by Brook Wilder
“She came for Carrie. That’s all, Gears.”
Tex shifted his focus to include both gangs, and he could see the Devil’s Martyrs eyeing their rivals, waiting for the chance to take out Gears. But, for the moment, he was surrounded.
“Look, Solomon set up this meeting,” Tex said loudly, hoping the mention of the king-pin would be enough to keep them in check. “You said we both had to be here, and we are. Now, we came here to talk and to make sure Carrie is safe. So, let’s all talk this through. No one wants to lose any more men.”
“No! No talk! No more talking! I’m sick and tired of talking!” Gears shouted as he frantically waved his gun around.
Even members of his own gang were starting to look at him warily, taking a hesitant step backwards from the obviously unstable man.
“We are done talking.”
Suddenly, Gears was completely in control again as he jerked Carrie forward by the arm, but Tex could still see the madness in his eyes.
“I want Lori in exchange for Carrie. Give me Lori. Now!”
“No Lori! Don’t do it!” Carrie screamed, waving at her friend to stay back, desperation in her voice. “Don’t listen to him…”
Carrie’s words were cut off abruptly as Gears brought up the pistol and hit her hard on the side of the head. Tex saw her temple explode with bright red blood a second before she collapsed onto the dust.
Chapter 26
“Son of a bitch. You’re dead!” Porky shouted, and it took all the strength Tex had to hold the other man back from running to his certain death. “You’re dead, do you hear me? I’ll fucking kill you for hurting her!”
“Porky. Porky stop, man. Just stop for a second. She’s still breathing,” Tex said, desperately trying to keep his own voice calm, trying to derail the man’s anger or at least stop it for a moment., “Look at her, Porky. She’s still alive. She’s still breathing. He just knocked her out.”
Porky finally let out a deep breath, panting like an enraged bull, but at least he wasn’t trying to charge forward anymore. He just stood there, glaring bloody murder in Gears’ direction. But the insane man didn’t even seem to see it. His eyes were locked on Lori.
Tex scanned the crowd again. Capone, the Devil’s Martyrs president, was staring at Gears and the Grim Riders and shaking his head at something his second in command, Preston Osborne, was saying to him. They seemed to be arguing about something, but they were both obviously tense and uneasy about Gears.
The Grim Riders themselves looked at Gears with more than a touch of uneasiness in their gazes. Unsure what to do, they just stood there. They were all on the balls of their feet, though, ready to move at a moment’s notice.
Tex was still standing in front of Porky, aware of even the slightest move the man made, just in case he got it in his thick head to charge into the middle of the two rival gangs again. But his focus was on Lori.
She had one hand covering her mouth as if to stifle a cry, and her eyes were wide and filled with horror as she stared at Carrie’s motionless body.
“Lori, look at me,” Tex whispered, soft but fierce. He had to repeat it three more times before she finally shifted her gaze over to where he was standing a few feet away.
“Lori, I need you to get back, okay? I need you to go back to the limo.”
“No, I’m not leaving Carrie,” Lori refused, shaking her head.
The fear inside him grew into dread. He could tell that all it would take was a single spark to have the whole place going off like the fourth of July.
“Please, Lori. Please go back.”
“I can’t do that, Tex,” she said through gritted teeth
Part of him just wanted to throw her over his shoulder and carry her out, but he was afraid that, if he moved, Porky would charge forward despite the guns pointed in their direction.
“Enough of this!” a new voice said, cutting through the tension.
Tex looked over in surprise to see Solomon stepping forward. He still held himself apart from each group, neutral, not taking any side.
“We made a bargain,” he pointed out.
Solomon pointed to where Capone and Preston were still arguing and they both trailed off. They gave the king-pin a hard-eyed look, but finally nodded. Then Solomon pointed over towards the Grim Riders, where Gears was arguing too.
The man seemed intent on riling up the gang, reminding them of all the lives that had been taken and the blood that had been shed by the Devil’s Martyrs, and it seemed to be working.
The bikers around Gears started nodding, slowly at first, and then more vigorously, shooting murderous glares at the other gang. Even Solomon’s intervention didn’t keep them in check as they each started hurling insults at the other group.
It seemed like even the tenuous peace that had been formed was on the verge of crumbling, when suddenly Preston Osborne stepped forward with his hands raised.
“We came here to form a truce!” Preston’s voice echoed over the clearing, cutting through the angry mutters of the gang members. “There has been life lost on both sides. But no more! It ends today!”
Capone, the Devil’s Martyrs president, was glaring at Preston and shaking his head to himself. But he remained silent, a stony look on his face that made Tex nervous. The man wasn’t known for his stable temper or behavior, and Tex didn’t think he would appreciate being upstaged by his second-in-command. But every other eye was on Preston as he stepped a few more feet between the gangs, his hands raised in a gesture of peace.
“Let’s figure out what needs to happen on both sides, so we can get passed this and move on,” Preston said, and then gave a sarcastic half grin. “This shit is real bad for business. For both of us.”
And that was the heart of it. Because, at the end of the day, the gangs worked like a business and, if the business didn’t bring in cash, then people got fired. Or, in this case, worse than fired.
Preston continued his speech, calm and straightforward, as he laid out a plan that would help out both gangs, and Tex couldn’t help but admire the man. He had balls at least, that was for damn sure, to be standing in the middle of two rival gangs and not sweat a drop.
“Well? What do you say? Can we all agree to this plan and move on from this situation?” Preston asked, looking from one gang to the other. “I think everyone agrees that we can forgive and forget and get back to business.”
Tex could see Capone growing red in the face at being upstaged. For a moment he was sure that the Devil’s Martyrs’ president was going to explode and ruin everything that Preston had just gained them, but it was another voice that spoke out instead.
“No! No truce! No agreement! No fucking peace!” Gears shouted, safe once more in the middle of his gang, surrounded my fellow members, even if they did eye him askance. He was still waving that damned pistol in the air, the end of it stained with Carrie’s blood.
“I demand blood! Blood from the gang that took my woman away. I want Tex’s head on a fucking plate! I want to tear him apart for what he did to me! She was mine!”
He screamed the words until his voice was hoarse. He turned towards Tex, finally coming face-to-face with the man he imagined had taken everything from him.
“She is mine! Lori belongs to me!”
“I don’t belong to anyone, you asshole!” Lori shouted back
Panic filled Tex as the gun that Gears had trained on him swung towards her as she took a step forward.
“Lori, what the hell are you doing, sweetheart?” Tex hissed back at her. “Now really isn’t the time to play superwoman.”
“No, I’m done being scared of him. I’m done being told what to do, or feel, or how to act by him. He doesn’t own me, and he never will!” She shouted the last words loud enough for everyone to hear, “You’ve tortured me for long enough, you bastard! I’m not a dog! I don’t have an owner!”
“But, Lori, I love you.” Gears said.
Tex stared at the man in wide-eyed disbelief. He sounded like he actually meant
it, in his own sick and twisted way.
But Lori just scoffed at him.
“You don’t know what love is, Gears. You think you can own me like some sort of possession. But I’m a human being! I get to decide what I do, and – you know what? – I will never love you. Never!”
A part of Tex wanted to cheer her on, to tell her how proud of her he was for facing down the man who had made her life a living hell for so long. But another part wanted to tell her to maybe tone it down and not to egg-on the crazy man.
He was just about to look back and tell Lori that exact thing when he saw Gears’ expression change once more. It was an emotion he knew all too well. Desperation. Desperation and fury.
Tex was already taking a step forward as Gears raised his arm and aimed his pistol in Lori’s direction.
“Gears. You don’t want to do this,” Tex said, trying to draw the man’s attention away from Lori and their baby.
But Gears never looked away. His face was drawn into a rictus of a snarl and he didn’t make a single sound.
“Gears. Look at me. Look at me! I’m the one who took Lori away. I’m the one that she loves. She’s having my baby, Gears! Mine! Not yours.”
Lori shot Tex a wide-eyed look of fear. She shook her head as if to tell him to stop, but he couldn’t. He was so afraid he could barely move, but he couldn’t stop trying to save her from the madman.
“Please, Gears. This is a death sentence. If you hurt anyone here, it’s a death sentence. You know that,” Solomon said, as he stepped in to de-escalate the tension that had suddenly thickened the air.
But nothing seemed to have an effect on Gears, not Tex’s words or even Solomon’s.
Even the man’s own gang tried to stop him, reaching out to pull him back, but Gears still rushed forward, gun drawn, an expression of pure and utter rage twisting his features.
To Tex, everything seemed to move in slow motion. Every step that Gears took towards Lori was slowed to an eternity. Gear’s mouth opened slowly, showing every sharp tooth as he screamed a silent scream of rage.
And when Tex tried to move, every muscle moved just as slowly. It was like trying to run in quicksand. He just couldn’t force himself to turn fast enough. He could see, out of the corner of his eye, the bodyguards that Solomon had brought were all rushing forward, trying to knock her out of the way. But Tex knew that they would be too slow too.
All Tex could do was watch on in horror as the gun in Gears hand fired. The bullet left the chamber at blinding speed, so much faster than he could ever move, and when it hit Lori in the rib cage he felt it tear through him as well. He felt her scream of pain and fear. He felt the impact as she fell to the hard-packed dirt ground. He felt every one of her emotions all wrapped up in his own soul-searing fear.
Tex rushed to Lori’s side, barely aware of the pop of the Devil’s Martyrs’ guns unleashing on Gears, barely aware of the man falling to the ground where he had stood, gasping his last breaths. His focus was all on Lori.
Tex had seen the bullet hit her and he knew there was no way she could have survived that. It would have torn straight through her.
He dropped to his knees and suddenly time was moving all too fast. There was movement all around him, as Grim Riders checked to see if Gears were alive and Solomon rushed to diffuse the situation before it grew any worse. For Tex, it was already as bad as it could get.
He knew they should never have agreed to this. He should never have put her in danger.
“Lori, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” Tex cried as he pulled her close, cradling her in his arms.
All he could do was rock her motionless body back and forth as his world crumbled around him.
Nothing else mattered to him now. Not Gears. Not what happened between the gangs. None of it. It was only Lori. She was his whole world. And, now that she was gone, there was nothing left at all. Just a terrible bleakness and the blame that filled him.
He knew it was his fault. It was all his fault.
Chapter 27
He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. Tex couldn’t do anything but sit there, kneeling next to the woman he loved and the family he’d lost. There was nothing left for him. No hope. No love. No life. It had all been taken right along with her.
“Uh, you mind loosening your grip a little bit there, cowboy? I can’t breathe under here.”
It took Tex a full minute to comprehend what he was hearing. He still thought his brain and broken heart were playing some sort of cruel joke on him.
“Tex, I’m serious. I can’t breathe. You have to stop holding me so tight!”
Tex finally forced his frozen muscles to move, and he leaned back just enough to look down at Lori in complete wide-eyed surprise.
“What…? But how…? I saw you get shot,” he said, his voice trembling on every letter.
Lori just grinned up at him – actually grinned, after getting a bullet shot at her by a crazy person – as she pulled up the hem of her shirt.
“I really don’t think this is the place for…”
“No, look, Tex,” Lori snorted, still grinning like a maniac.
But Tex jerked back, startled by what he saw she had hidden underneath. It was a bullet-proof vest. She’d been wearing a bullet-proof vest the whole time and he hadn’t known it.
“How did you…?”
“It was a little present from Solomon,” she said, interrupting him once again.
He didn’t know if he would ever be able to finish a complete sentence ever again in his life and, for the moment, he didn’t care. The only thing he cared about was the fact that Lori was alive and well and still grinning up at him like a fool.
“I owe that man my life,” Tex whispered gruffly, suddenly fighting a scratchiness in his throat and a sting that pricked the corner of each eye. “Literally! You are my life, Lori. When I though I’d lost you…”
There was another sentence he couldn’t finish. He let the words trail off, still shaking from the roller coaster of emotions he’d just been put through.
“Hush.” Lori placed her finger over his mouth as if to stop the words that were no longer coming out of his mouth. “It’s okay. I’m okay. See? You don’t have to be afraid.”
“Afraid?” Tex said on a humorless bark of laughter. “More like fucking terrified, Lori.” Suddenly his face blanched. “What about the baby? Is the baby okay?”
“I think so,” Lori answered, gazing up at him as she cupped his beloved face in her hands. “I think we’re both good, Tex.”
But he barely heard her. He was already looking around, frantic once more.
“We need to get you to a hospital. We need to get you…I don’t know…x-rays or a cat scan or something. We need to make sure that the baby is okay.”
“Tex. I’m fine. We’re both fine now, okay?” she tried to convince him, but once more her words just seemed to bounce off of him.
After a moment, though, Tex’s shoulders drooped and his whole body seemed to collapse in defeat.
“I wasn’t quick enough,” he muttered.
Lori gave him a look of confusion.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“I wasn’t quick enough. When I saw Gears raise the gun, I should have known what he would do… I should have acted. I should have been faster.”
“Tex, listen to me. There was no way you could have known he would shoot me.”
“The man was insane. It’s something an insane person would do,” Tex answered with a shrug, as if he’d already come to terms with it being his fault.
“You can’t blame yourself.”
Lori stroked his cheek, comforting him as she spoke, even though she was the one who had just gotten shot.
“Shh. Just rest here and relax okay?” He was looking around again. “I’ll talk to Solomon and see if he can’t get you to the nearest hospital.”
“I’m fine, Tex. Honestly fine,” Lori tried to convince him, rolling her eyes up at him in a way that should have
told him more than words.
But he was still too shaken to really notice. He had gone from holding her lifeless body in his arms to having her whole and well and making sarcastic remarks at him. It was going to take him a little while longer to catch up.
“Just, please, don’t move okay.” It was Tex’s turn to plead with her as he looked down into her eyes. He needed her to know that he was serious. That he meant every single word he said. “I would die if anything happened to you or the baby.”
Suddenly, Lori’s eyes shot open wide as a shadow covered both of them. Tex glanced up and behind him to see none other than Preston Osbourne standing there, staring down at them.