Black (Thor Book 1)

by Mia Malone

  “Why didn’t you just bring us over the border?”

  “Cas, taking your daughter out of the country without her father’s consent would be seriously illegal and open you up for tons of shit. Bad enough that you’ve crossed a handful of stateliness chased by the police.” He shrugged and added, “It was just easier all around if we sorted out your shit for you.”

  “What if you can’t?”

  “Can’t what?”

  “Sort my shit out?”

  He started laughing but checked himself when he got that she wasn’t joking.

  “Cassandra,” he murmured indulgently. “We’ll sort your shit.”

  “Because that’s what you do.”

  “Yup.”

  She turned to look out over the lower part of the mountains, and then she sighed.

  “Let me see if I got this, Black. You run a garage and a lodge in a small, tiny, town on the middle of nowhere. Drive your bikes. Drink beer and smoke what I seriously hope are recreational quantities of pot. And smuggle shit across into Canada.”

  Their eyes held for a while and then he shrugged.

  “Or from Canada.”

  She closed her eyes briefly.

  “I probably don’t want to know.”

  “Probably better,” he agreed. “Cas, it’s not a big deal. It’s just shit we do when we feel like it.”

  He’d told her more than he should as it was and wasn’t going to dig into any details anyway.

  “Gee stabbed a needle into your butt?”

  “Hurt like hell.”

  “I’m gonna forget everything you told me about your lax view on borders, okay? I will remember the needle part, though, because that’s hilarious.”

  Then she started laughing

  When they’d finished eating, she got down on her back and watched the sky.

  “Why does food always taste better outside?”

  “Don’t know.” He got down on his side and watched her eyelids flutter. “Close your eyes for a while, Cas. I’ll wake you up in a few minutes. Sleeping outside is better too.”

  “I know,” she mumbled.

  He had no clue what made him start singing, but he did. It had been his thing, a long time ago, but he rarely did these days. Her face relaxed while he went on, quietly singing her to sleep.

  ***

  Cassandra

  “Dream baby, dream...”

  Black’s voice was low and sweet and surprisingly good.

  He also sang Springsteen to me which was a huge bonus. I loved all kinds of music, and enjoyed listening to almost anything with a catchy rhythm or a sweet melody, but for the real stuff? When I wanted to actually feel something? There wasn’t anyone else who could make poetry and music blend into something so painfully beautiful.

  I’d seen the guitar on the wall of Black’s living room. I hadn’t actually been in his living room, but he’d been gone, and there was a nice fence to lean on right outside his cabin, and it wasn’t as if I’d snooped. Except, I had totally tried to see what his home looked like, so I had glanced somewhat repeatedly at the windows facing the mountains, and I’d seen the guitar. It seemed old and well used.

  Singing just hadn’t seemed like something a badass sergeant in a motorcycle club would do so I’d figured it was an heirloom or something.

  Perhaps it wasn’t?

  While I listened to his deep voice, I slowly let myself drift off to sleep.

  I woke up just as slowly, and for just a little while, I forgot where I was and all the shit swirling around me.

  Black was next to me, and he was sleeping too. His face didn’t look soft, or even relaxed, but there was something oddly intimate about watching him lying there. As if he’d sensed my gaze, he opened his eyes, turned to his side and smiled sleepily.

  “Hey,” he murmured and moved his index finger over my cheek and down my neck. “Did you sleep well?”

  “Yeah,” I breathed out.

  “Good.” His hand moved up to cup my jaw, pushing until I was facing him. “Cassandra?”

  “Yeah,” I repeated, and it was even more breathy but the way his eyes had darkened shot warm shivers through my belly.

  “I’m going to kiss you when your shit is sorted out.”

  I would have asked him to kiss me then and there if it wouldn’t have sounded so desperate, so I tried for a casual smile and hoped I’d managed to pull it off credibly.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  His face softened, and his thumb moved over my mouth.

  Then I remembered.

  “Oh, God. Desiree. I must –”

  “Cas,” he said and put a hand on my shoulder when I tried to get up. “Easy. We’ve slept less than half an hour. Desi is safe at the compound.”

  I tried to relax but the moment was gone. I’d been gone for almost two hours, and I needed to get back. He saw it and sat up with a sigh.

  “Right. Let’s go back. They must wonder where we are, and I have shit to do.”

  I held on just a little tighter than necessary while he drove us back down to the compound and hoped that he would think I was afraid of falling off or something.

  Chapter Five

  Partytime

  Cassandra

  I stared at Black and tried to figure out if he’d really said what he said or if he’d said something else.

  “Cas?”

  I pulled in air and nodded.

  “He’s arrested?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  A weird whimper made its way up my throat, and I tried really hard to hold it back but failed and saw how their faces softened.

  “Cassandra,” Roddy said gently. “Sit down for a while. I’ll call Gee and Desi, they’ll be back from the supermarket in a little while.”

  My stomach roiled and churned, and it felt like my vision slowly became blurry at the edges. All I could focus on were Black’s dark eyes and how he moved toward me.

  “Okay,” I said but looked out through the window instead, and then I swung back to look at Black. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure,” he said quietly. “He’s charged with so much shit he’ll never get out.” He put a hand on the side of my neck and moved his thumb over my cheek. “Swear to God, baby. Desi is safe.”

  For the first time since that awful phone call when I realized that something was wrong with my daughter, I exhaled and let go of my control. There were good men and women out there, and they had taken the man down. He was in jail, and Desi was safe.

  “Excuse me,” I mumbled and walked into the small bathroom, doubled over and threw up.

  My legs gave out under me just as Black came through the door, so he caught me with one strong arm, and used the other to push my hair back.

  I kept retching and coughing, and he held me, mumbling something I couldn’t hear through the whizzing sound in my brain and the pulse beating heavily in my ears.

  When I had nothing left in my belly, he sat down on the tiled floor with me on his lap and started rocking gently.

  “Just breathe, Cassandra,” he murmured.

  Someone walked in to hand him something, and I felt a warm washcloth against my cheek, and then a glass of water was pressed to my mouth.

  I drank and breathed and held on to Black while my pulse slowed down.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’ve been so scared.”

  “I know.”

  “I just need a minute,” I added, feeling stupid.

  The man had held my hair back while I threw up, and wiped puke away from my mouth for Christ’s sake.

  “Cassie it’s okay,” he murmured and squeezed me gently. “You don’t know us, so you had no clue how safe you were, and we’ve all seen how strung up you’ve been. I should have expected this.”

  I was silent for a while and listened to the beats of his heart under my ear.

  “Desi is everything,�
�� I whispered. “I’d die for her. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my daughter, Black. Nothing.”

  “Cas…”

  “I won’t have to kill him now, will I?”

  His arms twitched, and I tried to move, but he held me and wouldn’t let go.

  “No, baby,” he murmured. “You won’t have to kill him.”

  ***

  Black

  He looked up at his father and saw the same hardness in the older man’s eyes as he felt in his own. Neither of them had understood how determined she’d been, or how desperate perhaps. Killing anyone was never a good idea and hurting someone within law enforcement a supremely stupid thing to do even if they were dirtier than dung, so it cut through them to hear her calmly state that she’d felt she would have to.

  “Cas, honey,” Roddy muttered. “You’re not gonna fucking kill anyone.”

  “No,” she said, and Black felt her head tilt back, so he looked down at her.

  She’d started smiling. There were still tearstains on her cheeks, and she smelled faintly of puke, and he’d never seen anything more beautiful than that smile.

  It finally reached her eyes.

  He’d seen it when he’d taken her out of the compound, when she woke up and had forgotten to be afraid, but it had been brief. This time, the happy smile didn’t go away, and the way her eyes had softened did something to his gut.

  “If he needs to be killed, then Black will do it,” Roddy added with a grin. “Gee and Desi will be here in a few minutes, so you might want to clean up a little.” He turned and walked out of there, adding over his shoulder, “Or else they might not be as keen on hugging you as Black seems to be.”

  “Black will kill –”

  She cut herself off and looked down on her tee which was splotched with what Black sincerely hoped was mostly water. Then she scrambled out of his arms with a squeal.

  “God, I’m so sorry,” she wailed and rushed out of there, tearing at her clothes.

  Black got up and surveyed his own clothes, but they seemed to have survived with minimal damage, so he threw the washcloth in the sink and walked into her small living room.

  “Cas, it’s –”

  She was naked. Or no, she wasn’t naked but almost. Or not even almost but she’d tossed the tee on the floor, and her black bra was made of lace and pushed her breasts up and together, and he wanted to –

  “Black?”

  “Yuh,” he said, shook his head to unscramble it while he tried to make his eyes not pop out of his head in a way she noticed, and said with what he hoped was calm indifference, “Sweet undies you’ve got there, babe.”

  Then he walked out of there before he made a complete fool of himself.

  ***

  Cassandra

  Sweet undies you’ve got there? Babe?

  The man was a moron. A moron of the pretty much super-hot variety, but still.

  I wasn’t going to look at him because that would make me a moron too, but I wanted to. I wanted to look at him any given day, but right now I wanted it even more because we were having a party and it was late. And I was drunk.

  Not sloshed in an embarrassing way but decidedly one step beyond tipsy, although so was everyone else, and some of them a lot more than me. Desi had gone to bed hours earlier, and she’d winked cheekily, mumbled, “Have fun, Mom,” and given me a hug before disappearing.

  It wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen me drink alcohol before because she had. I’d never been fall down drunk in the presence of my daughter, or at all, actually, but she’d seen me drink wine or some beer. A drink or two in the summer. Whatever.

  I’d always felt that it had to be better for her to see grownups who could handle alcohol rather than not seeing anything at all and then suddenly having to figure it out on her own. We’d talked about it, and she knew what a hangover was. Some of my girlfriends had told me that it was a very European attitude, and if the memories of a woman laughing and dancing in the kitchen hadn’t hurt so much, I could have confirmed that is was. I hadn’t been sure they meant it to be a compliment, though, and didn’t see a great need to explain my choices. I also didn’t share how ridiculous I thought it was that some of them wouldn’t even let their kids pour red wine into a pasta sauce or a bottle of beer in a stew or whatever.

  And maybe it hadn’t been the right choice after all because Desi might have failed at smoking a joint, but she’d tried. And tried to hide what she’d done. We’d talked about that too, and I’d asked her what she thought a suitable punishment for that idiocy would be.

  She walked off for a while and came back to tell me what she wanted to do, and I had no clue if I should yell at her or hug her, so I nodded and agreed. Then Desi borrowed Gee’s computer and wrote a five thousand words long essay about the impact of marihuana on adolescent brains. With footnotes. It was actually a good piece of work, and I wondered if someone somewhere would want to use it for something, but it didn’t matter much because Desi got the point.

  If she’d been a dope-head, she wouldn’t have been able to write that essay.

  I also spent more than an hour laughing with Ronnie at the bar about my idiot daughter who had been so adorably naïve and nervous about the whole thing she’d exhaled into the joint and missed the entire point.

  It felt good to relax and kick back a few beers. Laugh a little. Flirt a little with some of the guys and let the good mood wash over me.

  We were indeed safe.

  I felt a little bit stupid because the Sheriff was such an evil man, but I should have trusted in the system. Should have known the good cops would get him. I’d tried to explain this to Black and Roddy but it only made them chuckle.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “What?” Black snorted.

  “That chuckle.”

  “My sister’s man and his buddies, they don’t exactly follow the book all the time. Neither do we,” he said and watched me calmly.

  “What did you do?”

  “You can’t know,” Roddy cut in with a shrug. “You’ll want to testify.”

  He said it like it was an appalling thing to do, but he had a point, so I didn’t ask more questions. It anyway turned out that Desi’s involvement would be limited and mine non-existent.

  Bill called and shared that I hadn’t broken any laws. He apologized for trying to make me come back home, shared rather condescendingly that I should have done what he asked me to since everything clearly could have been sorted out swiftly if I had, and told me he’d cut the grass in the back yard. I stared out at the mountains and wondered why I was so annoyed with him.

  Then I called the number Bill had given me and talked to the police. They confirmed what was all over the news about how Sheriff White had been arrested on a number of charges. His computer had apparently been sent anonymously to a police department in Denver, and there had been further investigations after that. Desi was asked to come in for questioning, but someone had misplaced that stupid photo of her. There hadn’t been anything else which indicated any wrongdoing on her part, so the very nice detective from C-Springs PD had assured me all charges were dropped and the whole thing was now considered Sheriff White trying to frame her.

  Desi and I would leave the next day as soon as I felt up to driving, which would be after lunch for sure, and the party we had wasn’t a goodbye party. Gee had refused to call it that and had labeled it a, “See you again soon party.”

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about leaving. I had to, of course. Desi had to give her statement, and she had her last year in high school back in Colorado Springs. She missed her father, and I had my job to get back to.

  I didn’t want to, though. I liked the people and the area. I wanted to ride in the mountains and go to the small town close by. And when I’d stopped being afraid of Ronnie, who was constantly scowling but doing it to hide the softest heart on this side of the Rockies, I’d spent time with her and some of the other ladies whose men were part of the club. They were good women.


  And then there was Roddy and Gee.

  Every time it felt like I couldn’t hold on any longer and was on the verge of breaking into small pieces of anguish, they’d somehow known. Roddy had bossed me around, making me cook food for him or hold his tools while he replaced a windowsill I knew well did not need replacing. And Gee... she’d known that holding me in her arms would make me break, so we’d sat on their porch and talked about everything under the sun until I found firm ground again. It had mostly been her talking, about how she’d grown up back in Norway, how it had been to raise two boys who apparently had not been up to anything good since the day they were born, and how one replaced the brake pads on a Harley. Or, how to pretend to replace them and also tighten the chain, and then pretend that one didn’t notice that someone did it again later, which had made me laugh so hard I’d had tears in my eyes.

  I watched them on the dancefloor, slow-dancing and grinning at each other. They’d met when Roddy was twenty and Gee eighteen, and now, almost sixty years later they were still together. Still in love. And still –

  “Jesus,” I muttered and grinned at Ronnie. “I can’t believe they’re still that horny.”

  After making out like a couple of teenagers on the dance floor, Roddy calmly put his hand on Gee’s butt, squeezed, and pushed her around toward the exit. There was no doubt in my mind that they’d head to their home and do whatever two healthy adults did at this time of the night.

  “Runs in the family,” Ronnie said with a lip twitch, and I turned to look at what she looked at.

  Black raised a brow in a silent question, but I made my lips form a pouty smirk, or, I tried for that and hoped it didn’t look like a teenage duck face imitation.

  “Just do him, Cas,” Ronnie whispered in my ear. “He’s been a pain in everyone’s ass the past weeks.”

  “What?”

  “Black is his father’s son, honey,” she said with a grin. “Not doing to good when he’s not doing something good… if you know what I mean.”

  The brow-wiggle accompanying these words were superfluous, and I felt a blush creep up my cheeks.