Big Dog (5 page)

She frowned, but decided to humor the behemoth. Snagging up her bags, she hung them over her shoulder, and took her time walking over the span between them. “Yes?” She wasn’t about to let him know she was intimidated if she could help it.
The rules, remember the rules. You came voluntarily, under your own steam. Unless you break the rules, they can’t do a damn thing to you
.
You owe them nothing.
The pep talk helped her strengthen her spine and appear to be relaxed.

“I’m glad to see you could join us, especially after such a long absence. You have some explaining to do, but I want to know what I’m dealing with.” He spoke to a man she hadn’t noticed come into the room behind the rest of the mountains of muscle. “Donnie, get me the kid.” He kept looking down at her and didn’t seem to blink.

Donnie came back with the little whirlwind boy that almost ran into her earlier. He looked tired, but he was smiling. “Hey, Big Dog, did you see all the cool stuff I got for my Happy Birthday? I did what you told me to, and said thank you to everyone too.”

This was the test, she had a feeling earlier when she saw the kid, but this was going to be much worse, “I don’t do kids. I don’t do tricks for parties, and I don’t like where this is going, so ask me something else.”

His eyes narrowed, and he flatly said, “You do kids now. Stop fucking around and do it.”

Deep breaths witch, remember? You can do this, just once. Right
? She shot him a look of hatred, before dropping to her knees and reaching for the little boy. “Hi, big guy, my name is Future, what’s your handle?”

To give the kid his due, he didn’t go right to her. He waited for the nod from his idol, Big Dog. He got the nod and stepped into her reach. She tried to brace herself for a sickness, or looming death. What she felt from Kevin was almost worse. The kid had been abused by an authority figure in his life, his mother. She had sold him to a man that hurt him so badly that Big Dog took him from the hospital and brought him here to live. It didn’t take much for her to find the answers the big guy wanted to know. She knew who the abuser was, thankfully Kevin had blocked most of his abuse out with the concussion that had landed him in the hospital to begin with.

She pulled back to hold him with her hands on his shoulders, and gave him a wink. “Kevin, I know what you wanted for your birthday, and I think you should have told him what you really wanted. Hang on for a minute and I’ll check, okay?” The kid cautiously nodded his head. She knew he thought she was crazy, but that was alright. She stood up and held her hand out to Big Dog.

“Kevin, age five, you found him in St. Mary’s almost a year ago. Yes, to all of your suspicions, and more. Kevin wants a question answered that only you can give him, and he is afraid to ask. Will you allow me?”

His scowl became even darker while she spoke. He held out his hand and clasped hers in the palm of his. He certainly didn’t like the idea of her possibly knowing his thoughts. She quickly filtered through his brain, until she found the little spot she was looking for and it made her smile. She pulled her hand back and nodded to Kevin.

“Ask him for what you want, kiddo, I bet he says yes.”

The little guy had such a look of hope on his face that if she wasn’t sure of the outcome, she would be as anxious as the child was. He looked at her, and she nodded again. He took a deep breath, and walked over to his hero. Big Dog tried to look friendly, but the perpetual scowl must be permanently etched into his features, because even when he crouched down to make it easier for the child to talk to him, the look remained.

“I thought you said you wanted the bike for your birthday. You should have asked for something else if you wanted it, little man.”

Kevin opened his mouth and closed it, and blurted his request. “I, I want you to be my dad, I don’t got one. You’re not afraid of nothing, and I like you bester than anyone I know. You won’t let anybody hurt me, just like a dad should, so I really wanted you to be my dad for my Happy Birthday.” He shrugged his little shoulder and finished with, “That’s all right if you don’t want to be my dad, I still like you a lot.”

The man’s head bowed for a moment. He looked at the child’s trusting face and braced body. He knew the kid was gearing up for disappointment, but he feared for his ears when he told his nephew that he wanted nothing more than to be his father. If his sister wasn’t already dead, he would have given the order himself once he found Kevin’s broken little body in the hospital.

“Kevin, look at me.” The child’s quivering lips remained closed and his brown eyes were dripping with tears, but the little boy looked up. “I want you to know I had the Suits file papers for me to adopt you two months after I got you. Who wouldn’t want a kid like you for a son? I’m glad you’re not mad at me for jumping the gun and going behind your back like that, but you were mine the day I laid eyes on you.” He reached out a hand and laid it against Kevin’s cheek. “No one—and I mean no one—is ever going to hurt you like that again. I love you, kid.”

While the small gathering increased in size from curious people wanting to know what the child was yelling about, Future went back to her original seat and watched the mini circus. For once her gift had helped the two involved and she felt good about the outcome. Thinking about touching Big Dog, even for the brief time she had, made her shiver. There were spots in his being that she hadn’t been able to read. It was refreshing not to have to take on all of his secrets. The kid was right. Big Dog wasn’t afraid of much, and the few things he might have feared, she hadn’t seen.

She knew she hadn’t been summoned here to deal with this family drama. It had been a test of sorts. She texted Clementine to see how the bar was doing and they chatted for a few minutes. All was well at home, and there was a very happy little boy still dancing around the room looking so weary she was afraid he would drop in place from exhaustion. One of the women she’d seen when she came into the front door, swooped Kevin up and tossed him fireman style over her shoulder amidst his calls of goodbye to everyone in the room.

Big Dog stepped into her line of sight and pulled out a chair to sit down at her table.
Ah, now
the
real reason for getting me here
.

“You did good with the kid. So now I have a treat for you. You might even call it a gift. Come with me.” He stood and walked toward a door near the back of the room and she had to quicken her steps to keep up with his stride. He waited for her at the door and opened it for her to walk through before him. A gesture so polite that she hadn’t expected it from him, but she went with it. The short hallway led to steps leading down, and they went down. Another door, and again, she was ushered through first. The room was large. She wasn’t surprised to see what appeared to be cell doors like they had in prisons with the tiny windows in the door and bars in the openings.

Demon and Knight were there, along with two other large men, one was bald and sported tattoos on his head where hair should have been, and an earring of thick gold. The other man appeared to follow the fashion of Goth. Everything he wore was black, right down to the three teardrops tattooed under his eye. He was as big as Demon, but much scarier in appearance.

“You know Demon and Knight, The guy in black is Freakshow, and the other man is Seth.” He nodded to Freakshow and he opened one of the two cell doors, walked into the room and dragged out a man wearing a Breed cut. He pulled the resisting prisoner over to stand six feet from where she was and grabbed the greasy hair, pulling the man’s head back so she could get a good look at him.

Her blood was running fast and hot. He was one of the bastards who grabbed her to begin with. He’d laughed while he violated her body and pounded his fist into her ribs afterwards. He was also one of the men who killed Frenchy.

She bunched her fist and started forward, but Big Dog held her back.

“Tell me who this man is and what he did the night of the attack.” He wasn’t giving her a choice, if she wanted to hurt the bastard, she was going to have to relive the night, She shook with the need to finally have some payback.

“In fact, let’s see who else we have to sweeten the deal for you.” Seth opened the next door and she waited to see who he was bringing to the party. Before he had the man completely out of the doorway, she could see that it was Jarl. The cruelest of the bunch who had tortured her. She had scars on her body that reminded her of his cruelty every time she looked in a mirror, and the temptation to kill the evil bastard was too much for her to exercise caution, there was an orange red haze over her brain and she yanked her arm away from Big Dog’s grasp, and ran toward her nightmare. She landed a steel-toed boot to his crotch and reached for the knife she carried in a sheath in the other boot. Her hand was yanked up with the knife in her fist, and another arm ringed her waist as she struggled to be allowed to finish the job that should have been done at the birth of the monster.

“I will give anything to kill this cocksucker, anything. Let me have just two minutes, I’ll gut him and play in his blood. I’ll even clean up the mess. I owe him, I owe him so much pain and hell that you will never know.” Seth pulled Jarl’s head back and she could see where the evil bastard’s face was scarred from the fire the night she was dumped in that field. The scar wasn’t anything compared to the ones he’d left on her body, but she rejoiced in seeing that he had suffered, even if it was in a minimal way. She grinned at his startled face as she spoke. Her next kick barely connected to his gut, but watching him double over made her laugh. She screamed as many filthy words as she could think to scream at him. She struggled in the embrace that held her so tightly she had trouble breathing, and she cursed the men who put the prisoners back into their cages.

Knowing she was crying and not giving a damn who saw her tears, she fought her fatigue. “Please, let me have them.” Big Dog held her still. He was as bad as the other men she’d known all of her life. To dangle two of her nightmares in the flesh in front of her and then refusing to allow her to finally put an end to them was cruel. She stopped fighting his hold. He was too big, too strong for her to break free. As she came back to herself, she realized there was no way the men in the room would allow a female to do a man’s work if she got the chance. He let go of her middle and squeezed her wrist to make her release the knife. “You can break my fucking arm, I’m not giving it up. I’ll put it away, but I won’t give it up.” He released her, and she slowly put the knife back into its sheath.

When she straightened up, she met his steady gaze. “The first one is named Reeker, and the second one is tagged Jarl. You need a blow by blow account? Reeker helped two others beat Frenchy until he passed out, you want the gory details? They hung him by his feet and took turns kicking his head into hamburger. His skull was shattered into little pieces, and they kept kicking. Those fucking animals laughed the entire time. So you think about that, and be happy you weren’t forced to watch it happen.

“As for John Doe, I’ll be seeing him in hell.”

She’d developed a raging headache, and had to get away from the temptation to say fuck it and attack Seth, to get to Jarl. She turned around and headed for the door they’d come in from. On the way through the door, she picked up her bags and started up the stairs. She walked without stopping or hesitating through the large rooms and out of the front door to her bike, got on, and left the compound. She needed a hot bath to take the pain out of her back and relax the muscles that were still tight in her shoulders. There was no way she wanted to have to deal with Merlin and Muffy tonight, so she headed back toward the last town she’d driven through on the way there. They would expect her to stay in town, or with her parents, but that wasn’t happening.

She found a small motel near one of the popular lakes and was glad it was the off-season so she could have one of the more isolated cabins. She took the place for a week, assured that she would have as much privacy as she needed.

Gladys was an outgoing woman with a very perceptive aura about her. “Me and Ralph are going to visit my sister for the week, so nobody will be here at all. For all anybody knows, the place is closed for the winter break.” She was cheerful without being cloyingly sweet, and when they accidentally touched fingers when she handed over the key to the cabin, they both got a shock. The relieved laughter broke the ice completely, and Gladys came out from behind her desk to give Future a hug. “Now you come to the back, and I’ll clean out the fridge a day early, so you can feed that skinny belly of yours.”

Gladys loaded her down with food enough to feed her for the week, and helped by hauling the groceries in the box behind the driver’s seat of her golf cart to the cabin. She gave over the key to a storage shed that was located behind the cabin that normally held water toys for the lake visitors during the summer months, but was empty now. “You can park your beautiful motorcycle in here to keep it safe from the frosty nights if you like. I always wanted Ralph to buy one, but he is afraid of them. If you’re still here by the time we get back, can I have a ride? I haven’t been on a bike before and I would really like to try it.”

Future laughed, “Sure, Gladys, if I’m not here, and still in the area, I’ll come by and we can cruise the town so all of your friends can see you wave at them if you’d like.”

That sealed the deal for the older woman, and she was still smiling as she disappeared around the curved two track leading back to her place.

Chapter Five

“Are you fuckin’ kidding me? Find her, and don’t give me any shit about it either. Of all the bent dick bastards we have around here, you had to let her leave.” The Prospect who had been at the gate last night was currently held a foot off the floor and being shaken like a rag in a high wind. He’d been the unfortunate one to let the bitch on that pussy pink and black hog leave the compound, and he was about to piss his pants. It was a relief when the ham sized fist connected with his jaw and he no longer felt fear. He was knocked out on the floor.