Clementine
“Are you okay?” one of the men asked out in the parking lot. I couldn’t really tell one from another out there. They were all dressed in jeans and black shirts with their vests on. Even in the light shining over the parking lot from the light posts along the edge by the road, they all looked the same to me.
“Of course she’s okay,” another one chimed in. “She’s Leo’s sister, man. She’s tough, even if she doesn’t realize it. Right?” He nudged my shoulder.
I figured he was trying to cheer me up and talk me out of my worried state. I shrugged and gave him a feeble smile. It was the best I could muster up under the circumstances.
“Don’t worry about her, Nathan. Falcon wouldn’t have come out here for her if he didn’t see some kind of toughness in her,” the second one said to the first, giving me a way to identify the member who had been worried about me.
“Just making sure she doesn’t need anything,” Nathan said.
“You need anything?” the second asked in his harsh tone. Somehow, in that moment, I trusted the nameless one more than Nathan. I knew if I had told him anything, he would have gone out of his way to make it happen.
Instead, I just shook my head.
“See, Nathan, she doesn’t need anything. I told you, she’s tough,” he barked before patting my shoulder and walking back with the other men.
“If you need anything,” Nathan said.
“I’m okay,” I assured him, nodding. Apparently, I was handling the situation better than he was.
I listened to the gruff one and the other members behind me as they laughed and checked on each other. They told jokes about the men they had killed, men who had worked for my brother. I didn’t understand how they could have done that, how they could have made light of so much death, especially when their president was still in there with Leo. Both men, it was well known, wanted each other dead.
Well, they could have joked about it as they were, or they could have stood around worrying about it like I was, I figured. And like Nathan was. He stood next to me, watching the building for some sign of what was going on inside.
I chuckled. He seemed so soft compared to the others. Even Falcon, who had a very prominent sensitive side, was harder than Nathan seemed at that moment.
“I’m just making sure you’re al lright. I’m keeping an eye on you. That’s what Falcon would want me to do,” he said, talking like he knew Falcon wasn’t walking out of the warehouse once it was all said and done.
“Don’t talk like he’s not coming out,” I told him. “Any moment now, he’s going to pull the trigger again and put my brother down.” It was a harsh reality to face, but I knew I was going to lose Leo in all of this.
It was like my childhood had to finally die off completely in order for me to really reach adulthood. My parents died shortly before I made the transition from elementary school to middle school, and even in our small town, the difference was striking. We shared middle schools and high schools with a neighboring town because we just didn’t have enough kids attending public school at that age to support our own schools.
As much as I liked to pretend my childhood was all fairytales and princess dresses, I went to school with kids who probably turned out like Rogue Demons. They scared me, which was part of why I had retreated into my shell. They were rough, violent children, and, yet, there I was being protected by rough, violent adults.
After my parents died, my brother left so I wouldn’t be distracted and could finish school. It made sense now. If I had been around him, I would have been sucked into this life at an early age with no choice in the matter.
Then, when I went off to college, my grandmother died. She was my last tie to that little town where we’d grown up. Getting out of that house and letting go of her was the only way to ensure I didn’t have any reasons to move back once I got my degree.
Now, I was about to lose my brother, and living in his shadow was the last thing holding me back. I might have been grasping at straws with those rationalizations, but it was the only way to make it all make sense for me. Once it was all said and done, I wasn’t going to have to worry about anyone else’s opinions of what I was doing, and that was what mattered.
Worrying about what my brother thought was going to hold me back forever if I let it, but I wasn’t going to let it. I wasn’t going to have to worry about it.
Gunshots rang out, and I jumped. It was only two shots, but it was enough to snap me out of my little daydream.
“Hold on.” A hand grabbed my shoulder as I started to step towards the building. It was the gruff member, the trustworthy, hard one.
“What was that?” I asked. Of course, I knew it was gunfire, but I wanted to know if it was Falcon’s gun or Leo’s. I wanted to know which one of them had shot the other. I knew no one could tell me for sure from outside, but I hoped someone had the foresight to lie to me just that once to comfort me.
“Sounds like Falcon just took Leo out,” the gruff one said in an almost jubilant, celebratory tone.
“Thomson, we don’t know that,” Nathan almost whimpered. “That could have been Leo.”
“Boy, you’ve got a thing for him, don’t you? I swear, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were working for him, but Leo has already proven he has higher standards than that,” Thomson snapped.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” If it had been anyone else, they probably would have raised their gun at that point, but Nathan holstered his.
“You saw the men he sent in with Zeke and Collin, didn’t you? They would have eaten you alive, son. Now get your gun out. Something tells me we’re going back in,” Thomson ordered.
“What about me?” I asked.
“You stay here,” Nathan said.
“Bullshit,” Thomson scoffed. “You can follow, but you follow. That means stay behind us where it’s safe. We might need your help.” He said the last words in Nathan’s face.
“Guys, I don’t want to see any more fighting,” I cautioned them. “If we’re going, let’s go.”
They hesitated. It was like they were listening for more gunshots. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run ahead of them and see what the hell was going on.
Then we heard sirens in the distance, getting closer, and fast.
Thomson looked up and pointed at the SUVs parked at the edge of the parking lot.
“Get in the cars,” he ordered everyone. “Nathan and I will take Clementine inside. We’re getting out of here once we leave with Falcon. Pull up to the building and wait for us.”
Running with their guns drawn, the other members sounded like soldiers as they made their way to the SUVs and started loading themselves in.
“All right, let’s go,” Thomson said to us.
He started running, forcing Nathan to run to keep up, and I came running up behind.
“Come on. There’s only one guy to worry about, and that’s Leo. We’ve already taken everyone else out,” Thomson said as we hurried up to the second floor.
He pulled out a flashlight as we reached the top of the stairs. He swept it around the room. There were bodies everywhere, mostly my brother’s men. I didn’t see anyone in a vest lying on the ground, so I assumed that all of Falcon’s men had made it out alive.
“Over here,” Nathan called out, and that was when I realized he had wondered off away from us to check on Falcon and Leo.
I noticed then how quiet it was upstairs. I had expected to hear Falcon and my brother fighting and arguing, but there was nothing. Leo wasn’t even taunting him anymore. Had they killed each other?
Thomson and I ran over to where Nathan knelt over Falcon’s body. I gasped and covered my mouth with my hand.
Falcon lay in a puddle of blood. He wasn’t moving.
“He’s got a weak pulse, and he’s breathing, so he’s still with us,” Nathan said.
“What about numb nuts over there?” Thomson asked, shining a light on my brother. “Sorry, Clementine,” he said.
“He seems to be fine. He’s just out. Looks like the trauma of being shot twice knocked him out,” Nathan said.
“Good. Let’s get Falcon out of here and let the police find Leo when they get here,” Thomson said, slinging his assault rifle over his shoulder.
He handed me the flashlight, which I held up so they could see as they picked Falcon’s limp, soaked body up off the floor.
We hurried down the stairs to the first floor and loaded Falcon into the back of the car.
“We need to get him to a hospital,” I told the guys.
“No way,” Thomson argued. “We can’t let the authorities find him. We’re taking him to Nathan’s.”
“My place?” he asked. “How did I get volunteered for this?”
“Man, look.” Thomson grabbed Nathan by his shirt. “You’re not going to deny your president room to recover, boy. And when he does get back on his feet, I’m going to suggest we review your position in the MC. You’ve been nothing but a little punk since all of this started. Falcon needs men he can count on. We’re taking him to your place because headquarters is little more than a pile of rubble now thanks you and your kind.” He shoved Nathan back.
“My kind?” Nathan asked.
“Yeah, cowards.” Thomson spat the word out.
He pulled off his shirt and rolled it up. Then he handed it to me.
“Put this on the wound and apply pressure. We’ll be at Nathan’s in a few minutes. He’ll be all right.”
He closed the back of the SUV and climbed into the passenger seat. We were off immediately, and just in time.
As I watched the police cruisers storm the warehouse, I realized that as long as it felt like we had taken, we must have only been there for a few short minutes. Whoever alerted authorities would have done so when Falcon’s men started shooting at Leo’s men, which would have happened while I was blacked out.
My mind reeled as I realized just how quickly everything had gone down despite how long it felt like it had taken. And if it had happened that quickly, it could have easily gone differently. One wrong move from anyone involved could have ended in disaster.
I held the rolled shirt over the hole in Falcon’s side. I could feel his weak pulse and the slight heaving of his chest as he breathed.
“Come on, Falcon, don’t leave me here. You’ve probably taken my brother away from me now, so you can’t go anywhere. You’re stuck with me,” I whispered to him. “You owe me. You hear me? You owe me.”
“Can’t this blasted thing go any faster?” Nathan called out from the back, sitting across Falcon from me.
I wanted to push him out of the car. I couldn’t explain it, but I agreed with Thomson. There was no place in Rogue Demons for people who didn’t have the balls to do what needed to be done. As I watched Nathan fall apart, and as I sat there trying to hold Falcon together, knowing my brother was probably lost to me for good, I could feel myself hardening just a little bit.
Maybe my brother wanted to keep me away from this life because he knew what it had done to him, and he wanted to keep it from doing the same to me. After all, he had insisted that I was the smart one, and that I could do better. Well, I was going to do better.