Integrity Has No Bounds (12 page)

The bikers left, and she still sat staring at
the building. Lonnie stood outside of the truck waiting for the big
red rigs to show up.

The more she thought about it, the madder she
became, but the anger was a cold thing in her gut. In all
probability, one of those men could have killed Harry, and revenge
scenarios played through her mind. The practical side of her
reasoning dismissed all but one of the plots, and she continued to
make plans.

The chief of the volunteer firemen went
through the building and asked her questions about the vandals, but
she told them she was in the storage room with Lonnie, doing
inventory when they broke in and didn’t see the people who did
this. She knew that if he asked, she would have to give up the
security feed from the office monitor, but that only showed the
parking lots and backdoor.

Luckily the chief believed the sprinkler
system had drenched the computer, rendering any data useless. He
was old school good ol’ boy and directed most of his questions
toward Lonnie, and for once in her life she was happy not to be
considered a capable woman.

She walked inside the building with the chief
and Lonnie, and couldn’t believe the level of destruction done in
such a short span of time. What the fire hadn’t ruined, the water
did. She walked into the office and picked up the bags with her new
purchases inside, and took them to her Jeep.

Lonnie was busy with the chief and another
man when she walked up and told the men that she was not feeling
well. “I think I just need to go home and lie down for a little
while, if you don’t need me for anything else?”

The old man nodded and patted her on the
shoulder in understanding. “Naw, that’s fine, darlin’, you ladies
aren’t used to stuff like this happenin’ I guess it’s the kind of
thing that happens mostly when a man least expects it, but it
shouldn’t happen to a woman business owner. Might want to think
about some other business to go into. Mary Jane Old’s is thinking
of retiring, and her boutique does a good business. You can tell
her I told you to give her a call.”

Lonnie was watching her with narrowed eyes
and started toward her, but the chief had already dismissed her
from his mind and took his arm to have him show the old man where
they’d been when the fire started.

Stevie felt bad about trapping her bodyguard
like this, but she needed some alone time, and she didn’t need a
babysitter where she was going. She nodded at him in understanding,
and walked out of the building.

Thankfully the Jeep started, and the fire
truck wasn’t blocking her from leaving the property. She headed to
the only secluded spot that she could think of to clean up and get
ready. John wasn’t home when she got there and she didn’t have a
key, but she did have a credit card and slid it between the door
and the jam to release the locks. It worked, and she was shocked
that it worked, but walked inside with her purchases anyway.

She looked longingly at that tub again, but
couldn’t take the time. Hopefully he wouldn’t hold a grudge for her
defection, but this one was hers. She had a heritage that she’d
left behind the day her parents walked through the prison doors. It
was time to reintroduce herself to the world as who she really
was.

By the time she walked out of the sanctuary
deep in the woods, no one would recognize the biker chick from her
former hippie chick look. Her hair was pulled back in a leather
wrap, her jacket was hanging by two fingers over her shoulder, the
skintight jeans and buckle boots made her appear taller, and the
tank under the partially snapped vest completed her outfit. She
carried the leather bag in her empty hand, and got in the Jeep.

It was more than time to confront Stevie Ray
James, daughter of Rolf and June Bug James. Two of the most
infamous outlaw bikers in the state of Alabama. The Feds had only
been able to pin one count each of Drug trafficking and the RICO
charges had been dropped on appeal due to lack of evidence. Unless
some ultra smart Fed had dug up more charges, her parents should
have walked into the sun over a year ago.

When Harry slipped her out of that foster
home, it had been a blessing. The people weren’t bad, but they did
tend to lecture her on being churchy and they tried to get her to
talk about her parents. Harry told her afterwards the family was
kin to the federal prosecutor who was shoveling every charge he
could think of to keep Rolf and June Bug incarcerated for as many
years as possible.

She owed Harry her life, and her parents were
about to see what had become of their little Stevie.

John was searching the area around Egypt,
Arkansas, when he checked his phone to see if he had enough tower
service to make a call to Stevie and Lonnie. He was planning to
find a place to bed down for the night, and resume his search for
Candle. That fuck was earning himself some extra pain before he met
his mentor, the devil.

There were eighteen messages waiting for him
to hear, and from Stevie’s first call to the last call from a very
pissed off Lonnie, he grew more concerned. She’d given Lonnie the
slip, and done it deliberately.

There were two text messages from Stevie, and
he breathed a sigh of relief that she was safe. The last text just
pissed him off.

Sorry, I need to do this, tired of being a
victim. That’s not who I am. I’ll be in touch to explain next
week.

That was it, her phone went directly to
voice, and she didn’t return his texts either.

His brain was not going to allow him to
sleep, and he had a few hours before he would need to find a place
to camp, so he turned the bike toward the Swamp Rats nesting
ground. Pappy D swore he couldn’t find Candle to talk to him, and
John knew the old man was lying through the few teeth that were
left in his mouth.

The way John figured it was that if he busted
up enough of the fucks, they would turn on their comrade. He was
done being nice about this shitass. It was time to do some serious
damage, there was too much to deal with at home right now, and his
woman was out joyriding and being too damn reckless with her
life.

When he got a hold on her ass, she was gonna
feel it.

Once he got near Murky Carl’s Bayou Gator
farm, he almost busted a nut trying to find a dry enough spot to
set the kickstand securely to keep the scoot from falling over. He
finally saw a tree root that was mostly buried in the muddy dirt,
and set the kickstand. Damn, he was going to have to get back into
working out, pushing his favorite heavy assed bitch around in the
mud was work.

He slid twice in the mud going through the
trees running down the path instead of walking on the path itself,
he wasn’t familiar with the property, and didn’t want to be target
practice for some Rat.

When he saw the shack on the water’s edge, he
wondered what was going on inside. He could hear screams coming
from inside the building, and circled the perimeter in an effort to
make sure there were no guards lying in wait.

There was shouting and the sidewall of the
shanty shook as if it was considering giving way beneath the
pressure of a body being thrown against the rotting wood. The smell
of Meth cooking was intense, but it was mingled with the scent of
rotting vegetation and swamp, so he could understand why they chose
this place to cook the shit.

*****

Tonda was worried sick about Donnie Lee. He
was an asshole with a taste for sadism, but she liked most of what
he liked, so she couldn’t bitch too much about his methods. She
still wondered how they’d captured him. Donnie was a fighter, a
dirty fighter at that. Being the son of ol’ Pappy D didn’t give him
special treatment, if anything he was picked on more often and
always having to prove he was worthy of the name Dean.

She was the product of Lila Bennett who was a
waitress at the diner in town and some passing soldier boy named
Curtis that came out of the hills to join in Uncle Sam’s Army.
Tonda was the result of his going away party. Lila was wandering
around town nowadays talking to trees and picking up beer cans to
recycle for a few extra dollars each month.

Tonda had given up going into town and
bringing her to live in the small travel trailer that sat on blocks
behind the clubhouse. The woman would stay for a day or two and
disappear. She wasn’t aware that Tonda was her daughter, she wasn’t
aware of much of anything but the voices in her head. The cops
picked her up and let her sleep in the jail on cold nights, and
Tonda made sure the woman had a decent pair of shoes on her feet
and sweaters and coats to keep her warm. The soup kitchen knew Lila
by name and always had a meal for her when she came in.

Donnie had befriended Tonda when he stopped
some older boys from their intent to rape her in the alley behind
the Laundromat in town one day when she was walking home from
school. She’d worshipped him from that day on. If Donnie asked her
to sell herself on a corner in the worst part of Little Rock, she
wouldn’t like it, but she would do it, because he asked her to. She
gave him her virginity, in every hole, and he didn’t stay faithful,
but he did give her a place to live and a job of sorts. Her hopes
of setting up house with him had long ago been shattered,
especially when he encouraged other men to fuck her like the whore
she was. He was a cold hearted fucker, but she loved him, and she
was disgusted that old fucker Pappy D refused to turn Candle over
to the bastard who had Donnie.

Candle was a troublemaker who liked to hurt
anyone smaller than he was, and given the fact he was almost six
foot tall meant that there were several people around that
qualified as smaller, most of them were women. He thieved and liked
to play with his hunting knife while taunting his sex partners.

When she came up with her plan, it sounded
better than it actually played out. She had her belongings in the
backseat of the car before she left to get close to Candle and zap
his ass with the Taser she stole from one of the bikers she fucked
the day before.

She’d wished she’d told Allan if he didn’t
hear from her to come and rescue her. Her plan was going well until
Candle decided he needed a little fear from her to give him a
hard-on. He backhanded her and it was on. He got the fear he
wanted, and the screams, and the drops of blood from the prick of
his knife poking at her skin. Her hands were roped together behind
her and she was out of options but the need to live long enough to
get loose and find her purse where she hid the Taser.

She didn’t see what happened next. Candle was
lifted from her body, and she heard the crash of his body as it was
slammed into the table and chairs. She crawled to the wall and felt
the knife drop on the floor as she inched away from the fight
behind her. It took every bit of strength she could muster to push
herself up enough for the wall to hold her as she leaned on it. She
was praying for the Lord to help her survive long enough to help
set Donnie free.

The sounds of grunting and fists hitting
flesh made her look at the two combatants, and she gasped. This had
to be the man who was hunting for Candle. They said he was a big
man, with dark hair, and had tats. They hadn’t said that the man
was so well built or that he carried himself like a warrior.

The raw scream coming from Candle’s bloody
lips took her attention from the stranger’s thick tattooed arms in
time to see him proceed to beat the sadistic bastard’s face into a
red mush. She looked away when the big hands grabbed Candle’s head
and gave it a solid twist. It was the first time Tonda had seen
anyone killed, but after seeing the disgust on the victor’s face,
she got the impression he was disappointed Candle hadn’t put up a
better fight.

She tried to stay silent, hoping he wouldn’t
notice her sitting there, but he looked at her before Candle’s body
collapsed onto the floor. She cringed, but there was nowhere for
her to hide, and she resigned herself to dying because she was
witness to the death of a man who wasted space and the air he
breathed.

“Mr., I,” she had to swallow back her fear
before trying to speak to him again, “I was gonna bring him to you
but he surprised me before I could catch him off guard. You saved
my life, and I thank you, but I just wanted to get you to let
Donnie Lee go. This didn’t go like I planned.” She broke down and
cried as the big man came toward her.

John knew the woman was afraid, she should
be. From what he’d seen when he walked into the room, she was lucky
the fucker hadn’t killed her. He looked around the room and spied a
case of bottled water on an old dry sink. He went to the spot and
took two bottles from the dirty plastic wrapping. He kept his
movements slow as he crouched down near where she was sitting. He
looked at her bloody wrists that were still wrapped with yellow
nylon rope, and pulled his knife from his boot to cut the rope
while she tried to pull away from him.

The blade slid through the nylon with ease,
and her hands dropped down hard. As he reached for one of the water
bottles and unscrewed the cap, he began talking in a low tone to
her.

“Here you go, I think you could probably use
something to wet your whistle.” He held the bottle to her lips and
tilted it slightly so she could drink without drenching herself.
After a few swallows, he sat the bottle next to her hip and moved
back a bit to give her some space. At least she wasn’t hysterical.
If he heard her right, she almost lost her own life in an attempt
to ruin her own and save her worthless man. Did she even know that
by being here and attempting what she’d planned, would get her
shunned by the Swamp Rats?

“Did I hear you right? You were the only one
of your pack that had the guts to do the right thing? Tell me,
would you have killed him if necessary to get Donnie back?”