Wanted: An Outlaw Anthology

by Lane Hart

  “Coffee,” I tell the prospect manning the counter. “Black, no sugar.” I need it extra strong to start this day. Or, to keep it going, whichever way you choose to view it.

  “Same,” Malice orders him.

  “Are we having church?” Bowie comes up behind us and asks me.

  “Not yet, I need to figure out who set us up first.”

  “You think we’ve got a traitor?” he asks me, shock written all over his face.

  “Yeah, I do,” I reply to his question. “Has to be, there’s no way someone would have had enough information to share and prepare in time for those men to vanish. They should’ve been in that room, not escaping out of a hidden tunnel.”

  “Damn, that’s not good, we need to flush whoever it is out,” Malice says, steepling his fingers together and resting his chin on them. “It couldn’t have been anyone from our inner circle, otherwise they would’ve ghosted way before we got on their premises.”

  “I’ve been thinking the same thing. We have two clubs we don’t really know that well...that’s the way my mind is leaning towards.”

  “I’ve known Cloud and his men for a long time, I don’t believe for one second that they’re involved in it.” Bowie says, lost in thought. “There’s gotta be a reason someone would betray us like this.”

  “There’s never a good reason to stab your club in the back,” Malice points out.

  “True fact,” I say, taking a gulp from my mug. “Whoever it is, they will regret that decision.”

  Miracle

  “Mama?” I feel someone shaking me from sleep. I look over and see Kobe standing over me. He has a worried expression on his face.

  “Kobe, what’s wrong? Is it your dad?” I worriedly sit up in the bed once I notice Jasper never made it home last night.

  “No Mama, I haven’t seen Dad. Is Milly with him?” he curiously questions me.

  “What do you mean? She’s in her bed, Son.”

  “No she’s not, I went to go wake her up for cereal and she’s not there,” I get up out of bed and rush down the hallway. I slam open her door, but notice that the bed still has a lump in the middle, same as last night when I came in to check on her.

  “Milly!” I start screaming out her name. Rushing through the house, checking every crevice there is. Bedrooms, bathrooms, closets, under beds, in the laundry room, in the kitchen, under cabinets. I’ve searched every square inch before panic really sets in.

  “We need to go up to the clubhouse, Kobe. Now!” I scream, rushing to my bedroom to throw some clothes on. I notice him rush to his room to do the same I’m assuming. I don’t have time to worry if he’s appropriately dressed or matching. I’m not even sure that I am… “Let’s go,” I say, grabbing his hand, the keys from the entrance room table and haul ass to the car. I don’t even stop to put my seat belt on or to check and see if Kobe’s latched his.

  I’m scared, so very scared.

  Did she wander out of the house and head to the clubhouse on her own?

  Oh God! I hope she didn’t head up to the creek. She has a fascination with water.

  Do I go check there first?

  All of these thoughts and questions are flying so rapidly and randomly, in my brain, I can’t keep up.

  I skid to a stop in front of the club and rush out of my door, keeping it open. I hear Kobe’s smaller footsteps trying to keep up with mine. I don’t slow down, time is of the essence when you have a child missing.

  I slam open the door and rush in, “Milly!” I scream into the open room. “Milly, are you here, baby?” I rush around, doing the same things I did at the house.

  “Miracle?” Kong comes stomping my way. “What’s wrong? What’s got you acting like a crazy person?”

  “Is Milly here?” I rush out my question in one breath.

  “Milly? Why on earth would she be here?” he asks me, and I can tell immediately he’s not messing with me.

  “She’s gone, Kong. I can’t find her in the house!”

  “Pres!” he bellows out, “keep calm, Miracle. We’ll find her, she’s probably just wondering around.”

  “From your mouth to God’s ears,” I begin to sob.

  “What the fuck is all of this hollering about?” I hear my old man stomp his way into the front room, where I’m currently at losing my ever-loving mind. Suddenly, I can’t get my voice to work, I’m trying to speak but no sounds are coming out. Jasper grabs me by the shoulders and begins shaking me. “Speak!” he commands.

  “Pres,” Kong pipes in, saving me from having to form any words.

  “What?” he grinds out through his teeth.

  “It’s Milly. Miracle can’t find her anywhere,” he informs Jasper.

  “What?” he shouts out. “Milly!” he starts calling out her name, as he too, frantically begins looking for her. I snap out of it and begin helping him. She has to be here, somewhere. She’s good at hiding, thinks it’s funny, but this time, it’s not.

  About this time, all of the men figure out what’s going on and start shouting her name out with us. “Everyone, check your houses, make sure she didn’t wander over to y’alls places wanting to play with your kids.” They rush out of the building and go to do what their President ordered them to do.

  “How could you be so irresponsible!” Jasper rushes up to me, getting in my face. “That’s our daughter! You were supposed to be keeping her safe, I trusted you with my kids!” He grabs my shoulders and begins shaking me in anger...again. I can feel my teeth rattling in my brain. He’s never laid a hand on me in anger, and I’m shocked that he’s doing so now.

  I’m so lost, and unsure of what to say, that my mouth opens and closes a few times. Yet, once again, no sounds come out. I want to scream and shout at him, but my body won’t cooperate.

  “I checked...I went to her room last night and checked,” I finally manage to speak out. “I swear, Jasper. I checked on both of them last night!”

  The door slams open and Reaper rushes in the door. “Britney’s gone!” he bellows out, I can see the fear radiating from every inch of his body.

  “So is Mallory! She’s fucking gone!” Malice screams out in anguish.

  “Find them!” Jasper hollers out, I can feel his body trembling while he still has a hold of me.

  Dawg stumbles through the door, he hits his knees as soon as he breaches the doorway and screams out, “Not my Josie! Oh god, my baby girl is gone!” I can see that he’s been injured.

  I look up at Jasper and see dried blood on his face. I don’t know why I didn’t notice before just now. But Dawg’s appearance was a trigger to get me to search. Where’s Knuckles? These guys weren’t on a simple run last night! Are they the reason our daughters have been abducted?

  I knew we’d been on lockdown, but we were in our homes! The safest place for us according to our old men. I’m scared to death for my Milly and all the girls who’ve been announced as missing. What is happening to them? Are they hurt? Are they crying out for their moms and dads?

  Jasper releases me, and I stumble back losing my footing. I fall to the ground and release a sob when I hit the floor on my backside. Pain immediately radiates up my spine. And I grab my stomach, at least I know this one is safe...for now.

  Out of nowhere, anger takes over my fear and I scream out at all of the men. “Our babies are gone! It’s all your faults! We were always supposed to be protected! That was y’alls jobs! What did you do?” I turn facing Jasper, “what did you do to our children?”

  “Don’t you dare question me!” he screams, pointing his finger in my face. “For twenty-years all I’ve done is protected my men and their families. Especially my own,” he slams his finger in his chest.

  “Shut the fuck up, both of you!” Morgan, Reaper’s old lady comes in with Jackson and Mason under each arm. “This isn’t the time for fighting! I want to know what y’all are going to do to get my Britney back!” Tears of anguish are streaming down her face. Reaper walks over to her, grabbing her face in his hands and whisper
s something in her ear. She collapses into his arms, her boys holding onto her middle. “Promise me,” I hear her whisper.

  “I swear it on my life,” he answers her, I can hear the way he’s choked up. We’ve all lost something very precious to us, our daughters.

  Chapter Eight

  Jasper

  After all these years, nothing of this magnitude has ever happened to us. Our club has stayed solid with no casualties, only minor injuries have occurred, never any kidnappings or deaths—other than natural causes or accidents not pertaining to the MC.

  Lorenzo and his men are going to pay for this. There is no doubt in my mind that he’s responsible for the disappearance of our daughters. He’s playing a tit-for-tat game with me. I didn’t fall into line and be the good obedient MC President, and now he’s forcing me to pay and suffer the consequences.

  Our fellow MCs who helped us holed up at the local motel last night or should I say early this morning. They were wanting a bed of their own to sleep in instead of rolled up sleeping bags. I didn’t blame them at the time, but now my mind is boggled with questions of, did they know? Were they a part of this? Why all of a sudden did they want their own individual quarters? Someone has betrayed me, and I won’t quit until I find out who it is and make them suffer.

  “Church, now!” I holler as I walk out of the room and down the hallway. I need to bring each and every one of our babies back home. But first, in order to do that, we need to find out what hole these motherfuckers crawled into. I know they’re underground and will be hard to find, but I’m a determined asshole, one who never quits.

  As soon as all the men enter the room, I bang my gavel on the table. “Prowler, I want all footage of the compound last night. I want to know what happened in every nook and corner here. Nothing gets left out. I also want a full jacket on everyone who’s crossed the threshold of our gates. I want to know who their friends, family and associates are. I want to know the last thing they ate, and when the last time was they took a shit. No rock unturned, you are dismissed to find me this information.”

  “You got it, Pres,” he says, standing up and exiting the room. He doesn’t question me asking him to leave the meeting, he knows the information is instrumental to us finding our lost loved ones. His son is safe at home and snuggled in the warmth of his mother’s arms. This is when I need him at his best, I can’t have his mind jumbled and stuffed with plans and shit we’ll be discussing at this meeting.

  “While he’s doing that, I want to know who was manning our gates. They saw something, there’s no way all of ours would go missing and them not notice a goddamned thing.”

  Dawg growls out between clenched teeth, “Trent, Gavin, Stewart and that new motherfucker, Jason.”

  “Go find them,” I order Reaper and Blaze. They shove their chairs back and rush out the door. If anyone can track these sons-of-bitches down, it’s those two.

  “What do we know about them?” I question the room.

  “Trent is a single father who works hard at the MC’s garage. He keeps his trap shut and does as he’s told. He’s young, twenty years old,” Cobra speaks up.

  “Any reason to believe he’d betray us?” I ask him.

  “None, but no one is innocent as far as I’m concerned,” he says, looking me dead in the eyes.

  “Agreed, brother,” I reiterate. “Gavin?”

  “He’s been a good prospect,” Kong says, “He’s also in his early twenties, has no family to speak of other than a grandmother that he resides with and helps pay her bills. She raised him since the day he was born, parents abandoned him at birth and he’s unwaveringly devoted to her, and speaks highly of her. As far as I can tell he has no reason to turn his back on us. He’s been searching for the bonds of brotherhood, we’ve had several conversations on this topic. But nothing is set in stone, he has to be looked at just like the rest.”

  “Stewart and Jason on the other hand, I don’t trust those two for a nanosecond. They’re rude, belligerent, and I’ve had to kick their asses on several occasions,” Machete tells me. “I was going to bring it up at the next Church, but then Lorenzo showed up on our radar and it seemed more important dealing with that than those two.” Several men agree with his observations of these two dimwits.

  “Then they’re the first two we question,” I announce. Everyone left at the table agrees with me. I haven’t had a chance to speak or deal with the prospects one-on-one, so I was unaware of the issues the men were having with them. That’s my bad, I was dealing with so many other things that I let the ball drop on that one.

  “How’s Knuckles?” Bowie asks me.

  “Last I heard he had woken up, but Doc gave him some pain meds and he crashed again. He’ll survive, but will be pissed as hell he’s slept through all of this.”

  I get a text on my phone, which we usually don’t carry in Church unless it has something to do with our meeting and we’re expecting a call. But this time, I need it with me in case a ransom comes in on our girls.

  Prowler: Have information you need to see.

  Me: Bring it to church, and your laptop.

  “Prowler's got something, he’ll be here soon to share.” I get up and go to the mini-fridge we have in the room and grab a beer. I know it’s early, but I need something for the nerves. I pop the top of my can and gulp half of it in one drink. I grab another one and walk back over and take my seat. I lean back in my chair and look up at the ceiling. How am I going to fix this clusterfuck? While we’re getting our girls back, I’m now worried about how secure the compound actually is.

  “Machete, when we’re done here, I want you to grab a few of the brothers and walk around the perimeter looking for weak spots. Something was missed somewhere if they were able to get in.”

  “You’ve got it, Pres. I’ll get Kong, Cobra and Blaze to help. If there’s anything, we’ll find it,” he promises me.

  “I know you guys will,” I answer, still lost in my thoughts. I need to get one step ahead of Lorenzo. First, I need to make sure whoever it is on the inside helping him from the outside needs to be eliminated. I can’t have a rat in my club.

  “Pres,” Prowler slams the door open, and he’s out of breath.

  “Breathe, brother,” Malice says to him.

  “I’ve got our traitors! It’s both of the prospects, Stewart and Jason, I have a money trail leading from Lorenzo into their banks. They didn’t even attempt to cover their tracks and hide it. It’s in plain sight, so easy to trace that I couldn’t believe it.”

  “Show me,” I demand. The beast inside of me is trying to claw his way out. I need to keep him buried—for now. I can’t let him emerge until I have all the information I need in order to let him loose. He walks over to me and slides his laptop in front of me. Sure enough, it shows where Lorenzo wire transferred fifty-thousand dollars apiece into their personal accounts. Then he proceeds to show me incoming and outgoing text messages from their phones to his.

  “Bring them to me, now!” I stand up from my chair, beating both of my fists on the table.

  “On it,” Malice says, taking his phone out of his pocket and I see his fingers moving. “Finding out if Reaper and Blaze were able to find them,” he responds. I hear his phone ping and he states, “They’ve got ‘em, they’re bringing them in now. The pussies were caught hiding out at Jason’s girl’s house.”

  “Let him know to take them to the ice house.” It’s where we go to take people we need to get information from, or end an individual's pathetic excuse of an existence. I get up. “Meeting done,” I announce, and hear the men getting up and following me. I walk through the main room, going up to my boy and ruffling his hair and placing a kiss on top. “Be back, stay with your mom,” I tell him, walking past my wife, not even looking in her direction.

  I know it may make me a dick to blame her, but right now, that’s where my thoughts are. I quickly walk around the clubhouse and up the hill. We didn’t put the ice house near the homes or the clubhouse so that we have privacy and
don’t take a chance of anyone walking in on us. This part of the land is off limits to everyone who isn’t an officer, but this time, I’ll make an exception. All of the brothers deserve answers and a chance to get their pound of flesh.

  I stroll through the doors just as the prospects are being tied up to the ceiling. “Well, boys. We don’t know each other well, but I think it’s high time we do.” I smile in their direction, I see them look over at each other and laugh at the look on their faces. “Aww, don’t worry too much fellas,” I state with maliciousness. “The faster you answer my upcoming questions, the quicker and easier we will make your death.”

  Miracle

  When Jasper coldly passes by me paying me no attention, I want to jump on his back and beg him to talk to me. No matter how mad I am at him, I still need him. I want to plead with him to talk to me, to tell me if he knows anything.

  Kobe comes over to me and crawls up into my lap. “It’s gonna be okay, Mama. Daddy will get her back.” I pat his back as he lays his head on my shoulder.

  “I hope so, Kobe. That’s what Mama’s praying for.” I close my eyes and send a prayer out to the universe that my baby does return to me safely. Libby comes up out of the back of the clubhouse where the infirmary is and sits down next to me.

  She grabs my hand and squeezes it in unity. If we don’t have each other’s backs, we can’t depend on anyone else to. “They’ll get them back, I don’t know what to do or say here, except that I’m so terribly sorry for what y’all are going through.”

  Of course she wouldn’t understand. Her daughters, Sasha and Shelby are home safe and sound. Her daughters are the only ones who weren’t taken, so their family is still intact while mine’s up in limbo. The clubhouse is quiet with all the men out doing whatever it is they do.

  Hopefully when they come back they’ll have good news.

  I get up needing to do something other than sitting here, so I go into the kitchen and start a pot of coffee, and begin making breakfast. The men will need some substance in their stomachs when they come back. They can’t be expected to think clearly or have the strength in their bodies to go after the girls if they don’t take care of their needs.