Jack

by KJ Dahlen

  Joshua nodded. There was nothing in his stance or his eyes that told anyone looking at him that he cared one way or the other. His own daughter was a stranger to him and he didn’t seem to care one way or the other. He knew what had to be done. He vowed when he walked out of that prison two days ago, he would never go back and he meant that. “I hear ya dad. I hear ya.”

  “I’m not going down for her or anyone else, not even any one of you boys.” Michael growled. “I want to bask in the sun of a nice beach and live like a king. I want to drink my beer somewhere no one can find me.”

  Traven snorted lightly. He turned his head slightly and studied the trailer his father was pulling behind his truck. He knew how stingy his dad was with the millions he knew they had made over the years. If the boys wanted anything, they had to go to him and ask for the funds. They were grown men and they shouldn’t have to ask him for money. Hell, he hadn’t let any of them go far. He still held them tight to him. He knew he was never going to let them go but he also knew he would be the first one to throw them under the bus if the law came looking for them.

  He felt his skin crawl at the chances they were all taking. Joshua had changed while he was in prison and Traven didn’t think it was for the better. He was talking about his own kid for Christ’s sake. While He didn’t like kids and didn’t have any of his own, he would never hurt his own blood. But then Joshua had killed his wife and other daughter nineteen years ago and that hadn’t seemed to bother him.

  Kalinda had watched them that day, and the only reason she walked away from the mine was that she was sleeping when the incident went down. Or so they thought. Even now, none of them was sure if she saw what happened that day or not. Michael had decided they couldn’t take the chance she’d woken up and witnessed the deed.

  Someone had called Michael last week and he wanted to make a deal. He knew where Kalinda had gone and for a price he was willing to give her up. That’s why they were here. Michael was going to meet up with the gardener from the orphanage. This was a man who watched over Kalinda while she grew up.

  For nineteen years, they sent out feelers to see if they could locate his niece. No one knew where she’d gone that night or who got her to safety. Then fifteen years ago, this man made contact with then. He needed money and thought he could get paid for info on Kalinda’s whereabouts. She was on her way out, leaving to live on her own. Michael had sent Traven to Austin to find her and take her own. He found her all right, he had followed her all afternoon and just went it got dark he found her in a dark place and he attacked her.

  He thought they were enough out of the way that she wouldn’t be found for hours and as hard as he hurt her, he didn’t think she would survive, but she had. His father hadn’t been happy about his botched job. And in return, he hadn’t like what his father had done.

  Six months later, he’d been over this way on a drug run and he saw her driving on a busy road. He waited until traffic was lighter and then he forced her off the road. He hoped she would break her neck this time but she somehow survived the accident. This time, he didn’t tell anyone so when the news came to them that she survived he wasn’t in trouble.

  In private later that same night, he cursed himself out and wondered if the girl had an angel watching over her.

  Now he wondered if they would succeed in their attempts to silence her forever. Third time is supposed to be charmed right?

  Michael woke up about four hours later to a ringing phone. Only one person had this number, so he knew who was on the other end of the call. His eyes narrowed as he heard a location Kalinda was supposed to be at. He found out where she was and who she was with.

  He hung up before the other man was finished then he rolled out of bed and grabbed his pants up off the floor. He dialed his son’s rooms and got them up. One by one, his sons showed up in his room and he waited until all four of them were present before he broke the good news, “Well boys, seems we got a bit of a problem here.”

  “What’s that?” Craig asked.

  “Kalinda, the little tramp got herself mixed up in an MC.” Michael pursed his lips and began to pace. “And not just any MC, my source tells me. No, she got mixed up with an MC that took down another MC to take their place. Killed off the old to bring in the new.”

  The room was quite as Michael paced.

  The boys knew from long experience to keep their mouths shut when their father was like this. They had given up offering their own ideas about different options when they were kids. Michael had shown them the light of their ways when he got into one of his many moods.

  Michael finally stopped pacing and turned to face them. “My source tells me that she’s up in Killeen under the roof of the Lost Sons. Several of the members hold jobs in town. In fact, her biker is a mechanic and he works in a filling station just on the outskirts of the city. Now what I want you guys to do is one every hour head up there and check things out.”

  Why one an hour?” Craig asked. “Why can’t we all go together?”

  Michael snapped his head around and glared at his son. “Because if you all go at different times, one of you might actually make it to her.”

  Joshua snorted and received a blow to the back of his head. He glared at his old man. “We’re just supposed to walk into the middle of a biker compound and off one of their own? What do you think we are Dad, stupid? We’ll never make it out of there alive.”

  “Do I have to think of everything?” Michael yelled at his kids. “You go there, you find her, you lure her away from the main group and then you kill her. There can’t be any witnesses, that’s when you get your dumb asses out of there and come back here. We need to move quickly and quietly now boys. We’re running out of time. We need to get south of the border and keep on going til we get to where we’re going.”

  “Why can’t we just put a hit out on her and get the fuck out of the country?” James asked. “It’s not like we ain’t got the money to do it or the connections to see it done.”

  “Because dummy,” Michael snarled. “There would be too many things that could go wrong. Hit men always want to know why we need them to take the hit. We don’t have time for this. I want to be gone today.”

  “What about the biker club you just did business with?” Suggested Craig. “Can’t we throw some more pills at them and get them to smoke her?”

  Michael screwed up his face and glared at his sons. “No, we can’t. Part of the reason I want to get gone is because the pills I did sell them aren’t going to work quite the way they wanted them to work.”

  Joshua growled. “You sold them fake Vision Quest didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I sold them duds.” Michael sneered.

  “Are you fucking crazy, old man?” Joshua roared at his father.

  “Don’t you raise your voice to me you miserable little fucker!” Michael roared back. His fingers curled into fists and he stomped over to where Joshua was sitting. “You show me some god damn respect. I am your father and I deserve that from your fuckers.”

  “We’re gonna be running for the rest of our lives, thanks to you,” Joshua told his dad. “Bikers never forget when you fuck them over. And from what I hear, The Satan’s Fury is not one club to fuck over.”

  “What the fuck you care?” Michael shook his head. “We’re gonna be gone long before they even get this shit on the streets.”

  “Not if we have to track down Kalinda we ain’t,” Joshua stated.

  “Well, we can’t leave her alive and well, now can we?” Michael stated. “She’s the only witness left alive who knows about what happened at the mine that day. She may not remember it but we can’t take that chance. We don’t need the cops looking for us. This way, when we do come back over the border, we can move around and not be looking over our shoulder the whole time.” Michael checked his watch and noted the time. “It’s almost noon now. You do as I say and we’ll have time to get up there and get back and get out of town just after dark. If we drive all night, we can cross the border be
fore dawn and then there’s no stopping us.”

  “And we’re just supposed to cross the border with no problems? James asked. “What if they want to look in the trailers? If they got dogs, we’re gonna get busted for all the peyote we got in there. That shit’s illegal even for us.”

  “Well we’re not exactly going to cross at the ports of entry now are we?” Michael shook his head. “You need passports for that and we ain’t got them. Millions of illegals cross the border every day, why can’t we use it to cross over into Mexico? We run into trouble, we just offer them some money. We shouldn’t have any problems.”

  Joshua snorted.

  Michael turned his head to glare at his oldest son. “What now?”

  “Why do you assume the worst of people all the time?” Joshua asked. “You think you can do anything you want and go wherever you want and no one is going to stop you? There are people out there that can’t be bribed or bought off. What the hell are you going to do when you run into one or more than one of them?”

  Michael shrugged. “I’ll deal with it when I have to deal with it. Right now, we have to get this done, quickly and quietly. Time is not on our side here boys.” He looked over at Traven. “You leave now. Go up and check things out. Call back here if you find anything we can use to get to her faster. Killeen is about an hour north of here.” He nodded. “Keep in touch with your brothers and call back when the job is done. Then beat feet back here and we can get on the road.”

  “What about the trailers?” Joshua asked. “We can drive faster without them.”

  Michael nodded. “As long as one of us is here the trailers will be ok. Just unhook them. Make sure you lock them up good. We don’t need some nosey bastard breaking in and finding our secrets now do we?”

  Half an hour later, Traven pulled out of the parking lot and headed north. An hour and twenty minutes later, he was pulling in to the outskirts of the town of Killeen. He drove to a gas station and pulled up to the pumps. He looked around the area as he got out to fill his tank.

  Looking inside the garage, he took note of one man working on a car. At first, he didn’t think he was paying any attention to him at all. He looked around the area again and when he looked back inside the shop, he found the other man staring back at him.

  Traven’s phone pinged and when he looked down at the text message, he found his brother James’s message, “On my way.”

  Traven wiped the sweat off his forehead and tapped out a short message for his brother. He heard the roar of several cycles coming his way. Traven hurried and cut off the gas then rushed inside to pay for his gas. He needed to get out of sight before anyone knew he was there.

  He threw more than enough money to cover his gas on the counter and was walking back toward the door when he saw five bikes coming into the lot. Cursing under his breath, he continued to leave the station and go out to his truck. If he could get into the cab before they could reach him, he thought he’d be safe. Crossing the lot, he almost got to his truck before the first biker got there.

  The biker stopped his ride in front of the truck. Traven swore but continued on to his truck. When the second biker pulled up behind him, he began to sweat. Still, he continued. Each step he took seemed to be more in slow motion than it really was.

  He went around to his driver’s seat and opened his door. The biker in front of him looked at him with a glare. “Sorry man. We’ll be out of your way in a minute.”

  Traven nodded. “No problem,” he mumbled under his breath as he got into his seat and pulled the door shut. He kept checking where the other bikers were and what they were doing. Only the two bikers were putting gas in the bikes. The other three seemed to be loitering and that made Traven a little nervous.

  Jack stood in the shadows of the shop glaring at the man sitting in his truck.

  Bear was the biker in front of the truck and Creed was behind him. Cobra, Thor and Daniel were sitting there waiting for things to get started.

  Jack had been prepared for this, well as much as he could be anyway. There was really no way a man could be totally prepared for there being a threat to his wife and daughter. He had snapped a picture of the new man in town and sent it to Renegade and waited with impatience until the other man got back to him. He knew the driver. It was one of Kalinda’s uncles.

  They knew then that threat was real and they weren’t going to allow the threat to get to her. What Renegade had told them was true. Michael and his sons, one of which was her own father were coming to kill her. Now when they took this one, maybe they would find some answers.

  Jack looked over at his older brother. At Creed’s nod, they took the man sitting behind the wheel down. Jack went over to the second bay and opened the door. Silas drove his own truck out of the bay and Bullet jumped out as he got next to the other truck. He opened the passenger side and pointed his weapon at the startled man.

  The man had his phone in his hands texting someone when he suddenly dropped the phone and slowly raised his hands. He couldn’t look at the man behind the gun. His eyes wouldn’t leave the gun barrel pointed at him. “What do you want?” he asked.

  “We want to talk to you, only talk. If you tell us what we want to know, we’ll let you go.” Bullet quietly informed him. He knew he was lying through his teeth and the look in the guy’s eyes told him he knew it too. Bullet motioned for the other man to slide over to the passenger door.

  He did as he was told and he got out of his vehicle to climb into Silas’s truck. But before he did that Bullet searched him for weapons.

  The caught man didn’t say anything when Bullet found his first gun and he didn’t say anything when he found his backup piece. Then he grunted when Bullet put his huge hand in the other man’s pockets and pulled everything out. Money, change and a second set of keys hit the ground between the trucks. The only thing Bullet kept was a switch blade he found.

  Bullet leaned closer to his head and whispered in his ear, “I’ll only ask this once, is there anything else I need to know about?”

  He looked like he thought about lying, he really did but he wasn’t in the mood to feel this man’s hands beat him down. “I got another knife in my underwear.” He growled.

  Bullet made a face. “That’s just nasty man.” He shoved his hand down Traven’s pants. He wrapped his hand around the blade handle and pulled it out, bringing some pubic hair that was still attached.

  The man winced but didn’t say anything.

  Bullet unbuckled his belt and pulled it loose.

  The man frowned and stared at Bullet.

  Bullet snarled and said, “Don’t get your hopes up man.” He wrapped the belt around his hands after he pulled them behind his back and shoved him in the back seat of Silas’s truck. Then he went back to the other truck and grabbed the phone he had dropped before.

  As soon as he was settled, Silas took off and he was followed closely by the five men on bikes.

  Jack pulled truck into the second bay and closed the doors. He waved at the cashier behind the counter and throwing one leg over his ride,, he took off after his brothers. It didn’t take him long to catch up and it took them even less time to reach the compound. But they didn’t go to the clubhouse they went to a second building at the back of the property.

  Their captive was dragged out of the truck and into the building. It was a small cabin type structure. There was no furniture in the room except one chair and it was set in the middle of the floor. He was led to the chair and pushed down into its seat. His hands were released and retied to the arms of the chair but he still couldn’t move.

  He looked up at the men coming into the cabin after him. He didn’t know any of them. Then his eyes widened and he gasped as the last man walked in. He was one man he ever thought he’d see again.

  When Renegade closed the door behind him, he looked over at the man tied to the chair. He saw Traven’s eyes widen and heard the other man gasp.

  “What the ever loving fuck are you doing here?” Traven asked the other m
an.

  “Did you really think you and your family could get away with what you did, Traven?” Renegade asked.

  Traven didn’t know what to say. He was wondering what the other man was talking about. Get away with what? “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Get away with what?”

  “You killed a good man and are here to kill Kalinda.” Renegade seethed. “I’ll tell you right now, that ain’t gonna happen. Not in this lifetime and not for you, or any of your brothers. You guys have a lot to answer for.”

  “You can’t do shit.” Traven snarled. “They can’t do anything either.”

  “Oh, why is that?” Renegade asked.

  “I’m protected that’s why,” Traven admitted. “You mess with me and you’ll have more trouble than you think I’m worth on your hands.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Silas asked. “And who are you connected too? Anybody I might know?”

  Traven shut his mouth.

  Creed watched the exchange and thought he’d play a hunch. He walked over to the counter behind the bound man.

  Renegade watched him.

  He picked up a bundle wrapped in a leather cloth. He brought it out and set it on a small table he set up in front of Traven. He untied the bundle and rolled it out.

  The bundle was filled with sharp blades and a few tools they used for questioning. They hadn’t used them in a while but they were still shiny and ready for someone to pick them up again.

  He took his time choosing his weapon of choice. Looking from Traven to the instruments, he asked his dad and grandfather about all the choices he had available. “What do you think dad? A hammer or a blade?”

  “Oh, I’d use the hammer son. Smash a few bones before you get too bloody.”

  Renegade raised a brow then looked over at Traven.

  “Yeah, I think so too.” Creed shrugged. “Why shouldn’t he feel the pain?” He picked up a hammer and turned toward Traven. Creed almost pissed himself laughing at the terror on the other man’s face.