Unthinkable: The Blazers MC

by Paula Cox

  He made the last turn, trusting his reflexes and balance as he laid the bike out at a ridiculous angle to the ground, then burned into the straightaway at the end of the trail. He could hear Calhoun behind him, still angry, trying to goose a little more speed out of his bike as he downshifted, but it was too little, far too late. As Gunner rushed across the finish line drawn in the gravel at the end of the old quarry lot, he gave a little flourish, dragging the bike’s tail end through the crushed rocks, and making Calhoun swerve to keep from crashing.

  Calhoun was off his bike in half a heartbeat, the bike’s engine choking off as the sensors realized the rider had been ditched. Calhoun went for a gun, and everything went slow. Gunner could hear Horse shouting behind him, and knew that his friend was probably pulling his own gun already, prepared to intervene not just for his buddy but for his VP. It wouldn’t be necessary. His same reflexes doing the work for him, Gunner reached for the telescopic baton he wore strapped to his belt whenever he went out as part of the Satan’s Breed. He snapped it open even as he watched Calhoun’s approach. The pale man’s cheeks were bright red, whether from anger or exertion Gunner didn’t know. He stomped forward like some kind of Mafioso bad ass in a terrible movie, his gun all the way extended and held in a single hand. It was nothing to step just a little bit to the side, then bring the baton down hard, just above Calhoun’s wrist. Gunner didn’t hit hard enough to break the man’s arm, but he would have a multi-colored bruise there for days. The weapon dropped to the ground, and Gunner kicked it away, then gave Calhoun a sharp slap between the ribs with the baton. That was all it took; Calhoun dropped to the ground, coughing and gagging.

  “What the hell are you thinking?” Gunner growled. Out of his peripheral vision, he saw Horse pick up the fallen weapon and tuck it into his belt. Asshole was going to shoot his dick off one of these days, doing that. “If we were racing for territory, I could see you pulling a damn gun in my face, but wasn’t it you who called me out here for a little fun between friends?”

  Calhoun made a raspy sound, and then vomited a stream of bile into the gravel. Gunner made a face at the spatter on his boots and made a point of wiping it clean with the other man’s shirt. He wasn’t vomiting blood; that was good. Gunner hadn’t come out here to start a war, despite Calhoun firing off like a rocket. There was a chance the Vipers would overlook him wiping the ground with their sergeant-at-arms, but it was a chance, not a guarantee. There was a time when Gunner wouldn’t have cared about the difference. But that was in the past, and then some. Even with Samantha gone, he owed it to those he cared about to do the right thing. To protect the town and the territory. That was what the club was supposed to be for, despite the fools who thought otherwise—thought riding bikes and wearing leather was an excuse to run drugs and beat up women.

  Calhoun seemed to catch his breath, and he sat back on his heels. “Sorry,” he said, and he seemed to mean it. “Lost my cool there. And I swear, man, I didn’t know about the bike. About the brakes. I wouldn’t do that to you.”

  Gunner wasn’t sure he believed that even a little, but it was good that they were going to separate peacefully. The other Vipers who had come to watch the showdown were easing off as well, hands backing away from guns and resting more calmly over pockets again. Improvements. He reached down and helped Calhoun to stand up and dust himself off. Horse pulled a bottle of water from somewhere, and Gunner twisted the cap open and passed it over. Calhoun took a chug, rinsed his mouth, and spat again.

  “Billy,” Gunner said, his voice deliberately pitched low. “We’re not going to have a problem here, are we?”

  Billy Calhoun looked up at Gunner, but his eyes flicked away before they could really meet Gunner’s gaze. The kid didn’t really do eye contact, something Gunner respected. His old man had punished him for looking people in the eyes more than once. He was pretty sure that wasn’t why Calhoun tended not to meet anyone’s eyes, but it was still enough of a connection for some empathy.

  “No way,” he said. “I didn’t even want to do that. I’m sorry. It’s just that things are gonna be bad when we get back to the clubhouse, and I lost my patience.”

  Gunner’s belly twisted up just a little. The Vipers and the Breed had been coexisting just fine for years; the Vipers ran a whole lot of shit that the Breed didn’t touch, and as long as it didn’t happen in the Breed’s territory, they officially didn’t care. But the President of the Red Vipers had just changed, the old man retiring, and his jumped up asswipe of a kid taking over, and there had already been signs that things were going to get a lot messier before days were done. Privately, Horse and Gunner had already been making plans. What they’d do if war broke out. But Billy Calhoun was a good kid. He was a Viper because he’d lived on that side of the territory line, and he wasn’t involved in the dirty shit they did.

  He made his voice even quieter. “Billy, you have my number, right? You know I’ve always got a spot for you if you need one.”

  Billy nodded so hard it seemed like his head might snap off his neck. It was suddenly obvious that he was barely more than a scrawny overgrown kid. And when, exactly, had Gunner started to feel like twenty-seven was ancient, and everyone younger than him was an actual child?

  “I know, man, I know,” he said. “I gotta go, okay? I need to get out of here.”

  “Yeah,” Gunner said. “Take care.”

  Billy picked up the dirt bike he’d been riding, and one of the other Vipers picked up Gunner’s. The small pack of men cleared out of the gravel lot until it was just Horse and Gunner standing there, looking like two random dudes pissing in the wind.

  “What was all that shit?” Horse asked.

  Gunner shook his head. “Storm’s coming. Prophetic-type stuff,” he said. “Nothing we haven’t already been talking through.”

  Horse grunted. “Want to talk it over some more? Over a couple plates of chili fries and a couple beers?”

  Gunner laughed and soft-punched the other man in the bicep. Horse was more than ten years his senior, and he’d been the President of the Satan’s Breed motorcycle club for about fifteen years now. He was the one who’d cleaned the club up, and when he’d seen a young Gunner causing trouble at the unified high school, he’d given him a job working on bikes and sweeping floors. It had been hard work, but it had earned him enough money to get away from his drunk father and junkie mother, and that was all he’d wanted at the time. Then he’d met Samantha…

  The anniversary was hitting him harder than usual this year. He did his best to put it out of his mind.

  Horse looked at him like he knew exactly what Gunner was thinking about.

  “Come on, kid,” he said, and Gunner had to laugh; apparently, he’d picked up the word from somewhere. “Let’s go out and chase away some negative thoughts.”

  “Okay,” Gunner said. “But no chili fries for you. They make you fart like a damn dog, and it’s too cold to have the windows down in the Buick this time of year.” He started to walk towards the old car they’d driven to the gravel quarry, and then his phone started to ring. He glanced down, and his heart all but stopped when he saw Laurel’s number on the caller ID.

  “Just a minute,” he said, not really looking at Horse. “I have to take this.”

  His heart beat a little too fast every time Laurel called. It was a little silly; she was nearly always just confirming that he was going to stop by for a visit or letting him know about some new expense that had come up, but it never stopped him from worrying. Even though Grace was with Laurel so that he wouldn’t need to worry that he was putting the little girl in danger. He took several long steps away from Horse, more for his own mental privacy than anything else. He tapped to answer the call and put the phone to his ear, turning his body firmly away from his friend.

  “Hey, Laurel. Everything okay?”

  “You gotta go get her, Gunner.”

  Laurel’s voice was choked with tears and something more. His heart started to race. He’d been so careful for so man
y years, and he’d given up so much to protect the child, Sam’s child. His child. He lived in terror of someone figuring out the connection between him and Sam, and from there, it wouldn’t be much to notice that Sam’s sister had moved back to town with a baby right around the time that Sam had died. It wouldn’t take much for someone to realize that the child could be used to pull the strings of the most powerful group of quasi-outlaws in the city. He did everything he could to keep Grace safe, but a lot of that safety had to do with keeping his distance.

  “What happened, Laurel?” he asked again, letting his voice drop lower, and a little more intense.

  “What happened is that I was already running late to pick up Grace from aftercare, and then some shit for brains rear-ended me, and my car is completely totaled. I need you to pick her up.” Laurel sounded close to panic, but Gunner felt his heart slowing down.

  “Okay, no problem. Will they let me?”

  “Yeah, you’re on her emergency list, it won’t be an issue. Hold on a second,” she said, and then Gunner heard a muffled rustling like Laurel had turned the phone so that it was pressed up against her shirt. He heard her speaking, but couldn’t make out the words; he couldn’t tell who she was talking to. But then there was a short, sharp sound, and the rustling stopped at the same time that he heard Laurel start to scream. He heard himself yelling, but she didn’t respond, and then the call dropped, as quick as it had started.

  He turned blank, horrified eyes towards Horse. Horse was already ready to move.

  “I’ll find out what’s going on,” he said, clearly having overheard the entire conversation despite Gunner’s distance. “You go take care of the kid.”

  There was a weight to the statement that made Gunner more than a little nervous. Horse was the one person who held all the pieces and had probably put them together over the years. He was pretty sure that Horse would keep his teeth together, no matter what happened, but Gunner hadn’t spent the last seven years protecting a little girl to risk blowing everything up right now. He had to trust someone, and Horse was the only one who was here.

  He’d tried to get Horse to come to the gravel quarry with him in his rebuilt Buick Grand Sport, but Horse had rolled his eyes and insisted that Gunner drove like someone’s grandma. He’d taken his bike. Gunner was grateful for it now as he sprinted across the lot to his car, and Horse headed the other way, towards his chopper. He already had his phone out and was barking questions at someone, presumably at the clubhouse.

  Gunner put it out of his mind. He had one mission right now. He had to get to his daughter.

  Chapter Two

  Lola tried to glance at her watch without letting the child with her see what she was doing. Laurel Grisham was absolutely never late picking up her daughter, and Lola didn’t want to worry the pint-sized angel in front of her. Grace was sweet, kind, and well-behaved; staying late with her wasn’t much of a burden. But it was concerning all the same. Laurel hadn’t called or texted and was half an hour late. It wasn’t like her. The center theoretically closed at four-thirty, and it was pushing five o’clock now. Everyone else had left, with Lola agreeing to stay and wait. If Laurel weren’t here in the next few minutes, Lola would have to start calling emergency numbers to try and get someone here. For the child’s safety, if nothing else.

  Grace glanced up from the puzzle she was putting together, and the girl offered a small smile. “I know my mom is running late. You don’t have to pretend.”

  Lola forced herself to smile reassuringly. “I’m sure she’s just stuck in traffic, kiddo, nothing much to worry about.”

  “She’s not usually late. She’s very careful. She knows I worry a lot.” Grace spoke like she was repeating something she’d heard a bunch of times before, and Lola pushed herself to keep smiling, even as she worried whether she was starting to look unbalanced.

  “Are you hungry?” Lola asked, feeling a strong need to change the subject. “I have some crackers in my desk, and we can have a little extra snack if you want?”

  “No thanks,” Grace said.

  The child was almost too well-behaved in situations like this. Lola had been working at the center for the past two years as part of the after-school team while she worked on getting her Masters in Education. She wanted to work with young kids who had learning disabilities and autism, helping them to understand and work with their differences instead of trying to extinguish them. She’d wished before that she had the authority to ask Laurel to get Grace evaluated. A child should be nervous in this situation, maybe even acting out because of feeling a little bit panicked. Parents were supposed to be their constants, and things absolutely happened, but a kid taking parental mistakes and problems in stride all too often indicated that their home life was not as happy as it might have looked on the surface.

  Grace was an exceptionally pretty child; she had light brown skin with a reddish undertone, spattered dark freckles over her nose and cheeks, and deep brown hair that fell down to her shoulders in bouncy corkscrew curls. Her mother had much darker skin than her daughter, but the same freckles and curls. Lola was all too aware of the tendency of social and educational workers to stereotype African American families as less likely to be well supported and successful, but she also knew that getting a dark-skinned child, especially a dark-skinned girl, screened for any kind of developmental disability, would be difficult to impossible.

  Lola took a deep breath and forced herself to relax. One late pickup, even without a call, was not a reason to get worried. God knew there were other parents within the center who were much less considerate. Her priority right now was to make sure Grace was okay.

  She was about to suggest that they go outside to play for a little bit — the October weather in New England was crisp, but not cold, and it was still light out. There was something depressing about being in a school after everyone had started to go home, and creepy, but before she got the words out, she heard the sound of a car pulling up outside. A big engine, too, from the sound of it. She walked over and glanced out — Laurel drove a small hybrid, but this sounded much older and rumbled more. She glanced out and saw a car from her dreams. A 1968 Gran Sport 400 with a convertible top, painted in coal black. When she was a kid, her dad had been super into collecting muscle cars, and she’d sat on a stack of tires and watched him work on engines and transmissions. He’d never put his hands on a Gran Sport, though; he’d played mostly with old Chevys and Fords.

  There was a fantasy in the back of her mind about being eaten out in a Gran Sport, her feet up on the dashboard, which absolutely did not go with her teacher-uniform of leggings, mid length skirt, and boxy pullover sweater, but she was soaking wet just fantasizing about it.

  And then the driver side door opened, and her fantasy got even more explicit. A tall man got out of the car. His features were notably handsome, with black hair that was undercut on the bottom and shaggy long on top. He wore jeans that were caked with dust, and a black T-shirt with the logo of a local garage emblazoned on the chest. He moved with a loose-limbed grace that made her think of a dancer, and he looked like a walking bad-boy daydream. If he were walking into a bar, Lola would’ve thrown herself at him; though, she had to admit that him walking towards her school made her want to lock herself and Grace into the closet.

  But Grace was standing up on her chair, clear excitement on her face. “Uncle Gunn!” she shouted, waving frantically. The windows were open just a bit, and the man must have heard Grace’s call; his attention focused on their window, and his expression relaxed just a little bit. Lola felt the butterflies in her own stomach relax as well.

  “You know him?” she asked Grace, just for protocol’s sake. The girl nodded eagerly. Lola turned to meet him at the door.

  “Hi,” he said as soon as she appeared. He didn’t try to step forward or inside; she liked that he seemed to know what was up. “I’m here to pick up Grace. My sister-in-law said I was on the emergency list?”

  “Yes,” Lola replied. She’d checked the li
st twenty minutes earlier when she was still trying to decide what to do; there definitely was a Gunner Grisham listed. “I just have to ask for ID.” She tried not to stare at the way his T-shirt stretched across his clearly well-defined pecs. And biceps. And the impressive definition in his forearms. That would be rude. Of course, maybe it was rude not to look? When someone was this gorgeous, wasn’t it a crime to remain neutral? Down, girl.

  “Oh, absolutely,” he said, reaching around to his back pocket. She noticed that he wasn’t exactly being sparing with the up-and-down glances, either. Which was a shame, really. If he’d seen her at a club, she might have appeared interesting — worn out jeans or a leather mini, a metal T-shirt she’d inherited from her dad and cut down to fit her, winged eyeliner and lipstick to match. It would have been a lot more tempting. Right now, she probably looked as cute as his mother. His grandmother.

  “I’m really sorry Laurel was running late,” he said, pulling his wallet out of a back pocket and opening it to show her a driver’s license. She looked it over quickly, then passed it back.

  “Come on in,” she said, pulling the door wide. He gave her a wide smile, but there was something off about it. Something tense. Grace was still in the classroom, gathering her things, and Lola took a moment to step in just a little closer. He didn’t exactly flinch, but his entire body came into total awareness. That was interesting. It didn’t seem like a sexual reaction, but it wasn’t really guarded, either. She made herself focus. Not on the thin layer of hair she could see at the neck of his T-shirt, or the subtle interplay of muscles in his neck. Those were clubbing thoughts, not working thoughts.