Tank

I'd love to have flown to Chicago for this job, but showing my ID isn't an option. Fake or otherwise. Not that I have either currently. I'm wanted in five states—including California and Illinois—and the FBI definitely has at least a few pictures of me.

I also wish I'd ridden my bike. There's nothing like a long bike ride to clear your head, but I just turned thirty-nine. My body can't handle long rides the way it used to, and most of the country on the way from California to Illinois is still in winter.

So we took two trucks, and so far it's proving to be the longest fucking road trip I've ever been on. But we're almost home. One-hundred-and-fifty miles left to go. It's a shame we'll be arriving in the middle of the night, because I'd love to go visit Kim as soon as we arrive. But tomorrow's Thursday and there's another fundraiser meeting at Grey's. I can't fucking wait.

We were supposed to take down Seven, the VP of Hell's Spawn MC in Chicago, but we only found two of their enforcers hiding in a cockroach invested apartment in the worst part of town. Ice made one of them bleed again. It drowned about fifty cockroaches, but I managed not to get any of it on my new boots.

He's sitting beside me as I drive, staring straight ahead. His eyes are open, but if he wasn't breathing normally, I'd swear he was asleep regardless. His purpose in the front seat is to keep me awake, but he hasn't said more than a couple of words since I took the wheel.

"So what's with all the knife play, Ice?" I ask. "You always struck me as an efficient, level headed kinda guy."

Cross has invited him to join our MC, and I'm still mostly for it, although Ice has been displaying a psycho streak with his love of cutting men up, which is giving me doubts. In our line of work, if you can't trust the man next to you to keep his cool, you could get killed.

He looks at me from the corner of his eye without moving any other part of his body. "They die. What does it matter how?"

"Stabbings are messy," I say.

"And you don't like mess, is that it?"

I shrug. It's part of the reason. "I never had much of a stomach for blood. It gets everywhere and starts to smell. It's especially hard to get out from under your fingernails."

Ice turns sharply and glares at me like he doesn't know if I'm serious or not. I am. I'm always serious, even when it sounds like I'm joking. I don't like getting blood on my hands, and I've had bloody hands often enough to be sure of that. And to not have a problem admitting it.

"You're a cold motherfucker under all that light talking of yours, aren't you?" Ice finally says after a few seconds of just staring at me.

"As freezing as they come. I thought you were too, but I'm starting to reconsider after these last few jobs." He's not wrong. Most of the time I don't feel a damn thing watching a man die. It's been that way for as long as I can remember. But I do know when I'm supposed to feel something.

Ice faces forward again and reaches into his pocket for a cigarette. He takes his time lighting it, before filling the cab with smoke and looking at me again.

"The thing is, I have a list," he says in a less confrontational tone. "All the Spawns are on the list, but a handful of them are way at the top of it. Lizard was number one, his VP Seven is second. The guy whose throat I slit the other night, Bomber, he was number ten. And the one I cut up tonight was number six. They made my life in captivity even more of a hell than it already was. And imagining them die a slow and painful death was the only thing that kept me sane. Can you understand that?"

I nod. Sure, I can understand it. Never hated anyone enough to feel the need to cut them up, but I can relate.

I light a cigarette of my own and crack the window to let the smoke out.

"Just as long as there's reason behind your madness," I finally say. "I was beginning to think you were losing it. You're free now. Eventually, you'll have to leave the cage behind."

Lizard, the Hell's Spawn MC president who took Ice prisoner about seven years ago made him fight in the cages of his underground MMA championships. Ice was the best of the best in that world.

"Some of the guys are starting to think you're going soft," he fires back. "They're saying you don't have the stomach for the job anymore."

A mild annoyance is all he achieved with what was clearly supposed to piss me off.

"The brothers know who I am, and the new recruits will learn soon enough. I'm not going soft, so there's no cause for alarm on that front,” I reply calmly. “But we've dealt out a lot of death in these last few months, and I always call things what they are. When we find the VP you can cut him up for all I care, just try not to get the blood on my new boots."

He keeps staring at me like he can't quite believe what he's hearing, but doesn't continue the conversation. Which is good, since I'd prefer to ride the rest of the way in silence.

I hope Kim shows up to the meeting tomorrow. I call her the next hot redhead I'll fuck. And soon. What I feel fucking hot girls—preferably redheads—is the closest I get to genuinely feeling anything. Sometimes I actually fall in love with them, but it never lasts. But I'm certain Kim will be memorable. She's already been on my mind a lot more than I expected her to be.

* * *

Kim

I was at Grey's visiting Benji and helping him with his lines every day last week, but Tank's assertion that we'll see each other soon didn't come true. Just like I figured it wouldn't once I got far enough away from him to regain my ability to think clearly again. He's a talker. Likes to say and do clever and outrageous things for their shock value alone.

But knowing that doesn't change the fact that I really want to kiss him again.

"So, about Tank…" I say to Benji, finally breaking down on Wednesday night, right before I'm supposed to leave, go home alone and try to sleep, which has been proving difficult lately. "He doesn't come around on any kind of regular basis, does he?"

Benji looks at me and I can just see him try to work out what I actually asked.

"Tank is humpty dokey," he finally says, just as I'm about to phrase the question in simpler terms. "He put the hoop up for basketball. He will come see me play Romeo, he promised. He said I'll make a really good Romeo."

"Well, if he promised," I say and smile at him. I think I know what Tank’s promises are worth though. Less than the air they actually are.

But later, as I walk across the empty parking lot to my car, so I can drive down the empty streets to my empty apartment in my parent's backyard I begin to understand that it's not promises I want. If he ever shows up again, I'm going to take him up on his offer. It'll hopefully make for at least one night of fun. I need some fun in my life. And maybe it'll even stop my nightmares, but I doubt that.

Something broke inside me as I watched those girls get herded onto the truck in the middle of the night, screaming and crying, as I watched the one who tried to run get gunned down. I was supposed to be writing an upbeat article about orphans thriving in the hostile environment they lived in. Instead it became another story of injustice, rape and torture. I know it goes on all the time, I've seen more than my share of it over the years. But this one cut deep. And the fact that I was utterly powerless to change those girls' fate even a little bit was the worst.

Hundreds of thousands of people read my article in the Sunday edition of the New York Times. Maybe some of them choked up a little over their morning coffee or fancy brunch. But after that, it was business as usual. Bad things happen in this world. We all know that. That's how it's always been. There's even a name for that reaction. Compassion fatigue, they call it. But I couldn't and still can't get over it. I knocked on every door I could think of to try and save those girls after my articles failed to spur anyone into action. I got so bold that an editor at the New York Times told me to cool it if I wanted to keep my career.

I failed those girls completely, and I might never get over it, never be able to write another article again. Because I can't look the other way anymore. Can't just report the facts anymore. No one cares about the facts.

So, yeah, I need a diversion. I need to get out of my own head, at least for a little while. I need to do something I've never done, because everything I've done up until now has just led me around in a circle back to the same pain, loneliness and powerlessness I've been trying to run from my whole life. Just like in high school, I'm at home, taking care of my mom and wishing I could be an important journalist who makes an impact in the world. The difference is that now I know I'm not very good at doing either of those things.

I doubt sleeping with Tank will break that cycle, but at least I'll have some fun.