by Jayne Blue
Sarge and I had a past and it wasn’t up to Tracy to atone for. It felt like someone had piled heave stones on my chest. Olivia looked smaller to me today. Her cheekbones were more prominent. I wondered how long she would live in this middle ground between life and death.
I had been living in that same middle ground. Tracy had broken me out of it and I wouldn’t go back. Even if she was gone, I needed to move forward.
Tracy had shown me that and so had Sarge.
I had to re-join my life. Even without Tracy.
I didn’t want to be in the house tonight. It was too big and too empty.
The third floor, which had been my cave, had too many memories now of Tracy.
I wanted to be at the club. I needed to be surrounded by my brothers. I knew I could never leave The Dark Saints. They’d waited until I could come back, whole, if not completely healed.
It was up to me to shoulder what I could of the fight with The Hawks that I had made worse.
I drove to the club. It was the one thing I felt good about in one emotional fucking day. It was where I was supposed to be.
When I got to the MC, I was greeted with hugs, handshakes, fist bumps, and nods. I wasn’t just a member of The Dark Saints, I was an officer and my dad was an OG.
I had been on the outside, a self-imposed exile, and it hadn’t served me. It had made things worse. It was as Sarge said. The MC needed me, sure, but I needed them more.
I had blocked them out long enough. I had handled Jonesy C with my dad, but in the end, the MC had helped us finish the job.
This was my life. The Saints were as much a part of me as Olivia was.
For the first time in almost a year, I sat down at the table for Church. Bear was at the head of the table, E.Z., the veep, to his right. Kade, Benz, Chase, Axle, Zig, they were all there.
“Good to have you back,” Bear said before he pounded the gavel. E.Z. snorted at me. I didn’t expect any different there.
“First up, all in favor of patching Toby in, say eye.”
“Eye.” It was unanimous. I wondered when Fitzie’s turn was. It had to be soon. He’d come through the other day, big.
“Next order of business, Benz, you have something on the petty crime?”
“Yeah, Jen thinks it’s Hawks,” Benz said, and everyone’s temper rose a notch. There’d been muggings, robberies, vandalism on the rise. The stuff The Saints was supposed to help squash was getting worse. Petty crime was on the minds of the people of Port Az. The exact same type of crime that had gotten Tracy that first day she’d worked at The Castle.
Hawks? I was surprised.
“The thugs I ran off didn’t have colors, no patches. No faces. Why does she think it’s Hawks?” I asked.
“She got a print from a knife used at an ATM robbery. Matches to one of their low-level guys from Laredo. Then another witness got a partial plate. That plat was traced to a stolen vehicle out Laredo too.”
“So why are they doing all this without the colors? If they want to start a war, why the masks? Why hide?” Kade asked. Kade had added his own fuel to the fire that was blazing between The Hawks and us.
“They’re trying to destabilize Port Az and undermine us. If The Saints aren’t the saviors anymore, maybe The Hawks can be? That’s their game,” Axle piped up. It was a good theory of why The Hawks were anonymously fucking with Port Az instead of doing it openly like usual.
The bigger plan from The Devil’s Hawks came into focus. They wanted us to look weak.
“Yep. Good a theory as any. I say we fucking do the same in Laredo but with full colors flying. Let ‘em know we won’t take this shit.”
E.Z. was always the first to want to war.
“I say we meet. Give them a warning before we open up a war.”
Axle’s suggestion was my preference.
“Let’s put it to a vote. All in favor of going to Laredo and causing some shit?”
Nearly half the hands rose. E.Z. shot daggers with his eyes at the rest of us who didn’t agree with him.
“All in favor of opening a parlay?”
Everyone else, including me, voted for opening a discussion. I would have been on the other side of this, just a month ago. Fuck it. Go to war. But today, I knew it would put lives on the line. Lives of people I cared about. The vote was probably 60-40 to talk not fight. That balance, though, was precarious.
We voted on a few other pieces of business. I had been keeping up on revenue streams and for the first time in a long time gave a report in person instead of via an envelope carried by Fitzie.
It was good, familiar, and the connection to the world I needed.
As the meeting broke up, Bear asked me to hang back.
“How’s Sarge?”
“He’s okay. The other day nearly did him in.”
“That’s cleaned up, no heat will come from the cops. But The Hawks are another story. They’ll lay that on us soon. They’ve got no body, but they know their guy is fucking gone.”
“I’m sorry for that. Sarge, well, he’s not so sorry. He was the asshole that gunned Olivia.”
“Yeah? Except he wasn’t. Benz’s Old Lady, you know her, right? Jen?”
“Yeah.” I felt a cold stab coming before it landed.
“Your guy, Jonesy C, he was verifiably in the joint when it happened.”
Bear laid the information at my feet. I had never gotten that information. I had never verified where Jonesy C was when the shooting went down. I’d acted immediately after he’d fucked with Tracy, and now, I was at the beginning again.
“I told Sarge it was him. I was sure it was him.”
“Oh, he was an evil fucking cocksucker. You did the universe a favor. But I want this personal revenge shit to stop. Only the officers know what’s what. We’ll keep it that way if you can keep your shit together. No one, I mean no one, wants Sarge to take a fall. So as far as anyone knows, it didn’t happen. And if it did, it was for Olivia.”
“Yep.” I nodded and promised Bear I’d cool it on my vendetta. Inside I was roiling with conflict. Who had pulled the trigger? Nothing I’d done had avenged my sister. I wanted to pull my hair out at the roots in that moment.
“Listen to me. We’re trying to stave off a war. You ask your Dad what that’s like. It’s why he’s not at this table anymore. You cool it. We move on The Hawks as a club, when we decide the time is right, not to handle your personal bullshit. And I’m going to keep this off book, but in exchange, you stay on my side with this war vote. Until I tell you different.” I swallowed hard.
“Yep.”
“You keep your mouth shut, support me no matter what, and Sarge stays in the clear with this Jonesy shit.”
There was always a price to pay. Always.
I walked out of Church with no idea what would come next. Killing Jonesy C hadn’t done a thing to avenge Olivia. Every lead I’d received had turned up cold.
And I was going to do exactly as Bear said. He was right; no one wanted to see Sarge pay for killing Jonesy, least of all me.
I walked into the bar and grabbed a beer.
“Hey.” Kade came up to me.
“Hey.”
“Good to have you back, man.”
“Yeah. I missed it. Some of it.”
“Talked to my Old Lady, looks like Tracy’s going to be sticking around. Harlow was pretty happy about that.”
“What?”
“Yeah, they were talking earlier, and Harlow gave her Old Lady 101. We’re in trouble when those two team up,” Kade said and laughed.
A sinking feeling gripped my chest.
“She was gone, she left. I thought I’d scared her away.”
“What?”
“I came here thinking she was done with me. That she’d moved on.”
“Literally the last thing Harlow told me was that Tracy was excited to tell you she was staying.”
“Kade.”
“Yeah? You look as pale as Sarge all of a sudden.” He put a firm hand on my shoulder.
“I think something’s very fucking wrong.”
22
Tracy
I woke up with absolutely zero idea where I was. Zero. Except I knew I wasn’t at The Castle.
It took a moment to remember what had happened. I had a pounding headache. I tried to reach up and rub the lump that was forming and remembered how it had got there.
Fitzie had hit me. I looked down and realized my legs and wrists were bound with zip ties.
I swallowed a scream. I realized then that my mouth was taped shut. I felt a panic rise. I couldn’t breathe.
I concentrated on slowly inhaling and exhaling through my nose. I could breathe. I was alive. I could figure this out.
I looked around. I was in a basement. Okay, someone’s basement. Fitzie’s basement? There was a small window. It was night.
A could see wooden stairs. If this were like most basements, the stairs would be my only way out.
Images came back to me, the moments before things went black.
Fitzie – he’d been obsessed with Olivia. She was going to tell Maddox. The letters were coming together in my memory.
Why hadn’t I given Maddox that crazy letter right away? Maybe he would have put this together faster than I did.
I felt stupid. There was a deadly regret choking me. I’d missed any sign of danger. If only…
A door at the top of the stairs opened. I recognized Fitzie’s skinny legs and the boots he always wore as he descended the stairs.
“Hi, Tracy,” he said.
I tried to talk but only mumbling came out. The tape did its job. I couldn’t talk to him. Ask for mercy. Or reason with him. I tried to come up with some sort of plan.
“Here.”
Fitzie ripped the tape off fast.
“Ah.”
“I know. Sorry. It’s the only way. Here.”
Fitzie poured water into my mouth. I coughed up most of it but tried to swallow the rest. I had no idea how long I’d been down here. Had it been a few hours? Had a day passed?
He was giving me water. Maybe he hadn’t decided what to do with me.
“Fitzie, why did you do this? If you just untie me, we can go home. Or go to the club.”
“You were going to tell,” Fitzie said and he sat down, cross-legged like a kid, on the cement floor of the basement.
“I wasn’t. I promise I wasn’t.”
“Olivia was going to tell. That’s why I had to do it. I had to shoot her.”
“I’m not her though.”
“I know you’re not her. She was mine. She was going to be my girlfriend. She was meant for me.”
“Okay.”
I didn’t know what to say. It seemed smart to keep him talking to me.
“I wrote her notes, and brought her flowers, and the carving I made, and the picture I drew of her. I gave them to her. She liked them.”
“I’m sure they were pretty.”
“Then she told me to stop. That was what made me mad. And she didn’t like my letters and she was going to tell.”
“Tell who?”
“She was going to tell Maddox, just like you were going to tell Maddox.”
The walk down memory lane turned into panic and rage.
“I wasn’t going to tell! I won’t tell! You can trust me, Fitzie.”
“LIAR!”
Fitzie hit me across the face with the back of his hand and I fell to my side on the concrete. The zip ties made it impossible to break my fall. I curled up in a ball, hoping he wouldn’t hit me again. I tried to protect myself in any way I could. Fitzie was totally unbalanced and I didn’t know what to do next.
“Fitzie. We’re friends,” I said, hoping to find the person that had driven me around town, that had delivered packages for the MC. That Fitzie had to be in there somewhere.
“If you tell, if she tells, I’ll never get into the MC. I had to shoot her. I had to. Now you. I have to.”
“You will get in the MC. I know it. Maddox says so. They know how much work you do. You do everything they ask.”
“I do everything they ask. And I know where the bodies are. You understand?”
I didn’t really understand, except I wondered if this was connected to what Maddox had said earlier about the Devil’s Hawk.
Was Fitzie there when Sarge and Maddox settled the score with Jonesy C?
“I understand. See, you’ll be a Saint soon I bet.”
“No. They keep waiting and waiting and giving me more to do. I already knew the vote today went to Toby, not me.”
Fitzie’s mood swings were scary as hell. He’d been able to hide his obsession with Olivia and his obsession with becoming a Dark Saint.
What else had he hidden?
Fitzie stood up and paced for a few minutes. I kept my mouth shut. Maybe he would forget that he’d taped my mouth shut before and I could keep at least that freedom.
Fitzie’s phone buzzed. He looked at it.
“Shit shit shit,” he said. And he ran up the stairs and shut the door.
If I didn’t think fast, I was dead. Fitzie was crazy and he’d tried to kill once before … at least once.
My mind raced. How was I going to find a way out of this?
23
Maddox
I rode back to the house with Kade, Benz, and Axle by my side. I knew without a doubt something was off. I didn’t have to ask them for help. They were as focused as I was without a shred of proof. I just knew.
“My bet is on The Hawks again,” Kade said.
I agreed. They’d done something to my girl. They’d found out Jonesy C was dead and put the blame where it should go. Me.
And they put the payback where it would hurt the most. Tracy.
“Let’s look around. See if we can get a bead on what’s missing or what’s wrong,” Axle suggested.
“I’m checking on Sarge.”
Kade, Benz, and Axle walked around the first floor while I found Sarge in his room.
“Hey, you up?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
He had fallen asleep in his chair.
“Have you seen Tracy?”
“Yeah, earlier, she was going to bring me some dinner, but I must have dozed off. I’m starving now, must have slept through it.”
I looked around. There was no tray of food. No indication that the old man had eaten a meal in hours.
“She said she was going to bring you food and didn’t?”
“Yeah, but I ain’t mad about it. What’s wrong?”
“Did you hear anything? Or notice anything suspicious tonight?”
“Shit, Maddox. Do you think I’d be sitting here dozing if I did? I’m old, not an idiot.” Sarge growled his answer at me.
“Think. What happened around here after she said she’d make you dinner? You need to think.”
The same dread I’d felt was sinking into Sarge now. I saw him lean forward in his chair and his eyes dart around.
“No, nothing weird. I heard Fitzie’s car earlier. He probably left you something, I guessed. But he does that every few days.”
That was true. I’d let Fitzie come in and out, deliver shit, take things to the club for me.
“Only sound was his car?”
“Yeah, so what? Where’s Tracy?”
“I don’t know but I think she’s in trouble.”
“Find her fast, boy,” Sarge said urgently.
I was already headed to Olivia’s room.
She was a witness to everything and nothing. Her nurse sat there quietly.
“Was Tracy here?”
“Yes, normal evening visit,” she answered.
“Anyone else?”
“No. She looked at those binders of Olivia’s and then left. I guess she was sort of moving fast if I think about it.”
“What binder?” The nurse stood up and opened a dresser drawer. She pulled out three big binders and handed them to me.
“Miss Plumb was using them to make to-do lists I believe. They’re your sister�
��s.”
“Thank you.”
I walked into the kitchen and spread out the books. Color charts, sketches of rooms, to do lists, recipes for Dad’s favorite foods … it almost hurt to see my sister’s vibrant handwriting.
“What you got?” Axle and the others joined me in the kitchen.
“I don’t know. Just page through this. It’s what Tracy was doing the last time the nurse saw her.”
Kade, Axle, and Benz did what I asked. We rifled through as fast as we could.
“Oh, this would be a nice color in here,” Kade said as he held up a paint sample. He was fucking serious.
“Focus?” I said and we kept looking. Benz put a hand on my arm.
“You got something?”
“Olivia didn’t have a boyfriend, right?” Benz asked me. He was studying a piece of paper that was in the binder he had.
“No, not that I knew about.”
“Look.”
He handed me a piece of stationery paper. It was some sort of poem, in shaky scrawl. It made zero sense, and it wasn’t signed. Except there was something familiar about it. I’d seen something like this every day.
“Shit.”
“What?” Benz asked me.
“Hold on. Keep looking, see if there’s any more love notes or poems.”
I raced upstairs to the third floor.
I knew I’d seen that writing. I pushed the envelopes around on my desk. And there it was: the latest packet of stuff from The Dark Saints.
Scrawled on the front of the envelope were the words “club stuff.”
I knew exactly who had written that fucking poem to Olivia.
And I had his number.
24
Tracy
Fitzie had disappeared upstairs with his phone. I sat upright with some struggle. I needed to get these zip ties off me. I needed to do something to fight back. No one had seen Fitzie take me out of The Castle, I was certain of that.
And thanks to me not being fast enough, no one knew Fitzie was unbalanced.
No one knew that he’d been obsessed with Olivia.
Fitzie was back downstairs. He was focused and looked less crazy.