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My childhood friends, Melody, Truly, and I spent a lot of time together. I like to think that we weren’t trying to relive our high school days, but we still found ourselves doing the same kind of things together that we used to and still having a blast doing them. They loved to tease me by drawing similarities between myself and that old-school cartoon character, Mr. Magoo. Because—evidently—having narrowly escaped some pretty sketchy moments without losing my mind, meant that I went through life with blinders on. I loved them like sisters, but what they don’t get about me is that just because I don’t run out of the building screaming, doesn’t mean that I don’t know it’s on fire.
Truly is adorable with her pixie-cut, shining, dark hair, light green eyes, and lips that were so full she had had to grow into them. She bored easily and never stayed at one job for long. Currently, she was working for Mr. Ling at the Soap and Suds Laundry Service. Truly had a fondness for three malt whiskey and Lewis Carroll. Inked on Truly’s left arm was the complete scene from Alice in Wonderland’s tea party.
Melody had given Truly that tattoo.
Don’t be fooled by her looksshould be etched into Melody Carmody’s tombstone. She is petite, with wide blue eyes, silky blonde hair, and a little bow mouth from which she swore like a sailor. She had the temper of a Hun and the courage to match. She had been on the cover ofInk Artist Magazinetwice and carried concealed in her Givenchy bag. If she knew who the father of her baby boy was, Melody wasn’t telling.
I am tall and slender with too-long legs and too-small breasts. My skin is clear and pale but still dotted with freckles. The circus clown red of my hair has toned down to a shade of golden auburn, but the riot of curls remained tight and now hung in long ringlets down my back. I had been offered a couple of modeling jobs during my stint in the city, and I had smiled for the camera a few times. The money had been good, but the boredom of standing for long moments in pose after pose had been numbing. So that hadn’t lasted long. I still painted, but now it was for my enjoyment. Mostly, I did commission work forStinkin’ Ink, Melody’s Tattoo Parlor.
Without a doubt, Truly, Melody and I were as different as three women can be on the outside. But on the inside, we were still the same little girls who had held hands together that first day of school and had been holding each other’s hands one way or another ever since.
After a long day, me and my girls liked to meet up a couple of nights a week at Savage’s Saloon. Savages sold beer on tap and had the best barbecue within a fifty-mile radius. It had been a staple in the community for what seemed like forever. Salty, the owner, had served in both Korea and Vietnam and despite his advanced age kept the bar tight. The Silver Sinner brothers were regulars and over the last couple of weeks I had seen a lot of faces I recognized, but not one of them had been Kid. When I asked my girls about him, they just shook their heads and said he wasn’t around too much anymore and that probably was a good thing. I was going to askwhyKid not being around was a good thing, but then a look passed between them that made me think I probably wouldn’t like the answer, so I let it go. But as the weeks went by and there was still no sign of Kid, I began to wonder.
While weekends at the bar were always crazy, weeknights were usually pretty chill, and tonight was no exception. About a dozen Silver Sinners were playing pool while their wives and girlfriends sat at the tables nearby. There was a group of steelworkers from Local 473 relaxing with a couple of brews after their union meeting. Tommy Brown was sitting at his usual table in the back taking bets on just about anything you wanted to risk your hard-earned money on. Card games and pool tournaments were underway. The vibe was small-town hustle with friendly competitions and cheap beer. Everyone knew everyone else, and it was pretty much business as usual.
Business as usual, that is, except for the lone couple dancing in the middle of the floor. Their PDA had the attention of half the room. The woman was young, not much older than a girl really, and sporting an extra fifteen pounds that my skinny hips couldn’t help but envy. She had a small waist, round hips, apple bottom ass, and full breasts. Her hair was colored Umbro style with a blond color on top that faded into a pretty, light pink. She had a lot of piercings, a few strategic rips in her fishnets, and expensive black leather biker boots. Her clothes were too short and too tight, and I figured that the guy who currently had his hands on her ass and his tongue down her throat might not have an easy time getting that tight skirt over those curvy hips. But good for him, he looked more than willing to try.
“You know what that is right there?” Arnie, the guy who had just nailed my ass in darts came up behind me and nodded to the couple on the floor.
“Foreplay?” I asked with just a tinge of envy because it had been a while.
“Suicide,” Arnie said it like he meant it. Then he nodded his head towards the entrance.
Four Silver Sinners had just entered the bar. At the front of them was a big man, who was made even larger by the aura of his bearing. He had the look of a Viking…blonde hair worn shaven on both sides of his head while the top was gathered in a series of long braids tied by leather strips. His feet stood wide apart and were covered in heavy boots. The rest of him was covered in worn leather…muscular thighs were encased in brown, road dusted chaps and his broad shoulders sported the cut of the Silver Sinners MC. V.P. was monogrammed over the place where a man’s heart should be. There was a thin silver ring pierced into his nose and no laugh lines around his eyes. When he took a step forward, I had to fight the absurd desire to drop to my knees and bow my head.
His gaze swept the room and when they landed on me they stopped and flashed with surprised recognition and something that both made my toes curl and my heels step back.
Kid Harding.
Before I had time to process, Kid’s eyes had moved on from me and were now fixed on the couple who were still dirty dancing in the extreme on the barroom floor. The blonde’s skirt was riding high, and that apple bottom was partially exposed and being squeezed like someone was checking for ripe fruit.
Although the couple on the dance floor was way too into each other to notice, the vibe in the room had gone from chill to hyper-alert. The Sinners playing cards in the corner stood up with their inked biceps folded over their chests, spines ramrod straight and legs parted. Conversations lowered and people edged towards the shadowed corners of the room. Truly and Melody flanked me and looped their arms in mine. When I lifted a questioning eye to Melody, she pulled on my arm to draw me tighter to her and whispered an obvious warning, “There’s going to be trouble.”
Suddenly the music stopped and with that came a brief moment of eerie, expectant silence. Then everything happened at once. One of the Sinners locked the door just as Kid grabbed the girl by the back of her hair. Another Sinner threw the girl’s dance partner hard against the wall with a warning tostay the fuck down. But when the guy struggled to his feet awhat are you thinkingmoan swept through the crowd. Instantly, he found himself in a chokehold that had his face turning eggplant and his neck stretched at an odd angle.
Everything in the room suddenly blurred and hushed for me while a spotlight seemed to shine on Kid, or more aptly on the man he had become. I stood mesmerized while I watched as the blonde looked up at him with a tear-stained face, her lips moving fast in a fervent plea. Kid paused for a moment, then with sudden and ferocious force, he threw her from him. The sound of the back of her head hitting the wall made a sickening thud.
Another collective groan sounded through the room as we all watched on in horror as the young woman rallied herself to her hands and knees and crawled back to Kid. She wrapped her arms around his leg, and with a growl, he tried to kick her off. When she shifted her arms higher up on this thigh and looked up at him begging, I felt my stomach turn.
Then things got worse.
Kid heaved a deep sigh as a look of boredom and disgust flashed across his face. His scowl turned fierce, and his strong jaw clenched. Kid’s mighty fist tightened while his whole body coiled in barely suppressed violence. The world stopped as he looked over at me again. He held my gaze like some dark hypnotist while he moved his hand around to the back of his waistband, pulled out a nine-millimeter, and without warning or hesitation shoved it into the pleading, open mouth of the girl at his feet.
The next thing I heard was a blast that sent glass shattering and sent me reeling back on my heels. My heart stopped beating as I covered my face and waited for the blood-curdling screams and the spray of brain matter. I uncovered my eyes just in time to see the bartender put away the shotgun that had just sent bullets flying through the air. As if by voodoo magic the dance floor was empty, the Sinners had disappeared and all signs of Kid and the would-be lovers had vanished.
“Shows over, drinks on the house!” Salty bellowed out while Truly, Melody, and I were thrown forward with the pack of eager customers. And just like that, the music had been plugged back in, and the card dealer in the back had begun to shuffle a brand-new deck. In a very few, too short moments, all was as it was.
Kid Harding
From the Silver Sinners clubhouse to my house was 15.2 miles of winding, steep, country road. I knew all the dips and curves like I knew a woman’s body, and just like a woman’s body I liked to hit it hard. Dark, tormented thoughts had me tightening my grip as I controlled the nine hundred pounds of chrome and steel that roared between my thighs. The speedometer had passed red a few miles back, and when I came up against that next sharp curve, I leaned in low and tight. When I pushed the throttle even harder, the front end of the bike shifted to the left while the back end fishtailed to the right. There were a couple of harrowing moments when I fought to get the machine under control. The last thing I needed was to wipe out on the soft shoulder that I knew was up ahead. Like everything else in my life I got things under control just in goddamn time. It pissed me off that when I pulled over to the side of the road and pulled out a smoke, my hands were shaking.
I had almost killed my damn self, and it was all because of her.
Lidia Rose Hall.
The thought of her made me want to shake out my long hair and roar into the wind like a jungle animal warning an intruder to stay away. Five years, five goddamn years without a word. Then I see her sitting at a bar making herself free for the taking for any asshole that happens by? What was left of the rational part of my messed up brain told me that she was just a girl sitting at the town bar having a night out with her friends…but the irrational badass part of my brain was telling me something completely different. I sat on the edge of that road raging and pacing, smoking and snarling until my head ached and my throat burned. Then I got back on my Harley and drove home.
The stars were shining bright when I stepped onto the porch and punched the code into the door lock. I don’t know why the hell I bothered, nobody in their right mind would ever think about stealing from me. And if someone got it in their head to try, I had high-tech security cameras everywhere, which meant I could hunt the bastards down and beat them to death. Honestly, beating someone to death sounded pretty damn good to me just about all of the time. Being the VP in a club like the Silver Sinners afforded all kinds of opportunities to commit those satisfying acts of violence. In the years since my buddy Rudy had died, I had become one mean, cold and calculating sonofabitch.
