Bane

by KJ Dahlen

  Priest listened and held no emotion on his face.

  “No one in my life ever did anything like that for me. No one ever stood up for me either, but she did that for her family. And she considered the MC her family.” He shook his head. “Yes, I could take the easy way out and not put myself out there for them but that wouldn’t do. This situation might drag me back into my old life, kicking and screaming but I’m doing this for her. I’m doing it for my grandfather as well.”

  Priest stared at him for a moment then nodded. “Are you going to tell her you’re still alive?”

  Theo shook his head. “No I don’t think so. I thought about it, I really did, but no. I let the Jessin name die out a year ago when I was bleeding out after the battle with Stark. She took who she thought was me home and buried me when I expected her to spit on my grave. But I can’t walk away from her either, so whether she wants it or not I’m her fucking guardian angel. Hell, whether I want it or not, I am her guardian angel.”

  Priest smiled faintly. “I know how that feels too. My Sawyer and the Hell’s Fire Riders got me too. I can’t change that and neither can they. My wife and son keep me grounded and the Hell’s Fire Riders gives me purpose. They are my second chance, my do over.”

  “The question is what do I do after this, always supposing we survive?” Theo asked.

  “One thing at a time old man, one thing at a time.” Priest grinned as he slapped the other man on the shoulder and they both turned back to the table and James’s information.

  They quickly finalized the arrangements and set their course.

  Priest made a phone call to Deke, while Theo went back to his own room to tell Sarah what they were going to do.

  He closed the door behind him and walked quietly over to the bed where Sarah was laying. Her eyes were open and she watched him approach without saying a word. He stood over her for a moment then held out his hand. She paused for a moment then reached out and wrapped her fingers with his.

  Theo sat down on the edge of the bed and still looking at her he whispered, “I don’t know why you came to me and I don’t know why you stayed all this time. As I said before, I’m not an easy man to get to know, but I do know I would miss you if you left. I have this mission coming up shortly and I need to know if you’ll be here when I return.”

  Sarah closed her eyes then brought her hand and his closer to her chest. Splaying out his fingers against her chest, she allowed him to feel the beat of her heart. “My heart beats for you and you alone. You may not want it but it does. I know you’ve lived your whole life thinking you don’t have feelings but I don’t believe that. You and I wouldn’t be here if that were true. You may feel differently than everyone else but you do have them.”

  Theo couldn’t speak, as his throat grew thick.

  “Yes I’ll be here,” she vowed. “I’ll wait forever for you to return if I have to.” She reached up with her free hand and laid it against his jaw and whispered, “Please come home to me. I need you. I need you to come back to me.”

  Theo nodded. “We’re leaving in a few minutes to try and stop the threat. I don’t know when we’ll be back but sweetheart, I will come back to you. Now that I know the sweet taste of you, I will be back.”

  Sarah nodded, then she sat up in bed as her hands went to the back of her neck and she unclasped her necklace. She pooled the necklace in the base of his hand and told him, “My mother gave this to me the last time I saw her. She’d always worn it from the first time I could remember. She used to tell me it was her talisman against the evil of the world. This necklace has been passed down from generation to generation. My great grandfather gave it to his wife well over a hundred years ago. I don’t know if it really works or not but I want you to take it with you. If there is magic in the stone I want it to watch over you on this mission.”

  Theo closed his hand over the necklace and swallowed hard. “Thank you.” He didn’t know what else to say, no one had ever cared if he lived or died before this.

  Sarah closed her eyes and whispered brokenly, “P-please come back to me. You mean a great deal to me and I want more time with you.”

  “As do I with you,” he assured her.

  A knock sounded on the door and Theo got up to react to the summons.

  ~*~

  In a little less than three hours, they arrived in Lowell, Massachusetts. Darkness was just falling and the shadows would hide them while they did their jobs. Locating the survivalists wasn’t as hard as they thought. James had done his homework and had worked out where the men were waiting.

  They found them in a shack on the edge of town. The men were not concerned about anyone finding then and that was always a bad sign. Priest had determined that they couldn’t just blow up the place which in a way disappointed Theo. He explained that they had to take them out one at a time and in a hurry. These men were the last piece of Buckley’s plan for the destruction of the Sin’s MC.

  Priest reasoned that if they took them out one by one whoever was the last one would think the others had changed their mind and backed out of the deal. It made sense, but they had little time to make that happen. Maybe only hours which meant they had to move now. It also set up the possibility that the last person alive could contact Buckley and tell him about the others.

  Priest and Theo waited in the shadows as James moved toward their bikes. He added a little something to each bike and then without warning came back to where they were waiting.

  “What did you do?” Theo asked.

  James glared at him. “I put sugar in their gas tanks. That will seize up their engines and then we can pick them off one at a time.”

  “We don’t have time for all of that,” Theo grumbled. “Buckley could be here anytime.”

  Priest glared at him. “We don’t have much of a choice here. If we take them all out at once, Buckley will know someone is trying to stop them and he’ll be more determined to stop us. Right now, he has the upper hand or so he thinks.”

  “Ok, so how does this work then?” Theo asked with impatience.

  “We draw them out, get them to chase us and then we kill them and hide their bodies.”

  Theo looked back at the shack and the bikes in front of it. Studying the sight in front of him, he noted the fact that the bikes sitting there looked almost new. Turning to the two men, he grinned. “Let’s find out just how brave these bastards think they are.”

  “What do you have in mind?” Priest asked him.

  Theo leaned in and told him of his plan.

  Priest and James listened carefully and then all three agreed on his plan.

  Priest disappeared in the shadows, then James and finally Theo disappeared into the darkness.

  A few moments later, the silence of the night was shattered by the sound of a single bullet hitting the gas tank of one the four bikes sitting in front of the shack. The explosion rocked the area and the bike blew apart.

  Four men rushed the front door. Each of them had a small handgun and each of them rushed in a different direction. A shot rang out and the first man went down. The other three looked around to see if they could find the person shooting at them. Of course, they couldn’t see him, he was hidden in the trees.

  Another shot rang out and the second man went down. The other two took up a defensive position and again, searched for the shooter. They looked in every direction as the second shot came from a different direction than the first.

  When the third shot took out the third man, the remaining man looked ready to piss his pants. He gazed around in all four directions.

  The three men standing there watching him could almost see the man coming apart. Sweat matted the man’s hair to his head. His eyes were wild as he searched in front of him then the man turned and he searched behind him, then to his left and his right. “Who the fuck is out there and what the fuck do you want?” the man shouted out.

  “We want you, motherfucker,” James shouted out.

  “Why?” the man asked as he swiped his
hand over his mouth. “I didn’t do anything to you.”

  “But you did, asshole,” Priest yelled back. “You were willing to join a man in his quest to slaughter innocent people. You know who I’m talking about!”

  The fourth man paused and nodded as he muttered something none of them could hear. When he went to reach in his pocket, Theo put a bullet through his hand. The man screamed and his other hand went to cover the hole in his wrist.

  “Throw your gun away then stand up,” Priest ordered his target.

  “What? So you can shoot me in the head? I don’t think so.” He looked around again. “I’ll just keep my gun if you don’t mind. I got all night. You are the ones who hide in the shadows.”

  “You think Buckley will allow you to live when he gets here?” Priest laughed at him. “He’ll put a bullet in your head when he hears how you betrayed him.”

  “But I haven’t betrayed anyone!” the other man screamed.

  “Buckley won’t believe that,” James shouted. “He’ll think you gave us information to save your own slimy hide.”

  “But I didn’t,” the man yelled out. “I haven’t told you nothing!”

  “He won’t believe that for a moment. He’ll kill you just for surviving. When he sees the other three are gone, he will not understand at all,” Priest stated real facts. “If you think for one moment, he’ll let you live you’re only kidding yourself. You’ll be useless to him now. He wanted all four of you.”

  “You lousy bastards. You killed all four of us, even if you leave me alive I’m still a dead man!” The man knelt in the dirt. He was holding his pistol against his forehead while contemplating his options.

  Without warning, another shot rang out and the man hiding fell into the dirt. He was screaming in pain, holding his side.

  Theo saw Priest walking out of the shadows.

  The man noticed him and brought his bloody hand up. His weapon was shaking as he held it on Priest.

  Priest paused and told him, “You won’t live long enough to pull the trigger, should you choose too. You have two more guns on you and they both have their hands on the trigger.”

  “What...what the fuck do you want from me?” the man asked as he blood poured from his wound.

  “Was your life worth getting mixed up with a man like Oscar Buckley?” Priest asked as he stood over the other man’s bleeding body.

  “I had nothing before this came up, no wife or sweetheart so I figured I had nothing to lose and who knows, I might have survived long enough to enjoy what he promised.”

  “And what did he promise you?”

  The man swallowed hard, blood began to drain out of the corner of his mouth. His eyes were glazing over and his skin was turning grey. “Oscar promised us a place of our own. A place at his table and a roof over our heads. That’s what he promised us.”

  “What did he expect you to do for all of that?”

  “He wanted us to find a secret way in. He said someone was working with him and all we had to do was locate a tunnel from the compound to the woods behind the fence line.” The man’s words trailed off and his words were nothing more than a whisper as he took his last breath. Then there was nothing. He died staring at the night sky.

  Priest turned and narrowed his eyes at where Theo was standing.

  A few minutes later, Theo and James joined him and Priest glared at both men. “There’s a traitor in the compound. Someone who knows a way in and out of the compound. One that I doubt Deke knows about.”

  Theo turned and regarded the shack the men had been in a few minutes ago. He took one step toward it then another and another. He felt the Priest behind him and that was fine with him. Pushing the door open, he saw the gear the survivalists had waiting.

  There were full backpacks with climbing gear and ropes, shovels and pickaxes. On the table was paperwork and maps. Theo looked over the maps carefully and soon found a pattern and something familiar. His heart grew cold as he studied the area on the map.

  Gathering up the information, they found he nodded at Priest. “We have to get back while there’s still time.”

  “Time for what?” Priest frowned.

  “Time to set a trap to catch Buckley before he gets inside the clubhouse,” Theo assured him. Looking around, he didn’t see James. “Where is your buddy?”

  “James is taking care of the bodies. He’s pulling them deeper into the woods for the local wolf population to feast on.” He looked around at the dump.

  “What are you going to do with the bikes?” Theo asked.

  “We’ve already pulled the blown up one away. The rest I think we should leave here. If Buckley and his men use them they won’t get very far.”

  Theo nodded. “But then they would know someone is waiting for them and we could lose the element of surprise.”

  Priest shrugged. “We’d lose that element anyway at some point.”

  “True enough,” Theo agreed. “But we have to get back to the compound right now. There is a secret way in that Deke may or may not know about. Now only the upper echelon of the old MC might know of this secret way in and out so that makes me think there could be a traitor working on the inside. I don’t know if it’s one of the men Buckley has with him or—”

  “It could be Breaker.” Priest followed his train of thought. “Maybe he came back not to stand with Deke against Buckley but instead to open up the tunnel leading into the compound for Buckley.”

  Priest shook his head. “Damn that man, doesn’t he realize that once he’s inside, Buckley will have a bullet with his name on it?”

  “Did your man James find out anything on Breaker?” Theo asked. “Maybe something that Buckley could use against him?”

  “We didn’t look that far into him as he said he was working with Deke not against him,” Priest admitted.

  “Well, maybe you should dig a little deeper,” Theo suggested. “Whether the traitor is in the group Buckley is riding with or it’s Breaker himself, we need to know.”

  “I know he’ll start looking when we leave here and by the time we get back to Troy, he should have some answers.”

  “What about this Trudy person?” Theo asked. “Could she get the information we need faster?” Theo asked.

  “Maybe I can ask her.” Priest nodded.

  “We need to give Deke a head’s up on this. Find out if he knows about the tunnel or not.”

  Priest nodded. “And if he doesn’t have a clue that the tunnel exists? What then?”

  “Then we get his attention and let him know he could have a traitor in his midst. He’s needs to know who he can trust from the men around him.” Theo sighed. He knew this wouldn’t be pleasant. Deke’s men had been with him for years.

  Chapter Five

  James returned and they left the shack. They decided to leave the bikes behind after dragging the blown up one deep into the woods. If anyone tried to ride the bikes, they wouldn’t get very far.

  Theo took all the paperwork he found on the table with him to show to Deke. While Priest drove back, James was on the phone to Trudy to begin getting background on Breaker and the members of the old MC who had left when Deke didn’t want to keep drugs on the menu.

  They had to find the traitor and find out what Oscar had in mind. If Deke made the mistake of placing the women and children in the basement and Oscar got to them before Deke realized what was going on, that would be like handing them over for slaughter. That scenario was unacceptable.

  A few hours later when they arrived in Troy, Deke, Sam, Black Jack and Mountain were waiting for them at their hotel. Priest opened the door to his room and all seven men walked in.

  Deke walked over to the window and looked out over the city, then he turned back to confront Priest. “You’d better have a good explanation as to what’s going on here,” he growled. “You call me out of the blue and tell me I may have a traitor within my ranks. I trust each and every one of my men and you come out of the blue and tell me one of them is working with Buckley. How the fu
ck did you figure that out?”

  Priest glared at the men in front of him. “We found a map of an underground tunnel that leads straight from outside the fence to the basement of the clubhouse. I didn’t know if you knew about it or not, but Buckley knows about it.”

  Deke stared at him then looked over at his men. None of them looked as if they knew about this tunnel either. “How the fuck did you find this information?”

  James stepped over to the table and began spreading out the documents they found at the shack out on the table.

  Deke, Sam, Black Jack and Mountain stepped forward and began studying the documents.

  Deke raised his head and glared at Priest. “I’ve never seen these drawings before. There were fifteen members of the old MC that stayed with us. Over the years, we’ve lost ten, either by death or the fact they wanted something they couldn’t get with the new MC. We still have five members that have been there longer than me.”

  “You can’t forget about Breaker,” Theo reminded them.

  Deke snapped his head and glared at Theo. “Breaker saved my life seventeen years ago. I doubt he’s setting us up now. He chose to stay with us and helped me rebuild the MC the way it is today.” Shaking his head he said, “I can’t see him turning on us now.”