CHAPTER 12 IRON JACK
IRON JACK
Greta doesn’t look around as we enter the wedding hall. She’s a woman on a mission.
A few of the guests have arrived, but the ceremony won’t start for a while yet. Now that the tension is over, the early birds have settled back in the chairs, probably a little disappointed I was the only minor casualty.
Greta holds my arm aloft like she’s personally stopping the flow of blood by elevating it. “We need clean water and some bandages. What if you need stitches?”
“It’s fine. Just a scratch.”
“Your shirt sleeve is soaked in blood!” She leads me over to a chair and shoves me down. “Let me look at it!”
She’s making a lot of fuss about nothing. I don’t even feel it.
But I do notice the gentleness of her hands as she lifts my arm to examine the cut in the sleeve. “I’m guessing you don’t have anything else to wear.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s soaked, Iron Jack.” She glances around. “We have to wash this off to know what’s going on in there. It could get infected.” She looks around then, spotting the various doors. “Where’s the kitchen?”
“It’s not those two doors,” I tell her, pointing at the side walls. “One’s the groom’s dressing room, and the other is the bride’s.”
“Well, the back wall doors are marked as bathrooms, so it has to be that one in the corner.”
I nod in agreement.
She pulls me to standing and leads us to the back. We enter an industrial kitchen more modern than you’d expect for an old sawmill. A half-dozen women arrange trays of sandwiches.
“This is actually pretty nice,” Greta says. “They should have a first aid kit somewhere. It’s required, like an AED and fire extinguishers.”
I’m about to tell her that this is backwoods rural Florida when she makes a beeline for a red box on the wall. Sure enough, it does say “AED” on it, and below it is a mounted kit. She pulls it down and brings it back to where I stand by the sink.
“Okay, we’re going to wash this up.” She unspools a handful of paper towels from a roll and wets it under the faucet.
“I need to get back out there before long,” I tell her. “The ceremony will start, and I have to watch for the arrival of any additional trouble makers.”
“Not until I look at you. Hush up and let me see what we’re dealing with.” She pushes me onto a stool by the counter next to the sink.
She looks young with her red hair in braids, pieces sticking out in every direction. I wonder what she was doing at the club when everyone hauled ass to be backup.
The wet towels are cool on my arm. Greta pulls at the cut sleeve, frowning. “I’m going to have to roll this up or something.”
“Just cut it off.”
She nods. “Probably ruined anyway.”
She tosses the first clump of towels, now red with blood. Huh. The nick was bigger than I figured.
Greta spots a pair of scissors by the packages of croissants the women are filling. She picks them up and makes quick work of slicing off the sleeve half way up my bicep. Her hands and the scissors come away red. “Jack, you’re going to need stitches I think.”
One of the other women comes over to peer at my arm. “You should use skin glue. I got a kid who bleeds every time he goes out. Never seen a boy fall off a bicycle as much as him. God help us when he takes up a motorbike.”
“There might be some in the kit,” Greta says, washing her hands in the sink and drying them as she peeks into the red plastic case.
At least she didn’t flinch at the blood. That’s important for a Wild Hair woman.
“Oh, look, there it is.” She tosses the paper towel and lifts a squeeze tube. “I’ve never used it.”
“It’s magic,” the other woman says. “Hold the skin closed and wipe it on, and keep holding until it’s dry, like thirty seconds.”
Greta nods. “Got it.”
The woman moves back to the rest, who are pouring bottles of booze into a giant punch bowl.
Greta tilts her head. “I think I need to clean it one more time.” She unspools more paper towels and gets them damp.
I watch her concentrate as she cleans the rest of the blood off my arm. It keeps oozing, so she holds the towel against my skin. “Coagulate!” she orders.
I have to chuckle. “Does everything do what you tell it?”
She blows an escaped tendril of hair out of her eye. “Hardly. I have a free-range kid and an ex-husband who didn’t do a damn thing. I’m not in control of anything.”
“How long were you married?”
“Ten years.”
“Have you been to a wedding since your divorce?”
“I had to go to Bailey’s and my cousin Rhett’s shindig six months ago, right at the start of the disaster.”
“That must have sucked.”
“It wasn’t my favorite day.” She pulls away the towel. It’s red, but not crazy. “I think this will hold long enough for me to glue it.”
I reach out a hand. “Hey, you don’t have to stay at this wedding if it’s going to bring up hard feelings.”
“We’ll see.” She uncaps the glue and squeezes it along the path of the gash in my arm. “I really think this is a stitches thing, honestly, but I can tell you’re too ornery to go in.”
“This will be perfect. Thank you.”
She spreads the glue out and presses both hands flat against my arm to hold my skin in place as it dries. When she glances up at me, she’s so close that my breath catches. “This is one hell of a meet-cute, right?”
“Meet-cute?” I ask.
“Oh, it’s a romance thing. Where the guy and the girl get in some weird situation and that’s when they realize—” She cuts herself off and looks down at my arm.
“Realize what?”
“Oh, nothing. It doesn’t matter.” She carefully touches the glue. “I think it’s dried. That lady was right. It is magic!” Slowly, she pulls both hands away. “Let me cover it so it won’t break open.” She turns to dig through the box.
I don’t press about what she meant about the meet-cute. I can guess. “Thanks for patching me up.”
“Is this an ol’ lady thing?” she asks with a laugh.
But I’m dead serious when I say, “It is, and you’re a natural at it.”
This sobers her up. “I can’t imagine having to do this every weekend.”
“You won’t have to,” I say before I catch myself. I’m way ahead of the game.
Her throat bobs as she pulls the backing off an oversized bandage. “I’m not sure that’s something I can picture for myself.” She presses the bandage over the glued cut, tapping the edges to stick it down.
I lay a hand over both of hers. “I’m glad you’re here this week.”
She won’t meet my gaze, trying to laugh off the seriousness of the direction our conversation has taken. “Even though I’m just here to spy?”
“I’m an open book for you.”
She pulls away, picking up the trash and dropping it in a nearby can. “It’s been an experience already. And only day two!” I wait on her as she closes up the kit and returns it to the wall. “Should I even out the sleeves?” she asks.
“Sure.”
“We’ll cut the other one to match.” She runs the scissors around my other arm. I sense her hesitating on the uninjured bicep, as if she needs to take a long look.
She can stare all she wants. But my need of her is rising, filling every nook and crevice of my body. We’ve played a cat-and-mouse game so far, but I’m ready to catch her now. That’s how I will know if I’ll be able to let her go at all.
I’m thinking it’s not likely.
“There,” she says. “You’re less obvious now.” She tosses the cut sleeve in the trash. “That slice might heal strangely over your tattoo.”
“Makes it more interesting. Do you have any?”
“Tattoos? Gosh, no. I haven’t considered it.”
“We should get you something before you go back.”
She presses her hand to her chest. “Me? I’d have no idea what to do.”
“Mmm. I have some ideas.” My eyes lock on hers.
“Uh…really? Like what.”
“My name. And a threat for anyone who happens to see it.”
I watch for her reaction. It will tell me where we’re headed.
Her voice is shaky. “Seems ill advised, particularly for someone in the middle of a divorce from the last man.”
I wrap my arm around her back and draw her forward. Her legs are forced to part and straddle my knee. I lift my leg, putting pressure where I want it, just a test.
She draws in a breath, her eyes half closed. “Iron Jack…”
“Say the word and I’ll let go.”
She breathes once, twice, and a third time, her gaze on my face. “What is happening here?” she finally asks.
“I think we should find out,” I tell her.
Our gazes hold.
But we’ve forgotten we’re not alone. A squawk of surprise rings out from the women behind us, then a burst of giggles.
We turn to look. Three of the women are trying to carry an oversized crystal bowl filled to the brim with red punch.
Greta leans in close. “I think they sampled too much of their own punch and can’t carry the bowl without sloshing now.”
I reluctantly release Greta and head toward them.
“Let me take that,” I tell them, stepping forward to lift the bowl from their arms.
“Oh, thank you,” one lady says. “There was no way we were getting that out there without a spill.”
“Your arm okay with that load?” Greta asks as she runs ahead to open the door to the hall.
“I’m fine.” But I hesitate before I go through, turning to the laughing women. “You ladies sure you want this out there before the ceremony starts? It might be all gone before he kisses the bride.”
“That’s the idea,” one woman says. “The Rebels want everybody drunk.”
I can’t argue with that. We walk out into the main room, now loaded with guests. Almost every chair got taken while we were in the kitchen.
For a minute after I set it down, nobody heads to the punch bowl. But then women nudge their men, and cups get poured, and by the time the DJ plays the intro music for the groomsmen and the officiant to come out to the arch, everybody is drinking.
I drag a chair over to an unobtrusive corner near a fake tree covered in white lights. Field and Damon nod at the latecomers as they enter the front door. They’ll make note of anybody who isn’t a Rebel.
“You can sit there,” I tell Greta. “I’m on watch.”
She plunks down, taking in the scene now that the patching up is over. I stand next to her and flex my injured arm.
It aches in a good way, the kind that keeps me sharp and alert. Even though Field and Damon are checking the arrivals, I want to watch in particular anybody who was here early, like the photographer.
That includes the kitchen ladies.
Anyone can be suspect. The florist. The DJ. I watch the man behind the sound setup. He’s focused on his work, one hand to his headphones, the other on a laptop keyboard. He’s the most likely to have a weapon stashed, even though Damon checked his equipment.
“What happened earlier?” Greta asks. “How did you get shot and it not start a riot?”
“We were inside. The other Wild Hair didn’t even know. They were dealing with the arrival of all the Wingmen.”
“Who shot you? That woman you dragged out?”
“Yeah. She was the photographer. A Wingmen ol’ lady.”
“She got herself hired for the wedding?”
“She was a family friend of the bride. Artemis didn’t think she’d lead an uprising.”
Greta touches her hair and seems to remember the braids. She swiftly unravels them, leaving her hair wavy and wild. I like this look, too. “I bet she was upset. How did you end up in the line of fire?”
“She was aiming at Rumble, the Rebel president. I got in the way.”
“You took a bullet for the Rebels?”
“That’s what you do in protection gigs.”
Greta closes her eyes like she’s counting to ten or something. “So the bullet meant for Rumble grazed your arm.”
“Yup. But the Rebels by the door were right on it.” I angle my head toward Damon and Field. “Got her disarmed.”
“I guess the Rebels owe you a debt if you saved their president.”
I shrug. “Part of the gig.”
The music changes and the officiant gestures for everyone to stand. Greta stands, too.
I scan the crowd, watching for weapons, anyone looking nervous, people whose minds aren’t on the ceremony. All seems well.
The bride’s dressing room opens, and the first bridesmaid in blue comes out, walking to the back of the hall and slow-stepping it down the center aisle.
“Ooh, I like their dresses,” Greta says as each bridesmaid emerges from the room. The colors go from a pale aqua to a deep sapphire.
The arch area fills as the bridesmaids line up opposite the groomsmen in their silky black shirts and leather cuts.
Greta leans closer. “My favorite part is to watch the groom see the bride coming.”
I follow her gaze. The groom shifts nervously in his cut and bow tie.
Rumble’s daughter arrives with her blue basket, dropping white petals on the floor. Artemis enters the hall.
Greta’s hand squeezes mine as the groom sucks in a breath at the arrival of his bride. “He must love her to go to so much trouble, since she’s a Wingmen.”
“He must.” I didn’t get it before, being of a mind that breaking club code over a woman was bad business.
But with Greta’s hand in mine, as this couple gaze at each other, both of them barely holding their emotion back, I might get it. Some things rise to the top, making everything else matter less.
Artemis has no family here and clearly opted to walk herself down the aisle. Nobody’s giving her away. She simply arrives at the arch and passes her bouquet to the first bridesmaid. Then she faces her groom.
“Just look at them,” Greta says. “It’s Shakespearean.”
The officiant motions everyone to sit. I decide to take the chair and pull Greta onto my lap. Everything looks good for now. I doubt we’ll have any trouble other than drunk Rebels as the reception goes on. That’ll be for them to handle.
As the couple starts their vows, Greta grips my arm. I was worried she would feel uncomfortable or even distressed at a wedding, given her recent split.
But she’s riveted, turning to me when the groom’s voice cracks and when Artemis has to pull a tissue from her sleeve to dab at her eyes.
Greta’s sentimental, and she can set aside her own feelings to take on someone else’s happiness.
That’s a good characteristic of an ol’ lady, especially at the top.
I wrap an arm around her waist and hold her tight.
I aim to make this happen, starting tonight.