Authors: Joanna Wylde
Us.
I was part of “us” now, I realized. These
were my sisters, Horse was my man, and I could trust all the guys to keep an
eye out for me, even Max. I still loathed him and he made my skin crawl, but
he’d been watching out for me and Silvie in his own weird way today. It’d
always been me and Mama and Jeff against the world—it felt good to have more.
An air horn sounded at nine, calling
everyone outside to the bonfire. I followed the girls and found Horse again,
tucking myself into his arms to keep warm as Picnic stepped out in front of
everyone, solemn. Cookie stood not far away, flanked by Maggs and Dancer. She
looked unsteady but determined. She still wore her black dress, but she’d put
her “property” vest on over it, trading her heels for black leather boots.
“Tonight we say goodbye to a brother and a
friend,” Picnic said, his voice hoarse. “He truly understood that brotherhood
is forever and that no matter what happens in this life, a real man never walks
away before the fight is finished. No matter what, we stand together. He gave
his life standing with his brothers in Afghanistan and we’ll respect him for
the rest of our lives.
“Bagger wore the Reapers’ patch for ten
years and always brought it honor. When he left for his last deployment, he
gave his colors to me to keep safe. He’s Freebird chapter now and he doesn’t
need his patches anymore. It’s time to send them back to him. We won’t forget.
Reapers forever, forever Reapers.”
A lot of the guys, including Horse, echoed
his words like a mantra. Then everyone grew silent and the opening strains of
Lynyrd Skynyrd’s
Free Bird
started playing. Picnic stepped forward,
holding up Bagger’s cut for all of us to see. He’d almost reached the fire when
Cookie cried out.
“Wait!” she said, pulling away from Maggs.
“Wait for me. Mine’s going with his. They belong together.”
I watched as she shrugged out of her
“Property of Bagger, Reapers MC” vest and draped it over Bagger’s cut.
“They go together,” she said again, voice
breaking. Picnic shook his head and Maggs came up to her, taking her arm.
“You’ll want it,” she said. “You aren’t
thinking straight tonight. Bagger would want you to keep it.”
“It belongs with his,” Cookie replied, her
voice fierce. She and Picnic stared each other down for a minute as the song
played, then he jerked his head once in acquiescence. Cookie sighed in relief
and let Maggs pull her away, unsteady on her feet again, as if she’d used up
all her energy on this final chore. The song soared around us as Picnic threw
the two sets of patched leathers into the fire. All around me I heard women
sniffling. Men blinked quickly, their eyes suspiciously moist. All too soon the
song ended and the leather cuts were lost in the flame.
It was official. Bagger had left the
Reapers behind.
I stood in the bathroom off the game room
an hour later, fiddling with my hair and wishing I could leave. Horse needed
space and wanted to be with his brothers. The women were friendly but I didn’t
know most of them and I didn’t want to intrude on their grief. The toilet
flushed behind me and Cookie stepped out of the stall.
“Hey,” I said, not sure what to say. I
didn’t want to ask her how she felt or offer some empty platitude.
“Hey,” she murmured, washing her hands. She
looked in the mirror and then glanced at the door. She took a deep breath and
touched my arm.
“I need to get out of here,” she said, her
voice matter-of-fact. “Can you take me home? Everyone’s drunk and I can’t find
anyone to drive me. Are you sober? You look sober.”
“Yeah,” I said, startled. “You really want
to leave? Everyone’s here for you—”
“No, I need to go right now,” she said,
shaking her head with unnatural composure. “I’m holding on by a thread and if I
have to listen to his name or any more stories I’m going to fall apart and I
don’t want an audience. Not only that, they all say I shouldn’t be alone
tonight and probably won’t let me leave. That’s not working for me. I’m not
going to do anything stupid, but I can’t handle listening to a party when all I
can think about is my husband lying cold and dead in the ground a mile from my
house. Will you take me home?”
There was only one answer to a statement
like that.
“Let me get my purse. I’ll meet you out
front.”
I ran upstairs and grabbed my things,
trying to decide whether I should tell Horse. The Jacks were out, I knew that.
But Horse needed his mourning time and I didn’t want to take it away from him.
Maybe I could find a prospect to go with us. Painter stood outside with a few
other guys, but when I went up and asked him to drive home with me and Cookie,
he said he needed to check with Picnic. Cookie paced nervously by my car and I
could see her starting to visibly fall apart. What if Picnic didn’t want her to
leave? Then Max walked around the corner and I made a snap decision.
“Are you sober?” I asked him. He stopped,
obviously startled.
“Um, yeah, I am,” he replied. “Wanted to be
alert if the Jacks showed up. Why?”
“Cookie needs to go home and I’m taking
her,” I said, putting my cards on the table. “I asked Painter to ride with us
but he said he had to check with Picnic first, and Picnic might not let her
leave. We have to get out of here now. Will you come with us?”
“Sure,” he said, and we all got into the
car, Cookie taking the backseat. During the drive my phone started ringing,
Horse and Picnic both, so I let it go to voicemail. I’d deal with the fallout
after I got Cookie home. None of us spoke on the way to her house and when we
pulled up, she paused only long enough to thank us before heading inside.
“You think she’ll be safe?” I asked Max. “I
mean, from the Jacks?”
“They won’t bother her,” he replied. “Not a
war widow, not with this many guys in town. They go after her, even their own
support clubs could turn on them. She’s untouchable. You aren’t though. We
should get back.”
My phone rang and I grabbed it, wanting to
reassure Horse.
“Hey, babe, I’m sorry—”
“Marie, it’s Jeff.”
I stilled, eyes darting toward Max.
“Um, yeah,” I replied, keeping my tone
friendly and casual. “Just a sec.”
I stepped out of the car and closed the
door, strolling a few feet down the street in front so Max could see me without
hearing me.
“What are you doing calling me?” I
demanded. “You were supposed to email. What if someone else had answered? It’s
after midnight, what if I’d been in bed with Horse?”
“You’re not,” Jeff replied. “I know there’s
a wake at the armory. Are you there?”
“No, I had to give someone a ride home,” I
said quickly. “How did you find out about the wake?”
“I know everything they do,” he said. “I’ve
got things all set up now, it’s time for us to go. I want you to meet me out at
Horse’s place. I’m in the barn.”
“What? How is that even possible?”
“I don’t have time for this,” he said
sharply. “You need to get your ass out here so we can go. We’ll talk while we
drive.”
“I’m not alone. Max is with me.”
“Lose him,” Jeff snapped.
“I don’t think I can,” I replied. “They’re
worried about the Jacks. He isn’t going to just hop out of the car. Jeff, you
need to know I’m not going with you. I’m with Horse and I’m going to stay with
him.”
He sighed.
“You’re brainwashed,” he said. “But I told
you, Horse isn’t who you think he is. I have proof, I’ll show you. Everyone’s
busy, they won’t have a clue until it’s too late. At least come and see what
I’ve found. If you still want to stay after that I’ll call off the Jacks and
leave you alone.”
“Max, remember?”
“Bring him,” Jeff said. “Tell him you need
something in the house, ask him to come with you. I’ve got a gun. We can tie
him up while we talk, lock him in the tack room. He’ll be fine.”
I felt my stomach sink.
“This is a really bad idea, Jeff,” I said
softly. “Think it through. What if it doesn’t work? He could kill you. You need
to stop doing crazy things and deal with this situation in a way that doesn’t
make it worse.”
“You’re so damned naive,” he muttered,
frustration clear in his voice. “Max is a violent criminal, all the Reapers
are. You need to stop protecting them and think about your family. Now get your
ass out here.”
He hung up on me. I turned back to the car,
pasting a fake smile on my face for Max’s benefit. No way I would be bringing
him out to Horse’s place. Jeff had lost his mind. But I still wanted to talk to
him and see if we could figure something less crazy out together. I also wanted
to look at this proof he kept talking about. There had to be an explanation.
“That was Maggs,” I said, climbing back
into the car. “She wants us to stop by the grocery store and pick up some garbage
bags. I guess they’ve run out and things are getting ugly. Let’s swing into
Safeway, okay?”
“Sure,” he said and I kept my eyes forward,
counting every breath as I drove to the store. As we pulled into the parking
lot I chose my spot carefully, then stopped the car. Max got out and as soon as
he shut the door I clicked the locks and hit the gas.
I’d deal with that later.
Still, I didn’t want him to worry about me
more than he needed to, so after I pulled up I sent him a quick text saying
that things were all right but that my brother had called and I needed some
privacy to call him back. Then I silenced the phone, planning to ignore his
response.
The fallout from this was gonna suck, no
question.
I grabbed my purse and walked toward the
barn. No sign of Jeff. No sign of Ariel either, which made me really nervous. I
pushed through the open door, noting the broken lock. Horse wasn’t going to
like that either, I thought, biting back a hysterical giggle. Poor man would
have a heart attack before the night was over at this rate. Jeff grabbed me as
soon as I walked into the barn, pulling me to the side of the door with one
hand and waving a gun around in the other. All of Horse’s training must have
sunk in, because I hit the ground automatically as the barrel swung toward me.
“Don’t point that at me!” I hissed, and
Jeff glanced down at the gun, startled.
“Oh shit, I’m sorry,” he said. “Did you
come by yourself?”
“Yes,” I replied, standing up and dusting
off my knees. “But they were lighting up my phone on the drive out here. We
don’t have a lot of time. What’s the proof you were talking about?”
Jeff walked over to a work bench and pulled
out a folder. I flipped it open and saw several articles about the massacre
from different news outlets. None of them had any information I hadn’t seen
already.
“Keep looking,” Jeff said. I flipped
further, finding a copy of Horse’s discharge papers. Honorable. I found a memo
stating that his unit was being cleared of charges based on a lack of evidence.
Another newspaper article followed, this one stating that the killers had never
been found and now several key witnesses had disappeared. That was it.
“You see?” Jeff asked. “It’s right there.
Now do you understand?”
I looked at him, confused.
“This doesn’t say he did anything,” I
replied softly. “It just says they never figured out who did it. Sometimes that
happens during war, Jeff, especially in areas with competing guerrilla groups.
This doesn’t prove anything.”
He shook his head, clearly frustrated.
“It’s a conspiracy, you have to read
between the lines,” he said. “The witnesses disappeared. Why do you think that
happened?”
“Probably because they were afraid they’d
get murdered if they collaborated,” I replied, shaking my head. “Jeff, forget
about this. You need call off the Jacks and stop working with them. Then you
need to disappear. Otherwise I’m afraid the Reapers will kill you. I love you
so much—I can’t lose you.”
Jeff’s face softened, and I saw a trace of
the laid-back, loving brother he’d been most of my life. He pulled me into his
arms but he didn’t feel right to me. His heart raced, he’d gotten far too thin
and I felt and smelled clammy sweat coming off him. I pulled back and looked
into his face, feeling indescribably sad.
“Jeff, what are you doing to yourself?” I
asked. His features hardened and he jerked away.
“I’m trying to take care of my family,” he
snapped. Outside I heard the roar of bikes and I froze.
“Oh shit, they’re gonna kill you,” I said,
panicking. I started looking around, trying to find somewhere to hide him,
which was ludicrous. The barn door flew open and banged against the wall. It
was Horse and Max, holding guns. They froze as Jeff grabbed me and held his own
weapon to my head.
“Don’t worry, sis,” he whispered in my ear.
“I would never hurt you. I just need to get out of this so we can start over
somewhere else. It’s going to be great, you won’t have to worry about
anything.”
Oh fuck.
Chapter
Twenty-One
Horse saw red when he saw the gun at
Marie’s head. Jensen stood next to her, trembling so hard he thought it might
be enough to pull the trigger. The man was obviously tweaking hard on
something, probably meth. Very bad news. Might even be hallucinating. It took
everything he had not to charge Jensen and kill him with his bare hands, but he
had to be smart.
“Hey,” Max said, sounding a little too
casual. Horse glanced over at him and caught his play. “We’re just here to make
sure Marie’s all right. We were afraid the Jacks got her. We know you love her
and would never hurt her so let’s talk this through. Win/win, right?”
Jeff laughed, the tone high-pitched and
more than a little crazed.
“I showed her the evidence,” he said. “She
knows all about what you did in Afghanistan to those kids. And now you’re going
to die for what you did to her.”
Horse ignored his words, focusing on
reading his tone and body language. No clear shot, obviously. How could he get
to her? He’d been in tighter situations but never with so much at stake.
“I’m going to put down my gun,” he said,
setting the gun very slowly and carefully on the floor. Then he held his hands
up, showing Jeff they were empty. “Max will do the same. Then you can take the
gun away from her head. I don’t want any accidents. We’ll let you get in her
car and go, sound good?”
Jensen laughed again, something new and
ugly on his face…honest glee, with a hint of gloating.
“I want you out in the center of the
floor,” he said. “No tricks.”
Horse stepped forward, hands up. The gun
trembled in Jensen’s hand as he pulled Marie backward, deeper into the barn’s
open central floor.
Fuck.
“That’s good,” Jeff said. “Your turn,” he
added, looking at Max now. Horse heard Max shuffle behind him and then Marie’s
eyes went wide. She opened her mouth and screamed at him as a bullet tore
through his back, pain exploding as his vision started going dark.
He hit the floor, seeing his blood flowing
out onto the ground next to him. He couldn’t move but he could feel, the pain
beyond anything he could have imagined.
This is how Bagger went,
he
realized.
Alone in a pool of blood, knowing that he failed his woman.
Then
he stopped thinking and everything stopped.
Horse hit the floor and my world ended. I
think some part of me had doubted whether our love was real. Not anymore. I
hardly noticed as Jeff let me go, I just ran over to Horse and felt his neck
for a pulse. It was there, and while the blood was pooling beneath him it
wasn’t spurting out.
I still had a chance.
I stood to see Max and Jeff greeting each
other, guns lowered.
Holy shit.
“This was a setup,” I said. Jeff glanced
over at me.
“Max is my inside source. He knew I’d be
here tonight and planned to deliver you, but it made things a lot easier when
you gave Cookie a ride home.”
“Too much talk,” Max said, narrowing his
eyes at Jeff. “We can’t trust her.”
Jeff nodded, looking sad.
“Yeah, you’re right,” he said. “Marie, I
know this is hard for you but you’ll get through it. You’ve only known him a
few months and it was all fake anyway. You’ll see.”
“Everything ready?” Max asked. Jeff nodded.
“All set up,” he said. “Haven’t pulled the
money from the accounts yet, didn’t want to do that and tip them off until we
got her out. Marie, grab your purse, we gotta go.”
He picked it up and tossed it toward me,
then pulled Max away, talking with him quietly. Both men seemed extremely
excited and agitated as they pored through papers on one of the work benches. I
didn’t care about that—I needed to find something to stop the bleeding. I saw a
pile of rags that looked pretty dirty, but figured we’d worry about infection
if he managed to survive. It wouldn’t matter if I kept the wound clean if he
bled out.
Once I had the rags on him and started
applying pressure, I tried to think of the next step. I definitely wasn’t going
anywhere with Max and Jeff. I’d finally grasped the reality—I’d already lost
Jeff. There was something really, really wrong with him and I’d never be able to
fix it. Even if I did, I didn’t want him in my life anymore. Not after he
killed Horse.
Tried
to kill Horse.
He wasn’t dead yet.
Gotta keep the
thoughts positive.
Max and Jeff were engrossed in whatever
they were studying—apparently I wasn’t a threat to them. I could use that. I
glanced down at my purse and realized I had two very powerful tools in there.
My phone and my gun. I couldn’t call and say anything though, because they’d
hear me. I guess I could’ve called 9-1-1 in the hope they’d find me, but considering
it was a cell phone that wouldn’t happen very fast.
I’d call Picnic and hope to hell he
answered. Maybe he’d hear something useful.
I scooted around Horse’s body, turning my
back to them. That felt wrong, but I needed some cover to dig through my purse.
I also needed to keep up the pressure on his wound, so I leaned down and across
him, holding down the rags with the weight of my body as I searched quickly
through the bag. I found the phone first, turning down the sound and hitting
Picnic’s number. It rang forever. Nothing. Shit. I heard their conversation
shift and realized I was running out of time. I hit Maggs’ number and set the
phone on the floor behind Horse’s arm, hoping she’d answer and hear something.
I couldn’t do more than that, not right now.
Now for the gun.
Horse had given me a really cute leather
purse that had a little compartment in it designed especially for a
handgun—crazy, right? I was damned thankful for it at the moment though,
because my .22 slipped right out when I pressed the latch. Now all I had to do
was cock it. I got ready and then coughed loudly as I chambered a round,
sliding it under his arm.
“You should leave him,” Jeff said behind
me. “He’s going to die, no way you can change that. Grab your shit and let’s
go.”
I lifted my chest and pressed against Horse
again with both hands. Then I scooted around to find Jeff standing over me.
“I’m not going with you,” I said, meeting
his eyes. “You guys should get out while you can. Leave us. I won’t even tell
them who did it, I just want you gone.”
Max laughed and came up behind Jeff,
holding up a paper. He smiled and shook his head, studying whatever it said.
“I can’t believe it’s this simple,” Max
said, shaking his head. Jeff turned back to grin at him, the maniacal gleam
coming back into his eyes. “You’re a genius. We’ll be set, even after we pay
off the cartel.”
“It’s only simple because I spent so much
time setting it up,” Jeff said, looking pleased, although I noticed his hand
had started twitching again. Of course, he kept his finger on the trigger. Just
what I needed.
“You did a hell of a job,” Max said,
shaking his head ruefully. “It’s a thing of beauty, man.”
Jeff grinned at the compliment.
“I’m really glad they didn’t listen to me
back in September,” Max continued. He looked at me and smiled almost fondly.
“Gotta thank your old man for that, Marie. I wanted to kill you months ago,
Jeff. Figured you might expose me on the skim. Never figured on a payoff like
this. Damn. I’m actually sorry I have to do this. It’s not personal, okay?”
Jeff looked at Max, puzzled. He never saw
the biker’s hand lift and for the second time in ten minutes I found myself
screaming a warning too late for someone I loved. Jeff’s head exploded.
Literally exploded, chunks flying off. One of them hit me in the face, which I
didn’t notice at the time because in the instant Max shot him, Jeff’s hand
spasmed and pulled the trigger on his own gun. A second shot rang out almost
instantly and I felt a line of fire across my arm. I ignored it because my
brother was dead, my lover was almost dead and I had a really, really bad
feeling that I’d be dead, soon too.
Max looked down at me, tapping his gun
against the side of his leg. He wore the same puzzled look he’d had the night
he’d attacked me.
“He’s going to die,” Max said, looking down
at Horse thoughtfully. “Your brother was right about that. You might as well
let him go, because his blood is getting all over your clothes.”
“What’s wrong with you?” I whispered. “Why
would you do this?”
He shrugged.
“Money, what else? Get out of the way
unless you want me to shoot you too. I want to fuck you first. Your call.”
My eyes widened as he raised his gun and
pointed it right at Horse’s head. This was it. Horse was out of time. I needed
a distraction, just for a second.
“Oh my god, I’m covered in blood!” I
squealed suddenly, pulling my hands away from Horse to tear off my shirt and
bra. Max’s eyes went straight to my tits right as my hand grabbed my gun. A
thousand memories flashed through my mind in an instant, but the one that
stayed with me was the sound of Horse’s voice, that first day he taught me to
shoot.
Just remember, you ever point this at a
person, you shoot it right at his heart and you shoot to kill. Never point a
gun unless you’re ready to end a life.
I lifted my gun and pointed it straight at
Max’s heart like I’d practiced hundreds of time. I didn’t even think as I
pulled the trigger over and over and over until I ran out of bullets. Like
Jeff, Max’d pulled his trigger as he died but his arm had dropped just enough
to miss us. I crawled over to his body and grabbed his gun, taking it back with
me as I climbed onto Horse, sitting on the rags as I grabbed my phone.
“Maggs, are you there?” I asked, my voice.
“What happened?” she demanded, her voice
steady and calm. Apparently Maggs took gunfire in stride. “The guys are on
their way, they’ll be there in two minutes, tops. They had GPS on your car. Are
you okay?”
“Horse needs an ambulance,” I said, my
voice shaky. “I think he’s still alive. Max and Jeff are dead. Please save us,
Maggs. I’m really, really scared.”
The barn door burst open in front of me and
I dropped the phone, bringing Max’s gun up and pointing it at Picnic, Bam Bam,
Duck, Ruger and a couple other guys I’d seen at the armory, guys from another
charter.
“I want cops and an ambulance,” I said, and
my voice might have been weak but my hands were steady.
Picnic surveyed the scene, his face calmer
than seemed reasonable.
“Max tried to kill Horse,” I told him. “He
killed Jeff. I don’t trust any of you. I want an ambulance for Horse and I want
you out of here.”
“Babe, I have no idea what went down here,”
Picnic said slowly. “But you have to let us help Horse. Put down the gun.”
“
No fucking way
,” I replied. “Max
shot him in the back. I’ll shoot any one of you fucking Reapers who try to
touch him. Ambulance. Now.”
“There’s one on the way,” Picnic said.
“Bam’s called it in. But if you’re sitting there holding a gun on us when the
cops get here, that’s going to make it a lot harder for them to take care of
Horse. He’s our brother, we aren’t going to hurt him.”
“Max was his brother too.”
“A bad thing happened here,” Duck said,
stepping forward. Something about his voice mesmerized me, and his eyes looked
soft and sad. I watched as he crossed the floor and sat in front of me, about
three feet from the gun. “Don’t make it worse. We can still control the
situation, but not if you get in a shootout with the cops.”
That startled me.
“I don’t want to shoot the cops, I just
want to protect Horse,” I said.
“How are they going to know that?” he asked
reasonably. I heard sirens in the distance. “You’re running out of time, let us
help you through this, okay?”
I wanted to agree and had opened my mouth
to tell him when something tackled me from behind. Duck’s hand darted forward
at the same instant, wrenching the gun out of my grasp as Ruger rolled me away
from Horse’s body. He held me down, hand over my mouth, and leaned his face in
close to mine. His expression was intense, almost feral. In the corners of my
eyes I saw the guys spring into action, throwing things into a bag, which Bam
Bam grabbed before he took off running out the back door of the barn.
“All hell’s gonna break loose when they
come in here,” Ruger told me, his tone urgent. “They’re probably going to
arrest you, maybe all of us. Keep your mouth shut. I don’t care what happened
here and I don’t care who did the shooting. You keep your mouth shut and the
only time you open it is to ask for a lawyer. Keep asking for a lawyer ’til you
get one, we’ll send him to you. Do
not
talk, you got me?”
He pulled his hand away from my mouth and I
nodded, eyes wide. A single cop came flying through the door and stopped
abruptly, obviously shocked at the scene.
“Holy shit!” he yelled, reaching up to grab
his radio. “We need backup now. Everyone, hands up where I can see them. Get
off that girl, let her go.”
Ruger rolled off me and stood, backing away
with his hands raised high. The others followed suit and then I joined them.
The lone cop watched us anxiously as EMTs rushed over to Horse, bundling him
onto a stretcher and hauling him out the door. More cops arrived, which was the
start of a very, very long night.
I asked for a lawyer and eventually I got
one, but he couldn’t answer the one question I cared about.
Was Horse still alive?
He felt detached from his body, almost
floating. Pain roared through him. Voices echoed in the background, along with
sirens. Then the world went black again.
More voices. Pain, but muted. Horse opened
his eyes slowly, taking in a blurry room and a bright white light. A woman
stood over him, asking him questions. He tried to answer, telling her his name,
but he was so damned tired. He needed to sleep.