I burst through the door and into the edge of the kitchen. Two men, both wearing Chino’s and wife beaters, stood side by side. One was pointing a rifle toward the front door, right at Pee Bee.
As his eyes shot toward us, I fired a shot, and then another, striking him twice in the chest. His rifle discharged as he stumbled against the countertop. The sound of his weapon firing was deafening, and muffled the sound of the silenced gunshots that followed.
The second man was struck multiple times. His dingy shirt glistened with blood as he fell to the floor.
Nervously, I kicked the rifle away from the dead man at my feet, and then looked around. The filthy shack had virtually no interior walls, and consisted of a kitchen on my left, a living room in front of me, and a hallway that led to the bedrooms on my right. With the exception of the inside of the bedrooms, everything was within view.
There were two dead men in the kitchen, and two in the living room.
“Bedroom’s clear,” I heard Crip shout.
“Check the garage,” I said over my shoulder.
Cautiously, I walked through the living room and toward the hallway. With Crip still in the bedroom on my right, I rushed toward the door on the left. Cholo looked at me and then slowly opened it.
The smell almost knocked me to my knees. Sixteen concerned eyes from eight filthy half-dressed teens stared back at us. My stomach churned as my blood pressure rose. Cholo lowered himself to one knee, and pulled off his mask.
“The police will be here in a minute to give you girls a ride home,” he said. “No one here is going to hurt you.”
A few of the girls nodded. I wanted to say something meaningful, but couldn’t seem to get a sound past my tightened throat.
“How many you got?” I heard Pee Bee ask.
I realized I was sitting on the floor in front of the doorway, simply staring into the room. I didn’t have any idea at what point I sat down, or why.
“Eight,” Cholo said. “We’ve got eight.”
Pee Bee turned away, and quickly returned with another girl. One of the fella’s black tee shirts hung from her like a black bedsheet. With matted blonde hair and bare feet, she walked at his side, holding his hand loosely in hers. She couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven years old.
At six-foot-eight, Pee Bee looked like a gentle giant at her side.
A gentle giant that I now saw was covered in blood.
“Just stand in there for a few minutes,” Pee Bee said as he released her hand. “Help will be here in just a couple minutes.”
She glanced over her shoulder and responded faintly. “Okay.”
Pee Bee reached for the door handle. “I’m going to close this. Don’t come out until someone identifies themselves as a police officer, okay?”
“Okay,” the girl in the black tee shirt repeated. “Thank you.”
Hearing those words proved to be all I could take. My throat went dry and every muscle tensed. On the verge of what I expected was a nervous breakdown, I peered into the filthy room and filled with sorrow over what the girls had undoubtedly gone through.
Someone pulled the door closed. Once painted white, it was now dingy and discolored. The greasy fingerprints and stains gave hint to the vile scum that had touched it from the outside. I gazed blankly at it, and imagined the other side being spotless and shiny.
I felt a hand on my arm. Someone pulled me to my feet. Our raid and half-assed rescue wasn’t like the scenes I’d written about. The intensity and emotion were unexplainable. The smell of week-old piss, stolen innocence, and unimaginable fear hung in the air, all but choking me from taking each breath.
I turned toward the kitchen.
Covered in blood, and not wearing a shirt, Crip stood over a man in the hallway with his pistol pointed down at his torso.
The barrel of the pistol jumped repeatedly. The thwack, thwack, thwack from the silencer preceded the smell of cordite that filled the hallway.
The sweat-stained shirt of the man on the floor transformed to crimson.
“Come on, Boss,” Pee Bee said. “I told ‘em help is on the way. We need to roll.”
“You guys go ahead. I’m not leaving these girls alone until I know they’re safe,” Crip growled. “Pick me up at the ball diamond. As soon as that cop pulls up, I’ll slip out the back.”
“You’re covered in blood, and you gave up your shirt, Boss. You’ll get picked up by the cops for sure,” Pee Bee said.
“Not leaving the girls, Peeb.” Crip glanced at each of us. Blood ran along his arm and dripped from the tips of the fingers on his left hand. “Get gone.”
We all stood and stared.
Crip pulled up his mask. His face was peppered with gray and black whiskers, and his eyes were filled with concern. “I’m not asking, I’m telling,” he said. “Now, beat feet.”
Pee Bee pulled off his shirt and handed it to Crip.
Pee Bee’s shoulder was covered in blood. Crip nodded toward it. “You get hit?”
“Just once.”
“You alright?”
Pee Bee motioned toward the door at the end of the hallway. “Better off than those kids in that room.”
“I appreciate each one of you fellas,” Crip said with a nod. “Now get gone. I’ll see you at the ball diamond.”
The entire event hadn’t lasted five minutes. It wasn’t like kicking the shit out of someone in a barfight, recovering a stolen bike from a rival club, or settling a dispute at a weekend rally.
It was different.
So much so that I wondered if I’d ever be the same.
Chapter Thirteen
Bobbi
After receiving an email from Amazon that book number six in the biker series had been released, I eagerly clicked the link. Frustrated to find that the book had been out for almost a week, I eagerly downloaded it and took my Kindle to work. My day was then spent anxiously waiting for my lunch break to arrive. Now that it was finally time, I sat in the observation station with an apple in one hand and my Kindle in the other.
“Must be a great book if you can’t wait until you get home to read it,” Perry said. “Never had one that I was that worried about reading.”
I seriously doubted he’d ever read a book. I glanced up, gave him a quick glare, and then went back to reading. Two chapters in, and it was so gripping that I couldn’t put it down. It followed the life of an ancillary character from book four. He was proving to be more interesting than any of the previous characters from the series.
His name was Becker Wallace, and he went by the road name Cricket. It’s been said that crickets are a sign of good luck, and Cricket was the club’s good luck charm.
He’d been riding with the MC for sixteen years, and was only 34 years old. Set in his old-school ways, he was a man well beyond his years in persona, actions, and state of mind.
He wore short unkempt hair, a full beard, and smoked a pipe – which he carried in his front pocket. Despite living in southern California, he always wore a flannel shirt. He didn’t have a television, carried a flip phone, and didn’t use the internet. He didn’t send text messages or have Facebook, and believed social media was the beginning of the downfall of the entire nation. If you wanted Cricket, you had to call him or somehow find him. If you weren’t one of his MC brethren, you couldn’t call him, because he wouldn’t give out his phone number to anyone. He only had it because the club demanded it in their bylaws.
He despised anyone who made online purchases for anything they could otherwise buy in person, and wasn’t afraid to speak his mind. He didn’t carry a gun, a club, or a knife. He did, however carry a straight razor in his back pocket, and made it know if anyone ever aggravated him enough to cause him to use it, that they’d end up being cut three ways.
Long. Deep. And, forever.
He worked as a jewelry smith, making custom rings and pendants by hand in his garage. He often turned work away if it was simplistic in nature, believing the complex designs challenged him more. All hi
s work was obtained by word of mouth, as email, telephone conversations, and texting were out of the question.
When he wasn’t sketching his next creation in his notepad, he read literature, focusing not on the likes of The Grapes of Wrath, Pride and Prejudice, or other well-known works. He read pieces of lesser known literature that he believed had artistic merit, most of which his late father left him when he died.
With a jeweler’s magnifying visor affixed to his head, and one thousand watts of light illuminating his workbench, he delicately tapped a sterling silver strap with his brass hammer and awl.
Crafting the flat piece of silver strap into an intertwining string of roses, he worked all day and into the night until the piece was done. Upon completing it, he inspected it under a twenty-power microscope for any imperfections.
After finding none, he set the piece of jewelry aside, removed his visor, and reached for his book.
One thing that I liked about Tate’s MC series was that each book gave a totally different perspective into the lives of the men. They weren’t simply men on motorcycles who sat around the clubhouse drinking beer, farting, and screwing strippers.
They were men who had lives outside the club. Where one man might look at the MC as nothing more than an obligation, another may see the MC as his only family. One character might spend all his time in the book at the clubhouse or with the other men, while another rarely mentioned the men in the club.
I suspected Tate’s portrayal of the men in the fictitious club was accurate, and that in real life, MCs were comprised of people from all walks of life.
To Becker, the club was not a way of life, it was life. The only life he had, the only life he wanted, and the only life he knew.
I flipped through the pages with my thumb, soaking up every morsel of information about Becker Wallace that was available. After what seemed like a matter of minutes, the sound of Perry’s voice caused me to divert my attention to the other side of the observation station.
I lowered my Kindle and gave him a look. “What?”
“It’s one o’clock,” he said. “Time to get back to work.”
I glanced at my watch. Somehow, an hour had passed. I looked at the apple that was clenched in my other hand. One bite had been taken out of it.
Reluctantly, I turned off my Kindle and tossed it in my purse. I took a bite of my apple and then looked at Perry. With his thumb hooked on his belt and his keys swinging at his side, he gazed beyond his reflection and into the silent cellblock.
It irritated me that he spent three or four hours a day looking at cars on the internet, and if I wanted to read, I was chastised for it. Nonetheless, I sat and silently ate my apple.
“So, what’s that book about, anyway?”
“A jeweler,” I said.
He chuckled. “A jeweler?”
“That’s right.”
He gave me a look of disbelief. “Doesn’t look like a book about a jeweler.”
I raised my eyebrows in wonder. “What’s a book about a jeweler look like?”
He stopped swinging his keys and turned to face me. After swiping his flattened palm against the strands of hair that formed his makeshift toupee, he dropped his gaze to my purse. “I saw the cover of it when you got your Kindle out. Had a guy on the front without a shirt that was covered in tattoos and shit. Doesn’t look like a jeweler book.”
“Should he be wearing a suit?”
“He should be wearing something.”
“If he was an old man in a suit, would it look like a jeweler’s book?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
I wasn’t surprised. He was a narrow-minded bigot who was incapable of seeing beyond the surface of anything.
I wondered what someone like Becker Wallace would do in prison. My guess was that he would read, fashion objects out of what others considered to be trash, and take no shit from any man, guards included.
I watched Perry’s reflection in the glass as he walked to his desk, logged onto his computer, and began scoring the internet for cars.
I finished my apple, tossed the core in the trash, and reached for my Kindle. “When you stop looking at cars, I’ll stop reading.”
He looked up. “Excuse me?”
“When you stop looking at cars on eBay, I’ll stop reading.”
He glared at me for a moment, and then shifted his gaze to his monitor.
He continued to look for cars, and I began to read. As the straight razor toting biker forged a piece of gold into a ring, I relaxed. When the club went on a fact-finding mission at a rival club’s watering hole, I squirmed in my seat. Page after page, and chapter after chapter, I allowed Becker to wiggle his way into my heart, having no alternative but to accept him with open arms.
Tate’s previous books were narrated in first person, using an alternating point of view. The chapters were written from both the hero’s and the heroine’s points of view, giving an insight into the lives, thoughts, and feelings of both characters.
This book, for whatever reason, was narrated by an omniscient protagonist. It was different, but I was enjoying it immensely. Becker had just finished an engagement ring for a local attorney, who planned on proposing to his would-be wife over the weekend while on a cruise ship.
Under the illumination of the streetlight, Stephen inspected the ring at his leisure. His previous examination, while in the confines of the jeweler’s home, left him feeling anxious and rushed.
Using his thumb, he roTated the magnificent piece along the tip of his index finger, admiring the detail given in the placement of each of the hand-picked diamonds. His painstaking examination produced not a single imperfection. Finding it to be flawless, and much to his liking, he imagined what Julia would say when he offered it to her. Wearing a grin of anticipation, he folded the blue velvet cloth over the ring and pushed it deep into the pocket of his slacks.
“Give me the ring,” a voice from behind him demanded.
Stephen’s mind told him to run, but his feet refused the instruction. With his hand still in his pocket, he clutched the velvet cloth and said a prayer.
“I…I can’t. It’s…” Stephen turned around, hoping a heartfelt explanation would spare him from being robbed of the precious hand-made ring.
The tip of the assailant’s knife struck the left side of Stephen’s neck, severing his carotid artery. As his hands rose to the gaping wound, the thief thrust his hand into the prospective grooms’ pocket, retrieved the ring, and ran.
With a crimson trail leaving proof of his every step, Stephen stumbled toward the jeweler’s home. Fighting against time and his own beating heart, he somehow managed to stagger to the porch.
His vision blurred as he pounded his bloody hand against the door. “Please,” he pleaded, his voice weakened by the loss of blood. “Help me.”
The jeweler, immersed in reading, rose from his position in his favorite chair. As he took his first step toward the door, Stephen drew his final breath and collapsed on the porch.
The jeweler opened the door, and upon recognizing Stephen, lifted the lifeless body and cradled it in his arms. He tilted his head toward the star-filled sky and asked his glorious maker how nothing more than greed could empower one man to take another man’s life.
The sound of an approaching vehicle caused the jeweler to divert his attention toward the street. He raised his hand at the passing car.
The driver, a school teacher on her way home from a winter social engagement, shrieked at the sight of the jeweler’s blood-soaked shirt. Instead of stopping, she pressed the button on her steering wheel mounted controls, activating the vehicle’s cell phone.
She cleared her throat, and with a shaking voice, gave the command that would change the jeweler’s life forever.
“Call 9-1-1.”
I looked up. My heart was racing. I felt sick to my stomach. I scanned the observation station. Perry was no longer at his desk. I looked at my watch.
3:25.
In five minutes, my shif
t was over. I tossed my Kindle into my purse. I would be so pissed off if Tate let Becker go to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Tate wouldn’t do that to his readers. He knew exactly what it was like to have that happen, and I doubted he wanted to wish it upon anyone else, book character, or not. I stood, let out a breath, and looked around the room.
Damn you, Tate.
Chapter Fourteen
Tate
In a week, the new book had received over two hundred reviews. According to the amount of praise it was receiving – and the five-star average it held – it was my best received book to date.
I scrolled through the book’s Amazon page and down to the sales rank. Much to my surprise, the ranking was below one hundred.
Sixty-six to be exact.
Notoriety had never been my goal. No differently than any other author, I hoped to one day write a New York Times Bestseller, but made no real effort to obtain the goal. The policies, procedures, and layers of bureaucratic bullshit that were required to be hurdled to reach the objective were beyond what I was willing to give.
I enjoyed writing, sharing my stories with others, and felt blessed that I could somehow manage to pay my bills with the income I received from doing so. Becoming a puppet and allowing the industry to pull my strings wasn’t on my to-do list, nor would it be.
Excited at the book’s progress, I wondered if the success was simply a result of it being the last book in the series.
I decided it was.
I checked the sales rank again, fully expecting it to have jumped to well over one hundred.
Sixty-two.
I grinned at my accomplishment. Having a book ranked in the top 100 out of all books in Amazon’s existence was a benchmark I had yet to reach, and doing so was quite an accomplishment.
For the first two years that I’d published books, I didn’t have the internet at home. I’d write a book, take my laptop to the coffee shop, and upload it through the publishing platform using their free Wi-Fi. Rankings, reviews, and sales data were observed infrequently – if at all – and only when I was able to cart my computer to the coffee shop in the saddlebag of my motorcycle.
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