by Christa Wick
“Calm down, miss.”
I heard the crackle of the dispatcher reaching one of the patrol units on their radio. She told them a disturbance was in progress at the bar.
“Murder,” I repeated. “M-U-R-D-E-R, not a fucking disturbance! The Steel Tide are going to kill Callan Tilley, you dumb—”
I sucked in a calming breath. I needed the woman on the other end to be my friend, to send the cops here as fast as their super-charged cruisers would carry them.
“Please,” I whispered, glad for the throbbing vibrations of Callan’s bike to cover my voice. “If they don’t kill him here, they’ll do it at the clubhouse or on the ride back. But it’s happening tonight.”
“Who is this?” the operator asked.
I could tell by her tone that she had filled in the other half of “dumb” and didn’t give a rat’s ass that someone was about to die. But, before I could think about answering her question, I heard the patrol car’s response and the excitement in the responding officer’s voice. He gave his coordinates, the location less than half a mile away.
That was all I needed to know. I snapped the phone shut, ending the call as I opened the bathroom door. If I wanted to live, I had to be back in the thick of the bar, slinging drinks when the sirens started or when Bolo proved he was as stupid as molasses is slow and shot Callan behind Freya’s.
Halfway down the hall, Little Red stepped into view. His lips did a smirking dance as he walked up to me and put his hands on my shoulders. His head dropped to a conspiratorial angle and he smiled at me, the air issuing past his open lips rank with the smell of beer, whiskey and cigarettes.
“You’re late with the drinks, darling.” He brought his mouth closer to my ear, making my skin feel like I had a colony of ants crawling along my neck. “Now, what are we going to do about that, hmm?”
“I’ll bring them right away.” I promised, swallowing hard while I tried my damnedest not to look repulsed or give away the fact that I had just called the cops on him and his gang. Either sin committed against the vice-president of the Steel Tide would earn me at least a beating.
“That doesn’t fix them being late, does it?” His hands moved halfway down my arms and then he jerked me closer.
His groin pushed against mine and I was half a heartbeat away from freaking out when I heard the sirens in the distance. Little Red heard them, too. He released me immediately, as if the police were on their way for his sickening, but minor, molestation of my flesh.
Panic flashed across his face as his hands moved over his belt line and pockets. He bent quickly, his search for contraband continuing as he fingered the inside edge of his boots. Straightening, his gaze raked my body and then he jerked a thumb down the hallway toward the main room and the serving station beyond.
“Get me those whiskeys.” He turned, his head twisting so he could look back at me. “Teaching you to move faster will have to wait.”
I nodded, something else entirely racing through my mind.
Fine by me, asshole.
Squashing the urge to collapse against the wall in relief, I followed after Little Red, the flashing lights of the patrol car lighting up the front of the bar as the cruiser pulled into the parking lot.
2
Avery
A surreal, low-key circus erupted with the arrival of the police. Act one was Callan roaring through the front parking lot on his modified Harley as soon as the red and blue lights breached the dark behind the building. Thinking they had a rabbit to chase, the cops took off after him.
Seeing Callan leave with the cops in pursuit, Little Red, and the other three club members from the back room barreled past me on their way to the front door. Bolo pushed into the bar at the same moment, his face a furious red and both hands clenched.
“Fucker kicked my bike over and took off!” Bolo uncurled one big hand long enough to grab the edge of Little Red’s vest and shake him. “He fucking knew what was going down!”
With the second act in full swing, the rest of the bar’s patrons and all of its staff looked for someplace to hide because a fight between the gang's vice-president and its sergeant-at-arms seemed certain.
Little Red clapped his hands around Bolo’s head. “Don’t be paranoid, brother. Maybe Last Drop was carrying something he couldn’t have the cops find on him and that’s why he ran. He doesn’t know shit because no one in the club or out would cross us like that.”
“No.” Bolo shook Little Red’s hands away. His whole body vibrated with energy as he growled at his vice-president. “That pussy won’t carry a piece and you know he doesn’t have so much as a joint on him. I’m telling you he fucking knows!”
My hands balled into fists. I forced them to straighten then shoved them into the pockets of my apron as I edged my way toward the serving station. The way they were talking about Callan pissed me off. I found “Last Drop,” the club nickname for him because he was his father’s youngest, insulting. Callan Tilley was more man than all five of the club members standing in front of me were combined. And to suggest he was a coward because he wouldn’t carry drugs or a gun was all kinds of messed up coming from someone who was trying to lure a “brother” back to the clubhouse so he could kill him.
Bolo and Little Red were the cowards and I wanted to tell them as much—walk my stupid ass right up to them, shake my fist under their noses and call each out as the piece of shit he was.
I didn’t. Even if everyone thinks I’m stupid, no one has claimed I’m suicidal. I kept my head down until the bikers left the bar. With a smile plastered on my face, I kept working my shift, stopping only when a second patrol car showed up and the police started asking questions.
Hoping they wouldn’t recognize my voice, I spoke in soft tones. A guilty sweat covered my top lip and brow even though I had taken the battery out of my phone and stashed it behind the bar. The police stayed about half an hour, questioning every female in the place until dispatch radioed and said there was a three-car accident on the interstate.
Two hours later, I climbed into the cab of my dad’s rusted pick-up, my chest heavy with the knowledge that the last Tilley brother was gone from Thunder Valley. At least I hoped Bolo was right and Callan knew he couldn’t go back to the clubhouse or any other place he might run into a member of the Steel Tide. But the only way to make sure was to find Callan and tell him Little Red had an execution order out on him.
“Lots of squawking on the scanner tonight,” my dad announced as I drew the seat belt across my chest.
“Yeah.” The truck was about fifteen years too old for anything on it to be automatic, so I reached around to push down the lock on my door. Then I rolled down the window a little for relief from the stale odors of beer and cigarettes.
He hadn’t put the truck in gear yet. I knew when I turned back, his eyes would be on me. Meeting his gaze, I shrugged. “Some pile-up on the interstate.”
“I was talking about the bar.” His gaze narrowed and then his mouth imitated the motion until it was the thin, angry line I knew too well. “Sounds like the cops were questioning just the whores.”
Wow!
My eyebrows shot halfway up my face. I knew better than to leave them there and I forced them down, another fake smile shaping my mouth. “Questioning the whores and me, dad.”
“Only whores work in bars.”
Okay. I guess that made him my pimp since he claimed most of my money.
I took a deep breath, my sensitive nose trying to gauge just how many beers had passed his lips before he remembered he had to pick me up from work. Anything after seven and he’d turn violent in a heartbeat. Since all I smelled was beer without the bitter mix of bile, I figured he was at four cans. Any less and his grip on the wheel would have been tighter.
Upping the wattage on my smile, I nodded at the insult but didn’t let it slide. “Only whores and me.”
“Don’t get mouthy.” He glared at me before putting the truck in gear and slowly pulling forward. “You didn’t call the cops
on them bikers, did you?”
“Don’t have the minutes on my phone to waste,” I answered.
He let the topic drop. Toeing a few empty cans out of the way, I made room for my feet on the truck’s floor and rolled the window down a little further. The act reminded me of being stuck in the bathroom at Freya’s, my nose to the window first so I didn’t have to smell the stench and then because I had to know what was going on between Bolo and Callan. The sense of déjà vu between my actions at the bar and in the truck was so strong, I could have sworn I heard Callan’s bike in the distance.
My heart skipping a beat, I checked the side mirror then discreetly looked through the cab’s back window. I didn’t see headlights and the sound of a motorcycle’s open throttle faded like the ghost it was.
“Anything else on the scanner?” I asked, trying to get my mind off the phantom sounds of Callan’s bike and maybe learn from my dad whether the police had caught up with him.
He grunted, one hand reaching into his shirt pocket to fish out his pack of cigarettes. I reached forward and pressed the cigarette lighter for him like a good daughter would even though he was only a few more beers away from calling me a worthless cunt.
“Just them cars on the freeway and the shit at the bar.” He plucked a cigarette from the pack and put it between his lips. Making a show of counting how many cigarettes were left, he waited until the lighter popped before he returned the pack to his pocket.
“Do we need to stop on the way home?” I asked, already knowing the answer. He wanted me to buy him another pack and probably more beer. That he wasn't already piss-drunk meant he was out of alcohol at home.
Exhaling, he picked at a loose fleck of tobacco that had fallen on his lip. “Could use some ciggies and a twelve.”
“Sure, I’ll run in and get them.” I tried to keep the disappointment from my voice at the familiar exchange. I hated that I had to work two jobs to help keep him in alcohol and tobacco, hated it more knowing that if I didn’t volunteer the money, he’d find another way to get it out of me. Like Callan, I needed to get the hell out of Thunder Valley, but I didn’t have a ride.
Callan...
Thinking about my dad and my own sorry situation, I had lost sight of the bigger picture for a second. Looking out the window and feigning disinterest, I tried to pull a little more information from my old man before I resorted to any direct questions.
“Hey, didn’t the cops chase one of the bikers, tonight?”
“Didn’t catch him,” he answered before giving the knob on the stereo a hard twist. Country music blared over the truck’s tinny speakers, telling me any further conversation between us was unwelcome.
Fine with me. I stayed silent until we stopped at the Kwik-Shop, where I dashed inside for the cigarettes, a twelve-pack of beer and a gallon of milk. Knowing all the city and county cops stopped at the little convenience store for the free coffee and fountain drinks the owner offered police, I tried to chat up the guy behind the counter.
My dad gave an impatient honk of the truck’s horn before I could get anywhere with the clerk. I hustled back to the vehicle, my face a bland mask that hid my irritation.
Five minutes later, the truck pulled into the driveway of our crumbling two-story house. Carrying the milk, beer and cigarettes, I got out of the truck and waited by the front door. Just as they did every night my dad picked me up, my cheeks burned with shame. I didn’t have keys to the house I lived in. I used to—when my mother was alive and my dad didn’t much care whether or not I made it home from school.
He took the keys away about a month after she died. He left for work after I left for school and I waited on the front porch, through snow, rain or sunshine until he got home. The only thing that changed after high school was that I had two jobs and he lost his.
“You didn’t do the dishes before you left.” He slid the key into the doorknob, twisted it then stepped inside, his thin frame blocking me from entering. “Or take out the trash.”
“Right.” Holding back tears, I forced myself not to blink because I knew they would fall and he’d score his second victory of the night. I shifted the twelve-pack to my other hip. “Let me get these in the fridge and then I’ll take care of the kitchen.”
Granting my carefully phrased plea to enter the house, my dad stepped to the side. Just before the door slammed shut behind me, I thought I heard the beckoning hum of a distant motorcycle. I shook my head, flinging the foolish notion like drops of water after a cold shower.
There was no bike. Even if my ears hadn’t been playing tricks on me, the bike wasn’t the one I wanted. Deep down, I knew—the last Tilley brother had left Thunder Valley and there was no way I could follow.
3
Callan
Avery Watkins lived seven blocks from the high school we had attended as teenagers. I stashed my motorcycle across the street from the school where nothing but acres of woods ran until the tree line broke onto the interstate. I used the trees as cover for three blocks as I traveled on foot to reach her house. For the last four blocks, I stuck to the streets with busted out lights.
Exhausted, my body fought me every step of the way. Tired as I was, I had to force myself not to run the distance from the school to Avery’s house. I told myself she was still alive, that the Steel Tide was too busy hunting me down to realize someone at the bar had called the cops on them. If we were lucky, morning would come and go before they figured out they had a snitch. Hell, it had taken me three hours to piece together what must have happened. And I still didn’t have the puzzle completely solved.
I just knew that, if there was an angel in Thunder Valley looking out for me, she had red hair and sky blue eyes.
I couldn’t leave that angel to face the wrath of the Steel Tide once they managed to get a copy of the 911 call that must have been made. They’d hear her sweet voice and Little Red would know it was her from the first recorded word out of her mouth. He’d been sniffing after Avery the last six months, only my warning to him that I wouldn’t let her be drawn into the Steel Tide forcing him to back off.
I mean, damn, if I was okay with Avery being a biker’s old lady, she would be mine.
Approaching her house, I rubbed at my eyes and tried not to think of her that way. I was here to offer her a ride out of town and enough money to start her life someplace new. Someplace without me or any of the baggage I came with.
Seeing the lights on in her house at one in the morning, I stashed a bag I had carried with me then settled beneath the branches of a dying peach tree that ran along the border between her yard and the next one over. I hoped like hell there wasn’t a dog in either house that would start barking and alert the whole neighborhood to my presence. I needed to talk to Avery tonight. We needed to get out of Thunder Valley before the sun came up.
Both our lives depended on it.
Knotting one hand in my hair, I watched Avery clean the kitchen. I mulled over if I could even convince her to leave with me. It’s not like we were friends despite living in the same small town our entire lives and being only one grade apart. I hadn’t noticed her until high school and who knows if she noticed me back then or now beyond what beer to bring me at Freya’s or how I liked my eggs at the diner. She probably had no clue that I only ate at that dive or drank at the bar when I knew it was her shift.
Then again, maybe she did and the quiet way she had about her was a mask for the disdain she felt about the Steel Tide, and by extension, the disdain she felt for me. I couldn’t blame her. The club wasn’t started as an outlaw gang, but it had devolved to a group of one-percenters who had yet to find a crime they weren’t willing to commit. The change in members had occurred slowly as Big Red moved up through the ranks to become the secretary-treasurer first and then the vice-president while my dad was still a free man.
As best as I could piece together, he roped in a few club members for protection runs—legitimate goods at first, but no one realized Big Red had put the squeeze on the companies, threateni
ng the shipments with breakdowns and beat downs on their routes if they didn’t pay up. Then it was moving stolen goods, then drugs and guns.
I started to pace beneath the tree, grateful for the branches’ dark shadows that sheltered me from the moonlight. I didn’t need to spend the pre-dawn hours ruminating how my family’s life had spiraled into hell because of Big Red or how, knowing what a piece of shit the man was, I had nevertheless become a full-patch member of the Steel Tide to keep protection going for my brother and dad in prison. I just needed to acknowledge that these were issues I’d have to get past with Avery if I wanted her to trust me or believe I could keep her safe long enough for her to start over.
An extra body in the kitchen distracted me from my thoughts. I looked over to find that Avery’s dad, Joe, had joined her. Not to help her clean, of course. That would be too much work for the old bastard. By his unsteady gait, I figured he was there to grab another beer from the refrigerator. I checked the time on the big wall clock behind his head to see that less than fifteen minutes had passed since Avery took a cold one to him.
Reaching into the refrigerator, Joe pulled out a beer, popping the tab and slamming half the contents down his throat before the door finished closing. Turning, he leaned against the refrigerator. All his weight seemed to rest against the appliance as he watched Avery work.
Her posture changed from drained fatigue to alert and on edge. Two feet away from her in the small kitchen, Joe put the beer to his mouth, his lips moving in speech before he took another sip. Avery reached into her pocket and took some money out. Placing it on the counter without looking at her father, she went back to cleaning the dishes. She hadn’t spoken to the old man since he entered the room.
I closed my eyes, tried to let the black behind my eyelids wash down the anger rising up inside me. Instinctively, I knew what would come next. The signs were there. Long sleeves on hot days, the occasional scarf knotted around her neck when she was not the kind of woman who added flair to her outfits. If anything, Avery Watkins tried to be invisible.