Devil on Your Back (9 page)

THE ONLY
way to describe it is to say I went into mourning all over again. I shut down. I shut off. Nothing went in, nothing came out.

The days after the phone call came and went in relative monotony. If I wasn’t needed in the kitchen or laundry, I was in my room. Alone. How it should be.

The boys picked up on it after the second day. King asked me what was up, even came out and asked if it was to do with Vince.

“I saw you guys friended each other on Facebook. What’s the asshole said now?”

I couldn’t answer him. Because Vince hadn’t actually said anything wrong. Essentially, he did what any red-blooded male would have—he went after what he wanted.

This fuck-up, this misunderstanding is all me. Everything is me.

I’m holed up again on my bed, the door to my room shut, with photographs of me in my younger years spread over the comforter. The day after the phone call, it was photos of Mike, and us as a couple . . . happier times.

But something shifted.

I realized that my biggest grievance wasn’t Mike’s death anymore—it was my own. I died.

And as I sit here, staring at the photographs of summers on the beach, of rallies, and silly days out with friends, I wonder
where did I go?

It’s me in these pictures, but it’s not. I know this woman, but only like a distant relative. She’s familiar, but we’re not close. I want to
be
her. I want to
feel
like her. How do I become her again?

“Sonya!”

I jolt back to the room, to the ugly reality of now.

“Sonya!” King is hollering for me.

Quickly, I sweep the photos into a pile, and stash them in my bedside drawer. He’s at the door as I straighten up, my fingers just leaving the stainless handle.

“Should have known you’d be in here again.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I snap.

He narrows his eyes at me in the way that screams ‘don’t bring your psycho woman shit out right now’.

“How can I help?” I ask, rolling my eyes.

“First off, you roll your eyes at me again, woman, and I’ll punish you like the child you’re being. Second, I’ve got an issue in the laundry.”

“What are you doing in the laundry?”

“What you aren’t.”

I snort. I know I shouldn’t, but the idea that King, the club president, is doing laundry is hilarious.

“Fuck off, woman,” he scoffs. “I’ve got Ramona doing it, but she’s having an issue.”

“Right-o. Let’s go see what it is.”

I’m damned if I know what could be so difficult about putting powder in the compartment and cranking the dial to regular, but I follow King down the stairs and into the laundry anyway.

Ramona is sitting on top of the industrial Maytag, arms folded, waiting.

“There’s your problem,” I say, gesturing to her. “Somebody’s trying to get their rocks off on the machine.”

She tosses a dirty towel at me, and I dodge it expertly. Lord knows whose room that came from . . . or what it was used for.

Eww.

King doesn’t laugh, chuckle, or even bat an eyelid. Instead, he turns and shuts the three of us in the cold concrete room.

“Okay . . . I swear it wasn’t me that took the last of the Oreos.” I back into the wall opposite the machines, hands raised.

King shakes his head and Ramona sighs.

My palms start to sweat. “You fuckers are staging an intervention, aren’t you?”

“Perhaps.” King leans his butt into the large concrete basin next to Ramona. “You tell us—is it needed?”

“Apparently. You two
are
the experts,” I drone.

“Honey, you’ve been moping around the place for days. Before that you were on cloud nine. We’re worried.” Ramona flicks her long, cherry-red hair over her shoulder.

“Maybe it’s that time of the month.”

“Fuck.” King cringes. “Do we really have to talk about that?”

“She’s bullshitting, dipshit.” Ramona snaps her gaze back to me. “You have to try harder than that. I’m used to being lied to.”

I sigh, and slide down the wall until I’m sitting on a heap of laundry with my knees tucked to my chest for warmth. “What do you want me to say? Huh? It won’t matter . . . you can’t fix it for me.”

“Uh, maybe if we knew what in the hell you were on about, we could.” King squats before me. “I need to head off and sort out some . . . issues. You two talk about this, okay? I can’t have the woman who holds us together falling apart.” He pats me on the knee and stands. “Come see me when I get in, Ramona.”

“Sure thing.” She slides off the Maytag as he leaves, and offers me her hand. “Come on. I better go get Mack out of that mud he’s playing in, and we’ve got coffee to make.”

I smile, and wrap my fingers around hers. Sharing my insecurities with somebody else makes me physically ill, but I know I need to. I
have
to. How many nights have I laid spread out on my bed, drowning in my self-pity because ‘nobody cares about me’, ‘nobody ever listens’?

Maybe it’s not that nobody has ever been there to reach out when I needed help, but that I’d pushed people away without realizing it.

Uncomfortable, schmomfortable. If something’s going to change, it’ll be because I let somebody else see the mess I created.

It’ll be because I finally admitted I’m not as strong as I pretend to be. That even a lion can sometimes feel like a sheep.

DAY FOUR
waking up in this shit-ass motel. Day four with a raging hard-on, and day gazillion and however-fucking-many with the terrors that remind me why I shouldn’t have a hard-on. I’m still so messed up on a deep psychological level over Julia that there’s no reason why my head should be preoccupied with another woman. Why a curvy blonde should be my every waking thought.

Maybe she’s into voodoo shit and she’s cast some magic over me? I never did ask where down south she was from . . .

All the same, that kid’s funeral is today. While there’s no hard evidence to suggest my gut feeling has even an ounce of truth in it, I can’t shake the dread that fills me knowing the remaining boys will be congregated together.

Like sitting ducks.

If I were Carlos, I’d have a plan to take them at their weakest—no fucks given. And if a guy like me, who does his best to keep out of the blood sport that accompanies this life, can think of that, then surely the boys are done for?

For the last three days I’ve tailed Alice’s buddy, Ty. He’s the least shady of the bunch and my suspicions are he’s the logistics man. Guy sure doesn’t dress as though he gets his hands dirty, and he sure as fuck doesn’t drive an inconspicuous car.

Overall, he didn’t give me much: a few good coffee shop locations, a barber who did a pretty sweet job on his beard, and an office block which checked out as legit. His house—at least I assume it was his—was the most unlikely of the lot—a fancy-ass suburban home that looks as if it should come fully equipped with a wife and kids. The kind of neighborhood where people mow their lawns religiously on Saturday, and the newspaper boy never misses your front stoop. Sure as fuck isn’t like any criminal I’ve ever known.

Which makes me wonder how true these rumors about them are? Is Alice really messed up in some bunch of heavies, or is it simply a case of Chinese whispers? My heart wants to believe the latter, but my head tells me that with the cards he was dealt it’s more than likely the former.

The motel owner isn’t in when I leave, so I toss the key over his side of the counter and set off. Either I make headway with Alice today, or I go home and rethink my options. Maybe King has a few more connections that can get the message through better than me. Dark clouds shade the horizon, and an ominous chill in the air sets the mood. Seems the weather thinks today might not go as well as planned, either.

The church is a quaint little building set back from the road and surrounded by a low, mesh fence. A couple of sedans are parked in the back of the adjacent lot, and my guess is it’s probably the pastor and an assistant setting up the place, given the crucifix hanging from the rear-view of one. I circle the block, keeping my eyes out for anything out of place, anything that simply doesn’t sit right.

Nothing.

It’s quiet, ordinary,
too
normal—nothing to see but a bunch of pensioners out trolling the shops, and moms getting together at cafes along the street frontage.

Five lots down from the church, I find an abandoned store with ‘for lease’ signs splashed through the windows. Tucking my bike behind the dumpster out of sight from the road, I head up the way to check out the place up close. Two more cars pull in to the lot as I approach . . . one I recognize.

Ty’s Audi.

The city boy steps out of his car and straightens the grey vest he has on over a crisp white button-down. I hang back, keeping myself obscured by the tall shrubs in the neighboring property’s front garden, and watch as he shuts the door, and heads for the other car.

An older lady with a tidy perm, wearing a black two-piece, steps out of the second car. She rounds the vehicle and takes a large purse from the passenger before a young woman emerges. She’s attractive in that simple kind of way, and can’t be more than early-twenties; she has long reddish-brown hair, and is wearing plain shift dress and sensible flat shoes.

Ty talks with the older woman, and places a hand on her shoulder when the lady drops her head, raising a hand to her nose to fend off a sniffle. The young woman puts her arms around the lady’s shoulders and leans in, whispering to her. Kid’s family is my guess.

The pastor appears at a side-door, catching the attention of the women. The older lady looks to Ty but he holds out his finger, indicating he’ll be a moment as he brings a phone from his pocket.

I take a step back, set to turn heel and kill time at my bike when I spot him heading my way. Hastening pace, I barely make it ten yards up the street before he calls out.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Fuck it.
I stop, and slowly turn back to him. “And it’s your business how?”

“Because you’re lousy at hiding when you spy on people.”

“I wasn’t spying,” I guffaw, sounding more like a petulant child than he does.

“Don’t fuck with me, man. I can either be your next best mate, or a fuckin’ nightmare. So chose your answer carefully. What were you doing?”

Turns out city boy has balls.
Who would’ve guessed?

“Walking?” I shrug. “Not a crime, is it?”

“Look, buddy, I’m not dense. I saw you when I pulled in, and I saw you watching. You one of Carlos’s?” He tips his chin up at me.

I can’t help admiring the perfect line of his beard.
Damn, that barber’s good.
“Who’s Carlos?” I feign.

Ty shakes his head, grinning in the kind of way that has my fists clenching. “We’re about to bury a friend in there, a brother, and you’re out here wasting my fuckin’ time. What do you want?”

“To talk to”—I manage to correct myself before I fuck it all up from the start—“Malice.”

Ty narrows his gaze. “Why?”

“Didn’t realize he had a secretary. You had me fooled by dropping the skirt for the day.”

He advances but I retreat quicker, leading him around a corner so we’re obscured from the road by the tall shrubbery. “Sure you wanna start that?”

His eyes flick to my hands as I crack my knuckles. “Are you for real? You’re proposing a fight . . . at a funeral?”

“You started it.”

“Oh my God, you sound ten!” he hollers. “I oughtta just take you out now, save myself the grief.”

I can’t help it—I chuckle.

“What the fuck is so funny?” he asks, throwing his hands in the air.

“You said save yourself the
grief
. You’re at a funeral. It was funny.”

“You’re fucked in the head, man. Are you on something?” Ty steps in close, scrutinizing my eyeballs.

“Jesus! Can I just talk to Malice already?”

“You need to talk to him,”—he steps back—“you talk to me first.”

“Fine, whatever.” I’m so over this pantomime that I’d write a fuckin’ letter if it got under Alice’s nose. “Do you guys have any idea who you’re messing with?”

“Come again?”

“I’d love to, but you’re not my type.”

His hand is at my throat with the precision of a cobra strike. Maybe I
did
underestimate him?

“Get to the point,” Ty growls.

I smirk—I can’t help it. He digs his fingers in a little.

“Fine,” I bite out. “Just get your fuckin’ hands off me.”

Ty lets go with a shove—a cheap move to try and assert authority over me. I’ve had worse. Still, it does nothing to ease my building frustration with him.

“You aware there’s a job out on you lot? Open season, kid.”

“And how would you know this?” He looks over my shoulder as another car pulls in to the church lot beside the one we’re standing in.

“That him?” I ask.

He shakes his head. Can’t deny I’m a little disappointed.

“I know about the job because you’ve got a contender for the title,” I explain. “Carlos’s son is out to one-up his old man, so if I were you I’d watch every corner.”

Ty stares at me, blank as a new canvas. He snaps out of wherever he went for those brief seconds, and takes a step towards me. I wait him out as he circles me, taking obvious note of the name on my cut.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” he starts, stroking his beard, “but Carlos’s son joined an MC called the Fallen Saints, right?”

I nod, impatient for
him
to now get to the point.

“And that’s your club.”

“Shit, you’re good,” I snipe.

“So why you here, tellin’ me this?”

“I have a vested interest.”

“How?”

“Needy fucker, aren’t you?”

He shoves me in the shoulder, sending me off kilter. I steady my footing and lift a fist to his face. “Shove me again, you get this—funeral, wedding, fucking visit from the Pope, I really don’t care either way.”

“Cut the lip and I won’t have to.”

Tension boils between us. He’s obviously not going anywhere until I spill, and I’m not ready to reveal exactly who I am.

Although, doing so could give me an advantage. Ty seems like the family type—sensible sedan, caring demeanor with the kid’s family, and clearly cares for his friends. Maybe if I spill it might fast track this a little—get him on side and working in my favor.

“Malice ever tell you much about his family?” I ask.

“A little,” he responds with a frown. “Why?”

“What’d he tell you?”

“Dude, how fuckin’ stupid do you think I am? I’m not telling you shit. How do I know you aren’t out digging for info?”

Clever boy.

“Fair enough.” I nod. “He say much about his father? The guy he hasn’t spoken to for a while?”

“A while? Try about twenty fuckin’ years,” Ty scoffs. “Has he put you up to this?”

“I am the ‘he’.”

Ty’s face falls flat, then bit by tiny bit his eyes widen. He assesses my face, walking around me again and coming to a stop where he started.

“Shit, man. You’re a bit bigger, but I guess I can see the resemblance now.”

“Alice took after his mother a lot.”

“So, you’re Vince, huh?”

“One and the same.” I lift my arms out at my sides. “In the flesh.”

“And you’re in the same club as Carlos’s boy, huh?” He returns to stroking his beard.

I’m tempted to find him a tobacco pipe to complete the look. “Call it an unhappy coincidence.”

“Shit.” Ty glances over to the church as another two cars arrive, and sighs. “Can you hang about until this is over?”

I nod. Kind of what I’d planned on doing anyway.

“Just for fuck’s sake, stay out of sight. I don’t need Malice freakin’ out when he sees you.”

“Whatever, kid.”

He raises a finger to my face. “And don’t call me kid.”