Welcome to Sugartown (18 page)

I should have
traded the thing in, or at least let her gather dust in storage for
a few years. Instead, my simple decision to cling onto the one
thing I truly loved from my past could cost us both our lives. And
maybe I even deserve to go out like a rat, to be strung up by the
balls and beaten bloody, but Ana sure as shit doesn’t deserve to be
anywhere near that.

We come
tearing out of the alleyway into the empty street. We’re alone. For
now.

“
What the
hell was that all about?” Ana’s standing beside me with her helmet
in her hands, but she’s not moving.

“
Put on your
helmet,” I command and find my patience stretched to its breaking
point when she stands there demanding an answer. “Ana, put on your
god damn helmet and get on the fucking bike!”

“
What the
hell is wrong with you, Elijah?”

“
Ana, baby
girl, if you don’t get on this bike right now, you’re going to get
us both killed,” I plead, and my fear must finally resonate with
her because she hurriedly straps on her helmet and jumps on behind
me. The engine roars to life and I twist the throttle and gun it
down the road. We’re almost to the town limits when two single
headlights appear in my side mirrors.

My head is
pounding, my heart racing, veins running cold with fear. Not for
what they’ll do to me. Sure, it’s gonna fucking hurt like a bitch,
because that’s what we do to traitors. We take them apart, slowly.
We poke and we prod and we strip them of their cuts and burn off
their marks and we hurt the ones they love—not because we’re
sadists, but because once you patch in, the club doesn’t just
become your family, it becomes your whole fucking world. And once
you fuck with a good thing that good thing fucks with
you.

When it comes
to taking someone’s old lady it’s never personal, it’s just the
quickest way to rip out a man’s heart and force him to watch it
beating in his hands. Even though I was merely just a prospect when
my arse was carted off to prison, I grew up in the club. My dad is
sergeant-at-arms, I’ve been privy to what goes on in those darkened
rooms beneath the clubhouse countless times and I’ll be dead before
I let Ana see the inside of them.

I shout to
Ana to hold on and thrust the throttle all the way. The bike
shudders and lurches forward. I check the speedo and feel a weird
swell of pride that my little baby’s still got some kick in her. I
can feel the tension in Ana’s grip around my waist and for once I’m
thankful for the fact that we can’t communicate freely on the bike,
because I know she’s dying for answers that I’m still not ready to
give her.

The
headlights in my side mirrors are rapidly gaining on us and fear
has my balls disappearing inside me. I should have left Ana behind,
somewhere she’d be safe until Bob or Holly could come get her.
Instead, she’s holding tight to my waist and my stupid decisions
will more than likely get her killed.

Ana points to
a turn-off up ahead and I slow the bike just enough to take the
corner without gutting the underbelly. Once we’re flying down the
straight I breathe a bit easier because my vision isn’t hindered
like it was in the winding hills outside of Lismore. I can see
exactly what lies ahead of us, and at the moment it’s nothing but
cattle fields and straight bitumen. The relief is short lived,
though, because I’m already pushing the bike as far as she’ll go
and the two Harleys are no longer in my rear view. Instead, they
slide up beside us playing some kind of fucked up game of pong
where we’re the ball, caught dead in the middle, drifting back and
forth across the road between them.

“
Pull over!”
one of them yells above the roar of our engines.

I shake my
head at the Angels’ VP, Rocker—nicknamed that because he’s
completely off his—a man who scared the shit outta me as a kid and
still does. “Fuck you!”

“
Come on,
Moose,” Kickstand says—yeah, you guessed it, his road name came
from the fact that he forgot to put his kickstand up while taking
off in front of a bunch of über hot girls one day. And mine? Well,
it’s kinda self-explanatory.

Kick and I
were close, both made prospect at the same time. We’re both the
same age, and both came when the club called because we’d never
known any other family than the one our dad’s had indoctrinated us
into. I glance at his cut and realise he’s now a fully patched in
member, which is exactly what I would have been if I hadn’t taken
the fall for him and been ordered to run. “We just wanna talk,
man.”

“
Got nothin’
to say!” I shout back and give the throttle one more sharp twist,
praying like hell she’ll pick up speed and not die under us. Ana
has a death grip on my waist, and I wish I could say something to
comfort her but my energies are better focused on getting us the
fuck out of here. Up ahead there’s a crossroads, and though I know
it’s ridiculous to think we might get away from our tail all I can
focus on is it. If we can somehow get ahead of them, it might not
be hard to lose them along the road between here and
Sugartown.

If I thought
heading in the direction of the nearest police station would help,
I would, just to keep Ana safe, but I’m not fool enough to believe
the badges would make even the slightest bit of difference. After
all, you can’t hide out at a station forever.

As we
approach the crossroads I don’t slow like I should. Instead I
quickly pat Ana’s arm so that she knows to hold on tighter and
attempt to take the corner at holy-fuck-high-speed when, from out
of nowhere, some arsehole with no headlight decides on a game of
motorcycle chicken. I almost didn’t see him, but as I swing hard to
the left and the bike slides along the gravel shoulder I realise
that that was the point.

Ana and I are
airborne in seconds, and I reach out a hand to grab her but she’s
so much smaller than me so she flips in the air through two full
revolutions before landing hard on her side in the gravel. Fuck. I
hit the ground before her, but there’s much more to me than skin
and bone, so I’m probably hurting a lot less than she is right now.
My leg’s torn up pretty badly and there’s blood pouring from my
head. A single tooth rattles around in my mouth and I spit it onto
the ground with a wad of blood and dust. I unstrap my helmet to
make sure there are no more teeth dancing around inside my mouth
that might choke me.

“
Ana?” I
yell, as I attempt to climb to my feet but settle instead for
crawling my way toward her because my leg won’t take the weight.
Dazed, she rolls toward me. There’s a small cut on her forehead
that’s bleeding like a bitch. She’s clutching her arm to her chest
and there’s a patch on her upper arm where the gravel ate through
her jacket and sliced up her bicep like a cheese grater.

“
I’m okay,”
she mumbles and then lets out a scream. That’s when I feel the foot
in my back pressing me down against the asphalt. Someone cocks a
gun and shoves it into the back of my neck.

“
Don’t move,
motherfucker.”

“
Hey, Rocker,
ease up, okay? It’s Ethan.”

“
Ease up?
Prez wants this fucker’s head on a platter and you want me, his VP,
to ease up?” he punctuates each word with jab of his gun into the
back of my head. “He fucking sold us out, Kick. He’s a
rat!”

He spits
beside me. I glance over at Ana, who’s being forced onto her
stomach as I lie here, helpless to do anything but watch. I don’t
know the man holding her down but I could tear him apart with my
bare fucking hands for the way he’s touching her arse as he pats
her down for a weapon. He’s wearing a cut with a Wolf on it.
Not an Angel, then,
I
think, relieved, but I know with certainty he’s the guy who was
standing outside the bar, watching, just a half hour ago. Which
means whoever these Wolves are, they’re running either drugs or
guns with the Angels.

Fuck! We are
so fucking screwed.

“
Get up.”
Rocker hauls me to my feet, his gun now thrust up under my chin.
“We been lookin’ for you a long time, boy.”

“
Been runnin’
a long time.”

“
You been
shackin’ up with this pretty bit of pussy, here? You always could
pick ’em, Son.” He whistles low as the guy holding her to the
ground slides his hand over her arse and then dips it down between
her jean-clad legs. Ana lets out a startled cry and tries to go
completely still, but she’s shaking so hard I know she’s in
shock.

“
Touch her
again and I’ll rip your fucking face off!” I sneer at
him.

He just
laughs and yanks her to her feet by her pony tail. He unbuckles her
helmet and throws it to the ground and the pinches her cheeks
together, titling her head this way and that to get a better look
at her face. Then he looks at me with a shit-eating grin. “You mean
like this?”

He tugs her
zip down so her jacket falls open, exposing her big beautiful tits
and turns to face her. He reaches out a hand that she flinches away
from, but he grabs her arm and yanks her hard towards him before
burying his face in her chest. “Don’t worry, baby, Maggot’s gonna
take real good care of ya.”

Ana struggles
in his grasp. She’s crying, hard, great wracking sobs that rattle
her little frame. Her eyes meet mine and the pleading in them
twists my gut until it feels like I’m coming apart. I try and lunge
toward the bastard whose hands are mauling my woman from tits to
arse but Rocker yanks me back into reality by cocking the gun under
my jaw.

“
Uh-uh-uh.”

“
Leave her
alone. Your beef is with me, not her. Let her walk and you can
deliver my head to the prez yourself. I won’t fight, just let her
go.”

Maggot pops
open the button on Ana’s jeans. She struggles and lashes out with
her injured arm, and she manages to get in a few solid hits to his
chest and face before he pulls the gun from his waistband and
pushes it to her temple. “Hold still, bitch. I can just as easily
get in your pants with a bullet in your brain.”

“
Rock, are we
sure about this? This is Ethan, man, the only person other than
Tiny you trusted enough to fuckin’ glance in the direction of your
bike, much less fix it.” Kick, who’s been awfully fucking quiet
this whole time, steps into my peripheral.

“
He ain’t
Ethan, he’s a motherfucking rat!”

“
We don’t
know that for sure. Till now, no one’s seen the bastard since he
was released.”

“
Been runnin’
like a rat, hasn’t he? What does that tell ’ya?”

“
I didn’t
sell out the club. I got out on good behaviour. Saved a cop from
being shanked in the middle of riot. Part of my conditions of
release was to put the club behind me. That’s why I’ve been
running, I can’t go back in or I’m toast.”

“
Bull-fucking-shit!” He nods in Maggot’s direction.

Maggot pulls
Ana into him so that his chest is against her back. One hand
cradles the gun against her head and the other slips inside her
jeans. “Bitch is fucking wet,” he slides his hand further into her
pants and, from the way she cries out in pain, I know his fingers
are inside her. “You got some kinda rape fantasy, bitch? ‘Cause I
am totally fucking down with that.”

I see fucking
red. No word of a lie, everything is tainted with the swell of rage
inside me. I jam my foot down on Rocker’s instep. He cusses and
loosens his grip on me. I drive my elbow back into his face with a
solid hit to the nose and I feel him drop like a tonne of bricks. I
don’t have time to see how Kick’s going to deal with this
situation—I must trust the bastard enough not to shoot me in the
back, because he’s all but forgotten as I scoop up Rocker’s gun and
aim it at Maggot as I run toward them.

He has a
kicking, screaming Ana bent over at the waist and he’s attempting
to shove his dick inside her. I shoot him once in the hip and he
drops to the ground with a scream. Then I fire off an entire round
into his head and chest, screaming out the remainder of my rage
when my bullets run out. Then I reach down into the mess of blood
and bone and take his gun before firing more bullets into his
dick.

Ana’s been
stunned into silence. Her jeans are down around her ankles and
she’s shaking so bad her tremors look like convulsions. I take a
step towards her and she flinches.

“
Baby girl—”
I begin, but the sound of shots ringing out behind me forces me to
remember we’re not alone. I spin around with the gun aimed and
ready, but it’s just Kick staring back at me with a wide-eyed
expression, his gun held aloft, his other hand held up in
surrender. Rocker is still on the ground, only now he’s sporting
two clean bullet wounds to the head.

I keep the
gun aimed at his head and jerk my head toward his weapon. “Put it
down!”

“
Easy
brother,” he says eyeing me nervously.

“
I’m not your
brother. Now, put the fucking gun down, Kick.”

“
Yeah, okay.”
He slowly eases the gun down to the ground and steps
away.

“
Back it up.”
I keep my weapon firmly trained on his head and he slowly walks
backward. I lean down, scoop up the gun, click on the safety and
shove it in the back of my pants. “Down on your knees and place
your hands behind your head.”