Raw: The Ultimate Mc Collection (18 page)

So, yeah, we weren’t friends.  I didn’t have any friends.

That’s why I thought it was odd when Judd asked me to get a drink after I had been back for a week.  In all the years we had worked together, he had never done that.  

The captain wouldn’t let me return to work yet.  He had insisted that I go through an exhausting battery of medical tests and psychological evaluations before I could.  I was pissed about it, but I understood.  I was bored to tears, though.

I agreed to meet Judd after he got off work at Club 21, an old East Portland bar that for decades had been a hang out for the regular old man crowd, the crowd that tended to start drinking at seven A.M. every morning.  Now, it was slowly being taken over by the bearded hipsters of the neighborhood.  

Judd was sitting at a dimly lit booth in the back when I arrived, a pint of beer sitting in front of him next to an empty shot glass.  I joined him after grabbing a beer for myself.

“Hey,” I said.  “How’s it going?”

“I’m fine.  How are you?” he asked.  “I can’t believe you had amnesia!”

“Yeah, weird, huh?”  I replied. “Good thing it didn’t last for very long.”

“Did you finally remember everything?” he asked.

I rolled my eyes.  I didn’t want to talk about it.  It was difficult to talk about the situation at all, considering I had to leave so much out, since I had to leave Ryder out of the story.  I wanted to just move on with my life, and my work, as best as I could, now that my heart had a huge empty hole in it.

“Look, let’s talk about something else, okay?”

“Sure, sure,” he said, his eyes darting around the dark room behind me.  “I just thought, you know, maybe you had thought of some new information or something.  Something that might tell us more about what happened to Dice, or who he was working with or you know…whatever.”

“Yeah. No,” I replied. I watched him drink his beer, small beads of sweat forming at the top of his forehead.  “Like I said, I don’t remember much after getting in his car.”  It had been easier to tell everyone but the Captain that I hadn’t recovered memories of the attack.   “I do have a question for you, though, Judd.  Why didn’t you guys know I was in trouble sooner? I thought you were following us. I never figured that out. He threw my purse out of the window.”

“Yeah, yeah, we knew that.  It took us a while.  But we finally found your purse on the side of the road. GPS was still working.”

What was he saying? I knew for a fact that my purse had tumbled down the ravine and was carried down the river. There’s no way they could have found it on the road.

That didn’t make any sense at all, but I didn’t say anything to him.  I nodded, watching him finish his beer as I silently drank mine. 

“So, what did you want to talk about, Judd?”

“Oh, nothing, you know, just catch up, see how you were doing.”

“Yeah, okay.  Cool.  Listen, I need a lot of rest these days, I get tired pretty easily, so I’m just gonna head home. Sorry to leave so soon.”

I felt uncomfortable, and I didn’t know why.  Alarms were going off in the back of my head, and I needed time alone to think.  

“Oh, sure, sure…” he said, his eyes narrowing as he watched me gather my keys and purse.

“I’ll talk to you at the meeting next week,” I said, waving at him.  I sank behind the driver’s seat thankfully, and locked my doors.  It had started raining while I was inside, and I turned on my lights and wipers, pulling out of the parking lot and heading back to my apartment.

I didn’t see his car pull out behind me. 

***

When I pulled into the parking space at my apartment complex, I was still bewildered and thinking about what Judd had said.  Something wasn’t right, but I couldn’t quite figure it out.  

I needed to talk to Dawn, and then compare her story with his.

I hit the button on my car key to lock the door, took two steps towards my door and heard his voice behind me.

“Grace.”

I turned around and faced him.  Judd stood there in the pouring rain, his gun drawn, pointing straight at me.

“Judd! What the fuck are you doing?” 

Rain poured over us and we were drenched in seconds. I could barely see him. I took a step toward him.  And then another.

“What’s with the gun, Judd?”  

“You,” he slurred, “you weren’t supposed to survive.  Dice was supposed to take care of you.”

“What are you fucking talking about, Judd?  Put the fucking gun away!”

“Move!”  he gestured towards my apartment. I hesitated and he yelled again, stepping towards me and shoving the gun in my ribs. “Inside! Open the door.”

I opened the door, and we entered the dark apartment.  I took a silent inventory of what I had nearby that I could use as a weapon.  My gun was in my purse, which was slung over my shoulder.  I had knives on the kitchen counter.  A can of mace was hanging on a spare pair of keys by the front door.  

But the gun pressing into my ribs wouldn’t allow me access to any of those things. 

I could fight him if I had to.  

I was stronger than him, and I knew it. We had gone through training together, and he had barely passed the grueling physical tests we were forced through.  He had always slacked off, and since we had been on the force, he wasn’t exactly known for having much discipline when it came to working out regularly.

“Judd, this doesn’t make any sense. You’re a fucking cop, for god’s sake! I’m your partner!”

“Not anymore you aren’t,” he said, shoving me further into my apartment.

“Get on your knees - now!” he yelled after we entered the living room.  I did as he said, sinking to my knees on the carpet.  

“Why are you doing this?”  I asked, my heart racing.

“Shut the fuck up!  Put your hands behind your head!” I obeyed.  “Dice fucked up, okay? He was supposed to finish you. Not get fucking killed himself and leave you alive to keep getting in our way.”

“Our way?” I asked.

“I said, shut the fuck up!”  He hit me across the face with the gun and I went tumbling to the floor.  I looked up at him as he began unbuckling his belt in front of me, the gun still in his hand. 

“Might as well have a piece of you before I get rid of you.”  His pants fell to his feet, and I saw the tattoo.

A black snake. Wrapping around his calf.  The same tattoo Dice had. Dice’s voice filled my ears as the memory of his words came crashing back for the first time.

“You think a pimp like me doesn’t have friends on the inside?  You think all your cop friends are clean as a fucking whistle? You think they aren’t the worst of all? Yeah, little piggie, I know things you would shit your pants to know about. You got sold out, bitch.”

I shook my head, raising to my knees.

“No, that can’t be, you can’t…” I said.  “You, Judd?”

He pulled down his boxers, and pointed the gun at my forehead.  

“I’ve been wanting a piece of you for a long time, Grace,” he snarled.

Something in me snapped.  I wasn’t about to let this asshole get any part of me.  

“Suck it,” he said, waving his prick in my face.  I shook my head.

“I don’t think so,” I whispered. He took one step closer, and reached out with one hand, his fingers heading towards my hair.  

He was inches away when I threw my left hand out to push the gun away at the same time that I grasped the fingers of his other hand with mine, forcing them backwards and up, the satisfying crack vibrating through my hand just as his gun went off before falling to the ground, the bullet shattering the glass of my coffee table.  

Judd fell to his knees.

He screamed in pain as his broken fingers grotesquely dangled off of his hand. I brought a knee up as I raised to my feet, hitting him squarely in the nose and sending him flying onto his back.  He moaned as blood gushed from his nose.

I was on my feet now, but to my surprise he was able to jump up with me.  We raced towards his gun on the ground, but he reached it before me, grabbing it and swinging it towards me, the butt of it landing squarely on my cheek bone.  

He hit me with it again, and I went flying across the floor, landing with my purse underneath me this time.  I felt the hardness of my gun press into my stomach, and I reached under me, fishing for it in the darkness.

When my fingers wrapped around the cold metal, it felt as if a steel hand had wrapped around my heart.

Was there nobody in this world I could trust? Not even my partner? The one person that was supposed to keep me safe that I had allowed in my life?  How many times did I have to turn away?  How many people did I have to banish?

When I pulled the trigger, his body flew into the wall behind him.  He almost looked surprised, as the blood trickled down his chest, and then a bright ribbon of darker blood escaped from his mouth.  

I don’t know why he didn’t think I would have my gun with me.  I might have been off-duty, but I never went anywhere without my gun.  

It’s what people do when they didn’t trust anyone.

It’s what people do when they have nobody to rely on but themselves.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Ryder

Two weeks had passed since I said goodbye to Sam.  Or Grace.  Or whatever her name was.

And one week had passed since I saw her on the news.  Her face was plastered all over the papers and every news station.  

After seeing what happened, I debated if I should go to her. She had to have been a fucking mess.  But I didn’t.  

I stayed strong. Kept my distance. The last thing she needed was to get photographed with an outlaw biker while she was receiving awards of honor for help bring down a child-sex ring that included everyone from low-level cops to judges and politicians.  After Judd had attacked her, and she had killed him, they found an obscene amount of files, photographs and videos in his apartment, naming and identifying all of the monsters in the most fucked up club I had ever heard about.  All of them with that stupid fucking tattoo on their leg, like some sick badge of honor. And now that Dice and Judd were dead, the rest of them were going down too.

The information also led to a hotel room, filled with over a dozen young girls who now, thanks to Grace, would have a second chance at a normal life.

I was proud of her, sure. My heart was fucking bursting with pride.  

Even more so, knowing what she had gone through to get to where she was. Knowing what it must be bringing up for her, so soon after those memories were already haunting her once again.  The wounds were fresh again, after all the years she had worked to heal them.  

My heart ached for her, to see her on television, her eyes empty and sad as she took the award, and then promptly denied having any real role in anything.  

She was painfully humble.

And so fucking beautiful that I wanted nothing more than to go to her and bring her back home with me.

But I couldn’t.  So I let the time pass, and I turned off the television whenever the news came on.  I avoided the papers, and everyone around the clubhouse knew by now not to mention her name around me if they didn’t want their head knocked off.

She was a bit of a celebrity, though, even here.  Cherry was in awe of the fact that she was a cop and still hadn’t said a word to anyone about any of us.  She had earned the respect of every single member of the club by being able to keep her mouth shut when it counted.

She had my respect for a whole lot more than that.

And that’s why I left her alone.  That’s why I didn’t go to her, even thought I knew she was in pain, and it fucking killed me not to.  She didn’t need me to save her this time.

She had saved herself.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Grace

I pulled my car up to the side of the clubhouse, the only car amongst the dozens of Harleys.  It was early.  The morning light broke through the trees above me, and I smiled wistfully, inhaling the heady pine scent that I remembered so well.

I walked through the front door, and it was quiet.  Several Gods were sleeping in various spots on the floor, their mouths open, snoring, still wearing their cuts.  Bottles of beer were knocked over, the smell of the stale beer puddles next to them filling my nostrils, overpowering the pine trees outside.  Tiff was curled up in the corner next to Slade, and I spotted Cherry sleeping alone on a couch along the wall.