by Vera Quinn
“Sean it’s alright, please, speak freely. So much has happened to me in the last few months that I am not some innocent girl. I am six months away from being eighteen, but I feel way older and none of this is making me uncomfortable.” I try to ease Sean’s mind, so he can go on.
“But she acts like she’s twelve most days.” Con comes backs with. Sean levels Con with a stare.
“For someone that says he wants this woman to be his woman, you sure don’t know how to go about making it happen.” Ewan says with a snicker.
“Enough Ewan. Let him dig his own grave alone,” Cooper says. “What Sean is trying not to tell you is that Darren and Alice had fallen into extracurricular activities in their marriage. The friends they had shared their women, but only of the husbands choosing, never the wife.”
“That was the practice of the community since I could remember. The men could have multiple wives, or they could choose to share their wives with another man in the community. That’s why Charity chose not to become a wife, because once they were bound on paper the women never had another say when it came to their bodies or anything else. The man was the head of the family unit, making the rules in the community, and the leaders were the head of the men.” I try to explain it, the situation, so everyone understands how I was raised. Cooper and Sean are shaking their heads.
“That’s a shame. This little game Darren and Alice was playing with us went on a few years. Their visits were every weekend and they brought some of their friends with them. We discussed how the government didn’t take care of veterans and government workers. Darren brought up that the government was making profits off people’s intellect and it wasn’t fair that they weren’t compensated fairly. We listened but when they returned home to Maryland we went about our business. All our buddies had made it out of the army and we located close together. Then one day Sean bought his first Harley and all of us fell in love with it and one by one we all bought one and the freedom of the road called to us, so we started having weekend rides, and we were not around for Darren to make his visits. He was furious, but Alice was livid. She called us constantly, and then started contacting our buddies through their wives. We all became tired of it, and we were tired of living in the Dallas area. We thought of moving towards Florida. That’s where our only other family lived, but when one of the wives let Alice know about it, Darren made a visit to us during the week. He tried to convince us to stay put because we owned our property. We dismissed his concerns. He told us that he and his friends had decided to take a leave from their job and locate in Texas. Here in Saltillo and they were going to start a community of their own. No outsiders but they wanted our group to go with them. The plan that they told us that visit was beyond anything our group would do. They were going to steal from the U.S. government. They said it was just communication technology that they developed and that they had buyers for the technology and they were going to use it for their use to stay off the grid and from being found.” Damn, my family is screwed up. Cooper starts to go on.
“If I understand this right, the community stole from the government and no one was caught, and no one was jailed for it. How is that even possible?” Shine asks. I know Shine has heard part of this story before.
“That’s where it gets tricky. The technology that they took wasn’t the cutting-edge thing at the time. It was something they had worked with before. They covered their trail and blackmail. They had some dirt on some high officials that had been paying them cash payments for a while and then they settled with a favor of helping cover their trail.” Sean answered. Shine looks critical of the answer.
“Darren and Alice came straight to us while the rest of the group stayed hidden. They wanted us to move here with them. We refused, and they left. Two days later both sets of our parent’s houses burned the same night. We lost the only people that we had as family beside Darren. We were grief-stricken and never thought Darren would go to such extremes. We buried our parents and then Darren offered us a payoff with a lot of zeroes to accompany them here and provide security while they set up the place. We took it to our brothers and we voted, and the vote went Darren’s way. Long story short we stayed on and bought land here. We liked the people and the quietness. I had a woman and Sean had a woman and we already had sons and we grew some more. We worked our land, raised cattle, and raised kids. Our group did our thing and your pop, and his friends did theirs. Then things started changing. Some of our group started liking the way Darren ran things. We weren’t their keepers, so they changed sides. Alice got pregnant, but we noticed that Darren was sharing her again and so were the other men of their group.” Cooper stopped for a minute and looked at me. “The next part, I am not proud of it, but the rest of our group started acting like fools. We weren’t faithful to our women and started sharing with Darren’s group. I knew, and Sean knew that the women in our lives didn’t agree with the change, but when they refused to participate then we sent them on their way. It’s not that we were married or anything, but it still wasn’t right the way we disrespected our women and in the end a lot of good relationships were lost because of our stupidity. We paid a high price for it, we lost people we cared about when they packed up and left. We also wouldn’t let the women take our sons, and that’s when the rift became bigger. Darren wanted us to let the boys go so the law wouldn’t come around. We refused.” A thought runs through my head.
“You let them take your daughters and not your sons? Why? Didn’t you love them equally?” Sean laughs.
“Faith, Darren’s girls were the first girls in our family for five generations, or so Mam told us. We don’t know about our dads’ family.” Sean says in a quiet voice. I see it is a sore subject for Sean.
“After the big fight over lawyers and such things went downhill from there. Alice gave birth to a daughter, and we were all in awe. A sweet angel to bless us all. When Alice was healed from childbirth she tried to smooth things over with sex. She pursued both Sean and I shamelessly. We were weak to the pleasures of our body, and we were both with your Ma, on more than one occasion. She wasn’t the only one and we weren’t the only men.” Cooper seems sad, as he tells the story.
“This seems more like a personal story than one that’s going to help us.” Rebel says with impatience in his voice. “It gives us a better mindset of the people we are dealing with, or part of the ones we are dealing with, but we already knew they were damn crazy. They kidnapped me and thought I was going to have sex with a woman and then blackmail me with it. It wasn’t happening. Who wants to hurt people that way for shits and giggles?”
“Do you have a woman at home?” Sean asks.
“I have an ol’ lady that is my wife, and mother of my children, and I would never hurt her that way. I would die first.” Rebel says with conviction. I knew Rebel was a good man.
“You are an honorable man then. Cooper give it to them. This is important to them.” Cooper shakes his head in agreement.
“While Darren and his group were making money left and right the rest of our group dug into this town. Hope was born, and it wasn’t long until Alice was pregnant again. The question was which brother or other man, was the father. She swore it wasn’t Darren’s and some of the other women also became pregnant without knowing who the fathers were. No one used condoms and they started using that against us to coerce us into doing what they wanted. They knew how our brotherhood felt about family.” Cooper looks at Sean.
“Saltillo is a town that gets left behind. We divide two counties, and the law is sparse at the best of times. We picked up the slack and weeded out the druggies and made this a drug free zone. We had no school and our children were bused another county over, so we built a school. We had no church and we built a church. We did this with our money, but Darren fought us every step of the way and then his group came to us one day and said they had sold a few of their systems and there would be people coming into Saltillo to seal the deal, and cash traded hands.” Sean looks at Shine. “When the people arri
ved, it was two biker clubs, and they came into our town and started taking over. We weren’t included in the conversations, but Darren came to us and said that we needed to accommodate the bikers while they were here. At first, we were confused, but what they were getting at is the women of our brothers were expected to be there play dolls. The women who left with our men were wives, and we would not even consider their demand. The next time they came to talk to us was a day later, and these bikers wanted to move here and build their clubhouse. They were making two clubs into one, and they wanted to come here because very few law enforcements ever came out here, and they said we had lost our way and we could leave. In other words, they thought they had people who could throw us out of our homes. That wasn’t the way it played out” Sean has fire in his eyes.
“After we told them to go straight to hell, that night two wives disappeared. They were gone for days, and we looked everywhere. Sean had a suspicion and when we had the chance we went into Darren’s barn, and the two women had been beaten and raped. They were in chains. We lost Edith from her stab wounds. She had repeatedly been stabbed. Elsa told us who had taken them, and who had joined in their torture and rapes. The men from Darren’s group had lured them away, and then gave them to the bikers. After three days Elsa took her own life. The Possessed Blood Soul MC lost four members and left our town. King, the vice president assured us that none of his other members were involved. They were from another area and their president had set up the meet here and were going to patch the Demon Hearts MC over. Both clubs had bought some of the communication technology from Darren. There were very few of the Demon Heart MC that made it out of Saltillo alive. We put the cur dogs down. We didn’t have as many men as they did, but each one of us had our own skill set and we were used to working together.” Cooper looks at Sean. The way they’re giving the information like a team shows the bond between them.
“Darren was making a move to take over Saltillo while we were busy with the two clubs, but we nipped it in the bud, and that’s when we found that Darren and his group were partaking in drugs and selling them. Scamp, one of the Possessed Blood Soul came back and gave us information on everything that Darren’s group had been doing including all the technology that Alice and Darren had stolen. Things that neither worked on. We were under the impression that everything they took with them was their work. We were wrong and that’s the day we lost all trust in Darren and his group. Scamp also told us that Richard Denson had used one of the signal blockers to come up with the idea of using buses and RVs to set up moving drug houses. Using generators and the small solar panels for electricity. We don’t support anything to do with drugs. We played it off until we could get confirmation for ourselves. At this point we had decided to trust no one. Your Ma gave birth to a second daughter in the time it was taking us to confirm what Scamp had told us. Darren was our blood brother and we loved him and Hope. That little girl was everyone’s princess. The day Alice gave birth to a second girl was the day we found the bus they were working on for the first moving drug house. We didn’t even see your sister after she was born when we confronted Darren. We told them to take all their things with them and leave or we would turn them into the government. There was a small fight, and blood was spilled but we took care of business. We gave them one week to get out. That’s when we took the Lost Ones emblem and wore it like a flag of us rising, and taking our lifestyle, and integrity back. We are not a club or any kind of organization. We are just like thinking men and families that keep to ourselves and try to make a town we are proud of. We ride bikes and live our lives our way and Darren and Alice couldn’t accept that.” Sean looks at Cooper.
“That wasn’t our last meeting with Darren and his right-hand man Denson. They moved west of a town named Pittsburg on a place called Couch Mountain, but they kept trying to get us to see their ways and entice us with money. After they left we opened the sex shop to bring in extra money, and we have made a very good profit with it. We also opened the small convenience store with the fuel pumps and a laundry mat. We share the profits evenly to supplement our regular jobs. We aren’t rich, but we are comfortable, and we didn’t want drug money or any other illegal money. We had heard that Darren and Denson had started selling young women and that their satellite system was becoming obsolete, and they associated themselves with a motorcycle club.” Cooper looks at me. “Your ma came to us begging us to come back in the fold. We declined, but while she was here we did use her body again. It was our way letting Darren know we had hardened our hearts to him. Alice also let us know that Darren was losing his way and thinking he was above all laws and that he was the supreme leader of the community. He made everything happen and he was in control, but Alice lead us to believe that he had become sadistic, and taken many wives that bore him many children, and that he was replenishing this earth with worthy people to run it. Those children of his, and the other leaders of the community were sent out and educated after they were brainwashed to only believe in the ways of the community. They had plans to put those young adults in places of power, and then use that power for the community benefit, but it all went to hell. After the children were integrated into the real world they discovered things they had grown up knowing was lunacy. One being that name. Darren thought the place they lived was of no significance, only that they were one. That’s why the c was never capitalized when written about, and it was only referred to as community, and not home. That shows how he was unraveling, but I warn you Alice is just as evil as Darren ever was and maybe more so.” Another man walks in the back door without knocking and Shine, Rebel, and Con all have their hands on their guns, but no one else seems alarmed. I see a shorter man following along behind the first man in the door. “She is also just as smart so if she is still out there you and your sister are still in danger.” Well crap. Cooper stands up and shakes the shorter man’s hand.
“Thanks Hank for getting here so fast. This is Faith and we would like two DNA test done. One for Sean and one for myself.” Cooper looks at the man and the man looks nervous.
“I suppose you want this done as soon as possible and put a rush on it.” Cooper shakes his head yes. The doctor sets his bag on the table.
“We’re going outside to make some calls.” Shine stands up. Sean looks uneasy but doesn’t say anything.
“That’s fine. but don’t have any more of your men come today. We have guards riding our property and watching the roads and we may seem like peaceable men, and for most parts we are, but if you fuck with what is ours, we will spill blood. That seems extreme when we are just having a conversation, don’t you think?” Cooper never cracks a smile, so I know he is serious.
“Agreed. Just getting some people working on the information we have found out.” Shine says and then he adds. “I already have men posted just outside of Saltillo so if I wanted men here they would be. This is just taking longer than expected and I don’t want anyone getting itchy trigger fingers.” Shine doesn’t back down from Cooper.
“We knew exactly when your riders arrived, and they are being watched by snipers. We don’t miss much, and we just want peace here. This doesn’t need to be a pissing match.” Cooper comes back. Shine doesn’t miss a beat.
“And we have snipers on your snipers. No pissing match, we are just being careful. We have had an ongoing war going with the Hell Keeperz MC, and the community for a while now, long before we ever knew it. Now I am going to make them calls.” Shine, Con, and Rebel walk out the door. Copper looks at me.
“That is some intense friends there, sweetness.” That makes me laugh. I stop after I realize this is a very serious situation.
“They have been protecting Charity and me for a while, and I trust them. They have had club members die trying to protect us. The community has had people die. I just want it over with. I’m tired of looking over my shoulder every day. I worry because Charity is pregnant, and she was supposed to be married. I just feel so responsible for bringing this danger into their lives. I know they were
having troubles before they met us, but it was still our family that brought the trouble to them, and they are good people. I know they are intense, but they are a family and they care.” I spill my thoughts out in words about everything that has been bothering me. The guilt I have dealt with over this has been killing me. I just want to help and feel like less of a burden. I don’t even see the doctor walk up beside me.
“Little lady if you could just open so I can swab your mouth.” I open my mouth. He swabs the inside of my mouth and then puts the swab in a plastic bag from his doctor bag. “Now we are going to be thorough, so I am going to take a blood sample and a swatch of your hair. I will keep all of these on record and when the results come back I will give to Cooper or Sean if either are found to be a DNA match and if not they’re to be returned to you.” I am a bit confused at this, but the swab is done and then he starts going through my hair and he snips some off underneath.