by Nicole Fox
“Yeah. I’ve seen these kinds of things stay put for decades,” Brittany said sadly. “I’ll do everything I possibly can to make sure that doesn’t happen here.”
“Thanks, Brittany.” Kelsey didn’t know how to articulate the bottomless depth of gratitude she felt toward this woman whom she’d only known for a matter of weeks, but who was now going out of her way to find the answers that had eluded Kelsey for so long. “I owe you one. Or two. Or a hundred.”
The other woman laughed. “You’re sweet, but this is my job. I’m so happy that I can do this for you.” She paused. “I should tell you that if and when the case is reopened, they’re probably going to want to redo some interviews, see if anything’s changed, re-examine some evidence. So be prepared for that.”
“Yes.” Kelsey agreed automatically, but a cold fist of apprehension had clenched hard around her spine. Stupidly, she hadn’t really thought about what reopening the case might mean for the rest of her family, or for her relationship with them. Would she have to go back and face the people she’d systematically cut out of her life months before? Would she have to explain herself? Her head spun until she felt faint and had to lie back against the arm of the sofa.
“That’s fine,” she heard herself saying, as if from a distance.
“I figured you’d say that. I just wanted to warn you, so you weren’t caught off guard.”
“I appreciate it,” Kelsey said. “I appreciate everything.”
A voice sounded in the background, and Brittany shuffled the phone. “Oh, shoot,” she said. “I’ve got to go. I’ll call you as soon as there’s an update.” Then she was gone, disappeared into the constant jet stream of media work. Kelsey remembered the feeling. Did she miss it? She didn’t know. There were a lot of things she didn’t know at the moment.
She closed her eyes and pressed her hands over her eyelids until she saw splashes of color in the dark. Her dizziness wound itself slowly down in conjunction with her calming heartbeat. Kelsey made herself breathe slowly, counting to ten in her head. The knot in her chest loosened up, and she felt her limbs relax. But every time she thought about returning to her family, that feeling of dread coiled up again, like a snake inside her ribs. Before, when Hannah was still alive, they’d been a dream family, a perfect representation of happiness. But her death had shattered all of that like a hammer to a mirror. And no one picked up the pieces.
In her mind’s eye, Kelsey could see herself behind the wheel of her car, speeding to her parents’ house in the middle of the night. She hadn’t been able to see much of anything on that drive, and at the time, she’d thought it was raining. It was only when she got there and her vision failed to clear that she realized she was crying. She remembered lying on the couch in their living room in much the same way as she was doing now, listening to her mother screaming. The issue of murder had come up almost immediately with the police. There was no doubt about it. Hannah had been killed. And from then on, Kelsey’s whole life was haunted. When the investigation began its slow grind to a dead halt, those leftover demons nagged at her brain. How could she, the big sister, just let this sit and gather dust? Hannah could not have died for no reason. She was too important. She was too loved.
The whole thing had come together to drive Kelsey just a little bit crazy. Just enough so that she started grasping at straws, trying desperately to find a path toward closure. It didn’t help that she wasn’t the only one cracking under pressure. After the numbness of their initial shock wore off, her parents’ grief gave way in large part to helpless fury, which ended up directed at each other. Within a matter of months, Mom and Dad were sleeping in separate rooms. By the time Kelsey joined up with Spike, her father had moved himself out. So, it was just Mom, alone now in that house that had once been for a family. Kelsey tried not to think about it, because every time she did, she ended up feeling as though she really abandoned her mom.
Not that her mother was perfect. Kelsey distinctly remembered the day she’d gone over to the house to clean, and found an empty pill casing while she was making the bed. She’d taken a picture and used it to search the internet, and that is how she discovered that 51-year-old Suzanna Jones had a burgeoning narcotics problem. At the time, Kelsey had been too shaken to confront her mother about it, nor had she wanted to get her father involved. It had seemed as though the death of their younger daughter was already going to cost them their marriage. Kelsey had seen no point in throwing something else on the fire.
Maybe I should have, she thought, somewhat bitterly. Maybe I should have just laid everything out on the table. But their lives had become fractured so fast, that it was like sliding down a mountain made only of gravel. Kelsey tried to picture her parents, once the epitome of an ideal marriage, now embattled in their own private wars. Did she owe it to them to return? Or did she owe it to herself to stay away?
This was the question she posed to Chopper when he walked through the door. It took him longer than usual to formulate an answer; Kelsey felt as though she might have abruptly brought him back from somewhere far away. Finally, he looked up at her and said, “It depends on whether or not you think you can help them.”
“What if I don’t know?” she said softly. “What if I have no idea at all?” Silence fell in the kitchen, and she noticed as she gazed into his gorgeous, sea-colored eyes, that he seemed horribly, heavily sad. Kelsey walked over to him and wrapped her arms around him, resting her cheek in the hollow between his neck and shoulder. “Never mind,” she whispered. “You know what I really want to know? How did we get here?” He glanced at her quizzically. “Look at us,” she said. “We’re so hurt.”
Chopper turned in the chair and pulled her into his lap. “Yeah,” he said, the trace of an ironic smirk on his lips. “I guess we are, aren’t we?”
# # #
There was no sex that night. Kelsey was a little surprised when he got into the bed without reaching for her, but she was content simply to lie next to him and feel him breathing. His hand rested in the curve of her waist, his thumb tracing the line of her body. No one spoke. She swore she could hear his heart beating in his chest.
Then the spell was broken by a light in the shadows and a single clear tone from Chopper’s phone. Kelsey laughed before she could help it, and then he laughed too. She pressed her lips to his bare chest, thinking that perhaps it would be that kind of night after all, but he reached over to the nightstand and examined the message he’d received. A second later, he sat up.
“What is it?” She touched his arm lightly. Her fingertip skated along the bottom edge of his wrist.
He didn’t say anything right away. She watched him type out a response. Once it was sent, he leaned back into the pillows and looked sidelong at her. His palm settled against her thigh. “I sent Dean and the boys out to do some scouting for me,” he said.
“What are they looking for?”
Chopper gave her another little smirk. “Guess.”
Kelsey was about to say something when she was struck by a thought that drove all other things from her mind. It was something she had considered before, but not in a long time, and certainly not in all the context she had now. She chewed her lip. “Can I ask you something, Jesse?”
His face sobered instantly, as it always did when she called him by his given name. “Sure.”
Kelsey glanced at him. His eyes were very pale in the moonlight from the window, almost ethereal. She held that gaze as she voiced her question. “Do you think Spike killed my sister?”
He frowned. “I mean…it’s always going to be possible. But I would bet that if he did, you’d know by now — either ‘cause you found out, or because he told you himself.” It was a valid point. Spike Lawler was exactly the kind of person who would brag about murder. “Does it matter?” Chopper added. “I’m gonna get him either way.” Too late, he realized how callous that sounded, and he prepared to apologize.
But she didn’t even seem to notice. Her eyes glittered in the dark. “It matters to me
,” she said softly. “Because if it was him, then I want to be there when he dies.”
Chopper blinked. “Are you sure?” he asked carefully. This was the girl who still had yet to return to the club compound, who hadn’t even gotten on the back of his bike since the warehouse. Her sudden embracing of violence worried him a little bit.
Kelsey nodded resolutely. “This isn’t a club thing for me. It’s personal.” She looked at him. “And when it’s over, I want to know it’s over for sure.”
Chopper’s phone pinged again. They both looked at it. A message from Dean.
“I think we found him.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chopper
He could feel Kelsey’s eyes on him as he put his phone down onto the bedspread and sat back against the pillows, a million thoughts racing through his brain. He glanced at her, and the look on her face was unreadable. She didn’t say anything, but they both knew what was coming. Chopper sighed, tossed the covers back, and swung his feet down onto the floor. She gathered up the blankets around her, watching him.
“I gotta go, babe,” he said, his voice a mixture of resolve and regret. “I’m sorry.” When he leaned down to kiss her, she raised her hand to his cheek, tracing the contours of his face with her fingertips. Chopper lingered for a moment on her lips before reluctantly pulling away. Everything in the room—the light, the air, her skin—was warm, and the things he was going to do were so cold. He turned away from her as he pulled on his clothes, but he knew her gaze was still there.
“Be careful, Jesse,” she said softly. He stepped into his boots. She was a dream, and right now he was waking up.
“I’ll try,” he said. Kelsey didn’t answer. He stole one last look at her on his way out the bedroom door, and she was staring at her own hands clutching the sheets against her body. Maybe that was the wrong thing to say. Maybe he should have given her more, something to hold on to until he got home safe. But he couldn’t.
Chopper locked the front door of his house behind him, the night air slapping him in the face. It smelled like rain, heavy with uncondensed water, and he wondered for a moment if his trusty leather jacket would be enough in a potentially torrential downpour. The sky was too dark to gauge the clouds, so he just shrugged and jogged across the driveway to his bike. Another message from Dean popped up, casting him in the white glow of the screen. It was an address. Chopper swung his leg over the seat of the bike and made his reply.
“Don’t go in without me. 10 minutes.”
He drove away without looking back at the house, afraid his convictions would falter if he did. The image of Kelsey sitting up in the bed, blankets gathered around her like a dress, stuck in his mind no matter how hard he tried to dislodge it. She hadn’t stopped him, but that inscrutable expression was nothing short of haunting. What had she been feeling as she saw him get up and get ready to commit murder, no matter how justified? What had she been thinking? He was almost surprised that she hadn’t asked him even once if he would stay, but then again, no one knew better than she did that Spike deserved everything he was about to get.
Chopper told himself to stop worrying about the situation he’d just left behind and focus his energy on the one he was riding into. He leaned into the damp wind, easing toward the upper reaches of the speed limit. The hungry creature inside of him who fed off his Outlaw exploits was beginning to pull on the chain, igniting a fire he hadn’t really felt since Kelsey’s rescue. Her fear had tamed him somewhat, but now he was hot in the trail of vengeance. Pieces of his old self emerged from the depths. His mouth settled into a grim line. Someone was going to die tonight
The address from Dean was in a slum, on the end of a row of dilapidated houses that were practically collapsing under their own weight. All the run-down buildings were dark as tombs — abandoned, Chopper bet, as well as condemned. It was not beyond the realm of imagination that Spike was squatting there with the ragged remains of his crew, hiding in squalor until they could scrape together some kind of plan. Chopper smirked to himself as he parked up the block, far enough away that the voice of his motorcycle couldn’t reach their ears. Whatever plans they had managed to drum up were about to go straight in the trash.
He approached the house on foot, keeping his head low so that he wouldn’t be easily identified by anyone standing watch. On the way up, he passed a few bikes that he recognized, dotting the curb inconspicuously. They were not the custom rides favored by Outlaws on joyrides, they were junkers taken from the back of the chop shop, cobbled together out of old, shitty parts. He had to laugh. Some of those rust buckets probably weren’t even road-safe; maybe when this was over, he’d have them towed back rather than let his boys take their chances.
As he neared the side of the old house, he made out a figure half-hidden in the overgrown brush, signaling at him. Chopper double-checked the front windows to be sure he hadn’t been spotted, then moved stealthily to join Dean in his hiding spot. They both dropped to a crouch, the coarse grass scratching at their faces.
“Tell me what we’ve got,” Chopper whispered.
“We’re not a hundred percent sure he’s in there,” Dean replied, “but there’s definitely someone who knows where he is, at least. All the Mongols we followed ended up coming back here. I don’t know how many there are. I’m guessing five, tops.”
“Do you know if they’re armed?”
“Not with anything big.” Dean made a vague gesture toward the street. “This neighborhood is technically city property. They can’t do anything to any of these buildings without being charged.” He raised an eyebrow. “And they are not in a position to be inviting legal scrutiny.”
Chopper chuckled. “To be fair, neither are we.” He glanced around. “Where are the rest?”
“Around the back. There’s a broken glass door on that side.” Dean pointed. “I figure we’ll just go through there. It’s the easiest way.”
“Traps?”
“No.”
Chopper nodded. The adrenaline began to race through his veins. “Call ‘em. Let’s go.” He and Dean stalked through the grass to the far corner of the house, where Dean paused to alert someone Chopper couldn’t quite see. Three more shadows came out of hiding and drew into position around the door, which stood crookedly off its track, a star-shaped shatter punched into the center. The five Outlaws held their breath for a few seconds, listening. After they were met with nothing but silence, they all turned their eyes to Chopper. He motioned them forward.
The broken door didn’t make any sound as it was lifted away and set carefully to the side. The Outlaws filed in one-by-one, checking the corners of the room and scanning for threats. The air inside smelled stale, thick with decay. Even in the pale moonlight, Chopper thought he could see mold climbing the walls. No wonder these houses were abandoned—they were a hazard. If Spike’s beating hadn’t killed him, Chopper was willing to bet that living here sure would.
No one said anything. They stepped carefully through the debris-filled living room and into a hallway with stairs on one side and a severely neglected kitchen on the other. Just as two of Chopper’s men made to split off into the kitchen, footsteps sounded from the floorboards above. They all froze, their bodies tense, ready for anything. The footsteps came closer and closer to the top of the staircase, until Chopper caught a brief glimpse of someone peeking over the top banister.
“Oh, shit,” said a voice. “I think it’s Slater.” The voice did not belong to Spike.
“You’re damn right it’s Slater,” Chopper said loudly. His words seemed to shake the very foundations of the house. “And I think you know what I want.”
“He’s not here,” came the reply.
Chopper folded his arms. “Bullshit.” He leaned against the railing, causing the whole thing to creak ominously. “Don’t make me come up there. I’d rather not even deal with you, if I’m being honest.”
“Really, man. Spike’s not here.” There was a tinge of desperation in the Mongol’s tone now, which g
ave Chopper enormous satisfaction.
“Then where is he?” Chopper put on an air of great patience as he exchanged glances with Dean, who rolled his eyes.
“We don’t know.”
Chopper sighed. He climbed one step, making sure that the men upstairs knew exactly what was happening. In the old days, he might have simply shot through the floor and made his point that way, but he was serious about not wanting to deal with them—and besides, he didn’t trust the integrity of the house’s construction to withstand the force of even one bullet. All he wanted was to find Spike Lawler and kill him. Was that asking so much?
“Wrong answer,” he said out loud. “I’m starting to feel like my time is being wasted.”
“We swear, we don’t know! We’re the only ones left here. Everyone else has been sent away.” A pause, during which Chopper climbed another step. “Spike said he wants to put down new roots, so he’s spreading us out to do it.” The Mongols sounded like they were slowly backing away.