McCall wouldn’t consider an exchange. He conceded only to play the game for a while and stall for time, and that was the extent of his interest in a problem he considered beneath him. He had his precious box, and thus he didn’t care.
Hoosier was going to kill that rich bastard. But first, he was going to find his wife and kill the men who had her.
Three days. Three endless fucking days before they’d finally gotten a good lead. But now, at last, they’d found her. In a decrepit cabin deep in the woods near Big Bear.
They’d found her; now they needed to get to her, and they were going in guns blazing. Six men had assembled at the end of a dirt road. They were hiking in under night cover; there was no other way to come in undetected. Hoosier had the lead.
They crept as silently as they could, flanking the sagging building, closing off points of egress. Hoosier headed for the front door. He kicked it in and started shooting. Blue came in from the back at the same time.
There were three men in the main room of the cabin. One’s face and arm were thickly bandaged. Though all three were armed, none had the chance to draw before their insides were on their outsides.
When the quick thunder of gunfire had ebbed, Hoosier heard Blue call from the back, “HOOJ! HERE! NOW!” and he ran, jumping over bodies, down a dark hallway to the back of the cabin.
What he found would be etched into his mind for the rest of his life.
Blue was standing over the newly-dead body of a man. The man’s pants were loose, and his bare ass was exposed.
The room reeked of piss, vomit, blood…and sex.
On the rough, bare floor, against a wall, naked and sprawled on her back, her hands bound and over her head, was his wife. She had been savagely beaten, and she was streaked everywhere with blood.
She was awake; her eyes were open and blinking. But she had made no move, had not reacted to Hoosier’s presence—or, apparently, the commotion they’d all just caused—at all.
He handed his rifle to Blue, and then he knelt at his wife’s side. “Bibi? Baby, I’m here. I got you. It’s over.” When he put his hands on the tender, wounded skin of her shoulder, she finally reacted. She moaned—a low, slow, lifeless, hopeless creak of a sound.
She was hot, fiery hot, to the touch.
When he picked her up, cradling her in his arms, she made no move to help or resist, nor did she make any other sound. With her draped over his arms, he turned to Blue, who looked rocked all the way to his soul. It wasn’t easy to move Blue, but witnessing this horror had moved him to tears.
“I need a blanket. Something to cover her.”
Blue looked around, then shrugged off his kutte and laid it over her body.
“Thank you, brother.”
Hoosier carried his wife to the front room, where his brothers were going through the bodies. Chuck stood in the center, and he saw Hoosier coming down the hall.
“She alive?” he asked, not nearly as moved as Blue had been.
“She is. She needs a hospital. Now.”
Chuck shook his head. “Too many questions. We’ll take her to the clubhouse.”
Bibi hated the clubhouse. And she was too damn hurt for their slapdash care. The closest thing they had to a doctor was Edgar, who’d washed out of vet school. They all bore the scars of his shitty suturing work.
“No. She’s got a fever, and she’s in real bad shape. She needs a hospital, and that’s what she’s getting. Fred, go down and get the van—and brother, move your ass.”
“No, Fred, hold.” Chuck glared at Hoosier. “I told you—too many questions. We got meds, we got Edgar. I know she’s too fucking good to grace us with her presence, but we’ll set her up in a room and take care of her. No hospital.”
Blue went to Fred and snatched the keys from his hand.
Chuck’s glare moved to Blue. “You go, you can leave your kutte behind.”
Blue laughed and pointed at his kutte, draped over Bibi. “Already did. I’ll be back in a lick, Hooj.” He took off at a full run out of the cabin and toward the dirt road.
“That’s the club van. I say no.”
“You got to decide right now if you want this to be a life-or-death call, Chuck. It is for Bibi, and it is for me. If you want to draw that line, then draw it, but I’m coming over it, whatever it takes. And you know damn well this is no risk to the club. I can handle any question that gets asked.”
Chuck said nothing more, and the room froze in place until Blue pulled the van all the way to the door. Then Hoosier walked out to the yard. Blue had come around the van, and he was holding a quilted moving blanket. As he came to Hoosier, he gave a pained smile and opened it. “Better for her?”
It had been in the back of the van forever, and had been used for as long, for who knew what, but Hoosier nodded. He could wrap her up in that and hold her close.
“Same for you, Hooj,” Chuck growled. “You can take the van, but you leave your kutte. And your bikes, the both of you. Those bikes have Blades markings. They stay with the club.”
“None of this is a call you make, Chuck. That goes to the table. You’re no king.”
He sneered. “Then call it collateral. Leave it.”
Hoosier had worn a patch since he was twenty-three years old. Closing in on twenty years. Until he’d met Bedelia Beth Ladue, that leather on his shoulders had been everything that mattered about him or his life. After ten years of a life with Bibi, the club was still a load-bearing support. It didn’t mean everything, it didn’t define him completely, but it defined him mostly. He didn’t know what he’d do or who he’d be without it.
But that uncertainty didn’t mean hesitation now.
He handed Bibi carefully to Blue, who wrapped her up and held her as if she were made of spun glass.
Then he shrugged out of his kutte and let it fall to the floor.
~oOo~
Hoosier sat in the ICU room and tried to be quiet as he cried. Bibi was sleeping, a deep, medicated sleep that he’d been assured would be dreamless, and he didn’t want to risk waking her. If she was asleep and away from this reality, then she was safer than he could make her out here. He couldn’t keep her safe from the truth.
He’d promised he’d take care of her, but it was his fault this had happened to her. His life had brought this on her.
And might yet kill her. Among the many diagnoses the doctor had described was Toxic Shock Syndrome. They had her here in the ICU, attached to all kinds of monitors and pumping bag after bag of fluids and antibiotics into her, but she hadn’t yet rebounded.
She had been severely dehydrated, too. It looked as though the Leandros had never even given her a drink of goddamn water. They’d just beaten and fucked her right up to the point of death.
Hoosier remembered their bittersweet talk before getting out of bed on the day she’d been taken. She’d started her period. That hadn’t slowed her tormentors down at all, but it was why she was suffering from an infection so furious it had already ruined her uterus.
As a bonus to all the ways Hoosier’s life had broken her, it had also taken her dream away. There would never be a houseful of children.
Swimming in the brackish truth of his guilt, Hoosier held his head in both hands and wept.
ELEVEN
Hoosier hated the fucking flashcards.
For months, the damn things had been shoved in his face, and for months, frustration had been driving him insane. And shame, too—he knew full well this was the kind of thing that parents used with babies to teach them language. He remembered Connor’s sets.
Sure, these were different. Connor’s had been rendered as colorful, cartoonish drawings and whimsical fonts, and these were photographs, with a businesslike font. But the effect was the same. He was still looking at a fucking picture of a fucking carrot and being asked to say the word ‘carrot.’
And for months, he had been unable to do so. Six months; the fire had happened at the end of October, and he now understood that it was nearing the end of Apr
il. Six months since he’d been himself, since he’d been complete. And counting.
He couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t known the picture on the card was a carrot, when the image in the photograph hadn’t elicited immediate knowledge, complete with his understanding that he hated the damn things—and even sometimes with memories of the different ways Bibi had tried to prepare them so he’d eat them. He could hear his therapist speak the word ‘carrot’ and know what it meant.
He’d even understood that the letters under the photograph were meant to be the word ‘carrot.’ But he hadn’t been able to understand why that meant ‘carrot,’ or how to create the sounds of the word ‘carrot.’ Or any other word.
To be so close, and to know how he was deficient, what he was missing, had opened in Hoosier a deep, black pool of despair.
But today, maybe that pool could dry up. After his quiet, private moment with Bibi, she’d gotten up from the bed to let everybody know that he’d spoken. Since then, his room had been a bustle of people: nurses, therapists, his brothers and family, and now, his doctor. Dr. Philpott.
Hoosier hated him more than he’d hated almost anybody else in his life. Though he was likely the agent of his survival and possible recovery, in Hoosier’s mind, he was the symbol of his loss and weakness.
And he was the one currently shoving in his face the flashcard with the picture of carrot.
Hoosier had spoken three more words since those he’d said to his wife in private: ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ and ‘son’—the last said when Connor had come in and bent over his bed to hug him.
There had been no miraculous recovery; he was struggling to find words beyond that one sentence he’d so desperately wanted to say for so long. But being able, at last, to tell his wife he loved her had forged a tenuous, gossamer link in his brain between ideas and words, and though the words did not yet want to come easily to his lips, he was finding in himself the path to drag them along.
Now he was sitting in the chair Bibi usually occupied, with his bed table adjusted low and settled over his legs, while the illustrious and nefarious Dr. Philpott sat on a stool in front of him, pointing at the damn flashcard.
“Mr. Elliott, can you tell me what that is?”
Yeah, you jackass. It’s a carrot. I’d like to shove one up your ass. But he stared at the flashcard and willed it to be a word he could say. The feeling was akin to a physical push in his mind. It’s a carrot. Carrot. Come on, Hooj. Get a goddamn grip.
Then it came to him. Kuh-air-ut. He pushed that idea forward. His heart rate went up; he was working up a fucking sweat trying to make that stupid word. “K-k-kuh…air…air…ut. C-car-rot. Carrot.” He looked up, past the doctor he hated, to the woman he loved. Tears streamed down her face unheeded, dripping off her chin. “Carrot.” He grinned at her, and she grinned back. “Carrot.”
Philpott responded to that breakthrough by dealing another flashcard on top of the carrot. Asshole. “And this?”
He looked down at the new picture. This time, he had to push just a little bit less. “Duh…duh…dog.”
The words on the flashcards still didn’t make sense as words. They might as well have been written in Sanskrit. But he was learning to talk again, and he would learn to read again. As he’d learned to walk again, and to feed himself, and to take care of his physical needs—all of it the way a child learned, as if he’d never known how before. And yet not, because he’d known all along that these were things he’d taken for granted and lost.
He hadn’t lost his Bibi, though. She had been the one constant presence in his unstable, flickering understanding of the world he’d rejoined. She had brought him back—dragged him back, even.
As he had once done for her.
~oOo~
Hoosier and Blue both left the Desert Blades, but they did it of their own will. They weren’t kicked, and the table voted them out in good standing, leaving them their ink and their bikes. Chuck could fuck himself.
They’d both been out of a job, but almost immediately, Vulture had approached them. First, he’d offered them both a patch. Blue had taken it. Hoosier had declined. He blamed his outlaw life for what had happened to Bibi, and Vulture’s club was hardcore outlaw.
But Vulture had understood, and he’d offered him a station at the club’s shop, Cali Classics Custom Cycles, anyway—and that, Hoosier had taken. Making nothing but straight money was barely enough to keep them afloat, but it was enough. He would take care of his family. He would keep them safe.
Hoosier parked his bike in the garage one evening and came into the kitchen. The smell of cooking meat was strong and savory, but the kitchen was empty. Something in the oven, he guessed. “Hey,” he called.
“Daddy!” Connor trotted into the room and came for him with his arms up. Hoosier picked up his boy and gave him a squeeze.
“You have a good day?”
“Yeah. Auntie Margie made finger paint and we made a moo-wall. We painted ALL OVER THE WALLS!”
Hoosier frowned. “You did, huh?”
“Don’t worry, big guy. I taped paper up and then we made a mural.” Margot came in and went to the oven. Opening the door and glancing inside, she said, “We got a chicken casserole in about…”—she looked up at the clock—“fifteen minutes. Time for you to wash off the garage stink. Is Blue with you? I haven’t heard from him since lunch.”
Hoosier kissed his son on the cheek and then set him back on his feet. Connor ran out of the room, probably off to take something apart. “He’s finishing up a job. He’ll be a while, but we can wait supper on him. How is she today?”
“It’s not a good day.” Margot smoothed her hand over the little bulge of her belly. Only days after they’d found Bibi, while she was still in the hospital recovering from what had been done to her, Margot had found out she was pregnant. The timing was some kind of nasty cosmic joke.
In the four months since, Margot had been getting a crash course in mothering. She’d taken over the running of Hoosier’s family. Every day that he worked, Margot was here. They never left Bibi alone. Not ever, not for a second.
Hoosier felt sure, deep in his soul, that if they turned their backs on her for even a second, she’d disappear. Just wink out of existence.
He went to the cabinet and pulled down the bottle of Jameson. Pouring himself a full four fingers, he asked, mostly rhetorically, “Does she have good days?”
Margot fixed herself a glass of ice water. “I know she’s not ever Beebs, but you know…most days, there’s at least something a little normal—she’ll chat for a second, or she notices Connor, or maybe she’ll come out to the garden or something. Yesterday, she even asked about the baby. But today she’s been angry and distant. Days like this are hard. On Connor, too.” She hesitated, and Hoosier knew where she was headed next. “She should see somebody, Hooj. I’m here for whatever she needs, but I don’t know how to bring her back. She needs real help.”
“She doesn’t want that.” Hoosier hated the idea of talking to strangers about anything, but he was desperate enough to get his wife back that he’d suggested it to her more than once. She hardly talked to him under normal circumstances these days—if any circumstances these days could be considered to be normal—but she wouldn’t engage that topic at all.
Margot took a drink of her water, and Hoosier saw that her hand shook a little. He steeled himself to hear whatever she was afraid to say. “Maybe it shouldn’t be her choice.”
That, he hadn’t been prepared for. He slammed his empty glass to the tile counter, and she jumped. “I’m not fuckin’ committing my wife, Margot. No fuckin’ way. Don’t ever bring it up again.”
“I’m sorry, Hooj. I’m just worried. She’s not getting better. And Connor feels it, too.”
“It’s only been a few weeks. What happened to her—” He stopped, unable to say more. He’d never been able to speak of what he’d seen, or what the doctor had told him about her injuries. And she’d never told him what those days had been like. He d
idn’t need her to say; the blanks had been filled in by her condition when he’d found her.
“Months. It’s been four months. I can feel the baby moving, and I didn’t even know I was pregnant when they took her. She’s not getting better.” Margot put her hand on Hoosier’s and lifted her sad eyes to his. “I miss my friend. Connor needs his mother. You need your wife. When this baby comes, I don’t know if I’ll be able to manage Connor anymore. And I don’t think she’ll want me around then, anyway. Something’s got to get better before then.”
Bibi had come into the room, and Hoosier had put his hand up to try to stop Margot from finishing her thought. He hadn’t managed, but it didn’t seem to matter. If Bibi had heard what they’d been talking about, she didn’t react or remark. She went to the refrigerator, opened it, pulled out a little round bottle of apple juice, and then turned back the way she’d come.
Dream & Dare Page 13