6. Wrench
Chapter Six
WRENCH
I got maybe three hours of sleep, and I blame her entirely.
Striker took over outside Lila’s house from me at eleven, so I could get some rest. But every time I closed my eyes: Lila up on her toes in my shop, fistful of my coveralls, that soft mouth on mine and the little gasp she made against it.
I took a cold shower at midnight and another before dawn, and neither one did a damn thing. Months of wanting her at a respectful distance, and now I know what she tastes like. There's no walking that back: I don't want to. I can’t.
Hawk makes sure Lila and Rosie get to school and the diner safely while I work on her car. Prez calls while I've got Lucky's bike up on the stand and I put him on speaker, my hands covered in oil.
“Talk,” he says, instead of hello. Prison never wore the directness off him; the road hasn't either.
I give it to him straight. Stalker out of Lila's past, ex-con, sitting at the Carlton probably working out his move. Savage watching him, while me and the rest of the MC keep Lila and Rosie safe.
“She’s the waitress from Marvin's.” It's not a question. Prez has been out of state for a few months and he still knows what’s happening in High Vale better than the sheriff. “Does Lila know you're this deep in it?”
“Getting there.”
“Huh.” Impossible to tell whether Prez approves or not. “Keep it quiet and keep Savage on a tight leash. If it turns into more than a one man thing, you call me before you move.” Papers shuffling, somewhere far away. “One more thing. We're coming back.”
I straighten up off the bench. “When?”
“When we're done. Tell the brothers to air out the chapel.” A pause, and I can hear him deciding how much to say, always cautious about surveillance. “What me and Doc have been pulling on out here... the other end of it runs home, Wrench. To the valley.”
The line goes dead. I stand there a minute with the phone in my hand, the shop quiet around me.
“Well, that was ominous,” Lucky says from the doorway, where he's been openly listening. Hawk's brother, with a military pilot's habit of looking relaxed while clocking everything. He hands me the wrench I point at. “Speaking of ominous. You know those Lodge flights haven't slowed down any?”
“Rotmere still busy?”
“Affirmative. I'm flying more suits in now than I was in spring.
" He leans on the workbench while I work on his front brake.
“And there's a woman. Fourth run I've done with her. Sharp, quiet, no luggage, books under a different name every time. Takes meetings at the Lodge and looks at my logbook a beat too long when she boards.”
“Who's she answer to?”
“Well, That's the thing." He crosses his arms. "Between me flying her in and my brother working that place from the inside, one of us should've turned up a name by now. We've got nothing. And people like that always answer to somebody."
I nod. “Tell Prez when he's back.”
“Tell him yourself, you're his favorite since you fixed that bike of his.” He grins, then remembers he's aggrieved. “Also the pool's void, thanks to you and Lila kissing in private. Striker wants to donate it to the cat shelter.”
“Go ahead.”
He straps his helmet on. “Oh, and Savage says you smiled twice yesterday. The brothers are worried, Wrench. There's talk of an intervention."
In my chest pocket, folded in thirds, is a print out. Striker’s fiancée Bethany is a computer whiz. She turned it around in a day, the information hand-delivered by Striker with nothing but a nod.
Shawn Jebson. Aggravated assault; put a man through a plate-glass window over a card game. A protection order out of another county, another woman, from before Lila ever met him. A parole sheet with a list of things he can't do and a state line he shouldn't have crossed. Lila wasn't the first.
The phone chimes at half past school run.
I built a fence around that school on the tracker app, a circle on a map, and the alert says the dot marking Shawn’s location just crossed it.
I'm on the bike before the stand stops rocking, my dog jumping into the sidecar beside me.
Four minutes across town with my heart running fast, and I come up Gray Street from the south as the gates open and the sidewalk floods with kids.
Lila's at the fence in her diner uniform, scanning for Rosie, and half a block past her, rolling slowly on the far side with its windows up, is the dark red car.
I take the middle of the street and stop the bike in it.
He rolls closer. Slow. I don't move and I don't reach for anything; I sit my bike in the road in front of forty kids and their parents, letting him take a long look at what's between him and that fence.
I get my first look at Shawn Jebson: sandy hair, mirrored glasses, a thick jaw working tirelessly at a piece of gum.
The car slides past without stopping, Waffles growling low as it passes. Taillights, corner, gone. The dot on my phone drifts back toward the highway, casual as you please.
Lila hasn't moved from the fence, her hand at her throat. When Rosie comes flying out of the gate waving a piece of paper, she catches her, smiles, says all the right mama things, but her eyes never stop working the street.
We walk home. I keep myself on the outside, curb side, and Waffles takes point without being told, and Rosie holds up her test to me: nine out of ten, a red star.
“Which one d'you miss?”
“Necessary. It has a sneaky ‘s’.”
“It does,” I agree. “Never trusted it.”
At the yellow house, Rosie and the dog crash in front of the television to watch cartoons. Lila makes it as far as the porch rail. Then her hands start, finally, the shake she's owed all afternoon, and she grips the rail to hide it and stares hard at the apple tree.
“He was at her school, Wrench.”
“He was near it. He wants to scare you first.” I come up beside her. “He wants you scared and packing, because you scared makes him think he has power over you.”
“It's working.”
“No, it isn't.” I turn her by the shoulders, tipping her chin up. “You're still here. You’re not going anywhere.”
She grabs my cut in both fists and hauls me down, and I let her.
This kiss has nothing gentle about it. It's hard mouths and fast breathing, and my hand flat on the small of her back, my rock hard cock grinding into her.
All that fear burns off her into me and turns into desire, and when we break apart she's steadier but I'm not.
“Let him watch. He needs to figure out I’m looking out for you now. That's the part he hasn't figured out yet, and God help him when he does.”
She laughs, shakily, one hand still holding my cut like the porch might tilt. Then she shakes her head and steps back.
“I need to get dinner on,” she says.
“Okay.”
“Stop agreeing with me.”
“No.”
She goes in smiling. I stand on her porch a minute, adjusting my jeans, breathing like I hauled an engine block up a hill. I'm so fucked. Been fucked since the first time I saw her, with that red lipstick and those dark curls, and her special way of moving like she was dancing.
I get home late, once Hawk comes to take over outside her house. My kitchen smells of burnt cheese, and Savage is on my couch with a sandwich in one hand, watching my TV, wearing my favorite hoodie.
“Hey, brother. So the shop tomorrow, I was thinking…”
I take him by the ankle and haul.
He hits the floor with a crash, sandwich airborne, and before he's got his bearings I've got a knee on his chest and a forearm across his collarbones. Waffles lifts his head off the armchair, assesses the situation, and lays it back down. Not his department.
“The fuck, Wrench…” The flash of anger in his pale blue eyes tells me I have about ten seconds before this becomes a fight to the death.
“Shawn was at her school today.” I growl at him. “A block from those kids. Rolled right past her at the fence. Scared her silly. And I found out from an app on my phone, Savage. Not from you.”
He stops reaching for the knife in his boot. Savage only has two modes, joker or killer, but he knows when he’s fucked up.
“He used the mattress delivery to slip out of the motel. Must have figured out he was being tailed.” he says. “I was having my hair cut and I told you–”
“You told me after I got there. Your one job was trailing the man, and you screwed it up.” I lean on the forearm, just enough.
“I've been covering your dumb ass since we prospected. Pulled you out of the river that time, lied to Prez about the goat, rebuilt your bike for free, let you room with me. So hear me once. Her and that little girl are my family now. You protect them like you’d protect me. Are we clear?”
Savage looks up at me, his muscles coiling like a cobra about to strike, jaw tight, the beast in him deciding. He's never once backed down from anything on principle.
Then he goes flat and pats my forearm twice, gentle as a kitten.
“Are we hugging?” he says. “This feels like hugging. Brother, I'm flattered, but I'm not ready for this kind of commitment…”
I let him up before he can feel me laugh.
He sits against the couch, rubbing his collarbone, and the grin fades out of him. “I screwed it,” he says, plainly. “It won’t happen twice.”
“I know.”
“So,” Savage says, retrieving his sandwich off the floor and taking a bite, like the feral raccoon he is. “When do we start on him?”
“Tomorrow.”