by Zoey Derrick
“Do you know why they wanted him dead?” he asks as he reaches back for his chair, pulling it up and sitting back down. I let out a rush of relief. Sitting is good; it means he’s calming down.
“I have an idea. It might involve the briefcase or something else, but the other guy who came with Loki kept sputtering something about money and how they know Tryke stole it.”
Uncle D leans back in his chair and steeples his fingers against his lips. “It’s club business and I can’t go into detail about it, but there’s been some inconsistencies in that part of the business. We’ve not been able to break it down enough to figure out who’s behind it. If Rooster is saying that Tryke was behind it, he’d have the right to take him down without consulting me.”
“So, they become judge, jury and executioner with Tryke?” My uncle just nods and right now I hate him more than I hate Loki. “So, to cover their asses, to make it look like a good hit, they accused Tryke of stealing money from the club?”
My uncle laughs without humor. “Fucking morons.” His face turns red with anger. “I may not be there, in Roswell, but I know Tryke better than most and I know damn well he’d never do that. He has no reason to. He’s got enough money that he could get a major drug addiction and still survive.” I shudder at the idea of Tryke addicted to drugs. Sure, he smoked pot once in a while, but that’s it. All the guys did at one point or another. Beer, pot and cigarette smoke were staples in my house growing up.
“I assure you there were no drugs in his life and no reason for him to be skimming money from the club. We had everything we needed and then some. He dropped money on that safe room, those cameras, and security measures around the house like it was chump change,” I tell him. “We always had food in the house. I had clothes on my back and a substantial allowance that came without fail every week. He never griped or bitched about a lack of money and he even loaned Loki money from time to time. So, I can tell you, Tryke is not your thief.”
“Fucking idiots.” My uncle leans forward, putting his arms back on the desk. “I’ll get to the bottom of this and handle it.”
“I want at him first.” I narrow my eyes at him, conveying my seriousness. “I want to take him down.”
He just stares blankly at me for a moment. “You’re joking, right?”
“Don’t patronize me. Between my father, my mother and now my brother, I deserve my chance.”
My uncle shifts behind the desk, his hand coming up to play with his beard. Big Daddy is a big guy, about six-five, with broad shoulders and hips to match. At one point in his life, he was healthy and ripped. Too many beers and sitting around has changed that. He’s not unattractive, though the belly button length beard is a bit much. He thinks something over for a moment before he points to the briefcase in my hand. “We’ll come back to that, later. What’s in there?”
“I was hoping you would tell me. All I know is Tryke buried it, I found it with a note telling me to bring it here to you. Trust me; I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for that briefcase.” I take a deep breath, digging down to my toes for the strength I found when I finally left that hotel room. I stare at him. “He died for this briefcase,” I remind him as I set the briefcase down on the desk in front of him along with the DVD of Tryke’s murder.
“You got someplace to stay?” he asks.
“I’ll manage.”
“Stay here, at the clubhouse.” He gives me a look that says it’s not an invitation but an order.
“No,” I tell him sternly.
“You want a chance for revenge or not?” he asks me.
“You know I do, but not here, not like this,” I tell him. “I need time.”
“Fuck that,” he snaps.
“I’m seventeen,” I remind him.
“Fuck,” he groans. “For how much longer?”
“What day is it?” I cock my head at him.
“The sixteenth.”
“Three more days,” I tell him.
His eyes widen briefly before he relaxes. “Well, then I don’t see what the problem is.”
I put my hands on his desk and lean forward. “I’m not a club whore,” I remind him.
He smirks, “No? You walk in here looking like that and expect me to believe you’re not a club whore?”
I stand up and try in vain to cover myself. “I needed someone to take me seriously.”
“Oh, I’m listening, darlin’.”
“I can’t stay here,” I tell him.
“You don’t think we can protect you?” He raises an eyebrow at me.
“I know damn well you can protect me, Uncle D. But you have too many Roswell guys coming up in here too often. My brother did a damn good job of keeping me away from them for four years. Do you honestly believe I’ll let you ruin that with your over-protective big daddy complex?”
“Then go north, Boulder. Roswell has no business up there and no need to be there.”
“I’m going to my aunt’s in Colorado Springs,” I lie. The truth is I’m headed to Boulder. Headed to my uncle’s.
He narrows his eyes at me. “Your mother’s sister?”
“That’s where Tryke wants me.”
“Does your aunt even know you’re coming?”
I shake my head.
“Christ, Kiwi, have you even thought this through?”
“I have enough money to take care of myself and three days until I turn eighteen, then I can get a place of my own,” I snap at him.
“You’re family, Kiwi.” His eyes soften a little. He may be a Pres, a badass biker, but for the Wicked Angels, family has always come first.
“Forty-five minutes ago, you thought I was dead.” I narrow my eyes at him.
“That reminds me,” he drawls. “I thought you were dead because your brother said so. We buried your ass with your parents. How the fuck was I supposed to know we buried an empty coffin? Whatever Tryke was doing, he let very few people into that inner circle.”
“That son of a bitch!” I growl. My anger turns my vision red. “If that bastard wasn’t already dead, I’d kill him myself.”
“Whoa there, kitten, what are you talking about?”
I shake my head and start pacing around the room. “Will you just open that damn thing so I can get out of here?”
“Not until you tell me what the fuck is going on?” He stands up hard, pushing his chair against the wall behind his desk, again. Jesus, Lily, how many times you gonna piss him off in the course of an hour?
I stop, staring at him. “He brought home two urns. Told me it was easier that way.” Tears swim in my eyes and I bite my lip. I’ve held it together this long, I don’t need to lose it now.
My uncle shakes his head before shouting, “Whistler, Spike, get in here!” I jump at the loud boom of his voice.
“Yeah,” one of them says behind me, though I don’t bother to look to see who.
“Who can we send to Roswell?”
“Depends. What do you want done?”
“I want someone on the inside. We need to figure out what the fuck is going on down there,” my uncle explains to the two men who just came into the room.
“Then send someone from Boulder or somewhere else. You send someone from here and they ain’t gonna let them near anything.”
I try my best to ignore them talking about Wicked Angels business but they’re openly doing it in front of me. “Alright,” my uncle concedes. “We’ll talk about it later. Let me finish with Kiwi.” He sits back down and glares at me. “Your brother did the right thing,” he states stoically.
“What are you talking about?” I narrow my eyes at him in frustration.
“Club business.”
“Fuck that bullshit. You can’t drop a cryptic statement like that and not answer it.”
My uncle is out of his chair and rounding his desk faster than I can react. He has me pushed against the wall, his hand at my throat before I can blink. The impact knocks the air out of my lungs. I fight for breath, but he gives me nothing. I don’t fight
him. “Listen, and listen good. Club business is club business and not meant for some little bitch, you get me?” he growls at me.
I fight for air again before nodding and he releases me. I double over, pulling in deep breaths, trying to right myself as he returns to his desk.
“What’s the combo?” he asks as if he didn’t just have me pinned against the wall.
I shrug while standing back up, straightening out. “The note says you’ll know what to do with it.”
“Well fuck,” he grumbles but he starts fiddling with the combination. It’s one of those turning wheel ones.
“How many numbers?” I ask.
His eyes look up from the briefcase and he responds, “Six.”
“Birthday,” I tell him.
“Whose?”
“How the fuck should I know?” I retort. His eyes narrow at me again and my heart skips a terrified beat in my chest, but he doesn’t move. “Try yours, mom’s, dad’s, Tryke’s, mine?” I throw my hands up in frustration. “Fuck if I know.” I go back to pacing around the room while my uncle goes to town on the lock.
After a few heartbeats he asks, “What’s yours?”
“February nineteenth, two thousand,” I tell him.
He fiddles with it some more, putting in my date of birth and pushes the button, the latches pop up. “Well, aren’t you a lucky charm,” he mutters.
I shrug and move around his desk to look inside the briefcase.
“Money? I thought you said he didn’t steal anything,” my uncle snaps at me.
I look closer at it. There’s something off about it. I don’t understand it completely, but the color is bad, the numbers askew. “It’s counterfeit,” I breathe.
“How can you tell?” He looks up at me, skeptical.
“Look at it?” I tell him. “You got a twenty?” I ask and he digs into his back pocket, pulling his chain wallet from its resting place and he goes digging for a twenty. After a few seconds, he produces one and holds it next to the bills. “See, the color is off, not enough to raise too many eyebrows when they’re all together and away from a real one.”
“Fuck me,” my uncle breathes.
“He died for a pile of fake fucking bills?” I snap.
My uncle just shrugs before he pulls a stack of the fake twenties from the briefcase and then the next thing I know, he’s pulling them all out. Beneath the row of bills are a bunch of metal plates. “They’re print plates,” my uncle says as he grabs one from the briefcase and beneath it is a manila envelope.
Again, he pulls the plates from their resting place before reaching for the envelope. It has my name on it. “Fuck me,” I breathe and my uncle looks at me as if I’ve lost my damn mind. I’m sure that I have. He hands it to me and I flip it over, unclasping it then opening the flap. Inside are a stack of papers stapled together with a note on top.
Lily-bean,
If you’re reading this, you’ve done exactly as I’ve instructed. Thank you for listening to me. I need you to do one more thing for me.
Attached to this note is all the proof that Big Daddy needs to track down the missing money. With a little investigation, he might be able to finish what I started and figure out who’s skimming off the top. I recommend he starts at the top.
I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you any of this, but the less you knew the better.
I owed it to mom and dad, but more to you. You deserve a life better than I’ve given you, go and find it, Lily-bean.
There’s no signature, but it’s clearly my brother’s handwriting. I pull the note from the stack of papers and I look at them briefly. They look like accounting ledgers. I hand them over to my uncle. “The letter says that this,” I point at the stack I handed to him, “is enough for you to track down the missing money and with a little investigation, you should be able to finish ‘what he started’ and find out who’s behind it.” I take a deep breath. “Loki may have killed my brother, but he didn’t do it without orders. I assure you of that. The other guy that was there with Loki got hit in the shoulder during the struggle, but Loki got nothing. If my brother was shooting, he’d have clipped Loki too. I think he did what he needed to do to make sure that Tryke died with a little dignity, considering he was being falsely accused.” I chew on my lip for a second before I add, “Loki might know more about this.” I nod at the briefcase.
“Why would he kill your brother?” my uncle asks, his voice is soft, sad almost.
“Because my brother asked him to,” I state simply. “My guess is that the guy who was there with him is working for someone else inside the club or maybe he’s responsible for the missing money or knows who is. They kill Tryke to cover their asses and Rooster takes out the one man vying for his position. He wins all the way around.
“But, if money continues to disappear, then they’ve still got a problem and Tryke wasn’t the right man. Thus, producing a reason for you to take down whoever ordered the hit. If the money stops disappearing and the books stay legit, the person who took the money to begin with…” I swallow, “is dead already, or they’re covering their tracks. But in the end, when they get in over their heads again, the money will start disappearing again. It’s an addiction, Uncle D. Whether it’s drugs or gambling, or just money in general, whoever is really behind this will not stop forever.”
“Jesus, how old are you again?”
I smile at my uncle. “I’m a lot smarter than the strawberry blonde lets on. I pay attention. I’m smart. Private school wasn’t just to get me away from club members’ kids.” I wink and go back to the other side of the desk.
“We’ll get to the bottom of this,” he says without a hint of promise, but more of a ‘don’t get your hope us’ kind of tone as he fishes blindly for his chair and takes a seat once again.
“Whoever is behind this, I want my crack at him. Whoever it is took out my parents and had my brother killed.”
“Revenge is an ugly game, sweetheart.”
“And it’s all mine.”
My tone leaves little to misinterpret and my uncle nods in understanding.
Chapter Six
LILY
Roswell to Boulder, Colorado by way of Tucson, Arizona.
I stretch as I get out of the car in front of my Uncle Sticks’ house in Boulder.
The house is gorgeous, considering it’s a bachelor pad. White with hunter green shutters on either side of the windows. Two stories and a wraparound porch.
The front door opens and my uncle comes out with eyes narrowed on me. He’s older, sixty, a couple years younger than Big Daddy, but Sticks looks every bit his age. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he grunts as he steps off the porch steps. I meet him halfway between my car and the stairs.
“Hey, Sticks.” I smile and he wraps his arms around me.
“I was hopin’ you’d skip that aunt of yours and come up here.” His face lights up with a smile as he lets me go. Unlike his brother, Sticks maintains a nice goatee, though it’s longer off the chin, it’s not unattractive considering his age. His hair is salt and pepper and his eyes are my same shade of blue. The family resemblance is uncanny.
“So, Uncle D called you?”
He laughs, “Of course he did. Our niece, whom we thought dead, shows up after four years, damn right he called me.” The cold hits me then and I shiver. “Come on, let’s get you inside.” He’s actually happy to see me, which is a good sign.
He helps me with my bags, bringing them all in the house. “How long you gonna stay?” he asks as we set the bags at the foot of the stairs.
“Not long. I just need some time to get on my feet up here,” I tell him. It’s the truth. I never intended to be a burden on my uncle.
“You cook?” he asks, raising an eyebrow at me.
I smile wider, relief washing over me for the first time in almost a week. “I do.”
“Well?” He cocks an eyebrow at me.
“I’ve not killed anyone yet,” I tease.
“Good, you’re staying.”
I laugh.
The night goes much like that until he stomps his way up the stairs to his room. Sticks was married for a very long time to a woman I adored as a child. She died when I was ten and Uncle Sticks has been alone ever since. Well, as alone as a biker with a clubhouse full of club whores can be.
As I climb into the guest bed next to his room, I start to think about his open invitation to stay. I can’t help wondering if he knew more about my being alive than he lead me to believe. It also makes me wonder if he’ll give me the information I need about Roswell. The best I got out of Big Daddy was Rooster’s name. I still don’t know the name of the man who was with Loki that night.
I also need some time to learn as much club business as I can. I need to know how to get inside the walls and hopefully I can do it as something other than a club whore.
My uncle has been the Boulder charter Pres since he was twenty-two. The same age as Kellen when our parents died, but Boulder’s charter was smaller in numbers and already had some well-established businesses to keep it afloat during his transition. Under Sticks’ guidance and leadership, Boulder now rivals Tucson for the largest charter and it is still the most profitable.
During our talk tonight, I learned that the Boulder charter has several stores, shops and bars between here and Denver that they run. The money flows into the entire club through Boulder, and while Roswell and Tucson have their own store fronts, Boulder, for whatever reason, is the bread winner. There are several smaller charters throughout the West Coast. California, Oregon and Nevada are three states that I know for sure have charters.
Uncle Sticks, named because he was always drumming away with whatever he could get his hands on when he was younger, seemed happy to see me at first. Until I told him my plan to get revenge on the asshole who killed my parents and Tryke.
“Revenge is left to the big boys, darlin’,” he said, but there was a twitch in his lips that told me he wasn’t all too disappointed in my intentions.
“Yeah, well, if anyone has a right to it, it’s me.”
He didn’t have much of an argument after that. But he looked me up and down, scrutinizing me in my loose-fitting jeans and light colored t-shirt. The longer we talked the more I think he realized just how serious I am about it.