Chapter 1
1888 Words
Chapter One
AMANDA
“You crazy b***h!” he wailed. He was on his knees, head pressed against a brick wall. It was my hand pressing his head against the brick wall.
“What’s that now?” I asked. “Say that again, please, I don’t think I heard you right.”
“You f*****g broke my finger you crazy b***h!”
You’re damn right I did, I thought to myself. I held onto his finger even tighter, wrenched it even more and his arm followed naturally behind his back. With my other arm I pressed against the back of his head, mashing his face into the wall.
I looked up and down the alley. A girl walked by, just a silhouette crossing the gap. She looked at us for a second and then kept walking.
“Let me tell you something, Benny,” I said. “I found you once and I can find you again. Now if you lied to me about where Pelton is—”
“I didn’t, I didn’t, I swear,” he said. “I swear on my mother’s grave that’s where he told me he was headed .If you’re looking for him, you’ll find him there.”
“And about that other thing.”
“What other thing?” he asked hysterically.
“The other thing about you being a convicted abuser of women.”
“She lied! They lied!”
“Bullshit,” I hissed at him, pushing his face even harder against the wall. “Bullshit. Tell me the truth or,” I said, wrangling another of his fingers into my own. “I’ll break a second one.”
“Okay, okay, it’s the truth, it’s the truth. But I did my time!”
“So you had no designs for that sweet young girl you were manhandling earlier, did you?”
“No, I swear! She was into me. She wanted me. She said so!”
“Nobody wants you,” I spat at him. God, there was nothing I hated more than a man who hurt women. “Remember, Benny. I found you. I can find you again. I hear about you hurting a woman again, it won’t be me who comes for you, it’ll be people much, much worse. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”
“Yes, yes,” he gasped.
“You know what they’ll do to you, don’t you?”
“I do, I do.”
“Close your eyes and count to ten.”
He did as he was told. Not so tough when they know you can hurt them. I didn’t like doing this. I wiped my hand on the back of my skirt, one that I knew I was going to burn the first moment I could for how gross I felt in it, for the way he had run his hands all over my ass without so much as asking my permission.
But I had gotten what I wanted, information on the man I was following, the man I needed to find.
I went back into the seedy bar, found that sweet young thing Benny clearly had plans for, and told her that she should leave.
She asked me why and so I told her. I told her all about that man she had been talking to and what he was really about. I told her that a lot of the people in this place probably weren’t the most savory type.
“I can take care of myself,” she said.
I shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
I’m nobody’s hero. If a lady doesn’t want to listen, I’m not going to force her. She can make up her own damn mind. But at least now she had more information than she did before.
As I made my way out, I cast one look back at her. Hell, she didn’t even look twenty-one. But an expression of concern rippled across her face. Good, maybe she’d get some sense. Poor thing was like Bambi over there with those big sparkling eyes. She was a target. Maybe she thought she wanted to be, but not here.
I went out onto the street and flagged down a cab and had him take me to my hotel, and told him to wait outside. There I got my things — not much, I traveled light — and then climbed back into the waiting taxi.
“Where to now?”
“Steelbarrow,” I said.
“What?” The driver turned around in his seat to look at me through the plastic partition. “Lady, I’m not going to drive that far. I’ll never get a return fare.”
“I’ll pay,” she said. “There and back.”
“We’ll be driving all night.”
“Fine, get me there before dawn and it’s an extra hundred.”
“Two hundred.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “One-fifty.”
“Deal,” he said. “Why you heading there in the dead of night, anyway?”
I looked at him in the rearview mirror. “I’m going hunting.”
MALACHAI
An impromptu meeting was never a good thing. It didn’t have to be a bad thing, but it was never a good thing.
I looked around the table at my brothers, from Rafe to Tyson to Doc. The former two were as stumped as I was. Doc, the oldest of us and possibly the wisest man I’d ever known, seemed to be snoozing in his seat like he didn’t have a care in the world.
We were awaiting the president of the Steel Infidels MC in the chapel of The Road House, our clubhouse. The president, Jaxon, wasn’t typically late but he was today by maybe twenty minutes.
“What d’ya think is keeping him?” Rafe asked.
“s**t,” Tyson said, “Who knows.”
“Relax, boys,” Doc said without opening his eyes. “He’ll be here when he’s here.”
“If I’d have known it’d take this long I’d have brought in a bottle of bourbon.” Rafe and Tyson grinned at each other.
“You’ve had enough,” Doc said. “Take after Malachai here and sit still.”
“s**t, the rookie’s just shy,” Tyson said.
“Just curious,” I said, looking between them. “What’s this about? We know s**t is hot in Steelbarrow, and we know we’re supposed to be laying low. So, with nothing going on, why call a meeting?”
“Unless something is going on.”
“Nothing is going on,” Doc said. “Until Jaxon says there is. You boys need to learn some patience.”
“Patience is for old men.”
“Oh, what I’d do to have an old man’s mind in a young man’s body,” Doc said, tutting at each of us in turn.
“The tragedy of life,” I said.
“Of the human condition,” Doc said.
“What’s that?”
We all looked at Rafe, who became defensive. “What, man, I’m just asking.”
“Bro,” Tyson said, appalled. “The condition of being human.”
“Well that doesn’t help, dipshit.”
“It just means,” I said, “The shared experiences of living life as a human, and the things we learn along the way.”
“Gotcha,” Rafe said, nodding. “The journey, not the destination.”
“Right on, brother,” Doc said. “Now the tragedy of the human condition is that we accumulate all this knowledge, right? All this wisdom? But by that time our bodies are breaking down. We go through most of our lives young, dumb—”
“And full of c*m!” Rafe yelled, and he sank deep into his chair in laughter, clutching at his belly.
“Precisely,” Doc said, pointing a finger at each of us in turn. “When we’re young all we can think about is the next taste of p***y, the next wad of cash, always looking forward to the next thing, and never back. But when you get old, you look back see? Like, why didn’t I do this? Why did I let her go?” He leaned forward then, tenting his fingers and placing them under his chin. “And then you wonder, where did it all go? You realize the s**t you took for granted, well, you shouldn’t have. Maybe you should have been nicer to her. Maybe you shouldn’t have done this or that. Now if you could take that mind, that wizened old mind, and put it into your young, energetic body? s**t, ain’t nothing in the world stopping you from doing anything you want, and getting everything you want. And maybe you realize what you want changes. Like, maybe it’s not just the next piece of ass. Maybe it’s not just money. Maybe it’s… more.”
We all sat in silence for a moment. Then I said, “You regretting things, Doc?”
“Every damn day, let me tell you.”
“Sounds f****d up,” Rafe said. “That’s not gonna be me.”
“You just wait, my boy. You just wait.”
The door opened then, and Jaxon, club president strode in. We all watched him as he sat down, and then he looked at each of us, frowning. “Well who the f**k died?”
We all chuckled, but when it grew quiet I said, “Mrs. Salman’s son died.”
“Rest in piece,” Tyson said, crossing himself.
“Boy was just a kid,” Doc said with a sigh.
“We should do something about it,” I said.
“She’s your neighbor, ain’t she?”
I looked at Jaxon and nodded. “Yeah. Sweet lady, never hurt a soul. Her son disappears, turns up dead, washed up the river?” I scowled and shook my head. “Somebody killed him.”
“Know if the cops are doing anything?” Tyson asked.
“They ain’t doing s**t,” I spat.
Doc cleared his throat. “President is here, let’s hear what he has to say.”
We all looked at Jaxon, but he now seemed lost in thought. After a while passed, he looked firmly at me and then said, “Rookie’s onto something.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Steelbarrow is hot right now, we all know that. Between the Demons, the Fallen, and the whole mess they caused. Feds got their eye on our quiet little town, so that means no business.”
“No nothing,” Rafe said solemnly.
“But this is our town, ain’t it?”
“Amen, brother,” Doc said.
“And we help folks out around here. We helped fund that new library.”
“We helped clean up the park,” I said.
“Exactly,” Jaxon said, pointing at me. “So we helping the poor, the kids, whatever. That’s good. But can we do more? We got some time to kill.”
“But what money?” Tyson asked.
“One problem at a time, Tyson. What do you think, Malachai? What can we do?”
“s**t, rookie don’t know his ass from his head.”
“Let him talk, Rafe.”
All sets of eyes were trained on me. “We help Mrs. Salman,” I said. “We find out what happened to her poor boy, and we give her closure.”
“Do the cops’ job for them?” Rafe asked, incredulously. “f**k outta here. I ain’t no f*****g pig.”
“It’s not about that,” I said. “It’s about helping someone in our community who the cops aren’t helping.”
“Right on,” Doc said. “I like the smell of what you’re cooking, Malachai.”
“But we gotta do it quiet, like,” Tyson said. “Can’t be attracting attention.”
“So we sleuth,” Doc says.
“What the f**k does that mean?” Rafe asked. “Can ya’ll just talk English, please?”
“It means to act as detectives,” Doc said.
“s**t!” Rafe shook his head. “Look, even the president don’t buy that.”
“Isn’t that word a noun?” Jaxon asked, looking at Doc.
“You can verbify it,” Doc said knowingly.
“What the f**k does verbify mean?” Rafe asked, bewildered. He spread his arms wide, growing more frustrated by the second.
“Anyway,” Jaxon said, “It doesn’t matter. Let’s take this time to give back to Steelbarrow, capiche? Meeting adjourned!”
As we were leaving, Jaxon motioned me to one side and waited for everybody to leave. “What’s up, boss?” I said.
“Just wanted to say it’s good to have you home,” he told me. “Welcome back.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Means a lot to me.”
“I want you to take the lead on this case of Mrs. Salman’s son. You seem to care more than the others.”
“I know her,” I said. “Live right next door to her. She’s real sweet, man. Real sweet. Doesn’t deserve this.”
“No mother does,” Jaxon said. Then he jabbed a finger into my chest. “But you be real careful, got it? I don’t want you bringing the heat onto us.”
“I won’t,” I said. “Trust me.”
His eyes bored into mine.
“Trust me,” I said again.
- Writer
