Preacher

by Dahlia West

  The tiny woman seemed to know her way around the kitchen, even Erin’s hopelessly disorganized one. She rooted out two mugs, two bags of Earl Grey, and the sugar from the pantry.

  “Who are you?” Erin demanded of the men who were now filling her kitchen. The other woman was standing sentry in the front doorway. She had a clear line to the kitchen from her position, but it was clear she was watching the driveway.

  The blond man frowned. “It’s kind of complicated.”

  Erin glared at him. “I don’t care how complicated it is. Men came to my house! One shot my dog, one tried to stab me!”

  Behind her, Sarah whimpered.

  “Slick,” said the man in charge. “Make the tea.”

  Erin couldn’t believe everyone was so calm. She slammed her palm down on the counter for emphasis. “I want to know what the hell happened today at my house!”

  There was mostly silence in the room as everyone looked to the blond man to answer.

  Erin watched as he pulled out one of the undamaged chairs and slid his large frame down into it. He indicated the remaining seat.

  “Sit,” he told her. “I’ll tell you.”

  Nearly half an hour later, Erin stared at the man over a mug of tea that had finally gone about as cold as the pit in her stomach. She was barely able to process all of it. “A motorcycle gang?” she asked, incredulous. “I can’t believe it,” she whispered, but that wasn’t exactly true. The Jack who had come to her had been wild, dangerous. She could easily see that Jack as the leader of a motorcycle gang. But her Jack was different. He was warm and funny and affectionate. She wanted him here. She wanted him back. “I can’t believe he left us.”

  “Us?” he asked. “Who else lives here?”

  With that last question, the floodgate that Erin feared was close to bursting shattered. The pain in her chest felt like something really had broken, deep inside her. Hot tears spilled down her cheeks and she sobbed. This time she might never stop.

  Sarah wrapped her arms around her. It made Erin miss Jack even more, but it was better than nothing. She collapsed into the woman’s arms and cried. “Oh, sweetie,” Sarah said again and smoothed Erin’s hair. It was oddly comforting.

  “Who lives here?” he insisted.

  Sarah stiffened. “Chris,” she hissed. “Don’t be so pushy.”

  The man scowled but said nothing more.

  Sarah pushed Erin away, long enough to get a good look at her. She reached up and tucked a stray hair behind Erin’s ear. “Does Jack know?”

  Erin shook her head, lower lip quivering a bit.

  “Know what?” Chris demanded.

  Buck had stepped forward too, brows knitted together.

  In lieu of Erin having to answer, Sarah shot her husband a withering look.

  His shoulders slumped a bit under the weight of his wife’s stare. “Oh.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Buck muttered.

  “Don’t call him that!” Erin snapped.

  “Well, it’s true!” her father argued. “Look at the trouble he’s brought down around you.” Then he waved his hand at her, almost dismissively. “And left you in trouble, too.”

  “Shut up!” Erin seethed. “It’s none of your business!”

  Buck’s mouth dropped. “A bastard grandchild isn’t my—?”

  Erin stood up so fast her chair fell over. “You shut up!” she shouted. “You don’t get to say a word about anyone! Not you, of all people!”

  The buckle bunny had a kid, or so she’d said when she’d stood on the Walker’s porch those years ago. Somewhere out there, Erin might have a baby brother or sister that she didn’t know, would never know. And she knew for a damn certainty that Buck hadn’t sent that woman a dime.

  Maybe a few hundred, to ‘take care of it.’ At least that’s what Erin imagined whenever she was particularly disgusted by the man. She had no proof, but she could see him doing it.

  Chris stepped between them and ushered Buck out the front door, accompanied by two of the other men. They went out to feed Bee and bed her down for the night. One of them returned immediately, though, a large black duffel bag in hand. He passed it to Chris, who set it on the kitchen table.

  It landed with a thud. Whatever was in it was heavy.

  Erin stared at it. “What is this?” she asked.

  “He wanted you to have it,” Chris replied, which wasn’t really much of an answer. He reached for the zipper and pulled it back.

  Erin stumbled away, blood pounding in her ears.

  Sarah caught her and propped her up.

  “What is that?!” Erin demanded.

  No one answered.

  “You know what I mean! Where did it come from?!”

  Chris cleared his throat, looking at her, almost sadly. “You can use it for something good. Jack was right, you seem…like a good woman. Like a woman who’s trying hard to do the right thing. Keep it. It’s the least he could do.”

  Erin shook her head and rubbed the back of her aching neck. “He’s not coming back, is he?” she whispered.

  Chris’ eyes narrowed and his jaw tightened before he spoke. “You don’t need a man like Jack Prior in your life, Erin. Trust me on that.”

  “You don’t know what I need,” she argued.

  He sighed. “You need someone to show you how to spend this, how to hide it, how to be smart using it. We’ll show you. This money’s going nowhere, Erin, if you don’t take it. I don’t want it. I don’t need it, but I think you do.”

  * * *

  It wasn’t Chris but the large Sioux, Hawk, who set up an offshore account for her on her computer while she watched, with promises to contact her again in a few days with further instructions to launder the money.

  Launder money.

  Of all the things Erin could have imagined having to learn to do for herself, this had never been one of them.

  The giant of a man left her with a solemn nod and a sympathetic look as he left with his friends.

  Erin locked herself in her office, away from Buck, away from the blood on her floor and all the things she didn’t want to deal with. She set the bag on the desk and sank slowly into the chair, eyeing it warily. Her hand unconsciously went to her belly and she fought a fresh stream of tears that were welling up behind her eyes.

  ‘Take care of it’ didn’t exactly echo in her ears, but the sentiment was pretty much the same.

  She tried to tell herself that even if she had Jack and not the money, it wasn’t necessarily a given that things would work. He might have left anyway, further down the line. And Erin couldn’t imagine looking into a child’s eyes and trying to explain why Daddy didn’t want them anymore.

  Of course, there was always abortion. Erin wiped her nose and thought wryly about how much it would even matter at this point. It would be just another secret kept. Another sin committed. Dead bodies; dead babies.

  She’d allowed the devil to walk into her life and, like the devil, he’d wreaked his havoc and disappeared out of her life, like smoke, leaving devastation in his wake.

  And the worst thing, the unforgivable sin, the one which had paved the road to Hell itself, was that Jack had gotten through her defenses. He’d allowed her to dream, to plan, to love…to hope.

  Erin looked at the desk with the money spread out. She looked at what her blindness, her willful blindness, had caused. Erin looked over the wages for her many, many sins…and wept.

  Chapter Sixty-Three

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  The small, portable generator lit up the inside of the storage unit better than he could have hoped for. His eyesight was good, he just hoped his memory was the same as he carefully threaded each wire and cut them with a steady hand. The vent was open so that the smell of chemicals wasn’t overwhelming.

  Next to him, Jack had the borrowed laptop sitting on the workbench as well, and was occasionally monitoring it as he worked. He’d already guessed who was behind the attack at Thunder Ridge, based on their cuts, but it was nice to know that Morrie was ac
tually here in town, with most of his boys.

  They were taking over Jack’s operation, making inroads with all of his old street-level dealers. Morrie apparently thought that he could just pick up where Jack and Hook had left off. What few Buzzards were left breathing free air after the DEA sweep—and there were only a handful—were pointing out Jack’s former lackeys to the Kings, all over town.

  Guys whom Jack had barely let polish the chrome on his Harley were now sporting bottom rockers for the Kamloops Kings and they couldn’t have pulled up their skirts and spread their legs any faster for their new masters, at least not to Jack’s eyes and ears.

  Years of business deals, networks, and relationships were all being tainted with Morrie’s Canadian stain. He wouldn’t get his hands on all of them, because no one knew all of them, but, still, Morrie had enough info and contacts to make Jack’s stomach turn.

  Rapid City was theirs for the taking.

  They’d set up shop again, just a few blocks over from the old clubhouse, which had been seized by the Feds. But Jack had paid cash for the teetering second property and funneled the sale through a few shell companies. Apparently, the government bean counters hadn’t ferreted out its existence.

  Morrie was there, though, with the rest of his crew. And as soon as Jack finished assembling his new toys, he was about the pay them all a visit.

  He carefully—very carefully—packed an empty duffel bag with everything he thought he’d need and calmly looked over the rest. It had taken over a decade to accumulate all of it—at least Jack’s contributions to the lot. Scratch had started with just a suitcase of cash and a few Saturday night specials with the serial numbers filed off. Now there was a trunk full of black tar heroin, a few boosted electronics, and assorted AR-15s. As fun as spraying this shithole town with automatic assault fire sounded, Jack wasn’t about to do anything quite that stupid.

  It was all just collateral damage now.

  He left one of the cylinders on the flat worktable’s surface and carefully punched buttons on the small digital kitchen timer attached to it. When he was finished, he stepped back, pulled down the metal shutter, and closed up the storage unit.

  He was out of the facility, in the truck, and already pulling away from the curb when the timer reached zero.

  Chapter Sixty-Four

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  Just as her crying jag subsided, Buck knocked on the office door. Erin quickly snatched the duffel bag off the desk and stowed it underneath so that it couldn’t be seen. Instead of letting him into the room, she strode to the door and opened it, stepping out into the hall.

  “I…” he began sheepishly. “I just wanted to apologize. For earlier.”

  Erin tried hard not to roll her eyes and instead pushed past him, heading toward the foot of the stairs. “It doesn’t matter,” she snapped. She hoped to leave him behind, make it clear that she wasn’t interested in any kind of father/daughter Hallmark moment.

  Buck and Erin hadn’t had many of those in her life and certainly not any in recent memory. She wasn’t about to start now. She climbed the steps, hoping to put distance between them, but he followed her anyway. He was in the way, but neither did she want to be alone tonight. The irritation of the situation was simmering inside her, ready to boil over at any moment, she feared.

  In the bedroom she busied herself by picking up Duke’s bowl and taking it to the bathroom to refill it. When she returned, the dog thumped his tail happily as she set it down beside his bed. She hunkered down next to him, checked the wound, which was not bleeding now, and patted him gently on the head.

  “I’m sorry,” she told him tiredly. “I’m so sorry I brought you into my mess of a life.” She tried not to think about the world she was bringing the baby into.

  As if he could read her thoughts, Buck, who had appeared in the doorway, said, “I’ll help you. You don’t…You don’t have to worry about money. I’ll—”

  “I don’t need your money!” Erin snapped, thinking of the duffel bag hidden underneath her desk. Buck didn’t know about it and Erin wasn’t about to tell him, either. Leave it to Buck to think that his money could solve any problem.

  He gaped at her. “Well, hell yes, you do need it! That much is obvious.”

  Erin bristled as she stood up, planting her boots on the hardwood floor. “You don’t know anything!” she argued. “You don’t know me at all. Or my life. You don’t know.”

  He had the gall to look contrite just then as he ducked his head. “I do know, Erin,” he said quietly.

  She froze, standing before him, hands on her hips, cracked lip still stinging.

  Her father took a step farther into the room, licking his own lips, looking rather nervous. “I…” he began, stopped himself and tried again. “What happened with Hank, that was my fault.” His words seemed to echo loudly in the room.

  Erin stared at him. “What happened with Hank?” she repeated slowly, trying to understand what he was saying.

  “He…he hurt you. And that was my fault. He’d worked for me before. I knew he needed money. I…I paid him. Just to…mess with you.”

  The room seemed to swirl around Erin. All his words, all his whitewashed euphemisms, pounded in her ears like rushing blood. Hurt her? Mess with her? Was that what he’d called it?

  Her blurred vision suddenly sharpened and she lunged at him. Her palms shot up and found purchase on his large chest. She shoved him hard, making him stumble back.

  Beside her, Duke growled on his bed and started to rise. “No!” Erin cried, jabbing a finger at him. “You stay!”

  For the first time in his life, Duke actually listened. He remained on the bed, but his hackles were raised and he was glaring at Buck intently.

  “Hurt me?” Erin shouted, advancing on her father and pushing him again. They were out of the room now, dangerously close to the head of the stairs. For one wild moment, Erin wished she could push him down them, hear his bones break as he tumbled all the way to the floor below. “Mess with me?!”

  Buck looked at her wide-eyed, raising his hands to ward her off. “Erin, I…I—”

  “HE TRIED TO RAPE ME!” she shouted, despite the pain in her throat from earlier. “He held me down and all I could taste was dirt and blood and nothing’s ever hurt me so bad in my life. And I killed him for it, Dad! Me! Not Jack! I picked up a rock and I bashed his fucking head in! And I swear to God, if he were standing here now, here in this room, I’d do it again! AND YOU SENT HIM HERE?!”

  “Baby…”

  “Get away from me!” Erin rasped.

  But Buck didn’t get away. He didn’t leave. He reached out and grabbed her arms, a pleading look shining brightly in his eyes. “I should’ve protected you! I should’ve helped you. Instead I worked against you. And I sent a sick son-of-a-bitch out here just so I could get my way. But Erin, I didn’t know what he was. I didn’t know what he was capable of. I swear to God, I swear to God I’m telling it to you straight. I did not know. I never told him to hurt you.”

  Erin’s jaw tightened and she gripped Buck’s arms in return, digging her fingernails into his skin, hoping she was drawing blood. “He’s not the sick son-of-a-bitch,” she seethed. “You are.”

  “Erin, please.”

  Erin wasn’t one to wallow in self-pity, but she’d be damned if her father was going to snatch it for himself and make it his own. He’d hogged enough of the spotlight during their lives. She opened her mouth to make that fact very, very clear.

  Outside, lightning flashed just a half-second before thunder ripped through the air. It shook the house and rattled the windows. As the rumble died down, Erin heard the scream of a horse carried on the wind.

  Chapter Sixty-Five

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  Several emergency units, police and fire, rocketed past Jack on the way to the explosion he’d set off with the pipe bomb just minutes ago. Large, fat raindrops started to hit the windshield, one after another and thunder rumbled in the distance, coming ever closer to the city.

 
For a brief moment, Jack thought about Thunder Ridge and hoped the new roof of the barn was holding up in the storm.

  He reached the alleyway behind the warehouse his former business partners had appropriated and killed the engine along with the headlights. Slipping out of the driver’s side quietly, Jack inched his way up to one of the broken windows at the rear of the building.

  Aside from the occasional flash of lightning, the inky blackness of nightfall camouflaged him pretty well. He hoped. The sound of the storm masked the sound of his boots as he got as close as he dared in order to listen without being seen by anyone inside.

  He recognized Slider right away and watched the man disconnect a call he’d been on and look at the others. “Keller and Zane are going to take care of Haze. They’re headed out there tonight, right after their shift ends. There was some kind of explosion across town. It’s all hands on deck right now.”

  Jack rocked back on his heels in surprise. Haze? The man who’d left him for dead in the Badlands but hadn’t had the balls to actually finish the job? He was still around? Jack could hardly believe it.

  Keller and Zane were local, two RCPD patrol officers that Jack had had on the Buzzards’ payroll for years. If they were being dispatched to take out Haze, then Haze had to be somewhere close.

  Jack wondered what the bastard had finally done to show his true colors to the rest of the club, why they were so eager to get rid of him now. He supposed it didn’t really matter, though. He’d known that the man wasn’t right for the club. He’d known it from the moment they’d met. It was why Jack never patched him in.

  Who really gave a shit if Slider and the rest had figured out now what Jack had known all along, when the Buzzards were finished and the Kings were taking over their territory? Whatever Haze had done to earn the wrath of Slider and the Kamloops Kings, it paled in comparison to the debt Jack owed him for leaving him to die.

  Unfortunately, no one in the warehouse mentioned an address or any details at all. He could wait all night and never get anything. Haze would be dead soon, and not by Jack’s hand. And there was no way Jack was letting anyone steal his thunder.