Page 24 of Caution to the Wind

Maybe that was why I was so fuckin’ convinced the evil tragedy of Kate’s death could be made better by eliminatin’ the man responsible for it.

Simple thinkin’.

A soldier’s thinkin’ and not a general’s.

But I’d never been raised to lead, and back then, dumb with grief and in over my head raisin’ a girl on the cusp of womanhood, I made a deal with the only devil I knew.

“Fine,” I told Prez Rooster Cavendish. “You want me, you got me. The only condition is you help me find my wife’s murderer.”

When Rooster’s laughter came over the phone, it clawed through me like talons. “Done.”

Four years later,it was hard to remember why I’d been so fuckin’ foolish.

It’d started innocently enough. The year of prospectin’ was borin’ work, fetchin’ things like a dog for the patched-in brothers, fixin’ what was broke, and mostly keepin’ outta the way. I wasn’t allowed in church with the rest of them to make or listen to decisions, and I couldn’t ride out with them when they went on drug runs. It was easy to dupe myself into believin’ nothin’ really had to change. Not my lifestyle.

Not me.

But then the year was up, and I was made a member of The Fallen.

Of course, everythin’ changed, especially me.

I hadn’t joined a jolly club of pleasure-ridin’ bikers. I’d joined with an urban-type of militia with its own missions and agendas. Its own myriad of enemies, most of them accrued durin’ Rooster’s tenure.

We had more of those than allies, and it’d only worsened over the years.

The city of Calgary became a battlefield the way Afghanistan had. The impulses I’d tried to curb to assimilate back to civilian life swelled to the surface and drowned whatever remnants I’d clung to of my own pre-war mentality. I couldn’t go to the fuckin’ grocery store with Cleo without my head on a swivel, searchin’ for assailants in the cereal aisle. Average citizens looked at me in my cut like I was a villain, and it was funny how their censure seemed to stitch itself into my skin. The grief I harboured since Kate died merged with the hardness of outlaw life and welded me into a newer, weaponized version of myself. It got harder to argue with Rooster’s orders, to keep distance between my two lives as Henning and Axe. And as the gap shrunk, I started to feel trapped, a claustrophobia that strangled my throat in the dead of night.

How the fuck was I ever gonna get out?

Especially when the club had started an all-out war with one of the scariest motherfuckin’ gangs in town.

“Load ’em up,” Rooster ordered, thumpin’ a meaty hand on my back as he moved by each of his brothers on the way to his bike.

The ten men lined up beside their bikes grumbled in agreement as they finished securin’ the bricks of heroin to their saddlebags. The other half of our crew had already peeled off with the first load, bike lights off, Harleys carvin’ through the dirt paths between rows of barley so they could avoid the major highways leadin’ back into Calgary.

When you were stealin’ and transportin’ illegal shit, it paid to be cautious.

The rest of us would take a different route, cuttin’ east before circlin’ back through backroads into town. We had our own secured warehouse south of the city where we’d keep the contraband ’til we could get it dispersed out of town to our dealers safely.

“Shrap’s gotta stop drinkin’ so much damn Red Bull, and we’d make better time,” Hazard grumbled from beside me where he straddled his bike and adjusted his gloves. “Man pees like a pregnant woman.”

“Can’t get your little bitch pregnant yet,” Shrapnel countered cruelly. “Don’t take your unused testosterone out on me.”

Anger rolled off Hazard in waves, buffettin’ me so strongly I felt nauseated. His wife was a fuckin’ child bride, given as a gift to him by Rooster himself. She’d been sixteen when they got hitched just last year, and she was only seventeen now. The same age as Cleo and Mei. Too young to have kids unless she had a yearnin’ for them, and I knew she didn’t.

I knew ’cause I was the one who gave her a birth control shot every three months in secret out in the parkin’ lot behind my stepmum’s beauty salon.

It was a risk. Hazard and Rooster would kill me for interferin’, but there was no way I could stand by as a man who’d been trained as a doctor and watch a woman be forced into carryin’ a child by her backward dad and husband.

No fuckin’ way.

Joinin’ The Fallen had irrevocably stained my soul, but I still had remnants of decency. I refused to lose them, even if it meant losin’ my life. The irony of it hit me at weird times, sittin’ on the john, crackin’ a beer in the backyard, when Mei and Cleo giggled like the carefree girls they were not. Sellin’ my soul to the devil and carryin’ out their immoral deeds made me foolishly attached to what remained of my honour. It was a surefire way to get killed in this life I’d chosen, but I found there was nothin’ I could do to change it.

I’d patched in to find Kate’s killers, and I wouldn’t leave ’til I’d accomplished exactly that.

I’d compromised my soul to do it, but I’d also die defendin’ what remained of my honour to ensure Cleo wasn’t raised by a total fuckin’ monster.

“Axe,” Rooster barked, and I knew by his tone he’d been tryin’ to talk to me for a while. “You’ll drop the shit with the boys, then go home and see to that paper cut. Still can’t believe that fucker got the jump on you.” His laughter was a harsh bark. The “paper cut” was a shallow stab wound to my left side. The bleedin’ had slowed after Cedar tied my torso off with his tee wrapped up under my cut, but it stung like a son of a bitch. “Need you to visit Pryor tomorrow. Remind him he owes us some serious cake. If we got the fuckin’ Seven Song encroachin’ on our territory, we need to be flush to fight ’em.”