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  “Meet you out in the garage.”

  Bear knelt down in front of me, hot tears dropped down the side of my face as my gaze darted from the ceiling into the angry eyes of the person who I was stupid enough to think could have somehow been my savior in all this. “This is your only warning, Darlin’. If I find out that you’re in any way working for the MC. If you’re on their payroll…” His eyes turned dark and I tried to look away again, but he grabbed me by the back of the neck and leaned in so close the tip of his nose touched mine. His breath flitted against my lips in angry bursts as he spoke between his snarl. “If this is some sort of fucked up trap, you better fucking believe that whatever my old man did to you at the club is going to feel like you skinned your fucking knee compared to what I’m going to do to you.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Bear

  King and I loaded the bread truck with the plastic tarps, different types of saws, both electric and manual, drills, and enough cleaning supplies to start our own maid service.

  “You think Gus went back to the MC?” King asked.

  “Yeah that’s probably exactly where he went. If he disappeared too long now they’d figure out really quickly that he was the one who took the girl. Chop has always been paranoid about rats in our midst.” I laughed. “Fucker’s probably having himself a heart attack right now trying to figure out what the fuck happened.”

  “He didn’t do it quietly. Fucker said he set off a pipe bomb as a distraction to get to the girl,” King said.

  “The crazy thing is that motherfucker had a pipe bomb handy. Probably has a stack of them to the ceiling in his room. He’s always been a little off his rocker. One time I was in the shower at the club and when I pulled back the curtain he was just standing there, staring. Scared the fucking shit out of me.”

  “Creepy fucker,” King said.

  “Yeah, but he has his uses. And he’s loyal, obviously, which is more than I can say for most people these days.” King and I each grabbed a door on the back of the truck and slammed it shut.

  “What did you do for him that earned that kind of loyalty, cause that’s big shit, man.”

  “I saved his life. Fucker was about to catch a bullet in the head,” I said.

  “From who?”

  “Me. Gus almost didn’t turn prospect because Gus almost didn’t live past his sixteenth birthday. I’d caught him peering in through a warehouse window where he’d been watching me ‘question’ one of our rivals for information. The kid was as good as dead. Except when I was about to pull the trigger to put him down, the fucker didn’t flinch. Then he asked me if it felt good to gut a man and then he criticized my choice of knife I’d used on the guy before him. I decided he was more useful as a Bastard than dead. He turned prospect the very next day.” The little fuck became the best ‘questioner’ the club ever had. I bought him an entire butcher knife set when he was patched in. He looked down at the knives and I didn’t know if he was about to cry or come.

  Probably both.

  “Ready. Let’s go,” King said.

  “Nah, man. No need to put yourself at risk for this shit. I’m gonna get out there, neutralize the bullshit and get the fucking girl out of your house. The sooner I do that the sooner I can hit the road again.”

  “Fuck off. I’m going with you.” He pointed to the door of the apartment. “You know you can stay, right? That apartment is yours. Always has been. Rebuilt it with you being there in mind. Also, I built something else. A sort of fall out building, it’s on the island.”

  “Fallout building? Like a bomb shelter?” I asked. The back island was an acre of land that blended into the shoreline of the preserve on the other side of the bay. If you looked across the water from King’s property you couldn’t see that it was even an island. When King and Prep had first moved in he didn’t even know it was there until we came up on it by boat.

  “Something like that. I’ll show you one of these days,” King said.

  I shook my head. “Won’t be here long enough. Just me being here puts you and your family in danger. You got kids now man. Wouldn’t be able to live with myself if something happened to them.”

  Like something happened to Preppy.

  That wasn’t your fault, dick slick. It was mine. I literally couldn’t dodge that bullet. See what I did there? Oh my shit I’m hilarious.

  “Do you think I’m stupid? I’m not. I know the MC isn’t in the business of killing civilians,” King said, “besides, we’re wired up here like there is no tomorrow. See that?” King asked, pointing to a high corner of the garage where a small red light was blinking. “Got cameras everywhere. Everything is hooked to my phone. I also give the local sheriff a cut of the Granny Growhouse operation plus all the fucking weed they can smoke and now they look out for us. MC had a few deals go south lately so they stopped paying off the law. So you can stay here. Nobody is coming to our door. Nobody.”

  I cringed, remembering when Eli had done exactly that. He didn’t just come to the door. He bulldozed his own door and half of King’s garage in the process. King must have noticed my reaction. “Never AGAIN,” he amended. I hated the way he was looking at me, like he was about to ask me about how I was doing so I changed the subject.

  “I thought you were planning on going civilian?” I asked, surprised to hear that King still had the Granny Growhouses operating.

  “There’s only so much civilian a guy like me can go. I scaled back and I don’t bring anything to our doorstep. We keep busy though. During the day Grace has been watching the kids and up until we had Nikki, Ray had been apprenticing for me. She’s pretty fucking amazing. Can draw better than I ever could.”

  “That’s why I need to leave,” I said. “You got all this shit going on that I have no business being part of.”

  “Brother, we’ve had no business being part of a damn fucking thing that we’ve been doing since we were kids and that’s why you need to stay. Shit’s not the same without you. At least stay until you figure shit out and clear your head. Then if you still think being on the road is what you want you can go back to Bear’s Pussy Parade across America without ever thinking about Logan’s Beach again.”

  I laughed at how well he knew me. Better than anyone.

  Better than myself.

  He knew me so well in fact that he already knew there was no way I was going to stay. Logan’s Beach was my home, it’s where I was born, where I grew up. But right now there was nothing for me there except problems, and I wanted nothing more than to put the distance back between me and my bike, and the constant reminders of the shit my life had become that were on every street, every sign, every shell and piece of sand of my hometown.

  King ignored my refusal of his help and opened the driver’s side door. He set a radar detector on the dash, hooking it into the lighter outlet. Red numbers flashed to life and it made a sound like a metal detector hovering over a nickel in the sand. “Figured it could shorten the drive. Coyotes could be dragging her mama’s head around by her neck on main street by now. Every minute counts.”

  I nodded, time was definitely not on our side. “Good call.”

  “That girl in there…” King asked, tossing me a package of black tattoo gloves and rounding the truck to the passenger side. We’ve always had a ‘your ride, you drive’ rule which apparently applied to the bread truck rental. “…She tell you why there are two bodies rotting in the sun right now?”

  I shook my head. “No, she won’t say much. She mutters a lot. Rocks back and forth. Lucky we got her address out of her. Seriously, you shouldn’t even be coming with me. This entire thing could be a setup. Something happens to you or you go back upstate, Ray would kill me with her bare hands.” King had done time for letting his mom, who was an evil cunt druggie bitch, die in a fire that he didn’t start. Can you believe that shit? He doesn’t do time for killing her. He serves time for not saving the dumb cunt who neglected his baby girl.

  It was bullshit to me four years ago and it was still bullshi
t to me sitting there in that bread truck.

  “When I came to you at the MC. After all the shit that went down with Eli and asked you to soldier for me to get my girl back, did you hesitate? Fuck no you didn’t. You went there GUNS-A-BLAZING like a badass MOFO!”

  “Yeah, because it was Ray, but this isn’t my girl. This is just a girl. A wacky, parent-killing bitch who may or may not be sucking my old man’s cock. This isn’t a life-or-death guns-a-blazing situation,” I said, repeating the same words my old friend had just used. “This is just a problem that needs fixing.”

  King laughed. “You’ve seen thousands of Beach Bastard Bitches come and go at the club.” He jerked his chin toward the room where I’d locked Thia inside. “Answer me honestly, she look like any BBB you’ve ever seen?”

  “No, but that could all be part of it.” Chop couldn’t exactly send someone who had ‘cum dumpster’ written all over her so he sends an innocent looking girl with a fat lip…and even fatter tits.

  Down boy.

  “Do you even hear yourself right now? You got history with this girl, right? Enough to know her name?” King asked.

  “Yeah, but…” I started to argue.

  “But nothing. Skid’s been in the ground for years. What are the chances he told your old man that story before the cartel took him down, AND that your old man remembered it years later, and then decided he needed to go seek out that same girl, turn her into a club whore, AND then send her back to you to carry out his revenge against you for leaving the MC he practically pushed you out of?” King asked, pointing out the huge and obvious holes in my entire Thia conspiracy that up until a few seconds earlier had seemed like the most plausible explanation for Thia suddenly popping up in my life.

  “Well, when you put it that way,” I said, realizing how farfetched the idea seemed now that King had said it out loud, but that didn’t change the fact that something about the girl didn’t sit right with me, although I couldn’t for the life of me figure it out. Which was fine with me, I wasn’t going to stick around long enough to figure it out either.

  “What you been getting into on the road?” King asked, and again my old friend surprised me with the concern in his voice.

  “Nothing good.” I answered honestly, but it’s better than being here. “Looking forward to getting back to it right after I see what this crazy bitch did to her family.”

  “Did she say the second body was a family member?” King asked.

  “Nope, just a feeling,” I admitted. “She killed her mom, and if she really is an innocent then it only makes sense that the other body isn’t some random, so I figured it’s probably another member of her family.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but why do you care? You said yourself that you don’t even know the girl and that the ring and promise thing was a fucking joke. Why do any of this?”

  “I don’t care. Not about the girl. It’s not about her.” I hopped up into the truck and slammed the door. “But I told you already. The sooner I fix this, the sooner I can send her on her way and go back out on the road until I can figure out my next move. If I don’t do this she might cause problems, get loud, hang around longer than she’s welcome, which was already about the time I had to come riding back into town to see what the fuss was all about,” I said, not willing to admit that a little bit of my motivation was the evil five letter word that’s been haunting me for the past year.

  GUILT.

  “That makes a fuck of a lot of no sense,” King said, lighting a joint and passing it to me, I took a hit and passed it back.

  “Didn’t think it did, man,” I said, starting up the truck and easing it out of the garage. I turned us around once we were clear of the overhang and started down the narrow driveway.

  I pulled out onto the main road and waited for the radar detector to chirp, and even though King said he was tight with the local cops I was still relieved when it remained silent.

  “You know what?” King asked, picking a stray bit of weed off the tip of his tongue before taking another deep drag from the joint.

  “Huh,” I said. He passed it back to me.

  “You might not wear a cut anymore…but you’re still a fucking bastard,” he said on an exhale, a deep burst of laughter exploding from his mouth in a puff of smoke.

  “Haha, fuck you,” I spat, as he continued to laugh.

  There was a question I’d been wanting to ask him since I’d gotten back that popped back into my head. “Remember the night we were talking about hearing Preppy?” I asked.

  King nodded. “Yeah, the night we lit up Eli and his crew.” The vein in his neck started to pulse as he recalled the night I was tortured.

  The night he saved my life.

  “Yeah, that would be it. I was just curious. Do you still hear him?” When King raised an eyebrow I clarified. “Prep. Does he still talk to you? Do you still hear him?”

  “All the fucking time man. He grew quiet there for a little while, but as we settled down with the kids it’s like he’s back with a vengeance. Sometimes when Max and Sammy are screaming at the top of their lungs, I think he’s even louder than them. Like a fourth kid who broke into a case of Mountain Dew at nine pm and instead of sleeping has decided to run laps around the living room.” King turned to me. “You?”

  “Yeah. All the fucking time. Especially when I’m fucked up. Or fucking up. Or when HE seems to think I’m fucking up. You think that’s weird?” I asked, knowing damn fucking well how weird it really was to live with a second voice in your head who chimed in when he saw fit.

  You flatter me, Care Bear.

  “You mean do I think it’s weird that we both hear the voice of our dead friend talking to us?” He smirked. “Naaaahhhh.”

  “Well when you put it that way.” I hit the joint again, holding the smoke in my lungs until it burned.

  I pressed down on the gas and sped down the road towards the rotting bodies of Thia Andrews parents.

  But all the hurrying was pointless.

  We were too late.

  We were WAY too fucking late.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Thia

  I hadn’t meant to eavesdrop. I’d meant to LEAVE. But when I found out that yet another door had been locked, trapping me inside, I couldn’t help but to listen when I’d heard voices on the other side.

  I don’t care about the girl.

  When Bear said those words they shouldn’t have stung like a hornet to the heart. I already knew he didn’t care. It wasn’t until after they’d already pulled out that I remembered what Chop had said about the ring and about Bear’s making up the whole biker promise as a joke.

  This was probably all still a joke to him. They probably weren’t going to Jessep. They were probably in the truck on their way to some sort of badass tattoo convention where Bear would tell everyone about the stupid trick he played on a kid who actually fell for his stupid lie and came back years later, still holding onto a ring that had meant everything to her growing up and nothing to him from the moment he’d placed it in my hand.

  I knew he didn’t care about me. Not then.

  Not now.

  So why do I feel like someone punched me in the gut?

  After my brother died, my dad always told me that under the weight of great tragedy, came great responsibility. I took this to heart and as the years went on I took on more and more responsibility at the grove so my dad could tend to my mother who was slipping further and further into her delirium. Before the Sunlandio Corporation cancelled our contract I was seventeen and running the grove full-time, often skipping school to meet with vendors or make sure that orders went out on time. One night during an extremely rare frost I rallied the workers and we spent all night hosing down the oranges so we wouldn’t lose them to the cold.

  Under the great weight of that tragedy I took responsibility, but under the weight of the new trudges was too much, too heavy, and it was crushing me before I could make any rational or responsible decisions.

&n
bsp; Why did I even leave town? Why didn’t I just call the sheriff myself?

  I know why. I panicked. Panic and fear clouded any sort of logic, but as logic started to once again take over so did the gravity of my loss. I loved my father. He taught me how to tell when the oranges were ripe for the picking from the way they smelled. He taught me how to fish. He’d let me sit in front of him on the tractor when he mowed the field behind the house, the only space not taken up by orange trees. I don’t think losing him was something I would ever be able to move on from. My brother had died when I was young and although it hurt like hell, what hurt worse was seeing my parents hurting.

  I loved my mother, but I wouldn’t miss her. Not in the same way I’d miss my dad. She hadn’t been my mother in a long time. My father picking up her slack on days she refused to get out of bed, refused to take her medication, or after Jesse died, refused to acknowledge she still had a remaining living child.