VENGEANCE: Snow and the Vengeful Reapers

3. Doc

CHAPTER 3

DOC

Thanks to last night’s emergency Reapers meeting, the coffee service takes forever that morning. I guess failing to hunt down poor Persy made them extra eager to drink and get busy upstairs with a roadhouse girl. Only a few of the bikers in the line aren’t from that MC.

But I’m just about to hand a cup off to a Bandit, the second-to-last guy in the line, when I notice Hyena standing behind him.

Clean-cut with blond hair he tends to keep slicked back, I wouldn’t necessarily guess him to be a biker if not for the leather Reaper jacket he wears. He practically kicked me out of the meeting room where the Reapers congregated last night. But I should have guessed that was a one-off.

He rarely fails to leave the roadhouse without at least one flirting pass at me.

“He’s like a dog who keeps on trying the bedroom door. Like, maybe if I keep on pushing, one day it won’t be locked,” Bernice observed with a laugh during one of the nights she worked with me here at the roadhouse.

I laughed too…and pretended my stomach didn’t flip over a little bit every time he insinuated that Vengeance was just waiting for me to give in so they could rock my world.

“Oh, hey, Hyena,” I say, setting my voice to friendly but distant. “What can I get for—”

“What the hell is going on with you?” he asks before I finish with my polite greeting.

I have a light Southern accent that I try to cage in when I’m on rotation at the hospital where I’m completing my residency. But his accent is from the deepest part of the South. So despite his clean-cut good looks, he sounds extra menacing when he demands, “Tell me why you’re sleeping on the floor of the bar.”

I come close to my second near coffee drop of the morning.

“Um…”

I struggle to come up with an answer. I still feel a little guilty about lying to Des-E earlier—though I totally shouldn’t.

Giving personal details to any of the biker outlaws who come through the roadhouse is never a good idea. And getting too close to a Reaper can especially come back to bite you.

I think of Bernice, who I never should have recommended for this job—no matter how much she said she needed quick money. And that pretty nurse. Waylon, one of the Reapers’ presidents, spent half the night punishing her for daring to help poor Persy escape from the other Reaper prez, Hades—who, by the way, made Persy tattoo PROPERTY OF HADES across her back. I don’t care how good-looking that man is, he had no right to treat anyone like that.

And guess who had to clean up all the broken glass and vomit when he just about drank himself to death over her rightful leave-taking. Well, the answer to that question is Black with two thumbs and an impractically long weave she can’t wait to get rid of when she’s done doing time at this ridiculous roadhouse.

Seriously, if the last four years of bartending here have taught me anything, it’s that no woman in her right mind should touch a Reaper with a ten-foot pole.

And trust, I’m in my right mind. I’m also trying to finally free myself completely from the chaotic criminal underworld I was unfortunately born into when my mother decided it would be a great idea to have a d**g kingpin’s baby—about two months before he was killed in a shoot-out.

I’ve dedicated almost twelve years of education and training to not ending up like her by putting all my eggs in some criminal’s basket.

And besides, Vengeance already knows way too much about me. They’re the ones that labeled me with the roadhouse name Doc. Hyena’s always dropping tidbits he learned from Nestor to coax me into giving them a chance.

And I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve found myself telling Des-E way too much about my shifts at Nashville Baptist. He has a terrible habit of not only coming down early for coffee service, but also posting up near the beer station during lulls and just making himself way too easy to talk to with his silent-but-curious presence.

Telling them anything else feels like asking for more attention than I want from them.

So, I hand the coffee off to the biker and answer Hyena, “Like I told Des-E, I’m good. Totally fine.”

Des-E didn’t look like he believed me earlier, and Hyena doesn’t look at all convinced himself.

Hyena’s a real fun-loving guy. Full of jokes. Almost always smiling—usually evilly. Hence the name. But he’s not smiling now.

He dips his head and hits me with a serious look. “If you need something, if you’re in trouble, you need to tell us.”

I look at him. Then glance to Des-E and Vampire. They’re hanging back at the Reapers’ usual table, but their eyes are trained on me like they can overhear every word I’m saying to Hyena. Maybe they really are some kind of hive mind.

Still, I insist, “I’m fine. I swear.”

I hate lying. But it’s not like he’d understand, even if I told him why I was currently semi-homeless. Or like he’d offer to help me without any strings attached. Three sets of them that I could in no way handle.

“But that’s so sweet of you to worry about me,” I say to distract him from asking any more questions. “Here, let me get you a cup of coffee on the house.”

“Now I know you’re full of s**t. You don’t ever offer us anything for free.”

It’s true. Every exchange in the roadhouse is purely transactional, and I always keep that at the top of my mind while doing my job.

But a slimy feeling rolls over me. Like, Accuse me of being exactly like my mother without actually saying I'm exactly like my mother.

I harden my tone. “Fine, pay me then. I don’t care.”

The harsh look on Hyena’s face softens a little. “Doc, I’m only trying to—”

“She said she was fine,” the Bandit says to Hyena before he can finish. “And hey, Whisper t**s, you forgot my creamer.”

Bee Stings, Teetles, Low Self-Esteem, IBT (short for itty-bitty-titties). Those are just a few of the charming nicknames that bikers have come up with as punishment for me daring to work at a roadhouse with A-cup-sized breasts. But I’ve never heard Whisper t**s.

Before I can decide whether to be annoyed or impressed, Hyena gets up in his face. “What did you just call her?”

The creamer becomes a non-issue when he knocks the cup of coffee out of the Bandit’s hand.

“Hyena, don’t—” I start to say.

Hyena’s fist connects with the biker’s face before I can even finish that sentence.

So, this right here is why I don’t truck with criminals.

I make more money than usual on the coffee service that morning, but that fight will add another fifteen minutes on my cleaning shift.

I know from way too much experience that’s how long it will take to wipe up the blood and dispose of all the teeth from a Reaper beatdown.

Nestor is ecstatic, of course. There’s a five-thousand-dollar fine for all fights and kills, so Hyena has to pay up for knocking the biker unconscious.

My stepuncle loves easy money like that. But he’s also a little confused when he comes down to collect the wad of cash Vampire tossed on top of the unconscious Bandit.

“Hyena fought over you?” he asks, as if someone fighting over my small-breasted self defies all laws of physics.

“Hyena decided to create more work for me,” I correct.

Hyena gives me a guilty look. “Doc, I wasn’t trying to upset you. I was only trying to—”

I don’t let him finish. I just head to the back locker room. I’ve learned the hard way to completely disassociate when I’m at work. Dr. Allie Snow runs toward incoming traumas like she’s on a hospital show when she’s at her residency at Nashville Baptist.

But Doc has to step over hurt and dead bodies and clean up the messes these violent criminals leave behind like she never took an oath to do no harm.

Focus on the plan, I remind myself. Just a few more weeks, and I’ll be free.

In the back, I ignore the other roadhouse girls asking what all the commotion was about as I pull on my scrubs and pull my weave into a manageable ponytail.

I’m not due back to the hospital until after the New Year, but real talk, scrubs are designed to be everything’d in and they’re easy to wash—so basically perfect for the hazmat-level work of cleaning out all the s*x rooms. Other than the cowboy boots, I look exactly like I do when I’m at my real job of helping and caring for people.

But I try not to think about that. Focus on the plan. Focus on the plan. Focus, focus, focus….

I’m exhausted by the time I come back downstairs to take care of the last clean-up job at the bar. But I’m grateful it won’t require a blacklight to do properly.

However, to my surprise, the Bandit is gone, along with all the scattered teeth and bloodstains.

There’s just Vampire, waiting for me in the spot where Hyena felled the Bandit—even though it’s been two hours since I left him downstairs, along with the rest of Vengeance.

He’s both the tallest and the thinnest in the group. I don’t know his last name, but judging from his slight Boston accent, I’m pretty sure Vampire’s what they sometimes call Black Irish. He has inky black hair, pale blue eyes, and pale skin stretched over beautiful, sharp features. Or maybe he really is a thousand-year-old vampire. His whole personality seems to be one of those old English novels where the guy walks around large estates dropping terse sentences between long, dark broods. And I’m a woman of science, but if he suddenly flashed fangs, I’d be like, “Yep, that tracks.”

Vampire mostly ignores me. But he tends to suddenly appear like, well, a vampire whenever Hyena spends too long trying to flirt me out of my resolution to never go upstairs with Vengeance.

I’ve heard him say “Leave her alone” in that dark and smoky Northern accent of his more than I’ve heard him say regular things like “Hello” or “Whiskey straight.”

He’s the member of Vengeance who pays me the least attention. But he makes me the most nervous. My stomach doesn’t just flip when he closes the distance between us. My entire body goes haywire.

He stops just a couple of inches away from my toe line and rakes his pale blue eyes over me. And I feel like I often do with him. n***d and too exposed.

So even though I’m covered up, I try and fail not to cross my arms over my chest like I always do when he looks at me.

And he averts his eyes, like he always does when I cross my arms. As if that spark burning between us is too dangerous to acknowledge or even look at.

“What are you still doing here?” I ask, working hard to keep my voice from shaking.

A beat of silence. Then he raises his arm and jiggles a set of keys between us. “I’m taking you home.”