I threw my smoke down on the ground and crushed it out with my boot, giving one last look to Isabelle's motel room door before putting my helmet back on. No use sitting there all day if she wasn't going to come out and talk to me.
“Lead the way, Ace,” I said.
“That's the spirit, man.”
The two of us peeled out of the parking lot, and I followed him as he led me to our clubhouse—a ratty old place on the outskirts of town. We weren't big like the Hells Angels or the Mongols and couldn't afford a big, fancy place. We didn't run drugs or guns—hell, we worked hard to keep that shit out of Milling. We were a club and we had our own clubhouse, so that meant something, right?
When we pulled up, the clubhouse parking lot was full of bikes—all of them familiar. I'd lied when I told Isabelle I was alone. I wasn't alone. Not really. I had my brothers. My family. But these guys weren't the type of men I could open my heart up to. We weren't exactly the touchy-feely type. I could however, count on them to help me when I found myself in a bind. Which was exactly what they were doing now. I knew my brothers—without question—always had my back.
“Where is he?” I asked Ace. “Is he here?”
“Yeah, the dumbass is here,” Ace said. “We scooped him up when we found out the dumb shit was back in town. Follow me.”
Ace led me to the garage out behind the clubhouse where we usually worked on our bikes and took care of some club business. Business like the stupid looking motherfucker tied to a chair. His face had already been bloodied for me, since my guys had given him a little bit of a tune up before they found me.
“Joaquin, Joaquin, Joaquin,” I repeated, pacing in front of him. Didn’t I tell you to get the fuck out of town?”
He looked at me through a pair of puffy, dark eyes that reminded me of Isabelle. He sneered and spit blood on the concrete ground...
“I asked you a question.”
He looked around, seemingly pretending to have not heard me. I grabbed him by the chin and forced him to look me in my eyes and then spit squarely in his face. I saw a look of revulsion flash through his eyes, but he still remained silent. I smacked him across the face. His head rocked to the side and he groaned, but that was about the only reaction I got from him. He was a fucking moron, but he knew how to take a beating. I had to give him that.
“Might as well tell me what you’re doing here. Save yourself some hurt.”
“You know what I do,” he said, his voice raspy. “Besides, what's it matter? I'm a dead man either way.” He hocked back and spat, a large glob of blood and snot landing on the ground by my boot. I reared back and punched him in the gut. As best as he could while tied up, he doubled over in his chair and wheezed. Ace handed over a driver's license with his name printed on it, clear as day. And lest there be any doubt, the card had his picture, too. He'd been worked over pretty good, and I was having trouble seeing the resemblance between the man in the picture and the bloody lump of meat sitting in front of me.
I held his license up in my hand and then pointedly looked at him. “You know,” I started, “you have a really stupid-looking face.”
He snorted but said nothing more. I threw the driver's license in a nearby trash can.
“You won't be needing that anymore, Joaquin De le Rosa,” I said, kneeling in front of him and cracking my knuckles. “No, you won't be needing that at all. Not when we're done with you. In fact, there's going to be a lot of shit you're not going to need anymore.”
He met my gaze and smiled a bloody smile, his front teeth missing—likely because of my boys. But even through the blood and gunk, I could see that the rest of his teeth had rotted out of his fucking ugly head.
“Ahh, I guess there's my answer,” I said, nodding my head.
“Answer to what?” he slurred.
“I was just going to ask if you're the one supplying the meth in Milling,” I replied. “But I didn't because I figured you were going to lie to me anyway. But there's always one dead giveaway for you stupid, fucking tweakers.”
“Yeah? What's that?”
“Your nasty ass, rotted out teeth,” I replied. “They told me all I needed to know.”
“He's the one,” one of the other guys who was standing behind him said, his own knuckles covered in blood. “Caught him selling down by the school.”
“By the motherfucking school? Are you even fucking kidding me right now?” I seethed. I got down at eye level with him and stared him in the eye. “Starting them early, shithead?”
My rage—a deep, dark, abiding rage—boiled inside of me. As I stared into his face, I felt like I might burst a vein in my head. I wanted to bash his goddamn face in—more so than my guys already had.
“I guess I shouldn't be surprised,” I hissed. “You piece of shit have no motherfucking morals. You're lower than dog shit.”
I stood up and clenched my fists as I paced around this chair. I watched his body tense up and knew he could feel the hammer starting to come down. He was nervous despite putting on the tough guy act. There was a tremor in his shoulders, and a closer look at his hands showed me that they were shaking. Yeah, ol' Joaquin knew something bad was about to happen, and he was scared shitless.
“Know a woman named Jen?” I asked. “Bleached blonde hair, blue eyes, about five feet tall or so. Pretty smile—or at least, she used to. Great ass and hot tits—used to dance at the club outside of town? Sound familiar?”
He still didn't answer me, but I saw the recognition flash across his bloodied, beaten face. He knew exactly who I was talking about. And the realization of why he was strapped to that chair finally dawned on him.
“Look, man—” he started.
“Oh look,” I said, cutting him off. “The shithead actually speaks. The cat doesn't actually have this scumbag's tongue like I'd thought.”
The guys all laughed, which only made Joaquin look more nervous than he already was—something I didn't think was humanly possible.
“Of course, you know who she is,” I continued. “You know her because you were Jen's dealer.”
“She had money, man,” he said, his voice thick. “What am I supposed to do, turn her away? I didn't know her from anythin', dude. Seriously. She came to me, man. She's an adult, she ain't no schoolkid, so what the fuck, bro? Why you and your boys got me tied to this chair, whoopin' my ass like this for?”
“One, because my boys and I here work hard to keep Milling a nice place to live. A place you can raise a family in peace,” I said. “We don't tolerate lowlifes and degenerates. Especially when those lowlifes and degenerates are pumping poison into our streets.”
He shook his head. “I'm just supplyin' a service, bro,” he said. “There's a demand—”
“I don't give a shit,” I said. “Like I said, my brothers and I work hard to keep the streets of Milling clean and safe. It's our job to take out the trash here—trash like you, asshole.”
“C'mon man,” he whined. “Gimmie a break here. I promise to leave Milling. Never come back. I swear on my mama's grave.”
Ace laughed and shook his head. “Yeah, you swore on your poor, dead mama's grave last time, too,” he said. “We see how that worked out, huh?”
“Did you know that Jen was cleaning herself up?” I asked, staring him in the eye. “Did you know that she was getting clean and was starting to put her life back together?”
“C'mon, bro,” he said. “You know hardcore junkies like her ain't ever gonna get clean. Not for long, anyway.”
“Not as long as there are pieces of shit like you running around, preying on people,” I said. “Even after she tried to stop, you wouldn't let her go, would you? She was already into you for a lot of money, wasn't she? And if she got clean, you might never see that cash, huh? So after she went to that fancy rehab and was getting straight, you had to run right over and make sure she didn't actually get off the stuff, didn't you? You had to make sure she was still hooked to your shit, didn't you, dickhead?”
“Man, that's not even how it
went down,” Joaquin said. “I'm bein' one hundred percent here, bro. I didn't look for her to get back on the shit. She came to me.”
I laughed bitterly. “Yeah, and you knew she'd been in rehab,” I said. “You knew she was fighting to keep her sobriety and you went and fucked it all up for her. Because you're greedy. You're selfish. You're a worthless piece of shit.”
“You're a shit stain on the diaper of Milling, Joaquin,” Ace said.
“That's not how it went, bro—”
“Stand him up,” I said. “I'm tired of listening to his mouth.”
A couple of the guys cut the duct tape off his hands and ankles. He flexed his hands to work through some of cramping. They hauled him to his feet, and he looked petrified.
“You scared, Joaquin?” I asked.
He looked around one more time, and his nearly swollen shut eyes looked like something straight out of the comic books.
“You're fuckin A- right he's scared,” I said. “As he should be.”
“Look, bro—”
I never let Joaquin finish his sentence. Instead, I drove my fist into his midsection and was rewarded with a satisfying grunt of pain. He doubled over, nearly falling to his knees. Two of my guys grabbed him and picked him up, forcing him to stay up on his feet.
“We don't tolerate your kind of trash around here,” I said. “That kind of shit might fly in whatever ghetto you come from, but it don't fly here—bro.”
“Dude,” he gasped. “I swear you're never gonna see me again. Just let me go. Please. I'm beggin' ya.”
“Yeah, you're right,” I said. “We're never gonna see you again, that's for sure.”
“Please, bro,” he started to cry. “Please, don't do this. I swear—”
“Yeah, your word means exactly shit,” Ace growled. “You're a proven liar, for one thing—”
“And you poison fucking children,” I finished. “Not to mention the fact that you prey on people trying to get their lives together.”
“The weak and the kids,” Ace said. “That makes you a two-time loser.”
I stepped forward again and drove my fist into his stomach once more. The men continued to hold him up, laughing as Joaquin continued to cry and beg for his life. I reached back and drove my fist into his face, feeling his nose crumple beneath my knuckles.
“Oh Jesus Christ,” Ace said. “The little bitch pissed himself.”
I looked up and saw that the front of Joaquin's jeans were soaked through with piss. The guys holding him grumbled in disgust and let him fall to the ground—and into his puddle of piss—where he curled into a ball and wept loudly.
I rolled my eyes. “Have some fuckin' dignity, man.”
I delivered a vicious kick to Joaquin's kidneys. He squealed in pain as my steel-toed boot connected with his flesh, and his sobs only grew louder. I reached back and delivered kick after kick after kick, to any body part that made itself available to me. He wheezed and cried the whole time.
After a while, I grew tired of it. Tired of hearing him crying. And especially tired of smelling piss in the air.
“Time to say goodnight, Joaquin.”
I picked my foot up and brought it down, heel first onto his head. He grunted and groaned—and then wailed like a child.
“Okay, guys,” I said. “Civic duty time. We're taking out the trash and keeping the streets of our fair city free from pricks like this. Everybody step on up and give it a whack.”
There was some applause and excited chatter among the boys. Taking out the trash was something we all enjoyed. Yeah, we should have felt bad because technically, they were still human beings. But the fact that they were scumbags like Joaquin took a lot of the guilt away.
One by one, the brothers stepped up and drove the heel of their boots down onto the head of this piece of shit, just like I had. With each successive man, the cracking sound in Joaquin's head grew louder. Eventually, there was a loud snap and a pop—and then he stopped moving altogether.
Joaquin's head had collapsed in on itself. All that remained was his body and a lumpy pile of red meat on the floor of the garage. Joaquin had left the building.
“Get Fuzzy in here to clean this up,” I said. “And tell the prospects to be here for whatever he needs.”
Fuzzy was the club fixer. He had a talent for discretion and a knack for making problems disappear. He'd been doing work for us for quite a while, and I always appreciated his thoroughness and attention to detail. There was nobody I would trust more with a job like this.
“Nice work, boys,” I said. “Good job on doing your part to keep this community beautiful and clean. Proud of you all. Now, let's go get a fuckin' beer.”
Chapter 9
Jameson
“I know you've gotta be hungry,” I called through the door early the next morning.
I stood outside of Isabelle's room with hot coffee and a bag full of food for her. And of course, she was refusing to answer me—and refusing to open the door.
“The coffee might be shit,” I said, “but these breakfast sandwiches are to die for. Seriously. They're life changing. You like bacon, right? I mean, who doesn't like bacon, but you never know these days. People got all kinds of sensitivities and allergies and shit. You're not a damn vegetarian, are you?”
I continued talking, even though she didn't answer. Nothing but silence on the other side of the door. I figured that if I kept standing there talking to her, she'd eventually get tired of it and open the door. Either that or she'd call the police. That was about as close to a plan as I had. I was just hoping she didn't call the police—I still had a warrant out for my arrest. Old ticket. Nothing serious, but I didn't want to spend a night in jail over it.
“Come on, Isabelle,” I called. “Your coffee is getting cold. And if it tastes like shit when it's hot and fresh, I can't imagine what—”
She surprised me by opening the door. Standing there in a ratty motel robe that definitely had seen better days, her hair wet and dripping, I thought she looked adorable. There was no way in hell I was going to tell her that. Her eyes were narrowed and her jaw set, and she glared at me, the expression on her face one of contempt that said she wished nothing but pure death upon me.
“Hungry?” I asked, holding out the bag and smiling.
I swore I saw a smile slowly and sneakily creeping across her lips. But if I had, she pushed it away as quickly as it had come. It was gone and there was nothing but that ever so familiar scowl upon her face again.
She took the bag from my hand along with the cup of coffee. She turned, and for a second, I thought she might shut the motel room door on me and disappear inside without so much as a thank you. But in the next biggest surprise of my day, she'd actually left it open—as if telling me it was okay to come inside. Without actually telling me, of course. Because, you know, we wouldn't want to have to acknowledge that I'd helped her or anything.
I took it as a sign and walked into the motel room. Just before crossing the threshold, I had the unsettling image of her sitting there on the edge of the bed with a gun in her hand. Clearly, I'd been in the MC life too long.
“Maybe after breakfast, I can run you to a store, get you some clothes,” I offered. “I bet you could use a change or two, huh?”
Isabelle sat down at the table near the air conditioning unit but said nothing. She'd left a seat open for me across from her at the tiny table, so I didn't wait for an invitation—one that likely wasn't going to be forthcoming since her power of speech had apparently deserted her this morning. I sat down as she opened the sandwich and grimaced, slightly.
“It's better than it looks, I promise,” I said. “Which isn't saying much, I know. But still...”
“I sure as hell hope so,” she said.
She took a napkin and dabbed up the extra grease that had pooled around the edges of the bun on the paper. I watched as the napkin quickly became completely saturated with grease. As she was doing that, she must have realized what a jerk she was being, because she look
ed up and gave me a soft smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.
“Thank you, Jameson. I appreciate the food.”
“Figured you'd be hungry,” I said, taking a sip of the coffee. Mine was black. Couldn't stand all the cream and sugar people loaded down their coffee with. “There's some creamer and packets of sugar in the bag. I wasn't sure how many you needed, and I didn't want to assume anything.”
“Thanks,” she said again, this time she said it a little more clearly and with a little less mumbling. She actually sounded sincerely appreciative. Progress. We were making progress.
She took slow, small bites of the sandwich and washed them down with coffee. Though she looked like she was having a tough time choking it down and thinking that the sandwich was every bit as terrible as it looked. I didn't get it. I'd grown up on these things and yeah, they might’ve been a little greasy, but they had a hell of a lot of flavor. Granted, most of the flavor came from the grease, but still...
The room was silent as she munched away on her sandwich, and I sat there staring at her, drinking my coffee, like an awkward teenage boy. Even in her stained blouse and no makeup on, she was a hot piece. Deciding I needed to make some small talk with her to hopefully break the wall of frost between us, I asked, “So how's the car coming along?”
Isabelle sighed, rolling her eyes, and I figured that maybe that was the wrong question to ask. As I thought back on how upset she'd been after finding out she was stuck in town for a few days, I thought maybe she’d calmed down a bit. Clearly, I was mistaken.
She surprised me by swallowing down the bite of her sandwich. She let out a hefty sigh and responded, “They said it'll still be a few days. The parts got held up in Nebraska, I guess. Some sort of union strike at the warehouse or something. He was really apologetic but said there's nothing he can do. I understand it, of course, but I'm still just as frustrated.”
“Shit,” I said, taking a bite of my bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich, reveling in the flavor and all that grease. “That blows.”
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