Page 21

Lacey

I woke up to someone ringing my doorbell aggressively, which quickly turned into a frenzied hammering. As I stumbled downstairs, I could hear Eric, the prospect who drove me home, yelling for me to open the door. After landing badly on the last step, I took a minute to catch my breath and shake myself awake before walking across the living room and pulling the door open.

Eric was standing there looking all kinds of upset. “What’s wrong? Did someone try to break in again?”

He made a slashing motion with one hand. “No. It’s nothing like that. Storm, Celt, and Rebel were arrested last night.”

“What? Rebel was arrested?” Shoving the door open wider, I told him, “Come on in and I’ll make us some coffee. I want you to tell me everything.”

I padded to the kitchen with Eric right behind me. When I gestured at the long snack bar separating the kitchen from the living room, he climbed onto a stool. I started to make coffee but told him, “Tell me what happened now—I’m too nervous to wait until the coffee’s done.”

He leaned onto the bar with both arms and launched into an explanation. “I got a call from Hacker just now. He said that Storm, Celt, and Rebel were out looking for your cousin, Richard. I don’t know if Rebel told you? But the cops found his fingerprints here, so they had an arrest warrant out for him.”

My eyes shot wide open, my cousin Richie was a strange one. When we were kids we were close, but we drifted apart. It always seemed as though he had a dark side, and it got worse after my uncle died. “Richie’s a longtime drug addict, I can’t believe he’d do something like that to my mom and dad. But I guess if he needed money…” I paused as I thought over what I knew of the break-ins. “But nothing was taken from here or the office, it doesn’t make any sense.”

“Anyway, Hacker says they found him at a crack house. He appeared to be overdosing, so Storm stuffed the guy’s drug paraphernalia into his jacket pocket, and they were carrying him to get medical treatment. Then they got caught up in a multi-task force police raid that had been planned for a while.”

My hands flew to my mouth, “They got arrested because of me,” I whispered, feeling a tremendous amount of guilt. Rebel had tried to help me, and this is what happened.

Eric’s expression turned sympathetic. “No, they got arrested because of your cousin and their own decision to go lookin’ for him.”

“They were trying to help me,” I said more assertively. “That makes it my fault.”

He frowned at me. “If I dropped my wallet and you accidentally got hit by a car picking it up for me, would that make your injuries my fault?”

Without even thinking about it, I said, “No. Of course not.”

He responded confidently, “I rest my case. You are in no way responsible for their arrest.”

Yeah, he got me on that one. “We’re going to bail them out, right?”

“Yeah, whenever the judge sets a bail hearing. We’ve got our club attorney looking into it.”

“What can we do in the meantime?” I was desperate to do something.

Eric thought it over for a minute before responding, “Maybe we could visit your cousin at the hospital and talk to him about the break-ins?”

“Was he not arrested too?” I asked.

“Yeah, but he’s receiving medical treatment before they officially charge him,” Eric said as he munched on some dry cereal from an open packet. I was going to tell him to get a bowl, but figured given the situation I needed to sort out my priorities.

“Are we allowed to interfere with a police case that way?”

“We wouldn’t be interfering with anything. You’re just visiting a family member. If the topic of the outstanding warrant for his arrest comes up, just act like you know nothin’ about it.”

“I see where you’re going with this. Since your club brothers sacrificed so much to solve this case, we should step up while they can’t.”

Eric shot me a pleased grin. “They did the dirty, dangerous work of finding the guy. The least we can do is visit him in the hospital and try to get him to talk. Maybe if you get to him before the cops, you might figure out why he targeted your family business?”

I poured the coffee and handed a mug to Eric. Blowing on mine, I thought the situation over for a few seconds. I took a tiny sip before telling him, “I agree. If you can find out what hospital he’s at while I get dressed, we might even be able to get there before the police get to him.”

He pulled out his cell phone and I headed upstairs with my coffee. I hadn’t drunk enough to be hungover, but my mouth did feel exceptionally dry. By the time I’d showered and gotten dressed, my coffee cup was empty, and Eric was waiting for me in the living room.

When Eric pulled up the location of the hospital on his GPS, he said, “It looks like the hospital is about an hour away across the county line.”

“What about the jail where Rebel and the others are being held?” I asked. Although I was still feeling some type of way about the stuff I heard the club girls talking about last night, I wanted to stop by and show my support. I told Eric, “I’m thinking about dropping off a change of clothing for him, if that’s allowed.”

“They’ve not been arraigned yet. I doubt the cops will let you visit, the only person who has a chance of getting in is our attorney.”

I just shook my head. “I have to let him know I’ll be here for him.”

“If you want, we can stop by after we talk to your cousin, see if the cops will let you have a word with him,” Eric offered.

“That sounds great,” I told him, knowing the priority should be dealing with Richie, but right now all I wanted was to see Rebel. Last night I might have been thinking all sorts of bad stuff about him, but it was funny how a true crisis made you rethink everything. My car was still parked at the clubhouse, so Eric insisted on driving us to the hospital in the van he drove me home in last night. I didn’t fight him on that because I understood the tight time frame.

***

The ride to the hospital seemed endless in the Dark Slayer’s van. I stared out the window as buildings, vehicles, and trees blurred into a long line of images I could no longer distinguish.

Eric spoke from behind the wheel, “How are you holding up?”

I sighed. “Okay, I guess. Although, as you pointed out, Rebel getting arrested isn’t my fault, but I still feel guilty for getting him involved in the first place.”

Eric snorted a laugh, sneaking a quick, respectful glance in my direction. “My club brothers got themselves involved, just like they always do. They’re always looking out for the women in their lives, stray kids who don’t have anyone else to rely on, and our local community because they don’t want to live in a cesspool of crime and corruption. It’s what they do. They’ve landed their asses in jail more than once and unless I miss my guess, they’ll be out in no time.”

“I sure hope so,” I murmured as I continued looking out the window. It occurred to me that Eric might be a good person to ask about the club girls in general and what they were saying about Rebel.

Reorienting my body to face him, I tugged the safety belt into a more comfortable position. “Do you mind if I ask you something?”

“Not at all. If I can give you answers that ease your mind, I’d be happy to tell you anything.”

Looking down, I twisted my fingers together, worried that he might think my question was immature. Snatching up all my courage, I blurted it out, “Last night, I overheard a couple of the club girls talking in the restroom at the clubhouse.”

His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Is that why you went flying out of there like a bat out of hell?”

I nodded. “They were talking about Rebel, saying stuff about how he acted with the club girls, buying them gifts, and how he was insatiable. They thought if he ever settled down, he’d need two women to keep him satisfied. They didn’t know why he was with me and said some nasty stuff.” I glanced away, feeling small and unworthy of Rebel.

“The fuck?” he exclaimed, clearly angry on my behalf. “Who the hell said that? I want to know right goddamn now!”

My eyes flew up to his and I stammered, “I… I don’t want to say.”

“Then why the fuck bring it up?” he demanded.

I shrugged, “Well, he was a prospect until recently and you know him. I just wanted to check if the things they said were true.”

“Hell the fuck no! Almost nothing they said had a grain of truth to it.”

“Explain the ‘almost’ part.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but I knew for sure that I couldn’t not know.

Eric merged onto the highway. “Well, almost all the club brothers like to fuck, it’s not a secret.”

“That includes, Rebel, right?”

“Yeah, he’s a man who likes to drink and have sex. The last time I checked that’s not a crime.”

“I’m guessing the two at a time thing must be true as well,” I said glumly.

“Yeah, he did that a couple of times. A lot of times brothers do things for show because we’re pretty competitive. Carting off two club girls was not standard operating procedure for Rebel. Hell, since the day he met you, he hasn’t laid eyes on any of them.”

“Tonya was all over him the night he was patched in,” I reminded Eric.

“Yeah, but he somehow ended up leaving with you, right?”

I turned my head to look at him. He was right. That should have made me feel better, but it didn’t somehow. “What about buying expensive jewelry and cell phones? He must have liked them enough to spend that kind of money on them.”

“I don’t know who told you that bullshit, but it’s not true. Rebel spends all his money on his grandmother. Everyone knows that. And if there’s one mistake we never make, it’s favoring one club girl over another. That includes hooking up with them on the regular or buying them expensive shit. That way lies a whole bunch of trouble, so we wouldn’t treat them like a potential old lady unless that’s what we intend to do with them.”

“But… but they were pretty clear that’s what was going on.”

He asked point-blank, “Want to know why not many club girls end up in a property cut?”

“Because they’ve slept around with all the brothers?” It was my best guess.

“Absolutely not. If any of us wanted a woman, that wouldn’t stand in our way. It’s because most of them are catty, backstab each other, and lie to make it seem like they’re closer to us than they actually are. It’s how they get status in their world and it’s a real turn off for the brothers.”

As I thought over his words, he pulled onto a secondary road.

“Trust me, they were just bullshitting each other. Rebel only has eyes for you, darlin’. Any fool can see that.”

I leaned back into my seat, unsure why I had let those club girls get in my head, and turn around my thinking. When I thought of Rebel, words like trust, respect, and honor came to mind along with the adoring expression that came over his face when he looked at me. I could see now that they were jealous and likely lying to themselves as much as they lied to each other. A surge of guilt welled up in my chest for doubting him, even for a moment. Rebel didn’t deserve that, least of all from me.

I mumbled, “Thanks for clearing that up, Eric. You seem like a good solid prospect and will make and outstanding brother one day.”

“From your lips to God’s ear, ma’am,” he replied warmly.

We drove in silence after that, and I pulled out my phone and went to the website for the jail where he and his club brothers were being held. I checked to see if there were any regulations regarding visitors or what could be brought in. They allowed snacks as long as they were sealed by the manufacturer and the visitor presented a receipt showing they’d been purchased locally within thirty minutes before arrival.

I guessed that was to limit the opportunity for people to tamper with the packaging of the food items. I thought about buying a change of clothing, books, a deck of cards and snacks for each of the three of them. I worried that would be overstepping, so I texted Zoe as Eric drove.

Me: Zoe, are you awake?

Zoe: Yeah. You heard about Storm, Celt, and Rebel, right?

Me: Eric told me this morning. We’re on our way to see my cousin in the hospital. I want to know why he broke into my parents’ home and the office.

Zoe: I think everyone wants to verify that it was him.

Me: After I’ve seen my cousin, I’m gonna stop by the jail, drop off a change of clothing for Rebel and some snacks. Do you want me to do the same for the others?

Zoe: Not necessary. Grace and I are on our way to see Storm and Celt. It’s been a long night. I didn’t even think about Rebel, sorry.

Me: Don’t worry about him. I’ve got my guy covered.

Zoe: That’s great. He’ll be thrilled to see you, I’m sure.

Me: Same here. I might see you there.

Zoe: Want to do lunch afterwards?

Me: Yeah, I haven’t eaten yet today, so that sounds good.

***

When we got to the hospital, we fast-walked to Richie’s room because it was the start of visiting hours. I was praying we’d find him awake and it turned out we were lucky.

He was watching television and frowned when he saw me walk in. “You shouldn’t be here, Lacey.”

“Oh yeah?” I asked. “Why is that?”

“Your parents said they were finished with me and didn’t want me to see you anymore.”

I pulled up a chair and sat down beside his bed, while Eric hung back on the other side of the room like my shadow. “Can you really blame them?”

He used his remote control to turn the television off. “I guess not,” he responded.

“We used to be close when we were little.”

“That was when we were like five,” he replied flatly.

“Yeah, I really loved spending time with you and then things went wrong. What happened Richie?”

He glanced away. “It doesn’t matter. I’m a bad seed. My stepdad said so and he’s probably right.” The tone of his voice held more than just a note of sadness. He sounded almost tragic.

I decided right then and there that I wasn’t going to stop digging until I got to the truth.

“I call bullshit on that. Your stepdad has always been an ass. You were fine right up until you were about ten or eleven years old. Something happened around that time, and I want to know what.”

His head snapped around to look at me. Something dark in his expression hit me, telling me to dig deeper. So, that’s what I did. “You used to trust me, Richie. Trust me now.”

He laughed. “What do you take me for, some kind of fool? I know the only reason you came to see me is because they found my prints in your parents’ home. You want me to confess, fine. I broke into your parents’ house and ransacked the place. Let them lock me up and throw away the key. I’m a bad apple that didn’t fall far from the tree, right?”

At some point during his confession, my hands began to grip the armrests of my chair. I leaned forward, trying to read his cagey expression. When I opened my mouth to speak, he cut in quietly, “Just leave it alone, Lacey. This is one can of worms you don’t want to open. Trust me on that, it totally fucked me up.”

I pushed myself up from the chair and sat on the bed beside him. “No, I don’t think I’m going to leave this alone.”

“I loved you like a sister back then, Lacey. That’s why I’m telling you to look away. You don’t want to know all the details of life. It’s an ugly story, best not told.”

I reached out to grab his arm. “You’re gonna tell me what happened all those years ago that put you on the wrong path or I’m gonna follow you wherever you go and keep asking until you tell me, damn it!” Giving his arm a shake, I asked, “Do you want me to make my friend leave the room? Is it something really personal?”

He began to tear up, so I pulled him into a hug. I should have hated him for what he’d done, but seeing him in the hospital bed, all I saw was my cousin —a scared young man. His father, my dad’s youngest brother, had died when he was five and his mom remarried. I had a horrible thought, he’d never gotten along with his stepfather, and I hoped there hadn’t been abuse, “It was something bad wasn’t it, Richie? Please just tell me.”

He whispered into my ear, “I had a sister, and they fucking took her away.”

This was the first I’d heard of him having a sister. I pulled back and looked him in the eyes, only to see a world of pain staring back at me. “What do you mean you had a sister? Who took her away? When did this happen?”

“My mother gave birth when I was seven. The baby had problems at birth, she was born without an arm and had a club foot. They said she wasn’t smart, and that doctors needed to take care of her in a special home.”

“No one has ever said anything about you having a sister.”

“It’s why they stopped bringing me to visit you. They were worried I’d tell you and they didn’t want anyone in the family to know they locked her up in a home.”

I gaped at him, trying to process the implications of this hidden family secret. “Were you upset because you never got to see her? Is that what made you start acting out? Or were you afraid they were going to send you away too?”

“No, it was none of that. For a few years we went to see her every Sunday after church. My parents spent their time there talking to her doctors and nurses, while I played with Debbie. His bottom lip quivered when he talking about his half-sister.

I grasped his hands in mine and gave them a reassuring squeeze. “What’s she like?”

A faint smile curved up the corners of his mouth and for an instant I had my childhood cousin back. “She’s really pretty.” Gesturing to his head, he continued, “She has long, pale blonde hair like my mom had, and gray-blue eyes like me.”

I smiled at him, “She sounds lovely.”

He chuckled, clearly happy to finally be able to talk about her with someone. “She was also small for her age and delicate, I guess she got that from her father’s side.”

“I know it’s not polite to ask, but did she have learning disabilities, like your parents said?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe she had some problems, but as a kid I didn’t really notice. She was smarter than me in a lot of ways.”

I quietly asked, “What happened around the time you were eleven or twelve, Richie?”

“They said she had an accident and passed away. But I knew that was a lie because there was no funeral, no gravesite, and I overheard my stepfather arguing with someone on the phone that there was no use visiting because she was never going to amount to anything anyway. He said she was deformed, and my mom couldn’t handle seeing her anymore.”

“Did you tell him that you wanted to continue visiting her?”

“Yeah, I told him that I heard the conversation he had with her doctor, and he called me a liar, and said I was weak for getting attached to cripple, a girl one step away from being a vegetable.”

“Holy shit! Wasn’t that the summer your mom ended up in a psychiatric hospital? I’d forgotten about that.”

“Yeah, when nothing I said changed his mind, I tore the house apart in a fit of rage. I broke anything I could get my hands on. My stepfather tried everything to get me to stop. He grounded me to my room, but I trashed it too. Every time he let me out to eat or go to the bathroom, I kept raging. He tried bribing me, begging me, and finally guilting me by saying that I had driven my mom crazy.”

“Do you know where she is?” I asked with bated breath. “If you do, we can go get her.”

“They moved her. I went there half a dozen times as a kid, until they finally showed me her empty room. I begged them to tell me where she was, but they said they weren’t allowed. After that, I just lost interest in living for a while. As a teen, I drank too much, took drugs, did anything to make me forget I had a sister that I loved, and that my parents made her disappear.”

“Jesus, Richie. I’m so sorry.

“So am I. My mother died thinking I was a bad apple, a drug addict, and that I didn’t love her anymore.

He looked down and picked at a scab on his arm. “Anyway, that’s why I broke into your house. A long time ago, I got word from one of our cousins, Sarah, that my mom had left a letter for me with your parents. It was supposed to be delivered to me if anything happened to her, only that never happened because by then most of the family had disowned me.”

“This makes a lot of sense. I thought it was weird that you broke in but didn’t steal anything. Why did you wait so long to look for it? Come to think of it, why didn’t you just ask my mom for the letter? She probably would have given it to you.”

“My poor little innocent Lacey. You still have such a good view of the world. Me? I didn’t ask because I didn’t think she’d give it to me, since she’s been holding onto it for like eight years.”

“Why go looking for it now?” came a gruff voice from the far side of the room. It was Eric and he’d laser-focused on our conversation.

Richie turned to gaze out the window. “It started to feel like I was growing closer and closer to dying and I wanted to die knowing that I did everything I could to find Debbie.”

I suggested soothingly, “Maybe she got adopted by a nice family and has been living a good life?”

“I’d like to think that’s true, but every time I visited her in the facility, the place smelled like urine and her room looked like no one was cleaning it or taking proper care of her. The part that’s been driving me mad is worrying that she’s all alone with no one to care for her in another shitty care home or someplace worse.”

Turning to look at me, he said, “The situation makes me so damn mad, and I feel powerless to do anything about it. I think my stepfather talked crap to everyone in our family so no one would want anything to do with me or believe a word I had to say about my sister.”

I patted his hand, feeling unable to do anything else.

Eric stepped forward. “Come on, dude. We’re gonna take a nice walk.”

“What? No way. They said I couldn’t leave. I have to wait for the cops to take my statement.”

“Did you ever wonder why they left you here all alone, and you’re not cuffed to the bed?” Without giving my cousin time to respond, he answered his own question. “It’s because in California if you OD, and require emergency medical treatment to survive, they can’t arrest you on any drug charges. It’s a new law meant to encourage people to come to the hospital instead of just dying wherever they happen to drop.”

I got up and grabbed his clothing and started putting it on him. “Yeah, let’s do like Eric said and go for a little walk.”

Richie glanced from one to the other of us, “You two are breaking me outta here, right?”

“Are you stable enough to leave?” I asked.

“Hell yeah,” he whispered as he pulled on his pants.

When we came out of the room with him the nurse frowned. “If you’re taking him for a smoke, he can only smoke in the designated smoking area five hundred feet from the front door.”

“Okay,” I said. Eric started guiding us forward with one hand on each of our backs. We walked right past that smoking area and got into the Dark Slayers’ van. I let Richie sit in the passenger seat and I sat on the jump seat right behind the driver’s seat.

“Thanks for getting me outta there, man. You can drop me anywhere near town.”

Eric growled, “No can do. We’re not fucking dropping you anywhere. You’re coming back to the clubhouse with me. We’re getting you into a treatment program and then you and I are gonna find that sister of yours.”

Richie froze in his seat and then his head slowly turned around to stare at Eric. “Are you being serious right now?”

I spoke up for the prospect. “Of course he’s being serious. He’s prospecting with the Dark Slayers MC and they’re never anything but serious.”

Richie spoke in a trembling voice. “I’ll do anything and everything it takes to find my sister.”

“That include gettin’ clean?” Eric asked.

“Anything,” Richie replied.

“After I get finished seeing to Rebel, we’ll head back to Griffinsford. I’ll do my best to find that letter from your mom, but no more breaking into our house and business, okay?

Richie turned to look back over his shoulder at me. “I agree to all that, but just so you know, I never broke into the business.”

I’d been through too much to argue with him, so I sealed my lips.

Eric said from behind the wheel. “You want to go to a men’s clothing store for some clothing and then somewhere close to the jail to pick up snacks, right?”

“Yes. Please, and thank you for helping my family out, Eric. I won’t forget how good you were to us in our time of need.”

“Don’t thank me until we find the girl.”

I tilted my head as I stared at Eric’s reflection in the rear view mirror. “She’d be a full-grown woman by now.”

He made a grunting sound, like it didn’t matter as long as we found her. This whole situation was doing my head in, so I zoned out planning my shopping and visit with Rebel. I couldn’t wait to see his handsome face.