Chapter 15
SKIPPER
When I think about women, I normally do it consciously.
Not unconsciously during REM sleep.
This morning, I woke up with an unfamiliar feeling in my chest. Maybe this is what it feels like to be lonely.
Which is strange for someone who’s spent most of their adulthood alone.
Yes, sending Carmen away is going to ensure her survival and the club’s, but it’s going to be fucking boring from now on.
Until I hear a knock at the door.
Maybe I spoke too soon.
I head over and open up.
“Conrad?” I say his name more for my own benefit, as a way to try and wake myself up.
Conrad O’Neill is standing on the other side of the door, and I haven’t even had a chance to make a morning coffee.
“A message would’ve been nice,” I say.
“I don’t have time for messages.”
No, but he does have time to make threats and break up something I was just starting to get a good taste of.
His face is quite the jump scare. On second thought, I won’t be needing my coffee. Conrad’s freaky face has woken me up enough. He’s like a fly, nowhere and everywhere at the same time with the same beady eyes. They pop out of his face as he stares at me.
It’s a pity I can’t squash him. For all I know, he’s come prepared with an army, ready to initiate war.
The agitated face would suggest that.
“What brings you out here?” I ask. “If you’re interested in becoming a prospect, you’ll have to come back next year. We have a long waiting list.”
“Do I look like I want to ride motorcycles all day long?”
No, he looks like he wants to sucker punch me to the ground.
A guy can dream.
He sticks his nose into the clubhouse. “Where is she?”
“Who?”
“Now’s not the time to play innocent. I want Carmen.”
I fold my arms over my chest. “Why?”
“She’s mine.”
“You had your chance, in the parking lot when you invited her to your party.”
“I’m not like you bikers, acting out of impulse. I prefer strategy.”
“No, you don’t prefer strategy—you’re limited to it. You have no physical leverage to win, old man.”
Conrad bypasses my comment and sticks his nose through the door again. “This is your last chance to hand over Carmen.”
“Or what, we should prepare for World War Three?” I fold my arms over my chest. “Carmen isn’t here.”
“You’re lying to me. I saw you last night with her in the bedroom.”
“That’s a bit invasive, don’t you think?
” I take my hands away from my chest to make myself look bigger, closing the gap between myself and the sixty-year-old.
For creeping in on our business, he deserves to feel smaller than he already feels.
“Do you want me to spell it out for you word for word? Carmen is no longer here. She left.”
A disgusting smile crawls onto his face, one grim enough to unnerve even dead bodies. “Then you just made my life ten times easier.”
I refuse to let this grandpa’s words get underneath my skin.
“I’m glad to hear it,” I spit, shutting the door in his face.
When I turn around, I find Carter, Vex, and a bunch of other bikers staring at me.
“Thanks for the helping hand, gents.”
“He was here for Carmen?” Carter asks.
I nod uneasily. “I’m afraid so. I told him she’s no longer here. Apparently that makes his life so much easier.”
“He’s playing games, trying to mess with us.”
I hope Vex is right.
“Fuck.” Carter seems to be spacing out. Maybe he’ll follow Carmen and be the next one to faint. “We shouldn’t have let her go.”
“He’s stitching us up,” Vex says. “Carmen is much safer away from here.”
“Much safer? Are you fucking sure about that?” Carter has chosen a bad time to bash Vex up against the wall. “Safer for her, or more convenient for you?”
Vex responds with a brutal shove, sending Carter across the room.
He catches himself before crashing into a table. “Everything was simpler before the auction, but I’m not about to let Conrad kidnap her. She has a kid. A full life ahead of her.”
“Someone is going down,” Vex retaliates. “We know not to take the O’Neills lightly. If we choose to save Carmen, what happens to us? I don’t know about you, but I prospected here in the first place because the good guys always finished last and I was tired of losing.”
But this isn’t about victory.
It’s about justice.
Vex can be an intolerable son of a bitch sometimes, but he’s right. If the O’Neills win this, what happens to the club?
What happens to my life, since I threw it all away in the pursuit of revenge?
Revenge I’m not done chasing yet.
Carter steps back and shakes his head infuriatingly. “Unbelievable. You don’t care about Carmen one bit. You care about winning.”
“All due respect,” counters Vex. “We never intended to see Carmen for this long.”
I watch Vex carefully, noting the tightness in his jaw. Even though Carter has backed off and finished being accusatory, Vex is still on guard. Like he’s still losing, even though he joined the club years ago to do something more enjoyable than working as an officer.
“The visa has been taken care of,” says Vex. He stands on the other side of the door, hands shoved into his work pants.
I thought Australian officers were worse than American ones, but Vex has proved me wrong.
He was the one who baited me out when I was illegally working in Vegas. My first impression of him was a bad one. As far as cops went, he was the worst. A lot more than the Australian ones I was on the run from.
A pair of handcuffs had never left an officer’s pocket so quickly. He was escorting me into the car before he even had the chance to explain the reason for my arrest.
At the station, I had no other choice but to sit opposite him in the interrogation room and stare at his bland face for one whole hour. It was going to be torture.
Until he started to take interest in my seafaring adventures.
Are you supposed to befriend a police officer?
Probably not.
Invite them inside for a drink when they knock on your door bearing good news?
Not advisable.
I open the door and put a whiskey in his hand.
“You can’t accept a drink from a member of the public as a cop.”
“Fuck the rules.”
I scoff and sit down opposite him. “Someone wants to hand in their letter of resignation.”
“Is it obvious?”
“Why join the police force in the first place?”
Vex leaves that question unanswered and turns to the whiskey in his hand, taking a long sip.
“Thanks for sorting the visa,” I continue. “It can’t have been easy.”
“You can say that again.” Vex chuckles. “Federal agents were all over me like a bad rash for weeks. Hopefully now you’ll be able to leave this deadbeat motel and find something more long-term.”
I bark out a laugh. “Long-term? I don’t do anything of that sort.”
Vex sits forward in response, the glass of whiskey cradled in his hands. “How so?”
“What’s the point? People are forced to do long-term because they have a home and a family counting on them. When you don’t have those things, why stick around? Home is a sail and a few planks of wood, and that’s good enough for me.”
I don’t bother recounting some of my best seafaring adventure memories to Vex, how I island-hopped and made friends with all the locals. How I got caught out in a nasty storm one night and somehow made it out alive, even though the boat threatened to capsize multiple times.
Vex doesn’t wanna hear about all of this—his face is already turning green with envy. I was living my life while he was ruining other peoples’.
“How long will you be here for?” he asks.
“I dunno. Until I get the urge to leave.”
“Maybe you could take me with you. On the boat.”
Is he kidding? Forget the waves. Vex’s weight would be enough to capsize the boat alone. He’s also way too stressed. If he’s having a mid-life crisis over a job, what’s he going to be like when we’re stranded out at sea?
At some point, you’re closer to astronauts in space than you are to people.
“I like the idea of being on the move,” he says.
Theoretically, it sounds like a dream—escape the problems until they eventually fuck off.
I’ve learned my lesson the hard way. You can travel across continents, live on tropical islands and wipe your ass with palm leaves, run away from the life you once knew as much as possible.
But the demons still find you in the night and remind you why you’re not good enough. Why you’ll never be.
The foster families didn’t want you for a reason—you were never anything special.
No matter how far into the ocean you sail, no matter who you meet—the demons will always be waiting.
And I hear them now, starting to creep back into my life. Tomorrow marks three months since I first arrived in the US.
I’m familiar with the way of things. I know my way around.
But that’s not a good thing.
It means I need to change up my lifestyle and introduce something new into it. When your mind is busy navigating, you don’t have time to think about other things.
“Venom Vultures. Ever heard of it?”
“No,” I say, taking a sip of whiskey. “It sounds like a cult.”
“Probably is.” Vex finishes his drink and slams it down on the table. “The club was brought to our attention a while back in the station. It’s a motorcycle club. A few of the officers have reason to believe it’s a crime gang, but there was never any hard, concrete evidence to support that claim.”
“What are you proposing?”
“We join it.”
In my years on the boat, I’ve witnessed some bizarre things. You write them down in the log book and think you’re writing fiction.
A police officer suggesting that the two of us join a motorcycle club has to be one of the most crazy stories yet.
“You’re being serious,” I state, biting back laughter.
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”
I note the beige uniform with the yellow embroidered logo reading “Police.” A silver badge glows on Vex’s breast—the badge he stuck in my face when he arrested me a few weeks back.
“I’m already skating on very thin ice. I could get deported.”
“So, what? You get deported and jump back on your cruise.”
Cruise is an overstatement. If Vex could see my boat, he’d take back his proposition to sail with me.
“What about your job?”
“What about it?” challenges Vex. “I’m tired of the rules and protocols. I get why criminals break the law. The law sucks.”
I hitch my eyebrow. “I’m glad I can agree on that with a police officer.”
“When you do what I do, you don’t get to win.
You just get to exercise control over the general public and arrest people.
But there’s really no control or victory in it at all when superiors are drilling orders down your throat.
I’m done with it all. Join me. You’re not ready to leave the country yet.
There’s a lot more to America than flashing billboards and strippers. ”
Is there?
I narrow my eyes and wonder for a second if I’m being played. Some officers go far and wide to get you in the back seat of their car.
But I don’t think they’d go as far as this—drinking whiskey in a random Australian’s motel room.
Vex is right. I’m not ready to leave yet. In my forty years of living, I’ve never met a man like the one sitting before me. He could be a friend, and I’ve never had a proper one of those before.
“Sounds like a plan. Find out the club’s location and we’ll give it a shot.” I second-take his outfit. “And maybe swap out the uniform.”
“We should keep tabs on Carmen for the time being,” I propose, searching faces for my first death glare.
Surprisingly, I don’t get one from Vex. I get his usual glum face, the one that suggests neither yes or no.
“Sounds like a plan,” Carter says. “What did Conrad mean by that? Making it ‘easier’ for him?”
“I dunno.” I shrug. “Let’s hope he was trying to bluff us.”
I throw a jacket over myself and march toward the door.
“Where are you going?” Vex calls.
“Taking control of the situation before it takes care of us. Now, are you coming or not?” I swing open the door and descend the veranda, heading for my Harley.
I know exactly what Vex is thinking:
Why am I going to all of this effort for another human being?
Why am I not running back to Monterey and setting sail?
He can let me know when he has an answer, because I certainly don’t have one.