Chapter Two #2
The second my eyes fell on what was inside, I took a step
back.
Left side, eight by ten, man on his back in the street,
chest covered in blood that came from several holes, eyes open and staring
unseeing, since he was very clearly dead.
Gross and creepy.
Right side, eight by ten, man on his side in a gutter, half
his skull gone, blood everywhere, brain matter a blood-covered white-gray wodge
of goo that wasn’t all contained in the place it should be, even more very
clearly dead.
Way creepier and off-the-charts gross.
This was a curious thing for a gun shop owner to have.
Unless he was a responsible gun shop owner who wished to
impart the seriousness of owning a gun on people like me.
“You got a weapon in your hand, you got the power to do
that,” Snapper said, tapping a finger sharply on the right-side picture. “You
good with that?”
I tore my eyes away and looked to him to see him facing the
binder with his gaze aimed over his leather-clad shoulder at me.
Taking him in, for a second, I was thrown off kilter.
When the whole thing started with me informing on Bounty to
Chaos, and Snapper was assigned as my Chaos handler, we’d always met in person.
I preferred it that way because I knew he’d never approach if he hadn’t checked
to make sure he could. Telephone conversations could be overheard. Beck had my
phone password, so if he got any suspicions and was sneaky about it, without me
noticing, texts could be checked.
I didn’t want a record. I didn’t want evidence easily
available. I didn’t want to have to hide what I was doing in my everyday life.
I wanted Chaos to handle all that for me by casing the area to make sure it was
safe to approach.
Okay, so now I realized I also wanted an excuse to see
Snapper on a regular occasion. But also it had to do with feeling safe while I
was informing on the criminal activities of a motorcycle club.
For some reason, after a while of meeting face to face, Snap
decided it would be better if he didn’t approach and he gave me a burner. I
didn’t like it but I figured the Chaos men knew how to do this better to keep
it safer for me.
This turned out not to be the case.
In the end, I didn’t know how Beck found out. During the
tense ride we took before he delivered me to withstand Bounty justice, he
didn’t share.
But my guess was, since he had that burner, and it didn’t
have password protection, that was how he’d found out, even though I kept it in
my purse, which had been secured in the little staff room at Colombo’s.
Snap didn’t text. He called. So I couldn’t imagine even
after Beck found it, he’d know.
Unless he did what I’d guessed he’d done. After they’d been
taken down by the cops during one of their runs, Beck somehow started
suspecting me, so he’d broken into the staff room, found the burner in my
purse, called the only number stored in it, and Snap had answered.
I was curious about this as well as curious about how Snap
and Roscoe had known where to find me.
This wasn’t what was on my mind at that time, standing in
Zip’s Gun Emporium with Zip and Snap.
What was on my mind was that it had ended up where Snap and
I had a lot of phone conversations that had nothing to do with what was going
down with Chaos and Bounty.
We just talked, about everything.
He knew about my mom and dad. He knew I liked my job but
mostly the people I worked for. He knew my favorite pastime was shopping but I
also liked going to movies and reading.
I knew he got along with his folks, was still tight with his
brother and sister, even if he’d found another family in Chaos. I knew he spent
a lot of time reading, mostly thrillers (I even knew Steve Berry was his
favorite author, he was a Cotton fiend). Having that knowledge, it wasn’t a big
jump to the fact Snap was also a history buff. So if he wasn’t reading, doing
Chaos stuff, out on a ride (a lot of the time solitary, even if he found the
brotherhood, it was just his way), he watched documentaries.
And we were both X-Files fans.
But before we got into the marathon phone conversation
drill, we’d met up and he was Snapper. The boy-next-door biker with the
easy-to-be-with nature and even easier grin.
He was Chaos so the badass was inherent.
It just had never been apparent.
Right then, the way he held my gaze steady, looking over his
leather-clad shoulder, the Chaos patch on the back of his cut, his face set,
making a point, the badass was out.
And damn it…
I liked it.
“I would aim to maim,” I shared shakily, not feeling very
happy about this new way Snap Kavanaugh could affect me.
“Do you have even a little clue how good a marksman you gotta be to aim to maim and do that shit successfully in an
uncertain or tense situation?” he asked.
“Marksperson,” I muttered.
He turned slowly to me, the badass still brimming from him,
vibrating against me, and my determination not to get involved with another
biker ever (and definitely imminently) took a hit.
God, why did my dad have to be so awesome?
Why couldn’t I be attracted to geeks, metrosexuals, or
hipsters?
“Rosalie, this shit is serious,” he stated, all steely.
Snapper, easy-to-be-with was great.
Snapper being steely in a gun shop was fantastic.
Time to escape.
“I think I need to go home,” I mumbled.
“We’re goin’ for coffee,” Snap
declared.
“We’re not going for coffee,” I returned.
“You in a gun shop lookin’ to get
armed, time I give you space to regroup is done. We need to talk,” he told me.
“We don’t have anything to talk about anymore.”
Steely gone, gentle and sweet in its place, Snap said,
“Rosie, there will never be a time when you and me don’t have shit to talk
about.”
Whoa, that was crazy-sweet.
I decided to get mad instead of scared.
Or excited.
“I just got beat to hell by my boyfriend and his brothers,”
I reminded him.
“You got beat to hell six days ago by an asshole I
always knew was an asshole but now you know is an asshole, though you already
knew it, you just weren’t admitting it. And in those six days you’ve also
figured out why you were with him but you still had all the time in the world
to have a lotta phone conversations with me.”
Direct hit.
Damn.
“Are we gonna do this in front of
Zip?” I asked.
“Just to say, if I got a choice, I’d rather you not do this
in front of me,” Zip put in.
“We’re gonna do it wherever we gotta do it so I can be assured you know where I’m at and I
got you there with me.” Snapper ignored Zip to answer.
“I knew I wouldn’t have a choice,” Zip mumbled.
“I think I’d rather focus on the fact that Bounty isn’t done
with me,” I shared.
“Bounty is done with you,” he retorted.
I wished that was true.
“You know they’re not, Snap,” I whispered.
“I know one more Chaos woman gets dragged into brother
business, Denver is facing Armageddon,” Snap replied.
“To move this along,” Zip said, and we both looked his way,
“I can confirm that too. Streets are full of talk about Bounty bein’ pussy and takin’ their shit out on a girl. They’re
also full of Chaos bein’ at the end of their tether,
and we’ll just say things are feelin’ seriously
uneasy.”
“Zip, you wanna butt out?’’ Snap
asked.
“Boy, you’re havin’ this out with
your woman in my store. I don’t butt outta shit in my store,” Zip returned.
“And pay attention, I’m helpin’ you out.”
“I’m going home,” I declared, starting to move past Snapper,
but I didn’t get far because he caught me with his fingers wrapped around the
crook of my elbow.
I looked up at him.
“Baby, let’s just get some coffee,” he said.
He was right.
I’d needed to regroup.
He was also wrong.
I wasn’t done regrouping.
I needed a lot more time.
And right then I had to set about getting it.
“He had the burner,” I shared.
Snapper’s beautiful lips thinned.
“I wanted to meet,” I told him.
“There was a reason I went that way,” he whispered. “You
have coffee with me, I can explain.”
I ignored that offer.
“Did he call you?” I asked.
“No,” he answered.
Really?
“He didn’t call?” I pushed.
Snapper shook his head.
“How did he know?” I asked.
“You had a burner, honey,” he explained.
Just that.
I had a burner and there was no reason for me to have an
extra phone.
Unless I was betraying my boyfriend.
Suddenly, this whole thing was worse.
One and one equaled two, of course, but Beck hadn’t even
ascertained definitively that two was the two they were seeking vengeance for.
He suspected me, located the phone and found me guilty
without asking me a question or conclusively establishing my culpability.
It honestly didn’t matter that he was right.
What mattered was that he didn’t even ask before he
came to a verdict and sentenced me.
Especially the sentence he’d given me.
“How did you know where to find me?” I asked Snapper.
“Bounty’s place to do their wet work is known.”
Wet work.
My ex-man and his brothers had a place they did wet work
that was known.
Did Chaos have a place they did wet work?
Probably.
I nodded to Snap. “I need to go home.”
“They’re not gonna get near you or
your mom.”
I nodded again.
“Let you go now,” he gave in, probably reading me, and being
Snap, giving that to me because he knew how much I needed it. “But we need to
talk, Rosie.”
I shook my head.
“Honey—” he began.
I searched for another excuse and fortunately found one.
“I need to grieve my father.”
At that, he blinked, ending his blink with his brows aimed
high.
“Sorry?” he asked.
“I need to grieve my father,” I repeated.
“He died three years ago, Rosie.”
“Yes, and it’s come clear to me of late that I haven’t been
dealing with that in a healthy way.”
His fingers at my arm curled deeper at the same time he
pulled me closer.
“Everett,” I said softly, a warning.
“Throttle was not your dad,” he told me, demonstrating he
knew exactly what I was talking about.
“I know.”
“I’m not either.”
Yes you are.
And weirdly, that scared me more than anything.
“Please, I need to go,” I begged.
“You gotta know you’d never get
that shit from me, from Chaos, no matter what you did,” he said. “But you
wouldn’t have to do it ’cause that’s not our path.”
“What is your path?”
“It’s not that,” he stated.
We’d finally made it.
We’d made it right at the place I needed to be to get him to
leave me be.
And I jumped on it.
I looked him direct in his snow-blue eyes.
“Armageddon takes everyone out, Snapper.”
His fingers convulsed on my arm right before I gently pulled
it free.
I looked to Zip, gave him a trembling smile and said, “Nice
to meet you.”
“Come back for a Taser,” was his reply.
I nodded, thinking I didn’t want to be responsible for
someone who was out to harm me losing their brain matter, but I probably would
have no issue with amping them significantly.
I then looked to Snap, who was watching me but didn’t make
another move to detain me, and on unsteady legs, I walked out of the gun shop.