Knight (84 page)

I had two choices—exile or a bullet to the head.

Either way, I’d end up bloody.

Either way, I deserved it.

Three months on the road, but I was already up forty grand. Pretending to be dead wasn’t a bad gig. Pretending like the money made any bit of difference? I’d work on giving a damn once I got done with my next job. At least the open highway gave a man time to consider his career goals and how to get the money to his family, where it mattered.

But I was doing too much thinking about that lately.

The exile wasn’t a punishment. I told myself it was an opportunity, a way to end a life of heartache, misery, and guilt. I wasn’t a good man, but I used to be better at hiding it. Names changed, faces shaved, tattoos hid, but genes dug in as deep as a rusted blade. If my exile prevented me from becoming the monster lurking in my blood, I’d put enough road between me and the innocence I ruined to wear out my tires and destroy my engine.

No one else would get hurt—except the one who deserved it.

Pennsylvania was a long ride from California, but the more miles between us, the less chance anyone would recognize a supposedly dead man. The work was good, and the money even better.

My delivery went quickly. They all did, by design. I rode in, made the trade, and used the cover of night to speed away before any addict with more bullets than brains decided to test my accuracy while driving. And I was damn accurate.

The men waited for me in a slag dump outside the two stop-light town. The three rivers knotted about sixty miles south of me, where respectable civilization lived far from the stench of ammonia and methyl alcohol that leeched from the dilapidated houses dotting the countryside.

It wasn’t like home, but the drugs were familiar. Then again, meth cooked anywhere people were down on their luck. That didn’t change, no matter what side of the country I lurked. Only the weather shifted. The lake chilled the region and threatened snow. It iced the men and made the deals quick. Everyone wanted to return to something warm.

“Didn’t think you’d show.” My contact sounded like he used more drugs than he traded. The tag on his cut read VP, and the patch beneath called him Rivet. It was a good handle. He looked beaten down—a holdover of the abandoned steel industry framing the rivers.

He didn’t offer a hand to shake, and I didn’t extend mine. He might’ve been from the Kingdom MC, but chivalry was dead in this part of the state—a region which now forged more illegal deals than steel and metal beams.

Two of Rivet’s men lit cigarettes behind him. They drew long and puffed a curl of white smoke into the darkening afternoon. Rivet snapped his fingers and gestured for the men to grab the bag in his bike’s saddle.

“Noir?” Rivet laughed. The sound rasped like the cough of a smoker fighting the chest cold that would eventually kill him. “That your name?”

It wasn’t, but I answered to it. “Yeah.”

“You don’t look black.”

Observant. “It’s not the color.”

“Then what? Like a detective or something?”

“Pinot Noir.”

“What?”

“The wine.”

It didn’t take a connoisseur to realize the only thing people drank in this region came in silver cans packed in cases of twenty-four. Cheap, watered-down piss. They couldn’t tell an IPA from the ATF, and just hearing the initials would blow their labs from here to Lake Erie.

“What kind of fag drinks wine?”

I shrugged. “I’m a man of taste.”

“We don’t do taste around here,” Rivet said. “Ain’t got the money for it. Round here, you gotta earn before you can appreciate the finer things.”

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to earn.”

“Good. My president says you get shit done. You don’t ask questions and ride fast.”

“Just tell me what you need to be moved.”

Rivet wasn’t a subtle man. His hands lingered too close to a belt that weighed heavy with weapons. I understood the kind of man who preferred two guns at his waist and the knife in his pocket, but I just escaped that type of warlord. Not a minute went by I didn’t curse his name for leaving me alive.

Rivet leered through bloodshot eyes—sickly, meth binge red. I wished I hadn’t recognized the color. I wished more he didn’t remind me of my brother.

“You’re gonna keep your mouth shut about what you see, what you hear, and what you’re haulin’.”

“That’s a given.”

“Don’t get smart.”

He tested me. Three months ago I’d have kicked his ass out of the slag dump, past the Wal-Mart, and dumped his body behind one of the Amish built barns in the nearby cornfield. But if I was risking another bleed out in an alley, his wasn’t the blade I wanted. Age was supposed to bring wisdom. Thirty-eight years and all it gave me was grey in my hair and the instinct to duck instead of punch.

“This ain’t my first time doing business with Kingdom MC,” I said. “You tell me what to do, I’ll do it. Show me the cash, give me the address, and I’ll deliver the goods.”

Rivet laughed, bumming a cigarette from one of his men. He cupped his palm over the lighter. The flame flickered over his face. Pure, untaxed vice. It wasn’t the most lucrative of transports, but, in this region, a cheap, bootlegged smoke would entertain them until the next Klan rally.

“Head south. Toward the city. Meet with Harbinger, president of Sacrilege MC. You don’t talk to other members. You don’t look at other members. Only Harbinger.”

“Fine.”

“You don’t get followed.”

“No one can keep up with me.”

“That a fact?”

“Go ahead. Test me.” I nodded to my bike. Black. Stripped of any identifying marks and polished of the grime from the road. It was the only thing that still belonged to me, and I hardly recognized it. Fresh paint covered the former emblems, but the decals bled through. I doubted anyone else saw them. “You can ride pretty damn fast when you got nowhere to go.”

Rivet blew the smoke in my face. “You ain’t rushin’ this. And you ain’t bringing any attention to it. No speeding. No night runs without lights. You got a reputation, Noir. Heard about you running border to border with your bike at the red line the whole fucking way.”

“What’s your point?”

“You want to splatter onto the pavement? Get your brains blown out? Go flip off a cop and hop the median
after
you do this delivery. After we say we’re done with you. You got me?”

Kingdom MC wasn’t using their normal couriers for this trick, but I transported far more valuable goods than what they handed me. Drugs and guns, stolen jewelry and cars. I lived by two rules—accepting the fate of the road and never refusing a job. But after three months of high-speed, full-throttle races from sundown to sun up, I wasn’t some punk errand boy.

Rivet pushed the bag toward me. “Open it.”

The laptop wasn’t new, but that was all I cared about. I built my first bike engine when I was nine with my old man, but I left computers to the one who used them—the one who recorded songs and uploaded her shows and pestered me with emails and texts and all the bullshit family obligation that went with it. But her equipment was more up-to-date than the scuffed laptop Rivet had stuffed in the bag.

“You get that to Harbinger. Eight o’clock Friday night. Until then, that bag doesn’t leave your sight.” Rivet coughed and spat against the ground. “You open that laptop, and I will skin you alive. Anyone sees you, you’re gonna wish I skinned you.”

His threat wasn’t worth a hot air that managed to escape his tar-thickened lungs.

“Harbinger will get his goods.”

Rivet stared at me, but he had to look up. He wasn’t a short guy, but the world hadn’t beaten me down that much yet. He puffed his chest. I was approaching forty, but so far they were my best years. A ball-breaking moment passed, and he backed down. One of his men fished around his cut and handed me a thick envelope. Rivet flicked the cigarette filter away.

“Two grand. You do your job, lose any tails that follow you, and you’ll get another three from Harbinger.”

I tucked the envelope in my jacket without checking the contents. Not that I trusted them. I didn’t. I hoped they cheated me. I needed an excuse, that one opportunity to solve problems by crunching bones and bleeding someone dry.

I secured the laptop case in a traveling pack. The bag fell over my un-patched leather jacket. Black. Solid. I no longer wore the insignia of the Anathema MC, and I banished every label and emblem that ever marked me as the Sergeant-At-Arms of the 1% club. That part of me died—buried and lost.

At least my newfound business partners felt familiar. They were a little taste of home as I accepted dirty money and transported the un-transportable for men who either belonged in jail or in the ground. The gigs offered me a purpose and kept me sharp while I waited for my reason to live again.

I gave up everything when I left Anathema.

My revenge would be worth it.

I started the bike. Kingdom MC’s finest watched with sneers as their money and package rode away. Five grand was a small fortune to me. I lived nights in different motels, never stopping for long or settling down. I ran from everyone, including myself. What money I earned, I saved. As far as I was concerned, it didn’t belong to me. Once the time came and the guns were drawn, I’d leave everything to Rose. It wasn’t much, and it wouldn’t ease her nightmares, but at least she’d know I cared.

How I had
always
cared.

Only a few headlights traveled with me. Not much existed this far north of the city. Cornfields and meth labs, trucks and the occasional diner. I grabbed a motel closest to the interchange. Enough truck traffic passed through the region to hide the location in a veil of industrial anonymity. Bikes too. Men who shared my enthusiasm for the road, and men I knew to avoid, wove from the main roads and into smaller stops. Some made it out. Others got trapped.

The girl tapping her feet in a chaotic rhythm against the bench outside the motel was one of the ones trapped. The longer she stayed, the shorter her skirt got. The makeup around her eyes darkened black. What might have been dramatic now became a calling card. She spotted me. Ruby red lipstick glistened as she smiled.

“Hey.” She sounded interested if only because I was a new face and she needed new business. She looked me over. I did the same.

Christ. The girls were getting younger. The grey in my hair only made it more noticeable. Still, the perk of her eyebrow wasn’t for show. Neither was the finger she twirled in her hair. She liked what she saw at least. Didn’t surprise me. I packed on the muscle, and women got off on the tattoos.

“You look lonely,” she said.

I felt it too. She arched just enough to peek her stomach from where her sweater pulled away from her denim skirt. It wasn’t a bad sight until she rolled up her sleeves. The bruises in her elbows signified more than her temptress red lipstick. I made time for vice, but my patience for that brand of suicide ran out.

“Thanks. I’m fine,” I said.

“You sure? You look wound tight. When was the last time you had any fun?”

A question for the ages. I teetered between deserving peace and striving for penance. The road hadn’t given me either yet. No clarity. No finality.

The girl bit her lip. She swayed her hips in a way that must have worked on others.

“Come on.” She took my arm. “Let me help.”

I doubted she’d help me, but I wasn’t opposed to her brand of therapy. I led her to my room and locked the door behind us. She didn’t even glance over the space. Not that there was much to see. Standard bed. Coffee pot on the counter in the bathroom. Remote tethered to the television. I assume she’d been here before. In the light, her makeup didn’t look so heavy.

She wasn’t older than twenty. What the hell was she doing here?

“You want?” She pulled a tiny baggie from her pocket. The crystal was low-quality. That didn’t surprise me, but she shook it like the contents would entice me. “I don’t mind sharing.”

“No.”

Her fingers dug into the plastic. “Whatever.”

“If you’re gonna do that, get the fuck out.”

“What?”

“I don’t want that shit in here.”

“What’s your problem?”

I wasn’t giving an explanation, not to a small town skank who was lucky her teeth weren’t rotted out by the crank.

“That drug will kill you,” I said.

“Hasn’t yet.”

I reached for the door. It crashed against the wall as I pointed outside. “Be my guest.”

She still had some sense about her. She needed to earn before she wasted what little escapism she had. She rolled her eyes and tucked the baggie in her pocket. I shut the door.

“Figured you’d like to party.” She pouted. It wasn’t as cute as she thought it was.

“I’ve seen what it does to people. I’m doing you a favor.”

“I never asked for any,” she teased. “I’ve met a lot of guys like you. Tell me what you want. I’m good at what I do. Promise.”

How hard could it be? And how long had she been doing it? She was just a kid.

I didn’t step away as she approached. She kept her eyes where they belonged—low and at my belt. That was an admirable quality in a biker bunny.

So why did my stomach turn?

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Old enough to make you feel good.” She reached for my belt. I grabbed her wrist. She sighed. “Twenty-one.”

Christ. She was a baby. I ran my hand over my chin. Three months ago I’d have counted my blessings. But this close, in the light, I saw why she wore such heavy makeup. Her face was bruised. Good too. Someone got in a solid smack. He was probably why she was out trolling on a Thursday night, and why she needed the drugs so bad. She hid it well.

A lot of girls hid it well. Even when they didn’t need to. When they shouldn’t have.

Even when I would have helped.

Christ, three months of guilt felt like two hundred pounds of cement poured over my shoulders.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Pick one for me.”

“Tell me your name, or get the hell out.”

The girl stepped away. “Do you want your dick sucked, or do you want my life story?”