by Grey, Helen
“Well, good luck—”
“Kathy,” he interrupted. “Would you let me buy you a cup of coffee or something tomorrow? Since it’s your day off? I’d like to do something to show my appreciation.”
“That’s not necessary, Mr., uh, Ash,” I stammered. He was asking me out?
“I disagree,” he said. “I behaved badly. I’d like you to give me a chance to make it up to you. What do you say? Tomorrow afternoon, one o’clock? The Starbuck’s catty-corner to the pet store?”
I thought about it. Public place. Coffee, not dinner, not a date. Finally, I nodded. “Okay, sure.” What was the harm in accepting a cup of coffee?
He grinned. My nerves tingled again. Such white teeth, I thought stupidly.
“Okay then, see you tomorrow.”
I nodded, shut the rear door and climbed back into the front seat. I watched him make his way toward his door, juggling the enclosure and fingering his keys to unlock the door at the same time. I pulled my seatbelt on. As I began to back out, he turned and lifted his chin in a gesture of goodbye. I lifted my hand, then pulled the car around and headed out of the parking lot, muttering to myself.
“Kathy Mason, you have completely lost your mind.”
CHAPTER 4
Ash
It only took a few minutes for me to wrangle the enclosure up the narrow stairway and then juggle it while I strained to place the door key into the lock. I kicked open the door and headed in. As soon as I got Alice settled for the night, I would hit the sack, maybe watch some movies until I fell asleep. Maybe then I wouldn’t be so distracted. Kathy Mason kept appearing in my thoughts. I had definitely felt a physical attraction to her, but I hadn’t at all expected the emotional connection I experienced. Odd really, because I’d never responded to a woman that way. Usually, it was instant like or dislike. Instant physical attraction or not. With Kathy, it was different, although I couldn’t explain it or put it into words if I tried.
It wasn’t that she was drop dead gorgeous. She was pretty and had a pleasant face, structurally and well proportioned. Gorgeous baby blue eyes. But it was more than that. I sensed that beneath the surface there was a lot more to Kathy than one might expect. For some reason, I thought that my sisters, both of them, would have really liked her. She was firm but polite. Knowledgeable but not stuck up about it. She had gone out of her way to help me but had put me in my place a time or two. Even then, she wasn’t obnoxious or condescending when she did it.
I’m not sure which one of us was more surprised when I asked her to have a cup of coffee with me tomorrow. I was even more surprised by her response. I had seen her hesitance about accepting my offer. I think the only thing that made her feel a little better about it was that I suggested such a public place. Not so much of a date really, just a… just a what? What the hell had gotten into me? I had no business asking a girl like Kathy out. She was my complete opposite.
I got the impression that Kathy was all sunshine, rainbows, and unicorns. Me? I had been walking with one foot in hell for years. I imagined that her apartment was Martha Stewart bright while my converted loft was huge, dark, and, let’s face it, ugly.
At the moment, I had no job and no career aspirations, but that didn’t matter. I was loaded, so I didn’t have to worry about paying the bills, but—
“Where the hell have you been?”
I don’t startle easy, but the voice coming out of the shadows caused me to stiffen. My fingers tightened around the enclosure as I froze. “Shit. Bones, don’t do that.”
Bones was my best friend. At the moment, he sat casually on one end of the sofa, one leg crossed over the other, his booted foot jiggling with impatience. One arm was draped over the back of the couch while he held a bottle of beer in the other. Bones had a habit of appearing when you least expected him.
If you happened to see Bones walking down the street, his appearance wouldn’t ring any alarms. Well, aside from his recently shaved head. He didn’t wear rings in his lips, his eyebrows, or his ears. No visible tattoos. He only had one in the middle of his back between his shoulder blades. A seven-inch tall, four-inch wide intricate Celtic cross. While Bones had been raised Catholic, he wasn’t a practicing one, at least as far as I knew. After all, when you were part of a biker gang, you didn’t expect to get to church every Sunday.
I’d been friends with Bones for several years after meeting him in the gang. He too was trying to make some better choices in life. A former med school dropout — hence his nickname — he’d joined the gang just before I arrived in Denver. In the beginning, we mostly just rode around, visited bars, and raised some hell. Nothing too serious.
At first, I liked the feeling I got when we rode into town, the wary and often fearful stares of townspeople as we rumbled our way down their roads. It wasn’t like the Outlaw Biker Boys were in the same league as some of the bigger motorcycle gangs, but people were scared. And the Outlaws loved it. It went a long way to ramping their rep.
The Outlaws had grown since I first joined, now up to about thirty regular members plus their old ladies. Not even close to other gangs — the Hells Angels or the Mongols, or even the Banditos — that had a couple thousand members and were well known around the world. But their members weren’t in it for the fun. Beneath the leather, they were criminal organizations, who were also major transporters and distributors of drugs.
In comparison, the Outlaws were still in diapers. But an up and coming leader of the pack wanted to be taken more seriously. Spider wanted to cause a stir. I’d even heard that he was trying to make connections with the Juárez cartel still operating in El Paso, on both sides of the border. I was absolutely not up for that. In fact, it wasn’t long after the shootout in Waco last summer that I decided I didn’t like the direction the gang was going. Dealing with a cartel? No the fuck way.
Thinking back, I don’t even have a good reason why I joined the OB Boys. At the time, I was angry and disgruntled, feeling particularly anti-establishment and rebellious. To be really honest, I was just pissed off. Pissed off at my family, at the unfairness of life. I was so sick and tired of being judged. If my family thought I was so horrible, maybe I would be horrible.
Bottom line, I think I joined the gang because they didn’t give a damn about my history. Bones knew, but that was about it. They didn’t know about my money or family, and I wanted it kept that way.
“Where you been, bro?” Bones asked.
“Had to get a new enclosure for Alice,” I said, nodding down to the glass case in my hands.
“What happened to the other one?”
“She busted out.”
“Shit!” Doc exclaimed. More curses were followed by the thump of boots on my coffee table.
“Get your feet off,” I muttered, placing the new enclosure down on the floor. Like Kathy, Bones wasn’t exactly fond of snakes, but not bat shit afraid of them. Just cautious. I moved to the floor lamp near the couch and turned it on just as Bones warily placed his feet back on the floor. Only then did he glanced to his left and see that my snake was in a tank.
“Doesn’t look broken to me.”
“That’s because I made a lady from the pet store bring me a new one. Then while she was here—”
Bones chortled. “You made her come out here with a new tank?”
I nodded. “Why the hell not? I couldn’t very well just leave Alice roaming around, could I? She needs her heat lamp. Besides, I didn’t want her wrapping herself around my throat while I slept.”
“You’re so full of shit.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked as I pushed the temporary enclosure closer to the wall where I’d kept Alice’s older tank. As I re-situated things, I was distracted by the memory of Kathy Mason in my arms, not once, but twice. My balls tightened as I remembered how she’d looked up at me, those blue eyes flicking down to my lips. Shit. I adjusted my pants. I hadn’t been this affected by a woman in a long time.
“I was out late last night, just barhopping, you know
, the regular Friday night drill. Trying to meet some women.”
“Any luck?” I asked, moving toward the couch and sitting down at the other end. Alice was fine for now.
“I struck out, but who the fuck cares. I wasn’t much in the mood for conversation, you know? Just looking to get my rocks off.” He grinned his shit eating grin. “But you know when push comes to shove…”
I nodded. It wouldn’t be the first time either one of us had solicited a prostitute, or when prospects were even worse, taken things into our own hand. Come to think of it, I hadn’t had sex in months, but until I met Kathy last night, I hadn’t given it much thought.
But dammit, I’m thinking of it now.
I turned to Bones. “I’m seriously thinking of selling this place and heading to one of my other places.”
He snorted. “Don’t blame you. Same here.”
“You still thinkin’ of leaving the gang too?”
He nodded. “It’s time.”
Like me, Bones was considered the black sheep of his family. Not because he had contributed to anyone’s death like I had, but because he’d resisted family pressure to become a doctor. Not just any doctor, but a specialist. Cardiology to be precise. His father was a nationally respected cardiologist. His uncle, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather had also practiced medicine. In fact, Bones had once told me that there was a physician in the family dating back to the 1700s. Naturally, it was expected of him as well, as the only child, to also follow in his family’s footsteps.
Bones had rebelled. After going through two years of medical school, he had finally put his foot down. He told his father he wasn’t sure exactly what he wanted to do, but he knew it wasn’t being a doctor. Which was a lie.
Actually, Bones didn’t have a problem with practicing medicine, but he didn’t want to focus on cardiology. Even I had been surprised when he told me he had been thinking of becoming a pediatrician. A kid doctor? Looking at Bones, you wouldn’t think he had an affinity for kids. He didn’t look like the Mr. Rogers type.
Bones was like that though, a chameleon. Depending on his mood, and even his clothing, one might get any number of impressions about who or what he was. Put him in a suit and he looked like a damn fine professional: banker, accountant, teacher, or hell, even a funeral director.
Put him in tattered jeans and a t-shirt and he looked like your average blue-collar construction worker. Take off his shirt and put him in swim trunks and you’d think he was a surfer dude. In jeans and a black leather jacket, you’d think he was a troublemaker, a wannabe gang banger. But Bones was much more than that. He could be a badass, but only when it was expected. Inside, Bones was a lot like me. Looking for something but not sure what. He could fight, and often had, but he was never the instigator.
Maybe that’s why Bones and I had become such good friends. I didn’t try to fit him into any peg hole. He was who he was. I knew he was well off too, not that I had access to his bank records. But our backgrounds, at least family wise, was fairly similar. That was probably another reason why we were such good friends. We understood each other.
“What’s going through your mind, Ash? Any regrets?
I scoffed. “Can’t count that high, but about leaving? Just one. Wished I’d done it sooner.”
“Yeah me too.”
“Any shit going around about me?”
He shrugged. “A couple of have mentioned they haven’t seen you around lately. Mops asked me the other day where you were.”
“What’d you tell him?”
Bones gave me a look. “I told him what I’m telling you right now. I’m not your babysitter. You can do as you damn please and I couldn’t give a flying—”
I laughed. Bones grinned. “Okay, I get it.” He took the last swig of beer from the bottle and placed it on the coffee table.
I gave him a look. He laughed again as he picked up the bottle and put it on top of the latest issue of Newsweek. He sat quietly for several moments, and I just sat there too. I knew that sooner or later, Bones would get to the point of his visit. In the meantime, I wanted to talk to him about Kathy. I didn’t know why, maybe just to gauge his reaction.
“That lady that came over with the snake tank…”
After several seconds, Bones took the bait. “What about her?”
“She wasn’t at all what I expected. I asked her out.” That got his attention.
“You serious?”
“She wasn’t what I expected,” I repeated, sounding lame even to myself.
“You already said that.” He stared. “Is she a knockout or something?”
I shrugged. “Not really.” Bones looked confused. “Don’t get me wrong. She’s pretty. But a girl-next-door pretty. Not all fake this and fake that or slathered in makeup.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“She’s the exact opposite of the type I’ve gone out with before.”
“So why did you ask her out?”
“Hell if I know.”
Bones lifted a shoulder. “Oh well, maybe a little distraction would do you good. You’ve been wound pretty tight the past few weeks.”
“And with good reason.”
He nodded. “Which brings me to the reason for my visit.”
I glanced from him to Alice, who had wrapped herself into a tight coil. My gut tightened too as I waited for him to spill.
“I got a message tonight,” he finally said.
Alarms clanged in my head. I didn’t scare easy, but I wasn’t a fool either. “What kind of message?” He didn’t even have to tell me who it was from. I instinctively knew.
“The kind thrown through a window tied to a rock.”
Shit. The Biker Boys. “What did it say?”
“I could only make out half of it. I recognized Spider’s chicken scratch. The part I could make out said, ‘tongue cut out.’”
It didn’t take much interpretation to figure out what the rest of the message must’ve said. Keep your mouth shut or get your tongue cut out. Six months ago, I would’ve scoffed at such a threat. Today? Not so much. The up-and-coming leadership in the gang was out to prove themselves. Much like traditional gang behavior, leadership roles in the gang depended on how much the members respected you.
“Any sign of Digger lately?”
Digger was the leader of the gang. Mops was his second-in-command, and the third man down the ladder was Spider. They’d all grown increasingly violent in a relatively brief time. Spider was bat-shit crazy. Seriously. He was a narcissistic psychopath who didn’t care about anyone but himself. Much to my disdain, the three had been taking the gang down a road that I wanted nothing to do with.
Rumors of prostitution. Rape. The hint of a murder or two, and drugs. Most disgusting to me were the whispers of the developing relationship between the gang and one of the Mexican cartels down south. Human trafficking. That had been the last straw for me.
It had started when the old gang leader, Stubbs, had gotten arrested and sentenced to ten years for some past sins. Then his second-in-command, Digger, had taken over, but he brought in two new guys from out of nowhere: Spider and Mops. No one I’d talked to knew anything about them or their histories. That they were bad dudes was becoming quickly apparent. Screw ‘em.
I’d pretty much grown out of the need for “camaraderie” anyway. I was going on thirty years old. Time to grow up. Time to take a damn good look at myself and figure out what the hell I wanted out of life. This wasn’t it. So, without a word, I turned my back on them. Stayed away from their hunting grounds. Kept to myself. I ended up in the foothills a lot, just pissing the days away thinking.
And it wasn’t just me. For the past year or so, a member has disappeared every couple of weeks. Just melted away into the darkness. Never to be seen again.
Unfortunately, I, like Bones, knew what the gang was getting into. Not much, but enough to get those three top assholes into some deep shit. While the hierarchy of the Outlaws prevented all of the members from knowing all o
f the details regarding all of their activities, gossip, rumors, and bits and pieces of conversation overheard made it clear that everyone was pretty much aware of what was going on, even if they didn’t know the details.
The problem was, knowing such details and leaving the gang didn’t actually coincide with each other. Digger hadn’t hesitated to threaten me before, especially when I expressed my “displeasure” over the direction he was taking the gang. It wasn’t like I’d put in a request for retirement or submitted an official termination notice. I had simply quit showing up at the gang’s main hangout at a bar in southeast Denver.
“Sarge told me to tell you to watch your back.”
I turned to him. Sarge? I didn’t know much about Sarge. A quiet man. One of those quiet ones that you knew… just knew… you didn’t want to mess around with. He was a watcher. For him to pass along a message, a warning…?
But I should have known. After a several day absence, I’d been driving through downtown, not far from my loft, when I’d spotted Spider on his motorcycle, following me.
While I was pretty certain that none of the gang knew where I lived, I wanted to keep it that way. I pulled into a parking lot and waited for Spider. After he asked where I’d been the past few days, I told him that I was moving on. Spider wasn’t happy. Told me that Digger and Mops wouldn’t be happy either.
I didn’t give a shit about any of them, and couldn’t care less about their state of happiness. Spider had left me with an idle threat that if anyone even got a hint that I was talking about the gang with others, I would pay. I merely stared at him, not reacting, not showing any fear. Not that I was afraid, because I wasn’t. But I wasn’t stupid. I knew that Spider was serious, and I was incurring the wrath of the gang leadership by leaving.
I turned to Bones. “Man, sorry about the troubles. Hope they don’t go through you to get to me.” It was no secret that Bones and I were close friends. Maybe only one message was necessary, knowing that it would ultimately be delivered to me too.
“No problem. Just more incentive for me to make my move sooner rather than later.”