Chapter 24
Nothing
“I’m tired of getting fucked in ways that don’t end with me getting off,” I said miserably.
“I know, brother, and I’m sorry. I never wanted you to find out let alone like this, but you have to understand, we didn’t want you to remember her that way. Corrine made a monumental mistake, but there was no denying she loved you.”
I closed my eyes and sighed out, “I don’t want to think about this anymore.”
Twilight was invading my back yard and I’d mostly pulled my shit together from this latest soul shattering mind fuck. I was on my second beer and the light buzz wasn’t enough. That Jim Beam was looking awfully tempting but getting obliterated hadn’t been doing me any fucking favors lately and I needed to lay off the sauce.
Cutter’s phone started ringing and he pulled it out of his cut answering, “Yeah Charlie, what’s up?” His expression crushed down into a frown. “You fucking kidding me? Uh huh. Uh huh. Did you get the plate number? Yeah. No, give it to me. Uh huh, yeah text it through,” he pulled the phone away from his face and then put it back saying, “Yeah, I got it man, good lookin’ out.” He hung up the phone with a gusty sigh and immediately tapped out a message.
“Come on man, life ain’t done fucking you yet, me either for that matter. You good to ride?”
“Why, what’s going on?”
“Charlie down at Tiki Steve’s just watched someone roofie and take Charity.”
“You fucking kidding me?”
A mixture of adrenaline and fear chased the low grade buzz from the beer and the weed right out of my system.
“As your girl would say, as a heart attack.”
I got up bent double and screamed “Fuck!” as loud and long as I could to just get it out. “Let’s go, where we headed?” I asked.
“The Plank, let’s move, I gotta call Hope. Son of a fucking bitch,” he said and I didn’t fucking envy him that call.
We rode, and we met Hope, her Ducati screaming down the boulevard, winding down as she pulled up and fell in with us the rest of the way to The Plank. Her deep, dark eyes were snapping fire and mayhem and I had no doubt that some motherfucker was going to die. I was surprised to realize that it was going to be a race as to which one of us got there first.
We piled into The Plank, Trike opening the door for us and locking it behind us. The place had been cleared of anything not in Club colors except for Faith; she strode right up to me and slapped me soundly, the clap of her palm against my flesh echoing off The Plank’s open rafters.
“Woah! Marlin, buddy, control your property!” Beast called out, but Faith was inconsolable, her face streaming with tears as she screamed at me.
“This is all your fault!” she shrieked and resignation settled like a lead weight on my chest. She made to come at me again but Marlin got behind her, catching her wrists in his mitts and pulling her back, cradling her against his chest, holding her by the wrists.
Hope pushed past me and they took her back to the throne room. Cutter gave me a meaningful look, but the accusation stood, stinging in a fiery line from forehead to chin on the left side of my face.
“She’s not wrong, and I’m gonna fix it. Radar, what have you got?” I asked.
No one said a word about my overstepping the Captain by asking. Radar gave a curt nod, “Glad to have you back, Galahad,” he said and turned to his bank of laptops on the corner of the bar.
“Radar,” Cutter intoned.
“Right, Charlie got the plates on his surveillance camera. The car belongs to a rental company out of Miami-Dade International Airport. Looks like it was rented by a Grigori Rossoff, natural born American citizen to first gen Russian immigrants.”
“Fuck, how did we miss him?” Lightning asked.
“Don’t know, doesn’t matter, what else?” I asked.
“Grigori used a corporate credit card for an Iron Horse Holdings LLC. It’s a shell corporation owned by a Sergei Rimini, who also owns four other shell corps one of which’s corporate card was used to rent a hotel room at the Sunglade Motel off of the 595.”
“Good work, man!” Lightning clapped Radar on the back.
“Hunting people; it’s what I do.” Radar gave us the plate number, just in case we got lucky and Cutter gave us our marching orders.
“Marlin, you stay with Faith, she needs you. Hope, Nothing, Radar, and Lightning; let’s roll. Trike, get the first aid kit and medical bay set up in here, just in case.”
“Aye, Captain!” Trike got is ass out from behind the bar and to work.
We piled back out the front door and mounted our bikes, starting them up and falling in behind the Captain. We rode hard, but obeyed the speed limit when we needed to. I was so tempted to split lanes and cane it the whole way, but resisted.
I irrationally kept looking for the fucking plate number. It was stupid, they had a head start. Not much of one, but a head start is a head start. The motel we were after was something like three exits ahead of us when I spotted the fucking car. I was dumbfounded that we’d caught up, but sure as shit, after checking the plates twice from the number Radar had rattled off, that was the car.
“Captain!” I bellowed into the wind, and resorted to the risky move of breaking formation to ride up alongside. I pointed out the car and he nodded. Hand signals were traded, and the consensus was to fall back and to get onto the surface streets with him before attempting a takedown.
There’s an art to getting a car to stop that doesn’t want to when you’re on a motorcycle and the opposition is in the car. I hadn’t ever had a need to perfect such an art, but Radar in his line of work had, and Cutter had done it too, so I dropped back with Hope and Lightning to leave it to the pros. My expertise was in putting men back together when the shit went sideways, and for the first time that I could remember, that frustrated the hell out of me.
Never had I ever been so fucking righteously pissed off. It was like three plus years of rage and pain had just found a convenient target and he was behind the wheel of that car. My last chance at salvation was in that car too, and I wanted to fix things, give her the chance she deserved, be a better man, and I never would get that chance if we didn’t stop these motherfuckers.
The car took the exit for the motel, so it looked like Radar’s information was spot on. I didn’t know what to do with the feelings of doubt that were clouding me, it was a new thing brought on by the fucking bombshell the Captain had dropped on me. My brothers, my whole club had been lying to my face for years. Good intentions being what they were, the doubt I harbored now? It was that road to hell those intentions had been paving for close to four years. No good deed goes unpunished. I thought back to the smuggling work we’d done, to all of the medical care I’d provided to those refugees, and at what cost? The cost of your marriage, you jackass. Corrine couldn’t get it from you, she went elsewhere.
We dropped back further, and tried to avoid being an obvious tail. Easier said than done when you were a pack of bikers and the dude behind the wheel stealing your woman was probably aware that bikers were the big bad in his world.
Cutter gave signal that he and Radar were going in, once we were more towards the glades versus heavily populated areas. Hope fell back next to me, her face unreadable behind her black, full face mask helmet. It was a good idea, concealing identity for those of us with legit jobs to worry about, but I painted houses for a fucking living. Radar had the bottom half of his face covered with an orange bandana. We all wore our colors, but that was the beauty of brotherhood. If we got pinched, one of the boys with a record would step up to take the fall.
My belief in these guys was rattled, but on some things? It remained true. That was one of them. We rode, me and Hope up front, Lightning acting as our tail gunner. It was getting dark, but we could still see Cutter and Radar split and go to either side of the car. Cutter’d disengaged his getback whip from his clutch lever and with a mighty overhead swing, brought the lead ball the tip contained down hard on the driver’s side of the windshield.
The sound of the crack it made against the safety glass traveled all the way back here. The Captain kicked out, his boot making contact with the driver’s side door. The guy in the car swerved towards Cutter, who evaded, but just barely. Hope revved her Ducati and leaning down over her tank, punched it. The engine whined and she shot forward. There wasn’t any stopping her, but I think she and the Captain had some kind of accord because he dropped back and let Hope pull up.
She waved at the driver of the car to pullover, but he swerved at her instead. She punched it again and he missed her, but it was close. Cutter pulled up, and took another swing, only this time Radar pulled forward out of the driver’s blind spot where he’d been hiding and took out the passenger side of the windshield. The driver braked hard, tires squealing, brakes screaming and both the Captain and Radar kept going.
Lightning, who had pulled up next to me, shot me a hand signal for ‘get ready’ and I gritted my teeth, sure I wasn’t going to like this even as smoke rose from the screaming rear tires of the car and it shot forward. Fuck, he was making a run at the Captain.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
I looked up, past the car at Hope in the road, feet shoulder width apart, smoking gun in hand, she ditched off to the side, rolling, even as the car tipped up onto its side, it’s momentum carrying it along on its passenger side into the ditch on the side of the road.
“NO!” I screamed and torqued down hard on my accelerator. I braked hard, rolling to a stop by the car, barely having the wherewithal to put down my kickstand. Cutter and Radar were there and Cutter hoisted himself up onto the driver’s side of the car. He reached into the busted out driver’s window and seized the driver by the collar, slashing through the seat belt holding him.
“Charity!” I screamed. Cutter threw the injured driver down and Hope, Lightning, Radar, and I put our shoulders to the roof of the car.
“One, two, three, push!” Hope’s muffled cry from beneath the black carapace of her helmet. We put our backs into it and shoved the car the rest of the way over onto its wheels.
“Charity!” I screamed and thumping and bumping alerted us to the rear of the car.
“The trunk, man! Pop the trunk!” Radar cried and Lightning dove into the busted out driver’s side window. I was already there, the trunk flew open and Charity’s ice blue eyes, wide with a combination of fear and rage met mine.
“It’s okay, I got you, Baby. Do you think anything’s broken?” I asked her, running my hands over every part of her the awkward position she was in allowed me to reach.
I pulled the gag out of her mouth and she said, “No, get me out, get me out of here, now!”
“Hold still,” I put my arm beneath her knees and one behind her back, lifting with my knees. I turned and set her down carefully in the grass. “It’s okay, you’re okay; I’ve got you.”
“I know I’m okay,” she snapped and she demanded, “Untie me.” I flipped open my folding blade and sawed through the zip tie cutting into her wrists, and through the strips of material around her ankles. She pushed to her feet.
“Woah, woah, woah! I need to check you out, Baby, steady.” She wobbled on her feet for a second and pushed me off of her, making strides to where Cutter had the guy that’d kidnapped her. The first thing she did was march over to him and stomp one of her sturdy wedge heeled shoes down on his balls.
“Oh!”
“Ooo!” Lightning and Radar said in unison and we drifted over to where the guy was cradling his family jewels.
“We’ve got to move before we’re seen, Captain. Someone could come down this way any minute.”
“K, we’re going to the hotel,” he said and Charity stood, nodding, chest heaving in her outfit that she’d put on special to go have drinks with this asshole. Because you hurt her. You rejected her. The thought made me feel sick, but it was true just the same. She and I stared the distance between one another.
“Charity,” Hope called and flipped up her visor on her helmet, “Charity!” she barked. Charity tore her eyes from me and looked at her sister.
“Go with Nothing, back to Ft. Royal. We’ll handle this. Okay?”
Charity nodded and I held out my hand to her. She walked unsteadily to me and took it. I led her to my bike and asked her in a low, soothing tone, “You okay, Baby?”
“I’m not your fucking ‘Baby’ hotshot. Just take me home. Faith has to be freaking out.”
“She is, and I want to check you out. Adrenaline has you going, you’re gonna crash.”
“I know that, asshole!” she snapped and I took it. I deserved it.
“Can you ride?” I asked. She was shaking so bad, I had my doubts.
“I’m gonna have to; let’s go.” I got on my bike and she got on behind me, holding onto me tight, her body trembling against mine. I didn’t like it.
“Hang on tight,” I told her, she turned her head and the mercenary side of Charity came right out in the open. The part that was all her sister, Hope.
“Kill that son of a bitch!” she screamed, and I fired up my bike and took her home, to Ft. Royal.