There was a word for that, wasn’t there?
A car horn blared behind me, drawing my attention to the now-green light in front of me, and I waved a half-apologetic, half-thankful hand over my shoulder as I started forward. Riding on, trying to both remember what I’d been thinking a moment earlier as well as simultaneously trying to herd my thoughts as far from that crazed cycle of self-serving, psycho-analytical bullshit as I could. The irony that I couldn’t achieve one of those feats without immediately failing miserably at the other had me once again laughing like a lunatic. Once more considering how I must have appeared to any onlooker, I found myself thankful that Mia wasn’t there to see me like this. Though I doubted that the scene would be enough to convince her to up-and-leave me in that instant—though, to be fair to her, she’d have every right to—I couldn’t help but feel that I owed her a better version of myself than the crazy bastard a bunch of cruel years had twisted me into.
I was, after all, quite broken in the grand scheme of things.
Then, like a whisper from a nearly dead source of wisdom long-since buried in the rocky depths of my mind, a part of me thought, You’re not the only one…
And that was nearly enough to have me slamming on the brakes once more, this time without the benefit of a street light to justify the action.
It finally occurred to me then, coming to me in the instant when I’d all-but given up on finding a reason. Seeming so obvious in that moment, I wondered why it had ever seemed a mystery to me at all.
Why should I feel this way? Why should anal sex with Mia turn me into this when anal sex with any other girl, Anne included, never had? Why was I acting so strangely in the wake of everything that had happened?
Elementary, my dear dipshit… I thought.
(Suddenly seeing the two of us, mutually broken and near death, leaning against one another, supporting one another, and working our way free of the burning building so that we could save ourselves and alert the EMTs that Danny was still inside, saving him, as well.)
Because for the first time in my life, I was with a person whom I connected with so perfectly with that I no longer felt inclined to worry about where we might not connect. Like the well-oiled workings in my chopper, Mia and I meshed so well that neither of us had to worry about grinding the other’s gears.
And while a part of me felt like I was doing Anne’s memory a disservice through this thought process, I couldn’t help but think that her death was part of the reason things had turned out this way. A perfect gear had no trouble meshing with another perfect gear, after all; in most instances a perfect gear might even be able to pick up some of the slack brought on by a busted gear that it was partnered with. But what about when two broken gears were brought together? It was incredibly unlikely that two broken gears, perhaps jammed together by a cruel and sadistic cosmic mechanic, might manage to function even remotely. And a broken gear, knowing what it was, would forever feel like a burden if it found itself paired with a perfect gear, whether or not the pairing stood a chance of functioning. But what if two such busted gears, lonely and certain of their own uselessness, happened upon one another? What if they discovered that, by some divine miracle, their raging imperfections actually managed to fill in the gaps for the other? That they, busted and tormented as they were, might actually function better than even the newest and best of gears as a unit?
Well, in an event such as that, nobody—not a single goddam soul!—could blame one of those gears for feeling the way I felt; no one would dare question why someone like me should be riding on cloud nine, ten, and onward.
With this in mind (and my purpose once more, for the moment, forgotten), I caught myself in a fresh smile, wore it with pride, and turned at the next intersection.
And who-the-fuck-cared if it was orange or not?
****
Contracts!
There were contracts to be signed and collected regarding a few new business ventures the Crow Gang was undergoing. Among other things, this included a few of the first steps to securing the means to start what would eventually become a self-contained and independent prostitution ring run by none other than Mia’s previous mentor and ongoing best friend, Nancy.
Nancy had abandoned and then just as quickly reclaimed the title of “Candy: Whore Wonder” shortly after she and Mia had liberated themselves from the Carrion Crew and the street corner they’d been condemned to. Since then, Candy—she’d gone so far as to start claiming that Nancy was her “slave name” and none had been bold enough to ask her if she was serious—had taken to her new job with all the ferocity I’d known she would when I first offered it to her. While much of the paperwork I was handling could have just as easily waited another week-or-two, I was certain that Candy’s patience wouldn’t last that long. Through her work for the Carrion Crew, she’d developed something of a working relationship with many of the prostitutes; working relationships that ran too deep and were too personal to simply be filed away as friendships. When news of T-Built’s death spread—and to say that news of his death spread like wildfire was giving wildfires too much credit—many of them had scattered, taking advantage of the opportunity to slip the almost literal bonds of slavery.
But this had left many of them in almost as bad a situation as they’d started in. Though their work with the Carrion Crew paid practically nothing and exposed them to conditions on par with outright torture, they at least had homes and protection. With little other choice than to continue selling their bodies to survive, they were now susceptible to even greater cruelties while having no home or sense of safety to show for it.
Years earlier, back when my dad was in charge of the Crow Gang and the Carrion Crew wasn’t even a concept, he’d worked hand-in-hand with a small group of prostitutes who’d worked to unionize themselves. Back then, my father, seeing the benefits such a thing presented to the city, worked with those ladies to create jobs and circulate revenue that helped to strengthen not only the still-young Crows, but also the entire city. Without forcing them to work for the Crows—going to great lengths, in fact, to prevent it—he offered housing, protection, and healthcare for the prostitution rings in exchange for discounted services for their members and affiliates as well as their help in raising funds for “less than legal” needs to maintain the underground system that all-but kept the city running. Rumors of this “bordello” had been enough to bring in outside money, which quickly cycled through the city and created new jobs and revenue for everyone, crime affiliated or straight. Without naming names, my dad had boasted that a few of the city’s most influential politicians had gained enough leverage to do right by the city with the revenue generated by that work.
Now, years later—after dismantling the twisted prostitution ring and outright ending the illegal sex trafficking work that the Carrion Crew had been operating—I was aiming to reboot what my father and those pioneering women had started. And now, with “Mistress Candy” raring to get her old comrades off the streets and “playing the whore-game right,” I was forced to race to keep up with her. This, however, I couldn’t even begin to mind—it was, after all, why I’d wanted her to take the job in the first place.
As I dragged my cramping hand through the process of yet another signature, I wondered if my dad had ever found himself as intimidated by his brothel-running colleagues as I felt with Candy. She was sharp as a razor, funny as hell, and the best friend Mia could ever hope for, but she was intense!
“You get me those papers, big boy,” she’d said over the phone earlier that morning, “or Mia’s gonna need a boat and SCUBA gear to take you on your next date!”
Sure as I was that Candy wasn’t about to be taking things to a Medieval point anytime soon, the fact that she saw fit to issue such threats was motivation enough to ride out and handle the business. I finished up the last of the signatures and began itemizing various lists and documenting various phone numbers and email addresses so that various permits could be assigned (or *ahem* reproduced). A man who cal
led himself Robert even though we both knew that wasn’t his name prattled on about how much he’d enjoyed working for my dad and then how much he’d enjoyed working for my brother. He was in the middle of explaining how much he was enjoying working for me—though, after the last of this work was settled, the bulk of his ongoing business would be going through Danny—when my phone buzzed with a new text message. I passively retrieved it, expecting either something Crow-related from Danny, cute and-slash-or sexy from Mia, or twisted and threatening from Candy.
I was wrong on all guesses:
FROM: UNKNOWN NUMBER
meet me on the
conrer of church
annd lyle in 29
mins. com alone.
IMPORTANT!!
re: mia
Though I wasn’t sure how long I’d been frowning down at my phone, it was obviously long enough for not-Robert to finally glance at the message and inject a nugget of wisdom:
“Someone can’t spell for shit, can they?”
I pressed the power button on my phone, casting the screen and the message on it into blackness, and slipped it back into my jacket pocket. “Someone can’t mind their fucking business, can they?” I rebutted, shooting him my best “I’m the big boss here”-glare. Then, knowing how to put the scare in guys like this, I added, “It’s not too late for me to void those checks and take my business elsewhere.”
Not-Robert’s eyes widened in an instant of telling terror, then narrowed to dagger-like slits. He grinned, a forced gesture if ever I’d seen one, and wet his lips before saying, “And you think you’ll fair better with anybody else?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” I admitted, giving a casual and very not forced shrug. “But you’ve got more at stake if you lose the Crow’s protection than we’ve got if we lose your business. Especially with the news we’ve been getting regarding your little back-and-forth with the Feds.”
Not-Robert’s chest swelled with a panicked gasp, then he held it. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to look tough or if he was just holding his breath and hoping to bribe a witty response from his oxygen-deprived brain. In either case, neither worked for him. “And if I decide to take my business to the Carrion Crew instead?” he asked, challenging me with the only real ammunition he had at that point.
I issued a sincere laugh at that and leaned back, folding my arms across my chest. “Then I guess I’ll need a rowboat and some SCUBA gear to find you the next time we meet,” I said, hoping Candy wouldn’t mind that I borrowed her threat. “Since I’m pretty sure that some loose lips might let it be known that you had some very direct involvement in issuing phony docking permits to prevent any future attempts at shipping in any future product,” I said, holding up a few of the topmost contracts I’d just signed. “Guns, drugs, girls,” I recited a portion of the list of things that the paperwork would help prevent the Carrions from sneaking into the city; three of the things that had, up until that moment, represented the Carrion’s biggest cash crops. Then, tsking him, I added, “How do you think they’d react to a man who’s taken such steps against their business immediately showing up at their door and asking for work?”
Not-Robert gulped and looked down, turning bright red.
I nodded, made a show of gathering up the stack of papers and setting them out of his reach, and laced my fingers together in front of me on top of the table. “So, yeah, Robert, I’m not sure how well the Crows would fair if we had to take this business”—I gave the stack a casual pat with my left hand—“to somebody else. But I’m pretty sure we’d fair better than you if we did.” I re-laced my fingers and gave a shrug, admittedly a very juvenile and arrogant breed of shrug, pairing it with a smile to match. “So, what do you say, Robert,” I challenged, “you liked working with my old man and my brother, right? Who’s to say you won’t like working with me… provided you mind your fucking business and watch your fucking mouth.”
Not-Robert paused then, making an obvious show of sizing me up with his eyes and cocking a brow. “You packing, Presley?” he asked, sounding skeptical.
“Just a small-caliber and a big dick, Rob,” I answered with the straightest face I could manage. “And I’m a lousy shot with both; keep getting bitches in the belly when I try to aim at their face. Trust me, that gets messy. You don’t want to get messy, do you, Robert?”
We held each other’s gazes for a long, awkward time then.
The old-fashioned, crooked clock on the wall ticked away the moments, working in time with a throbbing vein in not-Robert’s throat.
And then we were laughing.
“You’re like your pops, Presley,” not-Robert boasted, giving me a few sharp slaps on the shoulder. “Biggest balls in the city and bronzed to a blinding shine!”
All in a day’s work, I thought, forcing the laughter to roll on as I let my mind wander back to that mysterious text.
****
Not-Robert, nosy prick though he might have been, had made a good point. Whoever had texted me couldn’t spell for shit. Worse yet, in their obviously sloppy and likely rushed typing process, they’d either mistyped “twenty” as “twenty-eight”—It’s just so hard when the zero’s that close to the eight, right, dumbass?—or they were operating on a strict half-hour schedule and had adjusted for a two-minute lag between when the message was sent and when I’d eventually read it. Considering that little “re: Mia”-bit, though, I wasn’t taking any chances one way or the other. I broke close to a dozen traffic laws and probably more than a hundred general codes of courtesy in the process, but I made it to the corner of Church Street and Lyle Avenue in under fifteen minutes.
Even if the mystery sender hadn’t mentioned Mia by name, that they were having me meet them at this corner—Mia’s corner!—would’ve made the subject obvious enough.
Except that it wasn’t Mia’s corner. Not anymore. She and Candy had been stationed there, sure, but Mia’s days as a prostitute were over and Candy would never have to work a street corner ever again. Now it was just a random intersection; another corner of concrete and lights with a little extra nugget of sordid history haunting the alleys. Now it was nothing. But then, at the same time, it would never be nothing—not to Mia or Candy, and not to me. That much was evident from the whirlwind of thoughts storming about my skull as I pulled up the corner and killed the engine to my chopper.
I was early.
I was early, so I couldn’t be surprised that the only people there seemed shocked to see me pull up as aggressively as I did. Their bewildered, nervous faces were evidence enough that they weren’t expecting a leather-clad biker to rocket up to that corner like a kamikaze pilot who’d traded in his plane for a set of wheels so he could wage a personal street war on them. Once certain I wasn’t about to go on a killing spree—What a stupid thing to stand still and wait for, I thought—they hurried along and left me and this nothing-yet-everything corner of sidewalk alone to our business.
Only our business was on hold until our mystery sender, the one responsible for “reuniting” us, finally showed.
In the meantime, I began contemplating the possible sources.
Though a good number of them might have known about me and Mia—might have known about Mia’s history as a prostitute for the Carrion Crew—it was unlikely that many knew the corner she worked. Moreover, anyone with the Crow Gang would know better than to get cryptic like that with me. That ruled out any of mine. However, on the opposite side of the gang-related coin…
It wouldn’t be unreasonable to deduce that the mystery sender might be a part of the Carrion Crew. A great number of their members had started off as Crows; hell, the “founding fathers” of the Crew were mostly comprised of some of the original Crows—men who’d worked directly beside my father before deciding to betray him and everything the Crows represented. Almost every day the Crows lost a few members, folks deciding that we were a sinking ship and that it was either hop aboard the SS Carrion and keep on sailing or sink into the icy waters. That being the case, there were ple
nty of Carrions, new and old alike, who’d not only know about me and Mia, but have access to the details regarding her work with the Crew.
Except that there wasn’t a single member of the Carrion Crew who wouldn’t have missed the chance at issuing a direct threat while sending me a text message. And, at that point, why bother texting me at all? It wasn’t their style to set up shady meetings with an enemy like this; not when they could arrange something more… personal.
The memory of Anne’s and my old house, littered in cop cars and bathed in their flashing lights, and the aftermath of T-Built’s attack on my old life jumped up, and I just as quickly buried it.
Riding On Fumes_Bad Boy Motorcycle Club Romance Page 13