Bless me father, for I have sinned …

Incense filled my head, my senses, making me sway for a moment as the hardwood of the kneeler cut into my kneecaps. Canned harp music softly played from speakers hidden behind two fake ferns on either side of the wooden podium at the front of the chapel. A wooden cross hung on two wires behind it. To complete the effect, they’d hung two identical fake stained-glass panels on either side of the room. Instead of depicting a saint or a station of the cross, the panels showed a nurse in an old-fashioned white uniform ministering to a wounded man who smiled up at her.

This wasn’t my church. Still, the incense pricked my sense memory enough that I could close my eyes and find myself right back there, laying out Father Sanchez’s vestments as he quietly sang. I found peace in the memory. Father would quote scripture as he stood, bent-backed as I helped him straighten his collar.

“Time to go to work, son,” he would say, his eyes crinkling with joy. Then he would take a deep, heaving breath and turn toward the door.

“Son?”

My eyes snapped open. The odor of strong antiseptic and sickness joined the incense. Behind me, a P.A. blared an electronic bell, paging a code team to the maternity floor. I made the sign of the cross and said a quick prayer that they moved swiftly.

“Son?”

His voice hadn’t changed. Very little about him had changed. My leather cut creaked as I rose from the kneelers and faced the door.

Father Sanchez wasn’t wearing his vestments today. Instead, he wore jeans and a blue work shirt. Even at his age, he was still the parish handyman. He stood in the doorway looking ancient and tiny next to the tall, brown-skinned orderly beside him. They each wore the same grim, sympathetic expression.

“I thought I might find you here,” Father said.

“Mr. Wade?” The orderly cleared his throat and stepped into the chapel. “They’re ready for you if ... if you’re ready.”

Ready. Ready? Father Sanchez’s eyes held a disappointed sadness as he looked me up and down. I knew what he saw. At least ... I knew what he wanted to see. By now, it should have been me standing next to that orderly looking to shepherd some grieving family member toward the metal double doors at the end of the hall. To him, I should be wearing the collar. He should be sitting in a rocking chair sipping wine and reading one of his favorite doorstopper biographies of one of the founding fathers or revolutionaries.

His eyes settled on the patch on my left breast, his mouth twitching ever so slightly. Only someone who knew him well would have even noticed. I did. My white patch showed the road name my club brothers had given me along with my position among them. “Deacon, Club Chaplain.” I had no congregation anymore. I gave no sermons. Now I was the man the rest of the Dark Saints M.C. looked to as their moral compass. That might be the biggest irony of all after what I’d done.

“Yeah,” I said, coming out of the pews. Behind Sanchez and the orderly, the door opened into the main hospital. To the right, behind the double steel doors, was the long corridor to the morgue.

Father Sanchez stood almost a foot shorter than me now, arthritis in his spine giving him a hunched back. The orderly wore a patch of his own, a square plastic ID badge that read “Clyde.” I didn’t know if it was his first or last name.

“Are you sure there isn’t someone else we can call?” Father asked. The moment he said it, his lips pursed and I knew he wasn’t sure he’d like my answer. I had no family anymore. Not the kind he meant. My father was long dead. My mother was on this very campus in a nursing care facility, her mind ravaged by dementia. My brother ... well ... that’s why I was here.

“This way,” Clyde said. “Let me tell you what to expect.”

“I know what to expect,” I said. I’d done this all before. Ten years ago. Same corridor. Same priest by my side. If I closed my eyes, I could see my father’s blue lips and white skin as they pulled the drape away from his face. “Let’s just get this over with.”

Even Father Sanchez gasped at the hard brevity of my reply. I felt guilty, but not for the reasons he wanted.

We went through those cold steel doors. Clyde asked Father to wait in a row of chairs along the wall. It was in me to ask him to go. Partly because I couldn’t stand that damn look of pity in his eyes. But mostly because I didn’t want this darkness to touch him. In his mind, it had already taken me. And it had taken the man behind this last set of doors, no matter who he was.

So five minutes later, I stood in front of a long, rectangular table. Clyde held his fingers on the zipper clasp of a black body bag. He gave me a quick nod, signaling he was ready to go. So was I.

The sound of the zipper opening echoed. Clyde was quick, efficient, careful as he pulled the black plastic away. I stepped forward and looked inside.

I don’t know what other people do. I can’t imagine the gutshot feeling parents get when called to do this. I’d seen that plenty. In another life, I had been there to hold their hands afterward, to pray with them, to counsel them. Just like Father Sanchez wanted to do with me. I knew I wouldn’t need it.

“Do you recognize him?” Clyde asked, his voice a flat monotone.

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s Sean. Sean Wade. He’s ... he was ... my brother.”

The word felt foreign in my mouth as I applied it to the lifeless figure before me. Sean. Two years older than me, people used to think we were twins. He had the same crooked mouth, the same thickness to his nose, though his had been broken at least twice. He looked gray, waxy, not even real. But it was Sean. An old, J-shaped scar cut through the bottom of his chin. He got it playing hockey when he was fourteen years old. His blood had run in a river down his neck and stained the ice.

Clyde was careful. Respectful. He didn’t let the bag fall open to show anything above Sean’s brow. Sean had been shot in the head, execution-style.

“You’re sure?” Clyde asked.

I looked up. A rectangular window opened out into the hallway where two policemen stood, one of them scribbling on a notepad. A speaker affixed to the top corner of the room picked up every word we said.

“I’m sure,” I said, aiming my voice straight at the speaker. “This is my brother, Sean Wade. There’s no question.”

Clyde gave me a grim nod and zipped the body bag closed. He held out his hand, ushering me toward the opposite doorway, the one that would take me into the hall past the police officers.

“Hell of a choice,” I muttered. Clyde gave me a sideways glance. Behind door number one, Father Sanchez. Door number two, the cops. They’d want to question me. So would Father. I was in the mood for neither but decided the priest would be less persistent. I had nothing to say to any of them. Not today. Maybe not ever.

I brushed past Clyde and went out the door I came in. Mercifully, Father Sanchez hadn’t waited. A wave of relief hit me, then turned quickly to ice as I remembered the P.A. and the code call to the maternity ward. I crossed myself again and headed for the exits.

The early morning air worked its magic on me as I climbed on my Harley and hit the highway going almost eighty. It was just me and the road. The powerful engine rumbled beneath me and I breathed in the tangy salt air of the Gulf as I headed out of town.

I made my way down the winding dirt road to the Dark Saints M.C. clubhouse. For the last two hours, I’d felt almost suspended in time and space, as if I were underwater. Now as Rufus, our club dog, came barreling around the side of the building to greet me, I broke through the surface.

Mama Bear stood in the doorway with her arms crossed. The woman had a sixth sense, I swear ... not unlike the dog. She seemed to know exactly when I’d arrive. I went to her, after giving Rufus the ear scratch he demanded.

“Hey, Mama,” I said. She reached up and touched my cheek, her steely eyes creased with concern, far different from pity.

“Hey, yourself,” she said. I hugged her quickly; her spiky white hair scratched my chin. For as small as she was, she hugged back with a hell of a grip. “It was him?”

“Yeah.”

Her eyes twinkled, but she didn’t say the empty things people usually say. Instead, she just rubbed my upper arm and closed the door behind us as I walked into the clubhouse.

She didn’t have to tell me where I’d find everyone else. The conference room door was wide open and I could hear our club prez Bear’s deep laughter echo through the walls. Sean’s death was club business, until it wasn’t. I was glad Bear called the rest of the guys. It would save me from having to explain things more than once.

“You want anything?” Mama Bear asked. “Hair of the dog?”

She was kidding. I never drank anything stronger than a sip of church wine or black coffee. I raised a hand behind my head and waved her off as I went into the conference room. It was a different kind of church, but one that often cleansed what was left of my soul just the same.

Bear sat at the head of the table, running his fingers through his thick, white beard. At his side, E.Z., his vice-president, sat, arms crossed, waiting for me to get there. The rest of the guys gave me knowing looks as I took my seat at the other end of the table.

Bear steepled his fingers beneath his chin and looked at me with his cold, hard eyes. Tension ran from him and through every other man at this table as if Bear could set off an electrical current among them with just one breath.

Shep, Bo, Domino, Kade, Maddox, Axle, Benz, Chase, Zig, E.Z., and Bear himself. My brothers. My surrogate father. My family. They meant more to me now than Sean had in years. I lost ... no ... I gave up the family I was born into to join this one. I knew from the flicker in Bear’s eyes he was thinking about the reasons why today just as I was. Sean had left me no choice.

They were all looking to me. None of them would come out and ask it. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. I was the one who would seek them out when I knew some fabric of their lives had ripped apart. They came to me looking for absolution, to confess when the light we fought for was touched by the darkness we had to dance with.

“It’s okay,” I said, trying to break the tension. “I mean ... I am. It was Sean. But we already knew that.”

Bear let out a hard sigh and dropped his gaze from me for a moment. I was itching to talk to him alone, so was he. He and E.Z. passed a glance. They were the only two people at this table who knew the truth about Sean and me. The rest only guessed or knew well enough not to ask.

“Cops are saying he was found in the alley behind Digby’s,” E.Z. said. “Did you talk to them?”

It felt like both a question and an accusation. If I hadn’t been staring at Shep when he said it, I might not have picked up on a second undercurrent running around the table. Shep looked at Bo. Bo looked at Axle. I knew them well enough to guess there was something they each wanted to say.

“No,” I answered. “Didn’t want anything to do with them. When they want to talk to me, they know where to find me.”

“Good instincts,” Bear said. “And we don’t have any solid reason to connect this shit to the club anyway.”

“Are you kidding?” E.Z. said, slamming his fist on the table. “You think it was a coincidence they dumped Sean Wade’s body behind Digby’s?”

“We don’t own Digby’s,” Chase said. “And it’s not the first or last time some drug dealer gets dumped down there. Sorry, Deacon.”

I put a hand up to wave off the offense. “Chase’s right. This could be a hundred things coming to a head in Sean’s life. I hadn’t talked to him, hell, I hadn’t seen him in almost a year. The last time he came to hit me up for money. I gave it to him. I know I shouldn’t have, but he knew it was the last time I ever would. I stuck to it.”

“The time before that, he cleaned your mother’s house out.” Shep said it, his tone grim as he locked eyes with me. It had happened a year and a half ago. When I realized my mother couldn’t live on her own anymore, club connections helped me get her into the facility at the Gulfside Nursing Home. She had my brother listed on her paperwork as her health advocate though. They called him. He went in the middle of the night and raided her house for cash, jewelry, and all her appliances. He even stripped out the copper plumbing.

“I’ve got feelers out,” Bear said. “Trying to reconstruct the last few months. See who Sean had been mixing with. Who he owed.”

“Everyone,” I said.

“He wasn’t killed in that alley,” E.Z. said. “Jenny says the theory is he was dumped there. That means something. You don’t gotta be Nancy Drew to figure this shit out. This was a message. Sean wasn’t a member of the club, but the whole damn town knows he was your brother, Deacon. He’d have been dead years ago if not for that. This was the Hawks. And everyone here knows what it means. If they’re going after family, then …”

“Deacon cut Sean off years ago,” Shep said. “Everyone in this town also knew that.”

“Fine,” E.Z. said, leveling a withering look at Shep. There was bad blood between those two and it was getting worse. E.Z. was the most closed off to me. He didn’t come to me like the men closer to my own age did. Shep was Bear’s son. I knew it rattled E.Z. sometimes if Bear deferred to him over E.Z. The truth was, Bear was careful, diplomatic. If anything, he was harder on Shep than the rest of us. Still, the fault lines running through the men at this table had deepened lately and there was no denying it.

“We’ll tighten security,” Bear said. “No reason not to. Until we know more about Sean’s murder, I think it’s smart to assume it might have been an indirect message.”

“Indirect message?” A purple vein jumped in E.Z.’s temple. Bear put a hand up to silence him. Usually that worked. Not today.

“I say we hit ’em back hard and now!”

For the first time, there were knocks of support around the table. Domino. Zig. Even Chase.

“And I think Bear’s right,” I said. “My brother had been dealing for the better part of the last decade. He’s been addicted to his product for the last couple of years. I think there’s too many other solid reasons why someone would have wanted to put a bullet in his head besides club retaliation. We should wait and see, but watch our backs even more in the meantime.”

This wasn’t a formal vote, just a status meeting, but I knew my words carried weight. Sean Wade had been my blood brother, after all. At least, once upon a time. My gut twisted as I closed my eyes and remembered the last real conversation we’d ever had. He accused me of stealing the only woman he ever loved. It was a lie, but not for the reasons he thought. Sean didn’t know how to love for real.

Bear adjourned Church and dismissed everyone. I hung back. So did E.Z. It drew some curious looks from a few of the other guys, but they all filed out into the main room where Mama Bear waited with a huge pot of chili and beer on tap.

Bear sat back in his chair while E.Z. got up to pace. My stomach roiled as I got up and walked to the end of the table. Bear looked up, his expression stony. He knew what I was going to ask even before I said it.

“It has to be me,” I said. “I have to be the one to tell her.” My words felt so dry in my throat. My heart pumped like a bass drum; I was sure Bear could hear it too.

“It’s been a long time. She’s bound to have moved on. Built a life for herself. You sure, son?” Bear said. Son. Father Sanchez had called me that today too. Yet with Bear, it felt more real. It didn’t feel like a knife twisting in my heart. Ten years had changed so much. But not enough.

“I’m sure.” My heart lurched. Could I go back? Could I reopen these wounds and still hold onto what was left of my soul?

“She needs to know what happened. She needs to hear it from me. Do you still know where she is?” I asked. Ten years ago, I’d made the two men in this room swear never to answer that question for me.

Bear lowered his gaze then reached into the breast pocket of his leather cut. He knew. Of course he knew I would ask this. He pulled out a slip of paper. Just a tiny folded square. And yet, I knew what he’d written on it could change the trajectory of my life again. Just like it had ten years ago.

He slipped the paper into my palm, giving me a firm, solid handshake. I withdrew and put the paper into my own breast pocket without looking at it. E.Z.’s eyes were burning through me too. I knew I should thank them both. All these years, they’d done what I asked. Even now, they were doing it when they knew how wrong my decision might be.

“Take a few days, son,” Bear said. “But don’t disappear.”

Nodding, I turned to leave. That tiny slip of paper with an address written on it I’d sworn him never to give me burned right beside my broken heart.