by Jessie Cooke
“What’s that?” Chris hadn’t moved back. He was trying hard to prove that he wasn’t any more intimidated by Dax than Dax was by him.
“I have things to do today, so I’d appreciate it if you’d either arrest me, or let me go home now.”
“And what if I say I’m not planning on arresting you, just holding you for the full forty-eight hours the law allows to see what you decide to tell me?”
“I’d say you were a fool. You’ll be taking up sorely needed space in your jail for however long it takes for my attorney to get me released. I’m not a person of interest in this murder, am I?”
“Not yet.”
“Good. So when or if I am, come and give me a ride back in…I’ll have my attorney meet us here. I’m leaving now, Detective Matheson, unless you arrest me. Your choice.”
Chris Matheson took a few more seconds to stare him down and then he stood up and shoved his chair in hard against the metal table. “Get the fuck out of here.”
Dax smiled. “Thanks.” He stood up too. “Can I take Cody with me or do I need to call the attorney for him?”
“That’ll be up to Detective Brady,” Chris said with a smile. He opened the door and let Dax go out first. Dax saw Kyle Brady at his desk. Of all Angel’s brothers, Kyle was the one he was having the hardest time liking. He almost smiled when he thought about Cody’s little friend being his girlfriend. Kyle had no idea what he’d gotten himself into, Dax was sure. If Hannah had shown her true colors, Kyle would have kicked her to the curb by now. He was all black and white, no gray areas. Dax was a lot like him, but they stood on opposite sides of that thin blue line. Dax strolled over to Kyle’s desk and said:
“Is Cody Miller free to go?” Kyle looked up at Dax and then over at Chris.
“That’ll be up to parole,” he finally said. Dax would bet that it was hard for Kyle to stay out of the interrogation room he’d been in. Kyle loved control, and the fact that Dax was in a relationship with his sister took a lot of that out of his hands, and pissed him off to no end.
“So, can I talk to parole?”
“Miss Hoffman is his PO. She was here, but she had to step out. When she gets back, I’ll ask her.”
“Cody didn’t have anything on him. I’d be willing to bet he passed your drug test. What violation was she thinking about calling him out on? He hasn’t done shit, and I’m getting a little sick and tired of these games you’re all playing, just because you think you can get away with it.” Dax’s patience was running thin.
“You can tell that all to Miss Hoffman. I’m done with him for now. Keeping him until she got back was her idea.”
“Where did she go?”
Kyle smiled again and pissed Dax off more before he even heard what his almost brother-in-law had to say next. “She had to go and toss a place, one of her parolees is up to no good…”
“She’s at the ranch?” Kyle didn’t answer him with words, just another smug smile that Dax really wanted to wipe off his face…and not gently.
It was six hours from the time Cody and Dax were taken from the ranch into town until they were in the car with Angel on their way home. Cody wondered if Dax had told Angel how he felt about Kyle. It was obvious when the two men were together that the fuse was lit and the explosion was imminent. In front of Cody, Angel didn’t ask any questions, and Dax didn’t offer any explanations. When they got back to the ranch, they dropped him off at the clubhouse and Dax told him they’d talk in the morning. It was already late afternoon, and Cody was exhausted, so he was grateful.
There were a few guys in the clubhouse, but everyone’s mood was subdued and no one even tried to talk to him as he grabbed a bottle of whiskey from behind the bar. He was in the mood for a fat blunt too, but there weren’t any in the box under the counter where they usually kept them. The place was spotlessly clean. Cody’s guess was that the blunts had either been tossed before the police arrived, or they had taken them with them. He passed Hawk on his way to the stairs and braced himself for a ration of shit. Instead, the old man patted him on the shoulder and just kept going. Something about that encounter gave Cody a sense of déjà vu, but he shook it off and kept going.
When he opened the door to his room and saw the mess the police had left it in, he was pissed all over again. He wasn’t pissed at the police or his PO, he was pissed at himself when it dawned on him that this was the kind of mess everyone else had probably spent the better part of the day cleaning up. He kicked his way through his things all over the floor and made a path to the window. He pulled the curtains closed tightly, stripped out of his clothes, and lay down on the bed. He lay there for a long time staring at the ceiling. The police hadn’t had anything concrete to hold him on, but they had seemed determined to keep looking. He thought about his life on the ranch and although the past month had been chaotic and stressful, every second of it had been better than life inside a 6 x 12-foot cell.
He sat up and opened the bottle he’d brought upstairs with him and took a swig. The whiskey burned going down, but the warm flush it gave him afterwards felt good. He took a few more drinks before setting it on the bedside table and lying down again. He wanted to go to sleep and just forget about everything for a while, but his head wasn’t cooperating. As soon as he closed his eyes, his memories began to run through his mind like faded old home movies. Unfortunately, his old home movies weren’t like other people’s. There were no smiling faces or family vacations. His mind wanted to take him back to that trailer when the old man was alive and every second of his life was filled with terror.
As he lay there he was taken back to a day he’d all but forgotten. He realized, as he began to remember, that was why seeing Hawk smile at him had given him a sense of doing this all before. He was suddenly back in the rundown trailer with Keller. They were both sitting on the dirty, broken-down old couch that Cody slept on every night, and watching as the old man was put in handcuffs. The old man’s parole officer had come by to do a check and found him as high as a kite. They’d tossed the trailer and found more drugs…lots of them. Cody and Keller usually weren’t home when that happened, or they had some kind of advance warning that sent them scurrying off to the ranch or somewhere else to hide. The cops had caught them all off-guard that day and the two boys had been told to sit quietly and wait. What they were waiting for, they weren’t sure, and Cody was scared. But he remembered feeling an odd sense of relief when the police put the cuffs on the old man. In his young mind at that moment, all he could think was that they were going to take the monster away and at least for a while he wouldn’t have to worry about getting beaten. Keller looked more terrified than Cody felt and even more so when the lady in the white suit came through the door. She looked around distastefully at their home and then at them before introducing herself as Peggy. She said she was a social worker and she’d be taking them to a safe place. Keller looked like he was fighting tears at that point, but Cody still thought that anywhere had to better than where they were…with the old man.
They were put into the back seat of the county car and driven for what seemed to be hours. When the car stopped and they opened the door, Cody could see that they were in front of a big, cement building. He couldn’t read yet, so the words on the sign over the door didn’t mean anything to him. Keller was told to get out of the car and before Cody could follow him, the car door was closed again. They left his brother at a group home and didn’t even let the two say good-bye. Cody cried all the way to the foster home they took him to. It was in an old house in an old neighborhood and the five other kids at the home were younger than him. The lady seemed nice enough, but she looked tired and distracted and not overly happy to see the screaming seven-year-old. She spent some time trying to calm him down, but the only thing that was going to make Cody happy at that point was to be with his brother. The second she left him alone in the room she’d told him was his, he climbed out the window and took off. He had no idea where he was going and the days that followed on the streets were pure he
ll. He remembered being cold and hungry and more scared than even the old man had ever made him. When he finally stumbled upon a bar with about ten hogs parked out front, he was so happy that he started to cry. He ran inside, hoping that Doc or one of the other guys would be there.
He remembered a lot of yelling. He was being told to get out, kids weren’t allowed in the bar. The bikers were all in a far corner playing pool and Cody caught the eye of one of them as the bartender was rushing him out the door. Just about the time he crumpled his little body to the sidewalk and started to cry, this big man in a biker vest with a hairy face and a gruff voice was next to him saying, “Kid, where do you belong? Why are you out here all alone?”
Cody looked up at him through the tears and the snot and said, “I’m a Southside Skull.”
He remembered the biker throwing his head back and laughing. That day was his first ride on a hog. The big biker put him on the seat in front of him and gave him a helmet that covered most of his face. He drove him over three hundred miles to Hanover and the ranch. Cody could remember that the guy working the front gate didn’t believe him when he said he’d found Cody in a bar. Cody had to tell the guy he was telling the truth. He didn’t understand why Doc’s crew were holding guns on the man and accusing him of stealing seven-year-old Cody. His savior didn’t say anything until Doc arrived at the gates.
“Hawk, what’s going on?” Cody ran to Doc and the old man scooped him up into his meaty arms.
“I found him in a bar between here and Providence. I tried telling your guys that, but they’d rather shoot my ass than listen.”
“Cody, what were you doing in a bar?”
“I ran away. I was trying to come home and I saw the bikes like yours and Daddy’s so I went inside. This nice man brought me home.” Hawk was the “nice” man. Cody hadn’t remembered until that moment that he probably owed his life to the old guy, and Hawk had never reminded him. Cody opened his eyes and he knew at that moment that he had to do whatever would keep this club and the people that belonged to it safe, even if that meant once more telling the truth, turning himself in, and going to jail. The thought of it made him sick, but it made him sicker to think about how selfish he’d been. He promised himself that from then on, he’d remember that these people were his family and he’d do everything he could to make sure he put them first, always.
28
Cody was early for his meeting with Dax. He stood at the locked door of the meeting room with huge butterflies in his stomach, wondering what Dax had in mind to do to him. Everywhere he looked around the ranch, someone was cleaning up a mess. He’d taken a walk out to the shop earlier that morning and found Tool reorganizing the office the police had pulled apart. Cody had pitched in and helped him, but neither man spoke about the elephant in the room. If this kept happening, and happened often enough, they’d eventually find something to bring the club to its knees.
“Cody.” Dax came up and startled him.
“Good morning.” Dax nodded and stuck his key in the lock, letting Cody go into the room before him. He took the seat he’d been in just about a month ago, answering for punching Jimmy out his first night home. He’d been a sarcastic little dick that night, and he wondered how Dax had kept from knocking him out.
Dax took his seat on the other side of the table and said, “So here is what I know. They found your fingerprints only on the outside of that doorknob. There were a lot of fingerprints on the inside but they were too smudged and mixed to get anything useable. They didn’t find the gun that left the bullet in the ceiling in their search of the ranch, of course. They say they have a witness that puts you at the motel with Scalper around the time of the murder. I don’t know who that is, but because of what Liam said, I believe them. But the man we do business with from Cincinnati was in town yesterday. I knew that when I told them that’s who you were there to meet. He’s got a legitimate online porn business and he has no problem telling them you met with him to give him our newest DVDs. So, they’ve got shit in a nutshell, Cody. They can’t tie you to Stitch’s death, no matter how much they want to.”
Cody’s mind was trying to process that. He’d already almost accepted the fact that he was going to have to turn himself in and go back to prison. His mouth was dry, but when he could speak he said, “So, are they going to leave us alone now? I mean, everyone else on the ranch. I’m sorry that I brought this all down on them. It’s not fair.”
“They’ve all been through it before, Cody, you know that. I’ve been the center of more than one shakedown myself. We get through it together and we move on. The only thing that’s going to come out of this that might be far-reaching is Liam. He’s convinced you killed Stitch and he’s pulled out of our business arrangement. My fear is that he’ll be gunning for you, for revenge. I want to tell him about Scalper. It will take the heat off you and our club. Stitch lied to you and you had to protect yourself.”
“But then Mayhem goes gunning for Scalper…and maybe Brew.” Cody had been raised on the premise that you never, ever, no matter what, snitched. He knew that was especially true when talking about brothers and cellies.
“Maybe. Liam would be a fool to get into a war with the Commies. They had upwards of two hundred men in their crew. They’re armed and ready for whatever comes their way, whenever it comes. He might try to find a way to underhandedly take them down, but I doubt that he’d engage them in a full-on war.”
“What about your business with him? Do you think he’ll come around on that if we tell him the truth?”
“I don’t know,” Dax said. “I hope so.”
“Okay,” Cody said. “Whatever you think is best for the club, I’ll go along with it.”
“Good. Now, let’s talk about Johnny O’Toole.” Cody felt that old familiar crunch of anger in his chest at the mention of the loan shark’s name. He nodded and Dax went on. “I’ve kept tabs on what he was up to over the years. I never forgot the promise I made to you, Cody, the timing has just never been right. Our club isn’t that big and even though you were locked up, I’m sure you heard how badly the war we were in with the Sinners hurt us.”
Cody nodded again and thought about Hawk. “Can I ask you something, not about O’Toole?”
Dax raised an eyebrow but said, “Okay.”
“Do you remember when they took me and Keller away and left him at a residential home for boys and took me to live in foster care?”
Dax nodded. “That was the first time you ran.”
Cody wasn’t sure why, but he suddenly felt ashamed of that. He didn’t want Dax to think he ran at the first sign of trouble, but if he was being honest, that was what he did most of the time. “Yeah. Hawk found me and brought me here, remember?”
Dax nodded. “That was during the first split between Hawk and Dad. I think that’s what brought them back together—you. Unfortunately, that didn’t last, and Hawk’s leaving the second time was what prompted that expensive, bloody war between the clubs.”
“Why did he leave? I always heard it was about power and money…everybody hated him so I think that’s why I suppressed that memory.”
“It was about a lot more than that. I only found that out recently. I’m not going to talk about it, because it disrespects our memories of a lot of people in the club that we’ve grown up looking up to. I’m just going to use it as a lesson that there is no right or wrong way to be a family. The only thing we have to remember is that when we became a part of this, we gave up the right to just think about ourselves.” Cody nodded again and Dax said, “Now, back to O’Toole. I have an idea that might just get us back into Liam’s good graces, take care of finishing the job he was working on for us, and…take care of O’Toole, all at once.”
Cody felt that same thrill race through him that he had when Stitch told him that he’d help him. This was better, though, because there was no one in the world he trusted more than Dax. “That would be…”
“I said it’s an idea and I said ‘might,’ so keep that in mind.
I have to meet with the rest of the voting board and get their consent before I put anything into play. I just wanted you to know that I’m still working on the thing with O’Toole so you don’t run off and do something stupid again.”
Cody felt his face go hot as he smiled and said, “That would be so unlike me.”
Dax chuckled. “Get the fuck out of here and go take care of your prospect duties. I know the guys have to have a mile-long list of things for you to do today.”
“I can’t wait.” Dax just smiled at him and watched him leave. Cody found out quickly, that Dax was right. Every one of the guys he ran into had something for him to do. The chores ranged from hoeing weeds to painting a bathroom in the house where the club girls lived. He worked until lunchtime and then took a break long enough to eat a quick sandwich and get back to work. He was cleaning out an old shed behind Dax’s and Angel’s house when Angel got home from one of her classes. Cody’s cock instantly took notice when he saw Harley climb out of the front seat of Angel’s car too. The two women were talking and laughing and at first they didn’t see him. Angel noticed him first as she reached the steps of the house that led up to the porch.
“Hi, Cody. What are you doing?”
“Handsome said Dax wanted this shed cleaned out and all the parts in here taken up to the big shop.” The shed was filled with old motorcycle parts, some that looked like they were probably outdated. Everything was covered in dust and Cody was covered in it too, from head to toe. He’d taken off his shirt and the sweat had made patterns in the dust on his chest. He’d been so thrilled to see Harley that he hadn’t thought about what he looked like until she said:
“I think this is a first for me—Cody Miller, sweating from work.”
Cody couldn’t help but laugh. “Sadly, you’re probably right.”
“I’ll get you a towel or something and some tea,” Angel said. “You’re going to have a stroke out here in this heat.”