by Cat Porter
Her forehead puckered, and she sank back against her pillow. “He’s into this because of the baby though, not because—”
“I didn’t tell him about the baby. No one has. He wants you, pure and simple. You have to be the one to tell him about your baby.”
Her shoulders dropped, her face visibly relaxed. She was relieved. Pleased.
“I came to see you, because I wanted us to talk first,” I said.
“Woman to woman or as a lawyer, negotiating?” Nina asked.
“Both. If you’re going to do this, Reich and your sister need to hear it from you. You have to tell them that being Catch’s old lady is what you want and that you are taking charge of your life, responsibly, not just running off with some guy again.”
“You’re right.”
“I also came to you first because we’re talking about my little brother, and I care about his happiness.”
Nina held my gaze.
“I know my brother, Nina. He needs a woman he can trust, not just a woman in his bed, now more than ever, and I think he’s ready to appreciate that, especially since he lost Jill over bullshit a while back. He knows where he went wrong there. Where they both did. I think, if you put your cards on the table with him from the very beginning, and be straight-up, stay loyal and honest, you’ve got a great chance of keeping things good between you two.”
“I really don’t know what that’s like. Sad, huh? Pathetic.”
“Nina, there is nothing in this world like mutual respect between a man and a woman. I would say it’s the most important thing, even more important than love. Love’s easy. It’s a good feeling that seeps through you like fine wine and makes you all dreamy and warm. Respect takes thought and care. I’m no expert, but from where I’m standing, it’s huge. You’ll make mistakes, both of you, but it will be worth it. No games though. No bullshit. That time has passed.”
“I want to see Catch.” She let go of my hand and shoved the magazine to the side of the bed. “Thank you, Tania,” she whispered.
“You’re welcome. I’ll go get him.” I rose from the bed, but her fingers clasped my hand, stopping me.
“You’re setting Butler free,” Nina said.
“Uh—”
“He’s got a deep sadness inside him. He’s never let me see it, but it’s there. I don’t know if anyone will ever get through it and get to him, but I hope you do.”
“I’m going to try.”
I CALLED FINGER, insisting we meet at a gas stop on Route 385, just over the border in Nebraska.
He tugged off his gloves, his eyes scanning the row of dumpsters, the old air pump, and the rusted out steel drums by where we stood.
We were alone, except for our bikes, a beat-up Dodge pickup, and plenty of garbage steaming in the midday sun.
“Tell me,” I said.
“Tell you what?” He pushed back from the grimy wall by the restroom door.
“Why the fuck did you kill Jump?”
He raised an eyebrow. “That keeping you up at night?”
“Yeah, it is.”
“An unpaid bill that had to be paid. In full.”
“I realized you liked being friendly with me because you knew Jump didn’t like me much,” I said.
“Yeah.” He folded his arms across his chest. “And you were way friendlier with me than I think your national president would have liked, nomad.”
“I was. I took the risk. But that’s between us. And you liked that. I let you in, and I let you take advantage of that.”
His eyes narrowed. “And you got your in with me.”
“And I got my in with you, and we pissed off Jump, which benefited both of us. But he was my president, Finger. What did he do to you? You looking to step in, take over the One-Eyed Jacks? Or maybe throw me a bone to distract me, shut me up, install me as your puppet, and drain the Jacks dry until there’s nothing left? ’Cause that is not going to fucking happen.”
“I considered it, but that’s not what I want. Not from your club.”
But that’s what he’s planning for the Broken Blades.
“No, Jump and I were never about the Jacks,” Finger said. “It was all Jump.” His expression remained neutral, calm, revealing nothing.
“I need to know.”
“Is it gonna change anything?” he asked, his tone weary.
“I need to know!”
He tilted his head, leveling his eyes with mine. “Once upon a long time ago, I was in trouble, needed help. I’d gone underground, and I was on the run from the Smoking Guns. My own brothers didn’t even know. It was an impossible situation, and I’d put everything on the line, everything, but I had no choice.”
I lit a cigarette.
The Smoking Guns were terrors that had risen in the wake of the Flames of Hell’s notoriety back in the seventies. They had wanted a piece of the Flames’ cocaine pie, a piece of the gun-running, and the easy money rolling in back then. They had also wanted the badass reputation that the Flames enjoyed throughout the country, being one of the first nationally organized outlaw clubs. And, as the Flames had spread throughout North America and then the UK, Germany, Sweden, Holland, so had the Guns.
Stupid confrontation followed epic confrontation. Until one day, the Smoking Guns in Kansas took Finger, tortured him, viciously hacked at him, then sent him back home. The point of no return. The Feds had been watching and waiting for the Flames to retaliate, but the Flames had put the brakes on the bloodshed and notoriety and opted for peace instead. That was twenty years ago. Over that time, there had been mini explosions here and there, some grandstanding, but they had been skin-deep, bullshit posturing.
“Was this before or after they held you prisoner?” I asked.
“After.”
“You went back to Kansas? You went on your own to get your revenge on the Smoking Guns for torturing you?”
“No. Things were locked down tight after I’d gotten released, after everyone had smoked their fucking peace pipe. What I did wasn’t about my revenge, and that’s all I’m going to say about it.” He crossed his arms, his eyes wandering over the dumpsters again. “Point is, I went in, did what I had to do, and on the way back, I needed help. I was heading for South Dakota to stay out of Nebraska for a while. I was hurt. I needed to lay low. I arranged with Dig to get to a Jacks’ safe house for a couple of weeks, and he agreed. When I needed him though, he was gone.”
“You mean, when he got killed?”
“No. It was when he got married to his old lady and went on his honeymoon. I couldn’t reach him, so I contacted Jump, who was Dig’s backup man. And you know what that asshole told me? He said no. I was literally fucking bleeding on the side of the road, and he told me no. No, I can’t help you. No, I can’t get you safe. No, I can’t take a risk for you. No. No. Fucking no.”
The muscle along his jaw twitched and pulsed. After all this time, his hate for Jump, for the Smoking Guns, for anyone who had ever crossed him—I was sure—was still raw and brutal, embedded deep. That beast within was alive and beating a barbaric drumroll from within his scarred, blackened soul.
“I was stranded, nowhere to turn. Fucking Guns hot on my ass. If they’d caught me, I would’ve been wishing I were dead. It got so bad that I almost ended it in the fucking restroom of a gas station on the highway.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No, I didn’t.” He licked his bottom lip, his gaze pinning me. “I managed. I survived and got done what I had to get done.”
“And you’ve been waiting all this time to—”
“I didn’t make life easy for the Jacks after that,” Finger replied. “Dig was always a man of his word. We’d been doing small favors for each other here and there. When he found out about Jump leaving me hanging, he was in a rage. He tried to make it up to me, but things cooled off between us. Then he got himself killed.” Finger let out a drawn-out long sigh. “But Jump…that fucker. I was never going to forget what he’d done to me.” Finger pressed his lips together
, his eyes narrowing.
“That was ’cause of me, you know—Dig getting married out of the blue. They’d kicked me out for flirting with his old lady, sent me to the chapter up north. He married her in a flash the next fucking week. Things were crazy for a while there.”
Finger let out a dry laugh. “Well, don’t expect a thank you from me. Things might have worked out differently. Who the fuck knows?” He rubbed his shoulder. “Doesn’t matter now. I got safe. Here I am.”
“You’re a patient man then.”
He shot me a look. “I need to be if I want to get the job done right. Any job. Many times, a situation presents itself—like Reich’s bomb at the Jacks’ clubhouse and I happened to be there. Purely random. That shit is real sweet when it works out, isn’t it? I slipped right in and got done what I’d been wanting to do for years. No big fucking showdown, no fuss, no mess—during and especially after. The best part, Jump was conscious. Looked me straight in the eyes. He knew, and I saw his fear there.” A subtle grin broke over his face and then receded.
I exhaled a final stream of smoke, and that goddamn dizzying rush went off in my head, that gnawing need crawled through my veins. I tossed what was left of my cigarette to the ground, crushing it with my boot.
“The next best part, I didn’t have to get rid of the body,” said Finger. “Your club got itself a new martyr and a fancy funeral, not a vanishing in the dark of the night.”
“Oh, we should be grateful?”
“You should. Without Jump riding your ass, you got yourself a good chance to rise the ranks again, if that’s what you want.”
“I only wanted back in. That was enough for me. To be in good standing in my brother’s eyes, to bring something to the table. Not to take away again. Not that!”
“You accomplished what you wanted, and I got what I wanted.”
My pulse banged in my head, and that ache exploded across my skull. “And the blame gets placed on Reich’s dirty shoulders, just where you wanted it to, am I right?”
“Patience, my friend, is an important virtue to cultivate. That taste of anticipation brews on the back of your tongue for years, and finally, finally, it transforms into a glorious amalgam of blood, satisfaction, and burning pleasure. It’s lingering still.” He made a sucking sound with his teeth.
There was a purpose to his madness. A scheme. A huge, fat fucking scheme. He enjoyed bulldozing his enemies in a quiet way. If this shit with Reich was Flames club business and not just about Tania, I had no doubt that vengeance would be taken on a large scale, Napoleonic Wars scale with a legion of troops marching across the agreed upon battlefield.
“And Reich?” I asked. “After what he’s done to Tania? What he’s trying to do to you and your club?”
He focused on me once more. His eyes were clear now, and there was an odd curve to his thin lips. “What was that word Tania used?”
“Unequivocal?”
He pointed a finger at me. “Yeah, that. Looking forward to making that happen with Reich.”
I was sure he was, and I was sure it would be a sight to see.
“You deliver the girl tomorrow,” Finger said, that husky scratch underlining his voice. “Tomorrow will be a very, very good day.”
“WHY DO WE HAVE TO MAKE A SHOW OF THIS?” Nina eyed the security guards at the Flames of Hell main gate who’d just patted us down and taken my gun and knife.
The four Flames stared at us from their posts at the tall, thick metal fence trimmed in barbed wire that marked the entrance to the property south of Chadron, Nebraska.
“You really have to ask?” I pulled her three suitcases from the back of the truck.
Nina’s face was pinched, her lips pressed together, her shoulders stiff, her one arm still in a sling. All through this past year—the plotting together, stealing from Reich, lying to everyone—she’d retained her remarkable cool swagger, her own jazz riff of brassy personality, cocky persona, and pixie dust. Not today. Today, she was worried, anxious.
“I’m just nervous.” Her eyes jumped from me to the front door to me again. “Ever since the car bomb. Knowing that he did it. What the hell will he come up with next?”
“I’m here, and so are Catch and Finger. Reich’s got no say in your life, Nina. Not anymore. None.”
“You realize you’ve probably said that to me at least a thousand times since we hooked up in Ohio. And look how that turned out.”
“It’s true now more than ever.” I slammed shut the back of the truck and glanced at her. “Hey, it got us here, didn’t it?” I wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and she slumped against me, her face in my chest.
She released a heavy breath and pushed back from me. “Let’s do this.”
“You sure?”
“It’s a little late now for that question, don’t you think?”
“Never too late.”
“This works for all of us, and anyhow”—her hand went to her stomach—“what better reason, right?”
For the first time, there was no confusion, no fussing, no pettiness. She was learning to stand up on her own two feet in the real world for herself and now her kid.
“Thank you.” She hooked her arms around my middle. “I mean it. Thanks for everything. God knows what a pain in the ass I’ve been to you, but I want you to know, I’m really grateful. You saved my life. You helped me realize that—”
“Shut the fuck up already.”
She rolled her eyes and planted a kiss on my cheek. “You can never take a stupid compliment. Thank you, okay?” She let out a tiny laugh.
“Yeah.” I grabbed two of her suitcases. “Ready?”
“Ready.” She grabbed the handle of her small suitcase, wheeling it behind her as we headed inside the Flames of Hell clubhouse past members who stared us down.
The big main room stank of ammonia floor cleaner and dread.
Finger stood in the center by a long table littered with laptops and coffee mugs, his arms crossed, his eyebrows a dark ridge. Catch ambled into the room from a side hallway, his face lighting up. I’d delivered the bride to her shotgun wedding.
“What the hell is this?” Reich eyed us from the sofa where he sat with a group of his men from Ohio, including Led, the bodyguard he had sent with Nina to South Dakota.
Led shot up from the sofa, glaring at Nina, glaring at her suitcases, glaring at me.
I lifted my chin at Catch. “She’s all yours.”
Catch held out his hand, and Nina raced over to him, wrapping herself up in her new man. They kissed.
“What the fuck is going on?” Reich’s voice tightened.
“What the hell is he doing here?” I asked Finger gesturing at Reich.
“Reich’s been staying here since your little event,” replied Finger.
“Event? Is that what you’re calling it? This is bullshit. We’ve been looking for him for days now. He’s gotta answer for killing my prez.”
“Butler, you need to leave now,” said Catch, his arm firmly around Nina.
Reich’s eyes bulged. He rose to his feet, his focus entirely on Nina. “I’ve been trying to call you, Neens. You haven’t been answering your phone. What are you doin’, sweetheart?”
Nina only pressed her body into Catch, her arms around his waist.
Catch brushed his mouth against Nina’s hair. “Nina’s my old lady now, Reich. You got something to say to her, you say it to me. Otherwise, you’re done.”
“Watch how you talk, asshole!” shouted Led.
“Done? Done? What the fuck? Done?” Reich turned to Finger, his face red. “You gonna let your boy talk to me that way?”
“She caused a ruckus with my club and Butler’s. But all the drama’s over now.” Finger shot me a look.
I raised my hands in the air. “I know I’m done with her and her shit.”
“Neens, come on now. This is ridiculous. I came out here for you, baby.” Reich’s tone had mellowed. He wanted his addiction back. My gut roiled at the strange soft look on his face.
“You need to come home with me and your sister and let us take care of you,” Reich said. “You need to be with your family, with people you trust.”
“I’m her family now,” Catch said. “This is where she belongs. With me.”
“You told your sister about this?” Reich ignored Catch. “We thought you were coming home with us today. You’d said—”
“I’m staying here with my old man,” Nina said, her voice clear.
“Your old man, huh? I’ve heard that shit before.” Reich glanced at me, and I raised my chin at him, not giving two fucks.
“You need to hear it now,” she said. “I’m with Catch, and I’m staying with him here in Nebraska. I love him, and I’m pregnant with his baby. I’m not going back to Ohio with you and Deanna. This is my home now.”
Her skittish gaze darted at me, and I raised an eyebrow at her. She was doing good. Hadn’t missed a beat.
“No.” Reich shook his head, his teeth dragging against his lip. “No! Deanna’s waiting for us back at the motel. She’s waiting for you to meet her there, like you said you would. You lying, cheating little—”
“Yeah, she is a cheating skank. I hope you’re proud of her,” I said.
Nina’s face paled.
“You are such a cocksucker!” shouted Led.
“Shut the fuck up right now! All of you!” Catch’s corded neck stiffened like a slab of marble, the lines of his face taut.
“This ain’t right,” said Reich through gritted teeth.
“You know what’s not right?” I stepped forward. “This.” I held up the flash drive.
The color drained from Reich’s face. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“The right thing, imagine that.”
“You’re nothing but a two bit thief!” Reich’s voice seethed.
“I am. I wanted your cooperation on trade deals out to our territory for my club bad enough to force you. Bad enough to steal from you, blackmail you. I followed your invisible trails and found out your little secrets. You knew that if I told Finger what you’d been doing, he’d wipe the floor of the Flames’ national clubhouse with your ass. And you’d not only be out but shamed, backs turned on you. Power taken away. Money gone. And where would the great Reich be then? I don’t think those VIP clients of yours would come to your rescue, do you?”