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8

WRAITH

“ T his is the fucking downside of having dealers,” Butcher says two days later, nursing knuckles that are still bruised from our fight at the bar.

It had been informative, if not overly helpful. We don’t have our shipment back, but we do have a handful of leads to follow up on. And we’d tailed the injured from a distance to gain more intel when they’d left the bar.

Most importantly, we left a clear message we won’t be fucked with.

Atom and I look at the pale man hanging by his feet from the rope attached to a beam in our old barn. A wannabe gangster who goes by the name Tenacious, when his real name is Ian.

“More like upside downside of having ‘em,” Smoke says, tilting his head to look at the man’s crying face.

“I’ll get it back. Please. My kid depends on me. If I don’t?—”

The sharp left hook I give to the side of his face shuts him up and sets him swinging like a boxing sandbag.

It also wrenches my shoulder, which took a pounding in the fight. But we came out on top and that’s all that matters, except…

For a heartbeat, I imagine it’s Spark’s face I’m hitting. The fucker’s words about the past and the present keep rattling through my brain. Since my anger needs to flow somewhere, this guy is my outlet.

“Oh my God, is that piss dripping from his shoulder?” Catfish asks.

“Glad I fucking punched him before it got that far,” I say, flexing my knuckles.

“You took ten grand of weed from us,” Grudge says. “We need ten grand or the weed back.”

“No. Please. My car broke, and then some shit happened. I only borrowed the money. I’ll pay you back. Get me some more weed and I’ll sell it.”

I shake my head. “But that isn’t going to pay us back, is it, you little shit? That’ll just be giving us the money you should have for the first load we gave you.”

“I think he’s gonna choke on his own snot,” Smoke says.

Catfish mock vomits. “That’s a foul way to go.”

“I’ll think of something…sell my car.”

Butcher crouches so their faces line up. “We already took the fucking car. We want the rest of it. Or we’ll bury you, head down, in a ten-foot pit.”

Grudge looks at me and winks.

We’ve never done it. Not once. That threat is usually enough.

“Please, give me until Tuesday.”

Butcher nods. “Fine. But here’s the deal: We’ll put some men on you. You try to run, we’ll kill you. You try to tell the police, we’ll kill you. You do anything other than get us the fucking money, we’ll kill you.”

“I understand.”

I pull my knife from its holster and cut Ian’s hands free, moments before I slice the rope holding his feet. He has three seconds to save his face and fails.

All of us wince as his body lands on the barn floor with a splat.

“You ever fuck with us again, Ian, you’re going in that hole,” I say.

Butcher takes out his gun and fires into the ground near Ian’s torso as he tries to scramble to his feet.

Once he races from the barn, Smoke is the first to start laughing.

I grin as I watch Ian run, then disappear, down the dirt trail.

“Alright,” Butcher says with a grin. “Back to work.”

“Can I have a word?” I ask.

“Sure,” he says. “When we get back to the clubhouse.”

I kick my leg over my bike, grateful for the crisp and sunny Colorado afternoon. The rain may suck, but everything smells fresher after a deluge. Like it wipes the stain of humanity off the buildings and roads. Lets the brisk air from the snow-covered peaks absolve us all.

It’s one of the reasons I chose to live here. Was on a road trip cross country, already half in love with Colorado, when I walked into the diner and saw Hallie for the first time. Her father, Two Bit, was an Outlaw. A patched-in member.

Took me under his wing.

Made the proper introductions to the club.

I still had to prospect like everyone else. So, Atom’s dad gave me a job as a maintenance guy at the ranch, I prospected with the club, and somehow convinced Hallie to fall in love with me. Fucked it up once too. Never heard of club pussy until I was involved with the Outlaws.

One night, after Hallie and I had been dating two months, I had too many drinks and let a club girl ride my dick.

Of course, it was the morning Ma had let Hallie join her to make breakfast for the men, given hers was now one of them.

If I close my eyes, I can still see the look of hurt and betrayal on her face as she opened the door to my room to bring me breakfast in bed. She looked pretty as a fucking picture. All sundress and cowboy boots and strawberry-blonde hair ready for a roll in the hayloft with me.

She didn’t cry. Not then. Not in front of the girl whose name I no longer remember. But the shimmer of tears in her eyes hurt me more than any bullet wound has since.

I can still see the look on Two Bit’s face as he kicked the shit out of me in the courtyard. Then he stood me up, asking me if I wanted club pussy or his daughter, because he wasn’t gonna let me have both.

I picked Hallie.

And I never forgave the hypocritical fucker for that beatdown, standing there all pious when I knew full well he slept with club sluts left, right, and center whenever Ma’s back was turned.

Guess it was good enough for his old lady, but not for his daughter.

Took me another seven months to convince Hallie to give me another shot.

Was I faithful while trying to woo her back?

You bet I was. My palm was in use so often, it was practically welded to my dick.

But when she finally forgave me and checked out the sexual health report she made me get, it was worth every single minute.

As we pull into the clubhouse, I can see the exact spot where I asked her to marry me. When she freaked out over the size of the rock I gave her. And how Ma and Two Bit hugged me.

I was the one who arranged for Two Bit to get taken care of in prison. The guy told the club lawyer he wanted immunity from prosecution for sharing major club secrets because he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life behind bars.

We made sure he was dead before he could testify.

Hallie and Margie never knew it was the club.

“What’s up?” Butcher asks me when we get into the clubhouse and order a coffee with whiskey to warm us up.

“Two nomads were seen in Kansas City. I want permission to ride out.”

Butcher looks at me. “No can do. You were just gone. And now that spring’s around the corner, we got groundwork to get on with. Repairs to the clubhouse. And a road trip to Sturgis in the summer to plan.”

His words irritate me, like nails across a raw wound. “That sounds a lot like keeping me here for months.”

Butcher shrugs. “Listen, brother. I understand your need for vengeance. But the men who gave the orders for Hallie’s and Lottie’s deaths are long gone. What’s your body count at now? Seventeen? Eighteen? We took out the cell in Denver, and they haven’t returned. Chances are, you already killed the man who gave the order. At the vote of your brothers, everything we took from them went to you.”

“You think I give a shit about the fucking money? It doesn’t bring them back.”

Butcher slams his palm on the thick wooden bar. “Neither does killing nomads you aren’t even sure were in the state when Hallie was murdered.”

“Except they’re in Kansas City. And it’s a day’s ride. If I wait too long to leave, they’ll be gone, and I’ll never know the truth.”

“And then what?” Butcher asks. “You’ll spend two days hunting around for ghosts, followed by another two days where you drink so much your liver goes on strike. Then you’ll ride home, sleep for another two days, and then come back to us. You’ve got to let this go.”

I glare at Butcher. Somewhere deep inside, a voice acknowledges that Butcher is right. But my heart. Jesus. My fucking heart calls out to me from its resting place in that coffin with my girls, saying that I can’t walk away from them now.

Unable to explain to Butcher why it matters so much, I simply chug my coffee. It burns my tongue, the roof of my mouth, and my throat. Might even blister in the same way a bite of flaming-hot pizza can do.

“Fair enough,” I say finally. “I got shit to do.”

“Wraith. The brotherhood isn’t your enemy.”

I walk out of the clubhouse and look up at the blue sky. It’s six weeks until Lottie’s birthday. She would have turned three years old.

I’d never lift a blade to a baby. Can’t imagine what kind of fucked-up brain you need to be able to commit such an act. I suppose that’s the difference between me and them—I only kill those playing the game.

When I found one of the men I believed was involved, I tore him apart slowly.

Over days.

I skinned a lot of his body and would sharpen my knife in front of him between sessions, telling him all about Lottie. About how fucking happy I’d been when we found out we were pregnant. About the day Hallie called me to tell me she’d gone into labor five weeks early. How I’d sat by Lottie in her incubator for four days, praying to a god I didn’t believe in that she’d be okay.

Then I skinned him some more.

Butcher intervened, in the end.

He held a gun to the man’s head and a one-minute timer in his other hand.

Told me for my own sanity, I had sixty seconds left to kill him or he’d put a bullet through the man’s brain.

I used fifty-eight seconds before stabbing him through the heart twice. Once for each of my girls.

So, I decide I’m going to Kansas City anyway.

And I’ll deal with the repercussions on another day.

I drive home and switch into the truck, and on autopilot, I take the route into town. Usually, I like to take the bike, but when I know I’m going somewhere a little more populated, the truck makes it easier if I need to remove a body.

If I grab a coffee and some food from Ma’s, I won’t need to stop on the way.

Main Street is busy for a weekend, but not so busy that I don’t spot all that black hair. Raven and her kid are dragging a large dresser along the street.

“Fuck.” I consider stopping for a second. “Not my circus, not my monkeys,” I mutter.

But I can’t help but take a long look at her as I drive by.

She’s impossible to ignore, no matter how badly I want to.