by Jessie Cooke
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know!” Walt said through his heavy sobs. “He took off, Lion. I don’t know where he is.”
Lion lifted him off the ground with one hand and drove his fist into the big man’s nose. Walt screamed and Lion let go of him and let him drop to the ground, hard. His head bounced up and slammed back down into the dirt and he let out a little wail before he went unconscious, or pretended to. Lion yelled into the night, like a wounded animal, and kicked Walt in the ribs. The cry the big man let out was proof he was as conscious as Hawk was. Hawk looked at Dax and said, “You better go after Lion, I’ll stay with this one.”
Dax looked skeptical but seemed to think Lion was the bigger wild card at that moment. Hawk watched him follow Lion through the clearing and into another row of trees, and then disappear. Hawk had seen Cody’s and Jimmy’s bikes out in front of the house, so he figured they must be out there somewhere too, looking for Luger. He wished he could be out there with them, but he could feel himself fading, fast. It pissed him off…but looking down at Walt now made him smile. He reached down and grabbed a handful of hair and pulled Walt’s head up, causing the man to open his eyes and cry out again. “You suck at playing possum,” Hawk told him. Walt looked like he was going to piss his pants, or worse. “Who took her?” Hawk asked. “Who took her from the ranch? Who busted her head open?”
“I’m sorry,” Walt said. “I never meant to hurt anyone, but Luger said…” That was all he needed. Hawk raised the heavy branch he was still clutching in his left hand. His shoulder felt like it was ripping out of its socket and his forearm ached as he held it about two feet above the man’s head. He was searching for the strength to slam it down into Walt’s face when he heard Kyle’s voice.
“Hawk.” Fuck that Brady kid. Fuck them all. This man had hit his Maddie in the back of the head…and whether he lit that fire or not, he was prepared to let her burn. When Kyle started talking again, he expected him to try to talk him out of what he was ready to do, but surprisingly instead he said, “Hurry. The cops are pulling in now.” Hawk had to fight through a coughing fit first, but by the time the cops found them, Walt’s body had been dragged out of the way and hidden and Hawk was lying in the grass, trying hard to catch his breath. Kyle was kneeling beside him and he looked up at the first officer who entered the clearing…gun drawn…and said:
“Get the ambulance guys over here.”
“What the hell happened here?” the cop asked.
Kyle looked down at Hawk and back up at the young cop and said, “There will be time to sort that out later. This man just saved his daughter’s life, and now he needs help.” Another cop appeared behind the first one and Kyle looked relieved before he said, “Sergeant Moon, please, this man needs medical attention. I will tell you everything I know later…but please help him first.”
Hawk didn’t understand why the Irish cop who never made a secret of hating him and the Skulls was suddenly interested in helping him…but before he found the energy to ask, he felt himself being lifted off the ground and the fog that had been swirling at the edges of his consciousness finally consumed him.
30
Lion walked through the dark trees, toward the foothills. His chest hurt and he wasn’t sure if it was the smoke he’d inhaled, or the anxiety of not knowing if Madison was okay or not. As badly as he wanted to go back and see her and feel her in his arms…he had to find Luger. The piece of shit had to know that he’d never be able to go back after he did this, so Lion was sure he’d come with some kind of escape plan. If he disappeared, Lion would never be able to rest, knowing he was out there.
“Lion!” The sound of Cody’s voice startled him. He relaxed his grip on the gun and lowered it before turning to face the SA. “Any sign of them?”
“I found Walt. Left him with Hawk.”
“Hawk?” Lion nodded. “Fuck. I wonder if Dax knows he’s out here.”
“I do.” Dax’s voice came from somewhere to the left of them both and after a few seconds he appeared out of the darkness. “I couldn’t stop him without tying him up. He’s okay.” He looked at Lion and said, “Madison’s okay too, I think. She was with the paramedics when I came out this way. The police were showing up too, so if we’re going to find this son of a bitch, we need to do it fast.” He looked back at Cody and said, “Where’s Jimmy?”
“He went the other way, on the other side of the house. He’s supposed to text if he finds anything.”
“Okay, good. Why don’t you cut across the back while the firefighters are putting out the flames and help him? I’ll stay with Lion.”
“Save him for me,” Lion said. Cody looked at Dax and Dax nodded. Lion started walking again and Dax followed him and said:
“Hey, here. This might help.” He was holding out a lighter. It wasn’t a flashlight, but Lion would take it. He used it to search the ground around him but he didn’t see any signs that anyone had recently come through that way. Continuing on, he stopped every few feet to look. When Dax caught up to him again he said, “You should go get checked out, Lion. Those burns look nasty even in the dark.” Lion had so much adrenaline flowing through his body that he could barely feel the burns, and he wasn’t stopping until he felt his hands around Luger’s neck. He ignored Dax, for the first time in his life, and kept going. When they got to another clearing Lion finally stopped and said:
“You have another lighter?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m going to walk around to the right. I think we should split up and see if there’s any place that looks like it’s been disturbed.”
Dax’s blue eyes shone even in the darkness and Lion had a feeling that he was reluctant to leave him alone. Finally he said, “Okay, but stay alert.” Lion nodded and with his gun in one hand and the lighter in the other he began to walk the perimeter of the clearing, looking for any tracks or signs that a human had recently been there, or any sounds that didn’t make sense in the woods, at night. Two hours later, he’d found nothing, not a trace of the son of a bitch who killed his grandmother and tried to kill the only woman he’d ever fallen in love with. Lion didn’t want to stop looking, but the police had taken over the scene and even if he found him, the opportunity to pull him apart like a jigsaw puzzle with serrated edges would probably not present itself. Lion didn’t want Luger in jail. He wanted him dead.
Madison woke up to the sounds of machines and unfamiliar voices. She knew she was in a hospital, but she was shocked when she realized she was in a hospital bed, and some of those machines she could hear beeping were attached to her. Something was covering her face and she reached up and pulled it off. An oxygen mask was in her hand. Confused and slightly disoriented, she tried to sit up. A pain shot through her head from the back to her forehead and she felt like someone had buried an ax in her skull. She didn’t hear herself cry out, but she must have because suddenly a nurse in bright yellow scrubs was at her bedside.
“Hey, honey, you’re awake. Are you having some pain?”
“Um…yeah, I guess. What’s going on? Why am I here?”
“You had an accident,” the nurse said. “I’ll let the doctor know you’re awake. Meantime I’m going to give you something for that pain.”
“An accident?” That didn’t make sense. She hadn’t been driving. The last thing she remembered was leaving Levi to watch over her father and heading to the clubhouse to meet Lion…Shit! What if she and Lion went somewhere? “Where’s Lion? Is he okay?”
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” the nurse said as she emptied a clear syringe into the IV going into Madison’s arm. “I don’t know who that is. I’ll get the doctor in here and hopefully he can answer your questions.”
“What about my dad…where’s my phone?”
“You didn’t come in with a phone, honey. There are some people waiting to see you, though. Let me call the doctor and we’ll sort this all out.” The nurse left her there, scared and confused. What if something had happened to Lion? She pushed herself up a
gain and the pain was once again excruciating. Putting a hand to the back of her head, she felt a bulky bandage there. What the hell was going on? Feeling lightheaded once she was upright, she reached for the hospital phone at the bedside. It took her three tries to get it right, but finally she dialed Lion’s number.
He answered on the first ring, growling a “Yeah?” into the phone.
“Oh, Lion, thank God you’re okay!”
“Madison…baby, you’re awake?”
“Yeah,” she said, feeling like whatever the nurse had given her was pulling her back down. “Sort of. Lion, what happened?”
“I’ll be right there.” The call ended and for the next ten minutes Madison fought sleep and listened to a commotion that at once sounded like it was happening down the hallway, and across town. Finally, just as she thought she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer, Lion barreled into the room with a woman in a white lab coat on his heels. He didn’t speak, he just smothered her all at once with a hug, pulling her up off the bed into his arms and holding her there until the woman behind him finally cleared her throat loudly and said:
“Can I talk to her, sir?”
Lion slowly lowered her to the bed, kissing her softly as he lay her back down. He shot the woman an annoyed glare but stepped back and let her move in closer to the bed. “Miss Benning, I’m Doctor Wang. Do you know where you are?” The doctor looked about sixteen, with perfect skin and hair that was as shiny as freshly cleaned glass.
“Hospital?”
“Good, yes. You’re at Boston Memorial.”
“Where’s my dad? Lion, is Dad okay?”
Lion nodded, but still didn’t speak. Madison frowned and said, “What happened?” The doctor was shining a light from the end of a pen in her eyes and when she finished that she said:
“You were hit in the head. You’ve been unconscious for quite a while, but that’s normal with such a tremendous head injury. Your scans were all normal, though, other than a little swelling. You also inhaled a lot of smoke, but it doesn’t look like it did any permanent damage to your lungs. Your throat will be sore for a while, and your chest too. But I think after a few days of rest, you’ll be okay.”
“Hit in the head? By what?”
The doctor looked at Lion then. “I’ll tell you in a minute, baby. Let the doctor finish.” Lion had on long sleeves, but Madison could see a bandage poking out of one of the sleeves. Did he get hurt too?
The doctor more or less nudged Lion out of the way and pulled a curtain around the bed. While she examined Madison she could hear Lion talking to another man. She didn’t recognize the man’s voice but she did hear them say something about Luger. Was that it? Did Luger do this to me? When the doctor opened the curtain back up, Madison saw that the man Lion was talking to was a police officer. If the police were there, and Lion or another Skull had called them, something bad had definitely happened. “Ten minutes,” the doctor told Lion as she left the room. Lion gave her another mean look, but she ignored him and kept going. The police officer stepped out of the room and Lion came back over to the bed.
“I’m so sorry, baby.”
“What happened?” Madison was fading, fast. But she had to know what was going on. When Lion told her, and she realized how close she’d come to dying, she was trembling all over. It was surreal that she didn’t remember any of it, but maybe that was a good thing. She still had nightmares sometimes about the last time Lion rescued her…from Eugene. “So…you didn’t find Luger?” That was what frightened her the most. What if he’s still lurking close by somewhere?
“Not yet, baby. But we will. Every Skull in Boston is looking for him, and now the police too.”
“And the other one…Walt? You said he’s the one who hit me?”
Lion looked over his shoulder toward the door, and then he leaned down close to her face and whispered, “He won’t ever hurt anyone again. Your dad made sure of that.”
“Dad? Oh God, Lion, they didn’t hurt him, did they?”
“No, baby. He called on his deal with the devil again last night. He’s safe, back at the ranch. Dax has it locked down and no one will get on or off without his permission.”
She let that process for a second, and then Lion’s words really penetrated. “Your dad made sure of that.” What did he do? She thought about Eugene then and what Hawk had told her…and she knew that if she was being honest, she didn’t care. She loved her dad, and she knew that he would do whatever it took to protect her…even in his own weakened state. She finally reached up and touched the bandage under his sleeve. “Did you get hurt?”
“Nah, baby, I’m okay.”
She frowned at him. “Tell me the truth…oh God, Lion, your house, is your house…?”
His green eyes looked sad, but his face was neutral as he said, “The house is gone, but that’s okay. I don’t care. You’re all I care about.”
Madison felt a tear slip out of her eyes. He’d been through so much. He didn’t deserve this. She heard herself whisper, “I’m sorry…” and then she lost her battle with the medication and slipped away into a deep sleep.
31
Lion sat for a while and held Madison’s hand while she slept. He was torn between his need to stay and make sure she was okay and the drive to be out looking for Luger with everyone else. He’d been out most of the night until Dax finally convinced him that they were wasting their time in the dark. Then he spent three hours at the police station, answering the same questions over and over until Kyle Brady finally came to his rescue. It was when Kyle was walking him out that he told him about Hawk, and Walt. Kyle didn’t say what had happened to the body, only that Jimmy and Cody had shown up to help. Lion couldn’t help but respect that the old man even showed up, much less that he’d taken it upon himself to make sure the man who hurt his beautiful daughter would never hurt anyone else.
By the time he got to the hospital, the sun was coming up. They wouldn’t let him see Madison, but he refused to leave. They tried to get him to go to the ER and have his burns treated, but he refused to do that too. So one of the nurses had simply taken him into a little room and cleaned them and bandaged them for him, warning him that they could easily get infected if he didn’t have them taken care of. He thanked her, but he wasn’t leaving to do anything until he saw Madison with his own eyes and knew she was okay. He was sitting back in the waiting room when one of the prospects showed up with some food and clean clothes for him, courtesy of Dax. The jeans and long-sleeved shirt were brand new, and Lion was thankful to peel off the burned, stinking ones he was wearing. He was also grateful for the food. He hadn’t realized he was starving until he started eating it. After that he must have fallen asleep because when he opened his eyes again, the sun was fully up and the woman in bright yellow scrubs was there, telling him Madison was awake again. She’d only meant to let him know and ease his anxiety, she said…but Lion had insisted on seeing Madison, and nothing was going to keep him away. There was a cop at the door whom Kyle had introduced him to the night before, and if not for him, the nursing staff probably wouldn’t have let him in.
He was softly stroking his fingers through the hair around her face when the phone in his pocket buzzed. He took it out and saw that it was Cody. Walking away from the bed and over by the window, he answered it. “Cody, tell me you found him.”
“We found him, sort of. Dax put the word out last night and a guy from the Dirty Bastards out in Salem said he saw him at a bar around 2 a.m. He didn’t hear about all of this until this morning, though, so we’re not sure Luger’s still around, but we’re headed out there.”
“I’ll meet you in Salem. What’s the name of the bar?” Cody told him and once they hung up, he texted Lion the address. He went back over and kissed Madison on her pretty lips and whispered, “I’ll be back. I love you.”
“Jeez, always with the mushy stuff lately.” Lion looked up to see Hawk framed in the doorway. He looked like shit, worse shit than usual, and Lion suspected the old man hadn’
t slept at all.
“How’d you escape the ranch?”
Hawk came in the room, closely followed by Pope, one of the prospects. “Dax said I could bring him to see her,” Pope told Lion.
“Good,” he said to Hawk. “I’ve got to take off for a while. If she wakes up again, tell her I’ll be back.”
Hawk’s sallow face lit up and he said, “She woke up?”
“Yeah, and the doctor said she’ll be okay.”
Lion wasn’t sure in all the years he’d known the old man that he’d ever seen a happier look in his eyes. Hawk let them linger on Madison’s face for a minute before looking back up at Lion and saying, “You going after him?” Lion nodded. Hawk frowned and said, “You have no idea how bad I want to…”
Lion got close to the old man and whispered, “Yes, I do. I heard you took care of the other one. I’m proud of you, old man. I’ll take care of this one, and then we can both rest easy, knowing Maddie will be okay.”
Hawk looked up at him and Lion could see in the old man’s eyes that there was something he wanted to say. He hesitated, though, for a really long time and Lion finally told him he was leaving. That was when Hawk put a frail hand on his arm and locked those black eyes into his and said, “I’m sorry Dolly is not here to see how well you turned out.” Lion had to fight the emotion welling up inside his chest. It was the first truly nice thing Hawk had said to him in a very long time. He swallowed the lump and said: