Chapter Seventeen

 

Carl knew my name, but beyond that, I had no idea what Amy had told him about me. Had no idea what he knew – or thought he knew – about me. But when I called his number, he didn't seem all that surprised to hear from me. Didn't seem put off by it either. Which made me hope that this was going to be an easy job. Yeah, I was out of the murder busines, but given that I had no choice, at least the mark was somebody I despised. It would likely make it a little bit easier for me.

“You're Amy's old man, aren't ya?” he said, seeming to remember me – or at least, my name.

“Ex old man,” I said. Maybe I should have left the ex part out – that could possibly have killed everything. But I breathed a sigh of relief when it didn't. “We split recently. She's in treatment.”

“Yeah, heard about that,” he said. “Her parents locked her away. Damn shame, too.”

“Yep,” I said. “But we both know she won't be in for long.”

“Yeah, I talked to her. We've already talked about what she's gonna do when she's released,” he said. “I should tell her you called – ”

“Nah, please don't,” I said, cringing. “I'd rather her not know what I'm up to. Like I said, we split up and we're just doin' our own things now.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “I'm nothing if not discreet. What can I do for you?”

“I was hoping you might hook me up,” I said. “I need to get my hands on some party favors.”

“Say no more, buddy. A friend of Amy's is a friend of mine. Even if you are her ex,” he said with a chuckle. “If anything, I should be thanking you. Maybe this is my chance with her. You wouldn't mind, would you, bro? Now that you're all broken up and shit?”

The idea of Amy with a drug dealer killed something inside of me. Not because I still loved Amy – far from it. It killed me because I loved our daughter and wanted Amy to pull her head out of her ass and be a mother for once in her life. Not that I had much hope for that, nor could I force the issue. She had to want it if anything was ever going to change. And if she wanted Carl Gillespie – and the lifestyle he represented – and chose him over her daughter, what could I do about it?

Not that poor Carl would be alive long enough to score Amy, but he didn't know that. And if it helped my cause to let him think he and Amy could live happily ever after, all the better.

“Sure, man,” I said. “I'm cool. I don't mind. Hook me up with some good shit and I can put in a good word for you.”

Yeah fucking right.

“Sure thing,” he said. “Want me to drop it by your place?”

“Nah, I have a kid, man,” I said. “Let's meet somewhere. How about Elm and Cedar, down at the river front? Say, in about an hour?”

“Sounds good to me,” he said. “There's an old factory there, isn't there?”

“I think so,” I said, feigning ignorance.

The truth was, I knew so. Knew there was a derelict old factory out there. Which was exactly why Mav picked that place. It was abandoned and no one hung around out there. It was falling down, filthy, dirty, and far enough away from civilization that I could do what had to be done, confident that I wouldn't be seen or overheard all the way out there. I could have probably dropped a bomb on Carl and nobody would have heard it go off.

“Wanna just meet there?” he asked.

“Fine by me,” he said.

We hung up, and my hands were trembling and my heart was racing. I'd just set up a drug deal. Not only that, I'd set up a drug deal and was going to kill a man. Two crimes in one. My record was filled with charges that were mostly ridiculous up to that point. Little things, nothing too serious. The heaviest charge on my record was Grand Theft Auto.

Meaning what I was going to do was not only out of my league, it was playing an entirely different sport. If this went to shit, I was going to spend the rest of my life in prison. If I was caught, that was.

But there was also the chilling possibility that I didn't come out of it alive. Knowing Mav and the gang the way I did, I knew that this could very well be a trap. Once I did their business for them and put Carl down, it was entirely possible that they would take me out as well. In their view, it could be killing two pains in the asses with one stone.

Which was why I'd made sure to get my affairs in order before I made the call to Carl.

One hour. One hour until it all went down.

And you better bet, that hour fucking crawled by slower than a sloth with two broken legs. As I watched the minutes dragging by at an agonizingly slow crawl, I thought I might just lose my shit waiting.

 

ooo000ooo

 

The old, abandoned factory I'd chosen used to make dog food, once upon a time. That was back before they started shipping most of that work overseas, anyway. Now it was just a derelict old factory sitting on the outskirts of town that just sat there waiting to be used once more.

And as I looked at it, I guessed that in a way, it was being used. For drug deals, a shelter for homeless people at night, and the odd place teenagers went to go when they wanted to fuck but couldn't do it in their parent's homes. It wasn't what it had been intended for a long time ago, but it was still being used in a way.

The doors were all boarded up, the building condemned, but that didn't stop people from entering to do whatever they needed to do. Which worked to my benefit, for the most part. The boards over the windows kept getting torn down as people climbed in through windows. And there was a large pile of trash filled with used condoms and needles sitting in the middle of the floor.

How anybody could think to screw in that kind of filth was beyond me.

I got there before Carl arrived. Or at least I think I did. For all I knew, he was there, watching me. Making sure I was alone. Making sure the coast was clear, and this wasn't an undercover deal with the police.

I paced the inside of the factory, checking several times for my gun. Just making sure it was still there. It had been years since I'd fired a gun, and honestly, I really had no desire to do it again. None. Guns usually meant trouble in my world. Trouble I was taking great pains to avoid. Because that kind of trouble usually meant that someone ended up dead.

Thankfully, I'd never had to kill someone personally, but I'd witnessed a few murders in my time, and it was never something you got used to.

It had never been something I was okay with.

Deep down, I knew all along that I wasn't cut out for the MC life, but it was much, much too late for me when I came to that realization. I'd joined the MC to be cool, to get the ladies, to have a family – I never knew it would wind up costing me so much though.

But I also wouldn't have Harley without having gone through life with the club. So, in a way, it made enduring my time with the MC well worth it.

I tensed when I heard footsteps outside the boarded up door, and then the board was pulled away. Carl Gillespie entered the same way I had and placed the board back in place when he entered.

When he stepped in, I realized that it was my first time seeing him live and in the flesh – at least close up. The only times I'd ever seen him, he seemed to be keeping a healthy distance from me – whch wasn't a bad idea.

Carl was older than I imagined him to be. Or perhaps, the drugs he took just made him look older, rougher – a little used up. Frankly, it was hard to tell. His eyes were sunken in and his cheeks were even more so. His skin was sallow, he had a general air of ill healthe about him, and he looked like a skeleton more than a living human being. And when he opened his mouth to speak to me, I noticed that a lot of his teeth were either missing or black with rot.

“Nice to finally meet ya, man,” he said, shaking my hand.

I could smell the body odor on him, he just had a general unclean stench about him, and his breath was about as fresh as a porta-pottie on a hot August afternoon. He was a real peach, this guy.

“Nice to meet you too,” I said.

Not really. The last thing I wanted was to be anywhere near this asshole doing what I had been ordered to do. But it was the polite thing to say and about the only thing I could say to keep him at ease. And it was the only want to guarantee that my daughter was safe.

“Got the cash?” he asked, lickig his lips nervously.

Carl bounced from foot to foot seemingly unabe to settle down in one spot. He picked and scratched at the scabs on his arms and his face, and he looked like had a bad case of the jitters. He looked like an addict in bad need of a fix.

“Yeah, uhh hold on a second,” I said.

That was the point I was supposed to pull out the gun and pop one in his head. Mav told me everything I was supposed to do and the way the whole scenario was supposed to play out from start to finish. Pretend to be reaching for your wallet, pull out the gun and shoot. Then get the hell out of there, as fast as humanly possible.

I reached for the gun, but then looked back at Carl and hesitated.

He was just such a pathetic excuse for a man. A pathetic excuse for a human being. If he fell off the face of the Earth – or took a bullet to the head and ended up in a shallow grave somewhere – someone like him wouldn't be missed. By anybody. He was a drain on society. And given his chosen profession, a cancer upon that society. A plague. The world would be better off without drug dealing scumbags like him in it.

I pulled out the gun, and as soon as Carl saw it, he stepped back, hands in the air, a look of pure terror upon his face.

“Whoa there, Elias,” he said. “If your plan is to rob me, you don't need to do that, man. I'll give you whatever you want. I just want to walk away alive. Just tell me what you want and I'll give it to you, man. It doesn't have to go down this way.”

“Why?” I asked him. “So you can ruin someone else's life like you did Amy's? You deal poison, man. You're destroying people.”

His face softened and his eyes shone with tears. “I have a daughter,” he said, “Her name is Sarah. I just want to get home to her, Elias. I just want to go home to my Sarah.”

Of course he had a daughter. And I had no doubt he was ruining her life too. That's what scum like him did – ruined lives.

“What kind of father can you be, huh?” I asked. “You can't be a good one, given the shit you do.”

“I'm the best father I can be,” he said, still holding his hands up. “Since she doesn't have a mom. I try to do everything I can to make her life good and make up for her not having a mom, man.”

Uh huh. Sure. Use my story against me. I had to give Carl some credit though, he was smarter than I thought. He thought he knew how to play on my heartstrings. But I knew he was full of shit.

I clicked the safety off the gun, but hesitated. In the distance, I heard sirens. And they sounded like they were coming closer.

Carl looked at me in shock and I returned his gaze, fury coloring my face.

“Did you call the fucking cops?” he asked.

“No. Why in the hell would I do that?” I asked. “I have a gun – ”

Then it hit me.

This was a set up.

I had been set up all along. That son of a bitch set me up.

Wiping my prints off the gun as fast as I could, I dropped the gun and told Carl, “Run. Get the hell out of here. Now. Go.”

He didn't stop to ask any questions, he just took off toward the door. I took off in the opposite direction, but that's when I heard a gunshot. It echoed around the deserted old factory – and was quickly followed by the sound of Carl screaming in agony.

I shouldn't have – my survival instinct told me to just keep running – but I couldn't And when I turned around, I came face-to-face with Jay. He had a predatory grin on his face and a gun in his hand. He looked at me like the only thing he wanted to do was put a bullet in my head.

“Not so fast,” he said. “You had a job to do. And the way I see it, you ain't done it yet.”

Carl was on the ground, bleeding from a wound in his abdomen, writhing in agony. The sound of his pained whimpering filled the air. He wasn't dead, but he was dying. Luckily, the sirens were getting closer. Well, lucky for him. They'd probably reach him before he bled out. It wasn't so lucky for me though.

Jay raised his arm and pointed the gun at my face.

“You're going to finish the job,” he said.

“Like hell I am,” I said. “You hear the cops coming this way, don't you? Not even you can be that deaf or stupid.”

“Of course I do,” he said. “I'm the one who called them.”

Of course he did. I wasn't sure if Mav was behind this shitstorm or not – not with any certainty. This felt too smooth, too smart for something Jay put together. Which made me think that Mav was the one pulling the strings and that had been the plan all along. That the real plan was not to get rid of Carl – that would have been a happy by-product – but to get me arrested and sent to prison for murder.

“Did Amy's folks put you up to this?” I growled. “I knew she wanted custody of Harley. Is this their fucking doing?”

“Smart man,” he said. “Too bad you've already gotten your babygirl sent away to her grandparent's place. Oh, and your girlfriend is going to get a little visit from – ”

“No, she's not,” I said, a smirk on my face. “So go ahead and shoot me. Pull the trigger, asshole. Because no matter what happens here, Amy's parents will never see Harley again. I've guaranteed that.”

“Liar,” he said.

I put my hands in the air and folded them on top of my head, intertwining my fingers – assuming the position.

“Amy's folks don't get Harly and then Mav and you don't get the big payout from them either,” I said. “And who's fault will that be? So go ahead, kill me. Either way, I'm fuckin' winning, man. But more than that, my daughter wins because she won't have to live with those fucked up, twisted assholes.”

Mav spoke up from deeper in the shadows of the factory, his voice echoing to us from the darkness like some damn malevolent spirit or something.

“Don't do it, Jay,” he said. “Not yet at least.”

Ahh, of course. Mav was there too. Of course he was. There was no way he wasn't going to be there to watch his victory unfold. He was like one of those kings in Medieval times who watched their armies fighting and dying on the fields below them, safely removed from even the remotest hint of danger. Fucking prick.

Mav walked out into the open, gun in hand as well, and shook his head. “I'm so disappointed in you, Elias,” he said. “I had high hopes. Thought you might finally have grown some balls. But I guess not. Same old Elias – pussy to the end.”

“I told you,” I said. “I'm not a murderer.”

“Kill him and let's go before the cops roll in,” Mav said.

But it was too late. For them, anyway.

“POLICE! Drop your weapon!”

The booming voice echoed around the inside of the factory and I watched as a dozen cops flooded into the factory, guns drawn, flashlights in hand. Jay kept his gun on me, while Mav turned his toward the police.

I heard him growl as he squeezed the trigger. Shots rang out, echoing through the darkness. The muzzle flash from his gun chased away the shadows for a moment. Knowing what was coming, I threw myself to the ground and covered my head with my arms – a futile gesture, but all I could think to do in the moment.

The sound of several dozen guns going off thundered in my ears and I heard Mav grunting as each bullet tore through him. He hit the ground with a wet, meaty thud. I looked up and was staring into his wide open eyes that were fixed and unfocused as he stared off into eternity. Blood seeped from his mouth and from the multiple gunshot wounds in his chest. A pool of blood was spreading out from beneath him and was slowly rolling my way. It was nauseating, but there was no way I was going to stand up in that moment. If I got Mav's blood all over me, so be it.

I looked up and saw that Jay had thrown his gun down and had his hands in the air.

“I give up,” he shouted. “I surrender.”

Multiple voices were shouting at him to get down onto his knees and put his hands on top of his head. Jay complied, though he turned and looked at me and I could see an expression of pure hate and rage upon his face. The cops swarmed in and took him down, pushing him face down onto the concrete as the slapped cuffs onto him.

I stayed exactly where I was, my hands up and over my head, waiting for them to come to me. It wasn't long before I had several cops putting cuffs on me, hauling me to my feet and marching me out of the factory. I complied with everything they said, not resisting, not so much as looking at them funny. I simply did as I was told. I hadn't done anything and they had nothing on me. All I could do at that point was hope for the best.

As I sat in the back of the police car, I knew I could very well be in trouble. I was in a bad place at a bad time and shit went sideways. And I knew everything that happened in that factory could be bad for me. Could be bad enough to cost me my daughter. But at the very least, I also knew she was still alive and well, and there was no way Amy's family would ever put their hands on her.

No matter what, she and Paige were safe. And that was all that mattered to me in that moment.

 

ooo000ooo

 

Earlier that day

 

Paige slid off her desk and wiggled back into her panties. She was so sexy and I felt the stirrings deep within me again. If she'd given me a couple more minutes, I might have just taken her right then and there one more time.

But we didn't have time for that. The clock was ticking and I needed to get some things squared away. Quickly.

“We still need to talk about Harley,” I said.

“What about her?” Paige asked, growing concerned.

“You know that trouble I'm caught up in?” I asked. “Well things are about to get very bad. And I'm afraid you're already caught up in it too. It's my fault for getting inolved with you in the first place and dragging you into my shit. I'm sorry for that. For everything. ”

I sighed and then told Paige everything. I held nothing back. I told her everything from Mav blackmailing me, to Amy's parents, to how they were watching her.

“We need to get you out of here,” I said.

“And Harley too?” she said, her voice rising in fear.

“Yes, please,” I said. “You're the only person I trust with my daughter, and if I don't survive – ”

“Don't say that,” she said, wiping at her eyes. “You will survive. You'll find a way, you have to. Your daughter needs you. I need you.”

“Just in case,” I said, reaching for her hands.

“Just in case,” she said. With a dry laugh, she said, “You know, I always said I wanted to get out of here, but I never thought it was possible. And this wasn't quite what I'd had in mind.”

“You have to leave everything, Paige. Your job, everything,” I said. “I don't know how this is all going to shake out, but I need to know you and Harley are safe. That they can't touch you.”

“I know,” she said. “And trust me, it's going to kill me. But if it'll keep Harley safe, I'll do it.”

Kissing her hand, I thanked her with all of my heart.

“They're after me too, right? So I guess I need to leave to be safe anyway,” she said.

“I'm sorry.”

“It's not your fault, you tried to warn me – I didn't stay away. I couldn't stay away.”

“Still, if I could have avoided all this – ”

“Then you'd have no one to take Harley,” she said. “Everything works out for a reason.”

Of course, that would require a plan. A plan to sneak both of them out of the school without anyone noticing.