They all look up as I enter, and I raise my hand in greeting, scanning the room for Blaze. He’ll know what’s going on, he always does.
I find him exiting the room that acts as our kitchen, carrying a bottle of water.
“What happened last night?” I ask.
He looks at me, then averts his eyes. “We lost Mitch.”
Such a simple sentence, but it lands like a ton of bricks on my shoulders. Mitch and his best friend Joe joined about a year ago. Both were younger than me and Blaze, they were so young they didn’t even have road names yet.
“What a fucking waste,” I say, exhaling sharply. “How’s Joe taking it?”
“He took some shrapnel in the arm and leg. Doc’s taking care of him,” Blaze says.
“Good. Doc knows his stuff,” I say, meaning more than just taking care of Joe’s physical injuries. Doc is known as being the MC’s shrink of sorts too. If you got any type of problem, you go see Doc.
Blaze nods and stands aside so I can enter the food room, but I’m not hungry anymore. Or thirsty. Or anything. Though I could use a stiff drink, or five.
“I’m going for a smoke,” Blaze tells me, and I follow him to the end of the hallway where we’ve set up a smoking room for the times of day when it’s just too hot outside. Though I prefer to smoke and in the heat and fresh air and not this airless, smoky cell.
Maverick and Eagle are already in there, each in his own corner, obscured by a sheet of purplish-grey smoke. Me and Blaze stay by the door.
“So what the fuck went wrong?” I ask after smoking about half a cigarette in silence, trying to find some normality in my brain again. It could’ve been me or Blaze, it could’ve been any one of us. Mitch didn’t deserve to die, he was too young. None of us should ever die. It’s such a waste.
“The Knights went in all kamikaze-like,” Eagle scoffs, answering my question. “There was no reasoning with them. It’s like once they got the go-ahead to make their move against the Sinners, they just went wild.”
“I betcha they figured they were invincible with us as their backup,” Maverick puts in venomously. “Fucking idiots. They were so set on their plan with the bombs, we figured they at least knew what they were doing. Not so much.”
“Cross better come down on them hard, that’s all I’m gonna say,” Eagle says, sounding like he’s got a lot more than that to say.
I still don’t know what happened, but I know that the charged, angry air in this room won’t brook any stupid or too pointed questions right now. Clearly, these guys were right there when it happened and saw everything. I give Blaze a questioning look, which he interprets correctly.
“The job was real simple, as you know,” Blaze says. “We’d wait for everyone to go to sleep, then set the bombs, which were to go off later in the night. But once word got out that cops were approaching, Cross called for a retreat. Some of them did retreat, but one group wouldn’t leave without setting their bomb off. Unfortunately, Mitch and Joe were with them, and by the looks of things they weren’t told what was about to happen.”
“Those goddam assholes,” Eagle interjects, tossing his cigarette butt in the ground and stomping it out.
“Joe kept saying, they never told us, over and over again,” Blaze says. “He dragged Mitch’s body away from the burning building after the blast, but there was nothing we could do for him.”
“Half his body was gone,” Eagle says, making me shudder as I imagine it.
“What’s gonna happen now?” I ask, my voice embarrassingly high-pitched. But the death of a brother will do that to you, I guess.
“Cross is livid, I can tell you that much,” Maverick says. “But he hasn’t issued any orders.”
“That blast must’ve taken out at least fifty of the Sinners,” Eagle says. “That’s how many were in the bar when the bomb went off, and there’s nothing left of that building.”
“I fucking hate bombs,” I say.
Eagle nods. “We should’ve just gone in and done it our way. Now I don’t know if we’ll be able to complete this job at all anytime soon.”
“And where the fuck did those cops come from, anyway?” Maverick asks.
I shrug with the rest of them. Maybe Cross has that answer. I hope he does.
I was in such high spirits riding in here, happier and more content than I remember being in a very long time. Or ever. But now all that’s washed away by the news of Mitch’s death and the total failure of this job.
Brenda
I spent most of the day dozing…recovering, really, from the wild night with Colt. Never has a man made me surrender so completely, to him, to the pleasure, to the moment. Never. I made up the bed and put up the Do Not Disturb sign so no one would come and disturb my dreamy remembrance of the magic we made in the dead of night, and the bright morning, for that matter. But by the time the pure white light of the day outside the windows turns to amber, I’m not so sure I haven’t just dreamed it all for real.
He hasn’t called. His smell is faint on the sheets and maybe, just maybe, last night never happened.
I started getting plagued by these weird memory lapses about two months into my stay with the Sinners. One day all that was happening to me was crystal clear, the next I wasn’t sure what was real. It was like a fog had descended on my mind, obliterating hours, sometimes days. And when it cleared, nothing was certain, nothing concrete.
At first I told myself it was just the shock, just the stress of being a prisoner worth less than the shit on the bottom of their boots to the men holding me captive. But then the foggy days kept getting longer, started becoming weeks. I was afraid to tell Stormi, afraid to admit it to myself.
Now I’m free, no Sinners holding me hostage, no Stormi to confide in, but no clarity either.
By twilight, I’m starving and scared of being alone. The heat absorbed by the asphalt and earth all day hits me like a blast from a furnace as I step outside the wonderfully cool motel room. I wish this heat was just a figment of my imagination. But I’m not so lucky.
The glass front of the vending machine is cracked and the blue and silver sign across the top is so busted I can only read the letters VEN and CHIN. Only about a third of the compartments are stocked and I should probably be afraid of eating anything from it, since no one’s been around to check on it for a long time.
“If you’re hungry, we do have a cafeteria here,” a man says, startling me. But when I turn is the pimply kid from reception. “Nothing fancy, Ramen noodles and such like.”
Is he the only one who works here? What the fuck is this? Bates motel? Maybe I should be scared of staying here alone. But Ramen Noodles sound very good right now. Much better a packet of those chips I’ve been eyeing in the vending machine, which I’m pretty sure are turning green with mold.
“Which way?” I ask snappishly since I don’t much like the leering smirk on the kid’s face.
“The door to the left of the reception,” he says, and points.
I wait a few moments for him to lead the way but grow weary of him just standing there with a dumb half-smile on his face as he checks out my boobs.
I feel his burning look on my ass as I start walking. I bet I could get a free meal out of this kid easy, he might even run down and get me a hamburger or something if I asked real nice, but somehow it’s a disembodied part of me thinking this. The woman I used to be before the Sinners caged me, I realize as I open the door.