Chapter Twenty-two
Wolf was just dropping off to sleep on the floor – he’d learned to grab a nap when Charlie and Judge were sleeping – when he heard footsteps approaching.
Right away, he was on his feet, standing between the babies sprawled across the bed and the door. It was where he’d placed himself over and over, anytime any one of those Hellions fuckers showed up for any reason at all. He was ready for whatever was coming through the door now: another beating, another round of threats against the babies, another truly disgusting meal, another taunting session where Viper or Preacher or Animal regaled him with horror stories about what was happening to his brothers and their loved ones back in Denver.
Except, as it turned out, he wasn’t ready. At all.
The door opened and Wolf felt his hackles literally rise, his entire body tensed up for a fight to the death. The man standing there was incredibly familiar to him, of course – every single man in the MC world knew about this guy. He was respected and feared, and for good fucking reason. The man had disposed of God-only-knew how many enemies without even touching them, without even being in the same goddamn room as them. Sometimes, not even the same city , the same state . He was a master of his alchemical craft, and if he was here now, then Wolf had no chance. Not even a prayer.
A beating or weapon he could see coming at him; fists and feet he could put up a fight against; what this guy could do, nobody ever saw coming.
I’m sorry, little ones. I don’t think I can keep you safe from this monster, but I’ll die tryin’, I promise you that .
Bones looked over at Wolf, a bit shocked at the man’s appearance: the strain of his imprisonment hadn’t diminished Wolf’s fierce glare, but he’d certainly lost weight. He was scruffy and his hair was wild, but the room was actually spotlessly clean and organized. Bones saw neat little piles of baby clothes, blankets, what looked like formula and bottles next to a small kettle.
He stared at the man, saw the twins sleeping on the bed behind him. He knew that Wolf was gearing up to protect them, if he could, and from the look of his face – the bruises blooming black and purple all over it – Wolf had been fighting for a while.
“Wolf.” Bones nodded at him, keeping his distance. No sense starting things off on the wrong foot, not when this was actually a rescue mission.
“Bones.”
“I’m not here to hurt you, not any of you,” Bones said.
“No?”
“No.” Bones held out his hands. “I’m here to get you all out.”
“The fuck you say.” Wolf narrowed those stormy gray eyes. “You’re the fuckin’ definition of a club man, Gallagher. Why the hell would you be helpin’ the enemy?”
“OK, look.” Bones slowly reached into his pocket, produced a phone. “I’ll get Scars on the line for you. He’ll tell you that it’s all arranged between us, and that he knows what’s going on.”
“I ain’t movin’ one inch towards you,” Wolf snarled. “And I ain’t touchin’ nothin ’ that you give me.”
“Ah. Of course.” Bones nodded in total understanding of the other man’s thought process. “Transference.”
“I ain’t totally sure what the fuck that is,” Wolf said crisply. “But I remember you killin’ a whole bunch of those Washington boys by puttin’ somethin’ on the front door handles of their homes. Soon as they touched whatever it was, it went right into their skin and poisoned them. Took days and it tortured them – but they were fuckin’ good and dead when it was all over.”
“Huh. I haven’t thought about that job in a while,” Bones said. “That was – what? Ten years ago?”
“I don’t know,” Wolf snapped, clearly not interested in joining him for a saunter down memory lane. “But what I do know is I ain’t touchin’ nothin ’ you try to hand me. You call Scars, and you put him on speaker, and you stay right the fuck over there.”
“OK, fair enough.”
Bones pressed the ‘1’ button in his saved contacts, then put the phone on speaker; the men heard ringing, and then a voice:
“Bones?”
“ Scars ,” Wolf said in shock, wondering if he was hallucinating. “That you, man? For real?”
“Holy fuck ,” Scars blurted, and Wolf heard him talking to someone. “I’m putting you on speaker, Wolf, so everyone can hear you.”
There was a click, then dead air for a second, then a hum.
“You still there, Wolf?”
“Yeah, Scars, I’m here. Me and the babies.”
“Are they OK?” came a voice that was either Dux or Drake. “Are they hurt?”
“They’re fine,” Wolf said to whichever twin it was. “They’re sleepin’ on the bed behind me right now.”
“ Jesus ,” said a voice, either Dux and Drake. “I gotta go call Briley, like right the fuck now ."
“Yeah,” said his brother. “Let her know.”
“Before I go,” said the first voice. “Are you OK, Wolf?”
“I’m fine, man,” Wolf said, his eyes still nailed on Bones’ face. “Happy to hear from you guys. Lookin’ forward to gettin’ home.”
“Wolf?” The voice this time was King’s, and Wolf’s anxiety dropped a few more notches. If Scars had shown up with the twins, and King, then he was organized and fully ready to fuck someone up if necessary. “We’re meeting up with you and Bones and the babies at midnight.”
“I don’t know how soon that is,” Wolf said. “I’m in a cell with no fuckin’ windows.”
“It’s in about five hours,” Scars told him. “You can go with Bones, OK? We’ve got a deal with him, and he only gets what he wants when he delivers you all safely to us.”
“What are the guarantees that he gets us to you?” Wolf rasped. “And not to Viper fuckin’ Grant?”
“Hasn’t he shown you the pictures?” King asked.
“What pictures?”
“On his phone. Viper, Preacher and seven other Hellions lying dead at a poker game.”
Wolf was stunned to near-silence for a few seconds, then recovered the power of speech. “ What ?”
“Something about some chemical through an air vent that made them drown in their own lung fluid,” Scars said vaguely. “We don’t quite grasp all the science, but we know this much: Bones wants out of the MC and this is how he’s buying his safe passage, but we don’t make that happen until you’re with us.”
“Got it,” Wolf said shortly. “Where are you guys?”
“Just over the state line in Wyoming, about four hours from where you are,” Scars said. “King has a safe house here, so we’ve just been dealing with a few issues, and waiting on Bones to tell us he’s got you. We’re heading out the second we get off this call.”
“How many of you are there?”
“Me, King, the twins, Ice and Cain.”
“And Denton?” Wolf asked. “Is he available for back-up at this end?”
The silence at the other end of the line gave him his answer.
“Bale killed him?” Wolf asked, but in such a way that it wasn’t actually a question. “He did, right?”
“Yes,” King said quietly. “But we got Bale.”
“Dead?”
“He sure is,” said either Dux or Drake coldly. “He’s helped the Hellions for years now, from what King’s been able to figure out. He’s had it coming to him for a long time.”
“I won’t be sheddin’ any fuckin’ tears for the bastard, that’s for sure,” Wolf said. “Is everyone OK back in Denver?”
There was another silence, and Wolf tensed up again.
“Scars?”
“Yeah,” Scars said. “Everyone’s alright. We had – there was an incident and Vixen got hurt, but she’s OK now.”
“ Vixen got hurt?” Wolf was genuinely perplexed; why would a waitress at Satan’s be injured, but nobody else? “How bad?”
“Bad enough,” Ice spoke up for the first time. “But she’s with Zoe and Keira with some of King’s Men, so we know they’re all safe and protected. Everyone is, man.”
“OK.” Wolf finally relaxed, accepted the fact that he wasn’t going to get the whole story right now. “You can fill me in on the drive back to Colorado.”
“You know it,” Scars said. “We’re gonna see you soon, Wolf.”
“In a few hours.”
The call disconnected, and now it was just Wolf and Bones staring at each other warily across a concrete cell. That was when Wolf started to actually take the other man in, started to notice things that had escaped him when he was full-on shocked and in defensive mode.
Bones was getting up there in years, Wolf knew, though he wasn’t totally sure how old the man was… maybe pushing sixty? Maybe a bit more? Wolf had heard the lore about Bones’ skills and kills with toxins for decades now, and the man had surely perfected his style over time, through trial and error, and practicing it over and over again. And if he’d just wiped out half of his own MC in one fell swoop – by poisoning their air – then the man hadn’t lost his touch.
But what Wolf saw resting on and weighting down Bones wasn’t age, and it wasn’t regret, and it wasn’t exhaustion… it was something else. There was a strange metallic-gray sheen on his skin, like what you saw on rotting meat – and that was when Wolf knew what was going on here.
“How long?” he asked Bones.
Bones looked puzzled. “How long what?”
“How long do you have before whatever the disease is takes you?”
“Holy shit, Connor.” Bones managed a tiny grin. “How the hell do you know what you know?”
“Dunno. So… how long?”
“The doctor says less than a year. Probably closer to six months.”
“Cancer?”
“Yeah. Stomach.”
Wolf grimaced. “That’s gotta be excruciatin’.”
“It will be, soon enough.”
“Ahhhhh. Now I get it.”
“I bet you do,” Bones said with a genuine smile now. “But just for fun, why don’t you tell me what you think I’m doing as we’re getting these kids ready to go… let’s see how close you get to the truth.”
“You don’t touch ‘em,” Wolf snapped. “On our side or no, you fuckin’ stay away from these babies. You can pack up all their clothes and food, but that’s all you do.”
“Understood.” Bones walked over to the far corner of the room, started putting everything in the cardboard box that Preacher had brought the babies in. “So… what do you know?”
Wolf paused, as he realized that there was nothing between him and the door; he could knock out Bones, steal his phone and vehicle keys, lock him in here, call Scars and the boys, and go meet them without this asshole’s help. It was all possible , and Wolf seriously contemplated it for a few seconds.
But then it came to him that Scars had clearly made plans with Bones, and Wolf didn’t want to fuck anything up by going rogue. No, he’d trust his men and King, and he’d go along with what he’d been told to do.
So he went over to the bed, checked on Charlie and Judge. Unbelievably, they’d slept through all of the conversation, and he was grateful: if he could get them to their Dads in just a few hours, their little existences could get back on their proper trajectories. All of this Hellions bullshit would have just been a blip in their lives, one that they would have no memory of, and not suffer any damage from.
“Well,” Wolf said, to keep the conversation going. “I figure that you’re old-school like me, and you’ve got a problem with Viper involvin’ kids in his personal vendettas.”
“I sure do.”
“He was a fuckin’ wild card, huh?”
“He was.”
“When did he turn on his own club?”
“A few days ago,” Bones said heavily, not even asking how Wolf knew that this had happened. “Some of our guys have gone missing, but the word is that they’re dead. They disagreed with Viper’s tactics, or messed up a job, so they had to go.”
“And you think you would have been next?”
“I know it.”
“OK, so… your Prez is a fuckin’ nightmare, your boys are disappearin’ left and right, kids are being dragged into this whole mess, and you’re in Viper’s sights, but you get a cancer diagnosis and find out that you have less than a year to live. So you decide that you’re goin’ out on your own terms.”
“You got it in one, man.” Bones hefted the box, winced a bit at the pain in his stomach that never really went away. “Scars assures me that King is going to get me safely to my cabin. I’m going to watch the first snowfall of the winter out there… then I’m going to drink some tea laced with a little something that I’ve made up special, and go to sleep. Permanently.”
“You could have done all of that without helpin’ us,” Wolf pointed out as he wrapped Charlie in a blanket. “Just up and gone to your little place, just run. Left me and the kids here, never made any arrangements with Scars and the boys, never taken out your own club members.”
“I could have. I thought about it.”
“But?”
“But, as you said, I’m not OK with Viper trying to kill kids.”
“ Kill kids?” Wolf looked up sharply, then the penny dropped. “You mean Keira?”
“Is that her name? The kid in Denver?”
“Yeah.” Wolf glared across the room at Bones, bristling with rage. “What the fuck happened?”
“A couple of boys tried to run her and her mother down in Satan’s parking lot.”
“ What ?”
“They messed it up,” Bones said hastily. “The kid and her Mom are both alive, though I heard the mother got hit by the van as they sped away.”
“Zoe got hit by a van?”
“I guess. I don’t have the details, because the guys who screwed up the assignment have gone missing.”
Wolf blinked at the onslaught of information, then remembered what Scars and Ice had said about Vixen being hurt in some incident – maybe she’d been with Keira in the parking lot, for some bizarre reason?
I cannot fuckin’ wait to find out what’s been goin’ on… midnight can’t come soon enough, I swear to God .
“OK,” Wolf said aloud, sticking a memo in his brain to ask Scars about Zoe and Keira and Vixen first thing. “So you’ve suddenly grown a conscience, now that death is comin’ for you? Decided to do the right thing, right at the end?”
“Something like that, yeah,” Bones agreed mildly. “Also, I didn’t want Viper to be the one to end me. It would be have been horrific, and maybe that’s what I deserve after the life that I’ve led, but I still want to be the one who makes the final call about how I go out. I think it’s a choice we’d all like to make, if we could. I mean – who doesn’t want to just die in their sleep, in a snug little cabin next to a frozen lake? Especially men who have lived the lives that we have, who always thought we’d go by violence somehow.”
“I’ll give you that,” Wolf conceded, now wrapping Judge up nice and warm. “But you still could have just run without helpin’ us, seen your snow and ended things your way anyway.”
“I know. I just – I wanted to do one good thing before I check out. I don’t think it’ll help me evade hell, if such a place exists, but at least I could leave Utah with a few points in my favour.” Bones shrugged, gave a wry smile. “It can’t hurt, right? And if I was going to blow town anyway, why not leave with a fanfare?”
“When your MC finds out what you’ve done to your Prez and Veep, they’re gonna hunt you down,” Wolf said. “You might not get to see your snowfall.”
“I’ll see it.” Bones spoke with such certainty that Wolf completely believed him. “I know I will.”
“OK, man,” Wolf said as he picked up the twins, one cradled in each massive arm to support their necks, and headed for the door. “Let’s get movin’ before one of your ex-brothers gets it in their heads to come and check on me.”
“It’ll be a while,” Bones said, following behind Wolf, carrying the box. “I sent the pictures of the dead bodies to a bunch of the Hellions right after I sent them to Scars, so they’ll all be over at the warehouse, looking for Viper and the gang. Possibly with oxygen masks, but if they didn’t think that far ahead, a few of them might well spend the night in the hospital. You’re going to be way down on their list of shit to worry about, believe me.”
“I’m startin ’ to believe you,” Wolf said as he stepped out of the concrete room that had been his cell, stepped into freedom and fresh air. “But I have to say that I can’t fuckin’ wait to see the back of you, Gallagher, ‘cause when that happens, it means that these kids are with their Dads, I’m with my club, and we’re all on our ways to wherever we’re goin’ next.”
“Let’s head out to the meet-up spot, then… and get to wherever we’re going next.” Bones felt the chill in the air and sighed, knowing like his life was being measured in mere days now. “Some of us will be going there sooner and forever.”
“And some of us are just gettin’ started,” Wolf said, looking down at the babies snuggled against his broad chest; they were starting to wake up, their delicate eyelids fluttering, their tiny fingers wriggling. “I guess there’s some weird fuckin’ cosmic balance in all of that, and I guess I can live with it.”
“We all have to live with it, Wolf,” Bones said. “What choice do we have?”
“Oh, we have choices,” Wolf said. “More than we know, and more often than we believe. So let me tell you this , man, that I’m so fuckin’ grateful that one of your last choices was to help us. I know your time is comin’ to an end and so I ain’t ever goin’ to be able to return the favor to you, but I can do this: I can say thank you. For me and for my club – and for these babies and their parents. Thank you.”
“As far as parting gifts go, I’ll take it.” Bones smiled, and suddenly Wolf could see him as a young man, maybe forty years younger, with bright blue eyes and wild, dark hair, not unlike his own. “And you’re welcome, Wolf. You’re all very welcome.”