JUSTIFIED (Motorcycle Club Romance) (5 page)

I watched Ash’s Ford pull up the long drive and turn onto the gravel road, leaving a trail of dust behind him, and I headed back to the kitchen to fix Tuck’s dinner.

I rifled through the pantry in search of something he could eat. Ash had brought back a few groceries with him that weekend, but grocery shopping was never his strong suit and several staples were very much forgotten.

“Ouch,” I cried out as I reached for a box of cereal on the top shelf. Stabbing pain seared through my lower abdomen, just as it had the night before, and just as it had when I’d lost two babies. The pain had left the night before, leading me to think it was a false alarm, but now it had returned with a vengeance.

I hobbled over to Tuck and placed him in his high chair, grabbed the Trac Fone and ran outside. The butte looked so far away, but I had to make a call. I needed to catch Ash before he got too far away so he could come back and take me to the hospital.

Through a quarter mile of grassy field and prairie, I’d finally reached the butte. I yanked the phone out of my pocket. One bar. One lousy, measly bar.

I quickly dialed Ash’s number and tried to stay upright when my body was begging me to lie down and writhe in pain. The phone rang once. Then twice. Then three times. After five rings it went to voicemail. I hung up and tried once more. Nothing. Knowing him, the radio was cranked so high he’d never hear his phone.

I pressed my fingers into my aching abdomen to try to counter the pain that was burning inside me. The warm wetness in my panties came next, and I didn’t have to look to know that I was bleeding.

I buried my face in my palm and shook my head. I was going to have to call Mary Jane. She was the only other contact in my phone, and I knew she’d come running if I needed anything.

“Mary Jane,” I said with a strain in my voice. It was obvious I’d been crying.

“What is it, Marina?” she asked. “Are you okay? Is it Tuck?”

“I need a ride to town,” I said. “It’s kind of an emergency.”

Mary Jane asked no questions. “I’ll be there in an hour.”

I hobbled back to the house and quickly fed Tuck, changed his diaper, and threw his diaper bag together. Ash would’ve killed me to know that I was leaving in a car with Mary Jane, but I knew she was harmless. She’d helped me with Tuck the week before. She was a sweet, kind person. From the outside it probably looked bad, but Ash would never let me explain anyway. It was pointless to make him worry for nothing.

Mary Jane arrived exactly an hour later and helped load Tuck into the car. “What’s wrong, Marina?”

Her brown eyes were kind and she placed her hand on my back. In some ways, I felt like we were just two friends. Never mind the complete randomness that brought us together and acquainted us in the first place.

“I think I’m having a miscarriage,” I sighed. Hot tears burned my eyes once again, but I wiped them away before they had a chance to fall.

“Oh, my goodness,” she said. She reached over and placed her hand on top of mine and squeezed it. “Let’s get you to the hospital.”

We traveled down the country roads that led to the nearest town, and she pulled into the same hospital we’d visited the week before with Tuck.

“Do you need a wheelchair?” she asked with raised eyebrows.

“No, I’m okay,” I said. “I just need to take it slow. I’ll be fine.”

When we arrived inside, Mary Jane helped me to my seat, placed Tuck on her hip, and went to the front check-in station to let them know what was going on. She was an angel. My angel.

“They said it shouldn’t be much longer,” she said when she came back and took a seat across from me in the waiting room. She grabbed a book from the table next to her and began paging through it for Tuck. “Do you need to call your husband at all?”

“No,” I said quickly. “He doesn’t know I’m pregnant. I haven’t told him yet.”

“Marina Decker?” a nurse called out from a doorway by the front desk.

I stood up, nodded at Mary Jane to assure her I’d be fine, and hobbled to the nurse.

The nurse led me to a dark sonogram room and helped me onto the table. She lifted up my shirt and I pressed down on the waistband of my pants. I knew the drill. I’d been in that spot a million times before.

I laid back and stared at the white, tiled ceiling and braced myself to hear the news I’d been dreading. As the nurse squirted warm jelly onto my stomach and began to move the wand around, all I could think about was Ash. He’d always gone to every doctor’s appointment with me, he had been there twice before to carry me out of the clinic when I’d be sobbing like a crazy maniac.

The whooshing of the ultrasound filled the quiet space between us until suddenly I heard a galloping noise coming from the speakers.

“There it is,” the ultrasound tech said with a smile. She turned the screen towards me. “See it?”

I leaned up, dumbfounded, and stared at the tiny, wiggly thing moving around on the screen.

“Heartbeat is about 140,” she said. “That’s really good.”

She clicked around and took some measurements.

“We’re putting you at 8 weeks and two days,” she said proudly.

That was further than I thought I was. We were just weeks away from the “safe zone”.

“Due date would be May second,” she added. “Want me to write that down for you?”

“No,” I said, a smile forming on my face. “I’ll remember it. So the baby is okay then?”

“You’ll need to talk to the doctor, but generally yes,” she said. “At this stage, everything looks great. And a healthy heartbeat at 8 weeks is considered a very good sign.”

I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face if I’d tried. We never made it past six weeks with either of the other losses. This was a very, very good thing.

“Everything okay, sweetie?” Mary Jane asked as we headed back out to her car.

“Yes,” I smiled. “Everything’s fine actually. Thank God.”

I reached for Tuck, but he yanked away in favor of clinging on to Mary Jane. Apparently those two had become well acquainted while I was being examined.

“It’s okay,” Mary Jane said as she helped him into his car seat. “I’ve got it. You get yourself settled for the drive home.”

As soon as the three of us were buckled in, Mary Jane turned down the road to take us home. I stared out the window and the miles of vacant prairie and open space and for the first time, I felt whole again. Ash and I had wanted a second child pretty much ever since Tuck came along. We loved Tuck so much that we wanted another one as soon as possible. Now it was finally happening.

I rubbed my belly and squeezed my eyes and hoped that the tiny little one growing inside me could feel my love for it. When I felt the car slowing down and taking a right, my eyes shot open.

“Where are we going?” I asked. I wasn’t familiar with the area but I knew damn well we were going north instead of west, towards the house.

“Oh,” Mary Jane said. “I have to run a quick errand while we’re in town. I hope that’s okay.”

She wasn’t asking, she was telling.

“What kind of errand?” I asked.

“I have to drop something off for my husband,” she said with a smile.

I glanced over at her hands, which gripped the wheel. Her left ring finger was naked as the day she came without so much as an indentation. “I didn’t know you had a husband. You never mentioned it before.”

A nervous smile spread across Mary Jane’s face. “Well, I suppose it just never came up in conversation before.” She shrugged like it was nothing.

From the corner of my eye, I watched her like a hawk. Something was not right. Something was very wrong.  I just had to stay calm and try to put it together.

I studied Mary Jane. Her black slacks, cream blouse, pearls, and red lipstick seemed a little overdone for taking me to the hospital. Why had she dressed up for that? It was almost a little costume-y.

She reached over and dialed down the AC, since it was getting stuffy in there. It was unusually warm for a September day, nearly in the nineties, which made me question why she was in long sleeves and pants.

“Eeeeh,” I sieved. “Ouch.”

Mary Jane said nothing, pretending not to notice.

“I’m cramping again,” I said as I clenched onto my lower belly. It was a complete and utter lie, but I had to test her. “I think I need to go back.”

“Oh, we’re almost there. This’ll just take a minute. I promise.” She placed her hand back on the steering wheel and the cuff of her sleeve fell revealing part of a snake tattoo on her wrist. I didn’t know a single pearls-and-heels wearing woman with snake tattoos on their wrists.

I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. I’d been set up. Mary Jane was a Cottonmouth all along, just waiting for the perfect opportunity to pounce.

I forced myself to breath and act calm. The last thing I wanted was for Mary Jane to know I was onto her. She has plans for me and Tuck, and I didn’t want to make things worse than they were already going to be.

Mary Jane pulled her Mercedes into the back alley behind an old abandoned warehouse. I glanced back at Tucker who was sound asleep in his car seat. I thought about grabbing him and running and getting the hell out of there, but with a million different buckles bolting him in tight to his seat would take time and draw attention to us. It was going to be our only option though, and it was a risk I was going to have to take.

I flung off my seatbelt, popped the lock button and flew out of Mary Jane’s car, yanking on the passenger door behind me. I was moving as fast as I could, but it didn’t feel fast enough. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. As I hurriedly unbuckled Tuck, sweet freedom was seconds away.

I glanced up at Mary Jane who was just sitting there, staring straight ahead, not trying to stop me, and I wondered if I’d had it all wrong. Maybe I was just tired, paranoid, or crazy? Sleepless nights and minimal human interaction could do that to a person.

With Tuck finally in my arms, I spun around, prepared to run as fast as my feet would let me, but was immediately bumped by a big man in a leather vest, blue bandana, and fierce, beady eyes just like my father’s. I didn’t know the man, but I knew that look. Behind the man were three other men, all standing with their arms crossed and blocking my path.

The man in front of me reached over and grabbed my arm, sinking his meat hooks into my flesh and yanking me towards a door.

The warehouse was dark and dust particles circled the air around us. Flickering fluorescent lights buzzed above us and the heavy, metal door slammed once the last of the men were inside.

We were surrounded. Four men in with leather vests and snake tattoos…and Mary Jane. My sweet friend, my angel, the nicest person I’d met in a long time – was one of them.

“How could you?” I whispered to Mary Jane as tears streaked my cheeks.

She wouldn’t look at me. She just stared at the hard cement floor and clasped her hands at her waist.

“I thought you were my friend!” I screamed at her. I wanted her to look at me. I wanted her to look at the helpless toddler in my arms who hadn’t the slightest clue what was about to happen. “You’re the fucking devil, Mary Jane.”

“MJ,” one of the bikers said. His eyes scanned the length of her. “Take that shit off.”

It was a costume all along. I was right. I watched as she kept her eyes averted to the ground and walked off, heels clicking, to change her clothes. Part of me wondered if she didn’t have a say. In some of the old school clubs, the women did as they were told. No questions asked. My father didn’t operate that way. He kept his club progressive. He had three daughters, and to him, women made the world go round. He didn’t treat them like slaves. He treated them with respect and gave them unwavering protection from harm.

“What are you doing with us?” I whimpered. I tried to hide the fear in my tone, but it came through loud and clear.

“LeRoy,” the man in front of me said, his eyes never leaving mine. His lips twisted into a sinister smile. “Take them to the holding cell. I’ve got to call the prez and tell him we got ‘em.”

I studied LeRoy’s face as it looked slightly familiar to me. Within seconds I’d figured it out. Green! It was the man who’d set us up in the safe house. He was supposed to be on our side.

A man no smaller than six foot four, LeRoy Green walked up to me and nudged towards a narrow corridor in front of us. He didn’t place a finger on me. He didn’t have to. Some men used force and others used the sheer threat of their body size. LeRoy was the latter.

I carried Tuck down the corridor, LeRoy following close behind, until we got to a door at the end of the hall. Made of thick, reinforced steel, the door was even heavy for LeRoy to open.

“Get in,” he said. “Sit down. And shut up. No screaming. No yelling. No crying.”

He slammed the door behind him, and the clunk of the locks echoed through the small space.

Tuck looked up at me, confused, and I forced a smile. The last thing I wanted was for him to be scared.

“It’s okay, baby,” I soothed him. “This is just temporary. You’re with mommy. You’re okay.”

The room had to have been no bigger than eight feet by ten feet, with a small sink a toilet, and a bed. It was the equivalent of a prison cell, only much dirtier and unkempt. The thin mattress on the bed was nearly paper thin and covered with various stains, but it was the only remotely soft place in the room, so I laid down with Tuck in my arms and tried to get him to take a nap. I needed to think and the confused look on my baby’s face only made me an emotional wreck.

I shut my eyes and let the tears fall as soon as Tuck was asleep. All I wanted was for Ash to come bursting through the door, but that would never happen. Ash was on his way back home, and as far as he knew, Tuck and I were nestled nice and safe in the big house in the middle of nowhere.