If I Should Die: A Kimber S. Dawn MC Novel (34 page)

“Yeah, whatever that means.” I blush and shoot both shots back to back then slam them on the bar and grab two more. “Here’s to double fisting.” I smirk and shoot both of those back next.

Whew. I am, whew...
If I had to bet, I’d say it was the nerves mixed with the sixth shot.
But when someone comes flying into the side door, barking orders and asking where Dreads and Slim are at, my eyes kinda crossed when I looked up and saw the short, squatty man with a long beard and a big ole belly. Must be Clutch. I chuckle to myself.

“Clutch?” Dreads comes from around the bar, confirming my assumptions so quick I almost tip over. And I’m standing...sitting. I’m sitting three feet away. “What the fuck, bro? You look like you just saw a ghost,” he asks the other man. And when my eyes go back to the shorter older gentleman who just rushed in, I do note that he’s sweating a bit profusely beneath his tan colored shirt and that he has panic across his face.

“Clutch?” I mumble and try to stand—only to think better of it and sit back down.

“He won’t make it out this time alive. Dreads, he shouldn’t have lived the last time.” The old man bends at his waist and I tip my head to the side with him.

Wondering, I ask, “Who? He who?” But no one pays me any attention. And suddenly I feel like the same little girl who once was having a heart attack, but she couldn’t find the right words to describe it before the pain ebbed away, and then she couldn’t get the adults to believe her. “He who?” I whisper scream, asking something I don’t want to know, I suddenly realize.

I feel my heart shudder to a still beat as I remember the feeling that kept interrupting my dreams. The one that warned me something was wrong. And I can’t remember to even breathe as my eyes meet Clutch’s and I know the truth before I’ve even officially met the man standing in front of me. “What happened to him? Where’s he at?” I pepper the man named Clutch with questions. “He shouldn’t—no. He wouldn’t have left me here. Not now. Not right now. Not before this meeting. Not just before meeting my father. And not for Roxy. Somebody find Jacques fucking Cain. Or tell me where the hell he’s at. Somebody better start talking now.” I grab my bag from the bar and swipe a few sets of keys before heading towards the bay doors opened up to the parking lot. Or Boneyard, so says the sign. Then I start hitting the buttons on the key fobs I snagged. “If you don’t want me driving drunk, you better damn well start following me, boys. Or start talking!” I holler without even glancing over my shoulder.

And when I hear the sound...I don’t even know what it is. Mainly because I’m a civilian, and we don’t hear shit like that on a regular basis, but also because it’s accompanied with the blunt end of a pistol, with Ben Cain on the other end of it, slamming it against my temple. But I do register the resounding sound of a bullet falling into the chamber as soon as my mind connects with the fact that there’s a nine millimeter pointed to my head. “Vagabond? Is that what he calls you?” Ben’s dark chuckle raises every one of the hairs on my skin. “Where the fuck did he get that dumb shit?” His tone is edging on insanity and I wonder...a little too loud, before I can stop it.

“W-where’s Eden? Where’s my sister?” I glare knives at him, praying with everything in me that she’s okay. That’s Jacques is okay. That I didn’t piss away too much time being stubborn. “Where is my sister, motherfucker! Tell me. Now. Or so help me—”

CRACK.

Then everything went dark. As dark as the darkest flecks in the irises of Jacques Cain’s eyes. And almost as black as his hair.

Jacques.

It all went dark. And I can’t even remember if the Sons of Silencers had followed me outside the MC’s big building during my rant.

When Roxy called, asking for help, I immediately called Slim and told him I was heading over there. Then I relayed what our phone conversation consisted of.
“She said Ben made her grab the file. That had Eve looked hard enough, or been paying attention, she would have noticed Ben on the ground just outside the window, rushing Rox and making her hurry along. But I hadn’t given Pipsqueak the time to tell me that part of the story,”
I told him.

And it was the truth, too. I did what I always do when she starts running that damn cute little mouth of hers. I shut that shit up. I meant to go back and make her finish telling me the rest of the story, I swear I did. But what the hell happened?

I chuckle to myself after hanging up with Slim, thinking of Eve cuddled up asleep in my bed where I left her. As I take the corner, and head west on my bike towards Rox and Clutch’s old house off Willard Street, I start chuckling at her little demands earlier. Every time her voice would growl, it took everything in me not to laugh. Jesus, she drives me crazy.

After I call Dreads and give him a heads up on what’s happened too, I tell him I’m headed over to Rox’s. Then I also tell him about my sleeping beauty who should be still tucked in my bed. “It shouldn’t take long, but you know how Roxy is. And you know her dramatics. So...just give Pipsqueak enough time to wake up. Maybe get a beer in her or two before the meeting. No Versed, though, brother. I think she’s cool. She was being good before I left.” I chuckle. “But on the cool, I need her lucid when she meets her father. If I’m not back, I will be back soon after 'King' and Philip show up. If not, just wait. I got Rox. She ain’t no bigger than a bite. I can handle her.”

Once Dreads and I have everything squared away, I hang up and keep making my way towards Roxy’s. And when
Are You Gonna Be My Girl
by Jet starts playing in my earbuds, I smirk...then crank that shit up.

I’m just making the curve, and it’s a curve I’ve taken a thousand damn times before in my life. I swear to God. There’s not a single damn thing different this time. Not one. Well...except for the oil all over the road.

But I didn’t see that. I never saw the oil because I was distracted by the figures of eight to ten men standing around it at the end of the curve. And then I smelled the familiar smell of my favorite fumes—just before my bike fishtailed and I spun out, landing myself between an old oak tree and the big bitch herself; my bike, Linda.

I remember faintly hearing the sound of another bike in the distance, and then the shadows standing around me began to slip back...until I’m no longer aware of their presence any more.

Then I glance up in the big old oak tree above me.

And I swear to God, I see my vagabond. In the distance, I hear Slims’ bike pull up beside me before he yells and grabs his phone from his vest pocket, cursing. And when he leans over me, I can barely make out his face as I feel him checking me for a pulse, but my focus is no longer on him and his antics.

My eyes slide back on my vagabond up in the tree...
with the cutest little face I’ve ever seen. Her big brown eyes looking down at me are the only thing I see from my spot beneath the branches. As her lips move, I try and make out her words and the sound of her familiar voice.

And then...suddenly they both become more than just clear...they become real. As real as the prayer she’s praying over me.

Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. May angels stay with me through the night and wake me with the morning light. But If I should die before I wake I pray the Lord my soul to take.

The End.

Thus far...

Before I Wake:

A Kimber S. Dawn MC Novel

Chapter 1:

Eve—

When I come to, I’m barely aware of two things. One being that I’m somewhere dark and cold, and two, that I’m not alone. I can hardly make out Ben Cain’s form sitting in a straight-back wooden chair until he moves and leans forward in a dark corner of the room. And when his eyes settle on mine, I’m forced to shudder to keep my teeth from chattering because of the cold chill in the air.

Have I previously mentioned how much I hate being cold? As I move to sit up, for the first time I notice the lumpy mattress under my bottom and the cold damp concrete room I’m in. Then I start glancing around the small space nervously. And without thinking of the consequences, I blurt out the first thing that comes to my mind. “Where the hell are we at, you crazy motherfucker? Jacques is gonna kill you. He’s so gonna freaking kill you—”

But his dark chuckle cuts off my whispered warnings and threats. Just as the hair on my arms raise at his even darker voice, he whispers, “Vagabond, even if he makes it, he doesn’t give a shit about you. Don’t you realize that? He doesn’t care about you. Not anymore. Or he won’t, not with Roxy back in the picture and bidding his beck and call. He was supposed to die. Why can’t they just fucking kill him, already?” I note the sad, dark tone laced with confusion in his voice, but I can’t focus on that. I can’t focus on what he’s focused on. I need to know where I’m at. I need Ben to know I’m loved, that I have family and friends who love me. I need to make myself seem loved. Real. Special, maybe? And even though his words do sting, I brush them off and go back at him. “Okay, so if Jacques doesn’t want me, I know Ty does. And I texted my friend, Lauryn, too. She knows I’m in town. We have plans, actually. Tomorrow,” I somewhat coolly lie. “So there are people who’ll be looking for me.” I feel myself pleading with his eyes through the dark until I’m wincing when the hand I was reaching up to tie a ponytail in my hair hits the egg on the back of my head at the base of my skull. I gently brush my fingertips around the jagged but approximated edge where his pistol split the skin earlier. “You stitched me?” I ask in a whisper. “Thank you.” And no, I don’t know why I’m appreciative. Especially to him. Maybe it means he doesn’t plan on killing me if he’s sewing me up? That’s as far as my mind took it.

And first of all—I don’t know why I’ve been kidnapped twice in the last month, but I’d be willing to bet it’s because of my affiliation with a certain man from an MC as of late, but right now it’s slim pickin’s on whose side I can chose. And the police are no damn help. Can we all agree? Besides, I already see where the lines in the sand are being drawn, and you can bet your sweet ass I know where I belong in those lines. I know whose side I’m on at this point. And he just so happens to be the only ally I’ve got; as well as the damn president of Sons of Silencers, NYC.

“She has manners.” Ben nods, chuckling before standing up. And when his laughter quiets, he takes a breath then blows it out. All the while I haven’t moved from my spot on the mattress; I’m still even as his eerie black eyes settle on mine. “So, what do you think? How do you feel about what I did? Huh, Vagabond? How do you feel about what I’ve done to my family? My club?”

My eyebrows shoot up my forehead at his question. “What do I think? What does it matter?” I ask the honest question.

“It matters because now that we know who your daddy is—that fucks everything up. Especially when he isn’t even back in his own town because he’s fucking with Jacques in Daytona, who’s been fucking with you! Who’s it supposed to look like killed my father when the main players aren’t into position? That puts me and my plans at odds with not one, but two MCs, honey. Do you know how many fucking men that is in cuts?” He tsks before stepping towards me. “Too many for my eight to ten to handle. That’s for fuck’s sure.” After he slowly makes it across the small space between us, he walks onto the raggedy wafer-like mattress that I’m on like it’s nothing more than a floor mat. Then he takes the toe of his boot and shoves it between my legs sitting in indian style, butting his steel toe boot against my pelvic bone. And when the heel of his boot digs into my ankle bone under his weight, I wince and bow my head before separating and straightening my legs on either side of his foot and scurrying back. Once I’ve backed up to the point of feeling the cold stone hit my back behind me, I tuck my legs beneath myself, pulling myself up on my haunches. And only then do I realize I’ve got myself cornered into a huddle on the thin mattress in the dark room with my kidnapper.

My thoughts begin scattering like pins hitting the floor. Racing and running. I squeeze my eyes closed and try to breathe as Ben looms over me.