For no particular reason, I ride north. Miles fly past. After a couple of hours, I cease keeping an eye on the road behind me. Continuing along the same route, I stop only for gas and fuel for myself, before getting on the move again. For almost twenty hours, I ride, or until I know I can’t go on anymore. When I halt, I’m unaware of what state I’m in, mentally or in actuality.
Entering the motel room, I collapse fully clothed on the bed, falling asleep immediately.
I wake as sunlight comes in through the curtains. For a moment, I wonder where I am and how I got here, and why I’m not back in my room at the clubhouse. As the events of yesterday come flooding back. I lie, hands behind my head, thinking.
The brothers won’t understand. I’ll have left them believing I’m a coward and that I ran to avoid my punishment.
I did not.
I might have been riding blindly yesterday, not caring where the road was taking me, but in my head, thoughts were whirring. Things that should have become clear years ago, only coming into clarity now.
Nazia trying to blow herself up, Marjan’s disappearance… No, it starts before that with Pooh’s death. A senseless act caused by Smythe’s panic, which didn’t absolve me. I was guilty as fuck, but how could I have left those kids to die?
Then came Nazia’s unexplained death and my inability to find her sister, followed immediately by the news that my whole team had died. Loss and failure, failure and loss, cycles of my life on repeat.
A therapist would probably tell me I’d been struggling since, and maybe they’d be right. My actions hadn’t been rational, though my reasoning appeared sound. I thought I was being sensible, not wanting to put myself in the position of losing brothers again or being responsible for them, but instead it all got twisted in my head.
With sudden clarity, I understand. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust them, I didn’t trust myself.
And fuck, I was right not to. Look what a fuckup I made of things. Drummer could have decided to take our charter because of what I’d done. But perhaps it wasn’t just me to blame. It had been Pip’s desire for secrecy which upset Drummer most, but that had only given me enough rope to hang myself. I took distrust to the fucking limits and stretched it further. Pip’s desire to fly under the radar might have provided the envelope, but I’d written the letter, outwardly showing my disdain for men wearing the same patch as myself, simply because they belonged to another chapter.
As the sun starts to rise in the sky, I admit everything at last. I hadn’t run because I was a coward. I’d run because I was ashamed.
The punishment doled out would have done nothing to assuage that. A beatdown would have been painful, but I’d have survived. Six months prospecting would have been hard no doubt, but it wouldn’t have wiped the slate clean. I let my chapter and all of the Satan’s Devils down. There weren’t sufficient amends I could make.
The devil on my shoulder reminds me I wasn’t the only one to bring Drummer’s wrath down onto the club. That honour’s all Pip’s. He patched in Swift which stretched the Satan’s Devils’ rules almost, but as it turned out, not quite to a breaking point. Pip was the prez who couldn’t ride, that little fact which blew every regulation out of the water. He was the one who’d stepped in and taken over the club, for good reasons, but ones which primarily served his own purpose. He was my enabler, I couldn’t forget that.
But Utah had become something admirable, it gave purpose to all our lives. It had saved me from disappearing down a hole of my own despair. And I rewarded them how?
There’s no denying I personally insulted two of the chapters of the club, and by association, Drummer and the mother chapter. That was the straw with potential to break the camel’s back. As it is, Snatcher is hanging on to his charter by his fingernails now. Drummer will be watching very carefully.
I haven’t left forever, in my heart I know that. I will return. But I’m not going back empty-handed. I need something to make them trust I have their interests at heart and that I deserve a chance to prospect for them again. It won’t wipe the slate clean, but maybe it’ll make their acceptance of me, and mine of them, easier.
For now, the Satan’s Devils Utah will have to ride on without me.
They’re hanging on by a thread, Drummer will be all over them like a rash. And one thing they don’t need is something coming along and catching them on their blind side.
I might be arrogant, but I’ve remembered something they’ve overlooked during the last couple of days with the mayhem of Drummer’s arrival, and that’s that while Swift’s captors have all been dealt with and the reason behind her kidnap had all been to do with Pip and his past, there remains one thing which makes it a matter that’s not yet a closed book.
There’s a risk that though the kidnappers are dead, there could be someone else involved who’s still very much alive. If there’s one, there may be others, and Pip might do well not to stop looking over his shoulder.
It’s a small lead, but one worth investigating.
Swift was kidnapped and held in a vacation rental, and an unknown woman had made the booking. Maybe under duress, maybe she was part of the team. Maybe it wasn’t a she. It could have been Saul Kincaid or one of his cohorts registering under a fake name. But Airbnb do run rudimentary checks. To my mind, something would have needed to be set up to prove the woman who rented the place had at least at some point had an existence that would pass scrutiny. Who is she, and what risk remains to the club?
It may be something, it may be nothing, but I could check it out. If I found anything, I could eliminate any remaining risk. Only then will I return to my club and take my punishment, at least I’d have something to prove my allegiance.
It shouldn’t take long. I sit up, realising I hadn’t undressed, and feeling the loss of the one garment I should be wearing. I roll my shoulders promising myself it won’t be long until I wear my cut again. Albeit, I muse wistfully, with a prospect patch. The sentence has been passed, I have to accept it.
Now I’m fully awake and plans consolidated in my head, my stomach growls loudly. It’s an inconvenience, but I have to eat. I shower, dress again in yesterday’s clothes. Despite knowing it’s not there, I automatically reach for my cut, when my hand hits air I let the pain pass through me. I pick up my saddlebags and stride to the restaurant located next door.
Even without my cut, my appearance screams biker and stay away from me. I’m not bothered, it means no one will bother me. I walk to a corner table, sit with my back to the wall, and take out my laptop. I give a cursory glance at the menu, then start to work.
When the waitress appears, I order coffee—black, no sugar—and the food that will set me up for the day, when she’s left me in peace I settle to concentrate.
Always hoping I’d be sent out on the road as a nomad once again, I’d used my time wisely while I was in Utah, leaving myself a back door into their systems. My brothers might be good, but I’m their equal if not better, and they’ll never know I’ve been in and used the resources they have. I log in with the full confidence I’ve disappeared off the grid and that they’ll never find me.
The online booking site gives me no problems, and soon I have a name—Catherine Beeswick—and an address. It’s in Kentucky. With a huff at myself, I remember I don’t actually know where I laid my head last night, and have to glance at the address on the menu to find out. It seems I’m in Minnesota, well, fancy that. Googling it’s another nine hundred miles to bring me close to her. It’ll be another long ride, twelve or thirteen hours give or take and depending how hard I push it. Right now my ass wishes Preacher would turn up with his fucking plane, but there’s no point wishing for resources I no longer have. Kentucky’s a fucking long way from Utah. If my brothers are looking for me, I’ll have time to find answers. Only a lunatic would have ridden so far.