Preacher

by Zahra Girard

  The car heads off down the driveway and I settle into stride beside Bear. “You think the club will be ready for what we need to do?”

  He pats his assault rifle and grins. “Brother, we’re locked and loaded.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Jessica

  I drive the car around back, and Preacher and Bear both follow on foot. Bear really does live up to his name. He’s a monstrously-sized man, thick, muscled, and tall. Preacher’s big, but Bear looks like he’s constructed out of brick instead of flesh and bone.

  I take a look back at the cabin, shielding my eyes from the bright sun. It’s a small building, worn and faded from years of the desert sun and the winds whipping down from the mountains. The windows are covered with cobwebs, the roof has a noticeable sag in it, and, if it weren’t for the handful of motorcycles and a truck parked behind it, it’d be hard to tell that anyone’s living in it, much less a heavily-armed biker gang.

  I park and get out and move around to the other side of the car to help Bryce get Detective Erickson out of his seat. Preacher lets out a shout, drawing my attention.

  “It’s here,” he exclaims, making a bee-line for one of the bikes. He sits down on a classic-looking Harley, it’s painted black, with a few deep red accents. The gas tank is red, with a skull wearing a crown painted on it in black. He looks so natural sitting on it, it has to be his. Preacher looks over at Bear. “We went by the storage unit earlier and saw it was empty. I thought I’d lost her.”

  Bear shakes his head. “You think we’d let anyone get your bike? The storage unit was one of the first places we hit when we high-tailed it out of there. Cleared it out. We’ve got your cut inside, too. Let’s get everyone inside and out of view.”

  All of us follow Bear inside. The cabin looks just as worn on the inside as it does on the outside, everything is broken, worn, and falling apart. But it does look like the guys have made some effort at cleaning things up, the furniture looks freshly-dusted and the floor looks like it’s been sweeped.

  There’s four other men in the cabin, all wearing their MC cuts and carrying some serious guns, automatic rifles in their hands and pistols in holsters around their waist or strapped to their shoulders. It’s like a guerrilla army.

  “Look who finally got around to joining us,” says an older man wearing a patch that says ‘President’ and sporting a buzz-cut and a few days growth of beard. He shakes Preacher’s hand and then pulls him in for a hug. “It’s good to see you.”

  “Glad you’re not dead, mate,” says another with a funny accent and a patch on his chest that says ‘Enforcer’.

  “Me too, Ozzy,” Preacher says. Then he turns to me. “I suppose I should do introductions.”

  “Yeah, tell us about your better half,” says another man. He’s heavier-set and resting on the cot.

  Preacher smiles for a second and shoots me a look I can’t quite read, though it makes me feel warm inside. “Alright, everyone, this is Jessica. She saved my life after that whole thing at Joker’s Wild, and she’s been taking care of me since. Jessica, the lazy-ass on the bed over there is Rog, this drill sergeant-looking man is Gunney — and he actually was a drill sergeant — and the man who talks like he was dropped on his head as a child is Ozzy — he’s from New Zealand — and the pretty one over there is Hazard. And you’ve already met Bear.”

  Each of the men comes over and gives me a hug as Preacher rattles through the introductions. I don’t feel any tension or suspicion from any of them — which is strange, considering they’re all armed to the teeth — I just feel accepted, like Preacher’s word was on it’s own enough to make every single one of these men view me as family.

  “It’s nice to meet you guys,” I say. Every one of them is looking from me, to Preacher, and back again, with knowing looks on their face. It’s like meeting a boyfriends family. If his family were made entirely of heavily-armed older brothers.

  In other words, awkward as heck.

  “These other two men with us are Bryce — he’s a reporter — and that sack of shit with the busted face is Detective Erickson, Reno PD, and bitch to the Bloody Jackals,” Preacher says.

  Gunney nods, clears his throat, and spits at the feet of Detective Erickson. “Now that we’ve got everyone properly acquainted, you all look like you have something important to say. So, enough fucking around: out with it.”

  Preacher looks over at me, and I can tell he’s giving me the lead in breaking the news to his club. The whole ride here, I was thinking of where I could take these guys to hide out. I need someone I can trust, and someone that wouldn’t throw a fit at having a gang of bikers show up at their place unannounced.

  Fortunately, I think I have an answer. Maybe.

  “The Jackals know you’re here,” I start. I pause after I say that, half expecting some of them to burst out with shocked exclamations or shouting or something. All I get is a few head nods. They’re way too calm about this, it’s unsettling. I clear my throat and go on. “They’re planning on coming tonight to finish you all off. We need to find some other place for you guys to hide out.”

  “You have somewhere in mind?” the one in charge, Gunney, says.

  “I do.”

  They’re just not going to like it.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Jessica

  “Come on in, boys,” Cassie says, holding the door wide open and grinning like a wolf left alone with a herd of sheep. I’m starting to get why she agreed to my request so quickly when I called her.

  I follow the Kings MC inside, fixing my hair for the fifth or sixth time in the last five minutes. I rode the whole way here on Preacher’s bike. It was an exhilarating experience, we flew down the road, whipped around corners, and I spent the whole time clinging to Preacher for dear life and deafening him with my screams. The wind and the helmet did a number on my hair. I look like I’ve been electrocuted.

  “Thanks, Cassie,” I say.

  “No problem. Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had a few houseguests. By the way, Jessica, how many of them are single? What about the big one over there?” She says, looking back at the group of them as they cluster in her living room.

  “Which one? The one with the big beard?”

  She shakes her head. “No, the older guy, with the limp. Is he available?”

  “Rog? Honestly, I don’t know. But I didn’t see a ring on Rog’s finger. So… maybe?”

  “Maybe’s good,” Cassie nods. “I can work with that.”

  I step inside and shut the door behind me. I put both my hands on Cassie’s shoulders and pull her attention towards me. “Look, these guys are in some serious trouble. You can’t tell anyone that they’re staying here.”

  “Jessica, I’m not blind. If you show up at my place with a bunch of bikers, Bryce, and some guy who’s had the shit kicked out of him, I figure you’re involved in something serious. I’ll keep my mouth shut. But, just for my reference, who is the guy that was on the wrong side of the ass kicking?”

  “Well-,” I say, then pause. “He’s a cop.”

  “Shit.”

  “A dirty cop, though. As if that makes it any better. He works for the Bloody Jackals MC. He also murdered my dad.”

  “Shit. Again.”

  “Yeah. That’s why I’ve been a bit out of it at work.”

  “So what the hell happens next? I’m happy to have these guys crash here for a bit, but I can’t really take them in permanently. I only have one bathroom.”

  Preacher comes over and slips his arm around me. “Jessica, I need to talk to you about that.”

  There’s something in his voice that gives me pause. I look up at him from the corner of my eye. He’s got a serious expression on his face. “What is it?”

  “We need to question Erickson.”

  “By question, you mean-?”

  Preacher grunts. “I mean, let Bear and Hazard have a go at him. We can’t spend forever hiding out here, and we can’t wait around for an opening to take out Ma
son, or anyone else in the Jackals leadership. We’ve got to make our own opening.”

  I bite my lip. What he’s saying makes sense, but even hearing what they’re planning fills me with conflict. I can’t condone them doing what they plan to do.

  Preacher senses how I’m feeling and hugs me.

  “I know you don’t want to think about it, but, this is really the only way. We need to strike at Mason — he’s the one in charge — and the sooner we can do that, the safer everyone will be. This isn’t easy, but this is how we avoid other people getting needlessly hurt.”

  “But why are you asking me? Why is this my say?” I answer.

  I resent him for putting me in the position where I have to give the ‘ok’ for them to basically torture Detective Erickson.

  “Because I’ve told Gunney and the rest of the club that Erickson is yours. He’s the one who hurt you the most, so nothing happens to him without your say.”

  I have a man’s life in my hands, in the worst way possible. Preacher makes a solid point that we need to find some way to get to Mason, but their way doesn’t feel right. Why does it have to always come down to violence?

  I turn to Preacher and cross my arms over my chest.

  There’s got to be a better way.

  “Let me talk to him. Alone.”

  * * * * *

  They set him up in the bathroom and leave the two of us alone. The man I remember visiting my house when I was a kid, sharing an occasional beer after work with my dad, the guy who stood with his policeman’s hat over his heart at my father’s funeral while looking solemnly at the grave of the man he murdered, is dumped unceremoniously in my best friend’s bathtub. His face is a mess of bruises and blood. There’s a hematoma swelling over his right eye. I know he’s lost a few teeth from Preacher’s beating.

  He’ll never be the same again.

  He’s cuffed, his feet are hogtied, he’s helpless and powerless now.

  I put the lid of Cassie’s toilet down and sit down on it, looking at him. It hurts to see him this way; it hurts that it’s come to this. Seeing him makes me think of my father. I trusted him, my father trusted him, and all he cared to do was kill us and save himself. What a selfish jerk.

  “Why?” I say. My voice is raw with pain and heartache. It breaks and tears through just the single word.

  He looks at me, defiant, but he doesn’t say a word.

  I think that hurts most of all.

  “Why?” I say again. “Why?”

  Then I slap him. Tears wet my cheeks.

  I’ve waited my whole life for answers. And now I’m face to face with the man who could give them, and all I get is the most frustrating silence of all.

  “He trusted you. You were supposed to be his partner, you were supposed to protect each other. Why? Why did you do it?”

  I grab him by his bloodied collar.

  “When I thought about finding out more about who killed my dad, I always pictured it being some gangster that pulled the trigger. Someone it would be easy to hate. I hate that it’s you,” I say. He looks away from me and I grab him by the hair and turn his face towards me. “I hate you. I hate you. Why the fuck did you shoot my dad?”

  “I had my reasons, Jessica. Good reasons,” he says. His voice is weak, shaky, wheezy. One of the Kings must’ve damaged his trachea. He’ll need supplemental oxygen when this is all over, but the injury doesn’t sound serious enough to require intubation.

  I slap him hard across the jaw with enough force that I can feel his teeth grind across each other.

  “Fuck your reasons.”

  “Your dad wouldn’t back down. He believed in the system, even though we’d seen it fail over and over. For every person we helped, there’d be many more criminals that would get off for bullshit reasons and would go right back to offending,” Detective Erickson says, pausing to spit a half-congealed glob of blood onto the tile floor of Cassie’s bathroom. “When I told your dad about the talks I’d had with Mason and his MC, that they could chase the cartel out of town and make sure that all the doctored drugs with fentanyl and all that other psychotic shit stayed out of Reno, and all we had to do was turn a blind eye and make a cartel member or two ‘disappear’ during an arrest, he wouldn’t get on board.”

  “So you killed him?”

  “I went to him when he was staking out that warehouse to get him to leave, so the Jackals could move in. I wanted him to get on the right team. But he wouldn’t. And if I didn’t get him out of the way, the Jackals would’ve, and they’d probably kill you and your mother as well. So I did what I had to do.”

  “I suppose I should feel thankful that you saved me by just murdering my dad.”

  “I don’t expect you to forgive me. Or even understand. But I can live with that.”

  I stand up and look down at him. He looks so pitiful. even though he’s trying to seem defiant, I can see right through it. For as strong as unrepentant as he seems, in the end he’s a beaten man in a bathtub surrounded by his enemies. The only principles he has are selfish and self-serving ones.

  “Do you know why I came in here?” I say.

  He gives an approximation of a shrug. “You wanted answers.”

  I shake my head.

  “I came in here looking for a reason. A reason not to let those men out there beat and torture and do things to you that, for the rest of your life, every time you look in the mirror, you will feel shame and fear. Those men out there should frighten you to your core. And the only thing standing between you and them, is me. I’m inclined to give you to them.”

  He suddenly looks a lot less defiant, self-serving asshole that he is. “What do you want?”

  “A way to get to Mason without having to shoot up half the city. The Kings want him, since he gave the order to kill their VP.”

  Detective Erickson thinks for only a second before he answers. “You don’t know what you’re asking. Mason usually never goes out without a Jackal escort around him. The man’s cautious, as he has to be since he chooses to fuck with the cartels on a regular basis. But there is one time, around one person, where he keeps his escort at a distance.”

  “When?”

  “When he goes to visit his sister.”

  “He has a sister?”

  Detective Erickson nods.

  “He does. And you’ve already met her.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Jessica

  “Mason Shaw’s got a sister?”

  Preacher stares at me, incredulous.

  All of us are sitting in a circle in Cassie’s living room, like some kind of pre-war powwow. As I break the news, surprise and disbelief runs across the faces of everyone in the circle around me.

  Hazard looks over at Gunney, frown on his face. “How the fuck did we not know that the fucking president of our biggest rival MC has a sister?”

  Before Gunney can answer, I cut in. “They’ve done a lot to keep her secret. There’s only a handful of people who know who she really is. Tracy changed her name, way back when she was like seventeen and before Mason started making waves with the Jackals MC. She changed it again after she got married. Mason does a lot to keep their relationship secret and keep her out of any club business. Just like everything else — like having cops in his pocket — he works under the radar.”

  “You have to respect the dedication and skill,” Bear says, nodding. “He would’ve made a good Marine. If he wasn’t a scumbag.”

  “Funny, most jarheads I know make pretty good scumbags,” Hazard says.

  Bear punches him in the shoulder. “And the Rangers are the dumping grounds for the ones that couldn’t hack it as Marines.”

  Gunney cuts them off. “The question remains: how the hell are we going to get to Mason’s sister?”

  “And, another question, what the hell are we going to do with that human stain in Cassie’s bathtub? Do we even have time to off him and leave him in the desert?” Preacher says.

  I shake my head. I’m adamant. “We’re no
t killing him.”

  Preacher raises an eyebrow. “We’re not? We got what we needed from him. There’s no more reason to keep him around.”

  “It’s my call, and I’ve got something better in mind,” I say. “We’re going to have him talk to Bryce. On the record.”

  I smile — I can’t help it — seeing everyone’s shocked expressions. Bryce’s, especially.

  “Wait, what?” he says.

  “Detective David Erickson is a total scumbag and the worst human being I think I’ve ever met — unless I happen to come face-to-face with this Mason guy — and he probably deserves to have every bad thing imaginable happen to him, but, I think he’s more useful to everyone if we don’t murder him,” I say. The response is looks of disbelief and doubt from most in the club, everyone except for Preacher. “He’s way more valuable because he’s a self-serving bastard and will say whatever it takes to keep himself alive.”

  “Why do I have to talk to him?” Bryce says. He seems intimidated about talking to a man who’s barely conscious, handcuffed, and tied-up around the ankles.

  I’m so glad I’m not dating him.

  “You’re going to interview him, get a record of the dirty things he’s done, get confessions, and get that stuff to your paper in case things go sideways. Then the two of you are going to take a road trip down to Las Vegas and get him to the FBI offices down there and have him give a statement. He’s a witness and co-conspirator or whatever the heck the legal term is. His word should be enough to get the FBI involved.”

  “You want to trust law enforcement?” Preacher says. “And what makes you think he’s going to even talk?”

  “I’m a cop’s daughter, of course I want to trust them. Reno PD might be compromised, but bringing in the FBI is the right thing to do. And it’s a heck of a lot better than killing everybody, which, to be honest, as tough as you guys are, is going to be nearly impossible considering you’re way outnumbered and outgunned. Trust me, Erickson will talk because he knows that being the first to flip means he has the best chance of saving his own skin.”