Wring: Road Kill MC #5 (2 page)

Viper's place is tucked
between two copses of trees, a small log gem, gleaming like a piece
of fossilized amber.

Viper gets after the
place, comes up here for the solitude, likes restoring shit on his
spare time.

I turn away. The low
rumble of my modified pipes thunder as I cruise slowly down a
winding dirt road that's half a mile long. I cram a cig in my craw,
willfully abusing my health, and take a deep drag. I sit at the end
of the drive, blowing out smoke as the deep colors of dawn wash the
clouds tangerine. A long ribbon of emerald-green grass bisects the
middle of the gravel drive.

Prospects come out here
and mow the swath of grass once a week—in between cleaning up after
the club parties. Been six years since I patched in. Didn't take
long for Lariat, Noose, and me to get through the fucked-up
prospect slavery period.

Guess we just fit in
faster
. My smile is small, but the
memories of being a fucking prospect are still fresh.

We like passing on the
baton. I think of Trainer—his dumbass finally patched in. So young
he can barely grow a beard.

I got one. It’s square and
almost white it's so blond. I have one of those tiny clear elastic
bands keeping it Fu-Man-Chu style and out of my face when I'm
eating road.

Like now. My bike growls
as I pull away, leaving Vipe's cabin behind.

Not much traffic as I take
516 all the way through Covington. Used to be Kent-Kangley. Maybe
it still is. Kent's such a piece of shit now. I guess it's better
than Federal Way, where Noose is from. Auburn, the town between the
two, is an armpit too, from what Lariat says of his old stomping
grounds.

But we're Southend
boys—the club—all of us. And the illegals and gangs aren't pushing
us MC men out even though they want to take over our
territory.

Road Kill MC rides. We own
the road and ourselves. We make our own rules. This is fucking
America. Not a cesspool for those fucks to run over the top of
citizens and innocents just trying to make a couple of bucks to
keep their shitty hamster wheel spinning.

We run the shit we feel
like pushing. We don't hurt chicks. We stay relatively clean,
keeping to the guns and the occasional drug theft from the
gangs.

That's always fun.
The first real grin of the day breaks across my
face.

Getting closer to the
clubhouse, I hit 132nd and head north. Then east again on 224th.
When I get to the 196th turnoff, I quickly survey the area. Not
seeing shit for movement.

Of course, it
is
seven o'clock in the
fucking morning on Sunday.

I'm probably the only
swinging dick stirring in the MC cauldron.

I chuckle as I pull up to
the club. The gravel parking lot is filled with bikes from last
night’s kegger, and I can faintly make out the faraway white noise
of Highway 18. We're on the back side, sandwiched by Fairway to the
north, Kent to the south, and Maple Valley to the
southeast.

Good location. After the
bullshit with Chaos Riders and the big cop/fed sting a few months
back, Viper thought it was a smart idea to come up with a new
location on the down low.

So the proposed pole barn
became an exhaustive and expensive old building haul instead. Got
the old structure at auction. Just had to pay a local outfit to
move it to the property the Prez already owned.

Simple.

Except it wasn't.
Kent has a bunch of lame fucking environmental
laws that needed addressing. Impact fees up the ass. A real pain in
the ass to own dick around here now.

Got lucky, though, and
found a sympathizer to the club within the ranks of the zealotry of
county planners and bullshittery. He greased the wheels for Road
Kill.

No, we didn't have any
bald eagles, spotted fucking owls, or marshland to save. Just set
the building on a concrete foundation and be done with
it.

I kill the engine on my
custom candy-red painted Harley-Davidson Fat Boy then listen to the
engine ticking as it cools. The birds and wind in the trees join
the faint music of the highway.

My eyes travel to the
clubhouse again. Noose and Lariat worked their asses off getting
the interior into shape. Noose is a mechanic, but his skill set
extends to carpentry, and Lariat's dad was a plumber.

They took a World War II
artillery bunker and made it into a work of art. Bedrooms and
shared bathrooms take up the second floor. The girls had bitched
and whined until the guys relented and put a glass-topped garden
thing on the top. The prospects clean that too.

My lips twist.

Finally got smart and did
the lower floor with an all-poured concrete finish. Easier for the
prospects to mop up the cum and booze fests. I grin. The other
place we'd been leasing before this outfit had to go. Too many
rules, building too beaten to fuck to save.

I shield my eyes as
chiseled light pierces the dense canopy of western red cedar trees
with drooping branches that flank the corners of the structure. At
the front and back, trees have been thinned to allow light in so
the girls can cultivate plants and shit at the top.

I shake my head. Can't
imagine being that whipped. But Noose and Snare are different men
since they got women.

Not worse men. Harder.
Fiercer. They got something worth protecting, and they're more than
who they were, not less.

Bright light nails the
paint job of my bike, turning it to gleaming scattered
rubies.

I stand, sloughing off my
jacket, and stuff it inside my saddlebag. My cut moves like a
second skin, creaking as I unlock my trunk, bend, and hassle with
reorganizing my shit.

Just as I straighten, the
front door to the club sweeps open, and Noose struts out, lighting
up as he approaches me. Usually, I'm not blown away by his size.
But as the shadows release him from the border of the building,
sunlight strikes him like branded fire, and he looks like a giant
waking up from a nap.

Tools whack his legs from
the belt riding his hip as he saunters toward me. Noose stops in
his tracks, hiking his chin. “What ya looking at?” He shoots smoke
rings at the sky.

I lift a shoulder. “You're
a big fucker.” Images of him using his size during our time
together in the Middle East slides through my mind like
smoke.

Noose's lips tweak at the
edges. “Yeah.”

I give an abrupt
laugh.

“Just noticed?” Noose's
eyebrow rises.

I shake my
head.

He frowns, switching
gears. Reading me like a fucking book. “Not sleeping?”

Don’t want to chat about that
shit.
I blow out an exhale, not bothering
to hid my irritation.

Noose studies my locked-up
expression. “Hey, man, whatever—Aria's keeping me and Rose up. Feel
like a fucking zombie.” He cranks his free arm up behind his head,
rasping a hand over his longish hair and making it go a million
directions. He flicks his cig on the gravel and stomps it out,
ripping his hair back and tying it at his nape with one of those
hair tie things.

Makes his face look
naked—and hard— without the hair.

I fold my arms, kicking my
chin up. “So you come here at the ass crack of dawn to do work?
That's restful.”

Noose nods, cupping his
hand around his lighter. The glow from a fresh cig flares in the
diffused light.

“When's this mess getting
paved?” I kick a loose pebble and it skitters, landing close to
Noose's black boot.

Noose's lip rises, baring
his teeth. “Not fucking soon enough. Hate gravel with the ride.”
His palm sweeps out at his machine glinting in the sunlight like a
black pearl. A faint layer of dust covers all that chrome and
black.

I nod. Yeah—a filthy ride
blows.

“How much longer?” I ask,
my gaze on the all-concrete building. Windows like the many eyes of
an insect ride the top perimeter, looking down on them with glass
scorn.

Gloomy fucking thing. As
much as I hate to admit it, maybe a garden at the top won't be too
bad.

“Impenetrable as fuck,”
Noose says, easily plucking my thoughts out of thin air.

“Yeah,” I answer softly.
He's right. Looks like a square hunk of concrete from the outside,
but it’s the Rock of Gibraltar. Fortification is the goal. Keeps
brothers and bitches safe. Snare probably loves the
thing.

“A couple of weeks, give
or take,” he answers, waffling a palm back and forth as he light
his third cig. “Lariat's having some bullshit problems with proper
pipe fall for the head.”

My lips tweak at the military
term for
bathroom
. Noose isn't much for change.

“It's just county code
bullshit. Gotta have a certain percentage of fall so all the
growlers and shit can go where they gotta go. Can't have turds
getting lost.” He shrugs, but his lips curl into a faint smile.
Nothing like referencing toilet habits for comedic
relief.

We laugh.

“So you still up at the
cabin?”

Noose's eyes meet
mine.

“Yeah.” I look away.
“Quiet up there. House is about done.”

We stand in comfortable
silence while he smokes. Neither of us has to talk.

Soon, I join
him.

“Kinda boondock shit you
got happening out by Snare. Love living in the city,” he
admits.

“Yeah, lot of noise
there.” I don't say how backfire from cars makes me think of enemy
gunfire.

Noose already
knows.

I guess we all react
differently to war. Quiet gives me some peace. Noise is
disorienting as fuck. Panic loads my shorts like shit.

Don't fucking need
that.

“Who'd you say was
building your pad?”

“Custom home outfit.
Terhune.”

“Ah.” Noose tilts his
head, brows meeting. “Yeah. Remember that now. Seen their building
down in the valley.”

More silence.

“It's better now with
Rose.”

My heart picks up stray
beats. “What?” Can't help the hoarseness in my voice—the
warning.

Noose looks at me. “The
nightmares and shit. The sweats, the fucking shakes.”

I blink. “You—what the fuck is
this?”
I pop my jaw back.
“
Confession time?”

Noose shrugs his broad
shoulders. “Trying to help.”

“Don't.” My eyes
narrow.

“All right, having a woman
you care about—sounds stupid.” Noose looks down, shaking his head.
He flicks an ash half a finger long. It falls like gray rain beside
his shit kicker.

I wait. Finally, when he
doesn't talk anymore I say, “All right—fuck it. What?”

He looks up. “We're
killers, Wring. You, me, Lariat—hell even Snare has come around.” A
smile ghosts his lips. “But”—he looks up at the sky, lighting his
fourth cigarette in forty minutes—“Rose makes me feel safe.” His
voice is a thread between us.

I snort. “No fucking way. You
could kill five people with your eyes closed. Our hands, our
weapons—
we're
lethal. How does a slip of a woman without skills make
you
feel safe,
Noose?”

His neck reddens. “Not
here.” He taps his temple. “Here, man.” Noose's hand moves to his
heart.

Our eyes lock, and
suddenly, the silence is awkward. His words cling to me.

Suffocating me.

I turn around on my booted
heel and march my ass back to the ride.

Noose follows, his heavy
treads matching mine.

He grabs my arm, and I
spin around. Angry, frustrated, and more exhausted than I have a
right to be.

“Don't,” I say in a low
voice.

“I don't fucking dream
anymore.”

I rip my arm from his grasp.
“Good for
you
.”

Noose flings his arms
away. “ʼKay, you stubborn fuck. I'm done with sharing the feels
with your tenacious ass.”

“Good,” I say, hopping on my
bike. I can't take his brand of encouragement. Can't accept
it.
Why doesn't he leave the fuck
alone?

Noose doesn't say
anything.

I blast away, kicking up a
spray of gravel on the temporary gravel driveway.

I run, using my bike to
carve distance.

Noose's words chase
me.

Shannon

I smooth my long thick
hair back into a low knot at my neck.

Getting ready for story
time at the Kent Public Library has me wanting to look the part. My
eyes rove my form in the silvered antique full-length mirror set
diagonally in the corner of my tiny room.

A slim-fitting but
proper-length pencil skirt grazes just above my knees. I’ve paired
the conservative navy skirt with a shell blouse in ivory without a
hint of yellow. It shows no cleavage but still outlines my figure
perfectly. Two-inch heels offer enough style to keep me out of
“meh” territory. It's the only place to work within walking
distance, so I don't need a car.