Vipers Run (13 page)

After Rocco and Preacher left, I said good-bye to Tenn.

“I'll come back anytime you need me to,” he said.

“Are you going back home tonight?”

“Nah. Gonna get in trouble with Tals and head back in the morning. Cage said he'd post my bail if I have a problem.”

“I never said that,” Cage called. Tenn gave me a hug and then left, and I closed the door and set the alarm. The night stretched out before me. I didn't know what to do. I'd wanted to call my father to tell him, but I wanted to connect with Cage more.

“Hey.”

When I turned, he was standing by the locked door. “Hey.” I felt shy all of a sudden.

“I've got to show you something. Will you come with me?”

“Of course.” I followed him through the door, down the elevator and into the big garagelike space in what looked to the basement.

“I hadn't been working in here,” he admitted. “Not until a few nights ago.”

This
was his alibi.

Cage was an artist. Which explained the moody, brooding parts of him.

“Wait. All this . . . is yours?” I put my hand to my throat. Even though I wasn't a motorcycle enthusiast, that didn't mean I couldn't appreciate what I saw laid out in front of me any less. Custom bikes finished to varying degrees, each piece painstakingly put together to create one-of-a-kind bikes.

My eyes were drawn to one old bike. It looked prewar and it appeared that the refurbishing process was just beginning. “This is your thing.”

Everything had been covered in blankets, which now lay scattered on the floor. I saw rows of paints, a half-assembled bike and a sketchbook. I put my hand on it, but didn't open it. My gaze caught on a photograph on the wall, a beautiful, custom bike.

“You made this?”

“Yeah.” His eyes looked far away. “That was before.”

“Before what?”

“Before I enlisted. Before I decided to become a one-man show, taking down the Heathens single-handedly.” His gaze flickered up to the photograph and back down, as if it was too painful for him to look at.

My chest tightened watching him. “And now?”

“I want to. I just don't know if I can, Calla. I know too much. I've seen too much. I'm not the same person anymore.”

He had to be lying—whether to me or to himself, it didn't matter. “Are you worried?”

“When you do shit like this, you have to feel. And I don't want to feel anymore because then—”

“Too late,” I told him. “If you already feel, this should be a breeze. Looks like it is too.”

The depth and breadth of his talent was apparent the more I investigated the shop. Since no one else was here, I assumed this was his baby and his alone.

“Does anyone help you?”

“Sometimes Tals will, for the complicated stuff I can't fix alone.”

“Do just MC members buy these?”

“No. Before I went into the Army, rock stars
and celebrities bought them. Figured it was time to pick it up again.”

I pulled myself up to sit on one of the tables so I could survey the place. He climbed up next to me.

“I told you that the Heathens surrounded me in that parking garage. I knew those men, Calla. I grew up with them.”

“I don't understand.”

“My brother, Troy . . . He was the one who gave the orders to kill me.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it. Because, based on my family experiences, it wasn't all that unbelievable. “So your brother joined the Heathens?”

“He was born into the Heathens MC. Just like I was.”

* * *

Calla's mouth dropped open. He put a finger under her chin and gently pushed up.

“Sorry,” she said. “It's just . . .”

“Fucked up?”

“That sums it up pretty well,” she agreed. “Is it bad there?”

“You have no idea, Calla.”

“So tell me.”

“You're already too involved.

“In for a penny.”

“Why? Why would you want that?”

“You took on my burden.”

“Willingly. No strings.”

“Why?”

“Because.” He skimmed her cheek with his knuckles.

“Exactly.” She mirrored his actions. “I'm here, Cage. Not because I have to be. Stop trying to lock me out. As a wise man once told me, your walls went back up, but I'm already inside.”

It was only fair that she learned what she was getting into. He'd given her zero choice, and staying here wasn't an option forever. Nothing lasted forever, but goddamn, he was going to try with the woman sitting across from him. “I couldn't tell you before. For a lot of reasons.”

“I understand secrets, Cage.”

He ran a hand through his hair. It had started to grow out a little, not enough to make him feel completely like him yet, though. “My father's the president of the Heathens. Troy's my half brother. So is Eli, but he's only fifteen.”

“Where's your mom?”

“She died when I was twelve. So did one of my sisters.” He paused. “Heathens have been dealing in drugs for a long time. Meth especially. It's cheap and easy to make and sell, addictive as anything. Heathens run it down the coast. They started when I was about seven or eight. It had never been
paradise, because it was a violent MC, but once the meth came into play, it was never the same.”

“What happened to your mom?”

“What happened to a lot of other Heathen old ladies. She got addicted to the drugs.” He paused. “I left, Calla. Left at ten and met Preacher. And he'd told me I could stay with him, that I didn't have to go back.”

“But you were ten.”

“It didn't matter. I knew my responsibilities.” And still, a big part of him wished he'd never gone back to his house that night.

If he'd just stayed at Vipers . . .

But he was worried about his sister. He was worried about his mom too, but he was also mad at her, because she wasn't doing anything lately, for herself or for her kids for two years. Cage had stepped in to help as much as he could, but he was twelve fucking years old, and he wasn't supposed to be mom and dad to his ten-year-old twin sisters.

Didn't mean he didn't try. “I'm the ultimate traitor in their eyes,” he told her. “If I'd been patched in already, it would've been really ugly when I left. Although it was pretty damned ugly anyway.”

“What happened?”

He took a breath and he told her his secrets.

The fire choked him. He wasn't sure what was
happening, but even though he was still in that partial dream state, he was still born and bred to an MC. He'd always been able to function easily postslumber, out of necessity. From the time he could remember, it was always, “You take care of your mother and your sisters, you hear, boy?”

And Cage had, loud and clear. Learned to shoot at six, was carrying a piece pretty much everywhere except school by eight and, now, the weapon was in his hand even as he covered his nose and mouth with a towel he grabbed from the chair as he fought his way out through the smoke.

He'd woken when the living room was already filled with smoke. When he'd fallen asleep, his mother had been asleep in the chair next to the couch. As he reached out, he realized that the chair was empty.

Had she stumbled to her room? Lit a cigarette and fallen asleep in bed? He'd caught her doing that before during the day, but that night, he'd slept deeply, and he'd woken and cursed as he yelled for his mother, his sisters . . .

Their room was next to his parents'. He could barely make it past the hallway bathroom before he started choking. The ceiling had begun to fall in and he got out of the house in time, before the entire thing burst into flames.

As he stood, feeling the heat from the fire
scalding him, he remembered the tree house. He ran there.

Marielle was in the tree house. Sometimes, at night, she snuck out there to read.

“I smelled Mom's stuff,” she said, referring to the meth, “so I climbed out. Couldn't sleep with the smoke.”

He put an arm around her, kept her close, because it was crazy all around the house with fire and police and the Heathens, who didn't trust the firefighters or the police, revving their bikes and trying to cover up the fact that Cage's mom was responsible.

“You keep your mouth shut,” his father growled when he saw him.

Somehow, it was all blamed on him. An angry kid . . . playing with matches, doing drugs . . . His school record showed a history of fighting. His record was sealed, because it was from when he was a juvenile. He'd done the time because he'd been too numb to give a shit about anything else. It was easier to take the blame than to fight it. His sister could stay with his father—the one thing he could say was that he'd never hurt Marielle. Unlike their mom, his father treated his girls like gold. After Sally's death, he kept a very close watch on her.

Even so, as soon as she turned fifteen, Cage got her out, thanks to a boarding school in
Florida where Preacher pulled some strings. Marielle had gone willingly and she'd been in Florida ever since.

But lately, she'd been worried about him, had been threatening to come back. Especially when she heard about his near-death experience.

He blinked and he wasn't smelling the smoke anymore, wasn't in that front yard or the juvenile detention center. He was with Calla and she was hugging him.

When she pulled back, she asked, “Was any part of it good? Because why go to another MC?”

“Where else was I going to go, Calla? Foster care?” He paused. “This is a violent, addictive lifestyle. I was born into it, yes, but it's also in my blood. In here.”

He hated telling her this shit. The look of horror in her eyes was something he wanted to wipe away, not watch grow stronger.

But he pressed on. Because if there was one important thing he learned in the Army, it was that letting someone know who they were up against and why made for a more effective soldier—and ultimately, a more effective mission.

“The Heathens are in fucking ruins. Just like my family,” he started. “The money they're bringing in should be enough to make everything good. But it's brought in nothing but ruin.”

“The drugs.”

“You think he'd know—no, you'd think he'd care.”

“So your father and your brother, they don't do the drugs.”

“No, they're smart in that regard. Most of the brotherhood doesn't. In fact, if you're caught doing drugs as a Heathen member, you're out. But they don't give a shit about their women. They keep them clean while they're breeding, but that's about it.”

“Breeding?”

He shrugged. “S'what they call it, babe. Not saying it's pretty, or that I agree. If I agreed, I'd still be a Heathen. And what I went through to get out and get in Vipers? That wasn't pretty either.”

“And no one stops them?”

“They don't sell the meth in their own town, so everyone thinks they're wonderful. Took that trick from Preach. Difference is, we don't sell drugs at all.”

“Guns?”

“We ship them out of the country,” he said.

“So they're trying to push meth into Skulls?”

“Among other things. They've got a prostitution ring.”

“So they drug the women, then pimp them out. I hate them.”

“Emotions will get you every time.”

“In this case, I consider them a bonus.”

He tapped on his heart. “Preacher gave me a second lease on life.”

From childhood, his few good memories centered on the bikes and the open road, anything and everything that happened away from the clubhouse.

MCs fucked you up good. But they were what he knew, and he was damned well and determined to believe in Preacher's Vipers. Because Preacher had saved the Vipers from a fate similar to the Heathens, had shoved the Vipers out from under the weight of drugs and shifted them toward the equally dangerous gunrunning.

But gunrunning wasn't destroying families from the ground up, not in the all-pervasive way drugs were. A mother with a gun could protect her baby; a mother on meth could not.

“Where's your sister now?” Calla asked.

“She's still in Florida. But she wants to come back.”

“And?”

“And I won't let her. No one knows where she
is except me, Preach and Tals. And Tenn, of course. I need it to stay that way.”

“She's mad at you for that.”

“I think she's beginning to hate me,” he admitted, careful not to let Calla see how much that shit broke his heart. “My family—what's left of them—would destroy her. My mom . . . by the end, she was all fucking strung out. She wasn't herself anymore. And my sisters were scared of her, but they needed her so much. I tried, but it wasn't the same.”

He stopped before his voice broke. Calla was staring at him, her hand on his arm, rubbing the ink there, tracing the symbols there. And when he was able to talk again, he told her, “We might be above the law here at times . . . but we don't pull that drug shit. I will never let that into my town.”

He paused, then told her part of the answer she'd been looking for. “I got out of the Army. Took the trip back here. That same night I came back to Vipers, they had a big welcome-home party for me.” He didn't want to go there, but he did. “Heathens crashed it. They heard I was home and they wanted to fuck things up. Two of our guys died. Because of me. And the next day, two high school kids OD'd on meth, sold to them by the same Heathens who crashed the party.”

The Heathens were taunting him, basically telling him,
You love your town so much, we'll destroy it.

She looked so sad as she said, “So after all that . . .”

“I left. Didn't say anything. Packed up some shit and took off. Let it be known I was going rogue. Heathens could hunt me down.”