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“Baby?”
All eyes turned to Pence as the color drained from his face. When he looked directly at me, I knew this was beyond bad. So bad there would be no going back. The bad that forever changed lives.
“Okay, baby. Don’t leave the house. We’re on our way,” Pence said, hanging up before getting to his feet. Reaching for his wallet, he threw a couple of hundreds on the table and said, “Someone hit the clubhouse. It’s bad.”
Forty-five minutes later, we pulled into the club’s compound to find total chaos. Several firetrucks, dozens of police cars and ambulance after ambulance lined the front streets. What caught my attention was that none of the paramedics were moving.
They stood stationary near their rigs.
Cutting the engine of my bike, I slid off as I witnessed a few police officers stumbling out of the clubhouse, only to vomit immediately. Looking for Justin, he turned just as the smell of blood and death hit my nose.
“Katie,” I whispered to no one in particular.
Racing for the entrance, I heard Justin shout. “Kansas, NO!”
The second I stepped foot in the main room, I damn nearly gagged. Brothers, ol’ ladies and club whores. Even the children lay mutilated, torn apart. The youngest, not even four years old. Nothing or no one was recognizable, not even the furniture some of them laid upon. The walls dripped thick, congealed blood into puddles on the hardwood floor, and I knew those stains would never come out. Making my way deeper into the clubhouse, I spotted Big Jim, our club president, laying behind the bar. His head severed from his body. His stomach gutted and laid around him. Everywhere I looked, men I once called brothers lay gone for all time.
Heading up the stairs, I tried to ignore the sloshing, sticky noise from my boots as I walked in blood and tissue that once belonged to someone I knew. The scene was like a horror movie. Only one I’d never seen before.
Mentally, I knew I shouldn’t have come in here. I knew she was gone the second I pulled into the compound. If I thought about it, I’d known something terrible had happened since I couldn’t reach her this morning. My gut told me that something was seriously wrong, but I refused to believe it.
Placing my hand on my door, I slowly pushed it open and stared.
There, laying on our bed, was my beautiful wife. My Katie. Only she wasn’t there anymore. Her eyes were wide with fear as they stared glued to something on the ceiling. Her blood covered every wall and ceiling as her life force dripped onto the floor. Her clothes, ripped from her body, showed the many bruises and cuts as my woman valiantly fought her attacker. I knew she would. My woman would never give up. Her beautiful face was black and blue, but all I saw was strength and determination to overcome the evil that befell her. I didn’t need to see the fluids leaking from between her legs to know that whoever attacked my woman raped her before beating, then stabbing her to death. If what my woman endured wasn’t hard enough, seeing my son cut from her womb, laying discarded at her feet with his neck cut was enough to make me vomit.
And I did just that.
Taking a few minutes, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand before picking our son up and cradling him close to my chest. He was perfect. Lightly kissing the top of his head, I placed him next to my wife in the crook of her arm. Seeing a blanket on the floor, I picked it up and covered them both up before kissing both of their foreheads. “Take care of him, Katie. I’ll see you both soon.”
Turning my back on them, I quietly closed the door and waded back downstairs into the slaughterhouse that was once my saving grace.
I found the Diamondbacks and Big Jim when I needed them most. Big Jim took one look at a snot-nosed kid, and that was all he wrote. One minute I was traveling around with no direction, the next I found myself accepted into a brotherhood I so desperately needed.
While brothers joined the Diamondbacks for their own reason, mine was to escape my family. I hadn’t thought about them, not once since I joined the Diamondbacks and never wanted to. Until now, they were nothing but a distant memory for me. Only now I was wondering what he would do. The reason for my leaving and turning my back on my blood. My big brother, Montana.
I thought it funny in a sick kind of way that the reason I left had befallen me again. Did fate hate me? Did God? Was I destined to suffer pain and heartache forever? I didn’t need an answer. The truth was before my face. While I may love and find happiness, I could never hold on to it.
Life was painful. I knew that better than anyone, but to have it happen again just seemed cruel.
Stepping outside the clubhouse, I never saw Justin walk over to me. Closing my eyes, I pushed every picture, every thought, every feeling I had of my Katie deep into the recess of my mind. I locked the door so that I would never have to feel or see what I just saw again.
“Kanas?”
Turning to the voice, I stared blankly at the man I’d know for a while. A good man, Justin Conway, was honest as the day was long. Though the Lawton Police department didn’t generally mix with the club, today the good detective threw the rule book out the window.
Today wasn’t about ridding the city of Lawton of the Diamondbacks.
Today, the rules changed.
Someone came into our town and killed several of our own.
“Who did this?” I asked.
“We don’t know yet,” Justin replied. “Has the club had trouble? Is there someone out to get you guys? I need something to work with here, Kansas. This is going to make headline news. Everyone is going to want answers. Some of your brothers were born in this town. They have families here that are about to learn the horrible truth. I need to tell them something.”
“I don’t have answers. I wasn’t an officer, Justin. I just did what Big Jim told me to do.”
“You gotta give me something.”
