At just after noon, the sun beamed around him, highlighting the new green of spring. The scent of dirt and foliage assailed his nostrils and he breathed in deeply, praying he’d get to enjoy these smells again. Logically, he knew the summons more than likely pertained to his father. Or one of his father’s men. Or anybody other than him. But some moments in life required irrationality, especially if it involved Outlaw.
Digger thought about Bunny and what she’d come to mean to him. Their friendship. He’d found in Bunny what he never had before—a woman in his corner. All he’d needed to do was fucking wait until it was his time to find a girl. But, no. He’d been a miserable motherfucker and he’d forced a situation with a bitch who only thought of herself. Peyton could’ve been an angel, but if they weren’t into each other, neither of them would’ve been happy in the long run.
Bunny, though, was vulnerable and allowed Digger to see that side of her. Despite the hurt she’d gone through—the hang-ups she had—she’d retained a small bit of innocence that allowed her to trust him, even if just a little bit.
Until Outlaw stepped out of the meatshack, puffing on a joint, Digger didn’t realize he’d stopped. At first he didn’t notice Digger, but the moment he caught sight of him, he lasered him with a cold, green stare.
Uneasy, Digger glanced over his shoulder, knowing if he bitched out he’d have no escape. First of all, he was a crippled motherfucker so he wouldn’t get far. Second, Outlaw would pull his piece and shoot the fuck out of him. Only so much leniency the man handed out.
“You plannin’ on gettin’ the fuck in this motherfucker today?” Outlaw called, pinching the weed to extinguish it and then shoving it in the pocket of his jeans.
Instead of answering, Digger hobbled the rest of the way, his heart pounding at Outlaw’s unyielding study of him. Right outside the door, Digger averted his gaze, not wanting to set Outlaw off.
“Get the fuck inside,” he ordered, turning around and disappearing through the door, leaving Digger no choice but to follow.
Arms folded, dressed in his meatshack uniform, Mortician lounged against the wall, looking bored. Johnnie paced, the light in his eyes making his current sanity questionable. Val leaned on a counter, cleaning his fingernails with his blade. On the table? Sharper, strapped, already exposed and bloodied, his mouth taped.
“You can stay or you can go,” Mortician said, lifting his brow. “I asked Prez to let you come and decide for yourself.”
Closing his eyes, Digger hung his head. Any remorse stinging him melted away at the memory of his father standing over Tyler’s body and pumping him with bullets. He remembered how his father had allowed Char to terrorize Bailey, pregnant with Harley at the time. Indeed, Sharper had tried to fuck Bailey himself. But she’d been so fucking drugged, Digger doubted she actually recalled all that had happened to her. As he pushed thoughts of his sister-in-law out of his head, all those dead girls marched through his mind, especially the last two. The one Tyler had raped and killed and left with a knife protruding from her eye.
The girl barely alive who Digger had killed.
He stared at his father, so helpless now, naked and stripped of his dignity. Poetic justice. How many innocent women had he terrorized? Allowed Char to use for her amusement before disposing them, if Sharper deemed them a true throwaway, unable to follow the rules of society and not good enough to sell in his sex ring.
Everything his father represented disgusted Digger.
He walked the short distance to the top of the table and studied Sharper. They’d never been particularly close, not even when Digger had run to him, but they shared blood. He swallowed. “Why?”
When the question fell from his lips, it surprised him. He didn’t need to ask that because he already knew his father was one of the most evil motherfuckers around. Years ago, something had tainted his stability and he’d taken out most of his anger on women.
“Misogynistic motherfucker. How the fuck it feel having the roles reversed? How it feel knowing you about to fucking die?” He narrowed his eyes. “I want you to fucking scream like you made all those girls scream.”
Sharper grunted, his eyes traveling between Digger and Outlaw, who stood at the foot of the table trembling with rage.
Mort ripped the tape from Sharper’s mouth. “You said something?”
“The key,” he managed with a small laugh.
Johnnie stopped next to Outlaw. “What fucking key?”
“You keep talking about a key,” Digger announced, shaking his head in confusion. “I always thought Meggie was that, but I’m thinking there’s an actual key. What does it all mean?”
Through his haze of pain, Sharper smiled. The curve of his mouth and his bloodshot eyes gave him the appearance of a demon. “B-both. She’s the key to the key.”
Before Digger thought of a response, Sharper howled.
Digger jerked, his gaze traveling from his father’s face and the sudden tears leaking from the corner of his eyes down his body, honing in on the ice pick protruding from one of his knees. Outlaw went to the counter and grabbed another ice pick, stabbing Sharper’s other knee. His pitiful wails only enraged Outlaw further. He aimed his gun at Sharper’s cock.
“Prez! You promised,” Mort said quickly. “The motherfucker mine.”
Outlaw’s trigger finger twitched.
“Six-three-four-two-six.” Sharper’s voice was shaky.
Val squeezed next to Johnnie. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“Never know if you kill me.”
They all looked to Outlaw. With a growl, he re-aimed before firing his nine into Sharper’s arm. “Now, motherfucker, Ima put fuckin’ holes all fuckin’ over you, until you talk, but Ima leave your fuckin’ ass alive so Mort can finish you off. I fuckin’ owe him that after what the fuck you did to his boy.”
“Take my secrets to my grave.” Even now, Sharper was arrogantly defiant.
“You fuckin’ think?” Outlaw roared. “How ‘bout I fuckin’ keep you the fuck alive for six, seven months and torture you every fuckin’ day?”
Uncertainty and fear slid across Sharper’s features before his face cleared, leaving behind only pain. “You wouldn’t.”
“Oh, I fuckin’ would. We already fuckin’ saw to the gunshot from the church.”
“And ripped the bandages away when you strapped me on your inhumane table.”
“None of your fuckin’ injuries life-threatenin’,” Outlaw said coldly. “At least, not fuckin’ yet. I can keep you fuckin’ alive however the fuck long I want to.”
They all knew Outlaw backed up his words with actions. Perhaps, that was the reason Sharper blurted directions and said, “You have a key somewhere? One that you may or may not know the origins of?”
Outlaw’s brows lifted in surprise. “Yeah.”
“Follow the directions I gave you and that key will work.”
“That was Big Joe’s key, assfuck.”
“It’s still good,” Sharper insisted.
“What the fuck the key go to?”
Instead of answering Outlaw, Sharper clamped his mouth shut.
Outlaw fired into Sharper’s other arm.
“Christopher, if you fill him full of fucking holes, he’s going to die before any of us get a chance at him,” Johnnie protested.
Shoving his nine away, Outlaw scowled. “Ain’t no fuckin’ us. It’s Mort and this motherfucker if he wanna stay,” he said, pointing to Digger.
“The fuck you say!” Johnnie yelled. “This motherfucker raided our club and shot my fucking wife.”
“Wasn’t me,” Sharper protested weakly.
Johnnie cursed, dug into his cut, and grabbed his blade, jabbing Sharper’s thigh and slicing downward, unconcerned at the screams. “Now, he’s fucking yours, Mortician,” he fumed and stormed out of the building.
Slob sliding down his chin, Sharper sobbed, twisting against the restraints. “Please!” he hollered. “HELP! Someone, please help me! They’re going to kill me. I don�
��t deserve to die like this. My only crime is loving Logan! And hating him.” He struggled on the table, although the restraints didn’t allow much movement. “Help me!”
“Lemme get the fuck outta here before I fuck this pussy up,” Outlaw snarled in disgust and stomped away.
Val shrugged and followed behind Outlaw.
“You staying?” Mort asked, studying Digger.
“Yeah,” he answered without hesitation, drowning out Sharper’s wails.
After grabbing a toolbox and setting it on one of the stools near Sharper’s head, Mort snapped on a pair of plastic gloves, doubling them before sliding on longer rubber gloves. He sat in the second stool, opened his toolbox and retrieved a pair of tooth extraction forceps.
Mort smiled nastily. “I think it’s time you really screamed, old man.”
Following the directions yanked from Sharper and with the numbers six-three-four-two-six in his head, Christopher coasted to a stop as Mortician, Johnnie, and Val did the same. The key so long amongst the others on his ring now had a place to go with it. A house from the looks of it.
“What kind of a fucking game is this?” Johnnie bit out, staring at the neat, two-story house with the red shutters. “This house? This is where Caroline killed herself. Where Logan stayed while he was here.”
“Somebody been keeping it up,” Val said, pointing to the manicured lawn.
Mortician rocked on his heels. “Think this a fucking set up?”
“Fuck, it made fuckin’ sense Sharper would fuckin’ provide Logan a place to stay,” Christopher said aloud, drawing his nine and moving forward.
“You’re going in?” Johnnie asked in outrage.
“Yeah, motherfucker. Whatever the fuck in that fuckin’ house caused a lot of fuckin’ mayhem.”
The key opened the door without any glitches. Before they did any-fucking-thing else, they each went in different directions, doing a sweep of the house to make sure no motherfucker lay in wait.
Everything was clear, except for dust and bloodstains and an eerie feeling, not one fucking thing looked out of order.
“This motherfucker got a basement?” Christopher asked as Val walked through the house opening and closing doors.
“This might be something,” he called down the stairs.
As they walked up, Johnnie explained how he’d killed a motherfucker from a rival gang in that very place.
Reaching the second floor, Christopher looked up and down the hallway, brightly lit by the sun glimmering through the windows. “Where you at, Val?”
“This way. Last room, left side.”
In the room, they all halted and stared at the door Val had found. What made this one different was it sat behind a wall that Val had somehow opened and had a combination lock clamped onto it.
“How you found this, Val?”
“I was just pressing on the wall and it clicked open, Outlaw.”
Fuck. What the fuck was beyond that door? With Sharper and Logan, anything was possible.
“What do you think is through that door?” Val whispered, sweat beading his brow as he echoed Christopher’s thought.
“The fuckin’ bogie man,” Christopher snapped. “How the fuck I know? My ass seein’ this for the first fuckin’ time just like you.”
Val frowned at the dirty door. “How are we supposed to get in there?”
“I…” Christopher’s voice trailed off, the numbers Sharper had taunted him with rising in his head. “Hold my nine,” he instructed Mortician. Once Mort complied, Christopher dialed the numbers on the lock, rewarded when it clicked open.
“Fuck, that was a combination he gave you?” Mort asked, caught between outrage and fear as a staircase came into view, seemingly leading into nothing but a black void. The pitch darkness didn’t offer a clue about what the fuck lay down those stairs.
Johnnie shoved a flashlight in Christopher’s hand. He hadn’t realized the motherfucker wasn’t with them until just then. “Use this.”
“Wait, Prez.” Mortician halted him when he would’ve gone forward. “What was those numbers again?”
“Six-three-four-two-six,” he answered, wondering why Mort found his phone so fascinating.
“Look at your phone. The letters that go with those numbers,” Mort said.
It took a moment, but the word M-e-g-a-n finally clicked.
Val gave him a wide-eyed look. “Holy shit, that spells Meggie’s name.”
She’s the key to the key. Sharper’s words rose in Christopher’s head.
Not wasting any more time, he stepped onto the rickety landing, shining the flashlight down the steps. At first, he saw nothing but two file boxes, until he scanned the far side of the room.
“Ain’t this a motherfucker,” he said.
Johnnie peeped in. “What?”
“There.” Christopher pointed to what he’d seen and raised his flashlight higher. “That.”
“What the fuck that be?” Mort called.
“Fuck,” Johnnie whispered.
“Is that a good fuck or a bad fuck?” Val asked.
Lined along the walls were two pallets, one stacked with bricks of cocaine, Christopher assumed, since it looked similar to how they packaged their merchandise. The other pallet contained bricks of money. To make sure the shit was real, Christopher walked down the steps and got a closer look, ignoring the closed-in, musty smell.
“This a lot of fuckin’ money.” More than he’d ever seen in his life.
“All real?” Val asked.
“Fuck if I know. The shit might be counterfeit.” That was the only explanation for all this money forgotten in a fucking basement in a house best forgotten.
Before he decided what to do, Christopher carried the two file boxes upstairs and headed to the kitchen, where the only table in the house sat.
The first box contained letters, some of them the originals of the copies Bailey had found in KP’s closet. Along with the letters were photos of Sharper and Logan in every imaginable sexual position.
“Fucking hypocrites,” Christopher growled, disgusted by the hell Logan had put him through when he himself lived a double life. He shoved the box away and focused on the second box.
Inside it were more photos, but these were of Megan as a three-year-old, almost a carbon copy of Rebel. As he flipped through the photos, he saw a beautiful little girl had turned into a gorgeous woman. One whom her daddy had loved, if all the photos were any indication.
And Christopher had no doubt these pictures had been Big Joe’s. One giveaway was his presence in the photos, especially between the years Megan had been born and had grown into a toddler. After that, it was mainly Dinah and Megan, the exception being photo of the three of them at Disneyland, where Megan looked to be nine or ten.
“Prez?”
“Yo, Mort?” he answered, distracted. Big Joe had seemed so happy in the photos when Megan had been a baby. He’d looked like a family man, but he had to have missed the club, which was the reason he returned.
Would Christopher miss it, too?
“I think I know why Sharper decided to get to Meggie.”
Frowning, Christopher looked at Mort, grabbing the piece of paper he held.
It was the deed to the house. In Megan’s name.
“That means all the contents in it belongs to Megan,” Johnnie said, his eyes wide.
Including drugs and money that Sharper had known about, but Logan hadn’t. Or, maybe, he had.
“Might be what kept Big Joe alive.” Christopher spoke the thought aloud. “If only he knew where this shit was and only he knew the combination and it was making that type of bank, they wouldna wanted him fuckin’ dead.”
“At some point, Sharper found what the combination was,” Johnnie pointed out.
Christopher thought for a moment. “Probably durin’ one of Big Joe’s drug-induced hazes he blurted the shit out. But even then the motherfucker had a sense of survival. He wasn’t givin’ up the fuckin’ key.”
“Maybe, no
t even the location,” Val offered. “Some fucker took great pains to hide that.”
Val was probably right.
“Where you think all that cash came from?” he asked. “If it’s real?”
“The drugs,” Christopher answered, trying to put two and two together, but it was hard when all he had to go on was what he knew about a bunch of dead motherfuckers. “And I think Big Joe bought his fuckin’ life by supplyin’ the fuckin’ money to bank roll the sex ring. They musta fuckin’ known this house in Megan name. Once Big Joe was gone, only she stood in the way of Sharper gettin’ to that fuckin’ stash.”
That’s why she’d been the key and motherfuckers had come from all directions once Christopher married her.
“Are you telling Megan?” Johnnie asked.
“I’m bringin’ her the photos. The rest of this shit? No. I ain’t gonna have her lookin’ over her fuckin’ shoulder the rest of her fuckin’ life wonderin’ if another motherfucker out to take her out.”
“The drugs?” Mort said.
“We gotta get some light in this motherfucker and we’ll check the shit. It looked pretty fuckin’ airtight.”
“The money?” Val asked.
Christopher shrugged. “We split it equal.”
“You know by right that belongs to your wife,” Johnnie said tightly.
“That mean the drugs do too, motherfucker, and I ain’t gettin’ her involved in this shit. If you don’t want the fuckin’ money, more for fuckin’ us.”
They fell silent and Christopher carried both boxes to his Harley, stuffing his saddlebags to the brim with photos and documents, and making the others do the same until he’d taken everything. Before he left, he secured the door, breathing in the fresh air. Inside had been oppressive, surrounded by the presence of Logan.
Motherfucker tainted wherever he touched.
At least, he knew what the fuck the key represented.
He only wished Megan wasn’t involved.
Death Dwellers Motorcycle Club:: Fifteen Bad Boy Biker Books Page 269