43
Loud voices and rushing footsteps echoed in the main room just beyond my office.
Slade leaned his head in, rapping his knuckles on my office door. “Prez, two women just showed up with Catch’s kid.”
I turned and scanned the security monitors at my side, Butler behind me.
“What the hell?” Butler muttered.
My pulse picked up. Tania stood in the center of the main room. She was with another woman in a baseball cap pulled down low, who held Catch’s daughter. Jill flew over and took Becca from the woman’s arms. Tania spoke with her brother as the main room filled up with Flames and their women relieved to see Becca safe.
Tania was here at my compound and under emergency circumstances. I hadn’t seen her in over ten years or spoken to her since I’d called her about her brother prospecting. I’d checked in on her once, twice, and found out she’d gotten married and then left Chicago for Racine, Wisconsin.
She was older now, yet even more attractive than before. There was a sharp confidence in the way she held herself, but she seemed tired and strung out; she was coming down from an experience. Stern-faced, telling her little brother what for, pulling no punches. The two of them had been estranged for years from what little Catch had told me. I’d never let on I knew his sister.
That was over now.
I listened to their conversation. Tania and her friend had happened to cross paths with Creeper at some junkyard not too far from here. He’d held them hostage, but the women had managed to knock him out. My muscles tightened at her description of Creeper assaulting her and threatening them and little Becca.
Tania at the mercy of that fuck. All this time of keeping her on the sidelines, and now, years later, she got touched by Flames business.
Her friend was keeping quiet, body language pulled together. It was perfectly natural for a civilian woman to be anxious at our clubhouse. She and Tania shared a quick, knowing look. There was something familiar about her face.
She was no civilian.
It was Grace, Dig’s widow. Catch knew her too from his childhood, but I was sure he hadn’t seen her in years, and he was too emotional now with Becca safe to notice much else.
“Did you call the cops?” asked Catch, his eyes on Jill, who kissed and held their daughter, tears running down her face as she murmured to the baby.
“No,” replied Tania. “We asked Creeper why he’d taken the baby, and your name came up. I would’ve called you, but my battery died, and I don’t know your number by heart.”
“Appreciate it, Tan,” he said.
Tania intervening once again, getting the job done. She followed her instincts and reached out. That was a fucking gift.
I stepped further into the room. “Why don’t you two take a load off and tell us where you found the kid and more about this guy, so we can catch up with that motherfucker?” I asked.
Tania took in a tight breath, her gaze landing on me. “Hey.”
A slight smile curled my lips. “Tania. Been a long while.”
Grace stiffened, her lips pursing.
“Yeah.” Tania’s voice was low, her eyes darting to my president’s patch.
We stood there, taking each other in, maybe not knowing what to say, but hell, we didn’t have to say anything. It was good to see her again. Real good.
Jill and the baby reemerged from a side hallway. Two bags were slung over Jill’s shoulders, Becca in her arms.
“Where you going?” Catch hollered after her.
“Are you joking? I am out of here, once and for all. I am so done. Done!” Jill yelled.
“Babe, come on now. It’s over,” said Catch.
“Over? It’s never over!” Jill let out a shrill laugh.
Catch shook his head. This was a well-rehearsed script between these two for months now. “You need time to settle down? Take it. Nothing’s over, though.”
“For God’s sake, Catch! Let’s be real for a change. This has been over since before Becca was born. But I stuck it out. You were supposed to be watching your daughter while I was at work. You! But no! Instead, you had one of your whores doing it while you were out. Unbelievable. I’m getting out of here, out of this shithole town, and—”
“And where you gonna go?” Catch dug his hands into his hips.
“I—”
“Yeah?” he prodded.
“Why don’t you come home with me?” Tania’s sharp voice demanded consideration. Jill spun around and faced Tania, her lips parted.
There she goes again, reaching out and helping someone she doesn’t even know.
“Sounds like a plan,” I said.
Catch’s eyes hardened. “To Meager?”
“Why not?” Tania said to her brother. “There’s plenty of room at Ma’s house, and she could use the company once she gets out of the rehab center. She was just saying how she wanted to get to know her granddaughter. I’m living at the house now, too, helping her out, but someone needs to be with her full time.” She turned to Jill. “If you’re up for that sort of thing, that is.”
Tania was living in Meager now?
Catch had mentioned that their mother had recently been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. Suddenly, Meager was full of people I knew.
“Are you up for that sort of thing? Helping out with my mom and all?” Tania asked Jill.
“Yes, I am. Oh my God! Yes! Thank you.” Jill practically jumped up and down.
Catch’s face hardened. He didn’t like the idea too much.
Jill and Catch hadn’t been getting along for months now. She was unhappy, had accused him of cheating, and he had cheated on her. He didn’t know which end was up and couldn’t keep up. Their daughter was the only thing attaching them, but they’d become a worn out rubber band, loose and frayed, ragged, but still holding on. You stay together for the child, but you’re still unhappy. Still bitching and miserable. Wasn’t that going to stain your child? Make her miserable too? What the hell was the point of all that?
“Sounds like a fine plan,” I said.
Catch glanced at me. He was worried, pissed off. He shot his girlfriend a harsh look. “How am I gonna keep you safe when you’re not here?”
“Like you kept us safe before? Give me a break!” Jill said, wiping at her face.
I raised my chin at Catch. “Time to move this along, man.”
Catch swallowed, his hard eyes glowering at his sister and then snapping back to his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend.
“Thank you, Tania,” Jill said. “I really appreciate this. God, you don’t even know me.” She kissed the side of her daughter’s face, her gaze hanging on Tania like she was grateful for the unexpected seat on the last lifeboat, the ship sinking fast underneath her feet.
“You’re welcome,” replied Tania.
Jill was a good girl from what I’d experienced of her around the club. She was friendly and helped out without having to be asked, without complaining, worked at the local laundromat to bring money in to her family.
Catch had to learn that to give up was not being less of a man or a failure, that there was strength in admitting the broken couldn’t be fixed no more. But he was emotional. I’d checked that shit at the door years ago, hadn’t I?
Catch jerked his chin toward the exit, and his girlfriend rolled her eyes. She brushed past Grace, and Becca reached out a chubby hand and nabbed Grace’s sunglasses from her face. She nabbed them right back, sliding them on once more. Diamond bands were on the ring finger. She’d gotten married again.
Good for you.
“You okay?” I asked her.
“Me? Yes, thanks.” She flashed a quick grin at me.
“Long day, Maddie?” asked Butler, an edge of irony in his tone. Of course he knew her. “Got a nice bruise there.”
“It’s not every day you get held at gunpoint and your life is threatened by a ratty-ass biker, is it?” Tania jumped in, shooting me a look.
I let out a laugh. I’d missed her.
“How ’bout you ladies give me the details on this piece of shit so I can head out after him?” Butler asked.
“Sure,” Grace murmured, glancing at me. I held onto her gaze and didn’t let go.
I’d started keeping track of Grace after I’d seen her in Colorado at that Harley Davidson store. She’d kept drifting all over the country, working at different HD stores, keeping pretty much to herself. I’d stopped after year two. Was she back with the One-Eyed Jacks now and that’s why she was playing it incognito standing here in my clubhouse? Did Tania, Grace, and Butler think I wouldn’t like a One-Eyed Jack woman on my property? I appreciated their caution. Now I wanted to see how they’d respond.
“You know these two?” I asked Butler. “Tania’s from your parts.”
“Yeah,” Butler replied curtly. “We met years ago in Meager before I went up north.”
My attention slid to Tania. She raised her chin and took in a long slow breath.
“Never seen this one before.” Butler gestured at Grace.
Real smooth. What an actor. But Jacks loyalty came first for him, as it should.
Tania said, “Maddie came down with me from Racine last week to help me with my move.”
So Tania was back in South Dakota, and it sounded like she was on her own.
Tania returned my heavy look with one of her own. Don’t ask me now. I’ll tell you another time.
I cocked an eyebrow. I’ll make sure there’ll be another time.
“Butler, find out what these two know, and bring me that motherfucker,” I said.
“Let’s go, ladies.” Butler gestured towards the main door.
Tania glanced at me over her shoulder and smiled. A smile that raced through the dark tunnels and hallways of my soul, leaving a familiar trickle of warm light in its wake.
Good to see you too, baby.
Butler got the job done. He caught Creeper that night and brought him into the safe house I’d designated for him earlier, about ten miles into the woods northwest of the clubhouse. Catch and I arrived within the hour. Catch jumped off his bike and tore into the shed. He wanted his revenge for his daughter, for losing his old lady.
I strode into the metal shed, an old seed warehouse we kept for storage between shipments and drop-offs. Plenty of shit lay buried in the ground here. Butler leaned against the far wall, his arms crossed, his hair damp with sweat. My men, eyes on me, had gathered around the prisoner. Creeper tugged on his chains, and my pulse beat hard at the sound.
I got in his face, two inches from his sweating, foul-smelling skin. “You fucking kidnapped a baby? One of mine?”
His red, glassy eyes flared as he twisted in his shackles. Moans and growls escaped his taped mouth.
“Such a fucking bad move, you shit. You’re going to feel how bad, then Butler’s going take you back to the One-Eyed Jacks. You don’t betray your own club and other clubs over and over again and not pay the price. Am I right?”
“Yeah, that’s right!” My men hooted their agreement.
I took in a breath, my chest lightening at the potency of communal anticipation, the fierce smell of blood in the air.
I removed my gloves and nodded at Catch. “Show him what you got.”
Butler had taken off, leaving Creeper behind at our safe house. He’d let us know when he’d be back to take the prisoner to the Jacks. The man was designing his presentation for Jump.
“You good?” I asked Catch later that night in our lounge, pulling him from a potential threesome with two petite brunettes before he got his dick out. My men were thrilled that we’d taken down our target. The holy trinity of adrenaline, testosterone, and job satisfaction always demanded a celebration.
“For now, yeah.” Catch drained his beer, leaning against a wall by my office door. “I have something for you. I found this on Creeper.” He handed me a torn and blood-stained business card.
Alejandro Calderón
The Calderas Group
Denver, CO
“Found plenty of business cards and a bunch of crazy shit in his pockets and on his bike. From what Butler said, he started out as a petty thief, pickpocketing, breaking into cars. Old habits die hard.”
I tapped the edge of the creased beige card. “I’ve heard of this guy. You get anything on him?”
“Me and Den did a little research after Butler left,” said Catch. “This Calderas Group is Salvadoran mob parading around as a Latin American import-export business—coffee, wines. But back in the eighties, they were the Executioners—”
“The most powerful Salvadoran gang in Denver.”
“You’ve heard of them?” Catch asked, wiping at his mouth.
“Yeah, the Executioners were big time back in the day.”
“They got their shit organized in the nineties, transforming themselves into this “legitimate” commercial corporation. Word is they still have ties with a major player in Mexico.”
“Which means, they’re still heavy into crack, cocaine, weapons, like they used to be in the good old days.”
“Yep.”
“You asked Creeper about him?”
“I convinced him to share.” Catch’s eyes gleamed with a satisfying memory. “Seems this Calderón was at the Broken Blades. He’s looking to spread his organization’s wings outside of Colorado. New opportunities for all and all that corporate bullshit.”
The ache at the base of my skull pounded. The Blades had been weakened over the years, and now Notch was flirting with a crime organization from Denver? An organization that was trying to control territory right next to mine? Push against mine?
Fuck no.
Catch gestured at one of the girls to bring him a fresh beer. “Calderón has got choice routes out of the old country through New Mexico to Colorado,” he said. “And don’t tell me he hasn’t heard of the Blades’s underground warehouse and meth factory which isn’t too far away from us. Everyone’s salivating over it. We’re salivating over it. If the Blades hook up with them, that could be a real problem for us in the long run.”
“Fucking Notch.”
“You got to give him an A for effort,” Catch said.
“He’s going to be getting an F and in more ways than one.”
“Looking forward to that,” muttered Catch.
I clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Good work.”
His back straightened. “Thanks, Prez.”
One of the girls brought him a beer, and Catch slapped her ass, laughing as she strut away, heading back to the couch where he’d left her earlier. She sat in the other’s girl’s lap, spreading her legs for him. Catch chuckled. It was a dark sound. He was drowning himself tonight—in violence, in booze, in sex. But his eyes told me the raw sting remained, still burned.
“Go, enjoy your party.”
“Yeah.” Catch swallowed a mouthful of beer and strode off.
“Prez!” Den came up to me, his teeth scraping across his lip.
“Where’ve you been holed up? You deserve a break. What’s with you?”
“I caught interference in the area today.”
“Meaning?”
“I’ve been trying out this new detection equipment since this whole thing with Creeper started—”
“Yeah?”
“Someone was out there today. I picked up on them and then they disappeared. Been following up, trying to trace it, find it, but I can’t.”
“You’re sure?”
“They were out there, Prez, and they were watching us.”