Otis, the skinny bastard, snatches the hand where the diamond is. He moves so fast I almost lose my balance. He yanks the ring off my finger, stands, and pockets the expensive jewelry.
“We let him wait, so he’ll think he ain’t gonna see you again, then he will pay up without any fuss. He knows we mean business.”
The blond one smirks at me. “Or, maybe, we’re just out to have a little fun and we really don’t intend to call him again.” He stuffs his hands in his pockets and leans forward. “What the fuck can he do, old woman? He don’t live in the city and, even if he did, he’s no match for us.
Otis’ eyes gleam.
Not trusting that crazy light and uneasy at the turn the conversation has taken, I think of another avenue to escape with my life and to save Miss Catherine. “Call Creighton. I’m his son’s grandmother. He’ll pay you to release me.” Unless he’s involved. If he isn’t, I can only pray he has enough love for Duke to save me on his behalf.
The stocky one shakes his head. “We’re not calling nobody. He’s not involved and he might decide to turn us in for swiping you. What Creighton doesn’t know won’t hurt him. This is just a side gig for us. We saw an opportunity and we took it. We brought you to Otis’ property to keep you our little secret. He bought the place especially to bring annoyances here to be taken care of and obliterated from the face of the earth,” he tells me as if I give a fuck about this shithole.
“Besides,” Skinny Bastard says, still hovering above me, “Creighton can’t stand you. He wouldn’t care if you lived or died.”
Their words have dented my armor and real fear is starting to rise up in me. “What makes you think Mortician will care?” I ask to buy time as I attempt to figure out how I can get to my feet without assistance.
“Any motherfucker who buys an old bitch a diamond must hold her in high esteem,” Thug One answers me.
“We’ve only met a handful of times,” I say truthfully. “He just sent me that because of how he feels about my granddaughter. Let us go and I’ll empty my savings. This will be between us.”
The tall, skinny, cruel sonofabitch curls his lip at me and steps on one of my hands, grounding it into the floor until he cracks the bones.
Agony races through me and tears rush to my eyes. He grabs a handful of my hair and presses the barrel of the gun in the spot between my eyes.
“Get to your fucking feet before I decide you’re not worth the trouble and put a bullet in your head.”
“Should we count to three or five?” his comrade asks in amusement. “Aww, what the hell? Give her until three. Gotta be politically correct, so you can’t have any special consideration based on your handicap.”
“One,” Skinny Bastard starts, backing away but keeping the gun trained on me.
Tears slipping down my cheeks, I grab my cane and stand it up. My damaged hand makes it harder for me to get a good grip.
“Two,” he barks out, coming closer again and looming above me. The nausea returns. My heart races in dread as I struggle to my knees. My bones are screaming at me and the stiffness of my joints slows me down.
“Three.”
Instead of firing, he crashes the gun against my head and the darkness swallows me up.
Mortician
Hide-and-Seek
Turning from North Claiborne onto Caffin Avenue, I curse. The place couldn’t be on one of the outer streets. Fuck, no. It’s within this maze that’s seen better days. Here and there, I ride past occupied houses. For the most part, it’s desolate and untended.
I finally get to Gordon Street and see more of the same—mostly deserted properties with a scattering of newer homes. As I approach the address Stretch gave to me, I slow down. A quick glimpse pisses me off. The shit should’ve been demolished years ago. However, I see the flicker of lights through the dingy windows.
Some fucker’s paying the electric bill. A cold-ass Benz is parked in the driveway. Shady motherfucker has this fucking dump for fucked-up shit.
I need to get my ass to a location where I can sneak up on the house.
Blazing off, I wonder what kind of bone-headed dickhead’s running this operation. He calls my ass, tells me he has my grandma-in-law, and to wait for further instructions. Hours have passed and I haven’t heard a peep from his ass.
It makes me wonder if Pearllene and her friend are still kicking. They might already be fucked up.
I can’t even think about that shit. What kind of almost-headless fucker hurts old ladies?
Just as bad as Pearllene being hurt or killed is the thought of breaking the news to my wife and her mama. My Bailey would be devastated and before that happens I’d rather tear my own eyes out. I want nothing to touch my wife. I’m her buffer between good and bad, joy and sadness. If it hurts her, it hurts me. What hurts me, pisses me the fuck off.
Finding a nice overgrown lot to park the bike in, about a block away from my target, I dismount. Everything I need to kill is already on me. I don’t have my instruments of torture or my tools for burying. This has to be a quick, fill-the-head-with-slugs event.
Then, some kind of fucking way, I have to move two old ladies when I have one fucking bitch seat.
Hold on, motherfucker. Cross that bridge when you get to it.
The wind whistles against my ears, exposed because my dreads are queued. The sidewalks are uneven, a broken leg waiting to happen, so I keep to the street.
Just as I reach the house, I see a motherfucker duck in the overgrown grass, thanks to the street lights that are beaming to life.
Motherfucker, man. I don’t need a punk ass bitch who sees the place as an easy mark to rob fucking up my rescue mission.
Growling low in my throat, I pull my .380 from my waistband, where it rested beneath my cut, and slide behind some type of massive green plant with huge leaves growing in all directions.
In my head, I start a countdown as I crouch down and slip into the tall grass on my side of the yard. Keeping my hand steady, I crabwalk forward, until I reach what once was a pathway. I rise up just as the other motherfucker does the same.
Like a choreographed dance, we aim our weapons at each other, at the exact same time as we both prepare to shoot.
Edge
Surprise!
By the time I made it to New Orleans, Miss Catherine’s phone had stopped moving. This was neither a good or bad thing. It was an undetermined thing that I was trying not to let fuck with my head.
I’d hunted about the street in this neighborhood for over an hour trying to find that fucking phone or Miss Catherine.
The whole time I was looking I was talking to the big man upstairs praying like a man possessed I wasn’t gonna be finding her dead body.
Joel to the fucking rescue.
I hadn’t wanted to call in Boxer’s computer-genius-golden-boy hacker, but I couldn’t waste any more time and risk losing Miss C permanently.
I got a whole lot of what-the-fuck from Joel about my whereabouts and then a whole lot more about Miss C going MIA, but we had to stay positive and unless I had found a dead body, she was still alive.
Joel didn’t hesitate to get down to the business end of his genius to encourage a satellite to cooperate and play back some footage around the time the phone signal went stationary. He picked up a white guy driving a black Mercedes, dumping two handbags among the refuse in a dumpster, on a building site.
A Pearllene Doucette aged seventy belonged to one of those handbags and the other was Miss Catherine’s.
This was Miss Catherine’s lunch guest.
Motherfucker!
I had to hope like Santa was real, their bodies weren’t being dumped elsewhere, because this sure as fuck was not a good sign. Something Joel expressed to me in detail.
No shit, Sherlock.
I had to hope he kept this information quiet until I could be back in Alaska with Miss C safe in my hands, because she fucking well was gonna be and I didn’t need Boxer worrying about two females at once. He needed to concentrate
on Whisper.
I couldn’t bear thinking about Miss C not being alive and well. I can’t let my very real fears get in the way of tracking her down.
I would pray to Buddha if it meant they were both alive and just in a whole lotta fucked-up shit that could get sorted with a bullet to the motherfucker’s brain.
Joel had noted the plate details. It took him further time to get me an address for an Otis Smithmore, AKA dead-motherfucker. A small-time thug with a known rap sheet of drug dealings and crimes.
I ended by promising genius boy he would hear from me once Miss C was safe, in my care and heading back with me to Alaska.
And here I am now. Several hours later hiding in the overgrown itchy grass surrounding this fucked up shell of a house, acting like a goddamn Peeping Tom.
I’ve hidden my bike in the shadows close by. I’ve only had time to check through some of the filthy curtainless windows until I let out a whoosh of breath I didn’t realize I had been holding in, when I found Miss C. She is lying bound on the floor in what was once a functioning kitchen of this dilapidated, filthy home with another old lady beside her. A good guess would be Pearllene.
There’s nobody else in the room with them. Their faces are turned towards me and they look like they’ve been belted around. Their faces are bruised, which makes my rage boil over.
There’s currently no movement at the station and that is a major worry. My heart rate picks up because they could very well be dead.
The front door suddenly opens forcing me to duck down in the overgrown grass up against the exterior of the house, my gun ready as the stocky blond haired asshole from the satellite footage walks over to the Merc parked in the driveway to get something out of it and then he quickly heads on back inside.
At least one kidnapping cocksucker accounted for.
I estimate there has to be at least two of the motherfuckers inside the house to be able to apprehend and get both of the old ladies bound and knocked out.
I rise up again and that’s when I feel a fucker too close for comfort.
One bullet to maim…
I swing around raising my gun to face off against a motherfucker as we simultaneously cock the hammers on our guns as trigger happy fingers are ready to follow through like we are in a wild west stand-off.
Nine Inch Nails’ Wish starts belting out from inside the house.
“Looks like you and me got ourselves a situation, buddy,” I growl out with enough volume to be heard, at the brown-skinned Jason-Momoa-back-in-the-day dreadlocked male mimicking my stance and with a happy-to-pull-the-trigger-motherfucker, look on his angry face.
I don’t know if the man standing before me ready to fire off a round is part of who took Miss Catherine, but I ain’t taking any chances, considering my MO is shoot first, ask questions later.
I contemplate getting a shot off and then I see what the streetlights have revealed. He’s wearing a club cut. My eyes slide back to his face, noting he’s looking at my cut, too. I don’t remember having any bad dealings with the Death Dwellers MC and I sure as fuck can’t be figurin’ on why they be sending a guy after Miss Catherine and her friend.
Neither of us can afford to start a war between clubs. “You’re a little far from home?” I get no instant reply, he keeps watching me. The cogs are moving in his mind trying to figure out why I am so far from home too.
“Name, motherfucker,” he finally growls out on a low whisper at me.
I too can play the non-compliant game. I can see we both are gonna be stubborn sons-of-bitches. Neither of us is playing nicely and we keep right on pulling our don’t-fuck-with-me facial expressions.
I ain’t got time for this shit. Miss Catherine could be dead or seriously injured for all I know and she means more to me than a Mexican stand-off.
“Edge, enforcer for the Soulless Bastards, and you are?” Not happy to see me.
“Mortician, enforcer for the Death Dwellers. State your reason for pointing that fucking gun at me and being here before I run out of patience.”
Grumpy. Much.
Fucker has about as many manners as me.
“Two old ladies hopefully only lying unconscious in that house…” I cock my head to the side, “say it’s my business to be here. We gonna have a real big problem if you one of the fuckers holding them against their will.” A small change crosses his face, he catches my drift and is wondering if they are both alive too, but he doesn’t move an inch. I can tell he wants to move and look through that window and see for himself. Pearllene means something to this man.
“One of those old ladies is my fucking business. Pearllene is her name. She’s my grandma-in-law and my wife is not going to be fucking happy if she is dead, so you better not be fucking around and we better be on the same page.”
Or what?
“Miss Catherine is the other lady in there and she is my business. How’d you know where to find them?” My curiosity peaks. “And why are they in this situation to start with?”
“Got a bead on Pearllene’s phone being at this address from one of my club brothers tracking it. Assholes wanted to take advantage of my financial situation by kidnapping Pearllene. Miss Catherine in the wrong place at the wrong time. Motherfuckers got two old ladies for the price of one.” He raises a brow at me. “How’d you know where to find them?” He’s still not a hundred percent gonna trust me, and that’s a fair call.
“I tracked Miss Catherine’s phone to a dumpster on a building site, few streets over and located both their handbags. You had the right answer with your grandmother-in-law’s name. I had checked her ID. There was no phone in the bag. She must’ve somehow kept her phone hidden on her for you to track her to here.”
He appears to like my responses.
“How you wanna play this, John Wayne?”
“Unless you see somebody else out here, son, I’m fucking not John Wayne.”
We can toss shit back-and-forth forever, and I don’t have time. “We lower the guns together and then we can get down to fucking with the fuckers who took them.” I got a knife in my ankle holster I can use if he’s bullshitting me.
He nods his head and we end this stand-off together. He then takes the steps needed to look through the dirt encrusted window. He grunts under his breath a string of curses at what he sees and then he’s quickly ducking back against the wall next to me.
“Two soon-to-be-dead motherfuckers just walked into the room,” he bellows.
I take a careful look. Their backs are to us and they’re both crouching down shaking the old ladies trying to rouse them. I watch long enough to see that they’ve both come to and are being sat up against the wall. Their hands and feet are bound. I fall back against the wall next to Mortician. “It’s time to teach some motherfuckers a lesson in respect for the elderly.”
“Fucking damn straight,” Mortician grinds out beside me.
Mortician
On The Same Page
Reading motherfuckers has saved my life more than once. The Dwellers have never had a reason to collaborate with the Soulless Bastards, and they’re located well out of our territory.
The lives of two old ladies are at stake, so a pissing contest is the last thing on my fucking mind.
I peep through the window again and spot water pipes extending out of a torn-up wall. Two doorways and countertops at a ninety-degree angle, a breath away from falling.
A tall, lanky motherfucker is yanking Pearllene up by her collar. When the stocky White dude goes for her friend—Miss Catherine according to Edge—Pearllene starts to struggle and speak words I can’t hear over the loud music. It earns her a slap cross her cheek. Miss Catherine is being hauled to her feet.
Edge is beside me cursing under his breath, thanking fuck Miss Catherine is alive, and growling at the way they’re being man handled. We look at each other and nod. These fuckers have just earned themselves a date with two pissed off bikers.
“I’ll go in first,” I say in his ear. The fucking music is so loud. “Y
ou got my back?”
Edge nods his head once, raising his gun. “Fucking oath. Let’s do this.”
I turn away and walk to the old steps, cursing each creak as I go up. The door is barely hanging on its hinges, rusty, noisy motherfuckers that they are. The heavy drum beat of the music helps to drown out the sounds we’re making.
The closer I get to them, the more I pick up on Pearllene and Miss Catherine’s cries over the music. They are being physically harmed.
Something scurries across my feet and I scowl. This house is a fucking disgrace. Edge jabs my back.
When I turn to glare at him, he points to another doorway, then indicates himself. I take that to mean he’s going to loop around and get to the other side.
I wedge myself into a corner, allowing Edge a chance to situate himself. My blood’s pumping in anticipation.
Raising my gun, I stroll into the room. “Good evening, motherfuckers,” I greet. “You needed to talk to me?”
They both stop their abuse. Releasing Pearllene, the tall one brings his hand to his side as Edge puts his piece at the back of the stocky one’s head. I don’t hesitate to pull my trigger, blowing a hole through the hand of lanky motherfucker. Blood sprays everywhere and the blowback hits his face.
The loud music has helped to swallow the sounds up of my gun going off and this fucker’s scream.
Pearllene has landed on the floor, next to her friend. They are both beaten and bloody. I want to assess them for broken bones, but Moe and Joe have to be dealt with first.
Leaning against the wall and heaving in a deep breath, Pearllene grabs Miss Catherine’s bony hand. She offers me a weak smile and I sense her relief. Anger surges through me again at the state they’re in. “Pearllene, you and your friend doing okay?” About the only thing I have for torture is my lighter. Roasted balls sound good to me. They both nod, which is a good sign while Miss Catherine has a look of shock on her face at seeing Edge come to her rescue.
When Clubs Collide Page 35