by Penny Dee
I turned down the radio. “Damn airline lost my luggage. Otherwise, things are great.”
“I wish you’d let me come with you.”
“There was no need. I don’t plan on staying long enough to show you the sights.”
“They have sights in Destiny?”
I laughed. “City snob.”
He laughed back. “Hick.”
I smiled. Anson always had a way of pulling me out of my funk. Maybe bringing him with me would have been a good idea. You know, be the safe buffer between me and my old life.
Between me and Cade.
I shook my head as if I could rattle the thoughts of Cade out of my brain.
“Don’t you worry about me, I will be fine,” I said.
“You’re lying. Your voice just went up an octave.”
I grinned. Anson knew me so well. “Oh, shut up…I’ll call you in a couple of days.”
“Okay. Love you.”
I smiled. “I love you, too.”
CADE
Now
When my granddaddy formed the Kings of Mayhem MC, he wanted a legit club. The rules were simple. No drugs and no guns. And women were to be worshiped, not enslaved. My granddaddy had seen enough shit in Vietnam to hold onto these values with determined grit.
My granddaddy hated drugs. And he hated guns. He had been a dust-off pilot during the Vietnam War and had risked his life flying an unarmed chopper into the jungles of battle to save the lives of the wounded. More often than not, he’d flown his Huey chopper into heavy gunfire to save soldiers who’d been shot or blown up, or trapped by enemy forces. And in the three tours he did, he had the scars of two near-fatal gunshot wounds and a chopper crash to remember it by.
He never spoke much about the war, and he died when I was thirteen years old, so I never really had the chance to talk to him about it. But his aversion to guns and drugs were legendary in the club. He always said they were the reason so many of his buddies never made it out of Vietnam. Illegal guns had found their way into enemy hands and had been used against his Army buddies. And the heroin that was so prevalent in the area at the time had claimed the lives of so many of his friends and military brothers. To my granddaddy, heroin was a dirty word. He had watched it destroy not only the lives of soldiers, but doctors and medics, too.
When granddaddy had come home from the war, he had been rocked by the lack of empathy and pride for what he had done over there. The fact that he’d risked his life to save American and allies’ lives meant little to the society that had been permeated with a deep, anti-war movement.
The lives he’d saved meant nothing.
The missions he’d flown into enemy territory to save the lives of wounded soldiers meant nothing.
In the end, he’d slowly withdrawn from society. He’d climbed on board his Harley and hit the road.
He had ridden out to California to catch up with Hank Parrish, his crew chief on the Huey, who was experiencing the same lack of empathy and difficulty in re-joining society. Hank joined him on the road, and the Kings of Mayhem MC was born.
The name had been a natural selection. Mayhem had been their call sign in Vietnam.
Nowadays, to make a legitimate income, the Kings had several sources of income: prostitution, pornography, custom choppers, and tattoos.
We owned a brothel called The Den. A few miles outside of Destiny, The Den was pure high-class shit. A place where both the average Joe and the executive could enjoy the finer comforts of a pleasurable establishment in the company of clean, beautiful, and accommodating women.
The Den was managed by Megan, a tall, dark-haired beauty with a knockout body and killer Egyptian eyes. Seriously smokin’ hot, she had a way about her that grabbed your attention and kept you mesmerized. Her voice was husky but as smooth as bourbon, and she had a way of slow blinking that you felt all the way to your goddamn balls. Megan and I had a weird relationship. A strange kind of mutual respect for one another. She got me. And I fucking admired her head for business—as well as the way she gave it. Yeah, we’d gone there numerous times. But we both knew the deal. There was nothing serious. A head job here and there, and the occasional night spent in her big bed. But nothing more. It suited both of us just fine.
The brothel aside, the Kings also ran an adult entertainment production company that included adult movies, as well as sexual documentaries. You know, sex for dummies, that kind of thing. It made the club a fuck load of money and staved off the need for us to look for other lucrative, yet illegal, means of income—like drugs and guns. Which suited me just fine, because just like my grandaddy, I hated that shit.
Our movies were made in our studios just off Highway 54. A place aptly named Head Quarters. It was an old converted warehouse, fully equipped with all the amenities of a well-appointed production studio, and guarded by security guards with guns twenty-four hours a day. Guards who went by the names Bubba, Tank, and Gigantor.
Other interests included a strip club in town called Spank Daddy’s—which was definitely not high-class shit like The Den, and a security detail service that was completely off the books.
Before I got so involved in club business, I used to work at Sinister Ink, the tattoo shop that bordered our clubhouse. Next door to that was our custom chopper shop, Shadow Choppers, run by a creative mastermind called Picasso. His custom paint jobs were legendary throughout the South, all the way up through the Bible belt and across the northern borders.
After visiting Jackie at the funeral home and helping Mom and Lady with some of the funeral arrangements, I headed out to Head Quarters to check out how things were going. It was Tuesday, and every Tuesday and Friday I checked in with the production manager, Tito, to make sure everything was running smoothly. Tito was a creepy looking pervert. Four-foot nothing with ill-fitting suits and a combover, he liked things a little weird. I had busted him jerkin’ his gherkin once. Not so unusual, until you factor in the detail that he was wrapped in Saran wrap and Vaseline, and rocking backward and forward on a big black dildo stuck up his ass. I’d shown up just in time to see him squirt the money shot all over his hands.
Like I said, he was a little odd. But damn he knew the porn business, and damn he was good at managing our interests.
So what if the oddball liked it a little weird?
As long as he didn’t get up in my face with his creepiness and kept things going well at Head Quarters, then I didn’t give a fuck.
Today he was in a fluster about God knows what. While I had been at the funeral home, he had rung my cell, hollering about not putting up with this craziness and if I didn’t come and sort out this insanity then he was going to go where his genius was appreciated.
Pulling into the parking lot of Head Quarters, I saw a cherry-red Mustang convertible parked by the front door, and Tito’s meltdown started to make sense.
That cherry-red Mustang was a warning to batten down the hatches.
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered as I parked my bike next to it, and shoved my aviators into the front of my cut. “This is going to be fun.”
INDY
Now
After hanging up from Anson, something in the distance caught my eye. It was at least a mile up and it looked like a plume of dust or smoke rising up off the side of the road.
“What the hell?”
As I got nearer, I noticed a woman kneeling in the dirt on the side of the road and the air around her was thick with a settling cloud of dust. I quickly pulled over and hurried out of the car, my skin tingling with the same electrical charge I had right before an emergency came into the ER.
I knew I’d just stumbled upon something—what, I had no idea. I did a quick scan of our nearby surroundings, but couldn’t see anything out of place.
I quickly raced over to the young woman on her knees in the dirt. She was bruised and dirty and moaning as if in labor, and the moment I got to her I knew her shoulder was dislocated. My first thought was that she had been thrown from a car.
I crouched in front of her.
“It’s okay, honey, I’m a doctor.”
At the sound of my voice, she looked at me. Her face was grazed and bruised, and drool was dripping from her mouth as she continued to moan in agony. I knew I wasn’t going to get any coherent details from her until I stopped that excruciating shoulder pain.
When I reached for her arm, she flinched.
“Your shoulder is dislocated. I can fix that, okay. I can make it stop hurting. But first, I need you to tell me if you’re hurt anywhere else.”
She looked at me with large, mascara-smudged eyes, and finally shook her head. As another spasm of pain washed over her, she moaned again.
“What’s your name, sweetheart?” I asked, guiding her upward so she wasn’t so bent over. I needed her to try and relax a little.
She flinched and gritted her teeth. “Michelle. My… name… is Michelle.”
I nodded. “Michelle. That’s nice. I have a cousin called Michelle.” I didn’t. But I was trying to build trust. I spoke quickly because time was ticking by and I had a feeling she wasn’t going to be the only surprise I found on the side of the road. How she got here and who was involved was probably nearby. But I had to get her fixed before I worried about anything else. “Now, I’m about to get real up close and personal with your shoulder, okay, Michelle, and I need you to be real brave for me… can you do that?”
She winced and started to cry again.
“Look at me,” I said as I put her arm in the neutral position and slowly began to rotate it outwards until I felt resistance. She winced again as I moved her upper arm exteriorly. “I promise you, it’s only going to take a few moments and you’ll feel—”
The relocation of her shoulder back into its joint was swift and the pain that had rendered her almost incapable of talking seconds earlier eased almost immediately. She looked at me with startled eyes and her panting slowly turned into deep, relieved breaths.
That was when her panic turned up and she started screaming.
And holy hell! This woman did it well.
“Caveman! You have to help, Caveman!” She stumbled to her feet and pointed to the embankment a few yards away. Tire marks ground up the dirt and disappeared over the edge.
That second surprise I mentioned earlier? Yeah. It was at the base of that embankment lying beside the twisted remains of a Harley. A man. A very bloody and broken man.
Oh hell.
I turned to Michelle. “There’s a travel first aid kit in the glove compartment of my rental. I need you to run and get it.” I thought about my handbag and the bottle of vodka I’d brought for my mom. “And my handbag. I’ll need that, too.” When she didn’t move, I yelled at her in some attempt to get her moving. “Hurry!” I needed that first aid kit. Not that I had any confidence in it having anything too useful to aid a broken biker who was quite possibly already dead.
Michelle took off while I was already calling 911 on my phone. As I scooted down the embankment, I hurried out words to the operator, then dropped my phone to the ground when I reached the body. Straight away I noticed the cut he was wearing and the familiar MC insignia on the front. Kings of Mayhem. But I didn’t recognize him.
Dropping to my knees, I checked his vitals. He was alive. But he was in a bad way. Clearly both his legs were broken and he was covered in grazes and cuts, but it was the damage to his face and mouth that concerned me the most. It looked like someone had taken to him with a baseball bat. His head and face were covered in blood, and I could tell by the extreme trauma to his mouth that he would be missing teeth.
Just as Michelle slid down the embankment to me, the broken biker began to convulse. He couldn’t breathe. Either he had vomited and was choking on it, or his facial trauma had filled his trachea with teeth and other tissue matter, stopping his airflow.
I swung back to Michelle.
“Give me that first aid kit.” She handed it to me and I quickly checked the contents. Inside were the usual suspects you would expect to see in a small travel kit. Bandages. Tweezers. Saline solution. Band-Aids. Medical tape. Small scalpel. Gloves.
“In my bag is a bottle of vodka,” I said, snapping on the latex gloves. “And a ballpoint pen. I’m going to need both of those.”
I opened the unconscious biker’s mouth and my suspicions were right. Most of his teeth were missing and were blocking his airway.
Michelle pulled out the vodka and handed it to me, then rummaged through my bag for the ballpoint pen “Caveman… is he… is he going to be okay?” she asked, handing me the pen with shaky hands.
“He won’t be if I don’t get that airway clear,” I said, unscrewing the pen. I glanced at my phone on the ground and gestured to it with a nod of my head. I didn’t need Michelle watching what I was about to do. “I need you to get back on the phone with emergency services and see how far away the EMT is. Tell them there is a doctor on the scene but she has to do an emergency crike.”
She looked at me with wide eyes. “A what?”
“Tell them there is a doctor on the scene and she is giving the patient an emergency crike,” I said calmly.
While she busied herself with the call, I tipped vodka over Caveman’s throat in a crude attempt to sterilize the area, then using the very small, but very sharp, scalpel, I slit into his throat.
That was when Michelle decided to pull a gun on me.
“Wha… what are you doing to Caveman?” she cried.
I glanced over my shoulder to reassure her that I was doing the only thing that could be done to save her friend’s life, and came face to face with the business end of a handgun.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I had just put a hole in her friend’s throat, and now she decided to confront me? “I don’t have time for this, Michelle.”
“You’re hurting him…!” she cried, her very shaky hands swaying the handgun closer to my face.
I wasn’t alarmed about having a gun waved at me—I was pissed. And the adrenaline pumping through my veins had me wanting to unrelocate that shoulder of hers just so she would stop being such a pain in the ass while I tried to save this guy’s life. He was cyanosed and would die within minutes. I didn’t have time to explain it to her, but the fact that she had a Glock up in my face gave me little choice.
“Listen, if I don’t get this airway clear, your friend is going to die.”
“Boyfriend… he’s… my… boyfriend,” she corrected me.
Because clearly now was the time to establish that.
“Listen, do whatever it is you’re going to do, but right now I have to get this pen into that hole in his throat if I want him to have any chance at survival. Do you understand? He will die if I don’t do this.”
Time was running out. Caveman was in peri arrest. So I turned away and prayed she didn’t shoot me as I continued slicing into the skin of his throat. I pushed two fingers into the cut and felt for the cricothyroid membrane. Blood was bright red as it rose to the surface of the wound and rolled down his throat. I glanced over my shoulder at Michelle, who half had me at gunpoint and half stared at what I was doing to her boyfriend in disbelief.
“How far off is that EMT?” I asked in an attempt to shake her out of her craziness. Shock was settling in and I couldn’t afford for her to lose it again while I was trying to save this guy’s life.
I turned back to Caveman and inserted the base of the scalpel into the incision, rotating it to hold the hole open wide. With a steady hand, I pushed the pen through the hole, passed the cricothyroid membrane and into his trachea. Not wasting anymore time, I leaned down and gave two quick breaths into the pen and felt a little win when I saw Caveman’s chest rise and fall. I counted to five in my head and then gave him another breath of air.
At the sound of arriving sirens, Michelle fell to the ground with a sob and discarded the gun to the side as if it was all too much for her. Shock and distress took over and she stared straight ahead at some invisible entity in front of her.
I nodded toward the gun. “You might want t
o get rid of that.”
She looked dazed at the sound of my voice, but then quickly grabbed the gun and pushed it into her handbag. I checked Caveman’s pulse but it was very weak and I didn’t hold out much help for him if the EMTs didn’t arrive soon.
At the sound of tires on gravel, both Michelle and I looked up the embankment, and within seconds, Sheriff Buckman appeared at the ledge.
“Oh shit!” The fifty-something sheriff exclaimed when he saw us. He quickly scrambled down the uneven ridge. “What the hell happened here?”
“I don’t know exactly, other than this is Caveman and that is Michelle,” I gestured toward the very confused looking blonde slumped on the ground. “And that’s the bike they came off.”
I pointed to the smoldering motorcycle a few yards away.
Sheriff Buckman already had his mobile radio in his hand. “Delores, where the hell is that damned EMT?”
The radio fizzed. “They’re two minutes away, chief,” replied a crackly female voice.
“Well, get on the line to them, will you? Tell them to make it one minute!”
Sheriff Buckman knelt next to me. “Anything I can do?” he asked, and then as if a light bulb went off in his head, he recognized me. “Wait a minute … Indy? Indigo Parrish?”
I gave him a close-lipped smile.
“Jesus Christ! What’s it been…? Seven? Eight years?”
“Twelve.”
He looked stunned. “Well, I’ll be goddamned.”
The voice behind us startled me.
“When you two are quite finished with your fucking reunion…”
We both looked around, and there was Michelle pointing her goddamn gun again.
Sheriff Buckman leapt to his knees with one arm out to calm her down. “Now hold on there, Missy…”
“Don’t worry about her, Sheriff. She’s just concerned about her boyfriend.” Turning to look at Michelle, I said reassuringly, “He’s going to be okay, sweetheart. The best thing you can do for him now is to put that gun away.”
Her wide eyes bounced between Sheriff B and me, and it was like some fucked-up standoff. Thankfully, the sound of approaching sirens and the screeching of the tires on gravel gave us all a sense of relief. Michelle dropped the gun to her side and Sheriff B went to her, putting his arm around her as he disarmed her.