Iron (3 page)

I breath a sigh of relief and look at the revolver again. He grabs my attention by clearing his throat. “Come on.”

“Really?” My eyes light up, but I feel a nervous tension knot in my chest. “But...”

“You’re right about them being trustworthy. We can do this together, but not if you stay here. I know these guys, and I won’t let them touch you. If one of them dares to do anything, they’ll answer to me.” He shoots me an arrogant smile. I can’t deny him. He’s never let anyone hurt me yet, despite probably causing most of the dangerous situations I've been in. He waves for me to join him. “Come on,” he repeats waving his hand for me to follow. “We have to fix this.”

Outside the apartment, the kids are still playing around. They pause when they see us coming, following us with their wide eyes. Are they admiring Logan or studying him? Logan doesn't seem to pay them any mind. I must just be paranoid. Logan climbs on his motorcycle and starts it. I grab his shoulder to balance myself as I throw a leg over it, feeling the warmth of the leather seat seep through my unwashed old jeans. The vibration of the engine is surprising, even though I rode the bike the other day. Thinking back to this morning, I hardly remember it. It was all a blur.

He twists his right hand and we pull off the curb. I clench my wrists together and lock myself around his waist, following his every movement as we turn out of the neighborhood and onto the main road.

My mouth feels dry. Will they recognize me from the bar? From the accident? No... if they had recognized me from the accident, I would have been in deep shit at the bar. I’m sure of that much.

The wind cuts around Logan and touches my face. I scoot closer and hug his back, resting my face against the stitched-on patches that fill the back of his vest. The stitching scratches at my face, like day old stubble. But the wind is cold and Logan is warm. I can do this. I can face his club. Especially if I’m with him.

––––––––

“W
hat are you doing here, Bomb?” Driver asks as I walk into the bar. All the men turn to face me, including Surge who’s taken his place at the front of the group again, like nothing has happened. Like he hadn't been hit, or I hadn’t killed a man. Does the rest of the crew even know? In either case, I'm demoted again. What else should I have expected? I’m kind of pissed that it even makes me feel any kind of regret. I never wanted to be president in the first place.

I pull on Cassie’s wrist and drag her inside, but she’s reluctant like a scared cat. She’s stiff, but she does follow behind me. The door shuts closed behind us.

All the men gawk as she steps inside the bar. Petrol drops a cigarette from his lips onto the velvet, only to have Sword snuff it out with his thumb. The men are all silent. It’s clear I have to be the first to break the tension.

Cassie and I walk up to the front of the bar and I grab two stools for us to sit on. Before we do, I clear my throat and announce myself. “This is Cassie,” I admit. I glance at her, and she gives me a nervous look, like she doesn’t want me to go on. We both decided this was the way to go, didn’t we?

“She’s the one who hit Surge two weeks ago.”

The silence vanishes and is replaced with murmuring as the men compete to be the first to say that they knew it or they told each other. The roar is quieted by Surge who slams his fist on the pool table. The force rattles beer bottles and plates against each other. “All right! Everyone shut up! Let the man talk already, Jesus.”

I’m surprised, I still can’t tell if he’s angry or not. I didn’t leave him in the best of spirits after all. He’s always been a hard man to read, even though I’ve known him for so long.

Cassie is cowering behind me, her fingers digging into my arm. I half-expected Surge to announce her execution and have her killed, but he seems pretty level-headed right now. It wouldn’t have mattered, I would have died before he got within an inch of her if killing her was what he wanted to do. “I got her involved in all this shit, and I’m only bringing her here because she needs our help.”

“Our help?” Sword says. He reclines in his chair. “This ain’t a sorority.” He slams his beer on the table and Petrol agrees with a hearty nod. I wonder if Sword recognizes her, but I don’t push the issue. Probably better if he doesn’t for right now.

Cassie tugs at my arm a little and whispers in my ear. “I want to go, Logan. They don’t want to help us.”

I turn my head to listen but don’t answer. Just wait, I want to say. She’ll see. They might be kids, but they’re good ones... at least, decent enough. A grizzled crew would be impossible to sway, but the young blood in this one might be different. “I’m only here to tell you that I’ve been lying about it,” I eye Surge. “And sometimes a man needs to admit he’s wrong.”

A relatively positive murmur shivers through the group of men.

“I still don’t know what you want us to do about it,” Six-Shooter says. His eyes move past me and obviously catch Cassie’s, because he grins. “Unless she needs a special kind of help.”

“No, she doesn’t,” I say. “Haven’t you heard about the Skeletons? Didn’t Surge tell you?”

All the men turn from me and look at Surge. An obvious No is spreading across their faces, followed by curiosity. I shake my head.

“I thought you’d be back to tell them yourself, Bomb. You’re the president around here, ain’t cha?” Surge says. He crosses his arms and leans back against the bar, looking smug and satisfied. So this is what he had in mind. Tank follows his lead and rests against the pillar next to him. Even you, Tank? I thought you had my back at least.

“Jesus, Surge, I thought you’d be president again when you came back.” It’s like he’s trying to fuck with me. Get me to spill everything, like some kind of hazing ritual. Surge doesn’t answer but simply shakes his head and holds up his right hand, palm facing outward. An old scar runs across it diagonally.

I bite my tongue and lower my head. I open my right fist and gaze at my own scar. Blood-brothers. The men sitting around the table all take glances at their scars, none being very inconspicuous about it. I’d even say they have a little humility.

Nothing else to do but go on. “I got Cassie’s information and made sure she didn’t tell the cops nothin’ we didn’t want them knowing. Standard procedure from where I come from.” I look at Surge. “The Skeletons must’ve found out about it because they had Rattlesnake go to her home and try something on her, and I intervened and... killed him.”

Silence. I scan the crowd for reactions. When I pass over Driver, he’s staring at Cassie like he’s studying her. He looks at me. “That’s the chick we saw at the bar, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I bite out. “It is.”

Surge is next. “I knew you were involved with some woman, Bomb. The minute you didn’t tell me you had the information from the driver, I knew you’d gotten yourself twisted up in something.” He pauses and unfolds his arms. “Regardless, I want to say this is your personal problem. Not the crew’s. But...”

I wait for him to finish but he doesn’t. Cassie’s slipped even further behind my back. “Surge, if she hadn’t hit you, which I’m sure we would’ve all liked a lot more, you wouldn’t have found out about that tumor. Maybe until it was too late.”

Surge’s stoic expression cracks into a smile. “You’re right,” he admits, dropping his hands to his sides. “I’m afraid this is personal for our entire crew. With Rifle turning his back on us and The Skeletons very interested in dealing a crippling blow to our morale, this would be just the ticket, wouldn’t it? Flushing your lies out to expose you and get us to turn against you. We can’t fall into their hands like that.”

The boys agree with some slight hesitation, but Driver is the first to be audibly upset. “I can’t believe you lied to us,” he says. He hesitates and cuts ‘us’ harshly, as if he meant to say something else.

Surge speaks up, “Logan, the woman can stay here... for a little while, while you try and figure out what you’re going to do.”

I stare at him, surprised. The other men seem shocked, too. Surge calls out each of the men's names, “These are the men, Cassie: Six-Shooter, Driver, Petrol and Sword, and Tank and well, you know Bomb... Now for you, Bomb, I need to talk to you,” Surge says, pointing at me. “Alone.” I release Cassie’s hand and let her settle among the other bikers, her nervousness spread across her face like a giant tattoo.

. . .

Surge guides me into the back of the bar and shuts the door that separates the kitchen and the front. The door has a small glass window in it, probably for servers so they don’t run into each other. When he hears the men start talking among themselves again, he levels with me.

“Logan, this is really fucking bad.”

I snap back at him. “Shit, you think I don’t know that?”

“The Skeletons already outnumber us, what do you think they’ll do when they find out you killed someone... pretty much in cold blood?”

“Bullshit, ‘cold blood.’”

“That’s what they’ll think. That’s what they’ll be told. They’ll come hunting for us — no — for you and that girl.”

I ball a fist and clench my jaw. Like I don’t know that.

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. You gotta do something for us now... let us deal with the Skeletons. But you need to disappear, and so does she.”

I stare at him, not sure how to process what he’s telling me. “Disappear? Like, leave the club?”

“Whatever will get you off their radar. They’re aggressive, but they ain’t a California club. Their connections don’t reach far. I’m sure of that much.” He shakes his head and grimaces. “I’m talking south of the border here.”

I can hear the men outside the door chatting with Cassie and the hairs on the back of my neck rise up. Surge reads me plain as day. “Relax, Logan, they won’t do anything. I’m alive and well. They have bigger issues to worry about right now... I’ll make sure of it. At the end of it all, you are weak with her. She will hold the whole club back if you both don’t make yourselves scarce.”

I swallow hard and look back out the window into the bar. Cassie still looks uneasy, but the men are all sitting and open. Only Petrol looks a bit defensive, but when Driver laughs at a joke, he relaxes a bit. Surge speaks again and breaks my long stare. “You like her, huh? Think she’s different?” I nod, but don’t look at him.

“She is different.” I don't have to explain myself to him.

I remember the last drug deal I did with him in California. It went okay, but when the club we would deal with found out we moved towns to strike out our own territory, they followed us and pushed us out. Shortly after, Surge left Los Devils MC and moved to Arizona to start his own club. It was a good thing too, if he hadn’t... he might be one of the many that found themselves behind bars getting three meals a day. I still don’t know what went wrong back then, who to blame for the fuck up that landed almost everyone in jail.

“You ran away from California, too.” I suddenly turn to face him. “Just ditched us all. We probably wouldn’t have gotten so fucked if you were still around.”

He slams his fist on the wall and the murmur outside goes silent for a moment. “Dammit, Logan. I told you that shit would happen. I warned Growler that he was making a bad call and he wouldn’t listen, don’t blame me for that shit.”

“You didn’t just leave the crew behind, you know.”

He nods and drops his hand from the wall. “I know.”

“Either way, we gotta deal with Rifle... All I hear is you telling me to leave. If you want me out of the club so bad, why don’t you just say so? You're doing the same thing Growler did, ignoring his crew.”

“I am listening Logan, but you're not. She’ll ruin all of us. You’ll ruin all of us if you keep her around.”

I fume and turn away from him.

“Look, I just need you guys to keep an eye on Cassie for a little bit. Hide her out here. I know this is Petrol’s place. I need to sort some things out and I can’t trust my apartment as a hideout anymore.”

Surge sighs heavily and I hear his hand rub the back of his neck. I can’t meet his eyes though, in case he’s already decided. When I finally look back at him, he’s staring through the window on the door at her and the other men talking. “All right. But she can’t stay for long.”

“Thanks, Surge,” I say. I give him a nod and he slaps me on the shoulder and gives me a powerful shake that nearly knocks me to my ass.

“Don’t mention it. Can’t say I’ve ever had to protect someone who’s hit another biker before. Go get your shit figured out. But if you want my advice — .”

“I don’t, —,”

“—, You’ll take her to the police and you’ll leave the country.”

I stare at him and shake my head to stop myself from lashing out. “Just let me take care of it.”

Surge pushes out the door into the front room and I follow him. Our entrance stills the air, and the men all turn to us, expectant or curious, I can’t decide. I walk up to Cassie and grab her by the arm and pull her to a dark corner of the bar, near the broken down jukebox. Surge starts talking with the boys, probably about our agreement, and I steal her attention with a touch on her face. She looks at me, startled but not nearly as frayed as she was when we first came in. Those beautiful eyes suck me in and make everything else vanish.

“What is it? What happened?” she asks.

“You’re going to stay here for a little while.” Her face pales a bit. “It’s okay. Petrol owns the bar, and Surge won’t let anything happen to you. I trust him with my life.”

She looks over as Surge as I talk about him, probably to study him. When she looks back at me, her eyes are determined and filled with a strange kind of fire I’ve never seen in her before. “If you trust him, then I do, too.”

“Good. I just have to clear some shit up... I might be able to save us all a lot of trouble.”

She looks panicked. “What are you going to do?”

“Don’t worry,” I stroke her hair and touch her shoulder. The feeling is exciting, being so close to her like this. Her eyes keep dancing and I can’t stop my eyes from glancing at her lips. She smiles in a way that makes me feel like I’m standing near divinity. She’s more than anyone has ever been to me. I can’t put my finger on it, but I feel something is being driven inside me to be with her. To keep her near me, to keep her safe. What I’m planning on doing is for that purpose.