by Nicole Fox
“Okay.” He opens and closes his hands. “This will all be over soon. Once we get Todd and the final remnants of the—”
“Wait.” The ground spins under my feet; the sky spins. I swallow mouthfuls of vomit. “What are you talking about? I thought this was over. I thought they were dead. Is Todd the guy with the handlebar mustache?”
“Yes, he is their leader. No, it’s not over, not yet. They’re still holed up in that warehouse. They’ve been using that as their base for a while now, and Todd is an arrogant man. He doesn’t know what it means to be humbled, even when bodies lie all around him. He is a fool.”
“I don’t …”I take a step back. Something rises inside of me, something hot and red, and then white-hot. I see that man, his smile, hear his voice, feel his breath on my cheek. They were going to rape me, they were going to take turns, they hurt my brother and they hurt my man. They’re fucking animals and they’re still alive and we’re here getting fresh air and smoking cigarettes like it’s no big deal.
“It’s a lot to take in,” he says, and then leaves me.
I massage my temples, trying to force this feeling away, trying to convince myself to go back into the hospital and sit next to Granite and pretend that all I am is a caring woman, a partner. But I can’t get that fucking man out of my head, the way his eyes danced. Has he done that to other women before? Will he do it to women again? I bet he has; behavior like that doesn’t just spring into existence out of nowhere. He’s done it before and he’ll do it again and we’re all just sitting here like it’s okay.
I pace over to Jax, snatch the cigarette out of his hand, toss it to the curb and then press him up against the wall. “I need your keys and your gun,” I tell him. My voice isn’t my own. It grumbles like the first signs of an erupting volcano. I barely recognize it. “And I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say no, you can’t give me your gun. Blah-blah-blah, but here it is. I’m taking your gun and I need your car keys, too. All right?”
“I don’t know what’s gotten into you.” He pries my hands from him and steps back, hands raised. “But I’m not giving you my keys or my gun. What are you, crazy?”
I dart forward and squeeze down on his fruits hard enough to make his face turn red. “If you don’t give me your gun and your car keys right this second, I’m going to keep squeezing until your balls pop like fucking grapes.” I squeeze a little harder, his eyes bulging. “I’ll count to three.”
About a minute later I’m sitting behind the wheel of his car, gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles turn white. I glance at myself in the rearview mirror, but I don’t see Allison, green-eyed, deer-eyed Allison. I see somebody else, something else. I see a crazed woman.
“Okay, stop,” I say, trying to persuade myself. “This is craziness. You’re not a fighter. You’re not an outlaw. You’re pregnant. This is stupid.”
But then I hear him, his voice, whispering close to my ear as his hands toyed near my pussy. “This is going to hurt,” he whispered, just before they threw the body in, just before it turned into a warzone. “I know I told you it’d feel good, and it will, but that doesn’t mean it’s not going to hurt as well. Soon the pain will fade, though. Trust me. I’m an expert.”
And what did I do? I just crouched there, bent over, whimpering, moaning. I see that girl in a third-person view and I hate her, hate her weakness, hate everything about her.
My cell rings. “What?” I snap.
“It’s me,” Emma says. “Jesus, Allison. You sound … are you okay? You don’t sound like yourself.”
“And who am I?” I growl. “When you really get down to it, Emma, who the fuck am I if I’m going to let some pervert do what he wants with me and get away with it? Nobody else is going to do anything!”
“Now, just listen to me. I don’t know what’s going on over there but if you just tell me where you are, what hospital, I’ll come to you and we can—”
I hang up the phone, start the engine, and screech out of the parking lot. That’s when I notice the gas can in the back and the matches on the dashboard.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Allison
“What?” I snap, my cell on loudspeaker on the dash, sliding back and forth as I swerve the car.
“Just wait,” Emma says. “Whatever you’re doing, just wait. Talk to me. Don’t make any decisions when you’re in this mood, Allison. Come on. Think. What are you doing? Can you tell me that, at least? Can you just tell me what you’re doing?” Her voice cracks.
“I’ll tell you what I’m doing!” I swerve again. The tires screech. I speed out of town and toward the warehouse, road and civilization replaced by dust and cacti. “All my life, I’ve let people walk all over me. You said it yourself. When I first started at work, what was I? I was a nervous freak and I let people say whatever they wanted, or I overreacted, you said; that’s how you put it. But was it really an overreaction if it got them to stop? I’m tired of letting men—and it’s always men, isn’t it, because they always want something from us—I’m tired of letting them walk all over me and get away with it.”
“Just wait,” Emma pleads. “Listen to me. I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know what you’re doing. But what I do know is that there’s never a problem so bad having a friend along to help you is a bad thing.”
I glance at the matches, and then laugh madly. “I don’t know about that,” I say. “I don’t think you’d agree, to be honest. I’m not going to tell you where I am, Emma, so you might as well stop asking.”
“Can you at least tell me what you’re doing?”
The matches slide across the dashboard, making a sound like skateboard wheels on concrete. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“You sound—different.”
“It’s because—ah, fuck it. That’s right. Fuck it! Why do I have to explain myself? Listen, Emma. I love you. You’re my best friend. But nothing you can say is going to calm me down right now. So just stop trying! Bye! I love you!”
“I love you too—”
I hang up the phone and turn another corner, the back of the car flipping out behind me. I touch the gun on the passenger seat, stroking the safety switch. Hopefully those lessons with Granite will be enough.
Finally, I arrive at the warehouse. Part of me suspected that my anger might dissipate when the warehouse came into view, but now, looking at it, it only flares inside of me. “You’ll love it … You really will. Come on … don’t be shy …” I bite down on my hand. And they would have done it, too; all of them would have plowed into me. I wasn’t even a person at that point. I was just a bent-over collection of parts, and there was one part they were most interested in. “And we’ll take it.” His voice is in the growling tires on the dust, the cawing of a far-off bird. His eyes are the stars. “They all take it, in the end.”
I come to a stop just outside the warehouse. It takes an effort to unclench the steering wheel, like my fingers are duct-taped to it. I pry them loose and then get out of the car, stuff the gun in the back of my pants and take the gas can and the matches. I creep toward the warehouse, completely fearless like I’ve never been before in my life. I don’t feel anything but this flaring within me, this constant pulsing, this never-waning hatred. I push the door open and creep inside. Voices, upstairs, shouting. Glasses clink. I creep across the almost-pitch room toward the bottom of the stairs, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the light.
“That was really something,” a man says, his voice quiet but audible. “I don’t—burying all those men, and all for some cunt. What’s some cunt? Can you tell me that? Seems to me the whole world makes a fuss about these cunts, but what do they offer? All our friends, fuckin’ twenty-five of ’em, for some cunt.”
“I know,” another man replies. No, not another man. It’s Todd, handlebar-mustache. “But we will get our revenge. I promise you that. We will not let them get away with this, the fuckin’ assholes. They think the Riders are the only club who can pull a f
ew tricks. No, fellas, no.”
Quietly, I move around the room covering anything flammable in gasoline, cardboard boxes and the wallpaper, leading a trail of it to the door. Then I strike a match and hold it out before me for a moment, thinking. This will mean crossing a line. This will mean becoming somebody else. But I’m sure these men have pushed women across lines before, lines they did not want to cross. I drop the match and run back outside.
I crouch down behind the hood of the car and aim at the door, making sure the safety’s off. Now that I’m in it, my heart is beating so loudly I can’t even hear the crackling of the flames. The fire starts astonishingly quickly, lighting up the walls and smashing the upper windows, fire-lit glass falling like hailstones.
Then a man runs out of the door, gun raised, waving smoke from his eyes. I think—I shoot. It’s as fast as that, just like Granite told me. I aim. I use the iron sights. I pull the trigger. There’s a bang and the gun kicks, and then the man’s face is torn in half and he collapses to the ground. Pity fills me until I remind myself: the voice, the men, gathered around . . . they would’ve taken turns. I kill the pity. Another man runs out. I shoot again. He falls next to his fellow rapist.
Then Todd comes running out, hands over his eyes but parted so that he can see through the slit. I panic—there he is, the bastard, the one who was leading them—fire twice. One bullet catches him in the leg and the other catches him in the shoulder. He drops his gun and falls to the ground with a grunt. Before I know it, I’m sprinting headlong at him.
I leap at him, thud my knee into his chest and press the barrel of the gun against the side of his head.
“Wow,” he says, smiling bloodily up at me. “I never expected this. Just look at this. The nervous little whore who came walking up to Brandon’s house is all grown up. What’s the matter, baby, you miss me?”
I press my hand against his wound, squeezing down on it. He grimaces and lets out a shaky moan.
“You’ll like this eventually,” I tell him. “They all do. It’ll hurt at first.” I twist my hand. I’m getting his blood all over me but I don’t care. “You just need to give yourself to it. Don’t fight the feeling. This is the last thing you’re going to do, so you might as well enjoy it.”
“You think you’ve got it in you to blow a man’s head off?” He laughs through blood-coated gritted teeth. “I doubt that, sweetheart. I really do. It’s one thing to fire off shots from behind a car, another to look a man in the eyes. I’ve got a son, girl, a son who looks up to me and loves me. He don’t know shit about this side of my life. His mother loves me, too. She don’t know shit either. They know me as Todd, the guy at the barbeque who always mans the grill.”
“I’m going to ask you a question and you’re going to answer honestly,” I tell him. “How many women have you raped?”
“None,” he says. “I was just trying to act tough for my men.”
“Liar!” I squeeze down even harder on his wound. “Tell me the truth or I swear to God …”
Tears slide down the side of his face. He closes his eyes, panting in agony, and then opens them like a different man. He’s no longer in pain, or he no longer cares that he’s in pain. “I don’t know how many women, sweetheart. Fifty, a hundred. Who fuckin’ knows? You all make it so damn easy, fluttering about the place in those fuckin’ skirts, shoving it in a man’s face. What do you think is gonna happen, eh? Even you, when you were tied up, the way you moaned, the way you looked at me. You were practically begging for it—”
I pull the trigger. His head jerks to the side. I leap back at the impact, the shower of blood, and then walk numbly back to the car. I lean against the hood and stare at the building, the fire consuming it now, licking the air like a hundred orange-yellow tongues. He was right. Killing a man at point-blank range is much different to shooting him from all the way back here. His head jerked to the side, blood exploded; his eyes went dark. He deserved it and yet my chest still feels heavy.
I force myself off the hood and to the driver’s-side door. Just as I open it somebody clamps their hand down on my wrist, brings something sharp to the back of my neck. He leans close to me, breath hotter than the fire. “Listen here, you cunt,” he says. “You drop that gun and turn around slowly. I don’t want any fuckin’ hassle with you.”
I do as he says, since I have no choice. He’s a mean-looking man with tattoos covering his face, three gold teeth in his mouth, and a dyed blond Mohawk haircut. “Okay.” He takes a deep breath. He’s all amped-up, bobbing from foot to foot. I guess cocaine and fire and death will do that to a person. “We’re going for a drive, missy, ’cause what you did—you don’t get a quick death with that, no way, no ma’am. So we’re going for a drive and you’re going to do what I want, and then I’m outta this fuckin’ state. Might even go down to Mexico or across the pond. I ain’t staying here. Fuck it. Get in the car. You’ll drive.”
Something in me snaps. I’m not angry anymore. I’m not scared. I’m just tired. “No,” I say, staring him right in the face. “I’m not doing that. You’re not taking me to some field or dungeon, you sick bastard.”
“Are you insane?” He picks up my gun and presses the barrel against my head. “Get in the car. Or I swear I’ll—”
The knife pokes out the front of his neck, blood gushing everywhere, and Mr. Ivarsson grabs the gun and smacks him across the face with it. He throws him to the ground and shoots him twice in the face, and then turns to me, all with slow, calm movements. “You’ve just done what very few club men would do, Allison,” he says, dropping the knife. “You’ve proved yourself. You killed the leader of our rival club. I—” He bows his head. “Even my father would be proud of this. We don’t take women, not usually, but if you really want to be in the club—”
“I never wanted to be in the club,” I say. “I just want to go home. Back to the hospital, I mean, to be with my family.” Which means Brandon and Granite, I realize.
“Okay.” He nods to the backseat. “I’ll drive. You must be tired. Your first fight is always the most exhausting.”
I don’t think I am tired until I curl up in the backseat. I stare at the receding flames for a while, licking the sky. And then I close my eyes.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Granite
“If I knew where she was, I’d tell you. You know I would.”
“With all these damn meds they’ve got me on,” I say, trying and failing to sit up, “it’s hard to know if you’re really there.”
Ranger pulls his chair closer to my bed. It’s the first time in almost a year I’ve seen him without his Stetson on, and the first time in much longer than that that he’s voluntarily hung out around bikers. “I’m here, Granite, don’t you worry about that.”
I open and close my mouth. Everything feels slow, drawn-out, each minor movement taking far longer than it should. My wounds don’t hurt anymore, but that’s ’cause nothing feels like much anymore. Everything is numb. “She told me she was pregnant,” I say. “At least, I think she did. It’s all a fuckin’ mess, man. Up here.” I try to point to my head, but I can’t. My arm won’t move. “I’ve never been this fucked up. Even after the most fucked-up night in the club, the most fucked-up night of drinkin’, I’ve never felt like this.”
“That’s because there’s a difference between drinking and getting shot three times,” Ranger says softly. “I hate seeing you like this. I really, really hate it.”
“Don’t get all soft on me,” I mutter.
Ranger glances at the door. “This ain’t right, man, being laid out like this. You deserve better.”
“What was I gonna do, let them have her? Fuck, no. I’d rather be dead than let that happen. What? Why are you smiling at me like that?”
His smile gets wider. “I don’t wanna be the jerk who says ‘I told you so’ to the guy laid up in a hospital bed, but …”
“Don’t say it, then. If you don’t wanna be the jerk, don’t be the jerk.”
“But ain’t it
just perfect? A few weeks ago—hell, a few days—I was telling you that one day you’d care about her, that you already cared about her. And you were trying to play it cool, looking at me like I was a moron—”
“I don’t need an excuse to look at you like you’re a moron,” I interrupt.
“Ha, ha, fuckin’, ha, and now here you are after risking your life for her. And a kid, Granite. That’s really something.”
“A kid. If she really did say that. It’s all a blur. Part of me hopes it was all in my head.”
“Why?” he asks.
I lick my lips. “I don’t wanna play the invalid, but can you get me some water?”
He brings a plastic cup to my lips and tips it. I feel like a real asshole, half of the water sliding down my face with my friend dabbing at my chin with a paper towel. “You said you hoped it was in your head,” he reminds me.