FOUND: A Motorcycle Club Romance Novel (20 page)

“Boyd!” I yelled while Jerome pulled my fighting body around the car and towards the house. “Run! Run!
Fucking run
!”

But he didn't. Boyd stood, as fixed as an oak tree, in that Death Valley plain. He raised his hands up and insisted, “Now let her go, Young. She needn't be part of this!”

I scratched Jerome's hands with my nails as he choked me with his forearm in a hold I couldn't escape. He held the gun to the back of my head with us situated only five feet from Boyd. The light may have been falling and Death Valley darkening, but his bright blue eyes were focused on mine.

“I tell you what,” Jerome chuckled through his words, “You're too easy. Drop your gun for some two-bit whore? Just 'cause you got a hard on for her since you were a kid? That's fucking stupid.”

Boyd held his stance. “It's the right thing to do. You and me live this kind of life. She doesn't.”

Jerome's chuckling turned into full blown shriek. “She a ho. I know that. She nothing! And she'll never be more than a nothing bitch ho!”

Suddenly, after seven long years together, what he thought of me came into stark focus. For years - even with all the shit I took - I had been loyal and devoted to him, yet a ho is all he viewed me as. Deep down.

Jerome might have lost it when I made it clear we were through, but it was all due to him losing face rather than any feelings he felt towards me. I'd broken his image of how he wanted his woman to be, and he couldn't handle the reality. Me telling him we were done was an attack on his identity. I kicked out his sandcastle of him being a powerful man who should be submitted to at all times. After that all the only thing left was for him was to explode.

“Let her go, Young,” Boyd urged, “I've given you what you demanded. It's time you follow through.”

Jerome lowered his head and whispered into my ear, “Watch this bitch.”

His Desert Eagle swung from the side of my head and aimed directly at Boyd.

“No!
Don't
---” My pleading words were broken by the firing of Jerome's gun. Once again, tearing its way through the world.

The bullet struck Boyd straight in the center of his chest. His hand reached to his chest and he coughed. Taking step forward, almost like he was falling, he recovered before collapsing back into the dust. It swept up around him, almost obscuring him.

“Boyd!” I screamed with the thud of his weight hitting the ground.

My heart drummed. My emotions rocked. I was sick the the depths of my stomach. The same as the cop on the road, Jerome murdered without a second thought.
Boyd –
the only reminder of a happy past I left behind.

But this time I didn't freeze. Hatred and anger charged through me. Adrenaline kicked in and I fought like a caged beast.

“Shit! Bitch! What the hell?” Jerome stammered shocked while trying to keep hold of my battling body.

Worse than any cornered animal, I tore at his arm with my nails and drew blood while my legs kicked back at his shins harder than any thoroughbred horse.

“Fuck!” He groaned in pain completely overwhelmed.

My teeth sank into the forearm and his gun instantly he dropped it to the floor. A knee, backed by everything I possessed, to his balls sent him reeling in agonized pain. All conscious thought left me. I attacked completely with instinct.

When I came to, I was standing above his prone body. This time his gun was in my hands.

“Fuck! Cassie! Fuck!” Jerome begged raising an open palm towards me. “Goddamn that hurt. Now easy, baby, easy! You don't know what you're doing with my gun. Put it down before you have an accident.”

I gazed down the sight – the metal lining up with his forehead. My shaking hands clutched tight and strained to keep it steady. Appearing below me, Jerome's face was a mask of horror. His eyes struggled to believe what they were seeing.

“Cassie... Cassie! What are you doing? What are you thinking?”

“You bastard...
You fucking bastard
!”

“Come on baby, come on baby. Point that away,” he coaxed while edging himself backwards. His suit covered by the desert.

“You killed him!” I sobbed. “You killed him just like that... He would have kept his word. I know him... Even after the shit you did he would have let you go. He would have stuck to his word... I know him...”

“Maybe...
maybe
not.”

“Stay still!” I demanded at the first sign of him attempting to stand. “Don't you dare move!”

“OK!
OK baby
. Whatever you say. Just point that gun away. I'm your man. We shouldn't be fighting like this.”

Tears trickled down my cheeks. “You...
You killed him
!”

“I...
I had to
. He would have done the same to me. You gotta understand, baby.”

“No! He gave up his gun! He would have talked things through with you. He's a man of his word! I know Boyd. He's exactly the same now as he was when he was a kid!” My crying may have almost blinded me, but it didn't stop what I needed to say.

Jerome trembled. “Come on Cassie... baby. Let's talk about this. Put the gun down and let's talk.”

“What? Like you agreed to do with him?”

“There's one shot in that gun. Come on now, Cassie.
You're gonna miss
. You know it, I know it... I'll let you stop now before I get really angry with you.”

“No!” I paced to within a couple of feet from him. “I'm not going to miss!”

He sneered at me, his light expression completely changing to darkness in a heartbeat. “You ain't got it in you to pull the trigger! You're the same scared whore as when I found you in that strip club...”

In the past cruel words from him would have broken my spirit. But not right then. They only urged me on.

“...Bitch! You ain't got the guts. You think you can---”

I screamed with years of frustration shattering out from my lungs. I pulled the trigger in rapid succession, firing straight down into the ground where Jerome sprawled. The first shot rang out, yet after that I was left only clicking.

I fell back to the floor staring at the smoke lifting from the barrel of Jerome's Desert Eagle. I knew the shot had connected.

Right then the only thing on my mind was Boyd. I tossed away the gun and ran to where he lay. Flat on his back, with both of his arms thrown against the ground, he looked frozen in time. Almost like an atomic bomb had dropped and stopped him in the middle of his life.

“Boyd... Boyd...”

Crouched down next to him, I cradled his head in my arms. My tears trickling down onto his cut.

“Boyd... You can't be dead...
Boyd
... Wake up. Please wake up... Those days we spent as kids were the happiest in my life. You can't go...
I've only just found you again
.”

I embraced him, my tears falling down on his face.

“Cass...” The words slipped from his mouth softly.

“Boyd... Boyd! Talk to me... Focus on me. Don't die. Please don't die...”

“Cassie...” A tilt of his head urged me closer. “The...”

“What is it? What are you trying to say?”

“The vest...” He coughed, his lungs struggling for air. Groaning he took a handful of his white t-shirt and raised it up. Underneath, wrapped tightly around his chest was a black bulletproof vest with Jerome's bullet driven into the center of his heart. Its metal was hot and faintly sending a smoke trail upwards.

I couldn't believe it. He was going to be alright.

When we were kids Boyd and me were inseparable and that remembered loyalty was enough for him to risk a bullet for me.
No one
. Not anyone in this world has ever risked or given me as much as he just did.

More tears burst forth from me, but this time they were tears of joy. As quickly as they came, I felt Boyd's arms link around me.

“Was that you firing the shot?” He asked. “You got him?”

I nodded into him, burrowing my head into his vest.

“Everything is going to be fine, Cassie. Everything will be fine... You hear that princess?”

The roar of engines sounded in the distance. Boyd's motorcycle club were pushing the limits of their bikes towards the house. They wouldn't be long.

~ Chapter Twenty One ~

“Holy shit! You mean the fun's over already?” Tiny, still as colossal as ever, joked while dismounting from his bike.

Behind him were six other men. Each one followed Tiny's lead, took of their helmets and pounded dirt towards us. Anton, Blanche's old man, and the new prospect, with barely healed bruises that were much worse than my own, were the only others I recognized.

Tiny continued, “I've been telling these guys we were going to war. And now it's over? I'm always late to a party!”

“Be professional,” Anton urged before turning to Boyd, “safe president?”

“Yeah,” Boyd replied. “Young ain't getting up though.”

“Holy shit,” Tiny exclaimed with a kick to Jerome's body. “Motherfucker's down for the count. Got him in one! Nice shot, Boyd.”

Boyd's eyes met mine. We were both leaning against Jerome's car as I helped him out of his vest. “It was Cassie's shot. Young got the jump on me, but she put him down.”

“Yeah,” I replied addressing the crowd, “it was nothing. He's deserved a lot worse for a long time.”

“What do you want us to do here?” Anton requested.

Boyd scratched his chin and considered the situation for a moment. “See if Young's got any of the drugs and cash still on him. Then burn his car and him out in the desert.”

“What about this place?”

“The house too. Cassie and me have been inside. We can't have anyone finding evidence of us being here.”

What Boyd said made sense. Virgil, when he returned, could in no way disregard the damage Jerome did to the kitchen. It didn't matter how we fixed things up. Questions would have eventually been asked and people – whether police or less than legal types – would get involved.

“Beauty, and good with a gun. I'm impressed,” Tiny said with a sly grin and evidently pleased by my handiwork.

Boyd took my hand and walked us towards the house where we took a seat by a window. We watched the others load Jerome's body into the passenger side of his car. One of the other guys kicked dirt over the blood stain he left on the ground.

“Looks like it hurts,” I commented when he leaned forward and lit us both a cigarette.

He shook his head. “I've had worse.”

I believed him. Stretching out from the left of his chest a huge blue mark already took shape on Boyd's body. The vest he wore for protection may have been reinforced by thick plates of steel, but it only scarcely stopped the bullet. The round went clean through with the tip connecting with the skin of his chest. I dread to think what this all would have been like if it passed through an inch further.

“Coping?” Boyd asked me reassuringly.

We were left alone for a moment. Anton had taken the rest of the club aside and detailed out the plan.

“Yeah. With him gone now I feel safe... But I'll feel even better when they have him burning.”

The corner of his mouth flicked up. “Sounds like something my old man once said.”

“Wise man.”

“The wisest.”

“I am worried about you though. I know you're keeping it together, but I can see the pain in your eyes whenever you breathe in.”

“Got to be strong to be an outlaw...” He took my hands in his. Lifting my fingers he placed the tip of my index finger to an indentation in his right shoulder. There was a round circular scar with skin extremely soft to the touch.

“A bullet?”

“Yeah. Couple of years ago. Went clean through without even so much as a hello,” he chuckled at his own joke.

I playfully scolded him. “You shouldn't joke about things like that, you know?”

“You gotta laugh. Though, with a comment like that, you're talking like Anita...”

I laughed, “Don't tell me I sound
that
bad... Actually, I can't believe you remember her.”

“How could I forget?”

“She still in Midnight?”

“LA, last I heard. Sounded like she has a legal job in government.”

We sat at the front of the house together and both stared out into the desert. Stars were already forming in the night sky. You could see on forever up there.

“You know, up until recently, I'd forgotten all about those days when we grew up in Midnight; but the second I breathed in the air while driving into town it's like they all came back to me in one rush...”

He nodded along with me.

“Wanna hear something funny?”

“Always.”

“I even remembered the name of that rat you kept as a pet that one time.”

He nodded.

“
France
?”

“Yeah...”

“I knew it!”

He put out his smoke. “It is funny. I always thought I was the last person on earth who remembered her. Like I was her only link to ever having existed...”

“Not anymore...” I shivered, my mind suddenly distracted by the chill in the air.

“Cold?”

“Yeah. Until the sun set I never thought the desert could get this cold.”

Boyd took his cut that was spread folded next to us and placed it around my shoulders. Big on my shoulders, its thick leather warmed me instantly.

“Thanks.”

His arm quickly followed around my lower back. “You remember back in the day when we used to talk late at night?”

My eyes dropped to his red lips, dark in the night against the paleness of his skin. “Yeah... I remember you sneaking into my bedroom. You gave me my first kiss.”

“Yeah...”

My eyes flicked up to see what he was thinking and his own were focused on my lips...

But... the moment broke.

Anton, coming from the left inside the house and out of view, interrupted us. “Excuse me president. Everything's done and we're heading off into the desert. How about you ride out? We can take it from here. Lemon” - who I later found out was the prospect - “has kindly donated his bike. By the way, what happened to yours?”