading me from the van.