Irish

by Dusty Lassetter

  “I…I…I got your message,” I shout out into the night air. The men look at each other, obviously shocked to hear me speaking so loudly before placing their hands at their sides. The way they are positioned tells me they’re getting ready to use the weapons they came with.

  Like a stalker preparing to pounce on his victim, a very large man that I recognize, starts walking in my direction. I remember him as being one of the men that showed up at the clubhouse unannounced. He was with the guy that greeted me by name. It all makes sense now. He knew who I was because he is working for Slasher.

  “Where’s the girl?” The giant brute asks. I get a sense Irish can tell who he is too. The man’s deep voice is unique and Irish has the memory of an elephant. He’s like a sponge. Soaking everything up to use it to his advantage later on.

  “There is a man in her room. I don’t know how to get him to leave.”

  I try to make it seem like my voice is so high pitched because of my fear, and thankfully fifty percent of the reason is in fact that. Hopefully, he doesn’t suspect anything other than me being a terrified female.

  “Find a way before I decide to leave with you instead.”

  “N…N..No. That won’t be necessary. I will figure out a way, but what do I do once I get her to the door?”

  When he reaches out to grab a hold of my hair, I scream, but Irish has me behind him before the big brute can touch any part of me. Irish shoves the door open so hard it bounces off the wall before coming to a stop at his boot. I’m left lying on the floor where he strategically shoved me to keep me safe from any flying bullets that may wiz by.

  “Don’t you ever fuckin’ touch what is mine,” he roars, shoving both his pistols in the man’s face. I listen closely to the sound of him pulling back the hammer. “Your men behind you may kill me, but your dick will hit the dirt first. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “You made an unwise choice, foolish girl. Slasher will come back…”

  His words are cut off when the sound of two guns exploding in the hallway causes a ringing in my ears, and his body does exactly what Irish threatened it would. A couple of shots ensue in the distance before Irish is bending down to help me off the floor.

  When I get to my feet, I’m able to see enough of Irish’s face in the moonlight to become sick to my stomach. I try to move away from his feet, but the vomit is coming up and there is no holding it back. He doesn’t seem to notice that his leather boots are being ruined as he starts rubbing my back in a soothing gesture. With my body hunched over, I try not to look at anything other than his black laces.

  “Are you alright?”

  “You have blood all over your face,” I manage to get out once I’ve stopped dry heaving. I don’t bother telling him about the tiny pieces of brain and skull I saw as well. I guess that’s what happens when you shot someone standing a measly three feet from you. How he is keeping down his dinner is beyond me.

  “Yo, Irish. We have a live one,” Taz hollers, capturing both of our attention.

  “Let me take Ashley to her room, then I’ll be back to help.”

  “Wake up Hammer and Teller. We will call Buck. No one sleeps until we get answers from him.” With Torch giving out the order, Irish gestures for me to keep pace in front of him. Having no desire to witness the mess on his face again, I do as I’ve been instructed. Once I make it to the spare bathroom door, I quickly enter the room without making the mistake of looking back at Irish.

  “I’ll be fine in here. Just going to take a quick shower.”

  “Alright. I’m going to check the rooms and make sure everything is safe.”

  With that said, he walks away from the door, leaving me to process everything that just happened. Scarlett is safe. I am safe. So why do I have this all-consuming sense that we aren’t in the clear yet? I feel uneasy, a sensation that has become all too common to me.

  Irish

  I walk away from the bathroom door, leaving Ashley to clean herself up while I check the rest of the clubhouse for any danger. I don’t like the feeling of the blood drying on my face, most likely mixed with bone and tissue, or the splattered vomit on my new boots, but there is a job to be done before I can take time to clean myself up. I start at the end of the hall where Serenity and Mia are standing. They don’t bother asking why Ashley rushed into the bathroom after getting a look at my face.

  “We heard gun shots,” Serenity states, wrapping her arms around herself. If these two women were awoken by the chaos, how are Hammer and Teller still sleeping.

  “Everythin’ is handled. Where are Sammy and the baby?”

  I ask about them first because they are the most vulnerable. Sammy would have to try fighting off grown men while trying to keep her son safely tucked away at her side. Mia glances at the door behind her, which is Taz’s.

  “Rebecca and Allison are in there with them. I haven’t woken up Scarlett because she’s not in her room. I assume she’s in Teller’s.”

  “You’ve made my job easier,” I announce right as Hammer comes stumbling out of his room trying to pull his pants up that are falling down to his knees.

  “What the fuck?” he roars, looking both crazy and confused.

  “Calm your tits, brother. Everything will be explained in due time. Right now, we need to wake up Teller. There is a situation outside that needs our attention.”

  “Is Torch alright?”

  “What about Taz?”

  “Yes, and yes,” I respond, answering the girls’ back to back questions.

  Hammer doesn’t bother commenting on my appearance. Instead, he gets a head start to Teller’s door that is at the end of the hallway. I’ve never thought about how easy it would be to kill us all with one strategically placed bomb in the middle of the night. We all sleep in one area of the house for crying out loud. It’s like living in a dorm.

  We both begin to knock on the door, trying to do the brotherly thing by not barging in on him, but there is no answer. Pounding my fist harder on the wood, Hammer looks at me with the same concern in his eyes that’s already started to enter my gut.

  Turning the brass knob, I’m blown away by what I see. There are tiny holes in his walls that are shining rays of light in different directions throughout his room.

  “What the fuck?”

  I don’t bother telling Hammer he needs to find another phrase to use because I am thinking the same thing. The closer I walk toward the walls with the fewest holes the louder the sound of a shower becomes. That’s the spare bathroom next door. The one Ashley is currently using. My blood starts boiling at the thought of my brother, my friend, invading people’s privacy. There are several women that use that shower. Has Saint’s accident caused him to grow completely out of touch with reality?

  “These go through the wall behind the bar,” Hammer says, standing beside the wall adjacent to me.

  “What the fuck?”

  I hate saying a line I’ve already heard too many times, but what the hell else can I say? I’m confused, pissed off, and now wondering what has been going through Teller’s mind. At this point, I don’t think it’s too farfetched to say he’s gone off the deep end.

  “They are too small to be viewing holes,” Hammer says, obviously having more faith in our discreet brother than I do. “He’s been listening to conversations.”

  When Hammer walks out of the room, I start to wonder if he is just going to leave this mess without a backwards glance, but he quickly returns once he has turned the light on in Scarlett’s room. Tiny new holes of light appear right before Hammer walks back into the space.

  “Where is he? And where is Scarlett?” I mumble.

  “That’s a good question, Irish. One I’m not sure anyone can answer.”

  When I hear two more sets of footsteps enter the room, I turn around to see Torch and Taz standing side by side. The look on their faces match the look on Hammer’s. I guess I took too long to return and they thought something was wrong. The guns they are gripping are now pointed at t
he ground as they stare around the room trying to make sense of the situation we find ourselves in.

  “Teller and Scarlett are missing.”

  I state the obvious, not because I think Torch and Taz are too stupid to figure it out on their own, I say it for lack of having anything else to say. I don’t have my toothpicks on me, and even if I did, they would be ruined with another man’s blood. My brain’s current energy level is equivalent to someone who just drank five energy drinks. Right now, it is impossible for me to stay still or silent.

  “Search for anything that will give us a hint as to what the fuck is going on.”

  Taz’s order is handed out in a way that lets you know he is now in vice president mode. It’s not a coincidence that Teller and Scarlett went missing on the same night she was supposed to be taken. I start to feel guilty about my earlier suspicions. Maybe someone working for Slasher got into the clubhouse and took them. It wouldn’t shock me if the sly bastard tried to lead us off his trail by using Dominic’s men.

  “Something doesn’t feel right,” Torch says. “If someone was taking him against his will Teller would have put up a fight. There are no signs of a struggle.”

  “What are you suggesting, Torch? That he and Scarlett are out on a stroll.”

  Taz raises his voice because that is what he does when he is stressed out. He becomes even more of an unbearable asshole when things aren’t going his way, and right now we have two missing people with no clue as to where they are.

  “No, I’m saying Teller has fooled us all. This entire time we thought he was mourning his brother when he’s actually been planning revenge on the man responsible for Saint’s condition. It all makes sense. Why he claimed Scarlett, why he’s been missing from our meetings, and why he wasn’t concerned when Slasher was sending us photos of Saint. He’s had this planned all along. He didn’t need to worry about how to get to Slasher like we were. He claimed Scarlett knowing he would use her as bait. Teller just needed to be patient and let the plan work it’s self out. Our brother has betrayed the club. Teller has gone rogue.”

  It doesn’t take long for Buck to make it to the clubhouse. Everyone is keenly aware the second he does arrive because the slamming of the front door shakes the entire building. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Buck so pissed. Not even when Slasher took Serenity. He was too upset to be pissed then. Now, Teller, a trusted member, has gone AWOL. Not only that, he’s taken one of the girls Buck promised to keep safe with him. Torch has spent the past five minutes trying to keep Mount Mia from blowing the roof off this place. Now I fear someone will have to do the same for Buck.

  “In my office, NOW!”

  Our president doesn’t bother to walk around the house looking for us. Instead, his voice can be heard booming through the walls. Taz immediately starts pinching the bridge of his nose. His situation is far worse than ours. Not only is he the vice president of the club. He happens to be Buck’s future son in-law. He’s about get the biggest ass chewing of the century.

  “Tell me this is a joke,” Buck hisses as soon as we are all in the closed off office. “Do not tell me that one of my members has kidnapped an eighteen-year-old girl, and we have no idea where they are.” He doesn’t give anyone time to answer him before he pinches the bridge of his nose and starts to pace the floor in front of the table. “How have we allowed one man to turn our club into a joke? Slasher has abducted half the women here. Put one of my men in a coma, and now he has stripped another of all his common sense. I refuse to continue to look like a fool,” he snaps at us. “I am not a FOOL!”

  “We need to focus on finding them,” Taz begins. “Teller obviously had this planned for a while. He didn’t choose tonight, the same night Dominic’s men show up at our clubhouse, out of coincidence. He knew they were coming.”

  “We need to talk to Dominic.”

  “Torch is right,” I grunt. “Maybe Dominic will be willing to tell us where he was going to meet Slasher.”

  “He doesn’t need to tell us anything,” Hammer states, inserting himself into the conversation. “Buck planted the tracker on his cell. We can find out where he is right now.”

  Hammer leaves the office long enough to retrieve his laptop. It takes him no time at all to have it up and running. Sitting in the middle of the table, the rest of us lean over Hammer’s shoulders to see the confusing programs we have no idea how to read. When I see him stop typing, I assume it’s because he has put in whatever was necessary for the GPS location to pop up.

  “He’s fifteen miles from here. Looks like he is near one of the houses we searched while looking for Serenity.”

  “Why would they meet somewhere we already knew about?” Buck questions.

  “Because that would be one of the last places we looked,” Taz answers. The way he twists his neck until the room is filled with the noise of him cracking his bones lets everyone know exactly how he feels about going on a wild goose chase. We know Slasher didn’t get Scarlett when he met up with Dominic. Obviously, the young boss knows the men he sent here aren’t coming back. We have a lot of questions, and I just hope the poor bastard we are about to ambush has some of the answers.

  “We can’t send everyone,” I point out. “The women would be left here alone, and the risk of losing all of our officers is too great.”

  “Torch, you’re responsible for calling all the members in this chapter to be here within the hour. I want all of them questioned about what they know, could know, or don’t know. Taz, you will stay here and get that bastard we have locked away to talk. I want him singing like a canary before I return. Hammer and Irish are rolling out with me.”

  Once Buck has handed out his orders, we file out of the room. Hammer and I are about to walk with Taz and Torch toward the girls’ room when we are suddenly stopped. “We don’t have time for goodbyes, men. We need to find Teller and Scarlett before something happens to that girl.”

  I look into my president’s eyes fully prepared to tell him to fuck off, but then I see how tired he is. Now, I’m not talking about a lack of sleep. Buck’s eyes are weary. His entire demeanor is worn out. It’s like this battle we are having with Slasher has taken its toll on him. So, I nod my head in understanding before following him to the front entrance. We don’t use this door often, but it’s the only one that doesn’t have blood waiting on the other side of it.

  Mine and Hammer’s bikes aren’t parked out front like Buck’s. Together we make it to the garage we use to park our bikes, only stepping over one dead body Taz or Torch must have killed earlier. Within seconds, we are straddling our machines, firing them up before rolling to the front of the compound to follow our president into the unknown. Buck saw the same screen I did, and he knows this town better than anyone. It won’t take him long to get us where we need to be.

  For once, Hammer doesn’t drive like an old grandma. He’s keeping speed alongside me. Buck’s leading the charge with enough distance between us and him that if any accident should occur we would not run him over. Looking down at the green and orange glowing speedometer, I see that we are going to make excellent time considering we are going twenty-five miles over.

  Just like always, I start going over every scenario in my head. We could potentially be ambushing not just one leader, but two. What if Teller hasn’t been able to get a hold of the Blacktop Sinners’ President to let him know he has Scarlett? Slasher might get gun happy seeing us roll up, and kill us before we are even able to get off our bikes.

  Before I can think about anything good possibly coming out of this plan, we are turning off the main road onto a sketchy looking, dark gravel one. The trees are making a tunnel over the road, almost daring the moon to try getting its light through their thick branches and leaves. We have to slow down a great deal because the tires on our Harley’s weren’t made for this type of terrain. Hammer and I are eating a lot of dust that is flying up from behind Buck, but we really don’t have a choice in the matter. If we allow a bigger gap between us that would put him in more
danger. He doesn’t need to arrive at our destination that far ahead of us.

  Finally, just when I feel like my lungs can’t take in anymore dust, Buck’s bike comes to a stop. Hammer and I park behind him, quickly getting off our Harley’s to take our rightful places at his side. Twenty feet is all that separates us and one of the sleekest looking black Rolls Royce Phantoms I have ever seen. What has the world turned to when men that sell women get to live like kings. They should all be in prison getting rode bareback by a guy named Bubba. Not being driven around in style.

  “You think they were about to leave?”

  Hammer asks the question because their lights are on, and pointing directly at us. Together, we are blocking their exit, so if they were leaving they aren’t anymore. It isn’t until Buck reaches for his three-eighty Springfield, that I retrieve my Beretta nine-millimeter, and I see Hammer pull out his Kimber forty-five.

  “Not anymore,” Buck growls before aiming his loaded weapon at the hood of the lead car. I follow his lead, and aim my barrel at the grill of the lustrous car.

  Seconds tick by, the crickets singing in the trees become louder before a man finally steps out of the passenger door of the car. Walking to the door behind him, he then opens it for his boss. With their lights still shining in our eyes, it is impossible to see anything other than their silhouettes.

  “I don’t like this,” I murmur loud enough for the two men beside me to hear. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Hammer nod in agreeance, but Buck never gives me any indication that he heard my reservations.

  “You were not the men I was expecting,” Dominic states with a false sense of confidence. Now that he is close enough to us, I can see his clean-shaven face and impeccable suit. I find it amusing that he tries to hide the fact that he is a gangster by walking around looking like a GQ model.