Ripley's Saint

by Isabel Wroth

  “The only one of them who isn’t talking is some rat-faced pussy with a mouth full of meth teeth. I let him watch while I questioned the others.”

  Saint gathered from the way Tobias said ‘questioned,’ he hadn’t been asking, ‘pretty please with a cherry on top.’

  “The patch on his cut says McGuyver.”

  “What did you say?”

  Every eye in the room swung to where Ever was sitting, curled up in Roar’s lap holding both her kids. She had been relaxing, quietly nursing Harper, right up until that moment. Her voice, the anger that sparked across her face, put him on edge and made him very glad Ripley was more of a purse swinger and less of an ass kicker name taker. Tobias cleared his throat, shooting Veracruz a look before he repeated himself.

  “Babe, I don’t like that look on your face,” Roar drawled, narrowing his eyes on his woman.

  Ever ignored him like he hadn’t spoken at all. “He’s here in this building?”

  “Yes ma’am.” Tobias confirmed.

  The hairs on Saint’s arms gave a quiver at Ever’s response. “Bring him up here.”

  “Sweetheart, that won’t do much good.” Tobias met her glare head on when Ever stood up and gave Tobias a look that made Saint wonder about her sanity. “Honey, I’m trained for interrogating prisoners and he didn’t make so much as a squeaky fart of fear when his ass cheeks clenched. How is it you think you can get him to talk?”

  Ever lifted her chin and not even the pink blanket or the nursing baby at her breast took away from the aura of rage around her. “He’s responsible for the death of my father and my grandfather. My family. He’ll talk.”

  Tobias was silent for a moment, then shrugged and said, “Okay. Fuck it.”

  *****

  EVER~

  Mac was older than she remembered. His skin loose on his wiry little frame, his hair long, greasy and stringy with a growing baldspot that made her think of Mr. Filch for some reason. If Mr. Filch had been a dirty, drug abusing traitor instead of a squib.

  Two of Damon’s commando buddies carried Mac in, not seeming to strain at all beneath Mac’s slight weight, the chair, and what looked like about six rolls of duct-tape keeping Mac secured to the chair.

  The former Tornado’s bloodshot eyes rolled around the room, touching on every face, skating right over her like he didn’t recognize her. But then, with all the drugs he had clearly been doing, it was a wonder he was even still alive.

  “Babe?” Roar’s hands cupped her shoulders, warm and loving as he rubbed up and down her biceps.

  His presence at her back gave her strength, helped her push the tears back as she looked at the face of the coward responsible for the death of everyone she had loved and cared about on her god damn wedding day.

  Her lips felt like dry rice paper when she drug her tongue across them, cracking like all the moisture had been sucked from her body. Her arms tightened around the fragile body of her daughter as she forced herself to turn around and look up into the face of the man she loved.

  She saw that love mirrored back at her in his concerned blue eyes, the banked rage, and the frustration and desire to make someone bleed. Ever knew if she asked him, Roar would walk over to Mac and rip the bastard’s heart out with his bare hand. She could tell he wanted to do it.

  “I need this.” she whispered to him and, to her relief, Roar didn’t argue.

  He didn’t even bat a lash. He gave her arms a squeeze and gave a slight jerk of his chin at their daughter.

  “Put your tits away and give me the kid. I’ve got your back, baby. Always.”

  Ever almost laughed to realize that Harper had fallen asleep under the blanket with her little rosebud lips still puckered around her nipple. She tugged her boob free of her daughter’s mouth and righted her shirt, handing the precious bundle to her husband.

  “I love you, Roar.”

  His grin was lazy, his eyes lighting up with lust as he bent to drop a kiss on her mouth.

  “Don’t do something you’ll regret.”

  With his hands full of their baby, he couldn’t stop her from lifting the gun out of the holster under his arm.

  “I won’t regret a damn thing.”

  No one else tried to stop her or get in her way when she walked up to the old man taped to the chair. No one said anything when she moved to stand close enough to smell the reek of his unwashed body and bent to look in his eyes. Ever wondered if her father had known Mac was the traitor. If he knew who it was that had sold the Tornadoes out to the Leviathans. If her daddy had looked in this man’s eyes as he died.

  “Connor Talbert. It’s been a long time.”

  The surprise at hearing his given name was clear, his lashes fluttered over his rheumy eyes as he searched her face. It took him a good minute to recognize her and when he did, a bemused smile broke out over his haggard, ugly ass face. His breath was disgusting, his teeth cracked and brown, rotting in his head from sucking on a meth pipe.

  “Everly? Damn. You grew up nice, girl. Look just like your-”

  he choked on his next words, or rather, choked on the barrel of Roar’s gun as she shoved it in his mouth.

  She distinctly heard the sound of leather creaking behind her as the men of Perdition tensed, ready for whatever she was going to do next. God knew she wanted so badly to pull the trigger and splatter this murderer’s brains all over the concrete floor. She shook with the effort it took to keep herself in check and not fall to pieces as memories of her childhood flashed across her mind.

  Memories of riding behind this man on the Monday afternoon cruises the Tornadoes used to take when she’d been six years old.

  Memories of this man sitting at the dinner table in her house playing Go Fish with her.

  Memories of this man drinking beer with her father and grandpa out on the front porch, smoking their nasty cigars.

  “Hon, Teague’s just getting this place finished up. He’ll kick my ass if we get blood all over the untreated concrete floor,” one of the commandos said, pulling her out of her memories with a blink.

  Mac was staring at her with round, terrified eyes. Whatever he saw on her face, or maybe the feeling of cold steel between his teeth, made him turn gray with fear. Ever took a deep breath, finding that cold, dead place inside herself she had locked away after Roar had brought her back to life.

  It was hard to get there, all that love and happiness Roar had filled her up with made it a difficult trip. But this man, this pathetic excuse for a man taped to a chair in front of her, had helped kill her family. Set fire to the Tornado compound with the men wearing his colors inside it and, nearly twelve years later, helped set fire to another compound with her second family inside it. Her babies.

  “Ever, we need this guy to talk,” Roar reminded her calmly.

  Ever tilted her head, rubbing her finger along the side of the barrel, enjoying the way Mac’s eyes crossed trying to look to see what she was doing. She wasn’t a murderer like he was. She wasn’t going to shoot him in cold blood with her son and daughter a few feet away. But he didn’t know that.

  What Mac knew was she was Stoneface Taggart’s daughter, and her daddy hadn’t exactly raised a Barbie doll-loving princess.

  “No, actually. We don’t. His buddies already gave the commandos what they need. Even if they hadn’t, this piece of shit owes me blood for what he did to my dad, my grandpa, and the rest of the Tornadoes.

  “We can move him into one of the shower stalls. The blood will wash away much easier in there and it won’t leave a stain on the concrete. Whatever is left of his brain will slow down the bullet enough to damage one, maybe two, tiles at the most.”

  Ever almost smiled at the shock that raced across Mac’s face. The dead calm of her voice must have made him believe her. Good.

  “Not a bad idea. Don’t know why I didn’t think of that before. We keep having to hose down the cells because the other guys keep shitting themselves.”

  Ever forgot the commando’s name, but he was being
very helpful, playing along like that.

  “I learned a lot of stuff from my daddy. You remember that, don’t you Mac? Remember when we went hunting for my twelfth birthday? I made such a mess of skinning my first deer. Y’all were making fun of me and I was so mad my hand was shaking.”

  Ever put a little quiver in her hand and, right on cue, Mac started to bounce and struggle to get away from the gun in his mouth, gargling and choking while he tried to speak. Ever carefully slid the gun out from the back of Mac’s throat and set the saliva-covered barrel to his balls instead.

  “Sorry, what? You had something in your mouth.”

  Mac spit out a string of curses at her, accusing her of being just as crazy as her father, and he broke a rotten tooth on the barrel of the gun when she shoved it back in his mouth. Some of the commandos chuckled, but she could feel the eyes of the Perdition crew drilling into her back.

  She wondered if they thought she had gone off the deep end, or if they understood why she was standing in front of the man who had killed her Tornado family, who would have killed Perdition and her babies, with a loaded gun in his mouth.

  She wondered if she cared what they thought.

  Right this second? Not so much. She leaned in until Mac had nowhere else to look except right in her eyes.

  “Twelve years ago you burnt down your own compound with the men who called you, brother, inside it. On my wedding day. Yesterday, you and your friends downstairs set another building on fire. My family was inside that building again. My children.

  “You bet your drugged-out ass I’m as crazy as my father. I will pull this trigger and feel not one ounce of shame or sorrow. I’ll kiss my babies goodnight, curl up with my husband, and not lose a single second of sleep over it. If my father were still alive, you’d be in his basement right now, and I don’t have to tell you what he would have done to you.”

  Mac swallowed with difficulty as he remembered her father and grandfather’s methods for dealing with people who screwed them over. Ever was willing to bet he’d probably participated once upon a time and knew intimately how kind a bullet could be.

  “You’re a coward who murdered the people closest to you, who trusted you, so you could join the winning team. You have nothing to show for it except a mouth full of rotting teeth and a piece of cheap leather on your shoulders that reeks of piss and vomit. You owe me, Connor Talbot. You owe me blood and you will pay your debt right here, right now.

  “Tell the truth, answer the questions asked of you, and live out the rest of your pathetic life in jail, or I’ll happily spend the next few hours branding the names of every single member of the Taggart Tornadoes onto your exposed bones, and take what you owe me, what you owe them, in your blood before I put this gun back in your mouth and pull the trigger.”

  The part of her that was her father’s daughter was disappointed by McGuyver’s choice to answer some questions.

  The part of her that hadn’t gotten to bury her father and her grandfather, or say goodbye to the men who had been her uncles and older brothers, rose up to inform her it was time to deal with the grief.

  Time to deal with the terror she had felt yesterday, huddling in Nasa’s basement panic room while the compound had burned above them.

  *****

  Ripley let out a shaky breath and accepted the soft weight of Harper, assuring Roar that of course she would look after the baby. Athena was cuddling Lyon not far away, all of them watching Roar follow Ever upstairs into the soundproof sanctuary.

  She had no idea how to react to what she had just seen. That was a side of Ever that Ripley hadn’t really realized existed. Sure, she knew Ever was really handy with a gun and that the redhead had a bit of crazy running through her veins. But there had been no crazy in her expression when Ever had put a loaded gun into a man’s mouth and very calmly threatened to kill him. Ripley swallowed, risking a glance at Saint and the rest of the Perdition brothers.

  None of them looked particularly surprised or disturbed. Dani’s eyes were as round as saucers, looking like a doll between Damon and Stone’s much larger bodies. Athena was curled against Raid on the couch, a little paler than normal, and Wren just looked…sad.

  “I like that ginger.”

  Ripley goggled at Tobias’s grin, so out of place on his otherwise stoic face. He looked like he ate babies for breakfast and pooped solid steel bricks. In fact, all of the commandos seemed impressed and amused with Ever.

  Top grunted from across the room, “If you wreck the shower, I’ll replace the tiles myself. Get that piece of shit out of my sight.”

  Two of the commando squad removed the Leviathan from the room and for a time, there was only silence. Silence broken when Lyon suddenly shot his head up from Athena’s shoulder and said-

  “Fissy?”

  Though Lyon didn’t have a very large variety of vocabulary to draw on yet, having only really started to use actual words over the last few weeks, his desire was plain in the way he looked around the room for his sister.

  The innocence and the sweetness of his little lisp brought tears to Ripley’s eyes. “I have sissy, Lyon. She’s right here.”

  Lyon stretched up in Athena’s lap to see for himself, then wiggled to get down, trucking across the room to grab hold of Harper’s blanket. The kid gave a very serious nod, like he approved of Harper’s sleeping position in Ripley’s arms, and looked at Saint.

  “Okay, bubba up go!”

  Lyon delivered his imperious command by putting his little arms up over his head. Saint just looked gobsmacked and unsure what to do. For the first time that day, Wren spoke up from her spot in the corner.

  “Roar says that to him, ‘okay bubba, up you go,’ and picks him up. He wants in your lap, Saint.”

  Ripley held her breath, watching the pain that flashed across Saint’s face as he reached down to pick up Lyon. How he forced a smile even though he was clearly in agony while Lyon bounced around to get comfortable.

  “Lyon, be gentle.” Wren called softly, smiling when Lyon looked at her.

  The boy frowned like he was thinking hard, then looked up at Saint, settling against his chest with a soft coo. In a sweet little boy voice, Lyon asked Saint-

  “Okay bubba?”

  Saint ruffled Lyon’s growing mohawk, his hair still struggling to recover after Roar had taken the dog clippers to his son’s cute curls.

  “Yeah, bubba. It’s okay.”

  Lyon grinned, showing off his two little front teeth, and leaned over to peek at his sister’s sleeping face one more time. Assured all was well, Lyon lay his cheek over Saint’s heart, stuck his thumb in his mouth, and Ripley felt the tension in the room, the fury and rage pouring off the men of Perdition, just drain away.

  For a few minutes, no one spoke at all. Then after drawing in a deep breath, Saint swallowed audibly as he looked from Lyon, to her, and then around to his brothers. His family.

  “Hey, Dani?” At Saint’s call, the small blonde woman lifted her head from Damon’s chest. “Thanks for making Damon do hot yoga with you. We’d still be down there if he wasn’t such a bendy guy.”

  Dani grinned immediately, her cheeks washing a soft pink as Damon snorted, hugging his arms tighter around his woman. Saint thanked the group of commandos for their involvement too, and the scary looking surfer who hadn’t quit smiling, rocked back on his heels happily.

  “Our pleasure, man. We were getting bored escorting Mr. Big Deal around on his tours. Seemed like a misallocation of our very special skills.”

  Stone threw a plastic spoon at the guy. “When the hell did you learn big words like ‘misallocation’, Duke?”

  Duke deftly snatched the spoon out of the air and waggled it at Stone with a grin.

  “Teague got me a word-a-day calendar. He said I look like a himbo and needed to up my game if any of his little subbie friends were going to take me seriously.”

  Ripley saw Damon roll his eyes. “Where are our bikes, Himbo?”

  “Him-bo!” Lyon whooped arou
nd his thumb, grinning when Top immediately bust out laughing.

  Oh lord. Ripley couldn’t wait until Lyon called his daddy that.

  Duke shot Damon a thankless look, shaking his head as he went on, providing an address and location for a storage facility just on the other side of East Austin.

  “According to our trussed up prisoners downstairs, the plan was to move the bikes today to a chop-shop,” Every member of Perdition hissed or growled, but Duke went on like they hadn’t made a peep.

  “The info they gave us says the two dudes left are new guys who know better than to think on their own without orders. We have a local keeping an eye on the storage facility for us and, so far, there’s been no movement near the unit with the bikes in it.”

  “Local?” Nasa questioned, his head having shot up from the laptop he’d brought with him.

  Duke gave a chuckle, “Me and Tobias got yelled at by this nosy old lady who lives in the building right next to the storage place. She was sitting on her balcony with binoculars and saw us hop the fence. Her apartment is situated high enough and on the corner to give her a perfect view of the entire facility.

  “She saw us and threatened to call the cops, so we told her we were tracking drug dealing gang members from out of town. She knew all about the shipment of motorcycles that had appeared last night and had already called the cops. Apparently Mrs. Dominguez calls them often and her report was filed in the ‘Crazy Cat Lady’ box for later.

  “She made us tea, gave us cookies and, for two hundred bucks and a pack of Virginia Slim Menthols, she agreed to call us if she saw anything suspicious. I’ve gotten twelve texts in the last hour reporting every single person going in and out of the front gate, with pictures.

  “Mrs. Dominguez also knows the couple who manage the storage facility. I didn’t ask how she did it, but she got security camera stills of the truck and the faces of every Leviathan who unloaded your bikes into the storage locker.

  “I tried to give her another two hundred for going above and beyond, but she turned it down. She did give me more cookies and made me promise to make sure she never sees those faces around her hood again.”