Chapter 20
CHAPTER
TWENTY
LINDY
“Thank you, Susanne. You enjoy it.” Lenore handed the woman the purple Lenore’s Lace shopping bag.
“Oh, I will.”
When she’d come into the store earlier, Susanne had told us that she had been saving money for several months to be able to buy the lacy nightgown she’d fallen in love with, and along with a nice discount from Lenore, it was finally hers. A divorcée in her early forties, Susanne had recently remarried, and to her high school boyfriend. The joy and satisfaction on her face were obvious.
“Thank you, Lenore. My first purchase from your boutique. Won’t be my last.”
I opened the door for her. “Goodbye, Susanne.”
“Bye, Lindy, thanks.”
As she stepped outside, my gaze landed across the street on my and Lenore’s Flames of Hell protector of the week, Cueball. Bald with big, dark aviator shades hiding his eyes, he stood sipping on a soda and smoking a cig like he had been all morning, slumped against a wall. He lifted his chin at me, and I nodded back.
I returned to the back corner of the shop, where I’d been setting up a new display of lingerie robes for the past half an hour.
The front bell on the door rang, and I turned my head. Jimmy, our courier delivery guy from Rapid. “Hello, my fair ladies!” he sang out as he entered the shop with a box in hand.
“Hey you,” said Lenore, grinning from behind the cash register where she was going over paperwork.
“Hi, Jimmy.” I dropped what I was doing and moved through the shop toward him.
Jimmy and I had become pals since I’d arrived in Meager as we frequently got packages at the store.
“Today, I got a little something for you, Lindy.” He held up the small square box. Had to be the new multi-chrome eyeliners that I’d ordered with express shipping from one of my favorite indie brands.
“Hooray!” I let out a laugh as I signed the digital screen on his handheld device, and he gave me the box. “Thank you.”
“You bet. Good day, ladies.”
“Bye, Jimmy,” Lenore and I both chimed as he headed out the door and crashed into Wes, who entered the shop. My skin heated at the sight of him filling the doorway, towering over Jimmy.
Wes put a hand on the older man’s shoulder. “Hey, Jimmy, sorry.”
“Aw, Wes, you’re so eager to see the ladies that you’re not watching where you’re going?”
“Something like that.” Wes laughed as he stepped aside for Jimmy to exit. “Have a good one.”
“You too.” Jimmy left.
“Hey there. How can I help you today?” I asked. “Perhaps you’d be interested in our new line of mens’ pajamas?”
“Sell it, girl,” laughed Lenore.
“No pajamas today. But I was curious about your thong underwear?” Grinning, he winked at me, and my insides twisted with heat. “Kidding. I got off work from the shop, and before I headed to the club for my shift at Eagle Wings, I thought I’d drop by and… say hi.”
I grinned back at him. A goony grin, my heartbeat jumping wildly. “Hi.”
“You good since seeing asswipe this morning?”
“I’m good.”
“Good.”
We both laughed softly.
He tapped on the box in my hands. “Jimmy brought you a package?”
“I was about to open it.”
“Is it more thong underwear?”
“I don’t need anymore. I’ve got a great selection already.”
“You do, huh?”
“I do. This has to be some makeup I ordered.”
“Allow me—” he pulled out a Swiss Army knife that was attached to his keys, and taking the box from me, slashed at the tape on the seams. “There you go.”
“Thank you kindly, sir.” Taking the box, I peeled open the flaps. Paper was stuffed inside, and a bleach odor rose from it. A prickle raced around my neck as I pulled back the flap with the address label. My name and this address in handwritten block letters. No return address. My pulse picked up as I opened the flaps again and plucked the paper stuffing out of the way. My stomach flew up my throat and jammed there. My heart stopped. I froze.
Everything froze.
No.
No.
NO.
Acid flooded my mouth, my insides jerked, and sinking to the floor, I retched.
“Lindy?” Wes’s shout came from far away. “Lindy!”
A low, keening sound pulled from me. A biting cold liquid crept through my veins. Everything blurred, everything except for the image of?—
“Daddy…”
Wes lifted me up from the floor and leaned my back against the love seat. “Lind? It’s okay. I’m right here.” His gaze hardened as he pried the box from my ice-cold hand. “Jesus Christ.”
“Holy shit,” Lenore exclaimed from somewhere above me.
“Lenore, call your Flame outside,” said Wes.
My body shuddered, cold prickles racing over my flesh. Mind blank. Numb.
I was being lifted and settled on the loveseat. “Feet up ’til the dizziness passes.” Wes wiped the damp hair from my face.
The room tilted again. “Daddy…Daddy…”
“It’s okay, baby. Hang on for me.”
In the distance, I heard Lenore talking, but I could barely make out the words. Only the image of my father’s cut-off middle finger in that box flared through me over and over and over again.
They cut my father’s finger off.
His middle finger. Just like Finger.
This had to be the Smoking Guns. The same club that had kidnapped Finger a long time ago and tortured him, cutting off both his middle fingers. The Guns and the Flames had been enemies since the early 70s.
My brain functioned like an out of whack factory machine. The Flames had taken over the Broken Blades out from under the Smoking Guns, and now my father was caught in the fucking crosshairs of their legendary and unrelenting symphony of animosity. Were they using Dad to send Finger a message of hate and scorn and revenge?
Now we knew what happened to Dad. We finally knew.
The door flew open. “What the fuck?” Cueball locked the door behind him.
I shielded my eyes from the afternoon sun pouring through the front display window as if I was a vampire who agonized in the light. I was cold everywhere, so cold.
Lenore handed him the box and tapped on her phone again. “Baby?” She’d called Finger.
Wes handed me an open water bottle, and I only stared at it. He brought it to my lips and tipped it. I gulped down the cool water, so hard, so fast, that a lot of it spewed from the sides of my mouth, streaming down my shirt. I brought it to my forehead. “We gotta find him. We gotta find him.”
“We will, sweetheart.” His voice had softened and the gentleness of it, of him, flooded my veins.
Cueball returned to me. “Sorry, Lindy, but I got to ask—you sure it’s his?”
“I’m sure.” I gritted out, my stomach rolling. “My mother’s name is tatted on the side.”
“Ah, shit.” Cueball’s phone rang, and my body tightened at the loud, jarring sound.
Bringing my knees to my chest, I hugged myself. “He got that tattoo when I was born. And he got my name inked on his other middle finger.”
Wes sat down next to me and took me in his arms.
Cueball’s and Lenore’s voices blended into a cacophony of terse words, firing away in the small store, ricocheting around me.
A bang erupted on the front door, and Cueball darted over, unlocking it. An angry One-Eyed Jack flew into the shop, long dark hair flying. Boner. He glanced at me as Cueball led him to the desk and he examined that foul box of evil.
Lenore came over to me, a hand on my cheek. “Honey, you doing okay?”
“This has got the Smoking Guns written all over it, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve been called back in to the Flames.” Cueball eyed Lenore. “Plans are being made.”
“You go on, man,” said Boner. “I’m here to take Lindy to the Jacks clubhouse.”
“You are?” Wes stood.
I wiped at my face. “What? Why?”
“I’m going to Nebraska with Cueball. I need to be with my old man,” Lenore said. “You can come with us or stay with the Jacks?”
“Lindy…” Wes’s hand pressed into my back.
I swallowed past the dry dirt in my throat. Again, everything was changing quickly, rapidly, at a breathless pace, and I was racing to keep up. “Where does our prez want me?” I asked Lenore.
A small smile tugged on her lips. “Here with the Jacks while our men do what they got to do.”
“I’ll go to the Jacks then.”
Lenore darted to the counter and swiftly packed her tote bag. “I’ll call Mary Lynn and Tania and let them know you’ll be there.”
“Okay.” My heart sped up in my chest, watching her prepare to clear out. “How long will I have to stay there?”
“We gotta see how this plays out, Lindy.” Boner’s jaw tightened. “Get your stuff, let’s go.”
Wes held out his hand and I took it. I got my jean jacket from the back and my oversized suede hobo bag, a precious hand-me-down from Lenore.
Grabbing me, Lenore gave me a fierce hug. My senses seeped in her aromatic fragrance, committing it to memory because that scent was about all the new goodness in my life. A new friend, a good job, new home. An older woman I could confide in, laugh with, learn from. “Text me when you’re settled in over there, okay, Lindy?”
“I will. You text me when you get to the clubhouse.”
Her warm hand cradled the side of my face. “I will, honey. We got this. Wes, you look out for my girl.”
“I will,” replied Wes, his voice steely as he took my hand in his again and led me out the door.
Outside, the sun’s glare had me wincing, and I fished out my sunglasses and put them on. Lenore locked up the shop and she and Cueball, who held the fucking box from hell, charged across the street.
“I’m parked at the end of the block,” said Boner. “Where are you, Wes? I’m guessing you want to take Lindy.”
“You bet I do. My bike’s down here on the corner. I’ll follow you."
I moved like a freshly-created zombie between the two men. Stumbling and ungainly, struggling to make sense of the outside world. Shouts and laughter raced around us on the sidewalk and had me cringing. Mothers strolling with baby carriages, teenage girls on their cell phones, laughing. Wes slid his arm around me, pulling me in close to his side.
“Meet me at the light.” Boner gestured at the lone traffic light in Meager and kept walking toward his bike.
“Got it,” said Wes as we turned the corner. He took my bag from my stiff grip and packed it in a saddlebag on his bike. His eyes narrowed at me. “You good to ride, Lind?”
Lifting my chin, I took in a deep breath as I slid on my jacket. “Always good to ride.”
I’d never been to the One-Eyed Jacks clubhouse before, which was on a property tucked in the woods northwest of Meager. The crisp scent of the evergreens filled my senses as we rode through a new gate over a winding road which finally opened to a wide clearing. Wes pulled up to a renovated old factory with vintage Depression era touches enclosed by a high fence in the distance. Loads of bikes and vehicles filled the parking lot. The famed Eagle Wings Detailing & Repair shop where Wes also worked stood on the other end of the property from the clubhouse.
As Wes shut down his bike, I detached the helmet and rubbed at my blurry eyes. I had entered Jacksland where Wes had grown up. Something stung inside my chest. He was lucky. He’d never had to move with his club from rickety abandoned houses and motels to shoddy warehouses, from one crappy town to the next, sometimes wondering when his next meal would be as he grew up. That’s how it had been for the Blades in my early years. Later, they’d finally settled down and had even acquired their own property, and their own on-the-books business. But all of that was gone with the damn wind now, wasn’t it?
The ride here had been refreshing and reviving, but as I steadied my feet on the ground once more, I felt more like I’d stepped off a space ship and onto an alien planet. Above me, the club’s logo of the skull with his gleaming eye glared at me, and my pulse thudded in my neck, that chill creeping over my flesh once more, swallowing me.
Boner waited for us at the main entrance. What lay in there for me? Panic seized me, and my legs froze.
“Lindy?” Wes had his hands on my shoulders and shook me gently. “Lind? You okay?”
That forbidding and ominous Jacks skull gleamed down at me. Watching me. Warning me. I buried my face in Wes’s chest, my nails digging into his leather jacket. “Don’t let me go.”