by Ivy Black
Who would do it? Who would turn against our brotherhood? Who would be so disloyal?
“Hey, what’s up, Nitro?”
I look up to see Grease limping into the clubhouse. I nod at him as he walks behind the bar and grabs a beer. He pops the top and tosses the cap into the trash can. Or at least, toward it. I hear it hit the floor, but Grease doesn’t bother to pick it up. Typical. The dude is a pig. I can only imagine what his house looks like. He’s my brother-in-arms here but that doesn’t mean I have to like everything about the guy. I’m not a type-A personality or anything, but I do like to be tidy and organized.
He leans against the bar and takes a long swallow of his beer. I close my notebook, but my mind is still working through it all. I still can’t believe Prophet put me on this. I have no idea why he did it. It’s not like I have any investigative experience. It probably would have been better for somebody like Doc or Cosmo to run point on this.
“This whole thing is a clusterfuck, isn’t it?” Grease says.
I nod. “Yep.”
“What are you workin’ on there?”
I shrug. “Nothin’ really.”
“You look pretty intense for not workin’ on anything.”
“Don’t know what to tell you.”
He chuckles. “You’re a little ray of sunshine today, aren’t you?”
“That’s me. All kittens and rainbows.”
The door to the clubhouse bangs open and Prophet walks in with Sheriff Singer and Cosmo in tow. They all file in and take a seat at one of the tables. I get to my feet and point to the door.
“You want us to go?” I ask.
Prophet shakes his head. “No, you’re good. Just grab us a beer.”
I walk to the bar and have to work around Grease, who apparently doesn’t feel the need to be courteous and get out of my way. I manage it though and grab three bottles for them, one for me, out of the refrigerator and pop the tops. I pointedly throw them into the trash can as Grease watches me.
I carry the bottles over to the table and set them down in front of the guys then retreat to my own table. Leaning back in my chair, I take a long swallow of beer as I wait. Sheriff Singer being here means that something is up. And judging by the grim look on his face, whatever it is, it’s not good. My first thought is that there’s some fallout from the hijacking we’re going to have to deal with.
But for the life of me, I can’t figure out what it could be. We weren’t officially in town limits. We were on a long stretch of highway, passing through some unincorporated land. As far as I know, nobody knows about the shoot-out. Doc pulled the bullet out of Grease’s leg which means there’s no hospital record of it. So I don’t know what’s got Sheriff Singer looking so foul at the moment.
He takes a drink of his beer and sets the bottle back down, his frown deepening. There’s a tension in the air that’s heavy. Oppressive. The longer the silence drags on, the tenser it seems to be getting.
“Okay,” Singer finally says. “We’ve got a problem we need to address.”
“What is it?” Prophet asks.
“We’ve got the ATF sniffin’ around town. An Agent Rollins came by the station today to let me know he’s in town,” Singer says.
“What’s he doing in town? What does he want?” Cosmo asks.
“He’s apparently looking into what happened to Miguel Zavala and his men,” Singer replies. “Apparently, they’ve been picking up chatter about what happened when you guys took him out. Some of Zavala’s guys have been tryin’ to put together a team to come up and take you guys out.”
“Okay, so what does that have to do with us?” Prophet asks. “So far as I know, our fingerprints aren’t anywhere near the hit that took Zavala out.”
“Zavala’s guys have mentioned the club by name,” Singer says. “So, yeah, you boys are all on Rollins’ radar too. Y’all can expect a visit from him at some point in the not too distant future.”
Prophet and Cosmo exchange a look, both of them suddenly looking as grim as Singer. The news that we’ve got an ATF agent in town, sniffing around our business, isn’t good. In fact, it’s about the worst news we could have gotten. But at least Singer is here to give us a heads-up. If he didn’t have our back, this Rollins would have just strolled in here and caught us with our pants down.
“I don’t want to know what you guys have goin’ on or anythin’,” Singer goes on. “But I figured you’d want to know so you can do whatever you need to do to prepare yourselves and all. That and to warn you to keep your noses clean.”
“We appreciate the heads-up, Sheriff,” Prophet says.
Singer looks at his beer bottle, a rueful smile on his lips. “Once upon a time, I never would’ve thought I’d be sittin’ here, tippin’ you off. I remember a time I would’ve gladly led the Feds here myself.”
Prophet purses his lips and nods. “I remember that time too. I’m just glad you’ve finally realized we’re not the bad guys.”
Singer looks at him. “But you’re not exactly the good guys either, are you?” he asks. “You’re kind of somewhere in the middle.”
Prophet nods. “But we all have one thing in common—we love this town. And we’ll all do whatever it takes to keep it safe.”
Singer picks up his beer bottle and taps it against Prophet’s. “And that’s good enough for me.”
I lean back in my seat, listening to it all. The truce we have with Singer is a good thing. But there is still part of me that wonders, if the chips were truly down, whether or not it really would be good enough for him, and if he really would have our backs.
Chapter Six
Hadley
“Okay, kiddo,” Brent says. “You’re free to go. But tomorrow, we need to go over Burgess’ case. We need to firm up our strategy.”
“I don’t suppose you’d consider letting him twist,” I reply. “I mean, the guy’s going to kill somebody if he keeps driving drunk.”
“It’s unfortunately not for us to determine the morality of our clients,” Brent finally says. “Our job is simply to do our job and defend them.”
Brent sighs, and I can see the conflict on his face. Brent is a good man, and I know that he doesn’t like the idea of putting a drunkard back out on the streets. I know the idea of Burgess killing somebody one of these times weighs on him. But he’s duty bound to do his job. He takes his duty to provide his clients with a vigorous defense seriously. It’s a solemn duty for him.
In a strange way, I know he’s also trying to teach Singer a lesson in all of this. If Singer’s deputies were more thorough and diligent about doing their jobs, Brent wouldn’t be able to make mincemeat of their cases time after time, after time. It hasn’t helped yet, but maybe one day, Singer really will take the whole retraining his deputies to heart. Until then, Brent is going to keep kicking his ass.
“I don’t like it any more than you do,” Brent says. “In fact, I probably like it even less than you do. My daughter was killed by a drunk driver—”
“Brent, I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” I say.
“I don’t talk about it much. It was a long time ago,” he replies. “So, no, I’m not big on putting idiots like Burgess back on the street. But he hired us to do a job and it’s our responsibility to do it without passion or prejudice.”
I nod, letting his words rattle around in my mind. Brent has always been good at giving speeches. That and making a lot of sense. Making me think about things in a different way. I appreciate that about him. I know I can sometimes run pretty hot, and I don’t always think when my blood’s up. It’s one of those things I know I need to work on. And it’s something Brent is teaching me. It’s one of those lessons though that’s taking a little while to sink in.
“Now, go on and get out of here,” he says with a smile. “Have a great night, kiddo.”
“You too,” I tell him. “Try getting some sleep for a change. And try eating a salad or something healthy tonight.”
&nbs
p; “Yes, Mother,” he says with a chuckle.
He heads off as I gather up my things. Turning off my computer and all, I turn and head out for the night. I toss my things into my car and decide that I’m going to stop by and pick up some dinner on the way home. I’m beat and putting my feet up and chowing down on some noodles while watching something on Netflix sounds just like what the doctor ordered.
I drive over to a little hole-in-the-wall place called the Noodle House and place an order for some teriyaki noodles and steamed pot stickers. I’d called Robin to see if she wanted to come for dinner, but she and Aaron had a date tonight. She asked for a rain check, which I willingly gave. With their herd of children and busy schedules, it’s rare that she and Aaron can get out for some quality time, so I certainly won’t begrudge her that.
As I sit on the bench in the lobby waiting for my order, I think back over the last few days. Today is the first day in the last week that I haven’t felt the need to look over my shoulder. The first day I haven’t lived in fear, waiting for that ATF guy—Rollins—to just show up out of the blue.
I considered talking to the sheriff about it. Then I considered talking to Brent about it. But in the end, I opted not to. I mean, what would I say? That he was aggressively flirting with me? The truth is, he didn’t actually do anything to me. He was persistent—insistent, actually—but that’s not a crime. He was creepy and entitled. Acted like he thought I owed him something. But those aren’t crimes either.
He acts like so many other frat boys I’ve known who walk around thinking women are there for their own personal use. For their pleasure. He acts like so many other guys I’ve known who think women owe them something. Like we should fall down and thank our lucky stars that they’re paying any attention to us at all.
All of that is in my head, but none of it is a crime. If I bring this to Singer, he’ll laugh me off. He’ll tell me I’m full of myself thinking that Rollins is so into me that he’d risk his career just to harass me. I know Brent would be more sympathetic but he too would tell me there’s nothing he can do. That Rollins didn’t actually do anything that would rise to the level of a crime.
But then, as I sit there, letting all the events of the last few days sink into my mind, there’s some small part of me that tells me I’m making mountains out of molehills. That part makes me want to believe that I’m blowing this all out of proportion. And that I’m reading too much into what happened. That little voice in the back of my head is telling me that I’m jumping to conclusions, and that maybe Rollins’ intention today was simply to apologize for his behavior, like he’d said, and that I’d simply lashed out at him without thinking.
It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve done that. Admittedly, I can be somewhat socially awkward at times and miss normal social cues. More than that, there have been times when I’ve felt so insecure that I’ll launch an attack preemptively just so the other person doesn’t have the chance to hurt me first. My insecurities are something I’ve been working on for a while now, but I know I still have a long way to go with them.
There’s only been one guy who’s ever made me feel normal and who never made me feel insecure or unworthy. Milo Ball. He and I were together for a few years after he came home from the war. We met and were almost instantly inseparable. There was just something magical about what we had between us. He made me feel whole in ways I never thought I could be. Ways I never knew I could be.
Everything between us had been so easy that I think we both almost took it for granted. In some ways, it felt like we’d always been together. And I think we both just assumed we always would be. Two people were never made for each other the way Milo and I were. We complemented each other so well, and things between us were absolutely perfect.
Until they weren’t.
It’s not that we stopped loving each other when we split up. I still love him very much, and I like to think he still loves me too. It’s just that his issues from the war grew to be too much. He often closed himself off from the world... from me. For so long, things with him were so great that I often forgot he had some issues. But then, he’d spiral and would cycle through a myriad of emotions. I never knew from one day to the next which Milo I was going to get. Angry. Sullen. Withdrawn. Depressed. Rage-filled. His emotional mood swings always dipped to the darker side of things and he would linger there for days, weeks at a time.
But then, that storm would pass, and he would be the man I fell in love with all over again. I could almost pretend everything was okay, but something would trigger his issues and we’d go through the same emotional spiral again. He was seeing a shrink at the VA, and he went to support groups for soldiers bearing emotional scars from the war. It only temporarily worked for him. It would pull him out of his dark place but it never lasted.
Bit by bit, it chipped away at the bond between us. When I saw him slipping into those funks, I would beg him to talk to me but he never did. He’d simply shut down and wall himself off from everybody and everything. It took a toll on me personally. Over time, it eventually laid waste on our relationship.
I remember waking up one day realizing that the one thing I could always count on, the one thing I thought was indestructible, had shattered into a million pieces. Even worse, I knew there was no way to put it all back together again. I’ve never felt the sort of devastation I felt that day nor the sense of grief and loss. But I knew I couldn’t keep doing it because when Milo slipped into his dark place, he dragged me down into it with him. And eventually, I knew I just couldn’t do it anymore.
I often think about him and wonder how he’s doing. It’s crazy that we live in the same town—and it’s not like Blue Rock is a massive urban sprawl—but we’ve never run into each other. Not in a very long time. I sometimes still catch myself looking for him at some of our favorite places. But I never see him. It’s like he’s abandoned all the places that once brought us joy. It’s like he sticks to his side of town, locked away with all his biker buddies, and I stick to mine.
It’s probably for the best that I haven’t run into him again. There have been so many times I’ve thought about calling him to try to reconnect. But I know that until he gets his issues under control, until he can finally put the war behind him, nothing will have changed. As long as he allows himself to keep slipping into those dark downward spirals, any relationship he’s in will be doomed to fail.
It used to be that I blamed myself for the destruction of our relationship. I used to mentally and emotionally bludgeon myself. The little voice in the back of my mind would often tell me I wasn’t good enough or strong enough to help him conquer his issues. It would tell me he closed himself off and refused to talk to me because I was lacking. Because I just wasn’t enough.
I’ve since learned to tell that voice to shut the hell up and have embraced the fact that it wasn’t me. Nor was it him, really. It wasn’t either of our faults. And I certainly can’t blame him for bearing the scars he does after what he went through over there. I don’t think any human being can see or do the things he did without suffering some long-term trauma. I would question whether somebody was actually human if they could. But even though I loved him so fiercely, I finally had to make the decision to love myself enough to walk away from what was hurting me.
Even though he never meant to, nor would he ever intentionally do so, Milo was hurting me. Not being able to help him through the darkness and constantly feeling as if I wasn’t enough wasn’t his fault. But it was something I couldn’t continue to subject myself to. And so eventually, I had to walk away. Even though it broke my heart to do it.
If I’d stayed though, I know that in time, I would have come to resent him for making me feel the way I did. I would irrationally blame him and would come to hate him for it. And that’s not what I wanted. That wouldn’t have been fair. And I loved Milo too much to ever want to see our relationship reduced to that.
“Miss?”
Her voice cuts into my thoughts—thankfu
lly. I look up and see the hostess standing in front of me, holding a plastic bag emblazoned with a giant yellow smiley face, and the words, “Thank You” printed just above it. As I get to my feet, she hands it over and I smile at her.
“Thank you.”
“Enjoy your meal,” she replies.
I walk out of the noodle shop and make it back to my car without turning around to look for Rollins. I give myself a silent word of congratulations as I get into my car and start it up. I realize I’m still scanning the parking lot, looking for Rollins, as I pull out of the lot and head up the street.
“You’re an idiot,” I tell myself. “A paranoid idiot.”
At least I can laugh at myself. By the time I get home, I’m starting to lean toward the possibility that everything with Rollins has been overblown in my own head. That he wasn’t as nefarious as I’ve mentally made him out to be. He’s arrogant and creepy, for sure, but maybe I overreacted to him. It’s not like it’d be the first time I jumped down somebody’s throat for what turned out to be trivial reasons.
I pull into my carport and jump out to head to my apartment, keying the alarm on the remote. The echo of its chirp follows me as I walk along the winding path that cuts through my apartment community that led to my ground-floor unit. My mouth is already watering as the aroma of the teriyaki noodles drifts up to me from the bag. My stomach grumbles as I fumble with my keys, desperately looking forward to getting in there and chowing down. I finally manage to unlock the door and open it. As soon as I walk inside, I immediately freeze.
Something’s not right.
I stand in the doorway, looking around the front rooms of my apartment, and I can feel it in the air. Somebody’s been here. Somebody may still be here. I scrutinize every pocket of shadow in the room but don’t see anybody hiding within them. I don’t see anybody lurking, ready to leap out at me. But my fight-or-flight response is definitely ringing. With how hard my legs are shaking, I’m not sure how effective I’d be at either. Kind of hard to fight or run when your legs give out under you and you’re nothing more than a puddle of goo on the floor.