by Callie Hart
“That’s Maddie,” Rebel says. “She’s older now, but not by much. She’s my cousin, but she might as well be my little sister. Ryan,” he points at the man in the picture, “Ryan got married late. His wife Estelle was in her forties when she had Maddie—surprise kid. They found out she had breast cancer at the same time, and she refused treatment so she could keep the kid. She hung on for three weeks after, got to hold her daughter in her arms, be a mom a little before she went. I guess that’s some consolation.”
I look at the picture, knowing what he’s doing. He wants me to testify so badly that he’s willing to pull the old poor-kid’s-mother-died-when-she-was-born-and-now-her-dad’s-dead-too card. It’s shitty and it’s underhanded. And it’s kind of working. “Who’s taking care of her now?”
“The state of Washington Child Services. She’ll be placed into a care home soon. At worst, some fucking drunk with a penchant for touching small kids will get her. She’ll grow up thinking it’s normal for Daddy Steve to touch her in her special fucking places. At best, she’ll be given to some down-and-out family who don’t give a shit about her so long as the government keeps on sending through the checks.”
“And how will me standing up in court and testifying against Raphael and Hector change that? If you’re so worried about her upbringing, Rebel, why the hell aren’t you petitioning for custody of her? She’s your blood relative right? You just said she’s your cousin.” Which makes the man in the photo, Ryan, his uncle. Rebel’s refusal to let this drop suddenly makes a whole lot more sense. His uncle. God, this gets more and more fucked up by the day.
“I can’t have her with me,” he says flatly.
“Why not? You afraid looking after a kid’s gonna cramp your style? That’s pretty fucking selfish.”
He clenches his jaw, clearing the picture from his cell phone screen and sliding it back into his pocket. I can tell I’ve made him angry just by the way he’s pressing his knuckles into the roof of the car. “I have a criminal record, Sophia. I live on a compound out in the middle of nowhere with a group of people who all have rap sheets as long as your arms. I’m not fucking evil. If I could take her, I would.”
I’ve accused him of being an asshole from the moment I met him. Turns out I’m an asshole, too. “I’m sorry, okay. I just—”
“A guy in my position, looking like I do, involved in the shit I’m running…you made an assumption about me. An assumption anyone else would make, too. Don’t sweat it. But know, the reason why I’m doing this…the reason why I’m going to convince you to do what I’m asking, isn’t because of me. Not because the man who helped raise me was murdered and I’m pissed about it. Which I am. But because I want justice. Justice for Ryan, because he didn’t get to watch his little girl grow up. And justice for Maddie, because of the shitty hand she’s just been dealt.” He slides off the roof of the car, jumping to the ground. I can hear him pissing against the side of the car. For the moment, I just stay where I am, eyes fixed on some vague, not-there point in the distance.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t know how he expects me to choose between helping him and keeping my family safe. This is the first time that I’ve even found myself considering it, and the prospect is terrifying. If I testify, they find out my real name. They can track down my family and Raphael can make good on his promise, regardless of whether he’s behind bars or not. He’s the type of man who will find a way.
Rebel taps the hood of the Humvee—I can almost see the dark cloud hanging over him. “Come on, we gotta go.”
“What would you do?”
He looks up at me, eyes sharp. Pained. “What do you mean?”
“If you were in my position, what would you do? If it were Ryan and Maddie who were in danger, would you risk their lives just because it was the right thing to do?”
“Our situations are a little different, sweetheart.”
“How so?”
“I would kill anyone that threatened my family with my bare fucking hands. It would never be an issue.” He opens the driver’s side door and leans against it. “If you do what I’m asking, Sophia, I will do the same thing for you. I swear to God and all things holy, before you right here and now, I will spill the blood of every single member of Los Oscuros before I allow a single one of your family members to come to harm.”
REBEL
When she climbs back in the car, she gets in the front.
That's how I know I've made some sort of progress with her. Is it her finally agreeing to help? No. But maybe, just maybe, she's not as adamant anymore. Maybe she's thinking about it. Which is a better situation than we were in before.
She sleeps. For five hours, she lays so motionless, stretched out as best as she can in her seat, and I drive, glancing at her occasionally out of the corner of my eye, wondering if she's still fucking breathing. I can't tell, and she doesn't shift an inch.
We arrive in Dallas just as the day's darkening, the lights of the city like lightning bugs blinking on and off on the horizon. My eyes are killing me. My body is used to this, though, traveling long distances. The Hummer actually provides more comfort than I'm used to. Sitting on a motorcycle, through wind and rain and everything other fucking thing Mother Nature throws at us, can be unpleasant to say the least.
You get used to it. You get used to all of it. The pain in your back. The wet leather that just doesn’t dry out. The guns. The sneaking around in the dark. The shootings and the stabbings and the dying. The funerals.
"Mmmm. Where are we?" Sophia stretches out like a cat, just about managing to straighten her legs before the soles of her shoes hit the engine block in the foot well. She blinks at me—she looks like a child as she rubs at her eyes, ridding herself of her sleep. She looks...she looks so freaking sweet in that very, very brief moment that it almost makes my teeth hurt. Catches me by surprise.
"Dallas," I tell her. "Halfway, or close enough. We'll stop for the night."
"I can drive. I just slept for...wow. I slept for a really long time." She stares at the clock on the dash like she doesn’t believe it's telling her the truth.
"Yeah, I don't think so." I give her the old you think you're gonna pull that shit with me? look. "We're stopping. I need to get actual rest, and I won't be able to sleep properly if I have to keep my eye on you the whole time."
She doesn’t react to my rejection of her offer—it was clearly expected. Instead, she asks something out of the blue. "Why did you kill off your accent?"
"I didn’t kill it off. My father did. He didn’t believe a regional dialect was gonna help me through life. Had it trained out of me when I was a kid."
"That’s...practical?"
"An obsession of his. He tried to make my mother 'speak properly' too, but it never stuck."
"So she still speaks with a Southern accent?"
"Nope. She's dead." I wait for the awkward silence, but it never comes. Sophia makes a soft humming sound.
"Oh."
"You not gonna tell me you're sorry for my loss?"
"Do you want me to?"
"Not particularly."
"Then I won't tell you I'm sorry."
I grip my hands around the steering wheel, cracking my neck. I shouldn’t have mentioned my mother. My whole body feels tight as fuck now. I like that she didn’t dive right in with the placations, though. I fucking hate when people say shit like that. It's such a fucking lie. At least Sophia was true to herself. She's in a shitty position and I'm the reason why. I could have let her go back home by now a thousand times but I haven't. I've kept her locked up and refused her requests to leave. She could probably give a shit if my whole family died right in front of us right now.
"Where are we staying?" she asks.
"At a friend's place."
"Another MC clubhouse?" I can hear the worry in her voice. She must have heard about the shit that goes down in places like the Widow Makers’ clubhouse. The drinking. The drug taking. The fucking and fighting. She doesn’t want to get
caught up in any of that.
"No, somewhere else. A motel."
"And...we'll be sharing a room?" She says it carefully, slowly, testing the words on her tongue.
"Yes, we'll be sharing a room. You got a problem with that?"
"You really expect me to say no here? Of course I have a problem with that."
"Well it's tough fucking luck, sugar. Unless you want us both to sleep in the car instead, this is happening. Don't worry—I fully intend on keeping my hands to myself."
I'm getting to know her reactions. I know she's looking at me, pulling that face she pulls when she's pissed. I don’t bother turning to check; I just keep on driving into the night. Our sleeping arrangements are non-negotiable. She can’t change that by acting like a princess.
"Okay. Fine," she says.
"Okay, fine?"
"Yeah. We get a room with two beds, you stay in yours and I stay in mine and all is right with the world."
If only she knew how many women had begged me to climb up into their beds with them. Begged. Sophia’s lack of interest in me only makes me want her even more, which is fucked.
We make it to the Motel 6 around seven. Not just any Motel 6; this is a specific motel run by a specific person. The place looks like any other cheap dive establishment might look, but it's not. It's a kind of safe house for people like me. Alex Draper, a regular guy well into his late fifties, owed pretty much every bookie in America money. I helped him clear a few of those debts with my fists, and I helped him clear the rest of them with a few careful words whispered into the right ears. Ever since then, Alex has been in my pocket. A Widower ever needs a place to keep his head down for a couple of days, he gets sent out to Texas on an enforced vacation.
There's an ancient-looking ’78 Honda CX500 leaning on a stand by the entranceway to the lobby. When I see it, my heart gives a kick in my chest. Its royal blue tank has been touched up, I see. In fact, the whole bike looks like it's had minor improvements made here and there. The old girl's been getting some love. I pull up beside it and park the truck, staring out of the window at a motorcycle I'd recognize anywhere, regardless of how many parts got replaced or fixed up.
"What's the matter?" Sophia asks. "You know the person who owns that bike?"
"I do. I knew the guy it belonged to before him better, though. That's my grandfather's old motorcycle."
"Your grandfather? Your father, the governor for Alabama, was raised by a guy who rode motorcycles? A guy like you?"
Her tone is very suggestive. I hate the way she says that: a guy like you. She's right—I'm a criminal and an all-round fuck-up these days—but, still, the more time I spend with this girl, the more I don't want her to think of me that way. "He was my grandfather on my mother's side. And no, he wasn't like me. He was just a guy who loved motorcycles. Building them. Racing them. He taught me to ride as soon I was old enough."
"Does he still live in Alabama, too?"
"Nope. Also dead." I climb out of the Hummer, slamming the door behind me. The ghosts of the past seem intent on screwing with me today. I don’t have fucking time for it. Or the energy, for that matter. I lock the truck behind me before Sophia can follow me. I head inside the motel, and Alex is sitting behind the counter, eating beans on toast from a chipped plate in front of him. Jeopardy! is playing on a small, decrepit-looking TV that's mounted to the wall. Alex Trebek flashes his pearly whites at the contestants, and Alex Draper catches sight of me and nearly chokes on his dinner.
"Rebel. Wasn't expectin' ya, son." He hammers his fist against his chest, face turning a strained shade of red.
"Yeah, flying visit. Was hoping you might be able to spot me a double room for the night."
Alex gives me that look he always used to give me when I was a kid and he was gambling away my grandfather's money—for a brief time they ran a business together, competing in races all over the country, and my pops trusted him with his winnings. He knew Alex was losing his money, but he didn’t really care. Alex was his best friend—hence how he ended up with the Honda CX500 when my grandfather croaked—and it was never about the money for him anyway. All he cared about were the bikes.
"Uh, well, yeah, son. I got the same room you normally use. I keep it free for ya. Just in case." We skip the whole credit card deposit, paperwork bullshit regular guest have to go through, and Alex tosses me the keys. When I head back outside, he follows me to the doorway, squinting out into the darkness. "That a girl you got with you?" he asks. Nosey fucker never did know when to not ask questions. I refrain from telling him to mind his own damn business, though. Against all odds, I have a soft spot for the old bastard, just like my grandfather did.
"Last time I checked," I inform him.
He nods, rubbing his calloused fingers over his two-day-old scruff. "That's good, son. Harry would be pleased. About time you found someone nice to settle down with." He squints a little harder, trying to get a better look at Sophia. "She's a beaut, too. Dark-haired. That's good. I never could picture you with a blonde."
"She's just keeping me company. She's not with me."
Alex's twisted old mouth pulls up to one side, displaying his crooked, slightly blackened front teeth. "Then you're a mad man, son. She's made for you, I reckon. Better get on that before anyone else does."
I fight off the urge to laugh. If only he knew.
******
The room's warm, which is welcome. Sophia heads straight to the bathroom and the sound of running water whispers behind the wooden door. I sit on the edge of the bed closest to the door and get ready to make some phone calls. Cade is first on my list.
"S'up, man. You breaking for the night?"
"Yeah. I'll be arriving at Louis' place around three tomorrow. Can you call Leah and let her know we're on our way in?" Leah McPherson works for my father, the one single favor the bastard's ever done for me. She needed to get the hell out of New Mexico, permanently, and I needed to find someone who would take her on, fast. At the time, my dad was the only person I could think of to ask. He goes through housemaids quickly, too abrasive and plain fucking rude for anyone to stomach him for too long, but a sharp-tongued Southern bastard was nothing after what Leah had already been through. I figured she would cope, and she did. Has been coping for the past two years. Ever since, she's been a convenient go-between, passing on messages from my father to me and vice versa. Makes communicating with the old man a hell of a lot more pleasant.
Leah is also very good at passing on information that my father probably doesn’t want me to know.
"I'll call her right away," Cade says. And then, “Shay came in here asking who she was buying all those clothes for this morning. She was pissed, man."
"Yeah, well, Shay can be pissed all she wants."
"It's bad juju to have a woman slamming around the clubhouse."
"What do you want me to do about it? Marry the fucking girl?"
Cade snorts. I can hear him shuffling papers or something—must be in my office. He takes care of the paperwork for the Ink Bar and the general running of the compound while I'm gone. "The day you marry anyone is the day hell freezes over. But maybe you could just talk to her. Have a quiet word in her ear or something. Fuck, man, just tell her it wasn't meant to be or something. I don't know."
If he were anyone else, I'd tell him to go fuck himself good and hard. "I'll think about it."
"Great. Now, the Mexicans want more—" Cade cuts off. I think it's just because he was about to say guns, and you can't say the Mexicans want more guns on the fucking telephone. Especially with the attention our little community out in the desert attracts. But Cade makes a guttural growling sound that tells me this is something else. Something bad.
"What? Tell me."
"You in front of a TV, man?" he says. "You'd better turn it on."
Oh, boy. When Cade sounds worried like that, it can only mean trouble. I hit the power button on the TV in the room, waiting for the old piece of shit to blink into life. The same Jeopardy! show Alex was watc
hing materializes slowly, pixel by pixel, onto the screen. "Which channel?" I ask.
"Any. Just look for a news station. You won’t have any problems finding this."
Fuck. If something's happened that's made it to all news stations across America, it must be big. I stab at the programming buttons on the bottom of the TV, searching, until I come across a stricken-looking woman in a pale green suit, staring straight out of the screen at me. She clears her throat, taking a deep breath, as though pulling herself together. "Again, eighteen people have died and seven further people are injured in what is perhaps the most violent gang shooting in Los Angeles for years. Eyewitnesses reported that at three pm this afternoon, a group of men dressed in leather jackets and black jeans entered Trader Joe's on Sunset Boulevard and began indiscriminately shooting at shoppers. It's unclear how many gunmen there were at this time, as security cameras within the store were shot out as soon as the men entered.
"Our sources have confirmed that the reason for the attack is most likely drug related. It is believed an undercover police officer working for the DEA was meant to meet with a handler at the grocery store. Police are yet to confirm if this is the case, or whether a DEA agent was in fact shot and killed, but the tightening of security around the crime scene and the LAPD's notable silence on the matter would lead us to believe this is correct.
"Once the shooting was at an end, the men involved in this senseless, violent attack sped off on motorcycles. Footage here shows three of the men celebrating as they prepare to flee the scene."
The image turns fuzzy as camera footage replaces the news studio, showing a clear image of the supermarket from outside. From the angle of the footage, this camera was covering a small food court outside the entrance, but you can clearly see three men emerging from the left, heads bowed, long hair ratty and hanging in their faces. One of them spins around, must hear something, and then there it is: The Widow Makers’ emblem. Our patch. Right in the middle of the motherfucker’s back. I can’t hear what’s being said between them, but they’re not fucking celebrating. Their wild arm movements, the way they’re shoving at each other as they hurry off screen—they’re arguing.