Chapter 30
CHAPTER
THIRTY
LINDY
The odor of dried blood, urine, and sawdust filled my nostrils.
Dad and I scrunched on the floor of the cabin against a wall, against each other. Minty was on the opposite wall facing us, his eyes struggled to stay open.
I prayed Wes was safe. If Raptor had seen him, he would have chased him down, shot at him, and then told us all about it. Wes was still out there in the woods, he had to be. I hung on to that thin sliver of hope as my back straightened against the coarsely textured wall.
Raptor finally sat himself down in a chair, a rifle at his side. Tilting his head, he studied me, and I steeled myself against the cold slime oozing through me. Should I have been trembling? Crying? Fuck that. Fuck him. I was finally here, face to face with this demon from the past, and right now Dad, Minty, Wes, and I were stuck beyond fuck.
“You came here with Minty?” Raptor asked me.
“I did.”
Raptor pointed his rifle at me. “Don’t even think about lying to me, Melinda.”
My head jerked against the wall, a tight laugh escaping me. “You know my real name? No one knows it, except for my father.”
“Your daddy and I go back a long way.”
“I know you do.” I took in a deep breath to keep my voice calm and even. “You, Dad, my mother.”
“Huh…” His eyes narrowed at Dad, at me, a slight smirk shadowing his face. “What do you know?”
“The three of you were together.”
My father let out a grunt.
Pick pointed his rifle at Dad. “He told you?”
“Nobody told me. At the Jacks clubhouse, I happened to see some photos of the old days—the Blades and the Jacks partying on a run. Wasn’t hard to figure out.”
He let out a prickly laugh. “Old days, huh? Don’t seem old and far away to me. Those were good days. The best.”
“Am I your daughter?”
“Lindy!” Dad barked.
Raptor’s eyes widened. “What’s that?”
“You heard me.”
A heady silence filled the already stifling room. Raptor only continued glaring at me, slightly amused, slightly annoyed. I wasn’t sure which with the way his lips curled— reptilian .
“Well?” I pushed.
“Lindy…” Dad’s body shook against mine.
“Shut the fuck up,” Raptor’s voice seethed. “She didn’t ask you, did she?”
“Am I your daughter?” I raised my voice, my pulse jostling in my veins as if my next heartbeat depended on his answer. Did it?
A grimace etched Raptor’s face. “I don’t fucking know. None of us knew, and it sure didn’t matter to them. They just went and did what they wanted.”
“So it didn’t matter to you?” I shot back, resenting the slight tremor in my voice.
He leaned over in the chair, seeming even bulkier than before, his forehead a ridge. I was annoying him. “Does it fucking matter? He raised you, didn’t he?”
My chin lifted. “He did. He sure as hell did.” My hand pressed over Dad’s thigh, his muscle tightening under my grip.
“You didn’t want a kid,” Dad grit out. “Emmy did. So did I.”
Raptor wiped at the side of his mouth. “You both knew I didn’t want a kid. I’d told her that over and over. Made myself crystal clear. And what does she do? Gets knocked up anyhow.”
“She did it all on her own, huh?” I bit out.
Raptor gestured at Dad. “This one over here stepped up.”
“He married her, asshole.”
“Feisty little one, huh?” His eyes narrowed at me. “Just like Emmy.” My insides twisted at his uttering my mother’s name with such warm nostalgia. “I came back from a long-term stint on an underground job and found a ring on her finger, you born, and the three of you all cozy.”
Dad let out a grunt. “She found out she was pregnant after you left. She didn’t want to get rid of it, and I didn’t want her to.”
Raptor let out a hiss of air. “None of us ever gave a shit about getting hitched, having kids, about any of it. Suddenly you all changed your tune, didn’t you?”
“And you never forgave them for making decisions they had to make? For wanting other things?” I swallowed hard. “For moving on? Is that it?”
“You got that wrong, sweetheart. Emmy lay dying, and she begged me to forgive her.”
“You fuck!” shouted Dad.
“What the hell are you talking about?” My fingernails dug into Dad’s leg, my pulse jacking up. “You saw her then? How did?—”
“‘Course I saw her.”
I blinked. “When? Where?”
“That hospital in Scottsbluff. I risked everything to be there. I was supposed to be in Texas, and instead, I was holed up watching the two of you, watching the hospital 24/7. Finally, late one night, you both left, and I went in.” His eyes flashed. “She was glad to see me.”
“Was she?” I muttered.
“Oh yeah.” A small smile perked up his lips, and a dagger ripped up my spine. “Oh yeah,” he repeated in a whisper, dragging out the word with relish as if he and Mom had some grand reunion hook-up in her hospital bed.
I grit my teeth. “And why would she beg you to forgive her?”
“Because she’d turned her back on me! For you. For him and their family—we already were a family, but suddenly, that didn’t seem to matter no more.”
My breathing had gotten louder. “And what did you tell her?”
“There she was dying, and she still loved me, still cared. So, yeah, I gave that to her. Forgiveness. Looming death makes you realize the futility of your lies.”
“What lies?”
“She’d lied to herself that she was better off without me. She wasn’t.” He pointed the rifle at Dad again, and my breath cut. “She suffered on his watch. She died.”
“She had cancer!”
“And I would have moved heaven and earth to get her the help she needed. Did he? No. No, he didn’t.”
“You don’t know shit!” Dad growled.
“I know she didn’t have to go like that, you fuck,” said Raptor. “Not like that.”
“Holy shit.” I sat up taller. “You kidnapped Dad on her birthday. On her birthday…”
“That’s right, Melinda.”
“But she died almost seven years ago. If this is your revenge, why now?”
“You love fucking yapping, don’t you?”
“I want answers,” I shot back. Minty’s ragged breaths grew louder as he made noises, warning noises I recognized. I ignored him. “You’re also pissed off that he joined the Flames?” I asked.
“What kind of brother jumps ship in times of trouble? Pick and Minty took the easy way out,” his voice sneered. “First chance they got, offered their asses for Finger to fuck.”
“I had a family!” Dad yelled, gulping for air. “We’d just found out Emmy was sick. Who was going to support her and keep our little girl safe? What did you think I was going to do? Take off with you to fuck knows where for however long? Didn’t mean I wasn’t a worthy brother, a loyal Blade. But I was sinking in hard, cold shitty facts. Facts that you were denying.”
“Fuck you say!”
“The Blades were done, the writing had been on the wall for a long time, and you refused to accept it.” Dad’s chest heaved. “That day, on that battlefield with the Flames, I accepted that fact and made a decision. I wasn’t going to abandon Emmy and our girl for an idea that no longer was. They needed me, and I needed them.”
My heart pounded at my father’s emotional fervent words. Their fire filled up all the hollows in my veins, in my soul.
“I needed you!” Raptor said. “The Blades needed you.”
“There were no Blades no more.” Dad’s head sank back against the wall. “You could afford to cling to that fairy tale. Not me.”
“Our brotherhood was no fairy tale,” shouted Raptor. “And neither was me and Emmy. It was me who’d brought you into our bed, motherfucker. You forgot that?”
I had to cut this argument off. “What do you want from Dad? Everyone’s been looking for you, and now you ran out of options? That it? You need a way out, a way off the grid? You need money? We don’t?—”
“I already gave it to him,” said Dad.
I swiveled toward my father. “?”
Raptor stretched out his long legs. “Something that belonged to the Blades that only Pick knew about, that only he could get for me.”
“What is it?”
Raptor wiped a hand across his forehead. “Back in the Blades’ time, each one of us officers held the key to a different stash. Only we knew what it was and where it was so that if anything ever happened to it, there’d only be one person responsible for the fuck-up.”
“That’s how much Notch trusted his own brothers, huh?” I said. “What a president.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Dad muttered.
“The Flames killed the other officers, so their stashes are lost forever,” said Raptor. “I’d already gone through mine—drugs, semi-automatic weapons. Pick’s stash was the only one left, and I needed whatever the hell it was to sell, to bargain with.”
“Because you need to forge new business relationships, right? Your reputation went up in smoke after the Feds came in and made everyone you’d ever worked with vulnerable. Who’d want to work with you again?”
A noise rumbled in Raptor’s throat. “I had a hot business going, and it was destroyed by the Flames and the Jacks. I’ve been on the run for too long now, living by the skin of my teeth. A few months back, almost got caught in Chicago. Getting Pick’s stash was vital.”
“What was it?”
“A big stockpile of well-made brass knuckles. It had been one of our many side hustles back in the day. Always in high demand by clubs and gangs. But there was something else even sweeter—raw material for making explosives, the kinda shit you can’t find easy no more.” He let out a laugh. “Notch was a crazy fucker, but a smart one.” He tapped the side of his head with a thick finger.
“You found your stash?” I asked Dad, and he only nodded.
“He found it all right. Now it’s mine.”
“Great. All good. Now you’re done, and I can take him off your hands.”
“You ain’t going nowhere, Melinda.”
“Why not? You got what you wanted, didn’t you?” I swallowed down the bile that had been gathering in the back of my throat. “Now you can go disappear into the dust once more. We won’t tell, for old time’s sake. And after this, Dad and Minty will be forever mistrusted by the Flames, if not kicked out, which should make you real happy, right?”
He chuckled, a low sound from his chest. “Pick was only half my plan.”
Half?
My breath burned in my chest as his hand brushed over the hunting knife holstered at his side. “You chopped off Dad’s finger and sent it to me, not the Smoking Guns.”
“The Flames are in Kansas City now, aren’t they?”
An icy hand curled around my heart. “You got the Flames to leave. You created a surefire distraction for Finger, and more hostility between those two clubs.”
He grinned slowly. A grin that seared my insides. “How’s it been living under the devil’s wing, Melinda?”
“Delightful.” I gulped for air, but there wasn’t any. “What’s the other half of your big plan?”
“You.”