42
“What the hell is that?” My voice came out louder than I expected.
On the wall of the bar area where tens of other T&A shots beckoned, Drac tacked up an eighty by ten poster of a woman’s curvy body, her hands clutching her breasts, torso twisted to the side, ass revealed in a sexy panty made up of a web of straps. The photo cut off right at her chin. Winding colored vines of thorns and flowers, tiny winged creatures, numbers, fancy writing were inked all over the woman’s skin.
My chest tightened, the blood backwashed through my veins.
“Tell me you don’t like it.” Drac bit down on a piece of tape. Rip. “It’s an ad for this underwear store in Meager. Krystal went there and she brought this back for me along with some mighty nice lace numbers. Smoking, huh?” His hand smoothed over the model’s raised ass and down the back of her thighs. His hand lifted and the name of the store declared itself in gothic lettering.
I stared at the photo, staring at the vine down the back of her left thigh that was made of tiny linked letter J’s and baby rosebuds. A vine I’d licked countless times a century ago. It was my vine. Mine.
“In Meager?” I asked.
Drac rolled the tape on his fingers, admiring his new acquisition. “Yeah, in Meager.”
Last I’d heard she was in Rapid City.
Years ago, while setting up the WiFi and a new printer in my office, Den had logged on to some celebrity gossip site as he worked. He’d groaned about how the lead guitarist from Cruel Fate, a band he knew, was getting a divorce. Den often worked at local music festivals as his brother owned a security company. He’d worked with Cruel Fate at many gigs in the area.
“What an idiot,” Den had said. “His wife is fucking hot. His bit on the side, not so much.”
After Den had left the room, I’d gone online and typed the fuck’s name in the search engine: E-R-I-C and Cruel Fate. The divorce came up right away. They’d filed in California, citing “irreconcilable differences.” The article mentioned that Eric had a new girlfriend, complete with a photo of him and a smiley young blonde with lots of makeup boarding his tour bus together. The reporter noted that Eric’s wife had been at home all along with their young son. A small inset photo of a woman with a hoodie over her green and blue hair wearing huge sunglasses, holding close to her chest a young boy who wore a baseball cap, a protective hand around the back of his small head, had lasered onto my brain. I’d recognize those long, bony fingers anywhere, the perfect oval of her face, the grim pull of her mouth, taut and resolute against all odds.
My Serena.
The wife was claiming their house in Rapid City as her own, and had left the rock star to his LA digs.
Lenore had put a lot of goddamn effort into sealing me out. Building walls, digging trenches, filling those trenches with boiling oil, lining the surrounding fields with mines, setting fires, exhaling thick black smoke. She’d abandoned the smoldering battlefield. And at some point, so had I. But her “normal” life had detonated and shattered. She was alone again and in Meager, not two hours away, closer than ever before. I took in a deep, long breath as if the quality of the air had changed suddenly, and I needed to take it in slowly, carefully, not sure how my body would respond.
“Hey, Prez.” Slade was at my side. “Butler’s waiting for you in your office.”
My eyes traced every detail of that thigh, that round ass, that—
“Finger?” Drac looked at me funny.
Scowling, I headed for my office. Butler’s icy blue eyes snagged on mine as I settled in my chair.
After Dig got murdered and I’d gotten out of jail, Butler had reached out to me, and we’d tried being cooperative the way Dig had once envisioned for our clubs—that “velvet network.” But once Jump had taken over as President of the Jacks in South Dakota, he’d put a cold, hard stop to it.
Butler had risen to become President of the One-Eyed Jacks chapter in North Dakota, but almost a year ago, he’d resigned and taken off, tail between his legs, for being hopped up on coke and unable to lead like a President should, not to mention, making under the table deals with the Demon Seeds. He’d gone Nomad, doing freelance work for his club. He and I had kept in touch, and kept each other on top of shit in our region.
A hard grin tilted his lips. “Hey man, how are you?”
“I want to nail Creeper’s ass to the wall and then blow his brains out,” I replied.
Butler let out a gust of air. “I’ve been on his trail. He’s as slippery as a—”
“I called you here to find him, Butler. He needs to die. He’s been playing both sides of every fence between the Jacks, the Blades, and the Demon Seeds since he took off from your club. He was a useful rat in the beginning, but now he kidnapped one of my brother’s kids, a baby, ‘cause he didn’t get what he wanted. Unacceptable. Insane.”
Creeper had been pissed late last night that he hadn’t gotten the payment he’d felt he’d deserved from Catch on a minor freelance job. Catch had called him on his shit, played hardball, and Creeper didn’t like it. He’d made threats. This morning, Catch and Jill’s daughter, Becca, had gone missing when one of the club girls had taken her into town for a ride in her stroller.
“I agree with you, completely on board.” Butler ran a hand through his newly shorn blond hair. “But Creeper is still a One-Eyed Jack, and I need to be the one to grab him and bring him in to my club first. That fucker is still wearing our colors, and I’m going to be the one to recover them.”
“Damn straight. You want to score points with your Prez now. I get that.” I picked up my Digi-Flex, a hand held exercise unit with separate buttons for each finger to individually compress. Working with it over the years had done wonders for developing isolated finger strength in my hands and maintaining my flexibility. Rubber stress balls were still a favorite, and I always had one handy, but this gizmo offered more intensity. Today was a very stressful day. A kidnapped child wasn’t enough, my eyes were still burning from seeing Drac’s fucking poster.
Butler’s gaze darted to my hand working the Digi-Flex. “I know it isn’t going to be easy with Jump.” He shifted in his seat, twisting his lips.
He always looked uncomfortable when discussing Jump, the president of the Jacks. Butler wanted back into his club real bad, and Jump was going to make him “jump” through rings of fire to do it.
“You Jacks have had it rough for a while now. You had the Demon Seeds breathing down your necks, wanting to take you over, then the fucking Russians were salivating over all our territory.”
Butler exhaled a thick stream of smoke. “Everyone wants a piece of the same pie.”
“There are rules, or none of this works,” I spit out. “These smaller links keep falling apart, it makes the heavy chain weak. We got the Mexicans watching us, dangling carrots in front of our usual clients. My contacts in South America are getting nervous. It’s only a matter of time before all of us start losing money. I ain’t having it for my club.” I slammed the Digi-Flex down on my desk. “And now the Broken Blades just south of here, on my fucking backdoor, are all restless and full of attitude, disrespecting borders.”
“Well, Notch thinks he can play mercenary and get away with it,” Butler said, lighting another cigarette. “He’s been making our life difficult in Colorado down through Texas. Shit’s got to stop. The Blades aren’t what they used to be. Business hasn’t been going so good for them from what I’ve seen. Plus, they’ve gotten sloppy. Last month, a whole chapter of theirs in Montana got wiped out with arrests. They’re grabbing at straws.”
He eyed me as he inhaled deeply on his smoke.
“Their President refused every one of my demands for respect,” I said. “He didn’t like my proposal for them to patch in now that his numbers are way down and his reach isn’t what it used to be.”
“Notch is an arrogant asshole, but hey, he’s protecting his club.”
I held his icy blue gaze. “I want the Blades put down once and for all.”
Butler took a deep drag and put out his cigarette as he gnawed on his lips. “You won’t have any complaints from the Jacks on that score.”
“I want Creeper gone.”
“That fuck couldn’t have gotten far with the kid. I’ve been checking in with your men every ten minutes. I’m going to get back out there.”
My eyes darted to the main room where Jill, Catch’s old lady, sat with Drac’s old lady, drinking coffee and wiping tears from her red eyes. I had to hand it to Jill, she was keeping it together. I’d promised her I’d get Becca back, and I would. We were talking about a two year old baby here. This was beyond fucked up. Who the hell kidnaps a tiny little girl? A fucking sociopath. Catch’s loud voice shouting in the courtyard seeped into my office.
His agony over his daughter hit home in a way I didn’t want to admit. In a way that made my insides snap.
After Tania and I had stopped seeing each other, I’d hooked up with Rachel. She was good looking, put up with me in and out of bed, and we got along fine. We’d been together for a few months when she’d gotten pregnant and hinted that she wanted to get married. But I didn’t want to get married; I wouldn’t let myself go there again.
But the baby. Oh, the baby.
In her fourth month, Rachel had a miscarriage. Turns out she had some blood condition that didn’t let her carry to full term. She hadn’t known, and hadn’t gone to a doctor soon enough. Afterwards, she’d gone off the deep end, and I didn’t know how to help her. I couldn’t respond. I felt helpless, numb.
Having a child was a secret hope I’d had with Serena and then it had failed, and I’d had to ignore it. Crush it. With Rachel’s pregnancy, that hope had inflated again like a big red balloon. With the miscarriage, that balloon had popped loudly, its shredded remains littering the floor around us. If only I’d paid enough attention. If only…
If only a hell of a lot of shit.
Rachel had plummeted into a depression, started using. One night I tried to shake her out of her daze, literally shake her. She slapped me, shoved at my chest muttering all sorts of angry words. I’d grabbed her hand, stopping her, but then I asked myself, why are you stopping her? She’s right. You’re a concrete wall, that’s what you are. I’d let go of her hand, and she punched and slapped me, kicking at me, yelling at me to leave her alone until she fell into a heap of tears on the bed. In the end her sister had come and taken her home, and I never saw or heard from her again.
I’d been kidding myself with Rachel, and she’d known it. I saw it in her eyes plenty of times, that wash of sadness, a submission to futility in the face of my barren landscape which, for her, would ultimately yield nothing.
Plenty of my bros had children. Many of them were devoted husbands and dads, and many weren’t so devoted. Either way they had their own families. I’d once wanted that for myself.
Once.
Once it had been a dream, a goal, a burning desire. But all of that was wrapped up in Serena without any beginning or end, and even though there was no more Serena, there was no way to unravel it.
And I didn’t want to. I was that stubborn. As stubborn as the prairie grasses that grew and grew, season in, season out.
Seeing Lenore pregnant with another man’s kid in her belly was a sledgehammer slamming down on me. I’d chewed on shards of glass at the sight of her that day and then months later when I’d seen her in Rapid and she confirmed the boy wasn’t mine. I’d tried to move on with other women, especially with Rachel. She’d been the last relationship. But after the miscarriage, I’d shoved the whole idea over the side of the table like some china platter, and it shattered into a thousand unrecognizable pieces. I would never be a father. I would never have my own family.
Catch had become a father, and it had made him stand up straighter. For all his swagger and personal crazy, he melted every time he saw Becca, and I liked that for him. I was glad for him.
I eyed Butler. “You get out there, find Creeper, bring him to me so I can have my fun with him, then do whatever the fuck you want and impress Jump with the leftovers.”
A grin lit up his face. He relished the opportunity. “I’m going to get this done and get back to Ohio. Reich liked the job I did for him last month. Said he has other shit on the back burner he wants me to take care of.”
“Oh, yeah?” I ground down on my teeth to control the charge of excitement that flickered through me.
I had sent Butler in Reich’s path months ago and it was paying off.
Turo and I had continued to work together over the years. Our business alliance remained secret, the way we both preferred. It worked for us, and filled my chapter’s vault with cash and maintained a firewall of protection from small fry interference throughout the Midwest stretching toward the East Coast.
He’d killed Med and sent me a photo of the fucker’s mangled body. I’d celebrated by taking off and riding through the Sandhills of northwestern Nebraska to deal with the volatile emotions that had erupted through me at the sight of that picture. Riding the banked turns, the sweeping hills, the hidden descending curves on that road was a better high than any drug or booze. That’s what made me feel alive, focused. At night the stars there can shine bright enough to cast a shadow over the grass covered ancient sand dunes. There I cleared my head, alone.
Turo also kept his eyes on Reich for me. Even sent a whore on his payroll to get close to him, and she did. She’d told Turo all about Reich’s scarred dick, in fact. Although Reich had a wife, that hadn’t stopped him from having plenty of action on the side, and Turo’s Chandra became one of his favorite girlfriends. She reported back to Turo on his movements, his disappearances. Disappearances that I’d tried to trace, but without much luck.
Finally, Reich took Chandra with him on a quick weekend getaway to Atlantic City that was really a business meeting with a local Jersey mobster. Chandra took photos. I made sure those connections went south for him with Turo’s help—deliveries not made, promises broken, goods stolen, destroyed. Reich’s reputation suffered. We let him have a few victories in between, and then tore him back down again. Eventually, Chandra let Reich’s wife know about all the wild sex she was having with her old man, then Turo pulled her and Chandra disappeared from Reich’s life. Reich looked over his shoulder all the time now, a permanent sneer on his mug.
“I got something for you,” Turo had told me over the phone a couple of months ago. “There’s a connection I can’t place between Reich and a Tantucci.” The Tantuccis were a rival crime family in Chicago.
“The Flames of Hell don’t work with the Tantuccis. Never have,” I said.
“I know. This Tantucci Reich talks to is connected to a state senator. Reich was spotted with this senator at a hotel in Michigan of all places. Brief. But it was a meeting. I’m digging, but you should dig too.”
“Will do.”
That was when I’d urged Butler toward Reich, and Butler had played it well, offering Reich his services under the radar of his club as well as mine. A nomad wasn’t supposed to do a job for another club without permission from his own. Butler’s reputation appealed to Reich though, so they both took the risk of bending the rules.
After his move to Ohio, Reich had set his sights on a position at the national level, and he’d succeeded. I wanted to slice him wide open, and I needed someone unattached to me and my club to do the dredging, and Butler was the perfect choice. Butler was no stranger to the subtle, the underhanded, the risky.
“Reich likes me,” Butler said, his light blue eyes gleaming, that cocky grin of his tilting his lips. “As much as he can like anyone.”
“Yeah, he pats you on the back with one hand, holds the knife over your head with the other.”
Butler knocked his head back and laughed. “That’s right.”
“And don’t you forget it.”
He held my gaze. “I won’t. As soon as I secure Creeper, and get back to Ohio and finalize a few details with Reich, I should have something for you. I’ll be in touch. After that, I plan on heading back to Meager, to the Jacks.”
“Good luck with that.”
“Yeah, I’m working on it.”
“You waiting on Jump to roll out the red carpet for you?”
“Well, some kind of carpet, yeah.”
Butler was clever, a sneaky fuck in the past. Just cause he was sober now, could I be sure that he wouldn’t stab me in the back with Reich somehow?
I stretched out my legs, crossing my arms. “You know, before the white man got to this area, the Native Americans used to burn large sections of land to divert the deer, elk, and the buffalo for easier hunting, driving the animals where they wanted them. A selective use of fire. Fire as destroyer, but fire as creator. Purposeful. That way they got rid of the brush and the tall trees, creating the wide stretches of prairie we got today.”
“Huh. Didn’t know. I like that,” Butler said, packing his cigarettes and lighter back in his pocket.
“That’s what I’m looking to accomplish here, Butler. That’s my ultimate endgame. A stretch of prairie, animals who heed. Nobody’s immune to flames. You get too close, you get burned.”
Butler stilled, his jaw tightened. “I want the best for my club, Finger. I’m killing myself out there to make sure that happens, and you know it. I’m not interested in double crossing you in any way. This—what we have here, you and me—” he tapped two fingers on my desk. “—I’m respecting it, and it stays between us. Too much is at stake.”
I picked up my Digi-Flex once more. “A hell of a lot is at stake. And you can either be a part of that purposeful fire or get destroyed by it yourself.”