by Jade Kuzma
“Stay low to the ground.”
I gave her a last set of instructions before sealing the door shut.
The sound I heard had grown so much louder that it was unmistakable. You weren’t a rider if you didn’t know what exhaust sounded like. And from where I stood, it was more than one bike heading my way.
“Shit…”
I muttered to myself as I headed back toward the pile of firewood. I grabbed the ax and got on my bike.
“Come on, come on…”
I struggled to get it started. I twisted the throttle and finally pushed it forward behind the cabin. I pressed back against the wood cabin and waited until the exhaust I heard was close.
I closed my eyes to try and count how many of them had arrived.
One… Two… Three… Four…
I guessed that there were four of them. The exhaust was so loud like it was right next to me. After a few moments, their engines shut off. I couldn’t see or hear them but I knew someone was there.
Whoever it was, they’d found Katrina and me.
I promised I would protect her.
And now I had to keep that promise.
“Come out!” a voice shouted. “I know you’re out there! Make it easy on yourself!”
I leaned up against the side of the cabin. My heart was pounding in my chest. I was having trouble controlling my breathing. I reached into the waist of my jeans and pulled out my pistol. In my other hand, I held the ax up. I was ready for anything.
“Come on! We’ll make it quick!”
The sound of footsteps approaching was unmistakable. Whoever they were, they were moving closer to the cabin.
I looked down at the ground and saw the shadows being cast from around the corner.
“You’re gonna die either way! Don’t die like a coward!”
I tried to place the voice but it wasn’t familiar. It wasn’t anybody from the Reapers. It wasn’t anybody from the Cobras. I went over every fucking club in my head but I couldn’t match the voice.
“Come on!”
I heard a loud thud against the cabin door.
They were going for Katrina. If I were gonna do something, I had to do it now. I gritted my teeth and took one last deep breath.
“Come out—”
Before he could finish, I spun around the corner and held my gun up. I took a split-second to make sure I wasn’t firing at someone innocent.
They weren’t.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
I squeezed the trigger and clipped one of them in the shoulder. He fell to the ground and yelped in pain. Another shot hit the next man in the chest. I only got two of them before the other two fired back at me. I was already back around the cabin before they could hit me.
“Motherfucker! You’re gonna pay for that!”
I could hear them stalking me. More footsteps approached me from around the corner of the cabin. I made my way around the back, trying to remain as quiet as possible. But I wasn’t fast enough. They turned the corner faster than I could get away.
“Come here, motherfucker!”
I dived to the ground and fired back at them as they shot at me. I managed to get out of the way of the line of fire.
Bang. Bang.
My bullets sprayed in their direction, managing to hit one of them in the stomach. He collapsed to the ground in pain.
I didn’t have time to celebrate. The other man kept moving forward, stalking me like I was his prey. I stumbled back up to my feet and fired at him.
My gun only clicked. The sound of no ammo.
“Shit…”
I tossed the gun aside in frustration. The madman smiled at me as he moved forward. His gun raised, he fired at me.
This was the end for me.
Another click.
Fate was smiling on me.
The last man tossed his empty gun to the side and motioned for me with his index finger.
“Hiding out in the woods like a little bitch,” he said. “Why don’t you come take your beating like a man?”
“This is your unlucky day, motherfucker.”
I stepped toward him with the ax in both hands.
He didn’t care that I had a weapon. He had his hands up like he was going to kill me regardless.
I swung at him and he moved out of the way. Another swing of the ax and he rolled to the side. He was surprisingly fast. All that practice chopping wood made it hard for me to hit a moving target.
“You swing like a girl,” he said. “Why don’t you stop being a bitch and put that thing away?”
“You’re gonna regret this.”
People always told me my pride was gonna get me killed. Having an ax meant I could kill this guy with one swing. But I was gonna give him what he wanted.
I tossed the ax to the side. As soon as I did, I raced forward and tackled him to the ground. He struggled underneath me as I rained down punches onto his face.
“Come on, motherfucker… Get up…”
There was nothing more satisfying than pounding some punk who deserved it. I wasn’t just punching him for me. I was punching for everybody he probably bullied in his life.
His eyes started to roll back in his head. His face was covered in blood. But through all of the red, I could still see his yellow teeth smiling up at me.
“Is that all you got?”
He reached up suddenly and grabbed me by the throat. I struggled on top of him as he started to strangle me.
Shit…
“Lights out, motherfucker.”
He gripped both of his hands around my neck.
I struggled to breathe.
Everything was going black.
Katrina… Katrina…
I couldn’t stop. I had to keep going. Not for me. For her.
With my last ounce of strength, I elbowed him as hard as I could in the stomach. He released me from his grip and stumbled backward. My vision returned to me as I tried to catch my breath.
I only had a moment to relax. He rushed back toward me. I spun out of the way and he stumbled.
I saw the ax on the dirt. I picked it up and got behind him. I pulled the handle around his throat and held it tight. He reached up and tried to free himself, clawing at me. His breaths grew weaker as I choked him out.
I yelled as I used every last fucking muscle I had.
Finally, he stopped struggling. His arms fell to the ground. I released the ax handle from around his neck and his body fell lifeless to the floor.
I pushed my fists into the dirt and worked my way back up to my feet. Heart pounding in my chest, I looked at the trail of bodies I left as I headed back to the cabin. I checked to make sure there was nobody else. There were only four bikes, so I had to assume that they were the only ones there.
“Katrina,” I said as I banged on the door. “Open up. It’s okay.”
A few seconds went by until the door slowly creaked open. Katrina stared at me, wide-eyed with a look of horror on her face.
“Blake…”
“It’s okay,” I sighed. “It’s okay.”
I could only imagine what I looked like to her. I wasn’t going to reassure with anything I said.
“What… Who…”
She stuttered her questions. And I was searching for the same answers she was.
I made my way over to the one man who was still alive. He writhed on the ground, blood gushing from his shoulder in a small pool around him.
I knelt down in front of him and grabbed him by the collar.
“What are you doing here?” I said.
He didn’t give me the answer I was looking for. He just smiled, yellow teeth as bloody as the rest of him.
“What are you doing here?”
I shook him as if that would make any fucking difference.
He wasn’t going to tell me anything. He let every drop of blood spill out of him. The smile stayed on his face as his eyes went lifeless.
“Shit…”
I got back up to my feet and shook my head as I
looked at the other body next to him.
“Who are they?” Katrina said.
“Spades.”
“Spades?”
I kicked one of the bodies and flipped it over. I pointed at the tattoo on the back of his shaved head.
“They all have a tattoo of a spade. That’s why they all shave their heads. There’s no mistaking it.”
“What are they? Are they a club—”
“They’re not a motorcycle club. They’re a white supremacist group.”
“What?” she exclaimed. “Why would they—”
“I don’t know. I have no idea why a bunch of fucking skinheads would come out here to kill us. Maybe they were doing it for themselves. Maybe someone hired them.”
“You don’t think—”
“Right now, I don’t know what to think. The only thing I know for sure is that it’s not safe for you here anymore.”
“Blake… What are you saying?”
The situation had changed. The Cobras were pissed at me. My own club was pissed at me, too.
None of that mattered to me now though. As I stared into Katrina’s eyes, I knew I had to protect her. So there was only one choice I could make.
“Get your phone,” I said. “Call the police and tell them these guys attacked us. Tell them I had to protect you. They don’t have any evidence otherwise. They’ll believe you.”
“And then?”
“Gather your things. I’m taking you back to Ivory.”
Chapter 14
BLAKE
I leaned back in my seat with my arms crossed. All eyes were on me. It wasn’t the first time I had the entire club’s attention. Brawn. Petey. Ghost. I took all of their money when we played cards on a regular basis. Sullivan’s time was coming.
Nah, it wasn’t shit for them to look at me the way they were looking at me now.
The circumstances were different though.
Garnet looked like he was intent on popping my head off my neck. He paced back and forth at the head of the table. He was about to blow and everybody outside of the chapel was gonna hear it.
He rubbed his hands together like he was trying to figure out where to start. I figured I would stop wasting his and everybody else’s time.
“It was the right thing to do,” I said.
Nobody responded. They were all just staring at me. Garnet kept his head down like he hadn’t heard me but I knew he did.
I looked over at Garnet and eyeballed him. I explained the situation to him but it looked like he didn’t explain it well enough to everybody else.
“Michelle is in the hospital,” Garnet said. “The doctors don’t know if she’s gonna make it.”
“I know that—”
“Do you?”
Garnet cut me off, raising his voice loud enough to echo off the walls of the chapel.
“The motherfucker who did that to Michelle is still out there somewhere,” he said. “The only chance we had at nabbing the bastard was getting the Cobras to squeal and you gave them back the only leverage we had.”
“Holding Katrina hostage wasn’t gonna do either of us any good,” I said. “Did none of you fucking hear me? Spades… Spades, okay? Spades tried to kill both of us.”
“Tried to kill both of you or just you?”
I narrowed my eyes at Garnet.
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“You said that Spades fired at you. They tried to kill you.”
“That’s right.”
“And where was Katrina the entire time? Was she ducking bullets? Was she trying to not get choked out, the same as you?”
I gritted my teeth. Garnet wasn’t thinking straight. So I knew there was nothing I could say to get through to him. But I had to try anyway.
“I told her to hide,” I said. “I told her to stay in the cabin until it was all over.”
“Until it was all over,” Garnet scoffed. “How convenient. As soon as they were done with you, they would’ve taken Katrina back to Ivory and into the waiting hands of the men who hired them.”
“What? What are you saying?”
“Harris hired the Spades. He hired them to kill you and take Katrina.”
I held back a laugh. Garnet was reasonable. He was always reasonable. But looking at him now, it was like someone had replaced him with an alien.
“You can’t be serious,” I said.
“You were out there for more than a week. That was more than enough time for them to find you.”
“Yeah but—”
“Was she ever on her phone?”
“So? She was talking to her brother, letting him know she was all right.”
“And tracking her phone at the same time. That’s how they found you. That’s how they were able to locate your spot. Out in the middle of nowhere and somehow, they found you. You don’t think that’s a strange coincidence?”
Garnet narrowed his eyes at me. I looked around the table and everybody was eyeballing me like I was crazy.
“There were others to find out,” I said. “They could have tracked my phone without me knowing.”
They weren’t listening. I shook my head and sighed. They were all against me.
“Now Harris has his sister back,” Garnet continued. “He’s got no reason to keep helping us find who hurt Michelle. He doesn’t have to cooperate with the police because the insurance will pay him for the stolen vehicle. Now we’re right back where we started.”
“That’s not true,” I said. “Katrina is gonna talk to Harris. She’ll convince him to keep helping us.”
“And you believed her?”
“That’s why I brought her back.”
Garnet put a hand to his face. He squeezed his temples together like he had a headache, his eyes closed in frustration.
“She’s a Snake,” he said.
“She’s not a Snake,” I responded. “Her brother is a Snake, not her—”
“That might as well be the same thing. You know her better than anybody else. She’s close to her brother, right?”
“…Yeah. So—”
“So, she would be willing to do anything for him. Lie for him. Pretend she didn’t know what was happening. Pretend like she’s gonna try to convince him to help us. But you know it’s not gonna happen.”
I bit my tongue to avoid saying something I would regret. Garnet was my brother, the same as every other man in the club.
Arguing with him any longer was only gonna make me more tired than I already was.
I looked down at the table to avoid having to stare back at any of them. They were all looking at me like they were trying to drill a hole through me. I felt the way I did and nothing was gonna change that. There was no point in trying to make them see it from my perspective.
“Now what?” Ghost said to the president. “Michelle is still in the hospital and the guy who did it is still on the loose.”
“Well, we can forget about getting help from the Snakes,” Garnet said. “If we’re gonna find out who’s responsible, we’re gonna have to do this on our own.”
“But where do we start?” Sullivan chimed in. “We’ve been trying to narrow this thing down for a week and we’re not any closer. The Cobras. The Sheriff’s Department. They haven’t come up with anything.”
I finally couldn’t take it. I had to speak up.
“The Spades attacked me,” I said. “Maybe Harris hired them. Maybe they were going for me and not Katrina. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. What I do know is they’re not a motorcycle club. What business would a bunch of skinheads have with someone like me?”
Garnet leaned across the table, his fists digging into it.
“If you wanna look into that, you look into that,” he said. “We’ve got enough of a mess on our hands as it is. My only concern right now is Michelle.”
Garnet was still in fucking love. Getting vengeance for his old lady had blinded him to reason.
I stared back at him and kept my mouth shut, just waiting for his orde
rs.
“I’ll try to set up another meeting with Harris,” Garnet said as he stood up straight. “If this Harris broad is true to her word like Needle says she is, then he’ll listen.”
“And if not?” Sullivan asked.
“Then we’ll keep fucking digging. There’s evidence. We’re gonna find the bastards… Meeting adjourned.”
I got up from my seat without looking at anybody else.
The Grindhouse was packed with people just trying to get away from the mundane routine of their ordinary lives. It was the middle of the day but they were already getting started with the alcohol. I wanted nothing more than to join them.
I moved up to the bar and grabbed a bottle of beer from behind the counter. As I sipped on it, I could see Ghost walking up to me from the corner of my eye.
“Don’t say it,” I said, not looking at him. “Don’t say it.”
“You don’t know what I’m gonna say,” he said.
“…Fine,” I sighed. “Say it.”
“It’s good to have you back, brother.”
He patted me on the back. It was nice to hear those words from him. And it was nice to be back in a place I was more familiar with.
“Civilization,” he said as he took a seat next to me. “I hear if you stay out in the woods long enough, it gets harder to come back.”
“I enjoy camping like any other man. But I’m happy to be back, trust me.”
“You belong in Ivory. You’re a member of the Black Reapers. Don’t ever forget that.”
I shook my head and took another sip of beer, going over everything in my head. I couldn’t reason with Garnet but maybe I could reason with Ghost.
“You hear me though,” I said. “You know what I’m trying to say, right?”
“It’s strange,” Ghost replied. “The Spades… They’ve never done business with any clubs before. They do some shit none of us would touch with a 10-foot pole.”
I looked Ghost right in the eye.
“I’m not the Cobras’ biggest fan. You know that. But do you really think Harris would hire a white supremacist group to put a hit on me? Do you think he would get his hands dirty and put his sister in that kind of danger? What if I didn’t tell her to hide in the cabin? What if I didn’t hear them coming and they ambushed us?”