by Zahra Girard
“You tell me the truth, Jamal, and I’ll do this quick. One bullet in your skull and we’re done,” I say, putting my knee hard into his throat. “You fuck around, and I’ll start by cutting your fingers off. Then your toes. And I’ll keep going — even after you’ve told me what I want to hear — until I’ve cut you into more pieces than a fucking LEGO set. So, think real hard, and then tell me why you tried to kill me.”
I give him a minute to think. Then I let him breathe.
He sucks the air in, his mouth opening and closing like some stupid goldfish. It’s a burbling, thick, bloody gasp.
“Price on her head,” he says.
“Someone wants us dead?”
“Captured. And there’s a higher price for her. Alive. We figured it’d be easier just to kill you first. Turns out it wasn’t a good idea.”
I look back at Roxanna. Her face is pale white, her eyes wide, and her mouth gaping. She might be screaming, but I can’t hear it over the rage surging through me.
“Who?”
“Fuck if I know,” he says, spitting a glob of blood that lands with a splat on my shoe. “Some player just put the word out to the gangs through the Iron Devils. That’s all I know. So can you just kill me, now? This shit hurts.”
“Sure, Jamal.”
“Sorry about this, Bear.”
“Yeah, me too.”
I pull his gun out and press it to his head. He doesn’t shut his eyes and I don’t shut mine.
The gun recoils in my grip and gouts of blood color the gravel, his body shudders and goes limp. A slight gasp breaks his busted lips — air leaving his lifeless lungs.
I stand and get to work, tossing both bodies in the back of my truck.
Roxanna’s silent. I give her a look that tells her to stay that way as I start the truck up and take some back roads towards the Puget Sound. There’s a small park in the shadow of the bridge. Surrounded by trees, with a small beach and a fast current.
It’s empty.
I back the truck up to the water line.
I get out, strip down, and put my clothes on the drivers seat.
“What the hell are you doing?” she says.
“Going for a bit of a swim. You want to join me?”
“I don’t even understand how fucked up things are right now. The bed of your truck is full of blood and bodies and now you’re getting naked? What the fuck?”
Maybe it is a little strange. Maybe she’s right to be confused. She probably hasn’t done this before.
I sigh.
“There’s a good current out here. Depending on the tide, it could suck these corpses down to Olympia, up to Seattle, or, if I’m really fucking lucky, to some deserted beach on the Kitsap Peninsula. The whole damn time, fish and crab and octopuses will chew these bodies to pieces. And even when they do get discovered, the police aren’t going to give a shit about two gang bangers from Tacoma. It buys us time and it keeps the heat off my back.”
“You’ve done this before.”
It’s not a question.
I shrug. “Not exactly. Not here. There’s better places — way out in the woods, for one. Or at this cabin a friend of mine has. Let all the rats and scavengers take the bodies apart. Nature’s great at recycling.”
“Were they going to kill us?”
I look at her — there’s an edge in her question, it’s razor-sharp, and razor-thin. One wrong step, and I know whatever it is between us will be as dead as Jamal.
“You saw their guns. The fuck do you think? That they were here to welcome us back the fucking neighborhood?”
Her eyes narrow.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Yes, they would’ve killed us. Me — definitely. You — probably, after they’d fucked you a few times.”
Even though it’s for good reason, it doesn’t feel right to lie to her. But I can’t afford to complicate things any further right now.
“So I suppose I should be thanking you. Killing them was the only way, right?”
“Fucking hell. Yes it was. Not like we could fucking solve this over a game of Mahjong. Funny the woman who’s stabbed me and cracked me over the head with a bottle would balk at violence.”
“You zip tied me to a chair and literally told me you were kidnapping me,” she fires back. “And even then, I never would’ve killed you. I only wanted out.”
“Next time I’ll remember to be more reasonable to the guys who pull me over off a dark highway and pull guns on me. Maybe if I say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ enough, they’ll decide we can settle our differences with words. Give me a fucking break.”
“You didn’t even fucking try. You just murdered two guys and now you’re dumping their bodies in the ocean like it’s not a big deal. If you somehow manage to get your daughter back, I feel sorry for her. You think just because you watched a few cartoons and are over the moon at the idea of having a child, that you’re going to be a great dad? Abigail’s going to have one awful childhood having a father who’s a rampaging murderer.”
“Shut up.” My guns back in my hands and up against her temple. “She’s got a father who would do anything for her. A father who isn’t going to let anyone stand in his fucking way.”
She doesn’t flinch. She stares straight back at me.
“She’s got a father who picks murder because it’s convenient. She deserves better.”
“We’re done.”
I ram the gun back in my pile of clothes.
Through with talking to her — because fuck trying to reason with this woman — I drag each of the bodies out of the back. They splash as they hit the water. Jumping in after them, I sling an arm over each and start wading out until I’m chest deep in the water. The current tugs at me, pulling me deeper, speedily sliding around my body, seeking to turn me into a corpse as well.
I shove the bodies out one at a time. They bob and steadily float away, disappearing into the dark. I wait and watch until they fade from view, turning to imperceptible blips on the black horizon.
Then, I wade back to shore. Naked, cold as hell, I stand on the shore and let myself drip-dry.
Roxanna doesn’t say another word as I get back in the truck. She stares straight ahead into the dark, which is fine by me.
It’s silent the last twenty minute drive until we get to Stony Shores. I can feel the judgment in her silence, nagging ignorance that thinks that the situation with Jamal could have unfolded any other way.
I push those thoughts away. They’re useless. And besides, I don’t want anything ruining this moment. I’m coming home.
It’s been years, but I can still drive these old roads with my eyes closed. Every tree, every bend in the road, it all feels the same. And when the first lights of town come into view, when the forest fades away and I’m cruising down the main street of this small bit of civilization built on the rocky beach that gives it it’s name.
A few more turns take us to the outskirts of town, where main streets turn into access roads and civilization fades away. In a clearing in the forest, at the end of a stretch of asphalt so busted it’s practically gravel, there’s the clubhouse.
I smile.
My truck may need a wicked cleaning, I might’ve just offed a few people — including one guy who wasn’t half bad when he wasn’t threatening my life — but there’s few things in the world that could wreck my mood right now. The weight of the world feels lighter on my shoulders.
Lights shine out the windows. Music — some old twangy rock that I feel in my bones — I can hear from the parking lot. The rumble of my brothers’ laughter.
I’m home.
Chapter Fifteen
Roxanna
It’s a different Nash standing next to me in the parking lot outside this squat building in the literal middle of nowhere. This man looks like Nash, he sounds like Nash, he moves like Nash, but this man is just an hour removed from dumping two bloody bodies in the ocean without blinking an eye. A man as dark as the chill night air ar
ound us.
I can’t fit this image of him together with the man who lights up a the thought of his daughter, the man that wants to be a good father for his little girl. I can’t see this man as the same one I slept with.
Who is he?
How can someone who wants a family — a daughter — so badly be so callous about ending the life of a member of someone else’s family?
Somewhere, at some point in the future, the only thing Jamal’s family will have to remember him are whatever bloated, fish-pecked remains wash up on the beach.
I blink those thoughts away and look around.
The parking lot is half paved, half gravel, and, while the building might’ve been painted at one time, the clubhouse I see in front of me is weathered and beaten enough in places that the tattered meat of the pine and oak shows in the near-dead light of the streetlamp. The sign above the door — Broken Crown Saloon — looks so weathered it might be the name of whatever the hell this clubhouse was before the Wayward Kings took over.
“Come on in,” he says, gruffly.
The door opens, muted music turns into a raucous celebration. Laughter spills out, shouting, the sounds of glasses smashing together and conversations practically shouted.
Inside, it’s warm. Alive.
Wood shines, polished from years of use, run-down in an inviting way. Bottles, filled mostly with brown liquor, line shelves behind the bar. Men in jeans and leather drink and chat with women in jeans and leather — some a lot younger than I’d expect and some a lot older. A man in a maid’s outfit, short frilly skirt and all, carries a tray of drinks through the room, taking empty glasses and giving full ones to anyone who asks.
“Bear,” a man with a buzzed head, barrel chest, and a thick goatee, bellows from across the room. “You son of a bitch. How are you?”
Whatever malice I felt in Nash — I still can’t bring myself to call him Bear — sloughs off the second the man yells his name.
“Free, Gunney. That’s how the fuck I am,” Nash answers, barely getting his words out before the older man envelopes him in a mammoth hug. Just watching it makes my back crack.
“I knew you were free, goddamnit. Hell, we had your release date written down and everyone was ready to celebrate. Your party was three days ago, by the way. It was a fucking grand time. But, what gives — you get out, you don’t call, you don’t write. We were starting to think you’d gotten yourself into some shit.”
“I had some things to take care of, brother.”
“Things?” he answers, eying me. “You put pussy over your family?”
Nash chuckles. “Never. This is more than that. Meet Roxanna. Roxanna Pierce.”
Gunney frowns as he shakes my hand. “Pierce, as in…” he says, his voice trailing off.
“The same,” I answer.
“Nice to meet you, Roxanna,” he says, before turning to Nash, wary, and I feel like I’m suddenly a background decoration. The two men nearly huddle together, Gunney’s voice dropping low. “Fucking hell. Did you lose your mind in prison? We’ve got enough heat as it is without you fucking with a judge’s family.”
“I’m settling a score, Gunney. I’ve got a daughter. A fucking daughter. Her name is Abigail. The bitch from Lakewood I fucked a few times, Melissa, she gave birth while I was in the joint.”
A pang of jealousy stabs me at the mention of the dead woman’s name, at thinking of the connection she has to the good side of Nash that I’ll never have.
“What’d this judge do to you?”
“Nothing,” I interrupt. “My father didn’t do anything.”
Gunney’s eyes flicker towards me, a silent rebuke, but that’s the only acknowledgment I get before he focuses his attention back on Nash.
“Abigail’s custody case is in his jurisdiction. Just before I got out, some son of a bitch came to see me, told me Melissa was dead and if I didn’t come up with a hundred grand within two weeks of walking free, the judge — her father — would make sure my little girl stays lost in the system.”
“Fuck.”
“Right. I’ve got to go down this road, wherever the hell it takes me. I can’t lose her.”
Furrowing his brow, Gunney nods. “We’ll back you, brother, but shit’s stretched real thin right now. People’ve died since you’ve been away, the Devils are pushing us every chance they get, and you’re not the only one who’s been in prison.”
Off in one corner of the clubhouse, the man in the maid’s outfit is singing karaoke — a breathy and spirited version of Careless Whisper — while a girthy barrel-round man cheers him on.
I’m starting to realize I have no idea what in the hell life in a biker gang is like. Maybe I’m still asleep in that truck, on the highway in Montana, and this is all some twisted hangover dream caused by tainted food from Dirty Hank’s.
“Get me up to speed, Gunney.”
“The Iron Devils are trying to muscle into town. They’ve been running heroin and ecstasy down from Canada, bringing that shit in by boat and Stony Shores sits right on their trafficking route. We’ve been making life hard for them, but we’re mostly legal, now, and we don’t have the income like we used to—” Gunney says, pausing for a moment to share a look with one of the women at the bar. The woman leaves her place, snatching a highball glass of brown liquor in each hand, and hands one to me.
“Come on, honey,” she says. “I’m Samantha. Let’s go take a load off while the boys catch up. What’s your name?”
“Roxanna,” I answer.
“Those boys are going to be a while, so let’s get you comfortable.”
I let her lead me to the bar. The drink isn’t bad — bourbon, and not as bottom-shelf as it looks. It might even be mid-bottom shelf.
Samantha and I sit down at the bar next to a large, muscular man with long, dark hair that’s in some kind of loose bun, olive skin, and tattoos winding up his arms in some kind of whirling tribal design. He’s in his late twenties, and he’s got a dazzlingly bright smile. Next to him, there’s a young blonde woman, she’s rail-thin and tanned, with a stunningly-detailed tattoo of a horse decorating her forearm.
“Ozzy, Beth, this is Roxanna,” Samantha says.
“Nice to meet you, Roxanna,” Ozzy says, his voice a lazy-accented drawl. He holds his drink out and I tap mine to his. “Welcome to the family.”
“Nice to meet you, too,” I say. It’s a bit disorienting hearing an accent like his — Australian, it sounds like, maybe, and it has to be considering his name — coming from a guy in a biker’s clubhouse in a small town in Washington.
My confusion must be painted all over my face like a billboard, or maybe it’s the fact that I’m openly staring at him that gives it away.
“There’s heaps of bikers where I’m from, too, Roxanna,” he says. “It isn’t just an American thing.”
“In Australia?”
“No, New Zealand,” Ozzy says. “But I understand your confusion. Word of advice, though: don’t lump a Kiwi in with an Aussie. We don’t always get on. Aussies live up to their reputation as a bunch of big-headed cunts and they can’t play rugby for shit.”
“So, your name — Ozzy?” I blurt out.
“The boys call him Ozzy because he’s a Kiwi. I don’t know how it got started,” Samantha says.
“Me neither,” Ozzy says. “Though I’d wager it’s just to piss me off.”
“I’m pretty sure it is, dear,” Samantha says.
“Does it work?”
“Yeah, nah,” he says.
“Huh?” I say.
“Yeah. Nah.”
Holy crap, I don’t know what’s up or down anymore.
I blink and move on. “So, how did you end up here?”
“I moved here. I live in town.”
Does logic work differently down there?
“I know you’re part of the club. But how did you join the club?”
“My cuz and I rode in New Zealand. We were a couple of Westie boys, practically bogans. But we steered clear o
f MC’s like the Head Hunters and the Mongrel Mob, the main clubs down there. Too much drugs. Too involved in P. So we came here to the States. Met a few of the guys here at a bar down in Tacoma, got properly munted, ended up prospecting.”
I think I kind of get it. Enough to nod authentically, at least. Though I still don’t know why the letter ‘P’ would be so dangerous. “Great.”
“How do you and Bear know each other? You must have something on him, because he’s never brought a woman to the clubhouse before. Unless, well, he was fucking a club girl,” Samantha says.
“I find that hard to believe,” I say.
“It’s true. It’s been club girls or ladies he’s met on the ride for Bear,” Ozzy says. “Heaps of girls, but, still, nothing serious.”
Heaps?
“It’s complicated,” I say.
“It’s always complicated,” says Beth. “If you try to make it more than it is. So, stop beating around the bush. What’s up with you and big Bear over there?”
I pause. Drink some bourbon. “I’m just helping him with some personal stuff.”
Samantha rolls her eyes. “Right.”
“I am,” I insist.
“Bear was the club’s enforcer before he went away — now Ozzy here’s filling that role,” Beth says, patting Ozzy on the chest, resting her fingers on the ‘Enforcer’ patch. “Bear’s not really the type to ask others for help. People either ask him for help or they’re begging him for mercy.”
“It’s big shoes to fill,” Ozzy adds. “I’m not a military guy like BEar. I’m just a bloke with a bike. Still getting the hang of the enforcer thing, if I’m being honest with you.”
“You’ll get there someday, hun. And with Bear back, you two can share the work, help each other out. Though there ain’t much to it, nowadays,” Samantha says.
“How so?” I say.
Ozzy shrugs. “Club switched business plans a few years ago, when a lot of the guys went away.”
Samantha nods. “The Kings are mostly a legitimate business, nowadays. Some of the boys have kids and families of their own, and keeping everyone together is the most important thing right now. Most of the ‘enforcing’ is just keeping out the pieces of trash that want to ruin our town.”