by Paula Cox
“Momma—”
“Look, Charlotte,” Bri says, pointing at me. “Dadda.”
Charlotte stares at me, but of course there’s no recognition in her gaze. She doesn’t reach out for me or try to go to me. I try not to let that hurt me, but it does, that’s the truth, because it gets me thinking about all that could’ve been, had I not gone to Seattle and had the humanity beaten and shot and cut out of me.
“She knows you,” Bri says, stroking Charlotte’s hair.
“She doesn’t,” I say. “She just sees another man—a man like any other.”
I swallow. Damn, this hurts. This really fuckin’ hurts way more than I ever could’ve anticipated.
“She does,” Bri insists. “Just give her time and—”
She stops talking, eyes going wide, looking not at me but over my shoulder. Instinct causes me to spin on my heels, reach for my gun in my jacket holster. In my experience, people sneaking up on you never wish you good. I pull out my pistol, spin, and wind up aiming it straight at Clint and his two cronies. None of them are wearing masks this time, but I only vaguely recognize the men. Road Rage is a sizeable club and for the past couple of weeks I’ve been at the Irishman with my own coterie. The men behind Clint are dangerous-looking, one of them with a scar across his neck, the other with two of his fingers missing, but still somehow managing to grip a knuckle-duster.
“Are you going to shoot me, Skylar?” Clint says.
From behind me, Bri gasps; that’s how rare it is for any club member to use my given name. It’s disrespectful. Worse than that, it’s purposefully disrespectful. It’s the sort of thing I’ve seen men tear chunks out of each other for, just so word doesn’t get around that he can be disrespected with no consequences. But I can’t tear chunks out of Clint or his men. It’d give him the reason he needs to get me kicked out of the club, and plus, my goddamn daughter is behind me, making a small confused cooing noise. “Mamma? Mamma?” she babbles.
I lower the gun. “What do you want?” I ask, keeping my voice level.
“I don’t want anything,” Clint says. “But Grizzly does. He wants to talk to you.” The men behind him shift restlessly, as though wanting me to refuse so they can prove their worth. “At home,” Clint adds.
“At his house?” I mutter, confused. Grizzly never has the men at his house unless the business is really serious. “What for?”
“I don’t make a habit of questioning—” Clint begins, but Brat interrupts.
“What does Dad want with Slick?” she says. She stands beside me, holding Charlotte, which makes the tough men glance at each other awkwardly. Only the meanest bastards in the world would still be willing to go in on a man when he’s standing next to a kid, and whatever Clint may be, I doubt he’s been able to warp any Rager into a bastard that mean.
“He didn’t say, precisely,” Clint mutters, waving a hand as though he can wave Bri out of the conversation. “And frankly, Brianna, I don’t see how that is any of your business—”
“It is my business!” Bri snaps, overriding him. “It is my business because Slick is my friend, Grizzly is my father, and I work for the club! So it is absolutely my business! In fact, if you’re taking Slick to the house, I’m coming with him.”
Clint makes to laugh, but Bri doesn’t look or sound like she’s joking. “I mean it!” she goes on, as Charlotte babbles Mamma-Mamma-Mamma. “What are you thinking, Clint, coming here like this, with two men, acting all tough? So you followed Slick, I’m guessing, but when he came here, did you really need to walk in like this, when I had my kid with me? I wonder how Dad would feel to learn his second-in-command brought two of his thugs into contact with his granddaughter.”
That seals it. I see the moment on Clint’s face, a twitching of his features. “Fine,” he says. “If you’re going to be like that, then come on. But all of us better get going. He’s waiting.”
I watch, impressed, as Brat stands up to Clint. I watch as she stares down three violent bikers, and once again I’ve got to do a double-take to check this is truly Brat. Soon, the five of us are walking across the parking lot, Bri to her car and me to my bike, but not before I offer her a tight smile, hoping to communicate, “Are we good, now?”
Either she doesn’t see, or she can’t bring herself to answer. One thing’s clear, though. I’ve found someone who hates Clint’s bullshit just as much as me.
Chapter Eleven
Slick
Grizzly’s house has been in his family for generations. It’s a large, colonial style mansion with an American flag fluttering in the breeze, tall and proud, with a triangular roof and a huge, dominating porch. It’s one of those houses you see in historical movies about the Civil War, and wouldn’t think twice about: might even think the set guys built the house especially. I stop my bike behind Clint’s and Brat’s cars, in the long, wide stone driveway, and then the five of us approach Grizzly. He sits on the porch, in a rocking chair, rolling a cigarette. By the time we reach him, since the walk across his garden is so long, he’s finished rolling and is smoking, flicking the ash into an ashtray not as old as the house, but still pretty old. It’s shaped like a skull, and was a present to Grizzly from my father.
Finally, the five of us are standing on the porch around Grizzly. We wait as he leisurely smokes his cigarette. He’s taking his sweet time, trying to make me nervous. Well, if that’s the case, he’s succeeding, but only a little. I’m curious more than anything. I’ve been making the club more money since Grizzly gave me my own team, been increasing everybody’s pay, and here he is playing the tension game. Brat takes Charlotte to the other side of the porch, waiting for Grizzly to finish his cigarette, and returns only when he’s stubbed it out in the skull ashtray. All through this, Clint gives me looks like a brother who’s about to see his sibling get a good telling-off, a pathetic, wormy look.
“Slick,” Grizzly says. I notice that he avoids looking at Bri or his granddaughter, maybe because he knows that she’s mine, or maybe because he can’t bear to look at her when he’s doing the tough routine. It’s clear, from the way he glances angrily at Clint, that he doesn’t want her here. But it would ruin his effect if he made a big deal out of it. So he just goes on: “Slick, I need to talk to you about how much time you’re spending with my daughter.”
“What!” Bri snaps, straightaway, voice cutting through the tension like a hot steak knife. “I’m standing right here, Dad, you don’t need to talk about me like that! You’re so solemn and overbearing and—and—this isn’t the fifties, you know! It’s twenty-seventeen!”
Grizzly shifts, ignoring her, and presses on: “You were seen riding with my daughter a couple of weeks ago, into the mountains, and were seen with her at a bar called the Irishman. The man who told me about that encounter was nice enough to leave out the unsavory details. Maybe he knew how I’d react if I found out the truth.”
“Dad—”
“Quiet!” Grizzly snaps, looking at her for the first time, face screwed up in annoyance.
“Oh, real nice,” Bri mutters, as Charlotte begins to whimper. “Make your granddaughter cry!”
Bri moves away from the group, whispering to her daughter—hell, our daughter. Clint makes a small laughing sound, a snigger like he’s happy to see the baby crying. I want to smash his nose into his face, but Grizzly goes on: “Look, Slick, if you wanted to be with my daughter, it would be the manly thing to come and talk to me about it first. But instead, you’ve just gone ahead and behaved as you see fit.” He pauses, rubbing his head. “Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?”
“Only that I was in prison for two years and now I’m back you wanna put shackles on me again, Boss.”
“Don’t talk to him like that, you insolent shit!” Clint screeches, making as though to strike me.
Grizzly holds up his hand, glancing at Clint like he wishes he, as well as Bri, was not here. “You want to make a name for yourself in the club,” Grizzly says.
I think about these past
years, the powerlessness, being told what to do, where to ride, who to kill. If I was VP . . . “More than anything, Boss.”
Grizzly allows himself a smile at that, but a small, bitter smile. The sort of smile a man might give you before stabbing you in the stomach, as if to tell you he respects you, but he has to cause the damage anyhow.
“But you have reservations about the club,” Grizzly says, watching me closely.
I think about keeping them to myself, but this is the time, if there ever is going to be a time, to tell him what I think is going on. I swallow, knowing that this could cause me to be cast out from the club. “Boss,” I say, “I think Clint’s gathering men around himself in an attempt to take power away from you. Just think about it—”
“Now hang on a minute!”
“Just think about it,” I go on, louder, talking over Clint. “Why does he always have his own personal guard? Why does he have men who will go to him before they come to you? Where does he get his arrogance from, his sense of entitlement? The way I see it, Clint is trying to make it so the club doesn’t need you anymore. He’s trying to make it so, one day, he can make a bid for President.”
Clint blusters all through my speech, but I just raise my voice and talk over him. Grizzly watches me with an unreadable expression. Clint makes to speak when I’ve finished, but Grizzly swipes his hand, silencing him. For a long time, Grizzly watches me, and then he says, “You two.” He turns to the two goons standing behind Clint, like two guardian angels who’ve been in the ring a few too many times. “If I were to tell you, right now, to beat Clint until his legs didn’t work, what’d you do?”
The eight-fingered man mutters, “We’d do it, Boss.”
“And if I were to tell you,” Grizzly goes on, “to put a bullet in the back of Clint’s head, what would you do?”
The scarred man says, “Do it, Boss.”
Clint, shifting uncomfortably, murmurs, “Let’s hope it never comes to that, Boss.” He smiles, but it’s forced, false.
“You see?” Grizzly says, facing me again. “If that’s not loyalty, what is?”
When I try to speak, Grizzly swipes his hand again. That’s the power this man has . . . but his power has blinded him, I see. He thinks he’s invincible. But still, he is the Boss, and I need him on my side if I’m ever going to get anywhere in the MC.
“You want to advance,” Grizzly says. “Fine. Good. Then do it like your father did it. Not by throwing around baseless accusations, but by working hard, climbing up the ranks.” When he mentions my dad, memories rush into me, the way they will when they’ve been ignored for a long time. I remember crying when Dad died, weeping like my eyes were burning with acid, and then I remember Grizzly, brown-haired then, lifting me up and telling me it’d be okay, telling me he’d take care of me. I remember this man, my new father, making good on his promise. I remember him schooling me, teaching me, raising me. I remember hundreds of times looking to this man for guidance, and so right now, I cannot just ignore what he’s telling me. The roots go too deep.
“I’m doing that, with the men, the warehouses . . .”
“Yeah, and you’re doing a damn good job. But I need you to deliver a package to another club. I need you to be a courier one more time.”
I bristle, annoyed, but I can’t exactly say no. The deck has been stacked against me, bringing me here like this. “What club?” I ask, not that it matters much.
“The Flaming Skulls MC,” Grizzly says.
I take a step back, memories hitting me again, but dark, warped memories, memories dripping red.
“Wait,” Grizzly says, voice low, glancing across the porch to Brat, who is rocking Charlotte back and forth trying to get her to sleep. “It’s not like that, Slick. Let me explain.”
Slowly, he stands up. “I need to talk to Slick alone,” he announces. “Wait here everyone.”
He gestures for me to follow. I do so, and in the house he explains it all to me, explains the danger of the trip, explains the risk, explains the timings, and ten minutes later when we return to the porch, I’ve got a feeling of fierce determination inside of me, revenge aching in my chest, fists clenched, jaws clenched. This will be a huge task for the club, but there’s more to it than that, ’cause it’ll mean vengeance on the men who spent two years torturing me, it’ll mean obliterating the Masked Man and all his sadistic bullshit.
“I’ll go to Seattle,” I say, clicking my neck from side to side. “I’ll deliver the damn package.”
“You will,” Grizzly agrees, patting me on the back.
“Wait!” Bri whispers urgently, as though she wants to shout but can’t because Charlotte is finally asleep. “What are you doing—going back there? You can’t go back there, Slick! Think what happened to you last time! Think about how long you were gone. Do you really want to miss out on two more years of—” She cuts herself short, looking at her father, but I know what she was about to say. Do I really want to miss out on two more years of our daughter’s life?
The answer is no, and the question makes me want to turn away from the life and run into the mountains and make a nice, quiet life with Bri and Charlotte. But then I remember the pain, and the heat, and the blades, and the hate. I remember hunching in wintertime over a book so cold the pages were icy to the touch. I remember my piss freezing in the bucket they gave me instead of a toilet. I remember the night of blood, and how something died inside of me. I remember riding with them, being forced to betray my father’s legacy. All of this, none of which anybody but me knows, comes to me, and I know I can’t refuse this task.
“I have to do this, Bri,” I say, all too aware of the men around us, judging us, especially Grizzly. He doesn’t look too pleased that I’m even talking to his daughter, let alone in such an intimate way. I shrug, and go on in a sterner tone, “The club is the most important thing. It was the most important thing to my father, and it’s the most important thing to me.”
“Be at the club tonight; they’re expecting the package late tomorrow. You’ll have to ride all night and all the next day, it’ll be tough, but I know you’re up to it.” Grizzly drops into his seat, and that ends the matter.
I head to my bike, and Bri heads to her car, but Clint and his goons stay behind to settle some business with Grizzly. So when Bri signals to me that she’s pulling over with her blinkers, there’s no one around to stop me from joining her. She climbs from the car, face red, and waits for me to join her. Charlotte is in the back, in her car seat, swaddled with what looks like a thousand belts. When I reach her, she makes as though to slap me across the face. I catch her wrist.
“You’re going back!” she hisses, voice breaking. “After everything that happened to you over there—”
“You don’t know what happened to me over there!” I growl, dropping her hand and taking a step away from her. “Nobody but me and the fucks that did it knows what happened to me over there, Bri, and it’s them I’ve got a meeting with.”
Traffic whizzes by us so that Bri has to shout, her voice whipping in the wind. “Do you know how much I missed you when you were gone, Slick? Every single night I dreamt of you!” She flushes, but presses on: “Every night I dreamt of you! Every night I was never sure if you were going to come back to me! Every night you were gone, a piece of me died. Every night you were gone, I felt myself turning to—turning to dust!” She stops, panting, words failing her.
“This is for the club,” I say, turning away. “This is for the club and those fucking bastards up in Seattle who tried to take the club away from me.”
“What’s in the package, Slick?” she calls at my back.
“Death,” I mutter, climbing on my bike and ignoring the way she stares at me, arms at her sides, like she expects me to be the hero and climb off the bike and go to her and wrap my arms around her and make everything okay.
When will she realize that I’ve never been the hero?
I kick my bike into life, and ride away.
Chapter Twelve
I tell Heather that I may be away for a couple of days, give her money for daycare, and then wait on the outskirts of the club on my motorbike, helmet visor pulled down, wearing dark plain leathers which will, hopefully, hide my identity. The sun is setting as I sit here, waiting for Slick’s bike to race by, a pit in my stomach. I don’t want to leave Denver, leave my daughter—and Heather gave me hell about it—but I won’t let Slick go to Seattle all over again, not alone. If the Flaming Skulls take him captive, this time there needs to be a witness; this time we need to get him free immediately, not after two long years.
Soon, Slick’s bike zooms past, going at least eighty miles per hour. I kick mine into gear and growl after him. I stay a few cars behind him on the freeway, head low, watching as he weaves between the traffic. The night is bright with stars and moonlight, and pretty soon I get the feeling that Slick knows he’s being followed, though not by whom. If he knew it was me, I doubt he’d be ducking and weaving like he is, giving me a good chase, making me exercise my biking muscles. I ride between trucks, duck behind cars, bob in and out of lanes, keeping up with Slick every step of the way. He keeps this performance up well into midnight, and then slows down and cruises. Perhaps he no longer sees me—I’ve dropped far back, keeping him just within my view—or perhaps he just doesn’t see me as a threat. I smile to myself, despite the danger, wondering how he’d react if he knew that Brat was keeping up with the master courier.