Spike
I bury my face in Yazmin’s hair, drawing in the scent of her. I know am I still asleep, or at least in that half-sleep state that feels like sleep. Vaguely, I see myself flying over Sunnyside, the type of dream I haven’t had since I was a kid and I was flying over the world, before Mom and Dad and Toby. I wrap my arms around her and bring her closer to me. She smells like shampoo and soap; she smells like lust; she smells like sex; and she feels like . . . she feels like a pillow. And as I rise out of sleep, I realize the smell is more like clean sheets than clean hair. The sweat is clinging to the pillow. I would laugh if I wasn’t panicking like mad. I’m hugging a fucking pillow.
I sit up, looking around the room, wondering if she’s in the bathroom. I charge in there, kicking the door almost off its hinges, but it’s empty. I run around the basement room, checking absurd places like behind the fridge. For a few sleepy minutes it’s like we’re playing a game of hide and seek. That’s what it feels like to me, anyway. But then the hard truth hits home. She’s gone. She’s left me. She’s left me to go to the Scorpions’ compound. I sit down on the chair, belly twisting in anxiety. She could be dead right now. She could be strung up in the clubhouse. She could be being tortured by the weasel-looking freak.
I feel sick. I try and laugh it off. I’m not some lovestruck man who’s about to puke because his woman has gone AWOL. I think about all the times in the army when shit went dark, all the bloody shit I witnessed. Images of torn limbs and bloody fatigues come into my mind. But it doesn’t matter. I feel sick and there’s nothing to do but run into the toilet and kneel at the bowl. In the end, I’m not sick. I manage to swallow it down. But the shock of it hits me hard. I care about Yazmin so damn much that it almost made me sick.
As I stand up, getting a grip of myself, I wonder if I love her. It has never occurred to me to wonder this before. I never dreamed that a man like me could fall in love. But what other word is there for this feeling? It’s like a piece of me has been wrenched away. I go into the basement and pull on my pants, and then go up into the clubhouse. I don’t want to tell the men that Yazmin’s gone, not yet, not if I can help it. After Danny and last night, they’re all freaking out as it is. The Scorpions are raiding us over and over and our one bargaining chip—that’s how they see her, I can’t deny that—has just fled the clubhouse.
But my choice is robbed of me when I run into Justin, crossing from the dormitory wing to the bar. “Something wrong?” he asks, tilting his head at me. I guess I must look pretty frantic for my VP to look at me like that.
“You got a cigarette?”
“Sure.”
Together we go outside. I lead him around the clubhouse, away from the main entrance, standing shirtless in the morning sun. I rarely smoke to relieve stress. In the army, men used to do that all the time, smoke ten cigarettes after a firefight to get over the shock of almost dying. But in civilian life—or outlaw life, depending on how you look at it—I usually smoke only for pleasure. But now, as I inhale the smoke, sucking it into my lungs, I know I’m smoking because I’m scared shitless. My woman, my kid . . . dammit, my woman, my kid!
“She’s gone, hasn’t she?” Justin says.
“How did you know?” I snap, way too intense. I need to calm down. I flick away the cigarette stub and take another, lighting it with a match against my thumb.
“I didn’t know.” He sounds defensive. Something has been off with him for a while, I reflect. Defensive, shifty. Or maybe that’s just my mood. “You just seem . . . you’re not wearing a shirt, boss.”
I look down at my bare torso. “All right, then. Yeah, she’s gone missing. She ran out on me and she might be at the Scorpions’ clubhouse. She had this mad plan . . .” I tell him about her plan to get more information for us to use.
Justin’s face tightens. “That doesn’t seem like a very good plan,” he says. “What if Snake knows she’s been with us?”
“Exactly!” I blurt. “That’s my goddamn point. I told her, man. I fucking told her.”
“So what’s the plan?” Justin asks.
“We need to raid the clubhouse, like Knuckles suggested. And we need to do it soon. Tonight. We’re going to go in there and we’re going to kill every goddamn one of them. We’re going to string Snake up like the fucking weasel he is. But if he’s laid a single finger on Yazmin, we’re going to make him eat his fingers first.”
Justin is backing away from me, looking scared shitless.
“Get the men,” I say. “I’m gonna get my leathers, and then we’re gonna have an officers’ meeting.”
“Boss.” Justin lingers, moistening his lips with his tongue. “I . . . uh . . . do you really think a raid is a good idea? Don’t you think enough of our men have died already?”
“We’re raiding,” I say. “And as my VP I reckon you ought to be focused on how to get it done, not second-guessing me every damn step of the way. What’s gotten into you, Justin? These past few months—hell, this past year, even—you’ve been second-guessing every decision I make.”
“I don’t know if that’s fair, Spike,” Justin says quietly. “I just . . .” That strange look flits across his face. He sighs. “I just want what’s best for the club.”
He leaves before I can say anything else.
I go into the bar, heading for my office, my mind full of dark thoughts. I keep thinking of the smoldering husk the car became by the time the fire truck and the ambulance arrived. I keep thinking about the charred bodies they were pulling out, only now it’s not Toby or Mom or Dad I see. It’s Yazmin, burned to a crisp, staring up at me with hollow eyes and silently asking me why I didn’t save her. A pit opens in my belly. I reckon the world is a twisted place when you can be sore from sex with a woman and not know if she’s gonna live or die at the same time.
I’m at my office door when Georgia Castle, the cleaner, approaches me. “I’ve heard the news,” she whispers. She’s been with us a long time. She’s a hard, strong woman, the sort of woman who doesn’t take shit from any of the guys. “Yazmin has gone.”
“I know. Do you think I forgot that on my way in here—” I catch myself, clenching my jaw. I need to calm down. A president shouldn’t act like this, even if his world is crumbling apart. “Sorry. I know you two were—are—friends.”
“I know it’s silly,” she says. “But I think she might be my best friend. We have such a nice time talking together, you know. I think given the proper time, we could get, uh, really close.” She fidgets awkwardly in the way a person does when they want to say something but don’t know how to open up. In the end, her face turns solid, her eyes narrow. “Save her,” she says, voice steady. “Save her, Spike.”
I pat the woman on the shoulder. “If I don’t, you’ll never see me again. That’s a promise.”
Before she can ask what that means, and before I have to think about what I mean, I go into my office and close the door behind me. I take the Desert Eagle handgun from my desk drawer in parts, shiny metallic parts. I remember being pinned down by five men in some dusty stone hovel overseas, my rifle malfunctioning, my only weapon the Eagle I won from an officer in cards. Five men, five holes the size of two fists in their chests, and one man walked out of the hovel that day.
I assemble the Eagle, trying to turn my mind away from images of Yazmin. But I love her; I must love her; I have to love her. I can’t feel this way about her and not believe that it’s love. I’ve gotten so used to knowing where she is, to her being down there, waiting for me every night. I’ve gotten so used being able to go downstairs and see her anytime I like.
When the Eagle is assembled I go to the wardrobe and take out some jeans, a shirt, and my leather. I’ve just put on my boots when I go into the bar to find it empty, devoid of men. I stomp through the clubhouse, shouting for everybody, but there’s no response. I find Justin outside, saddling his bike.
“The fuck’s going on?” I snap.
“Oh, boss.” He looks like a dreamy teenager for a second. “I thought you were out, getting the men.”
“Where are they?”
“Lots of different places. Warehouses, clubs—”
“Where are you going?” There must be some acid in my voice ’cause Justin has frozen and he’s looking at me like I’m about to go crazy. “I said, where are you going?” I take a step forward.
“I was gonna go into town and make sure they come back quickly.”
“Just call them. Fuck it. I’ll do it. Come on.” I wave him after me. We both go into the bar and I take out my cell and begin rounding the men up, telling them to call their soldiers, telling them there’s a meeting and that at the end of it there will be blood.
When all the men are on their way back, I turn to Justin, who the whole time has been sitting there scratching at the table like a kid waiting in the principal’s office. “What’s going on with you?” I say. “And don’t give me some horseshit answer. I’m not in the mood.”
He nods shortly. “Mom’s cancer is back, but it’s worse, much worse. The doctor says she might die within the year.” He is dead-eyed as he says this, like a man who can’t face the reality of what he’s saying. “Maybe that’s why I’ve been off. Maybe that’s why I don’t want to charge headlong into the battle, boss. I need to be around for her.”
“That fuckin’ sucks.” I lean forward, rubbing the bridge of my nose. Sometimes I think the world is a scarred wasteland with only one or two good things happening amidst a sea of pain. “Hang back during the raid. You don’t need to charge headlong. You’re the VP.”
“Oh, no, if there’s going to be a raid, I should be there. I was just giving you an explanation.”
I shrug. Knuckles is walking through the door, a crooked smile on his face. “All right, then,” I say.
Soon all the officers are sitting around my desk, our soldiers in the bar. The men talk in hushed whispers just as men did in the army before battle, making light of what they were about to do and what was about to be done to them.
“So,” Knuckles said. “Is it that time, boss? Is it time for war?”
“It’s time for war,” I tell him. “It’s time we ruined these Scorpion fucks once and for all. They’ve ruined our businesses, but more importantly they’ve killed men, good men. And they’ve taken my woman. I want to tell you something, lads, ’cause I think you ought to know what your boss is fighting for today. Yazmin is pregnant with my child. That’s what’s at stake for me. There are different things at stake for all of you. Men you knew, men you cared about, your wives and kids who you don’t want living in a town run by a sadistic weasel like Snake. I want you to remember your reasons today, ’cause it might get dark.”
Knuckles clicks his neck from side to side. Alfred makes a croaking, growling noise. Red-Eyes grins. Kieran McCarthy nods in a businesslike way. And Justin Herveux looks like he might finally have some fight in him.
I thump the table with my fist. “But first we need a plan.”