Wring: Road Kill MC #5 (3 page)

There's no money for
that.

As it is, our little house
is flanked by two commercial warehouses in the Kent Valley. At only
one thousand square feet and pre–1940 construction, the anomalous
little house is seated in prime real estate. It’s a holdover from
an era when a bunch of houses just like ours dotted the Kent
Valley—mainly homesteads for local farms that had since been eaten
up my technology and commerce. Our tiny place had once belonged to
my great-grandfather. It'd actually served as a cottage, an
outcropping of a larger farmhouse, long gone now.

Our cottage survives on a
sixteenth of an acre out of the original forty. Mom owns that small
sliver, the remaining property is gone. The property taxes are so
high, I barely have enough to keep us in food. Because Mom's health
is so dire, I can only hold a part-time job. Someone needs to take
care of her.

My pensive face stares
back at me, life's troubles tumbling around inside my head like
clothes in a dryer.

A cup shatters, and my
shoulder's slump from their regularly erect posture.
Why does she try?
Breathing through my irritation, I try to calm my nerves and
smooth my skirt with damp palms.

Mom needs me.

I pivot then stomp out of
my room. I'm completely prepared to chastise—until I see her
stooped over the shattered tea cup. Her soft tears splash on the
worn linoleum, cracked and abused from its long life, as her grief
sinks into the floor's decaying crevices.

“I'm sorry, Shannon. I just, I
know how hard you're working. I want to
do
something. To matter.”

My heart breaks, and I
rush over there, helping Mom up. Careful to avoid her hands, I
extend my forearm, and she places the flat of her palms on my arm.
She pushes off at the same time as I lift, and we get her on her
feet.

What if she'd fallen
instead of just trying to bend over to clean up the
shards?

“Mom,” I say gently, “you
can't do stuff like this before your meds have kicked
in.”

The meds that are killing
her.

She nods quickly, her
steel-colored, chin-length hair flowing forward in a
curtain.

I guide Mom slowly to her
favorite chair and arrange the pillows to cushion her fragile and
inflamed joints.

The rheumatoid arthritis
has robbed her of agility, strength, and most importantly—her
freedom.

The medication she's taken
since I was eighteen months old has weakened her muscle
tissue.

Including the
heart.

Take
this
medication or never move. Take
it and eventually have a heart attack.

Great options.

So Mom took the medication
so she could care for her child and herself. When the disease
progressed enough to cripple her body, she still took
it.

Then I stayed with her
instead of pursuing anything for myself.

There are no benefits for
someone who’s never worked and gets struck down by a disease during
youth. So Mom had me at thirty-seven. And now she's only
sixty-two.

Medicare doesn't kick in
until age sixty-five.

She won't live to see it,
though. The doctors have made that much clear. And we might not
hang on to this house until then.

I can't allow that to
happen.

I can't let anyone take
this house before Mom dies.

Not the tax authorities
for delinquent payment. Not the gang members who have moved into
both the commercial buildings and sandwich our property like
rotting meat.

I shiver.

But how's one
twenty-five-year-old, part-time librarian supposed to fight the
money men—or the gangs?

“You look nice, Shannon,”
Mom says through a watery smile, breaking into my
thoughts.

My constant worries slide
away at the expression on her face. Anxiety, regret, and guilt.
“Thanks, Mom.”

Though her hair is solid
pewter now, and her wrinkles are few. The ones that mark her face
are in the right spot. By her eyes.

Proof of all the
smiles.

Pale blue eyes blink up at
me, and I do a quick scan of the immediate area. Water jug with
large handles and integral straw. Check. Meds laid out.
Check.

Lunch pail.
Check.

She has the remote to the
TV—but even better than that is the pile of newspapers, magazines,
and nonfiction books. Mom adores reading.

I know that's where my
love of the written and spoken word came from.

“Go, honey.” She smooths
her hands down her bony legs, covered by knit sweatpants in an icy
lavender color. Her soft cotton broadcloth T-shirt is a matching
color. The cotton fabric is all she can stand to wear against her
sensitive skin. “I'm fine.”

I put my perfect, young
hand over her gnarled one. The joints of her fingers are so
swollen, they've caused the fingers to cant to one side.

I close my eyes in a long
blink, sucking up my emotions into a bottle inside myself. “Okay,
Mom.”

Tears don't fall. I always
cry in my room, where Mom can't see. But I think she knows. Instead
of showing my sadness, I gulp back my stupid sniveling and offer a
true smile.

“That's my girl.” She looks
away, gazing out the sparkling clean window at the cars rushing
past on the busy street.
“You have a good
day with the kiddos, honey.”

I draw in a fortifying
breath. “Don't call me ‘honey’—”

“Call me ‘darling,’” Mom
finishes.

We grin at each other.
I've been saying that for years, and she's always replied the same
way.

Our private
mantra.

I kiss her forehead and
move to the door. Solid reinforced steel. I unlatch four
locks.

I step through without
looking back and relock all of them. I try the knob.
Twice.

Five hours away from
Mom.
She'll be okay, Shannon.

I straighten my spine and
begin walking the eight blocks to my job. I love it so much. When I
was younger, I dreamed of being an elementary school
teacher.

Or just maybe filling a
home with children of my own. My smile is wistful, and a moment of
rare peace passes through me.

It's probably why I don't
notice Vincent until his hands are on me.

“Hey cunt,” a voice cuts
through my musing like a dirty knife.

Then his greasy hands are
on me, popping my feet off the sidewalk and pulling me into a small
alleyway between the tall commercial buildings.

My eyes slide the three
blocks to the faded red dot of the porch overhang on our house. My
attention bounces around mournfully—we're very close to Kent
Station, but there isn't much traffic this early on a Sunday
morning.

No one to help me.
“Let go!” I yell at him.

He pinches my upper arm,
and I whimper. I keep saying no, hoping the gangs find an easier
target.

Not some girl with an
invalid mother to take care of.

“Just do what we say, and
we'll take care of you, Shannon.”

I bite the grunt of pain
off mid-sound. “You're hurting me.”

“I don't have to,” Vincent
says oh-so-reasonably. “You spread those pretty legs for me, and
I'll see you get
plenty
of work. We have girls that aren't half as good
lookinʼ as you, bitch. You earn the cash on your back—make it easy
on your mama.” His dark eyebrows hike, and his pinch goes to
bruising.

I gasp, and he runs a
finger over my lip. I bite the plump flesh to keep from crying out,
inciting more violence. “I can get big money for your pussy. Real
money.” His brows lower over his eyes in an unforgiving line. “Word
on the street has it you never been tapped yet.”

I feel my eyes go wide as my
breathing turns to harsh pants.
They want
the house bad enough that they’ve actually researched me?
How would these losers even know that kind of
personal information about somebody?

Calling the cops doesn't
help. The fucking gang—an offshoot of the Bloods, I hear—are in
possession of police scanners. They scatter like cockroaches, and
when the police arrive, they're sympathetic. But without anyone to
arrest, it's like I'm reporting a crime where the perpetrators are
ghosts.

Hopelessness descends. “I
don't have anywhere else to live, for me and my mom to go.” I've
been trying to reason with them for the last three years, since
they moved into the buildings that surround us. But they've begun
to push harder.

He nods, a cunning smile
spreading over his vile features. “I know,
chica
. Let me put you under my
protection. You let me into that house, into your bed—and me and
the brothers will take care of your mama and take real good care of
you.”

He grabs his crotch, and I
fight gagging.

Even with an offer as
horrible as that, it's so tempting, becoming a whore to this man so
I can save Mom. They've been relentless. They push, push, push. And
I say no, no, no. Then there's nothing for a time.

I hadn't seen anyone in
half a year, and I'd become complacent, hoping they'd found greener
pastures. That a couple of defenseless women who didn't have a pot
to piss in or a window to throw it out of was just—too much work. I
finally allowed myself to believe that we were finally flying under
their radar.

But no.

Here's Vincent. All six
feet of threatening dark and deadly to my five feet five of Nordic
paleness.

He grabs a strand of hair
that’s come loose from my bun. “This shit real?” Vincent bends over
my hair and sniffs it.

I'm suddenly pissed he
wrecked my careful library hairdo. In fact, I'm just flat-out angry
in general. Over everything. “What?” I ask in a semi-daze, my upper
arm numb from his vise-like grip.

“The fucking hair!” He
screams in my face, tearing out the rest of my careful hairstyle.
My platinum hair falls almost to my waist, relieved of its
binding.

Vincent jerks me against
him. “You give me a stiff cock, bitch. All your fucking stuck-up
white-girl bitch bullshit. Hiding that hot body underneath your
library clothes.”

He crowds my neck,
scenting me like a stud dog.

I mewl. My rage
evaporating to fear so acute, I clench my legs together so I don't
urinate four hundred feet from my front door.

“I bet your pussy matches
the hair.”

A vehicle rumbles past the
alley, and Vincent swings his head up in surprise, shoving me up
against the building. I slap my palms against the rough
brick.

“What the fuck?” he asks
in a hoarse voice of interrupted arousal. His hand slides from my
hair to my wrist. He pulls me behind him, and I trip, bumping into
the back of him. I cry out when my nose rams his shoulder
blade.

“Come on,
puppy.
” He gives a harsh tug, and
I stumble forward, yelping from the abuse of my
wrist.

Gliding toward us is a
man, approaching slowly on a really beautiful red motorcycle. The
color is like a juicy sparkling apple.

He's as fair as I am.
Crisp white-blond hair is shaved close to his head, and a really
flat crop of it stands about a half inch on top of his
head.

Icy-blue eyes flash at the
sight of us standing in the border of the alley, where shadows hide
Vincent's violence.

I know the only person
that's seen us will roll on by. Just a girl and guy making out in
the gloom, he’ll assume.

Tears roll down my face,
and my wrist is throbbing.

The motorcycle slows. My hope
flares.
Please help me
, my eyes beg, despite my heart pulsing sickly in my
throat.

Vincent's grip tightens,
and new tears follow the old. A hurt gasp escapes between my
lips.

“Shut up, snatch,” Vincent
growls over his shoulder.

Even sitting down on his
bike, the man is huge, bigger than the gang creep with his hand on
me. His eyes meet mine.

Vincent postures, and he's
dangerous. In my mind's eye, he's like a rooster strutting around
in the chicken coop.

This man filling my vision
doesn't posture. He oozes danger.

His gaze flicks to
Vincent.

“Fucking Road Kill mofo,”
Vincent seethes from between his teeth and spits in the direction
of the man. His snotty loogy hits the sidewalk in a gross stream,
and I shudder.

The stranger frowns, his
bike slowing to a crawl.

Road Kill?
I have time to wonder, then he's rolling the great bike to a
stop and flipping the kickstand out with the heel of his black
boot. The metal tip hits the cement with a final-sounding
click.

The bike settles, and the
rider sweeps his leg over the seat before hopping to the curb with
a grace that has my mouth hanging open.