Prologue #2
Another tear slid over the bridge of my nose.
And I heard the sirens.
Snapper
“Stand down, brother,” Hop said at his ear.
Snapper had Speck up against the wall, their noses so close,
the tips were brushing, Snap’s hand around his throat, squeezing…squeezing.
He had three brothers working him, trying to pull him off, but he had his
weight aimed just right, straining against it, and he wasn’t budging.
Speck stared into his eyes, not moving.
“Snap, man, everybody gets you,” Rush said coaxingly. “Speck
definitely gets you. Step off, man.” Pause then, a jerk of his arm around
Snap’s chest, “Step off, brother.”
“You were on her,” Snapper clipped.
Speck just stared into his eyes, his face so red it was
turning blue.
“You were supposed to look out for her,” Snap carried on.
“He knows, Snap, look at him. Step off,” Joker
ordered.
Snapper kept squeezing.
Speck kept letting him.
“Brother, he fell down. He knows it. We’ll deal with that
later. We got two priorities here. Rosalie. And a reckoning for Bounty.”
At Tack’s voice, their leader, the president of the Chaos
Motorcycle Club, Snap pushed off of Speck, letting him go, and shrugged off
Hop, Joker, and Rush’s holds.
The second he felt them start to move away, he went back in,
slamming his fist into the wall by Speck’s head, feeling his knuckles split and
Joker’s arm coming around him to put him in a chokehold.
But Speck didn’t even flinch.
Before he could try to make a move to plant his feet in
order to throw Joke over his shoulder to get out of that hold, High had come
in, caught Speck by the back of the neck and yanked him from the wall and away
from Snapper’s reach.
“Take your hands off me,” Snapper bit at Joker.
Joker hesitated a second, felt Snap maneuvering his legs to
break his hold, but when High had Speck well out of reach, he let go.
Joke stayed close, as did Hop and Rush, and Snapper’s eyes
didn’t move from Speck.
“She was workin’ that shit for
us,” he told Speck, and the whole room, something they knew. “We promised we
had her back and you were on. You were supposed to have her back.”
“He knows that. We all know that,” Boz confirmed. “We’re all
feelin’ this.”
Snap turned on Boz. “Yeah? You got one guess who’s feelin’ it the most right now.”
Boz winced.
“Yeah,” Snap gritted. “And you didn’t even see her, man.
Beat to shit. She didn’t have her waitress apron on and seein’ her hair, I wouldn’t have fuckin’ recognized her.”
“Fuck,” Shy whispered.
Snapper slashed a glance through Shy but only allowed
himself to do it at a slash.
Rosie had been Shy’s once. He’d scraped her off, took up
with Tab before he really even ended it with Rosalie. Cut her deep.
Sent her straight to Bounty.
To Throttle.
She hadn’t wanted him at the hospital. She’d wanted him and
Roscoe gone. But he’d heard. He’d heard that Throttle had delivered her ass to
his brothers after he figured out Rosie was informing on Bounty’s maneuvers
with an enemy of Chaos.
She’d just wanted her man clean. Clean and clear of
something that had two endings, one or the other certain: it’d either get him
dead or incarcerated.
It seemed Rosie had bad taste in men.
That was going to change.
“Are we ridin’ out on Bounty or
what?” Hound snarled.
“They’re fucked. Half of them are out on bail and Snap says
first thing she asked for when she hit emergency was the police,” Rush pointed
out.
Hound took in Rush’s words and then repeated to the room at
large, “Are we ridin’ out on Bounty or what?”
“We’re riding out on Bounty.”
That came quiet. Quiet and sinister.
From Tack.
Snapper moved first, yanking open the door to the Club’s
meeting room and running right into Tabitha Cage.
Shy’s wife.
Tack’s daughter.
“Is it true?” she snapped.
“Get outta the way, Tab,” he said low.
Her eyes moved beyond him and she demanded, “Tell me it
isn’t true.”
“Darlin’, we’re on this,” her father said.
She took a step back and declared, “Yeah, we are. And I’m ridin’ with Shy.”
“Uh, say what?” Boz muttered from behind Snap.
“We don’t have time for this shit,” Snapper hissed.
“We actually don’t, baby. We got work to do,” Shy said.
“You’re not in this either,” Tack declared.
Shy pivoted on his father-in-law.
“Come again?” he asked.
“You’re here,” Tack decreed.
Were they seriously doing this?
Now?
Rosalie was still at the goddamned hospital. They were
keeping her overnight.
He had asses to kick and a woman to get back to.
“Who’s ridin’ is ridin’ and who isn’t is stayin’,”
Snapper began and turned his head back to Tab, “and you are not riding.”
“Says who?’ she asked.
“Says me,” he fired back.
“Excuse me but she is a sister who put her ass on
the line for the Club and I am the sister who’s gonna
go kick their wuss asses in retribution. Ganging up for a beat down on a girl?
Weak. Weak and lame,” Tab returned.
“Don’t you got a baby to look after?” Roscoe asked with more
curiosity than refusal, and her narrowed eyes turned to him.
Then she lifted a hand, fingers clenched around a set of
brass knuckles. Shy’s brass knuckles. Hound got every brother a pair when they
earned their patch. The palm grip had the Chaos emblem etched in and letters
above each knuckle read one of the words from the Chaos motto: Wind, Fire, Ride
or Free.
Shy’s read “Wind.”
Snapper’s said “Ride.”
“Don’t you got a nose I can break?” she asked Roscoe back.
Snapper heard Hound’s grim chuckle.
“Baby, give me my brass,” Shy murmured.
“I’m riding!” she shouted.
“You’re not and Shy’s here but the rest of us are going,”
Tack declared.
“Dad!” she yelled.
“Tack,” Shy clipped.
“Tabby, you wanna help, don’t hold
us up, we got shit to do,” Tack growled then added, “And I’m thinkin’ you get it’s kinda
important.” He turned to Shy. “To do what we gotta
do, you need control. You won’t have control.”
“Yeah, like Snap has control,” Boz mumbled.
Snap felt his neck get tight, ready to take down a brother,
even if that brother was Tack, to ride out on Bounty.
But Tack’s eyes just slowly came to Snapper and he rumbled,
“Snap is riding.”
“Could that happen about now?” Snapper asked sarcastically.
“A statement has to be made by one of the Chaos women,” Tab
announced.
“Christ,” Snapper hissed. “Can this stupid-ass shit be
done?”
“Why is it stupid-ass?” Tab retorted. “’Cause I’m a girl?”
“Uh,” he leaned toward her, “yeah.”
She leaned toward him. “That’s what I call stupid-ass.”
“We’ll make your statement for you,” Hound put in.
Tab turned her gaze on Hound and even Snapper lost track of
what was happening and paid attention with the look that settled on her pretty
face.
“You do not take your fists to a Chaos woman,” she
whispered. “You boys got an alarming trend goin’ on
with your women bein’ caught up in your shit. So a
Chaos woman needs to make a statement and Tyra might break a heel, Lanie might
break a nail, Carissa probably doesn’t even know how to form a fist, Millie
already went through her trauma, Sheila’s on the Western Slope, and Bev’s at
work, so this is on me and I’m riding.”
Tack was done.
So was Snap.
Tack got there before him.
“Deal with your woman,” he ordered Shy. “Rosalie has
reported the incident, we gotta get to them before
the cops do. We don’t have time for this. We need bail, you and Pete are on
that.” He finished with Shy and looked over his shoulder to his brothers. “The
rest of you, let’s ride.”
“Dad!” Tab shouted, but Shy clamped an arm around her while
the rest of the brothers rolled out.
They marched through the common room of the Compound to
their bikes lined up at the front outside.
When they rode out, Tack was lead, Hop behind him with High
riding next to Hop where Shy, as one of Tack’s lieutenants (with Hop) and as
the Club’s Sergeant at Arms normally rode. But High made a motion to Hop and
fell back. He then made a motion to Snap, who rode forward.
Of all of them, not that he’d left much in question bearing
down on Speck like he had, High knew where his head was at with Rosalie.
It was a huge solid to take that place in formation.
It was late winter. Cold. Dark. Night had long fallen.
But Bounty would know they were coming.
They’d be prepared.
They’d be ready.
They’d be waiting.
And they were.
Snapper sensed her waking up and looked over the top
of his book to her.
He beat it back, the tight, hot feeling that welled up
inside.
They’d laid Bounty out.
There was a lot of anger on both sides.
But Chaos had experience and skill. Joke used to be an
underground fighter. Hound, Snap suspected, drank blood for breakfast and ate
nails for dinner and outside that was all-around a lunatic. Boz was
half-lunatic, but it was the good half when it came to a fight. High and Tack
had had women they cared about messed up in bad shit, High recently, Tack not
so much, but that shit never went away, so they were skilled as well at working
out issues. Rush was all about the brotherhood and when the brotherhood had a
mission, even if he didn’t agree with it, he was always all in to carry out the
mission. Hop had always been their hand-to-hand man. He used to play in a rock
band but straight up, the way the man used his fists, he could have been a
contender. Roscoe had seen Rosalie. Speck had making up to do.
And Snapper had incentive.
That incentive was right there, lying on the hospital
pillow.
Her beautiful face was blown up, eyes swollen shut, lips
inflamed, nose huge, broken, so taped. Red and mottled had given way to deep
raisin-purple black, mostly around the eyes. There were livid scrapes and deep
cuts that shared some of Bounty didn’t bother taking off rings. There was flesh
stitched together above and through her left eyebrow, along that side’s jaw,
and he knew, under the bandage at her nose, down the left side of the bridge.
Her throat was stippled with angry jam-colored bruising.
Along the left side and at the top of her windpipe, there were distinct heavier
discolorations where Throttle had dug the pads of his fingers in cruelly,
positioned like he wanted to tear her throat out.
How Snap knew she was awake, he couldn’t say. Her eyes were
now so swollen they weren’t open because she couldn’t open them. But like
earlier, he saw her long lashes fluttering so he clapped his book shut, set it
aside, and leaned toward her.
“Hey,” he whispered.
Her head had been turned to the side, his way.
She rolled it, facing the other way.
Snapper extended his fingers, flexing them before curling
them in. They were swollen and mottled too, all the knuckles split and raw.
He didn’t feel a thing.
He considered his next move.
He wasn’t going to make her keep trying to escape him by
rounding the bed.
Instead, he bent over her.
“You want some privacy, Rosie?” he asked.
She said nothing, just kept her battered face turned away.
“Baby, swelling will go down, bruises will recede and you’ll
be just as beauti—” he started to assure.
“Get out,” she whispered.
Fuck.
Fuck!
“Rosie—”
“Get out,” she repeated, still quiet, frail.
“We want an eye on you,” he told her.
“No,” she replied.
Snap leaned closer. “Honey—”
She turned her head so it was righted on her pillow and he
saw just that pulled at and tightened her lips, showing him it caused pain.
They hadn’t laid out Bounty enough.
Not near enough.
It was still feeble, but she kept at it. “No Chaos. No you.
Get out.”
“Rosie, we got them then the cops got them so you’re safe,
honey. But I wanna make sure you’re safe so—”
“I never wanna see you again.”
Snap froze.
“Get out,” she reiterated.
“Rosie,” he whispered.
“Everett, go.”
She pulled out his real name.
This was more serious than the serious he already knew it
was.
He tried again, mostly because he couldn’t give up.
“Got up in Speck’s shit, Rosie. Brothers are pissed. We
rolled out on Bounty. All of us, we claimed you as one of our own. This didn’t
stand, Rosalie.”
“I won’t say it again,” she whispered. “In five seconds I’m
hitting the call button.”
He put his hand over hers, which was actually at the call
button.
She pulled it free, taking the button with her, and her
mouth again got tight.
He didn’t push that.
He tried another tack.
He shot her a grin. “C’mon, Scully. It’s me. You know you
got—”
It was the wrong thing to do.
“I’m not Scully and you are definitely not Mulder. We aren’t
out fighting for truth, having each other’s backs.”
Shit, that cut.
He leaned closer to her. “Baby, it’s not on Speck. I know,
the way it is between us, what we got…I fell down. I fell down lookin’—”
“It’s done, Everett. It’s over. I’m out. And you need to get
gone.”
Snap opened his mouth.
She lifted up the call button.
It was time to pull out the big shit.
“I’m in deep with you,” he admitted softly.
“Then dig yourself out,” she returned quietly, but her voice
was harsh, ugly, and not just from having her throat squeezed to shit.
“I’ll go now but I’ll come back,” he told her.
“Don’t.”
“I’m gonna take care of you.”
“No you aren’t.”
“We’re not done, you and me.”
“Yes…we…are.”
He got as close as he dared.
And he put it out there.
“I fell for you when you were Shy’s and if you think that
now, when you need me most, now, when I finally, fuckin’ finally got a
clear shot, I’m givin’ up, think again, Rosie. You’re
hurt and you’re pissed and I get that. But I’m not givin’
you up. I don’t care what way I gotta take you, as
mine or just havin’ you in my life in a way you’d let
me be there, but however that is, I’m not givin’ up.
Not ever, Rosalie. I’m not givin’ you up.
You’re gonna be in my life and I’m gonna be in yours. Bank on it.”
He gave her that because he had to and she had to have it.
But he didn’t push her further.
He reached up, kissed her forehead, straightened, grabbed
his book…
And walked away.
For now.