Colt
The glaring, hot sun wakes me from the most pleasant nap I remember taking ever in my life. Brenda’s breathing deeply, her perfect chest rising and falling evenly, her long dark hair spread across the pillow like something out of a fairytale. I could just watch her sleep and be content.
But as things stand, my stomach’s constricting in panic and I’m afraid to check the time. I wasn’t supposed to take all day with this visit. I wasn’t even supposed to take half a day.
I check my watch, relieved that it’s only one PM. We still have a little time.
“Brenda,” I whisper right into her ear. “Wake up.”
She stirs and opens her eyes, looking confused and disoriented like a doe, her deep blue eyes innocent and sparkling.
“I should go soon,” I add.
All the innocence vanishes from her eyes as they narrow at me. She rises, cursing as her elbow snags a lock of her lock hair in her haste to be up and glaring at me.
“Just like that?” she asks.
“Can you look at the pictures first?” I ask, refusing to get sucked back into the conversation we started this visit with. I showed her and told her all that she needs to know about the way things are between us. She understood. We don’t need to waste any more of the little time we have arguing.
“Can you take me to lunch first?” she counters, her eyes still blazing, but in a softer way. She knows what I know. “Somewhere nice. I’m starving and I’m sick of this plain old room.”
Arguing would waste time. Time I’d rather spend looking at her face and talking about more pleasant things. Or just share a silence. Or eating. I could eat, all I had to eat for the last two days are sandwiches in various stages of going bad from being out in the heat.
“You got it,” I say and grin at her.
“Good,” she says and gives me one of those perfect smiles of her, the ones that are equal parts pure happiness and wicked desire, and I dare any man to stay cool and collected when faced with it. “But shower first.”
She leaps off the bed, takes my hand, and pulls me after her to the bathroom.
And once she starts lathering up my whole body, including my hair with her soft, deft hands, I lose all track of time again. And all desire to regain it. Ever. I lose all worry over how I’m gonna explain how long I took getting the info. What comes, comes. It is not now. It is not this perfect woman touching me in ways no woman has ever touched me, making me feel things I’ve never felt before. Things like wholeness, belonging, finding something you lost. Something without which life really is not worth living.
19
Colt
The late afternoon sun is beating at my back and blinding me through my rearview mirrors as I ride back to the bunker, with all the information I needed and more.
Brenda recognized every one of the guys and even wrote out their names and what they most likely did for the club after she found my own chicken-scratch handwriting wanting. Her words, not mine. But accurate.
She was more reluctant to tell me the women’s names but did so after I assured her that whatever happens, none of them will be harmed. We’re only after the men, the ones who would sell us all out to gain an advantage for themselves. Kill or be killed. That’s our world. That’s everyone’s world. It’s just more obvious in ours.
“I don’t enjoy it,” I told her. “But I’ll do what I must to protect what’s mine.”
She gave me a lingering, soft-eyed look when I said it, that seemed to last an eternity and more.
Then she told me the names and places of all the women, including the two that somehow didn’t make it onto the photos.
I’m confident now that this job won’t take more than a night. Maybe two. One for planning, one for execution.
And I told her as much, before I left, when she got all cold and prissy again, before melting into my arms as I kissed her goodbye and then waving me off from the doorway of the motel room.
It will take me a lifetime to figure out her mood shifts and what goes on behind those pretty, midnight-blue eyes of hers. And I’m more than willing to give it.
Brenda
I was of two minds as I let him go and watched him ride off, and they were at war with each other. Anger and frustration crashing against understanding and love. Love confessed. Love expressed. Love shown.
It won out.
The sheets were wonderfully crumpled and smelled of him as I lay down in the spot he woke me up earlier to still my racing heart and quell the last flames of my frustration at things being as they are. At having to wait for him.
Wait while he does murder.
Murder I assisted in by giving him the names of those who must die.
Those who killed Josh and tried to kill me too. In spirit, they almost succeeded. In body, Colt saved me.
And now he’s ridden off to get his revenge and mine. And mine. That’s all I need to know.
Mine and Josh’s and Stormi’s.
I bet she’s at home with her sister. Where else would she be? Especially since Ace is here.
Her home phone number is one I’ll never forget for as long as I live. I’ve dialed it at least five thousand times growing up. More rarely later as we started drifting apart, but my fingers don’t even falter as I dial it now.
“Hello,” she answers breathily. That’s how she always answered the phone, because she was always scared it’d be bad news about her sister, or her missing mother, or her old grandmother. Just as I was always scared it’d be bad news about my mom, or her sister, or Stormi herself. We found each other in fear and pain, connected through it, made bonds that can’t be severed by either distance or anger.
“It’s me,” I say.
She inhales deeply and holds her breath. “Brenda, are you OK? I’m so sorry for leaving the way I did. Did you get my note? Ace said you got out. That you’re OK. Why didn’t you call sooner? I’m so sorry.”
Typical Stormi. Talking a mile a minute and jumping all over the place.
“No. I’m sorry for being such a bitch to you,” I say. “I understand why you didn’t tell me you were leaving, I totally do—”
“I just had to get out…but they caught me before I got on the bus. They were gonna kill me and Ace, and I just prayed you got my note and escaped,” she says, my head spinning with all this new information and fear and horror it brings.
“A guy from Ace’s real MC got me out,” I say. “Just in time too, they were gonna have Crow kill me. You know, the scary, greasy-haired guy with the dead eyes? He was gonna cut me up.”
Her breath hitches in her throat. “Fuck! But you’re safe now?”
“Yes,” I say. “Safe and in love.”
I can hear her smile in the way she exhales. “Really? You? In all these years we’ve known each other, I never heard you say that.”
“Yes, really, me. His name is Colt, and he’s in the same MC as Ace, and there’s absolutely nothing I want from him except him,” I say and laugh and she laughs with me and for the first time in forever it seems, we have good news to share. A lifetime of it, if I’ll have any say in it. And I mean to have a say in it.