Ellie

 

I heard a knocking at the door just as I was putting Peter down for his early afternoon nap. The kid took more naps than a cat. But he was pretty cute, so I let him get away with it.

 

I peeked through the window to the side of the door before opening it; after the scare with Brian, I was taking no chances. I smiled when I saw Grath there. The guy was easy to hang with, one of those people whom everybody likes. His body said badass, but his eyes said teddy-bear/comedian. It was hard not to feel better just being around him.

 

He didn’t come alone, however. The guy with him was new to me—he hadn’t been to the house before, and I know I hadn’t seen him around with the rest of the MC guys. Grath was all tall and bulky and just generally hugantic and covered in rather beautiful ink from his neck and collarbone to his wrists—and probably a lot more than that. In contrast, this new guy was a much more slim and smooth type—way more clean-cut looking. In fact, he looked like he could play a G-man out of Hollywood. Together, they looked like Mutt and Jeff. Not that I had any idea who Mutt and Jeff were or what they looked like; it was just something my mother used to say, connoting opposites. Aw, crap. I was becoming my mother.

 

He caught my eye through the window and said sotto voce, “Ellie, girl, knock-knock, sweetie. We’ve come to rescue you from the stench of Jack-o’s laundry.”

 

I giggled and swung the door open wide for the two men. I didn’t even care who guy number two was; Grath scored so high on my chart of cool peeps, I’d let in just about anyone he might bring, ever. I was definitely in the category of fan-girl to Grath’s fabulous/cool factor.

 

Maybe it also had to do with the starvation-for-adult-interaction thing that I was experiencing. Since Jack and I had agreed to table sex—gah! Not like that! Not to have table sex. The agreement to table the sex option—i.e., to not have sex, period. That agreement.

 

Since our agreement on that issue, I’d been kind of avoiding him, just to give us each space and not to get in each other’s way. This meant that almost all of my human interaction was now relegated—again—to being between me and my baby boy. In itself, this was normal and great and right for new mamas. I knew that. But I couldn’t help missing full sentences and interchanging ideas.

 

Grath and mystery man’s appearance was like a get-out-of-jail-free card. They couldn’t have come at a better time, either, with Peter just out in a brand new milk-induced coma. I likely had a good two hours of free time before his next waking cycle began.

 

“How’s the beautiful mamacita doing today?” Grath pulled me into a bear hug.

 

“I’m good. Chugging along. You good?” I returned the volley.

 

“All good. Ellie-ba-dellie, I want you to meet Steph, my partner.” He grabbed and squeezed Steph’s hand very quickly before continuing like a freight train. “Steph, this is the incredible woman I told you about. Mother to the miracle baby. Is he up?” Grath was looking around, as if Peter could come walking out of one of the back rooms at any moment. Steph was just looking at me appraisingly, not without some humor at his partner’s apparent ADHD.

 

I had guessed earlier that Grath might be gay; he wasn’t flamboyant, but there was just that little something in his profusive personality to suggest it. Now Steph’s appearance on the scene was confirmation. They looked really good together, these two, and I was glad to see that for Grath, even though I barely knew him. It was always good to see happy, well-matched couples.

 

“Hiya, Steph. Come on in. Grath, what are you doing here, middle of the day? Playing hooky?” I winked at him.

 

“Naw, honey, just came to check in on you. Got something I need to run by you. You got some time to talk, or did you make big plans for the afternoon with your little man?”

 

I assured him no, offered drinks, played hostess with the mostest, as one does. We settled in the living room, and had a momentary lull. I sensed there was more to this visit than a friendly little drop-in, but I was unprepared for the bomb Grath was about to drop on me.

 

“You remember that rock that that asshole dropped through the window?”

 

“Of course.”

 

“Well, it came with a note attached. Gotta know if you can decipher it for me.” And he took a dirty, wrinkled sheet of white paper out of his pocket and dropped it on the coffee table.

 

I took a few seconds, just looking at it and at him, threw a glance at Steph, who was watching me closely, and leaned forward to pick it up. When I read those nasty, ugly words, I freaked out internally, and I felt my color rise. “Oh, my God.” I didn’t even say the words outright, more just mouthed them, because speech had left me momentarily.

 

“Make any sense to you, Ellie?”

 

Now they were both watching me like eagles. I felt like I was going to barf.

 

“He’s crazy. He’s really, really crazy. Oh, my God.”

 

That was the best I could do at that moment.

 

“What is he talking about, there? What did he do for you?”

 

I didn’t know, not for sure. I mean, I had thought…but I had hoped I was wrong. But this seemed to confirm my worst fears, and it was time to own up. I truly got sick to my stomach, and made a run for the toilet, barely making it there in time.

 

I lost my lunch in the most unpleasant of ways, and then sensed Grath taking up space over me in the small bathroom, running water over a washcloth. He squeezed out the excess and pressed it to my forehead. I had pretty much done with the barfing part by now, and was just breathing heavily, on my knees in front of the toilet, waiting to make sure there was no more coming.

 

“You okay now?” he softly asked after a few minutes.

 

“Yeah. Thanks.”

 

“You think you can talk about it?”

 

“Yeah. I think I need to. Just give me a minute, okay? I’ll come back out. Just want to wash out my mouth first.”

 

“Sure thing. Take your time. We’re not going anywhere.”

 

“’Kay.”

 

I cleaned myself up and thought about how I could possibly explain my worst fears, now seemingly confirmed by that nasty, dirty, repugnant note. It had already been several days since that crazy day when Brian showed up here at Jack’s place. So much had happened…

 

Why hadn’t I been informed of the note before now? Did Jack know about it? If so, why hadn’t he brought it up to me? What kind of game was Grath playing, bringing it to me now? Gah—too many conflicting and confounding thoughts tossed in my head, and it started to pound.

 

I made my way back to the living room, barely looking at either man, and sat back down on the couch.

 

“What can you tell us, Ellie?”—that came from Steph.

 

“You sound like a cop or something. Are you?” I stalled.

 

Without moving his head, his eyes shot over to Grath’s, then came back to mine. “Yes, actually. I am a cop. Detective, actually. Homicide. But I’m also Grath’s partner, Jack’s friend, and your friend, too. But first and foremost, right now, I’m here just to help. Let us help. If you can explain this, so we can catch this guy, now would be a good time.”

 

Wow. This was a bit shocking on many levels. I took a moment to let it all sink in. That Grath—an MC guy—was partnered with a cop was, in and of itself, a strange thing. I guess opposites really do attract.

 

Beyond that, no one else could possibly know just how apropos it was that Steph worked Homicide. Because that was, I feared, exactly what it was about.

 

It was time for me to dump my info, and I was glad of it. I had been carrying it around for so long—the not knowing, the doubt, the guilt, the suspicion, the fear of what it all meant, the consequences, the pain. And the deep, deep regret.

 

“I…I don’t know this for sure, I wasn’t there…but now, seeing this, I think there’s a good chance…that Brian killed Keith.”

 

I lost it. I just broke down. Saying it out loud made it more real, like admitting it was true when I’d been lying to myself for nearly a year, trying to persuade myself that Brian could not have been that evil, that Keith’s death had not been connected to me at all, just a freak accident of place and circumstance.

 

Keith had been shot in the back, on a street in the neighborhood of his house and the Red Trick Pony. No one had ever been caught, there were no witnesses found, no trace of the gun, nothing. Just a late-night senseless shooting that had led to the death of a man.

 

Steph’s eyes had narrowed, and his body was leaned in toward me, his attention on full blast. “Grath has filled me in on what happened here the other day. I gotta say, you should have called the cops. You know that, right? That was your first mistake—this week. Hell, your first mistake was in not coming to the cops way back last year, when Keith went down. Why the fuck didn’t…”

 

“Yo, babe, go easy on her. Tone it down a notch. You’re freaking her out.” I was pretty sure Grath was observing my near-hyperventilating.

 

They got into it. “She should be freaked out! If what she’s saying is true, then we’ve got a known armed and dangerous killer out there with someone in his sights, and it doesn’t take too much thinking to figure out that that target is Jack. Beyond that, who knows who else…maybe the baby?”—and here Steph looked back at me, and my stomach about dropped out again. “But this stalker—Brian—I’m gonna need more info on him, by the way, honey,”—that was to me again—“if he did gun down Keith—and we will find out, because no way does his case stay open my entire fucking life—“

 

“McAfee goes down. Hard. Regardless. But especially so, yes, if what she’s sayin’ is true, if he’s the one what took down our man. Just, easy on the girl today.” Grath turned back to me. “Ellie hon, you gotta breathe. You need a paper bag?”

 

I shook my head, getting a handle on myself. Now that I was no longer the only person who had these thoughts haunting my mind, I felt somehow relieved. Not better—it was a living nightmare. I don’t know how, when, or even if it could ever get better—but by sharing it, at least I wasn’t alone with it.

 

“Okay, let’s start at the top. What do you know? What can you tell us?”

 

“Well, you know already about Brian, right? Jack explained all that happened in Portland, and how he’d followed me here last year?”

 

Steph piped in, ever the interrogator. “Yeah, sweetie, we got that part. But about Keith and Brian—and the note says that you made him do it once…”

 

“Steph! Stop.” They couldn’t think I would ever have asked for this, for Keith, or for anyone, could they? “Brian is crazy. You get that, right? I never asked for his crazy. Hell, I was trying to get away from him all this time. If he’s the one who shot Keith, he did it of his own volition. My God! Keith and I were friends. I liked him. He was awesome. I never wanted him to get hurt, to even be involved in the crazy that was Brian. I never wanted any of this.” Cue: tears. Damnit.

 

“Okay, honey. You’re right, it doesn’t make sense that you would have been behind Keith’s going down.”

 

“Except that I was, when you boil it down, right? It was my fault. Brian would never have targeted Keith if Keith hadn’t gotten in his face that night at the bar, defending me, putting Brian in his place. Humiliated him. Keith would never have been on Brian’s radar. Keith would still be alive…”

 

“Ellie, you can’t go re-writing history. From what Jack told me, that night that Keith gave McAfee what he had coming to him was the same night you and he…” Grath wiggled his brows at me with a funny sly smile, trying to lighten the mood. “So if Keith had never been involved, had never been on McAfee’s radar, then you might not even be alive—no telling what McAfee might have done to you—Aaand also, you wouldn’t have Peter. You wanna change that?”

 

The thought of not having Peter, who had so completely taken over my heart, was devastating. It was either Keith or Peter, but it was no choice at all. It had all played out the way it did, and now I had my beautiful son, and there was nothing any of us could do to rewind the clock for Keith’s sake. So I took a deep breath and smiled shyly back at Grath.

 

“You’re right. I could never choose not to have Peter. Never. But it doesn’t make me feel less guilty about Keith…It’s my fault, my fault, that Peter will never know his father. That Jack—and all of you—have to live without a great man whom you all loved—”

 

He cut me off. “Don’t go there, Ellie. You gotta let it drop. It makes sense, now, that we have a bead on Keith’s killer. Before now, we had nothing. So this is progress. We’ll find him, we’ll take him down. On that, you can be damn sure. One hundred percent.”

 

Steph, Mister Logic, got back in the ring. “You said the other day that the gun you saw in McAfee’s hands, that it looked like…?”

 

I repeated what I had seen. “Like a gun a cop would carry. At least, a cop on TV. I guess they look like real cop guns? I don’t know the make and model, but it was black, kind of square-ish looking, all business, no frills. Handgun. Not small, but not outrageously big, either. Does that help?”

 

“Yeah, it helps a lot, actually. Fits with the bullets that were found in Keith’s back.”

 

I flinched. Poor Keith! I hated to think of what he must have gone through, those last hours and minutes of his life, and what he might have thought about. I sent a prayer up for him, a message of love and gratitude and of sorrow at the untimely end to his sojourn here. I would regret and grieve his passing forever; it was something that I would carry in my heart for eternity.

 

But now, knowing—or thinking I knew the culprit behind his takedown, and the evil and madness that drove Brian to do it, I was getting angry. Red-hot angry. Because: how dare Brian play God with Keith’s life, with my life, with Peter’s life, and Jack’s life? Brian had to be all-out crazy—no, psychopathic—to have gone through with any of this. And I was done. I was pissed. I wanted to bring him down personally.

 

Apparently, in my raging thoughts, I had at some point gotten to my feet and started treading the carpets with vengeance, because I suddenly had two very strong arms around me, holding me from behind, and Grath’s voice began whispering in my ear, “Shhh, shhh, it’s okay, girl. We’re gonna get him. Breathe, Ellie. You have the cops, you have Steph and his team, you have me, and Jack, and the whole MC with you now. We’re all on this together. And we will hunt that bastard down. Do not worry. You just take care of that precious baby of yours, yeah? That is your number one. We will take care of the psycho. Okay? Are you breathing? In and out, honey. In and out.” And then we were basically doing Lamaze together, on our feet. It wasn’t even weird; it helped.

 

After a few minutes, he let me go, and we were all a bit calmer. The room was full of the tension of too much knowledge and too little action, but there was a new element, too: we were part of a team. I felt like a part of the team, even though they had relegated me to playing a bystander role in the hunt for the psycho killer. I had trouble with that image, a little bit. It was discomfiting—hi, understatement!—to think that all this time, Brian was actually capable and guilty of murder, and that he did it effectively for me. Gross. Repugnant. Sickening. Sick.

 

Eventually, Grath looked me over, seeing I was doing much better, had taken a few sips of iced tea and appeared fairly normal again. So he figured I was ready for the next hard hitter. “One last thing before we go, Ells. Gotta know, why didn’t you tell Jack about these suspicions of yours, about Brian maybe being Keith’s killer? Why didn’t you ever go to the cops, way back when? Seems like a lot of this could have been dealt with last year. What could possibly have held you back?”

 

Was this the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question? I didn’t have a good, easy answer. All I had was my truth, which I gave him, best as I could.

 

“Keith told me about his brother one night at the bar when we were just shooting the shit back and forth. Said Jack was the best. He talked about the MC a little—didn’t go into any detail, just about how he loved to ride, got involved with an MC, that you were all like family. He was a big, tough guy, but he got a happy look on his face when he talked about you all.

 

“But Jack—he said he worried about Jack, that Jack took business and family things dead seriously, and believed in an eye for an eye, everything in black and white. Even though Keith was younger, he said he felt really protective of Jack—funny, because he also said that Jack would say exactly the same thing, being protective of Keith. But that when he was a kid, growing up, Jack had always had his back, and always went after anyone who was even thinking about giving Keith a rough time.

 

“When I heard about what happened to Keith, I was horrified. I was scared. I didn’t want to believe that what I thought might be…I didn’t want to believe it to be true. I didn’t want to know it to be true. I just wanted to get as far away from all of it as possible, as fast as I could.

 

“I knew there was no point in going to another new place—Brian had already followed me to the one place that was so opposite of Portland, I thought he never would have come down here. But he did, and then Keith was gone, and I was pregnant and I had no one else, there didn’t seem any point in my staying here.

 

“I packed up right quick and went back to Portland. I have a friends there, and my mom and a bunch of ‘uncles’…” I shrugged, hoping that was enough of an explanation.

 

Steph wasn’t buying it. “There’s more to it, Ellie. Spit it out.”

 

He was right. “I guess, in my way, I wanted to protect Jack, too. Keith can’t anymore. But I didn’t want to tell Jack about my suspicions about Brian, then have Jack go off half-cocked to take out Brian and end up behind bars for the rest of his life after exacting some kind of eye-for-an-eye revenge. I mean, who could blame him? But for his own life’s sake, and for Peter…I want Jack around. I don’t want him behind bars. That’s why I didn’t say anything, earlier. That’s why I still don’t want to tell him. I don’t know how to do that. How do I stop him from killing Brian? Because I’m pretty sure that’s what he’s going to want to do.”

 

“Honey, we all want to kill McAfee,” Grath averred. Steph made a quick, sharp tsss sound and shot his big man a look that might kill, just by itself.

 

“Do not ever say that in front of me again, you ass. You know better. No matter how true it is.”

 

Grath grinned at Steph, then beamed it at me. “I love it when he gets all formal cop on me. Turns me on.”

 

Steph leaned over and swatted at Grath’s ass, and we all cracked up. The tension had finally broken.

 

Grath got up, pulled me to my feet, and bear hugged me one more time. “I get why you didn’t tell him, but Jack, more than anyone, deserves to know all of this. He’ll be really hurt it didn’t come from you. You know that, right? But I gotta agree, he’s gonna be so pissed off, it might take three or four of us to hold him down until he processes it and slows himself down.

 

“Tell you what. I’ll get the MC to call church—what we call our meetings, for all the brothers—and I’ll tell him and everyone else there, together. Might be safest.”

 

“Thank you, Grath. You don’t know how grateful I am.”

 

“Yeah, well, hold onto that gratitude. I gotta feeling Jack is going to be mighty pissed off about it, and some of that is pretty likely to come flying in your direction. Try to keep in mind that he’s gonna need some time to process, to get to grips with all this. But it will be okay. All right?”

 

“Yeah, all right. I gotta believe that. Holding onto that.”

 

“Yeah. Good. So you leave all the worries to us. You just focus on your baby boy.”

 

They both gave me squeezes, then looked hard at one another, communicating without words, and left the house with purpose in their strides.

 

I had just witnessed the beginning of what was likely to be one hell of a storm, hitting the streets of Tucson.