Cole

 

I hung up the phone. The sound of Alena crying kept playing in my head. It took everything in me not to go straight to Skull’s and beat him half to death.

 

I got on my bike and headed straight for the bar. A million questions ran through my mind. Who would do that? Why were they so desperate to keep her away?

 

I knew I was asking the wrong questions. After what had gone on between Skull and me that afternoon, I knew anything was possible. He was desperate, sneaky. He wouldn’t stop until he was sure he was safe. But from what? He wouldn’t even tell me what he had done to be so worried about.

 

He didn’t need to, though. The longer this went on, the better an idea I had. And I hated to think about it.

 

###

 

I wasn’t looking forward to going to the police station after leaving Alena’s. What criminal did, even if it wasn’t to be locked up? It was like asking a kid to go to school over vacation. Why be there when you didn’t have to be?

 

But then, I did have to be. I had to bail my friend out.

 

Some friend. He was fucking my life up. I reminded myself not to have thoughts like that. Before I knew it, I’d start resenting him. It would all go downhill from there.

 

I couldn’t help it, not after I thought about the things I told Alena at her house. He was the only normal thing in my life during those crazy times. He had been the only thing I could count on when everything else was going to shit. If I couldn’t count on him now, what was I supposed to do?

 

I rode my bike back to my house so I could pick up my car. I didn’t know if Skull would be in any shape to ride his bike, or whether he still had his license. With a DUI, it was probably suspended. How could I lead the club with a VP who couldn’t ride? That was one of the first rules of the club—you had to be able to ride to be a member.

 

He was causing more complications lately than anything else. I had to have a serious talk with him when I got him out. I didn’t care if he felt like talking or not. It was time to get serious.

 

I couldn’t miss the dirty looks I got when I walked into the station. I loved knowing how uncomfortable I made these assholes. Some of them I used to know in school. I’d beaten a few of them up, too, back when we were kids. They all had a beef against the club, and with me personally.

 

I walked up to the desk. “I’m here for Skull,” I said.

 

“You have money for bail?” the clerk asked.

 

“How much again?”

 

“Ten thousand dollars.”

 

I made sure all eyes were on me—and they were, just waiting to see if I could pay that type of fee—before I pulled out a wad of hundred dollar bills.

 

“This might take a minute to count out,” I said. “I assume you take cash?” I heard one of the cops snicker in the back of the room.

 

Once I paid the bail and got a receipt, I sat down to wait for Skull to be processed and brought out to me. How many times had I been here? More than I could remember, for sure. Sometimes to bail out friends, most of the time for stupid things I’d been picked up on. Drunken fights, causing trouble in town. Sometimes for no reason at all. Club members were always being brought in anytime things happened, just because of who we were.

 

“Mr. Sutton?” I turned my head when I heard my name called. One of the deputies was looking at me. I knew him well. He was one of the assholes I went to school with. Aaron McGuinness.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Can I ask you a few questions? You know, while you’re here?”

 

Fuck. What was this about? I shrugged like I couldn’t have cared less. The last thing I wanted was for one of these guys to think they had an edge on me.

 

I got up and walked back to Aaron’s desk. He waved at a chair, and I sat.

 

“How’s it going, Cole?”

 

I didn’t want to show him how irritated it made me when he called me by my first name, like we used to be friends. We hated each other. He didn’t let an opportunity pass to drop a snide comment about me when we passed in the hall. He and his friends would laugh and mutter things about my parents. I hated the hypocrisy people were expected to live by when they grew up.

 

“Fine, thanks. What can I help you with?”

 

He looked over a file. “We’ve had someone in here a few times recently, asking questions about her sister’s disappearance. She seemed to think your club might have had something to do with it.” He glanced up at me. “Ring any bells?”

 

Damn it. I frowned as if I was thinking about it. “I don’t think so.” I shrugged.

 

“Really? Because we have a few people who are willing to go on record, stating they saw you with the girl shortly before she disappeared.”

 

I nodded slowly. “Do you know exactly when she disappeared? Like…did she vanish into thin air? Did these people see that happen?”

 

Aaron smirked. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

 

“I’m just saying, how does anyone know I was the last person to see her? Anything could have happened between whenever that was and whenever she actually disappeared. Something to think about.”

 

Aaron nodded. “Gotcha. Let’s just say we have a good idea when she disappeared. She didn’t call her sister the next day, so we guess she vanished sometime between when you saw her and the following afternoon.”

 

“Seems a lot of people might have crossed paths with her. Right? Have you guessed that?” I couldn’t help myself. He was basing this on a lot of guessing and maybes. Meanwhile, where the hell was Skull?

 

His eyes narrowed. I knew he thought he was dangerous. “Just a heads up, from one guy to another, we’re gonna be taking a look at your club a little more closely. Now that we have these signed statements, and this girl’s been missing for over five weeks without a sign from her, we want to hit the gas pedal. Especially when guys like your buddy here get themselves into the sort of trouble he’s in right now.”

 

“What? DUI?”

 

“Ehh…not exactly.” He nodded toward the door, behind me, and I turned to look.

 

When Skull came out behind one of the cops, I almost did a double take. He looked worse than he had when I saw him at the bar. I saw what Aaron meant. He’d gotten into a fight, too. I hoped it wasn’t with the officer who pulled him over.

 

“It was with the officer who pulled him over,” Aaron muttered. “Took a swing at him.”

 

Fuck. Now the whole club was being looked at because Skull couldn’t control himself. It was all I could do to keep my temper while we were in the station. I waited until we were in the car and out of the parking lot before I lost it on him.

 

“What do you think you’re doing? Are you insane? Hitting a cop? It’s bad enough you got caught riding drunk, but then you had to hit him? What the hell is your problem, Skull?”

 

He was slumped against the door with his eyes closed. “Please stop yelling,” he said. His one eyebrow had been split open, and he had a pretty mean black eye. I was glad for it. It saved me the trouble of doing it to him. It wasn’t half of what he deserved, either. I growled in frustration, wishing I could wail on him.

 

“You need to tell me, now, what’s going on with you. This isn’t you. If something’s that wrong, let me help you with it.”

 

“I keep telling you. There’s nothing wrong.”

 

“Since the police are gonna start looking into the club thanks to you, I’m glad there’s nothing wrong. I’d hate for this all to have happened for a reason.”

 

“What do you mean?” I straightened up and stared at me.

 

“They’re going to start looking more closely at everything we do. It’s bad enough Sara disappeared— “

 

“What about Sara?” His voice went from foggy and disinterested to sharp just like that.

 

“I’m the last person anyone saw her with, outside your house. That’s bad enough. Now they’re pissed at you for hitting one of them, so they’re gonna be on our asses.”

 

“How do you know that?”

 

“Because Aaron McGuinness fucking told me, that’s how!” My roar echoed through the car. Skull flinched. I calmed, but only a little.

 

“See the problem?” I asked. “Now they’re going to look at everything we do. Remember the last time this happened? Back when all that shit was going down? It was bad enough Nails and everyone else died, but then the cops were on us because of the way it went down.” It was a tense, terrible time. We had a cop car in front of the bar almost every day. They’d follow us everywhere, from a distance. Not enough to obviously get in our business, but enough to make sure we knew they were watching. Pricks.

 

“You know we can’t have that right now,” I said to Skull. It seemed like he was finally starting to get the picture. He looked a little sick.

 

“Shit,” he said. That was all he said for a long time. I let him think it over. I hated getting mad at him like that, and I knew it only made him shut down, so I hoped giving him a minute to think about what I said would help.

 

He laughed bitterly. “Remember when we were kids, and it seemed like the world was gonna end over the most stupid things?”

 

I frowned. “Not so stupid, man. We had a lot more to worry about than a lot of kids our age.”

 

“That’s true. But I mean the really stupid things. Like whether a girl liked us, or if we were gonna pass chem class or something.”

 

I laughed, too. “Yeah. Those were the days, or something.”

 

He was looking out the window, away from me. I glanced at him. Where was he going with this?

 

“Sometimes I think it would be easier to go back to those days,” he said.

 

“Not me. Stuff’s hard now, but it wasn’t any better back then. I thought about that for a minute earlier. When I was talking with Aaron. Remember what a dick he always was?”

 

“Yeah, him and his jock friends. He’s one of the types you just knew was gonna become a cop, so that he could be a dick to people and call it his job.”

 

“Exactly. He’s the type to do that.”

 

“What was his problem, anyway?”

 

I shrugged. “Maybe because I stole his girlfriend.”

 

Skull laughed. “That’s right. Way to go, pissing him off like that.”

 

“I only did it so he would know he didn’t have everything going for him. He always thought he was hot shit because he played baseball and football, and because his parents had a little money. There was one thing I could do better than him. A lot of things, if you listened to his girlfriend.” We both laughed. It was good to laugh with him. It felt like old times.

 

“You had to go and piss him off, though. Then he was worse than ever. All over a woman.”

 

“It was worth it,” I said, grinning. “She was sweet. I had a good time with her. Sex-starved.”

 

“It’s never worth it.” I almost didn’t hear him, he spoke so low.

 

“What did you say?”

 

“I said it’s never worth it. Getting in trouble over a woman.” Here we were again. I knew he had to mean Sara. I thought about Alena, and how much she loved her sister. I loved Skull, too. I knew how it felt to want to protect someone—as much as I told myself for years that I had no attachments, it wasn’t totally true. I knew I might end up having to sacrifice Skull for Alena and the club, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to go that far.

 

“What do you mean?” I hoped I wasn’t pushing too hard, but I needed to know.

 

“Women aren’t worth it.”

 

“I thought you and Teresa were getting along well together.” Skull had been seeing her for a couple of weeks. It was a casual thing, which was unlike Skull. He was always jumping into living with a woman before he knew her.

 

“We are. I didn’t mean her. And even then, though, she can be a pain in the ass.”

 

“Can’t they all? That’s just the way women are. But I know I’m not gonna give them up.” I tried to laugh, to keep things light. He didn’t laugh with me this time.

 

“All they do is cause problems. Being too mouthy, or too needy. I can’t stand that shit. And even when you tell them in the beginning that you don’t like it when women are that way, they’ll tell you whatever it is they think you wanna hear just to get into bed with you. And you think it’s all nice, right? Like this girl is gonna be different. But there’s no such thing. They’re all alike. Pretty soon they start asking you where you go at night, why you don’t call them more often. Why you didn’t check in with them, like you’re in jail, and they’re the warden.”

 

“Yeah. That does suck.” Did Sara do that to him? I never knew her very well, but she didn’t seem the type. I had known my share of demanding women, so I knew what to look for. She had always struck me as being very sweet and quiet. But you never knew what went on behind closed doors.

 

“Then they wanna know why you haven’t called in awhile. Maybe because every time you do, they give you a raft of shit over one thing or another. Who needs that? Why would I want to call someone and get yelled at?”

 

“This is why I’ve stayed single,” I told him. “I don’t have time for that shit.”

 

“You were smart. You were always smarter than me.” He sounded miserable and scared, like a little boy. Who was this person? Even when we were kids, he didn’t whine like this. It was like he was breaking down.

 

“Not smarter than you. Just smart in a different way. How many times have I told you everything you did for me? You’re more level-headed than I am. You’ve kept me out of trouble. You’ve had my back. You know how to talk to people better than I sometimes do. You don’t rush into things the way I do. We’re a team.” I was almost at a loss for what to say to make him understand. “I just wanna have your back now. You know? I see something’s tearing you apart inside, and I want to help. It’s killing me to see you worried.”

 

He wouldn’t speak, leaning up against the car door again instead. I shook my head. Why the hell did he have to be so stubborn?

 

“Fine.” I was tired of playing games with him. “If you don’t wanna tell me, fine. But you have got to get your shit together, man. If not for you, and not for me, then for the club. Our asses are in hot water. I hate to say this, but it’s because of you. I can’t have you doing things like this. We’re already trying to balance shit out, and then you have to pull something like this. How does that look to the rest of the club?”

 

“I know, I know.”

 

“No, you don’t know. I didn’t think you could be this selfish.”

 

“Selfish?” He glared at me.

 

“You used to be able to see the big picture.”

 

“I’m fine with the big picture. I think it’s you who has a problem seeing it lately.”

 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

 

He shrugged. “You need to think about who you’re loyal to, that’s all.”

 

I went cold inside. Alena? How could he know about her? Then again, maybe someone told him about her being in the bar. Hadn’t Mona said something the night before? The little bitch. I should never have fucked her. She wasn’t even that good, especially not compared to Alena.

 

“Since when do you question my loyalty?”

 

“Since you started spending more time with people outside the club. That’s all.”

 

“You’ve known me most of your life. How can you say something like that?”

 

I pulled up in front of his house. It was a lot like mine, just big enough for him to live in comfortably. A little saltbox on a pretty much empty street. It seemed like we both lived best in open areas where there weren’t a lot of nosy neighbors.

 

I locked the doors so he couldn’t get out, and I turned to him. “Tell me. What are you talking about? Let’s stop playing games.”

 

“I know you’ve been hanging out with someone new. And she can be just as dangerous to the club as you think I’m being.”

 

“Who are you even talking about?”

 

“You know who I mean. That Alena chick. Sara’s sister.”

 

I swallowed hard. My protective streak was coming out. What did he mean to do to her? And since when did I doubt my best friend like this?

 

“So what? What’s she got to do with anything?”

 

He snickered. “Do you think I don’t know why you’re asking me all these questions about Sara all of a sudden? Come on. I’m not stupid.”

 

“I wouldn’t have to ask you questions about Sara if you didn’t already tell me you hit her when you were fighting.”

 

“So I hit her. Big deal. Men hit women all the time. I bet you’ve hit at least one.”

 

I shook my head. “I don’t hit women. You know that.”

 

He sneered. I’d never seen him sneer like that before. Like an animal. “Right. You’re so much better than me. I forgot.”

 

How had we gotten so far off course? It was like I didn’t know him anymore.

 

Then something hit me. “How did you know who she was? Alena, I mean? How did you know I was spending time with her?” When he didn’t answer, I got an idea. “Did you follow me last night?”

 

He wouldn’t answer, so I knew he had. Shit. Now he knew where she lived. It was killing me inside, thinking my best friend might want to hurt this woman. It wasn’t just because of who she was, either. I was never big on hurting women for any reason. Nails had taught me that, among other things. Always try to take the action away from where women or children were. I took that lesson to heart. I guessed Skull didn’t.

 

“She doesn’t mean anything,” I said. “Yeah, she was looking for her sister, but I think she’s coming around to the idea of Sara never coming back.”

 

“She said that?”

 

I looked out the windshield to the dead hedges in front of Skull’s house. Hadn’t they looked nicer the day I stood out there with Sara? A lot of time had passed since then. “Not in so many words, but in the way she talks about her. Past tense, you know. She knows she needs to move on if she’s ever gonna be happy.”

 

“You two have gotten close,” he muttered.

 

“So what? You’re allowed to have Teresa and whatever woman you want, and I can’t?”

 

“You never did before,” he pointed out.

 

I shrugged. “So what? She’s not anything special. I went over there last night to remind her to keep her nose out of our business. That’s all.”

 

“You’re sure?”

 

“You’re reminding me of the women you were just talking about, who always have to ask questions.”

 

He laughed a little. “Thanks.”

 

“And yeah. I’m sure,” I said. “She’s nothing special. I’m not hooked, believe me. No woman has ever hooked me.” But if anyone could, I thought, it would be her. Something told me this wasn’t the time to share my inner thoughts with my best friend.

 

He looked satisfied. I knew I wasn’t going to get any further with him, so I unlocked the doors. “You better get some rest,” I said. “Wash your face. You look like hell.”

 

“Thanks a lot.” He touched a finger to his eyebrow and winced. “Son of a bitch has a mean right hook.”

 

“Looks like it.” He opened the door and swung his legs out. When he bent to climb out, I saw something sticking up out of his back pocket.

 

“Oh, tell me you weren’t carrying that last night,” I joked. “I’m sure whoever it was was thrilled to see your knife in your pocket after you got in a fight with them.”

 

He pulled it out. “Yeah, they were happy to get this away from me.” I recognized his hunting knife. What the hell had he been carrying that around for? He was getting to be a looser cannon every day.

 

When he walked into the house, I told myself I didn’t wanna believe he was the one who had held a knife to Alena’s throat. But who else could it have been? And then he followed me to her house, all because he was afraid of what I would find out, I guessed.

 

And then what? Had he gotten even drunker when he saw where I was going? Did he look her up the way I had? He must have made the connection pretty quickly.

 

Now that he knew where she lived, I knew he wouldn’t stop at just threatening her with a knife. He could do whatever he wanted. Why was he so desperate to shut her up? I hoped she’d been scared enough by him that she would stay far away from now on.

 

But I knew her well enough to know she wouldn’t. She wasn’t going to let this go. If she kept snooping around, and he found out about it, I wouldn’t be able to stop him. Not unless I stuck to her side all day, every day, which would be impossible.

 

I punched the dashboard. What the hell was I supposed to do?

 

###

 

This went through my mind as I made the ride to the bar where Alena had done her gig. Was he following her? No, that wasn’t even possible. He’d had his license suspended, hadn’t he? The cops would be on him. He couldn’t get away with riding around town.

 

Then who? Did he have friends in the club I didn’t know about? Yeah, we were all friends, to a point. But sometimes little subgroups were formed for one reason or another. I didn’t wanna think of all the reasons why a group would form right now. Was he making allies behind my back? Could he have gotten one of them to follow Alena?

 

Where would he stop?