The guys had let me go, my jacket and cut hanging on me askew. I jerked my arms and the leather settled where it belonged.
“What the fuck we gonna do, Captain?”
“Meet with the fuckin’ lawyer back at the Voodoo Bastard’s. He’s meeting us there. Likely they’ll be arraigned tomorrow. They just gotta make it through the night.” He turned and looked up and down the rows of bikes.
“Nothing! Beast!” he barked, “Set up shop outside the jail until they trespass you, then call it in and fall back. Be a presence, make sure they know our women are going to be missed and it’ll be fuckin’ noticed if they’re abused.”
“Aye, Captain!” They both shouted in unison and they got on their bikes, taking off after the line of cruisers that were starting to distort in their retreat up the road with the heat patterns raising off the blacktop.
“Radar, you get all that?” I asked.
“Oh yeah, we got it all from like four different angles,” he answered.
“Good, fuckin’ make it go viral.” Cutter ordered.
“On it, Captain.”
“Fuck me swingin’,” I uttered, leaning over, hands on my knees.
“Too, right,” Cutter agreed.
Too fuckin’ right.
Chapter 28
Faith
I bent over my knees and keened. I couldn’t stop crying. Hope kept talking to me, I could hear her voice controlled and even, I just couldn’t make sense of what she was saying through the mad jamble of panic going on inside my heart and head.
“Shut the fuck up!” the policeman bellowed from the front seat and I shut up, like flipping a switch.
If you don’t do what they say, they will just rape you longer and hurt you more.
The voice in my head was both practical and cruel, and worse… it was right. I looked at Hope and mouthed ‘I’m so sorry,’ but all she did was shake her head at me. Her dark eyes stormy and unreadable.
I stared out the grate in front of the window at the scenery whizzing by and felt lost. Marlin had let them take me, but he couldn’t stop them. I knew that. If he had, he would just be in trouble too and they would have separated us anyways. His brothers had done the right thing in holding him back, but a part of me feared I would never see him again.
I looked at Hope, both of us were handcuffed and neither could do anything to comfort the other, but leave it to my big sister to figure out a way anyways.
“’Mere Bubbles, lay your head on my shoulder.”
I did what she told me to do and I felt better. She kissed the top of my head and whispered, “It’s okay, I’m here. I’ll always be here. You just do what I do, say what I say. Okay?”
“Okay,” I whimpered brokenly and hated that the sound had come out of me.
“You gonna give us some hot lesbian action back at holding?” The deputy asked from the front seat and Hope scowled.
“Break your nose?” she asked. He scowled into the rearview.
“No, bloodied it good, and you’re gonna pay for it too.”
“Knew I should have gone for your balls, but if you’re making threats against defenseless cuffed up women, then I guess I made the right call the first time. You don’t have any.”
“Fucking little cunt, I’m gonna fuck you real good,” he threatened and I felt myself blanch.
“Gonna have to find it first,” Hope shot and I kicked her foot with mine.
“Hope, stop!” I hissed, afraid.
“Don’t worry, Faith. He can’t, and won’t, do anything,” she said and sounded absolutely sure of herself. I bit my bottom lip and we made the rest of the drive to the jail in silence.
We were processed, and it wasn’t
as
bad, because there were female officers in the jail and they, shockingly, acted professional. More professional than the deputies who had brought us in, but they were there too, for a while. Soon after our arrival, a man in plain clothes from New Orleans showed up. He spoke to one of the jailers in a deep rumbling Cajun accent and introduced himself as a detective.
“Joe!” Hope called out when she’d seen him, and she jerked her head in my direction. I looked at Hope and she gave me that silent look like everything was going to be okay. Her deep, dark, eyes saying without words that this Joe was on our side. I nodded and he asked me to stand up and to go with him.
I debated and he said low so no one could hear, “C’mon Cher, no one’s gonna do nutin’ with a big city type here. Hope can take care of herself. Let’s go talk.” I got up and followed him and he took me into a little box of a room with a table and two chairs. I sank into the one he pulled out for me, shaking.
“Now, I’m a friend of your sister’s,” he said gently, “An’ I’m gonna keep you in here as long as I can for her and away from those officers that brought you in…”
We talked and he was kind, though we did have to go over difficult subjects surrounding my captivity. When he brought me out, hours later, the sun had gone and Hope was still sitting, leaning nonchalantly in the same row of DMV-like seats, her hands cuffed in front of her like mine were. She had a split in the corner of her lip, and her eyes sparked fury, but she seemed otherwise unharmed.
“You alright, Cherie?” Joe asked her and she nodded. I sat down next to her.
Joe nodded, and sucked his teeth considering, he caught one of the officers by her sleeve and demanded, “What happened here?”
The female officer made a face and looked pointedly at one of the male officers across the room, “Resisting Babbineaux.”
“Uh huh, put ‘em in holding together. Might calm her shit down some.”
“Both of you come with me,” she walked us to a cell across from us and opened the big metal door. Thick glass left us visible to the room and she locked us inside. Hope stuck her hands out a slot in the door and the cuffs were taken off, then she motioned for me to do the same.
I looked around at the stark, white walls, the stink of desperation filling my nose and finally looked at my sister as the handcuffs came free and I withdrew my hands from the little portal.
“I don’t understand…” I moaned and hated how scared and defeated I sounded.
“I know, there was no time to explain, it happened all on the fly, come here.” She dropped onto one of the benches ringing the room and I sat down beside her.
“Here’s what’s up, Bubbles. I had some problems with these assholes when I came to get you. They’d let you go with those dicks before I could get here and it pissed me off. I felt like I’d gotten so close, but yet was back to square one, you know?” I nodded, and listened to my sister, rapt.
“So when they pulled us over, I knew they didn’t have a reason. I also knew it meant you were going to get picked up. I called Joe; he was one of the detectives that raided the place where you got picked up the first time. I knew if I could get him down here to interview you, that it’d put these fuckers on notice. I’m glad I did it too.” She sniffed, eyes welling with angry tears and my heart gave a fractured ache.
“When that son of a bitch put his hands on you, I knew you were going to need more than just Joe here to watch your back. Felt really good to punch him, just sayin’, and I’d fucking do it again in a heartbeat. Nobody, and I do mean
nobody
, disrespects my girls in front of me like that without paying some kind of price.”
“Oh, Hope,” I grabbed my sister and hugged her fiercely, tears sliding down both our faces. I sniffed and she laughed a little brokenly.
“What do you need me to do?” I asked, making the decision that I needed to be an agent of my own rescue for a change. That if my sister were going to be brave, possibly even throw her career away for me, that at the very least I could pretend to be strong just long enough until we were both clear of this mess.
As if she’d read my mind that was almost exactly word for word, what my sister told me: “Just be strong, Bubbles. Okay? Just be strong for us and trust us. Believe in us that we’ll get you out of this mess.”
I nodded and linked fingers with her, “What about you?” I asked, not fully satisfied with simply worrying about my own hide.
“Don’t you worry about me, Little Sister, I’ve got this and what I can’t handle up front, the guys have got my back and will help me handle when I’m in a better position to do it.” There wasn’t one iota of doubt or worry in my sister’s voice. So strong was her conviction, that I let myself believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that things were going to work out and everything was going to be just fine.
Chapter 29
Marlin
I felt caged and I hated that I could feel this way knowing that my girl was the one behind physical bars,
with those fuckin’ animals.
I was smoking like a fuckin’ chimney listening to the Captain and that lawyer of Ruth’s talk it out. I didn’t sleep; instead I parked my ass on one of the picnic tables out front of the compound’s doors staring out at the green slats in the chain link. The bikes parked to either side of the cement slab of a drive gleaming softly in the diffuse light of the half-moon hangin’ high in the sky.
Cutter dropped onto the table beside me, propping his booted feet on the bench, much like me. I sucked in a drag and dropped my cig into the coffee can full of ‘em at my hip.
“How are you not goin’ fuckin’ crazy?” I asked him.
“Hope can take care of herself and then some; I ain’t got nothin’ to worry about ‘cept gettin’ your girl out intact. You been doin’ good with her, you two been findin’ some happy in each other. It’s nice to see.”
“Thanks,” I said and sighed out. “I’m just worried about how far this might set her back.”
“Won’t know that until we get her out tomorrow.”
“Think the lawyer has a shot at making that happen?”
“Pretty sure.”
“And Hope?” I asked when the Captain became more guarded.
“Probably not, she assaulted a cop. There’s more, the Russians have those hick fuckin’ cops in their pocket. Ruth says they’re bad business and might not give up now that the girls are here and they have a scent to follow.”
We searched each other’s faces for a long, drawn out minute and Cutter asked, “You still good buddies with that orange grower?”
“Bobby? Yeah, what ‘cha thinkin’? I should take Faith out there instead of the home front?”
Cutter was nodding scraping his bottom lip between his teeth, “Yeah, at least until all of us are back in town.”
I nodded, too; saying to him, “You know Faith ain’t gonna wanna leave Hope here, locked up by herself.”
“So don’t give her a choice. You saw her, Bro. It’s too soon, she ain’t gotta be nor
should she
be strong. You feel me? You need to get her the fuck out of here at the first opportunity and get her back on track and makin’ progress again. ‘Sides,” he slid of the table and stood on the cracked concrete, “If Hope is anyone’s responsibility she’s mine, bein’ my woman an’ all.”
I nodded, that more than anything told me how much it bothered the Captain that Hope was locked up with her sister. Even though he’d agreed with the course of action, it didn’t make it any easier to be on the outside, separated and all thing’s said and done, helpless. Helpless didn’t sit well with men like us.
“I’d better call Bobby,” I said, sliding my phone out of the inside pocket of my cut.
Cutter jerked his head in a sharp nod, “You do that,” he said and slapped me on the back of my shoulder before heading in.
I thumbed my way across the screen through menus and pulled another cigarette from my pack, sticking it between my lips and thumbing the wheel on a cheap plastic lighter. I lit the cancer stick and breathed deep as the deep trill of the ringer droned in my ear.
Shit, I was gonna get his fuckin’ voicemail.
“Yeah, hello?”
“Bobby?”
“Jimmy, hey, what’s up, Man?”
I thought for a moment and finally breathed out, taking another drag on my cigarette I said, “I need to ask you, probably the biggest favor I’ve ever asked in our lives…”
Bobby was quiet for several tense seconds before wherever he was, the noise in the background disappeared and he said, “What’s going on, man? You got my attention.”
I explained it all. I’d been avoiding telling him much about Faith since the morning, weeks ago, he’d found us sleeping in his orange grove. It wasn’t my usual thing to do and he knew it. We’d been friends for a real long time.
He listened and when I finished he said the only thing I could and would say if our roles were reversed.
“Yeah, Man. Think nothing of it, come on down. The guest room’ll be ready and waiting for as long as you need it.”
“Thanks Bobby, it’s just until the MC gets back with Hope and we’re in a better position to handle things.”
He snorted, “You like to forget that I was your brother long before any of them other fuckers were.”
I winced, he was right, and he’d had the opportunity to be one of The Kraken back in the days before Cutter had been our Captain, but for some reason Bobby and the dude that’d been P. before Cutter had never seen eye to eye. Bobby walked before making it out of his hang around cut and was never one to let go of a grudge. I was just both lucky and blessed that he had enough sense to remember just
who
his grudge was with for the most part. He sometimes let his grudge against Mac, the guy who’d started the club, bleed onto my club colors, but it never went further than the occasional biting comment.
We’d done everything together growing up; I think on a deep level it hurt my best friend that he didn’t share this with me too.
“Thanks, Man. You don’t know how much I owe you for this.”
“I look forward to meeting her for real this time.”
“Just, you know, you gotta be careful sorta; she spooks real easy.”
“I get it man, we’ll talk more when you get here.”
“Could be a long stay depending on how things go…”
Again he made a rude noise, blowing me off, “It’ll give us time to catch up some seeing as I haven’t exactly made the time to come down your way. I need a new foreman… bad.”
“Hey, Marlin!” Radar called from the open doorway.
“Shit, Bobby, I gotta go. I’ll see you soon. Get a six pack in the fridge.”
Bobby laughed, “There’s
always
a six pack in my fridge in case you stop by. See you soon.”