Chapter 21
Priest
I closed the medicine cabinet in my bathroom and watched in the mirror as I dabbed ointment on the crow skull brand on my chest. In the weeks since my punishment it had healed nicely, but I found my hand creeping up to rub over the spot unconsciously, usually when I was deep in thought or lost to memories. There were dark circles under my eyes from another night of tossing and turning. I had Mindy come up to my room last night for a little stress relief, but even meaningless sex couldn’t ease the tension in my shoulders and help me to relax. Ever since the night I forced Indigo into the confessional, I’d felt off-kilter, and I couldn’t seem to figure out how to get my shit together. I scowled at my own reflection, wondering what the hell normal even looked like anymore. I hadn’t been myself since Ellis died.
I pulled on a faded pair of jeans and a fitted black T-shirt and laced up my boots before heading downstairs. I tried to time my trip down so I had just enough time to grab something to eat before church, to avoid running into people. Today, Duke, Bard, and I were going over the final prep for our meeting with the Alvarez Cartel. We didn’t run guns for them often, but when we did, it was vital that everything go off without a hitch. Not only did we not want to risk a shipment but we also needed the money made off the sale of the weapons to help fund the club and our work against the trafficking rings.
I stomped down the stairs, lifting my chin at Prospect behind the bar and headed back to the kitchen. It was late in the morning, almost ten o’clock, and I hoped that everyone had cleared out by now so I could grab a cup of coffee, but my hopes were dashed the moment my feet crossed the threshold into the kitchen. My mother sat at the old kitchen table, nursing her cup of coffee and staring vacantly out the window. She didn’t say anything as I walked over to the counter and poured my own cup. Since Ellis’s death, my mom had withdrawn into herself; unable to cope with the idea of living a life without her child in it. Sipping the dark, bitter brew in my mug, I wondered, not for the first time, if she’d have been half as upset if it had been me that died that night instead of my sister.
I knew my parents loved me, but I thought my mother resigned herself to the fact that as a member of Los Cuervos, there was a pronounced likelihood that I wouldn’t live to be an old man. Ellis was different. She wasn’t meant for club life. She wanted to go to college and open up her own spa and resort one day with Lennon. If I got shot and died on the Alvarez run, my parents would grieve but the loss wouldn’t be a complete shock. Ellis’s death rocked the very foundations of their souls. It was an unexpected and tragic loss. As I watched my mother withdraw into herself and disassociate from life without her baby, I wished I could do something to bring her back to life. “You’re looking beautiful today, Ma.” Nothing. Her eyes were unfocused as she stared out the window. She didn’t register that I was even in the room, let alone speaking to her.
I sighed and walked forward to gently press a kiss to her brow, finally drawing Mom’s attention. “Oh, Lochlan.” Reaching forward with her free hand, my mother patted my cheek and murmured, “You look tired, hun.” She turned away from me, her focus going back to the window.
I sighed. “Love you, Ma.” Taking my coffee with me, I left the kitchen and made a mental note to talk to my dad about how withdrawn she’d become. It’d been two years, and while I knew her grief for Ellis would never leave her, she couldn’t go on like she was. I headed down to church, knocking on the closed door before I entered. Duke and Bard were already seated and ready to get down to business.
“About damn time,” Duke grumbled. I made a show of looking at my phone to check the time. I held it up to show Duke that it was 10 a.m., so I was right on time. My dad had been a surly asshole since the night he branded me, and I knew he had every right to be. I fucked up, and I paid the price. It’d been a few weeks, and I thought it was time we tried to move on, so instead of ignoring his gruff attitude, I decided to be a smart-ass. Couldn’t hurt, right?
“Come on old man, you know I’d never keep a lady waiting.” I winked at him as I sat down, and Bard smothered a laugh. Duke narrowed his eyes at me but didn’t rise to the bait.
“Shut the fuck up, Priest. Bard, you’re up. Give us the rundown for the drop.”
Bard clicked something on the laptop in front of him, casting his display onto the wall-mounted screen on the far side of the room. A map showing the rendezvous point with the cartel was displayed, and Bard launched into the plan.
“Okay, for this drop, we’ll be meeting the contact near a small town on the Arizona/Mexico border called Nogales. Our guy with US Customs and Border Protection has made sure the area between these mile markers”—he gestured to an area on the map—“will be clear for two hours as we make the exchange. It’s a smaller haul this time, so it shouldn’t take long.” Duke nodded along, and I took a sip of my cooling coffee.
“How many men will they have?”
Bard didn’t even need to check his stack of notes. He’d gone over this plan so many times.“Five. We’ll be bringing five as well. Two in the truck and three on bikes, one on point and two following the truck. Once we receive the shipment, we’ll transport it to our chapter in Cedar City, Utah, minus the pieces we keep for ourselves. They’ll be dispersed from there for sale.” We varied our pickup and drop-off points with every shipment to avoid a raid, and Bard seemed to have all his ducks in a row as he went into the smaller details of the plan with Duke. We’d be keeping a few pieces from the run for our own armory, but the rest would be sold to help fund our fight against trafficking.
Duke nodded along, seeming to approve of Bard’s preparations. “How long is the drive from here to Nogales?” Bard rifled through his notes before replying, “About fourteen hours, but we can probably make it in thirteen if the weather is good and there isn’t too much traffic. From Nogales to Cedar City, it’s another nine hours or so. We’ll stop over at the clubhouse there for a brief rest, and then make the eight-hour drive home.”
Duke rapped his knuckles on the table. “So the whole trip should take less than forty-eight hours. Who were you planning to take?”
“I’ll take point. Sticks, Thor, and Tank already agreed to go. I was thinking of taking Pyro—”
“No, Priest can go.” Duke sent a stern look my way. “A ride’ll do you good. You can take some time to think while you’re on the road. Clear your head.” I gritted my teeth, annoyed that he was throwing me into Bard’s run like I wasn’t VP and didn’t have my own shit to do. It was a power move to remind me that while I was VP, I wasn’t prez yet, and if I didn’t get my shit together, I might never be.
Duke waited to see if I’d disagree and start some shit but I knew better. I nodded and took another sip of my coffee. I’d be damned if I rose to his bait. I smiled placidly over my cup, leaving Bard to fill the silence.
“Okay, so me, Sticks, Thor, Tank, and Priest. We’ll leave next Saturday morning, probably around eight o’clock, giving us time to make it there and scout the meeting site before we make contact. If anything changes, I’ll let you know.”
“Sounds good, Bard,” Duke said, reaching out to pat Bard on the shoulder. “Nice work.” Bard nodded to Duke and slapped me on the back on his way out of church. The door snicked closed, leaving me and my old man alone for the first time since the night I fucked things up and disappointed him.
Duke sat back in his chair and gave me the good ole silent treatment. We’d seen each other around the compound and at our weekly family dinner, but Duke and I hadn’t had a real conversation about anything other than the club in weeks. Clearing my throat, I tried to bridge the gap that’d formed between us by bringing up the woman we both loved: my mother.
“I saw Ma in the kitchen before I came to church.”
Duke lifted his eyebrows, causing his forehead to crease in deep grooves and making him look much older than his fifty-five years.He harumphed a bit. “Well, it is her kitchen.”
I set my mug down and leaned back in my own chair, mimicking his body language.“She’s not doing well. She’s still…struggling with losing Ellis.” My dad sat up a little straighter, ready to defend his wife from criticism. Before he could work himself up into an indignant huff on her behalf, I continued. “I’m not saying this to be a dick. We’re all still struggling with it, missing her…we always will. But Mom’s retreating into herself, and I’m worried if something doesn’t change or she doesn’t get some help, she may never come all the way back. She’s like a zombie sometimes, and I worry about her. I just wanted to bring it up, make sure you knew. She needs help or something, Duke.”
“Well, we all can’t go around torturing girls when we need to take the edge off our grief now, can we?” Duke’s words cut me just like he intended them to, but I didn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me get defensive or angry. I owned my shit, and he wasn’t wrong.
“I fucked up, and I paid the price.” I sat forward, bracing my arms on the table and clasping my hands together. “I was right about her hiding something, but I was wrong about how I went about questioning her. I went against your direct order, and I was punished for it. She obviously said enough to establish some level of trust with you and Bones, or else she wouldn’t still be here. I’m not telling you about Mom to criticize how she’s handling the loss of her baby girl.”
I looked into the face of my prez, my father, and saw the toll his own grief had taken on him. He looked like he’d aged ten years in the two since Ellis was taken from us, and his shoulders slumped as he heaved a deep sigh. Mom wasn’t the only one whose heart was still bleeding from a wound that would never, ever heal. Duke might keep his shit together better on the surface, but one look into my old man’s eyes at this moment spoke volumes to the pain he lived with every time the sun rose and his daughter wasn’t here to see it.
“I just wanted you to know, so you could keep an eye on her. Maybe you can convince her to talk to somebody… a doctor or something. You’re the only one who can tell her anything, she’s so stubborn.”
A whisper of a chuckle escaped Duke. “Where the hell do you think you got your stubbornness from? When that woman digs her heels in, there ain’t no movin’ her.” He might be calling my mom a pain in the ass, but the gentle smile on his face and the softening of his eyes spoke volumes of the love and respect my parents had for each other. They weren’t perfect, but no one who really knew them could deny that they shared a rare and enduring love.
“Jesus, keep it together before I tell everyone in the clubhouse you were back here making doe eyes over your ole lady.”
Duke huffed out a laugh and told me to shut up. We both left church and went our separate ways to get on with the business of the day, but it felt like we’d taken the first steps toward repairing the relationship I damaged with my rage and grief. We weren’t okay yet, but we were closer than we were yesterday, so I counted that as a win. It was nice to take a step forward for once, no matter how small it may be.
I groaned as I stood from my office chair, cracking my back and neck after too many hours going over Bard’s plans for the Alvarez job. I’d spent my day looking at maps, aerial views of the meet site, and Bard’s detailed file on all the major players within the cartel. Nothing significant was leaping out as a red flag for our upcoming run, and I needed to tell Bard what a good job he’d done organizing it. Sticks used to be the man who handled our business with our neighbors south of the border, but he was getting up there in age, and riding for ten-plus hours one way to run guns wasn’t something he relished. Not that the bastard would ever admit it out loud, and anyone suggesting he was too old to handle his shit would quickly get an up close and very personal reminder that Sticks could still take care of business. This was Bard’s first time handling the prep work for a run without Sticks at the helm, and I couldn’t find anything to criticize.
It was Friday, which meant it was family dinner night. As I left my office, I could hear the ole ladies clucking away in the kitchen, so I stuck my head in to see if my mother was among them. The delicious scent of fried chicken wafted from the kitchen, and I took a deep breath in through my nose as I walked into the room. “Smells fantastic, ladies.” My hand darted forward to snag an apple slice from the counter, but before I could pull it back with my prize, Rose, Knuckles’s ole lady, slapped the back of my hand with a wooden spoon.
“Lochlan Abbott, you better get those filthy hands away from my apples! Go on now, shoo.” Rose was one of the only people who refused to call the younger Crows by their road names. She was like a grandmother to most of us even though her own two kids decided not to be affiliated with the club. We still saw them occasionally at family dinners, but they lived a few hours away and didn’t visit as much as Rose and Knuckles wished they would.
“Aw, come on Rosie!” I kissed her on her cheek. “You wouldn’t deny a hungry man some food now, would ya?” Rosie giggled like a girl fifty years her junior and pushed me away. The other ole ladies chuckled and continued their conversations while they prepped sides for the chicken. Rose kept peeling apples for pie, I assumed, so I leaned my hip on the counter and lowered my voice a little. “Have you seen Ma today?”
Rose’s hands deftly peeled an apple, its dusky red skin parting from the flesh of the fruit in one long ribbon. “She left here a while ago with that girl, the new one.” She gestured with her paring knife. “The one with the hair.”
“Indigo?”
Rose nodded and put another apple peel into the trash can. “That’s her. When we came in to start on dinner, your mom was sitting here, and that girl was just talking her ear off, mouth goin’ a mile a minute. I mentioned that we needed another dessert for tonight, and they headed off to your parents' place to rustle something up.” I gave Rose a quick hug, squeezing her slight frame and placing a kiss on the top of her head. That earned me a playful swat, and I left the clubhouse and made my way toward the part of the compound that held the single-family homes.
It took me less than ten minutes to walk from the clubhouse to the ranch-style home where Ellis and I grew up. When my parents got married, Duke helped Blaze, the Crow responsible for running Harrison it was sex and nothing more. We had rules about when club girls could be around and where they were allowed access within the compound for a reason. The girls understood their place here and were free to say no or leave at any time. They understood that the Crows would protect them while they were here and that they had no claim on any particular brother. Indigo wasn’t a club girl. I had no idea what she was, to be honest.
Both women paused what they were doing at my words, my mother transferring cookies and Indigo cleaning flour off the countertop. My mother raised an eyebrow at me. “Is that so? Well, what is she then, Priest?”
I opened and closed my mouth, unable to pull my foot out of it fast enough to come up with a response.
“I see,” my mom said with a smug tone.
Indigo unwittingly broke the tension between my mother and me by doing a pirouette and saying in a sing-song voice, “Don’t worry, Lorna. I defy expectations and labels.” She spun once or twice before dropping her arms and adding, “Plus, I’d never want to be part of a club with Mindy in it.” She spat out Mindy’s name like it tasted foul in her mouth, and shockingly, a sneer crossed my sweet ma’s face as she agreed with Indi.
“That girl is a real nasty piece of work.”
This was the first time I’d heard my mother speak about any of the club girls. The ole ladies typically pretended they didn’t exist, keeping a firm line drawn between women who were “wife” material and women who…weren’t. It was old-fashioned and kind of bitchy, but I understood it. Since club girls come and go on a pretty regular basis, we hadn’t had to deal with much drama or many catfights, and if one of our married brothers was stupid enough to fuck around with a club girl and get caught by his ole lady, then he deserved whatever hell she sent his way. As the prez’s ole lady, Lorna held a position of authority with the women affiliated with Los Cuervos. She didn’t often like to pull rank, having never been a fan of needless drama and fighting. I appreciated that about her, and I knew my dad sure as hell did too.
“Well, hun, since you like the snickerdoodles so much, maybe we can make your favorite dessert for family dinner next time?” Ma looked hopefully over at Indigo, her loneliness plain to see.
“If you asked me today, I’d say snickerdoodles are my favorite,” Indigo said with a mouthful of cookie. She swallowed thickly, her pink tongue darting out to lick the crumbs from the corner of her mouth. “Growing up, I wasn’t ever allowed sweets, so I’m not sure yet what my favorite is. Living on the streets and eating out of dumpsters on the regular, I didn’t have a lot of opportunities to sample desserts. People throw away a ton of food, but shockingly enough, not a lot of it is dessert. Go figure.” Indigo shrugged and stuffed another cookie into her mouth.
My mom gave me a look, and I knew yet another person on this compound was about to fall under her thrall. The girl had a knack for endearing herself to people; she was crazy enough to be entertaining but not so crazy she was off putting. Indigo was a heady mix of innocent charm and gritty experience, and I could see my ma forming an attachment to her as we spoke.
“There’s nothing for it then. I guess we’ll just have to bake our way through this cookbook so you can decide which dessert reigns supreme.”
Indi’s eyes grew round as she chewed. “Really? You’d do that with me? I wasn’t being humble when I told you I have absolutely no experience cooking unless you count microwaving burritos. Most people don’t. Count microwaving, I mean. Are you sure you have time with all your first lady duties?”
A smile, small but mighty, spread across my mother’s face. “I have more than enough time. Priest can help you carry this batch up, and I’ll bring the second batch up after it’s cooled. Thank you for visiting with me today, Indigo. I really enjoyed it.” It was hard to reconcile the zombie I found at the kitchen table earlier today with the woman standing before me now. An overwhelming sense of gratitude for the girl I tortured only a few weeks ago washed through me and made my throat feel tight. How did she make Ma smile like that, so easily? More importantly, could she do it again?
Indi helped my ma package cookies for transport, and I stood there like a tool watching them chatter and move about the kitchen. “You two head up to the clubhouse, and I’ll be there soon with the second batch.” I kissed my ma on the cheek and strode forward so I could put my boots back on and hold the front door for Indigo, who waved over her shoulder at Ma.
“See you at dinner, Lorna!” Indigo was all smiles. I couldn’t tell if it was a sugar rush or if it was spending time with my ma, but she practically bounced next to me as we headed back to the clubhouse. “You’re lucky, you know,” she said. “To have a mom like her.”
I nodded. “Ellis and I grew up with two parents who loved us, in a safe home. Things weren’t perfect, but I’ll always be grateful that they gave us that.” Gravel crunched under our boots as we continued our walk back. I could see that the parking lot had started to fill with bikes and vehicles as Los Cuervos family members started to arrive for dinner.
Kids played tag in the scrubby grass and gravel area off to the side of the clubhouse under the watchful eye of a few parents who took the opportunity to chat with each other. Darkness crept in slowly, shadows grew longer beneath the Joshua Trees and creosote bushes as twilight replaced the amber glow of the afternoon sun. As we approached the clubhouse, I gently grabbed Indi’s elbow. “Hey, I, uh…before we go in, I have a question to ask you. ”
“If it’s about the snickerdoodles, yes, we have to share.” Indi rolled her eyes and huffed, “Lorna said if we bake it, we have to share it; dessert tastes better with friends or some hippie-dippy crap like that. In my opinion, the only thing that tastes better than one cookie is two cookies.”
I tried and failed to suppress a smile. “No, it’s not about the cookies. I was wondering…how did you get my mom to be more like a person and less like a zombie? I tried to talk to her earlier, but it was like she wasn’t there at all. I want to help her come back to herself.” I kicked a larger piece of gravel farther out into the lot. “I just don’t know how .”
Indigo tilted her head back and looked into my eyes like she had been the person with the question and the answers were somewhere within their depths. Licking her lips, searching for any remaining sweetness from her cookies, Indigo gathered her thoughts. “Lorna was sitting in the kitchen, but she wasn’t really there . Like, her body was, obviously, because I could see her…but one look at her face, and I knew she had gone away in her mind. I do it too, sometimes.” She shrugged her delicate little shoulders. “When your ‘ here and now’ is too much to bear, you feel like you’re drowning. Slipping away into a happy memory or a fantasy can be like sucking in a deep breath of air before your grief and trauma drag you back under the surface. Lorna…she’s treading water. She’s fighting, but her grief weighs her down.”
“I know she’s disassociating. I’ve tried getting her to talk to a therapist, but she doesn’t want to talk to a stranger. I need to know how you got her to snap out of it.”
“I’ve noticed she likes to sit in the kitchen. I took a gamble and asked her about your sister,” she said. I tried to school my face so the pain that resurfaced every time Ellis was mentioned didn’t show. However, I must be off my game because Indigo reached for my free hand with hers. “I asked her if she taught Ellis to cook, and Lorna told me about how she started baking with Ellis when she was so little she had to push a chair up to the counter so she could reach everything. Lorna said that snickerdoodles were Ellis’s favorite cookie because—”
“Dad told her they were Santa’s favorite kind.” I swallowed harshly and hoped Indigo couldn’t see my eyes water. I’d never live it down if I got caught holding hands and crying like a little girl. I’d lose all my badass biker points.
“Yeah.” Indigo squeezed my hand once and let go. “I think talking about happy memories with Ellis instead of dwelling on the pain of her loss helped Lorna keep her head above water long enough to rest, even if it’s just for a little while.” Indigo walked a few steps toward the kitchen door before turning back. “People have nothing but wonderful and kind things to say about Ellis, you know. I didn’t get to meet her, but I think I would have really liked her. It’s a sign of a life well lived, I think, to have so many people sing your praises that a complete stranger feels a connection to you and misses a friend they never got to know.” Indigo gave me a sad half smile and turned to walk into the kitchen. Instead of following her inside, I had to take a minute to breathe and collect myself.
I tried to resent the fact that Indigo seemed to know more about helping my mom than I did. I tried to hate that she’d seen me vulnerable and sought to comfort me. I tried to be angry because rage tasted so much better than sorrow. I tried, and I tried … and I failed. Much to my surprise, and quite frankly, relief, I only felt gratitude that Indi helped my mother to smile even if it was only twice. Twice was worth it. It made me wonder what had happened in Indigo’s life to give her such insight in how to cope with grief. I wanted to ask that and so many more questions, but I didn’t feel like I had the right. After the confessional incident, I wasn’t sure if Indigo would ever answer my questions about her past, nor was I completely confident that I deserved to hear them.