“I should’ve fucking known,” I mutter. “Where is he?”
“He showed up here last night, and we informed him that he had been voted out for stealing from the club. We went through our books and took a look at those documents you sent over to us. The evidence was overwhelming, and the vote was unanimous. After we whooped his ass and took back his cut, he left on foot.”
“Goddamn it,” I huff while raking my fingers through my hair. “Do you have any idea where he would go?”
“Nope.”
“Well, thanks for letting me know,” I tell him.
“No problem, man,” Malcolm replies before he ends the call.
“Everything all right?” Reece asks when he comes up from the basement and leans his forearms on the bar.
“Evelyn’s mom is in the hospital, and now Evelyn is gone,” I tell him. “I think she went back to the asshole.”
“Why the fuck would she do that?”
“She’s an addict. He has a supply, although now he’s probably rather limited since he’s been exiled from the Dirty Aces.”
“No shit? They booted his ass?”
“Yeah. And now I have no clue where he would be hiding out.”
“Does he own any properties?” Reece asks.
“What?”
“Properties? Houses, condos, an apartment? Anything in his name where he could crash?”
“Holy shit,” I mutter. “Rita’s old place! It’s only been a few weeks, so maybe he’s still under a lease there.”
I start around the bar heading for the door when Reece pushes his palms against my chest to stop me. “Not so fast, buddy. You can’t show up there by yourself.”
“I’ve got my Ruger on me, I’ll be fine.”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” he responds. “But you need to take some backup just in case.”
“I didn’t join the MC to hide behind them,” I scoff.
“No, you joined the MC because you’re not stupid and you know that there are some things you just can’t do on your own. This is one of them. We put a lot of time and effort into training you up because we give a shit what happens to you. It would be a total waste of time for all of us if we let you get killed within a year of patching in.”
“Fine!” I cave. “But I can’t wait forever.”
“Give me fifteen minutes,” he says. “It’s cold as fuck, so we’ll all pile into the van.”
Evelyn
“Call…call…help,” Lowell croaks as he lays in a pool of his own blood that keeps growing bigger and bigger with every passing second while I stand frozen, watching.
I know I should call 9-1-1, but I can’t move. I did this! I stabbed him, and now he’s going to die.
My mother is going to die a slow, agonizing death, and I’m going to be charged with murdering my estranged husband! This is not at all how I imagined my life turning out.
I was supposed to go to community college with Cedric. I wanted to be an x-ray tech, maybe even a surgical assistant or a nurse. I wanted to marry my best friend and have a family with him.
But that’s not what fate had in store for me.
Instead of having anything good, I became a subservient, drug-addicted whore to keep my mother alive, and now it was all for nothing!
“Ev…please,” Lowell begs. “Donor…I’m a…donor.”
“You’re a goddamned liar! A lying, raping, piece of shit! You deserve this!” I scream at him, only realizing that I’m sobbing as my voice cracks and my vision blurs.
“Go get…the file…in the kitchen drawer,” Lowell gasps. “Aces have to have wills drawn up…I got tested years ago…I’m a match for Rita.”
“What? Lowell, what the fuck are you saying?” I gasp as I rush into the kitchen, throwing open drawers until I find the small black folder of documents. There’s his social security card and some other paperwork along with a thick envelope with the word ‘WILL’ scrawled in handwriting on the outside.
“Call an ambulance, Ev” Lowell coughs. “If I bleed out here, I won’t be any good for anyone.”
Even as my eyes are taking in the contents of the document, my hand fishes my phone out of the pocket on my jeans and dials 9-1-1. When the operator answers, I give them the address of my mother’s old apartment, which I know by heart, and tell them that there’s a stabbing victim. Laying the phone down on the countertop while the call is still live, I go back over and kneel down by Lowell, first throwing his knife across the room.
“You knew you were a match for my mother?” I ask him. “How could you never say anything?”
“I wasn’t…going to give it to the old bitch…while I was alive, was I?” he grins, showing me a mouthful of bloody teeth before he turns his head to cough. He groans as he presses his shirt against the wounds in his belly, unsuccessfully trying to slow the bleeding. For a few minutes we simply stare at each other, him too weak and injured to struggle, while I search his battered features, trying unsuccessfully to feel…anything.
“You still won’t if you survive, will you?” I finally mutter. “This was just your bullshit ploy to get me to call an ambulance instead of watching you die,” I whisper, so low the phone can’t pick it up.
“God, you know me…too well, Ev. I don’t think that’s…going to be an issue, though,” he says as he forces another grin. “You know, I did love you…just not as much as I loved myself,” he pauses as a coughing spasm rips through him, spraying blood across the carpet. “I’m glad it was you, Ev…and not that prick Cedric. Figured it would be him…”
When I hear sirens growing closer, I stand up and rush over to the window. An EMS vehicle roars into the apartment parking lot, its brakes squealing as it spots the building number and pulls up out in front. As I walk over to the door to open it up and guide the first responders, I see Lowell’s ragged breathing begin to slow as his eyes follow me across the room. Once I’m outside, I wave the three men past me into the apartment, unable to think of anything further to say or do for Lowell. I simply clutch at the papers in my hand, only vaguely realizing that the shock of what has happened has completely driven all the thoughts of drugs out of my mind.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Cedric
When we pull into the apartment complex parking lot, War suddenly slams on the brakes, causing Torin, Chase, Abe, Reece and I to jostle around violently in the back. “Whew, boy,” War mutters as we all struggle forward to look out the front glass. “Parking’s going to be a bitch up in here,” he adds.
The lot is filled with emergency vehicles. We had passed an ambulance speeding away back on the main road, but I hadn’t given it much thought until now. With the four police cars and firetruck sitting outside of Rita’s old apartment, the memory of that ambulance suddenly punches me in the guts.
“Evelyn,” I whisper. “Oh God, Evelyn. Let me out!” I yell as I hurry over to throw open the side door, leaping out and hitting the ground running.