Nomads' Fall: Burning Bastards MC (12 page)

Pinky and Harlow were in charge of eats for the rodeo, and Tiny had a couple of kegs on ice. Seth was helping shuttle the heavy pans and boxes for the women. He and Tarzan were turning all kinds of domestic now that they knew they were going to be fathers in the next few weeks.

Future was still mad at Big Dog and he was staying at the club until they worked out their problems. As far as he knew, Georgie and Gladys still hadn’t spoken. Beadle’s old lady had mailed him an Order of Protection and divorce papers in the same envelope with no return address.

Mick was without a woman now, his house mouse had taken off for the big city. Demon wondered if it was something in the water around the club. The females were all going crazy. Even Crazy Charlie was having woman troubles. The lady lawyer he’d been seeing wanted to change the greybeard into a respectable citizen, and that was just not going to happen. She was planning to run for a judge’s seat this fall, and she had to appear to be staid and lily white. Charlie was not what anybody would call on the up and up, anybody that wanted to look into his past anyway.

He and Knight decided they’d try to get the Prez and their Sergeant at Arms clean and sober in the morning before taking Big Dog home, and dropping Georgie on Gladys’s doorstep. The two would be a start. Hopefully things worked out, or this clusterfuck they’d made was going to continue.

Show helped him drop Big D into one of the back rooms to sleep it off, and Georgie told him to go fuck himself when he suggested the old man sleep it off too. They’d had to put Big D in the room by himself and lock the door, so one of the housecats didn’t curl up with him. All they needed was for Future to walk in and see that. Big D would have to shoot his own dick off to make her happy if that was to happen.

Knight stretched out on the couch in the lounge and hoped he could sleep. The shanties out back were too full of snoring, farting drunks for him to get any rest there.

Chapter
Twelve

Jolly and Gladys were two miles from the MC club when they saw four or five bikes headed toward them from the opposite direction. The bikes were still some distance away, but they clearly saw one of the lead bikes as it veered into their lane, and one of the bikes in the rear jerked to the side, causing the rider to go flying. The remaining riders kept going for another fifty yards or so, then used both lanes to turn their bikes around. The biker in front went flying into the ditch and his machine laid on the pavement circling, until one of the other men hopped around the thing and shut it off. Gladys turned the radio off and Jolly let her foot off the gas pedal to coast closer to the bikers who were littering the road and, “Fuck, did you hear that? Gunfire, what in the hell is going on?”

They could clearly see the two uninjured bikers who had parked their bikes on the shoulder of the road go back to their companions, carrying guns in their hands.

They parked on the side of the road behind the two big machines and Gladys tried to get out of the car wanting to run to the men, but Jolly held her back. “You can’t run up in the middle of a gunfight, we need to wait until we see someone walking around. I still have my guns, but they’re back at the house, and won’t do us much good now.” She was busy craning her neck to see the surrounding countryside. She looked in the rearview mirror because she thought she heard an engine, and saw a white truck pulling out of one of the fire lanes that were cut into the deep forests in the area. She couldn’t see who it was or how many people were in the truck, so she tapped Gladys to look too.

“Do you know that truck?” Gladys ignored the hand that’d settled on her shoulder and got out of the car. She followed, and wondered how Gladys’s short legs could move so fast.

They were both huffing and puffing by the time they got to the men. Gladys yelled, when she saw Georgie lying on the gravel unconscious, and Show was on the phone. She knelt on her knees attempting to get him to wake up and look at her. She laid her fingers on the spot just under his jaw by his earlobe, to check his pulse. It appeared to be pumping right along. “What happened? We saw you coming our way then bikes started falling.” She was looking at Show, but he couldn’t answer her question. He shook his head and looked into the forest.

“No idea, I heard shots, and watched Georgie fall. Came back and saw they got Big D and Knight too. Demon is on the other side with them. I just called the cops, this is a targeted hit, away from our property, so the state boys need to know something’s up. The ambulance is on its way.”

She looked at the big man lying in front of her and felt such love and rage that she couldn’t contain her reaction. She began pounding on his thick chest and calling him a dumbass, among other unflattering things.

Show went to his other side and pulled his wallet and weapons. He went to the other side of the road where a pretty slender woman was getting the story from Demon and a pissed off Knight. She was holding Demon’s t-shirt to the bullet wound on Big D’s chest while Knight surveyed his wrecked bike. Demon was cursing a blue streak.

“What the fuck? Dorsey isn’t hurting anyone, that fucker isn’t breathing unless he came back as a ghost who owns a high powered rifle. Who’s taking potshots at us? Some blue balled motherfucker is gonna get his ass handed to him in hell.” He went to help Knight with the wreckage of his beloved Triumph Trident and continued his verbal hissy fit.

She didn’t know whether to laugh or throw rocks at the two big men who were almost crying over the twisted lump of metal. She couldn’t help but be impressed and since she was being honest with herself, turned on by the sight of the bare chested redhead that she assumed was Demon. His chest was smooth and the nipple stud with the chain dangling from the piercing was sexy. He was a few inches taller than Knight, but they appeared to be evenly matched with the tight asses and thighs, at least as far as she could see with their jeans on. It solved the mystery of why Future had bragged about them to her. The two would be difficult for any woman to choose between.

Demon stomped back to where she sat with his President’s blood coating her hand, and started searching the man’s pockets, even reaching under the giant man to retrieve a .45 Sig semi auto. She didn’t flinch when Demon looked at her and nodded, she returned the gesture and looked down at her patient. She didn’t know what to say to the big man, and now wasn’t the time to ask him to strip out of those jeans so she could see if the packaging was hiding an even better product. She shook her head,
what in the
hell is wrong with you?
You’re up to your wrists in a stranger’s blood, the sniper might have
been, wait, she didn’t tell the big guys about the white pick-up
.

Demon was shoving Big D’s weapons into his own saddlebags when he heard her voice calling. “Oh uh, guys? I forgot to tell you something.” He stood over her and the random thought that his dick would look good disappearing into that wide lipped mouth of hers, made him frown. Knight stepped up next to him.

“While we were parked back there waiting to see if any of you were moving around, a white pick-up pulled out of the two track back about a quarter of a mile. I couldn’t see anything other than the color and it was one of those little trucks, not like a full sized one. Gladys saw it too.”

The sirens got louder and the men standing went to the side of the road to wave the emergency vehicles down. The state police cars arrived seconds before the lumbering ambulance could be seen with the red lights flashing. Two more police cars came from the opposite direction, and she watched the sheriff’s cruiser pull in behind the Mustang. The deputy got out and spoke into his shoulder mic. It was obvious he was running the plate numbers, and she wondered why. His head snapped up and he scanned the area around him before walking toward the crime scene.

Big Dog opened his eyes and closed them again, he moaned and told her to let him up. “Let me go, I need to see to the others.”

“The others are all right, you’ve been shot, and you’re bleeding like a stuck pig. If I let you up, you’ll probably bleed out since I have my finger in the bullet hole to stop most of the bleeding. I’m sorry if I’m hurting you, but it’s the only way to slow it down. Demon and Knight are talking to the cops and the ambulance is on its way, so everything’s under control.”

He licked his lips and told her, “Tell Future I love her, ‘k?” The last words she got out of him before the medics came and took over his care. One of them gave her a bottle of water to rinse the worst of the blood from her hand and she was grateful for the small mercy. It didn’t take long for the medics to load up the injured men and left the rest of them standing around while the police got their reports and pictures. Gladys climbed in the front of the ambulance and went to the hospital with the men.

She wasn’t surprised when the sheriff’s deputy whose shiny identification bar gave the name T. Murphy stood in front of her and began asking questions. When he demanded to see her license and the registration for the car, she began to walk back to the shiny blue vehicle.

Demon and Show watched the deputy put his hand on the slender shoulder of the girl and they looked at each other, something wasn’t right here. Unless the girl was wanted for something, the deputy had no reason to put his hands on a witness like that. They watched her shrug his hand off and saw him clamp his hand around her upper arm. She jerked away, but he kept his hold.

Knight was already headed that way, and Demon was close behind. Show interrupted the state cop and pointed toward the sheriff’s deputy with the two big bikers close on his heels. “You better call Barney off before we have an incident here.”

The officer shook his head and cursed under his breath. By the time he reached the other four, he was out of breath and pissed off. The bikers were standing arms folded while the deputy told them to back off, “You have no business being here while I interrogate the witness.”

Jolly flinched as his fingers dug into her arm and she tried to pull away, but he was not about to let up the grip he had on her. When the state trooper asked him what he thought he was doing, Deputy T. Murphy told him to mind his own business, and the language deteriorated from there.

The local cop and Show joined the gathering and watched as the two men argued over jurisdiction. Show was too busy recording the entire thing on his phone to join the conversation with the bikers and the local officer.

During a lull in the insults, Jolly asked the state cop to, “Please make him let go, my hand is going numb.” The deputy finally did something that made the state boy take him down to the ground, dragging Jolly with them, before she was loose from the grip on her muscle. He’d slapped Jolly, and called her a stupid cunt. The state cop had the deputy in cuffs before taking his sidearm and calling for backup. Knight stepped close to her and took her arm to examine the skin where it was turning a deep purple.

“What was that about? He had something planned I don’t think you’d find pleasant.”

Jolly shook her head, “I have no idea. He told me he wanted my license and registration on the car, but when I started to open the door to get my purse, he got mean. He kept calling me a thieving whore under his breath.”

Demon was the one to reach in the vehicle and get her purse. He found the registration and insurance papers in the console. He noticed the car was registered to a William Kelley and Jolly Baker Kelley.

The deputy was livid. He started shouting the whore had stolen the car, “Just look at the registration. William Kelley owns that car, and she’d as good as dead when he catches up with her. Nobody steals from a guy like him and gets away with it.” He didn’t tell them he planned to turn her over to that same man, the mob boss was notorious for his generosity when someone had information that he could use.

Jolly handed the papers to the sheriff when the older man got out of his squad car. “I didn’t steal it. My father gave it to me.” While the sheriff ran the VIN number on the car, Jolly took the new phone out of her purse and called the man herself.

“Hi, sorry to bother you, but I have a situation here. There’s a sheriff’s deputy that is swearing I stole the car.” She handed the phone to the state officer and sat on the hood while Demon and Knight waited to see what would happen.

The sheriff got the information back and he frowned at T. Murphy. “What made you think this here gal was lyin’?” Demon didn’t hear the reply but he did see the old lawman tense and look back at Jolly with his eyebrows raised.

He looked at Jolly himself and asked her the question, “Who’s your old man anyway?” She didn’t answer him right away because the trooper handed the phone back to her and went to speak with the sheriff and T. Murphy.

“Hi again, like I said I am sorry to have bothered you, but... well, no he didn’t exactly hurt me.”

Knight said, “Bullshit, the fucker bruised your arm, if that’s your father, give me the phone and I'll tell him the truth.”

She narrowed her eyes at Mr. Smartass, but handed him the phone, and he walked away with it. She dropped her hands in frustration. Demon propped himself on the fender close to her thigh. She looked up at the red-haired giant and shrugged her shoulders, “You know as much about him as I do. Until this past week, I never even heard of the man.”

She couldn’t tell anyone about William, what would she say? “
My father is the boss of a bunch of mobsters and tough guys
?” She wasn’t certain exactly what he was. All the way back to Gladys’s she kept rationalizing by thinking of William as a CEO of a corporation. Technically he would be exactly that. Organized crime was a business, the movies made that clear, it’s either business, or personal, you don’t mix the two. She sat there on the hood of her shiny sports car, and decided that this good Samaritan crap was not worth the hassle. That deputy was in trouble. If the bikers didn’t get him, her newfound daddy probably would and she wondered why the thought of the man being beaten didn’t bother her like it would have two years ago.