BRUF

by Jessie Cooke

  Sabrina shook her head at that as she read down further. The part that said “Family” listed a Clara Cantrell as his mother and it looked like she passed away at the age of 46. The father was Lee Cantrell and he died...the same day as Ediger’s mother, at the age of 47. She clicked on that link and read through the page, describing how the two were killed in a shootout with suspected gang members in a “dispute” over drugs being illegally grown by the Cantrells. The article said that the couple had two children, a twenty-year-old who wasn’t at home at the time, and a ten-year-old...who was. Sabrina felt an ache deep in her chest as she realized who that ten-year-old must have been. Suddenly, so many things made sense.

  18

  “Aw, damn it, Gracie, I’m not in the mood. Go home.”

  “Come on, Bruf, you never come see me anymore. I miss you. Don’t you miss me?”

  Bruf had left the gym, fuming. The sad part was, he didn’t blame Wolf at all. If he had been in on a vote for a guy that wanted what he did, it would have been a definite no fucking way. You didn’t fraternize with other clubs, friendly or not. Bruf knew that. He’d been delusional to think that Wolf would make an exception for him. It had just been the only way he could think of to do what Maggie was basically blackmailing him into doing, and keep his place with the Skulls. He’d ridden around for a while, trying to clear his head. Sabrina was there, as usual, on top of everything else. It didn’t matter how annoyed he was with her, one look at her made his dick stand at attention. He wanted her...bad. And now as he finally drove up in front of his trailer out the back of the clubhouse, he found Gracie waiting for him. Gracie, a club girl, had it bad for Bruf. He’d been with her a few times, but since he wasn’t attracted to her at all, it hadn’t been much better than jacking off. Sometimes she crossed that murky line they drew between the brothers and the girls, and she almost obtained stalker status. Apparently, that was where she was at today.

  “Not in the mood, I said. Go home.”

  “Nobody’s there. They’re all at the gym and you know by the time they get back they’ll all be drunk or paired off and ready to fuck. Come on, baby...it’s just you and me...we can fuck right here on the porch.”

  “Why aren’t you at the gym?”

  She looked down and then back up at him from underneath her dark lashes, like she was trying to look seductive. “I was...but I saw you leave after having words with Wolf...”

  “You were fucking eavesdropping?” Shit. What the hell is wrong with these women who can’t mind their own damned business?

  “No. I didn’t hear what you were saying. I saw you from the window in the back. I saw Wolf’s sister too...she was eavesdropping.” She rolled her eyes and said, “She wants to fuck you, Bruf, but we all know you wouldn’t ever go there with Wolf’s sister. The little whore...”

  “Get the fuck out of here!”

  “Bruf...”

  “I mean it! Get the fuck out and don’t you ever let me hear you talking about Sabrina like that again. You won’t be around here long enough to suck another dick if I do. Now go!” He stormed past her, pushing her slightly to move her out of the way of his front door. By the time he had his key in the lock, he heard her sobbing her way back toward the club. Let her cry, he didn’t care. Who did she think she was talking about Sabrina like that? Gracie had been hanging around the club from almost he day she was legal, and she’d fucked her way through every one of the guys. She’d had two abortions – that he’d heard about. He’d never for the life of him figure out why some guys were stupid enough to not use a condom.

  He let the screen door slam behind him and went straight to the refrigerator for a beer. He twisted off the cap and leaned into the little kitchen counter and wondered what the fuck he was going to do.

  After Maggie showed him the photos, he’d been speechless. She took advantage of that and started talking, telling him exactly what it was that his brother had “allegedly” done. The local police departments had tried on more than one occasion to take Ediger and his crew down, but Ediger somehow always turned it around and found a loophole to get out of whatever they wanted to charge him with...one time even bringing a lawsuit against them that he won. The city was ordered to pay the White Owls over two million dollars in damages. Frustrated, the chief of police had reached out to the FBI. That was two years ago.

  Six months into their surveillance, they were able to get an in for one of their youngest agents, a kid fresh out of the academy. He’d met the Owls a few times at a bar they frequented in the mountains and made friends with a few of them, making sure they believed him to be as racist and anti-government as they were. By the end of that first year, he was living on the compound, working on the marijuana farm and feeding information to Maggie and the other agents on the case. They were able to make a few arrests thanks to his information, but not on the scale they’d been hoping for...but then out of the blue an opportunity arose that no one could say no to. The young agent found out that they were expecting a shipment of an arsenal of stolen weapons from a club in Oregon. It would be a federal offense, transporting weapons across state lines. Plus, they could get them for a shitload of other things at the same time, and blessedly...obtain a search warrant for Ediger’s precious compound. That was something no one had managed to do until then.

  So, the plans were made. The search warrants were signed, and the agents and local police force were ready. They’d even gotten ATF involved...it was the day before it was going to go down, and all they had to do was wait. The young agent had gotten called in to see Ediger that day. Bruf could only imagine how nervous the kid must have been, wondering if they’d made him as an agent. According to Maggie, Ediger invited him to go along on the ride. That was going to change up law enforcement’s plans a bit...but there was no way he could say no without making Ediger suspicious. So the kid said yes...the day of the transaction came...and went. There was no movement on or off the compound and the wire the kid had been wearing...in a place where they’d been sure the Owls would never find it...was silent. Maggie was scrambling to get a judge to sign a warrant so that they could go in after him. The judges, gun-shy from the city’s recent two-million-dollar payout, insisted she had to wait forty-eight hours, like a regular missing persons investigation.

  Shortly before 6 a.m. the next morning, two joggers found him. He was lying dead in a ditch along a busy jogging and biking path. Whoever put him there knew he’d be found quickly. He had been beaten to death, his body was battered beyond recognition, and a dead rat had been shoved in his mouth. They knew it was him, but Maggie said that waiting for the positive ID by the ME’s office had been hell. She’d kept hoping it wasn’t him...but of course, it was. Maggie looked like she was fighting tears as she described it to Bruf. He could tell she felt guilty for the kid’s death and his heart went out to both her and the dead agent...but if not for her veiled threats about using him and his ties to Ediger to ruin Sabrina’s life...he would still have told her no. What she wanted him to do could cause him to end up in the same place that young FBI agent had...dead, at the hands of his own brother.

  Bruf wasn’t scared of anything in the world...except Ediger, and what he knew his brother was capable of even before Maggie told him her story. The beating he had received the first time he left was indicative of the fact that having Ediger’s blood in his veins gave him no advantage. They’d left him for dead that night and Ediger hadn’t cared. If not for Coyote and two of his enforcers finding him, Bruf wouldn’t be here today for Maggie to use. His brother acted like none of that had ever happened...but there was no way Bruf could forget it.

  He finished his beer, no closer to a solution than he’d been a half an hour before. He tossed the bottle in the trash and took a frozen pizza out of the freezer. He was about to stick it in the microwave when there was a knock on his door. Cursing and deciding if it was Gracie he might just break his never-hit-a-woman pact with himself, he walked toward the screen door and stopped in his tracks when he saw who it was.
>
  “What the fuck are you doing here?” Maggie stood looking in at him, not in her black suit any longer, but dressed now in a pair of jeans and t-shirt with her red hair pulled to the side in a braid. Bruf opened the screen door, but blocked her entry into his trailer.

  “I need an answer, Bruf.”

  “You have no business on Skulls property. If anyone catches you here...”

  “You’ll just tell them I’m an old friend. I need an answer...but, if you need more encouragement than what I’ve already given you, come with me. I’ll show you something.”

  Bruf was about to tell her to go to hell...but he realized that Gracie was right, everyone was at the gym and would probably be there well into the night. They were having a party, something the Skulls and their new friends, the MMA fighters from Vegas, loved. But Bruf wasn’t in the mood for a party, and he was afraid if he spent too much time alone he’d do what he really wanted to do, and call Sabrina. He kept telling himself that he only had to resist for six short days now...but those days looked like years when he thought about how badly he wanted her.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Trust me,” she said.

  Bruf laughed, but he grabbed his vest and keys anyway, and he followed her out the door.

  “You didn’t tell me we were hiking.”

  Maggie shrugged. “Figured you wouldn’t come if I did. It’s only about six more miles.”

  Bruf stopped. “Six miles? What the fuck is this, some kind of new torture like waterboarding or some shit?” Maggie looked sad and said:

  “This is where they killed him.”

  “The FBI agent?”

  She nodded. “I don’t know if your need to protect that girl, or your club, is strong enough to help us...so I’m going to try and get you to reach deeper.” She started walking up the hill again. It was steep and Bruf’s boots weren’t really made for hiking. He wanted to tell her to go fuck herself, but something drove him forward and he followed her. As she walked, she talked, “His name was Josh Billings. He was twenty-three years old. He had a girlfriend...who was pregnant.” She stopped again and took out her phone. Pulling up a photo, she showed it to Bruf. It was a little boy, maybe two years old. He had blond hair and brown eyes and a huge cherubic smile. “This is his son. He’ll never get to know his father.” She tucked the phone away and started walking again.

  Bruf started to tell her that the guilt trip wasn’t working on him...he didn’t know these people. But he was afraid she’d see in his eyes or on his face that it was a lie. He hated that his brother was responsible for taking that young man out and leaving that baby without a father. He hated it even more when Maggie said, “They planned on getting married in the spring that year, but because they weren’t married yet when he died, she didn’t even get his benefits. He was so young that there was no Social Security for the baby. His girlfriend works two jobs now, and her parents have to help her raise that baby. She’s a sweet girl and Josh was a good kid...and he was killed horribly, and viciously, because he was doing his job.”

  She stopped walking again and Bruf said, “Maggie, this is all sad and touching. I’m not heartless, okay? I get that my brother is a monster. I’m not denying that...”

  “He was dragged up here behind one of their four-wheel-drives.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “A couple of hikers found the murder weapons at the top. They called the police and once the DNA was run on the blood we knew this was where Josh was killed before they dumped his body in that canal. It was the rainy season and the four-wheel-drive left deep tracks in the mud...and Josh’s footprints and the prints his body left when he couldn’t walk any longer and they dragged him. I have nightmares about what kind of condition his body must have been in before they even reached the top.” She took off walking again.

  Again, Bruf started to say fuck it and go home, but then Maggie started talking again. “I lie in bed sometimes and wonder how scared he must have been. I try to imagine what he must have been thinking. He had to worry about his family, his girl, and the baby...he had to know that these were his last minutes on earth. The first time I came up here, I was haunted by those thoughts...what that must have felt like for him.” She stopped talking then as the grade became steeper and they needed all their air to breathe as they climbed. It took them almost an hour to reach the top, and Bruf was where Maggie had gone, wondering if the kid had even survived that trek. But when they reached the top, Maggie had proof that he had. There was a large, flat rock about four feet in diameter and the top of it was stained black.

  “His blood,” she said. “They used two-by-fours with nails hammered into them. They beat him until he was unrecognizable. They beat him until he bled out. That’s how he finally died...he bled to death. Do you know how much pain he felt before that happened, Bruf? Do you know how long he must have pleaded with them for his life?”

  “Like I said, Maggie...it’s horrible. But you’re asking me to give up my life as I know it for someone I didn’t even know.”

  “No. I’m asking you to do it for the next person that wrongs your brother, or the next one. Or the one that happened about six months before Josh. Another body was found in an orchard...a nineteen-year-old African-American kid. You want to know what his crime was?” Bruf didn’t say anything and Maggie said, “The clerk at the Chevron on Blackstone and Shields was the last person known to see him alive. He said the boy was paying for his gas just as this white chick walked in. The boy smiled at her and said, ‘Wow, you look like Angelina Jolie.’ The woman smiled and giggled and thanked him...he asked her name and she was giving it to him when her boyfriend walked in. The guy was tattooed from the neck down, the clerk said, and wearing White Owl colors. He asked her what was going on and suddenly she says the kid was bothering her...coming on to her. The kid left, and the boyfriend let him.

  “But the next day, he was found dead. There were no witnesses other than what happened in the gas station...and the clerk couldn’t say the White Owl was even agitated or mad, so there was nothing to arrest him for even if they identified him. But he was killed with a two-by-four...with nails in it. There have been more too, Bruf, going all the way back to when you still lived on the compound...”

  “I get your point, Maggie. My brother is fucking Satan...but I don’t understand how you think I’m going to get him to confess or admit to anything. We’re not that close; he’d kill me as easily as he would anyone else for going against him. Besides, Ediger doesn’t feel the need to brag about his exploits anyway.” Ediger was a classic narcissist. He validated himself constantly. He didn’t need validation from others.

  “Maybe you can’t, Bruf...but you’re our best bet, you have to at least admit that. Ediger started this whole organization out of his anger and disgust at the people who killed your parents, right?” Bruf shrugged. Their parents hadn’t been white supremacists, but they had been fearful of anyone that was different from them, so that had shaped his and Ediger’s ideas about the world some...but for the most part, Ediger’s irrational hate of everyone different had probably come from that one, horrible night. “Maybe that’s the bond you can use, to break through to him.”

  “Maybe,” he said, suddenly realizing that Maggie was right, Ediger would never stop until someone stopped him. Bruf used to dream of killing him...but maybe it was watching his parents’ murder, or maybe he was just a pussy; whatever it was, he knew he wouldn’t be able to do it. To take his own brother’s life was more than he was capable of...but maybe taking him off the streets would be almost as good. He wasn’t risking his real family for Maggie or Ediger, though. He wasn’t losing his place in the club and the respect that he’d worked so hard to earn there. “Maybe I’ll do this, Maggie...but we’re not doing it on your terms, we’re doing it on mine.”

  She raised an eyebrow and said, “And what are your terms?”

  He was making them up as he went along. He knew what was important to him, and he knew Maggie needed him. “Y
ou leave Sabrina out of it, completely. Don’t threaten her again because that just pisses me off.”

  She smiled, slightly, and said, “Okay...what else?”

  “I’m not leaving my club. I’ll work something out with Wolf where I can meet Ediger off the compound; you’ll just have to give me a little time to figure that all out. I want to help you, not because you threatened me, but because you’re right...Ediger needs to be stopped. But, I’m selfish enough that I’m not willing to trade my entire life for this. You agree to my terms and we have a deal. You don’t, you’re on your own, because the more I think about you setting Sabrina up with the Owls, I just don’t believe you would do that; and telling her family in Florida your theories about what happened to those rapists might make them walk away from the baby deal, but so what? If they walk away, she has choices, she has family...and she has me.” Bruf couldn’t really believe that he’d just made up his mind to become an FBI informant, especially against his crazy brother. Ediger was crazy, but he was crazy like a fox. Bruf wasn’t even sure he could outsmart him...but maybe it was time he grew a pair and found out.

  19

  Despite Sabrina’s aching heart, she’d stayed at the gym party for a while after Bruf left. She found that watching the fights and seeing the fighters shake hands and smile afterwards, and listening to the constant banter of the MC brothers back and forth, was actually therapeutic. It was good to see people doing what they loved and just having fun. She hadn’t realized how long it had been since she’d just had fun. The things she did in Florida were all about being the surgeon’s fiancée...the pretty little wife-to-be. The closest she came to real fun was the time she spent with her mother just hanging out at the beach, or shopping. It was good to relax, if only for a little while.