by Amo Jones
He shared a grim look with his brother Bat that was easy enough to read.
“Cops let them get away,” I confirmed.
Zeus Garro’s mouth flattened. “Lookin’ that way. Look, this is our town, we don’t want women feelin’ unsafe ’ere and fuck, I got a daughter I wanna know is good to walk home from school alone, ya get me? So, any information you got, we want it.”
“She was with three other girls, not sure what happened to ’em, and those two fuckers tryn’ to sell ’em. The guy that attacked me? Don’t remember much, but the fact he was lean with blond hair like a kid not a man.”
“Hear anythin’?”
“Nah, only reason I even noticed the situation at all was the girl caught my eye,” I said with a shrug.
Shit went down in bars like that all the time and I was no white fuckin’ knight.
I was just a man without a mission, wind at his back and nothing but road in front’a him. There’d never been a good enough reason to get involved in shit before I’d seen those huge brown eyes in that heart shaped face.
His gaze fell to the sight of my fingers strokin’ through the girl’s hair and I froze the instant he brought my attention to it.
“Listen, these kinda people aren’t the type to leave loose ends, ya hear me? You need a safe place to crash while they catch this motherfucker, I gotta free room for you and your girl.”
I blinked at him. I felt those words warm in my gut like a heat lamp over my weak-ass, faltering heart, something good that would help it grow and thrive.
“What do you care?” I retorted, focusin’ on that instead’a the fact that this nameless girl was not mine.
At least, not yet.
The biker Prez stared at me for a long, hard minute with eyes the colour of a steel blade. They cut through my shields, reduced them to ribbons so he could see right through to the heart’a me.
“Recognize a lost man when I see ’im,” he said quietly. “Got a group’a men fallen through the cracks of their lives, lost and fuckin’ alone ’til they found a kinda home with the club. You wanna stick ’round, put in some time, don’t see how a man like you who’d step in front’a an innocent woman to protect ’er wouldn’t do well as one’a us.”
“An outlaw?” I asked harshly.
“A brother,” he replied instantly. “One with freedom, but also a home, a purpose, and fuckin’ family.”
My vision swam as the headache swelling behind my eyes crested into a tsunami and broke against my brain. Tears fell outta my right eye and when I ran my fingers under the gauze on my left, they came away with blood.
“Leave ya too it,” he told me as he stood, droppin’ a card to the plastic tray beside me. “Number’s there, you remember somethin’ or wanna call.”
I watched them move toward the door then waited when the man named Bat hesitated in the doorway and turned back to say, “Went through hell, man, two tours in Afghanistan. Thought I’d live alone with those demons for the rest of my fuckin’ life.”
“You sayin’ those demons are gone now you got a nice, little family at your back?” I offered drily.
“Fuck no,” he said in haunted voice, his eyes vacant as they stared into some dark past. “But it feels a fuckuva lot better now they got company.”
I wasn’t asleep when the bikers came.
Normally, I didn’t sleep all that well or all that much. Sleeping in the backrooms of bars and in shitty motels wasn’t exactly conducive to solid slumber.
I’d slept well curled up at the base of mystery man Matt Broderick’s hospital bed. It probably had something to do with the fact that for the first time, probably in my life, I felt safe. This strange man had taken a broken bottle to the face and lost an eye trying to protect me. I might not have known his name from his own lips or any details of his life or even personality beyond his awesome courage and unfailing bravery, but I knew what kind of heart he had because he’d put it literally at risk to save a stranger.
To save me.
I felt his hand in my hair grow heavy as he fell asleep almost immediately after the bikers left. Carefully, I unraveled from the bed and slipped out the door to find something to soothe my growling stomach. I stared into the vending machine at the far end of the hall, deciding on a Mr. Big candy bar for Matt because the name was entirely suitable, and a KitKat for me when the brisk clip of booted feet struck out against the linoleum down the hall perpendicular to mine.
I recognized the police officer from the bar fight, a distinguished older blond man who looked like an old-time Hollywood heartthrob. I’d gotten in the back of the ambulance with Matt before they’d been able to question me so I assumed he was there to get my statement.
I was about to round the corner and reveal myself when I caught sight of the blond man who’d tried to buy me. Behind him came a beautiful Mexican man, young and fit, but entirely terrifying and not just because his gun was visible under his coat. There was a blankness to his face that spoke of apathy and inherent cruelty.
Goosebumps broke out over my skin and I took an instinct step away, pressing my back to the vending machine with a Mr. Big candy bar clutched in my hand.
“This is not the auspicious beginning I was looking forward to, Jack,” the cop said, his voice as clipped as his stride across the floor toward me. “Both of you assured me that there would be no backlash on this community yet the ink on this deal is barely dry and I’ve got a maimed biker in a hospital and a local bar in disarray.”
“The kids went off book.” I shivered at the voice of my attacker. “They’re Ventura’s boys, not mine.”
“They are,” the last man said, his accent lyrically Spanish, his tone dead flat. “I will deal with them.”
“You talk to Irina and get this sorted,” Danner threatened.
“Fine. But first, let’s sort this mess, hmm? Where is the man and the girl?”
I stopped breathing.
“Why do you need to kill them?” the cop asked, only mildly exasperated. “They don’t know anything about what’s going on.”
“Ventura’s don’t like loose ends. They need to know that no one can identify our connection or link them to the trafficking, especially if they hope to move here one day and set up a permanent business.”
There was a long pause. I waited for the policeman’s sense of duty to kick in and his outrage to surface. How could any man in blue okay the murder of innocents?
“Last room at the end of the next hall,” he finally muttered wearily. “Wait until I’m gone to do it.”
“Five minutes,” the Mexican man countered. “And I do it alone.”
“What the fuck, man? You think I can’t handle it,” the man named Jack demanded.
“I don’t want messy, I just want dead.”
I turned, dropped the candy bar, and ran.
Panic turned my thoughts to static, but I flew to the nurse’s station on instinct and ripped the landline telephone from behind the counter into my hands.
“Hey!” an outraged nurse protested.
I ignored her and read the label on the phone “dial 9 then the room number for internal calls.”
Matt picked up on the second ring.
“Yeah?”
“Hey,” I said, watching with horrified eyes as the beautiful assassin rounded the corner by the vending machine and started toward me, toward the end of the hall where my beautiful, scarred hero lay vulnerable. “It’s me, Tayline.”
“Tayline,” he repeated, his voice like sandpaper smoothing out the syllables.
“Yeah, listen, the cop from the bar and the guy that attacked us? He’s here and they’re sending a man to kill you like right now. Can you get out of the room without help?”
I caught his eyes as he passed me, unwrapping my fallen Mr. Big candy bar before tearing a bite out of it. He breezed by as if he was going for a stroll, not stalking his prey to ultimately put a bullet in it.
“Fuck,” he said and then I heard the rustle of bedsheets as he got out of
bed.
“I don’t know if I should call the police,” I whispered quickly. “That guy was one of them.”
“No, don’t. Just, fuck, get out of here.”
“I’m not just going to leave you, asshole,” I told him. “You saved my fucking life!”
“Yeah, well let’s not make it worth shit, yeah? Get gone.”
Dial tone.
Fuck.
I stared at the annoyed nurse and the cursed, “Call the police, something is going down in room 303.”
“Hey!” she called after me as I ran down the hall.
The man was just disappearing into Matt’s room.
I pushed my muscles so hard they burned with lactic acid and then I pushed them harder so that my breath burst through my lips, fueled by the panic that I wouldn’t get there in time.
I didn’t know what I would do when I got there, I just knew I couldn’t let him die after all that.
There was a coarse shout and then a gun discharged as I slid to a stop in the doorway, almost slipping on the discarded Mr. Big candy wrapper. The would-be-murderer and Matt were grappling for control of the gun until Matt slammed a heavy elbow into his nose and the weapon went flying into the wall and then skidded to the floor between them and myself.
I blinked at it and then dove, the linoleum catching at my bare skin through my ripped jeans so that the flesh tore, but I didn’t care. I could hear the sick thud of fists hitting bone and I didn’t know how long Matt could last in a fight, down one eye and exhausted from the trauma.
The hot barrel of the gun scorched the tips of my fingers so I fumbled it as I tried to adjust my grip. It was heavier than I would’ve thought, but then again, I didn’t know anything about guns.
So, I just did what I’d seen people do in the movies, raising it with both hands, squinting slightly to try to aim at the man that was not Matt, and then I squeezed the trigger.
The recoil bruised my thumb and made me jerk backward, but I was too focused on the screaming villain to care.
I’d got him right in the ass.
Matt didn’t hesitate, he brought the groaning man down into his raised thigh and kneed him in the gonads then pushed him to the ground. He swiped his leather jacket from the chair beside the bed and ran toward me shouting, “Let’s get the fuck outta here.”
He tagged my hand as if he’d held it every day for years and then propelled me out of the room with him. I still clutched the warm gun in my hand, wishing I knew how to turn the safety on as I raced after Matt into the emergency exit and down the stairs.
He stumbled slightly as he turned the corners, his vision off, so I moved closer to guide him. We burst out of the door into the brilliant light of the midday sun and blinked the spots from our eyes.
Only they weren’t spots, but police lights flickering silently as cops pulled up and poured out of them.
“Fuck,” Matt cursed, then clutched my hand tighter and swerved around the building to the back-parking lot.
“Where the hell are you going?” I panted.
“Where the cops ain’t.”
“You’re in a hospital gown and your ass is showing,” I told him as if the sight of those two muscular orbs, pale against his tan and clenched tight as he ran wasn’t the loveliest sight I’d ever seen. “We need to get somewhere private.”
He stopped running abruptly, swaying slightly as he stopped, his one good eye blinking hard against the dizziness. “Fine, you lead.”
I grinned at him and darted to one of the older model cars in the first row of the parking lot. All I had left of my meager possessions were the clothes on my back and my wallet, which thankfully, held my breaking and entering kit.
I dug out the picks and went to work on the lock of the Prius.
“You can hotwire a car,” he said from behind me, wry amusement and something kind of like pride in his voice.
“I can hotwire a car,” I agreed, finishing the job with a satisfying click as I pulled the driver’s side door open. “Teenage runaway.” I told him in explanation.
“Sure,” he muttered as he rounded the car and got in the passenger side when I opened it for him.
I could feel his eyes on me as I broke open the steering column and rewired the old system so the car started with a rumble and a purr.
“You take all your dates on rides like this?” he asked, mildly curious even though when I glanced over, his dark brown eye danced with humour.
“Last I checked this wasn’t a date,” I told him even though the thought thrilled me.
“I met you at any other bar on any other night, pixie, this would be our first date.”
“Well then, I can’t say I’ve hotwired a car, shot anyone, or gotten my man maimed on a date before.”
“So, I’m memorable already,” he noted proudly.
And somehow, after living through the absolute horror of the last twenty-four hours, I burst out laughing.
I signed us in to the cheap motel called Purgatory on the outskirts of Entrance, B.C. as Mr. Big and Miss Little. It made Matt laugh even though he was fading fast. I loved the sound of his laugh, rough and wild like sound of stampeding mustangs. He was quiet though on the way to the pink painted, chipped door of our room on the second floor of the two-level structure and he barely smiled at me when I snorted at the color of the door or the pink décor inside. I wanted to help him to the far bed, especially when he accidently bumped into the dresser on his way there, but he didn’t seem like the kind of guy to accept help easily so I left it.
He flopped to the hard mattress with a loud groan and remained quiet as I locked the door after us and tightly closed the cheap pink curtains. I’d looked it up on my phone and there were three motels around the town so if someone thought to look for us at one, there was a one in three chance we’d be found.
Then, not knowing what else to do, I sat down and stared at the man who’d lost an eye for me. I felt his sacrifice in my chest like a hand clenched too tightly around my heart. It was the pressure of responsibility, the suffocation of guilt.
“You shouldn’t have stepped in like that,” I told him quietly, wanting to apologize, but I was out of practice at it.
“Don’t make it out all hero-like,” he muttered, each word heavy with exhaustion. “Did it ’cause I liked the look’a ya in a way I couldn’t ignore.”
“So, what’re you’re saying is, you’re not a good guy and I’m pretty enough to warrant losing an eye over?” I asked bemusedly, drawing my booted feet onto the mattress so I could hug my knees.
There was such a long pause, I figured it had fallen asleep and then, “Yeah, sounds ’bout right.”
I giggled, the sound tapering off as he finally moved, tipping his head to the side so he could see me out of his good right eye. There was tenderness in his craggy features that seemed at odds there even as I thought it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
“She giggles,” he muttered. “Girl curls up like a kitten at the feet of a stranger, shoots guns and hotwires car, and she giggles.”
I shrugged, not sure what that meant.
He closed his eye as his lips twitched into a faint smile. “Hard shell, soft and sweet candy center.”
I smiled into my knees and watched quietly as he fell asleep.
He was hard and heathen even at rest, his features still suspended in a glare of intimidation as if he could scare aware bad dreams. His big body eclipsed the narrow bed completely, his overlong dark hair falling like an ink stain against the pale pink pillow. I wasn’t sure how long I sat there staring at the sleeping giant who’d saved me, but it was long enough for something to work itself free of its restraints tucked deep in Tartarus-like pit of my chest and crawl into my throat.
I didn’t know it until the possibility faced me bright and obvious as a flashing neon sign, but I realized what I wanted and maybe even, what I’d been unconsciously searching for across two continents over the last six years. And it was simple, so simple it made me feel simple. Dumb
and oblivious without the bliss to go along with it.
I wanted something to call my own.
More, I wanted someone to call me their own.
I was a teenage runaway, there wasn’t anyone as apathetic of possessions as me.
Yet… sitting there looking at the massive man sprawled across the tiny motel bed, I wasn’t sure the idea of being his sounded so bad.
I returned to the room laden with plastic shopping bags to find Matt sweating, grunting and thrashing restlessly on the bed. Immediately, I dropped the goods and raced to his side, pressing my hand to his hot forehead, checking the damp gauze over his eye, slightly pink with blood.
“Matt, wake up,” I shouted, jerking him by the broad shoulder. “You’re having a nightmare.”
He woke up with a snap, lurching to a seated position, his arms moving quickly to pin me against his chest as he rolled to the side, away from the door. At first, I thought he was attacking me and my heart tripped with fear. Then, when one hand cradled the back of my head and he covered me with his big body, I realized that he was instinctually protecting me from some imagined threat.
My heart restarted with a thudding bang like some ancient furnaces coming back to life.
“Shh, it’s okay, Mr. Big,” I murmured, stroking his damp hair back from his forehead gently. “It’s just me. You were having a nightmare.”
He peeled off me slightly, his good eyes dazed with sleep and remembered dreams as he raked it down my body, checking me out for injuries. When he found me whole, he sighed gustily and dropped his head into my shoulder, careful not to hurt his eye.
“Dreamt I was too late,” he growled into my hair. “Didn’t lose an eye, but you lost your face.”
“Yikes,” I said and he let out an amused exhalation that was something like a laugh. “Well, I’m fine and we need to get you sorted, so why don’t you get undressed while I start you a bath?”
He frowned at me, but let me squeeze out from under him and go to the pink tiled bathroom to start the water running in the tub. God, this place was straight out of some Barbie themed horror film.