by Keta Kendric
Aaron
We’d just been in a situation that could have turned deadly and Megan sat next to me as cool as a cucumber. My tension had eased as well.
“How did you know to tell that cop to look at my cut?”
She smiled before glancing in my direction. “I didn’t know if it would work, but after hearing some of what you and your father were talking about on the phone and after your father had started allowing me to enter the board room during some of the meetings, I concluded that you all had ties with law enforcement.”
“That was smart,” I complimented her, making her smile deepen. I hadn’t even considered explaining who I was to the cops. Knowing that Megan was in danger, all I saw was red. She was my weakness, and I needed to find a way to balance caring for her and handling my business as usual.
I avoided the normal route to my house, although it was off the beaten path. I’d taken the scenic drive that was nothing more than an overgrown path through the woods that would take me to within a stone’s throw away from my house. It was the same path I’d taken when I discovered that Chuck and his crew had landed on my doorstep.
Knowing that Megan had been in my house alone with them had driven me past the point of madness. It was the first time that I realized I would do anything to protect her, even if it meant giving myself up.
I’d ditched my truck in the woods that day. After snooping around and discovering the men hadn’t harmed Megan, I sneaked into the house. If I hadn’t feared for Megan being hurt in a gun battle, I would have handled Chuck, Clint, and Dutch in an entirely different manner.
My actions that day marked the first time I’d acknowledged my weakness. At my attempt to be careful, I’d nearly gotten both of us killed. Megan saved my life that day. Although my intent was to avoid a gun battle, she’d initiated one that had lured us away from the grips of death.
The idea that a group like Chuck’s had lurked long enough to find my house made me aware that this new group may have the means to find a way to my doorstep as well. How long had this group been in town? How long had they been watching me and Megan?
Last night, I’d warned my MC about the dangerous group lingering, but I wasn’t worried. For as dumb as my MC sometimes acted, when it came to life or death, they would choose life and survival by any means necessary.
I found a good spot plush with thick trees and vines to park in the woods behind my house. I made a move and started to climb out of my truck to go and check the house, but Megan stopped me, gripping my arm. “I want to come,” she insisted.
I said the magic word, “Please,” again and she stayed put in the truck. She was afraid to let me out of her sight now that I’d confirmed my loyalty to her.
My boot-clad feet trounced across the roots of trees and broken twigs as I crept closer to my house. My instincts told me that after that shootout yesterday, this group already knew who we were. If they were after Megan, they may have tracked her to my MC.
When the back of my house came into view, everything appeared normal, but I approached with caution.
Using the key I’d left tucked into the overhead paneling, I opened the back door. A flick of the knob sent my back door creaking open. A tap of the metal tip of my gun sent the door swinging over the area where Clint’s dead body had lain over a month prior.
My gun remained aimed and ready to fire as the cold steel of my back-up pistol rested against my lower back. Although the house was in order, careful steps led me through my kitchen as I kept my ears peeled for lurkers.
When I stepped into my bedroom, my gaze landed on the area where my safe room was hidden. The thick boxed headboard of my bed kept the entrance of the space hidden. The room sat snug between the walk-in closet and bathroom. I was the only one who knew about the secret space since I’d reduced the size of my closet to build it.
Attached to the wall of the hidden room, I’d strategically constructed my headboard that contained a latch to release it from the wall. The half door hidden behind my headboard opened into the closet-size safe-room.
After reaching into the thick wooden front of the headboard, I unlatched it from the wall. Two forceful heaves sent the bed out of my way. I stooped before the half door and entered the combination that would spring the door open.
Within minutes, I’d entered the room, retrieved money, extra guns, ammunition, and re-concealed the location. I packed myself a bag, packed Megan’s backpack with the items of hers that I could find and headed out in case there was a lookout watching the house.
Megan and I needed to regroup so we could plan our next move. We needed to figure out who the hell was hunting us. Even if they weren’t initially hunting me, my actions in those woods had put my MC and me on their radar. However, when they’d attempted to take my life and Megan’s, they’d place themselves on my radar as well.
I walked away from the house that I’d lived in for three years not knowing when I’d return. The last few drops of dew glistened off leaves as the sun started to rise higher in the sky. The hike back to my truck went by in a blur.
My mind worked overtime, processing the group of mercenaries we’d encountered yesterday. I was hesitant to say the word mercenaries in front of Megan, not that she couldn’t handle it, but she’d been through enough. I didn’t want her to stress any more than she already had or worse, have her take off on me again.
Of all the things she should have been worried about, she was worried about me getting hurt. Me. When my own mother was alive, she didn’t care that much about me. Knowing that someone cared if I lived or died put a spark of color in my heart and brought a smile to my face.
Chapter Three
Aaron
I’d lived surrounded by danger for so long that my body sensed it. My internal sensor for picking up threats sent my eyes jetting around the area that led to our MC’s clubhouse. The dead, empty air swept into my rolled-down windows and filled the cab space of my truck. The air alone told a story I was not ready to hear yet.
The bullet holes in the wood siding of the clubhouse were visible through my dusty windshield as I drove closer. The busted front window and the front door hanging lopsided told me all I needed to know. I turned my truck into the woods to ensure it remained hidden. Once I found a good enough spot, I glanced over at Megan.
“Stay in the truck and put one of those guns in your hands.”
No questions, no back talk, only actions. This was one of the reasons why I loved Megan. She reached down next to her sexy-ass hip and made the Beretta appear. The familiar slide and clap of the weapon being charged made my mouth inch into a smile, despite what I might face inside our clubhouse.
My roving eyes scanned my surroundings once more as I exited my truck with my weapon aimed and ready to put a hole in someone. At 08:45 a.m., it was too early for anyone but my father to be at the clubhouse.
The front end of his truck peeked from the far side of the house when my gaze went in the direction of where I knew it would be parked. My father slept at the clubhouse more than he stayed in his house. I reckon he preferred the clubhouse more because it had been his and my mother’s home. He claimed they’d been happy there once. How anyone, even my father, could have been happy with my hateful mother was beyond me.
There were no visible dead bodies at my first glance of the area. There was no spilled blood. But, the broken glass on the ground indicated that my father had at least shot back at someone. Therefore, he was either dead, dying, or inside killing someone. Entertaining the idea of my father being dead sent rage blazing through my veins.
As much as my father got on my nerves, I loved the old crow. However, there was one thing I knew well about him. He was a fighter. He would go up against the devil if it came to it.
The faint scent of vehicle exhaust lingered in the air mixed with the unmistakable scent of freshly-fired guns. Whoever had been there, hadn’t been gone long and could double back. Several bullet casings dotted the ground, and the deep imprint left by tires scratching on
the lightly graveled parking area in front of the clubhouse was visible.
After glancing back to ensure no one was creeping up behind me, I eased the lopsided screen door open and used the toe of my boot to kick the wooden door further open. Shards of glass fell from the square panes that once framed the heavy door, alerting anyone inside to my entrance. Once the door was open, I swept my body around and let the barrel of my pistol lead the way.
“Dad!” I called out. “You alive?”
Out stumbled my father with a gun jammed down the front of his pants. He had another gun aimed, and it was leading him out of the double doors of the kitchen.
“Motherfucking bastards shot me in the shoulder. I called Karla to come and pluck this bullet out and sew me up.” I smiled at the lovely words my father acknowledged me with.
Karla was a nurse my father had dated off and on for years. Although she was married and about twenty years his junior, whenever my father called her to patch up an injured member of our MC, she came without question.
My father stepped into plain view. His faded black T-shirt was wet with blood as it clung to his shoulder and chest area. I should have been more worried, considering how bloody my father was, but he was a tough old bird that didn’t like to be coddled.
“Fucking mercenaries, like you said. I think they came here as a warning. If they’d wanted me dead, I probably would be. They were in a black SUV with tinted windows. When one stepped out of the vehicle, and I saw a gun in his hand with a silencer attached, I didn’t wait around to see what the fuck they wanted. I started shooting, and they sure as shit didn’t mind shooting back.”
The people we were dealing with weren’t bikers, and I was starting to seriously doubt they were an enemy of the MC. Megan may have been right that these assholes were after her.
“Who the fuck are these people, Aaron?” my father asked. He knew that I should’ve had an answer to that question by now. Just because I was willing to go to war over Megan didn’t mean my father was and it damn sure didn’t mean the rest of my MC would.
“I don’t know who the fuck they are,” I replied. “We deal in guns and drugs, so it could be a faction trying to take over our gun business.”
My father shook his head, his mind obviously running wild over who was targeting us. My flimsy excuse would work on the rest of the club, but my father knew better.
I didn’t like the quiet amusement in his eyes as he stared me down.
“I called your cousin, Ansel,” he revealed as a wicked smirk creased his face. His revelation left me speechless for a few moments.
“Why the fuck did you do that? Why the fuck didn’t you at least wait until I figured out who the hell these people are?” I rolled my eyes at my father before pinching the bridge of my nose. “Dad, you know as well as I do, Cousin Ansel’s ass is as crazy as fuck and he’s as out of control as these damn mercenaries. He likes to kill for the fun of it and he and his band of killers don’t give two fucks about who dies as long as somebody goes to hell.”
I attempted but failed to shake off thoughts of my crazy-ass cousin. Two years ago, I’d left the MC for two months to help our gun supplier with a little problem they had that could’ve demolished our gun deal entirely. While I was away, my father ran into a little trouble with a rival MC. Long story short, the MC was no longer heard from after my father called my cousin, Ansel, for his brand of help.
Ansel and his crew ate through a third of the motorcycle club and killed over twenty-five men in less than a week. The rest of the MC had scattered or had gone into hiding for all we knew. We’d never heard anything else from them after Ansel got a hold of them. The Feds and every agency in the country was still sniffing around for some of the bodies.
Cousin Ansel was who you called whenever you’d run out of options, not when you hadn’t even figured out the problem yet. I cupped my forehead and rubbed my tired eyes. “How long before he arrives?” I asked my father.
Ansel lived and worked illegally out of California. He was a member of our MC and often joined us whenever we gathered and went on group bike rides.
“He said he’d be here sometime tomorrow,” my father answered with that smirk still on his face.
I leveled him with a hard stare and prayed that his shot shoulder was hurting like hell. He threw up his palm on his good side in reaction to my angry glare.
“What did you expect me to do, Aaron? You called me last night telling me you and that black wife of yours had dropped seven bodies in the woods. Next thing I knew, the damn television was lit up with dead bodies and a blown-up car like a fucking war had taken place in those woods. Before day hardly breaks, motherfuckers are blowing holes in the clubhouse with silenced weapons.”
When my father put it that way, it did sound bad. I’d been too busy searching for and fucking Megan, my, black wife, as my father had so elegantly put it, to care about checking out the news.
My dad leaned in and lowered his voice like someone was listening to us. “Is she with you now?” The fact that my father was referring to Megan as my wife meant he’d managed to swallow his pride and accept that I was not going to get rid of her.
“Yeah. You got a problem with it?” I asked, daring him with my gaze to say something stupid.
He shook his long, crooked finger at me. “You know fucking well I got a problem with it, but we got bigger problems to worry about than you claiming a woman who’s forbidden to us.”
My dad’s loud laugher irked my fucking nerves as he shook his head. That damn smirk had returned to his smug face.
“You know how Ansel is. What do you think he’s going to do when he sees your new woman?”
The ache in my head grew sharper, and my left eye started to twitch. The idea of what Ansel might do once he found me with Megan sent my blood pressure shooting through the roof.
“Dad, stop flapping your damn gums and make yourself useful. Warn everybody about what’s going on so they can be ready if more shit goes down. To be on the safe side, send them to the safe houses. I’m going to do some sniffing around. If they found the clubhouse, someone who knows us was likely bought and has sold us out or was tortured and forced to talk. But that doesn’t matter. The motherfuckers came at us, so either—”
“They die or we die,” my father and I spoke the statement simultaneously. Whenever we went into survival mode, that specific statement was tossed around a lot. Crazy thing was, we meant it.
Chapter Four
Aaron
After questioning my informants spread around the area, I staked out known areas for trouble. The only useful information I found was that a new group had landed in town asking questions and sniffing around for someone. They wore the same tactical style clothing as the ones we’d left dead in the woods wore.
The group was lurking, but they weren’t giving up a lot of information. In Copper County, something as simple as what you wore or what you drove could give you away. Whispers were saying that there were two groups, one in town and a second leg lingering outside of town. What their mission was, no one seemed to know for sure. The information I truly wanted was where these people were staying.
Megan didn’t leave my side as I went around investigating and talking to every contact I had. We ended up staying at another motel after I’d agreed to meet the rest of my family at the safe house the next day.
***
I pulled up outside my MC’s safe house and parked. It was a place I’d purchased a few years ago for members who’d gotten themselves into trouble and needed to lay low or hide from criminal charges.
The house, like my house, wasn’t under my name and only our chairmen knew the location and had the right to give a member in trouble sanctuary at the house. For some members, this was going to be their first time seeing and knowing the location or even knowing that there was a safe house.
The house was a two-story, brick, four-bedroom home in an upper middle-class, quiet neighborhood. I’d added a six-foot privacy fence around the property�
��more for security than privacy.
My Aunt Mona lived in and took care of the house until we needed it. She claimed to be afraid of the lives we led, so when any of us came around, which wasn’t that often, she went back to her estranged husband until we left the house.
The house had a large basement that we used for our meetings from time to time. Any one of the club members could be down in the basement within the hour, planning and strategizing.
I placed my hand atop Megan’s to keep her inside the truck with me. I needed to have a serious talk with her. She glanced up at me as her small hand turned and cupped mine.
“No matter what, you don’t know who these people are. If this is a group truly after you and the MC finds out, some of them will not hesitate to turn you over to them as long as they can get something out of the deal.”
Her mouth worked up and down before she spat her words out. “I don’t want anyone getting hurt because of me. You should tell them that I might have brought this trouble to your doorstep.”
I pursed my lips and shook my head, turning it slowly. “No. I’m not a hundred percent certain that these guys are after you. Until I am, you say nothing.”
The space between us grew silent and tight. Ever since Megan had told me about her past of how she’d been brutally raped and forced to watch her foster father murder and rape young girls that he’d gotten her to lure to him, I couldn’t shake the story. After she’d uttered her foster father’s name, I couldn’t shake the idea that I knew that name.
“Carlos Dominquez. I hate to bring it up right now but, who the fuck was your foster father?”
Her throat bobbed before her neck sunk into her shoulders and her head dropped. “Have you ever heard of DG6?” she asked in a shaky voice.
This time, my mouth worked back and forth without words. The confirmation of who her foster father was slammed into my brain with the force of a bullet. This was the big secret she’d been keeping from me. This was the reason she used an alias. This was why she’d felt the need to protect me by leaving me. This was why she’d been running for years.