Vicious

by LS Silverii

  Peace was what she needed at the moment. Anger had its place, it just wasn’t the antidote for here and now. Her eyes closed as his hand nervously stroked her hair. A flood of moisture streamed through closed lids. No time to act brave. She was still human and deserved to feel loved.

  “I’m sorry, James. You shouldn’t get caught up in this mess.”

  “Please stop. This mess was caused by those motherfuckers, and I’m going to fix it.” His eyes blazed with determination.

  “No need going to war with the entire Nation over me. I’m not worth it.”

  “Yes you are, and it’s only with Vengeance. Justice gave his blessing.”

  “Justice?” Mixed emotions coursed through her body.

  Sure, he revolted her at times, but she’d also come to rely upon Justice’s safekeeping. Her rational side, which had frazzled months ago, said to flee from him. Her insecure side, which dominated who she’d become, often ached for his approval, for his touch. Her eyes cut back to St. John to see if he’d read her thoughts. He stood and turned away for the window.

  How could I’ve been so stupid? He’s the only one who’s treated me like a human being.

  “James, I’m sorry. You don’t understand what they’ve done to me.”

  “Yes I do. They’ve done the same to me.”

  Breath clutched in her chest. Unsure what he meant, she lay silently awaiting his explanation.

  “I didn’t set out to belong to the Nation. It was part of my…” He bit his bottom lip and stormed out of the room.

  Abigail watched for his return. He’d stopped in the hall—she could see his shadow jittering the light beneath the door. Her eyelids batted, growing heavy from the sedation, but she fought the effects to have a last word with St. John. Maybe she should even tell him how strong her feelings had grown for him.

  The heart monitor spiked in synch with her heartbeat as the door eased open. St. John popped his head back in and smiled. She fought to push up off the bed, but searing pain cut her in half. She blacked out.

  Hours later, a nurse flipped on an overhead light to awaken Abigail. Her uneasy smile stretched across the room but Abigail’s paranoia spun wild. The nurse tried to settle her.

  “I need to get out of this place. Help me.” Her fingers fluttered wildly at the wires, the tubes, and the sheets.

  “Abi, settle down. You can’t strain or you’ll risk ripping your stitches open,” the nurse said.

  “Fuck settling down. They’ll kill me,” she muttered, barely audibly.

  “Honey, whoever you’re afraid of, you’re safe here. I’m sure your husband is more than capable of warding anyone off.” The shorthaired nurse tugged at her white lab coat and winked toward the corner of the room before walking out.

  Abigail wiggled her toes and curled the balls of her feet but even those small movements irritated the sensitivity in her ass. She flashed on Vengeance’s violent attack. Even the morphine high wasn’t enough to stop that memory. She repeatedly mashed the button for a measured dose of the drug, but she quaked in the bed as her body relived the vile assault.

  My husband?

  A noise, the heavy crunch of bulk against the plastic hospital furniture, caught her attention. “Abigail?”

  Aw, my husband.

  “Yes?” She whispered through. Her mouth was dry.

  Except for the sound of his body shuffling back into the hospital chair, it was silent. Satisfied by his presence, Abigail hadn’t much to say. Still, she needed the reassurance of St. John’s kind smile.

  “Baby, you still here?” She asked, slowly turning her head.

  “Yeah, baby. I’m here,” a male voice said. Leaning forward into the eerie greenish-gray glow of the equipment, Vengeance laughed with sinister delight.

  Chapter 10

  Hope Falls, or as it was known, Hope Fails was closer to Mystic but just a bit over halfway to Denver. The open Colorado interstate allowed bikers to haul ass from region to region without much hassle from the cops. St. John hadn’t had to deal with the local cops much, but in his position it was a losing proposition to get stopped at all. Unable to tell them he was a brother cop, he’d had to take the ride to county jails more than once.

  The night air was cool and made the run pleasant but his chest burned and tightened as he anticipated the conversation he’d have to have with Lawless Boudreaux. It was time for knowing the truth—the dirty rotten truth about his once-beloved federal agency.

  His big Hog slipped past the intersection where he was supposed to hang a right hand turn. It led toward the rear of a parking lot secluded by willy-nilly redevelopment and apathy. He’d sensed a tail since Custer County. St. John eased to a stop at the red light, his feet rooted firmly atop the chilled surface. Left hand poised near the pistol’s grip, he braced for confrontation. Nothing.

  Headlights pulled up behind and beside him until the light turned green. St. John stayed where he was. Vehicles honked and flashed their lights, but all went around—except one. He saw the headlights about eight car lengths behind him—parked in the right turn lane. As obvious as a boner in a Speedo, the sedan idled until it drew ire from more motorists than St. John.

  He leaned his bike to the left and accelerated through a sharp U-turn. The sedan lurched, then hesitated. Before anyone could react, St. John had backtracked west on the route for about six seconds until he crossed paths with the eastbound sedan. He saw the brake lights disappear, so he punched another left-hand semi-circle until he was again eastbound, this time behind the surveillance vehicle.

  He withdrew his pistol and racked off a flurry of bullets into each rear tire. The occupants ducked but before they vanished, he noticed a balding driver and a female passenger.

  That ought to occupy them—whoever they are. Right now, that could be anybody.

  He glared through the midnight tint of the passenger window as he flashed past the disabled sedan. St. John whipped a right at the first street and lost sight of his pursuers. Knuckles clamped around the handlebars, heart racing, he raged at the effort to bust him. His bike jolted over speed bumps set throughout the residential neighborhood, but he refused to ease off the accelerator until he got his hooks into Lawless Boudreaux.

  No one else knew we were meeting. Did that son-of-a-bitch set me up?

  The meet sight was nestled behind an abandoned hull of what was once a mini-mall. He’d heard developers were converting it into a hydroponics grow facility for the recently legalized marijuana industry. Instead of flashing his headlights off and on to signal his approach, St. John parked away from the location and crept to the darkest corner of the structure.

  Without binoculars or NVG, his vision was limited. St. John watched two shadowy figures move about the front of a full-sized pickup truck. He squatted and watched and waited, then waited some more but saw only those two. Based on the size of the shadows, he assumed the two were Lawless and Voodoo. Growing impatient, he worked his way around the concealed perimeter to approach them from behind.

  “Show me your hands,” St. John spoke in a calm voice.

  “Guns are on the open tailgate.” Lawless replied.

  “What?”

  Voodoo turned in his direction, “We knew you were coming like this, so we made it easy for you. Now check our irons and return them. It’s shitty out here. Fucking stoners keep trying to break into that building. They heard it was a grow house.”

  St. John handed their weapons back. “Who knew we were meeting?”

  “No one,” Lawless snapped.

  Voodoo raised her hand. “Ford knew.”

  “How?” St. John demanded.

  “We requested the undercover g-ride to get here. I had to sign the truck out from him,” she said, head bowed.

  St. John opened his hand and Lawless handed him the key fob. He darted into the interior, searched, dropped to look beneath, and finally popped the hood to dig behind the dashboard.

  Finally, St. John held up a GPS transponder device. “Didn’t you think you’
d be tracked and maybe tailed? This isn’t your first day on the job is it?” He threw it at Lawless’ feet. His size fourteen boot smashed it into the asphalt parking lot.

  “No one followed us, Seals. They followed you.” Lawless said.

  “My fucking name is James St. John. Unless you’re a total asshole like your group supervisor, Ford, I’d expect you to know better than to slip like that.”

  “It wasn’t a slip. You need to come up, brother. You’re doing an admirable job, but disappearing for a week ain’t going to stir these bastards. The club will survive without you.”

  Voodoo moved toward St. John and placed a hand on his shoulder. He shrugged her off.

  “Don’t you realize what’s at stake here? I came for a top-secret meeting, but instead had to unload a whole magazine into the rear of a car following me.” St. John’s hands flailed, over-animated in his attempt to make the point. “I think it was Ford and Worthington. And now you two—who I thought understood—are trying to sweet talk me into nesting. Don’t you understand there is no escaping this until it plays out to the bitter end?”

  “James, you sound like a broken record,” Voodoo said as she put her hand back on him. “Your life isn’t worth this case. We’ve got wiretaps and agents on the ground to wrap things up. Let us carry on from here.”

  “Wiretaps?” St. John’s knees threatened to buckle. Then he lunged to ram his boot into the hard plastic front bumper of the agency truck. “Why didn’t y’all tell me? Who the fuck is running this investigation after all?”

  “Graham was the case agent, but with him laid up in the hospital, Ford took over personally,” Lawless said.

  “No wonder they know my every move. I gotta ditch this cell and grab a burner,” St. John imitated tossing his smart phone into the woods. “So since you’re listening, what do you know about Gray Man?”

  Voodoo and Lawless stared at each other, awkwardly silent.

  St. John grabbed Lawless by the shirt and drew him close. “Tell me. You fucking owe me that much. I’m dying out there because of your six brothers, and you gonna get self-righteous on me behind a marijuana grow house?”

  Lawless shoved away. His feet angled into a fighting stance. Neither man advanced.

  “You ain’t killing yourself. You’ve never felt so alive pretending to be one of the Boudreaux brothers. So you can thank me later for giving your wretched life a purpose.”

  Voodoo jumped in between them. “Enough. Stop measuring your cocks and let’s start working through this shit to see who’s trying to put the dick to us. St. John did you forget we were in that Vegas desert under fire? Whether Graham was part of the set up or not, we were still the ones set up for ambush. If wild man here hadn’t blown up the chemical barrel and assaulted their burning butts, neither of us would be here right now.”

  Lawless reached over to high-five Voodoo.

  “We got cold ones in the bed of the truck. Why don’t we sit down and talk this shit through?” She offered.

  Chapter 11

  It had begun to mist. Heavy dew slicked the surface of the F-150 truck. Voodoo sat on the top of a wheel well and handed iced bottles of beer to them. She popped the top to hers, and winked as she settled against the inside of the truck’s bed. Lawless perched his big body on the open tailgate and St. John sat across from him.

  Voodoo cleared her throat, “St. John, can I be completely honest with you?”

  “Hell, I’d hope you’re always honest with me.”

  She held her beer bottle out to clink his. “Good point. I know I can handle my end physically, but I’m still a south Louisiana Sheriff’s Deputy who got yanked off the bayou to help in this investigation. I’m still in the dark on this federal Task Force law stuff and just how you got mixed up in this too?”

  St. John took a long draw from his bottle of beer, “I appreciate your honesty. This shit can get overwhelming. How about you, Lawless?”

  “I know Ford is trying to cock block us on a need-to-know only, but I’ve been around long enough to see through the smoke.”

  “So, I guess I get to explain this?” St. John turned to face Voodoo. She nodded, and took another guzzle of beer.

  “I went deep under almost two years ago to bust the Savage Souls on illegal weapons and drugs. They’re running one of the most complex RICO operations we’ve ever seen, and being on the inside is the only way to bring them down.”

  “RICO?” Voodoo asked.

  “Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations. Straight from federal code 18 U.S.C. 1961 – 1968 as part of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970 and signed into law by none other then President Richard M. Nixon. It was originally created to fight the mafia by classifying certain crimes over a 10-year period as a continuing criminal enterprise. The United States Attorney uses it on cases like these to draw everyone into a snare for plea deals so they can brag about convictions.”

  She spit out her beer. “How’d you remember all of that?”

  “Because I’m a United States federal agent and not some fucking outlaw motorcycle gang member,” he said as he held out his moist beer bottle to clank against hers again.

  “Welcome back Special Agent Louis Seals,” Lawless said cautiously.

  “I’ll let that one slip,” St. John joked.

  “Anyway, I got into the club as Justice had taken control from the old guard. Once he relocated the national headquarters from Chicago to Mystic, we thought it’d be a good chance to target the snake’s head—Justice Boudreaux.”

  “My brother,” Lawless said.

  “Yes, your brother.” St. John said. “I end up out here and get assigned to a big buy for military grade weapons. Little did anyone know that wise guy, Ricky Geneti, had planned the double cross of the century. Gotta hand it to him, the dude had balls of steel to ride into that viper’s pit knowing he’d rip off the most violent gang of murderers in this country.”

  “Yeah, and look at where he is now.” Voodoo added.

  “Well, typical feds, we lost the money and the weapons. So I couldn’t come up until we found them. Next thing I know the Nation rides over to Las Vegas like the four horsemen and murders Geneti,” St. John continued.

  Lawless held up a hand with three fingers showing, “And his three-year-old son.”

  “I know, and that’s where shit went awful. Justice is trying to keep his Nation from falling apart, and losing that much cash to a jackass like Geneti didn’t help his creds. He killed Red, the old Vegas chapter president because he was a rat, and that only made shit worse between the two chapters.” St. John paused to take a longer draw from his beer. “Crazy fucker then carves up a long time club member because he opposed him and denounced his colors.”

  “Carved up?” Voodoo asked.

  St. John imitated the way a knife would slice away flesh, “Yeah, the Savage Souls’ symbol is trademarked and legally belongs to the club. You quit and they take all shit back. Your colors, patches, t-shirts, your tattoos, your…”

  “Tattoos?” she spit beer through her nose and the rest drooled down her chin.

  St. John held his bare forearms out to show them his two Savage Souls tattoos, “They’ll come looking to reclaim these one day. Just like the ones they filleted from Tommy Cloud’s entire body.”

  “That shit’s disgusting,” Voodoo snarled. Lawless brushed across Voodoo’s thigh to dig another round from the cooler. St. John looked across at them, and saw her smile back at Lawless.

  What’s this flirty shit?

  St. John coughed to refocus them, “What’s disgusting is how they treat women. Same night Cloud gets butchered, some girl shows up to become their damn sex slave.”

  “Abigail?” Voodoo asks.

  St. John glowered at her.

  “You told us about her in the van, remember?” Voodoo said.

  “Yeah, sorry. I can’t get her out of my head. She’s a gorgeous woman, but why in the hell would she freely give herself to all of these mongrels. She can do much better than that
.” St. John said.

  Lawless pressed his hand into the left crook of his elbow. “Junkie?”

  “Not a mark on her. Sober as a stone.”

  “Maybe revenge?” Voodoo offered.

  His hands lifted, signaling a question. “For what?”

  “Who knows, maybe they killed a family member. Just please don’t get emotionally tied to her,” Voodoo said. “I know what happened to your wife, and I’m sorry, but you can’t fix everyone.”

  “How’s my wife your business?” Agitated, St. John let his emotion slip—a very rare mistake.

  Lawless looked him square in the face, but St. John shrugged and shook his head no.

  “Something horrible is about to break. They found two dead bodies this week on the club’s property. A brother Savage named Toad and a cop from Mystic. Both mutilated. Locals got no clue, but my gut says its Gray Man.”

  “Oh, him again?” Lawless asked.

  “Yeah, him again. Why do y’all insist on fucking me over where this nomad outlaw is concerned? Is he federally protected property? I mean fuck, you went so far as to try kidnapping me.” St. John rubbed his jaw to remind Lawless of the sucker punch he landed that day.

  Voodoo and Lawless exchanged glances, but not the cutie looks from earlier. St. John felt like he was back to playing this operation solo. Solitude overwhelmed him as he realized just how alone he was. He’d lost both parents within a week, and his wife overdosed on heroin the semester she would’ve graduated with her master’s degree in nursing.

  He’d isolated himself from the civilized life he knew to live among the ferocious outlaws, and his once beloved federal agency appeared rotten with disloyal, self-serving administrators more concerned with a pension than an arrest. Now, the only lifeline he had to the law enforcement community seemed more interested in getting into each others pants than covering his ass against Gray Man.

  “No problem. Keep your secrets. I was stupid to trust you both anyway.” St. John’s tone smacked with disgust. He slid off the damp tailgate and lifted his bottle. “Thanks for the beers and for nothing.”