Shades of Love (Mad Jackals Brotherhood MC Book 3) (5 page)

“Understood.” Donnie nods, uncharacteristically quiet – the man could normally talk the hind leg off a donkey.

“I know that face, Don. What are you thinking?” Ray rubs his forehead, knowing Donnie is hatching some kind of a plan.

Donnie shrugs enigmatically. “I’m just thinking over other possibilities. Why don’t you just let them have their money back? They might see their way clear to forget about you.”

“And pigs might fly any day now but I’m not going to be putting any money down on that bet.” Ray rolls his eyes. Donnie is many things but Ray hadn’t ever known him to be naïve or optimistic. These have never been words that came to mind.

“So that’s it? You’re just going to hand yourself over to those assholes without a fight? Do you know what they’re going to do to you?” Donnie is in Ray’s face, his eyes wild.

“Of course I know what they’re going to do, probably a damn sight better than you do! I’ve lived with these guys for the last eight years. I know what they’re capable of, or at least some of them. They’re not all the same.” Ray wonders if any of the Jackals that he’d thought of as friends were in town and what they’d been offered to shoot him on sight.

“One bad apple rots the whole damn barrel,” Donnie quietly seethes.

Ray doesn’t bother to tell Donnie that there is more bad than good in that particular barrel of bikers. What would be the point? It’s just semantics and it doesn’t make any difference to how things are going to play out.

“You tried to warn me, Don. I knew what I was signing up for.”

It had been Ray’s own damn stubbornness that had pushed him to want to be a part of the Jackals. He had a romantic idea of what being a part of an MC would be like. He’d thought that Donnie was just trying to scare him. After all, his dad had been a biker and, from the little that he remembered of him, Ray knew he wasn’t the kind of person Donnie had described. Ray had followed a misguided thought that becoming a biker would bring him closer to his dead father, that, perhaps, he would be proud of him. Besides, Ray had been desperate to get out of his house and the seemingly endless stream of junkies and pimps that paraded in and out as his mother held court, the biggest junkie of them all.

Ray’s heart twists as he thinks about her. It would be a stretch to say that he missed her. He hadn’t known her well enough to miss her. She’d been high or strung out through his formative years. She’d hit him up for money and try to persuade him to sell his bike just so she could score. That was more or less all the interaction they’d had. But she had still been his mother and you only got one.

“This isn’t your fault, Don. It’s mine. I got myself and everyone I care about into this mess. It’s up to me to get them out and I don’t intend to screw it up.” Ray looks down at his hands, his mind absently drifting to what they had felt like sliding over Mia’s skin, how it had felt to touch her face.

Donnie seems to have read exactly where Ray’s mind has taken him. “She’d be lucky to have you.” It’s the closest Donnie has ever come to an actual compliment and it gives Ray pause.

He huffs out a chuckle. “Sure, real lucky. A life on the run and a criminal for a boyfriend – how could she resist, right?” His voice comes out bitter no matter how hard he tries to keep it even. But it’s still early days, he tells himself. Hopefully, one day, he’d come to terms with it all and he’d be able to leave Mia behind. But, for now, it still hurt like hell knowing he couldn’t be with her, knowing she was with Eli, someone who could offer her a life, stability, security, all the things he couldn’t, no matter how much he wanted to. “I’ll be in touch to make the arrangements.”

He gets up to leave, but Donnie’s strong hand on his shoulder stops him. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

“I don’t have a lot of time, Donnie. The longer I stick around the more likely it is that they’re going to find me. I’m pretty sure I haven’t been talking to myself this past while.” He cocks an eyebrow at Donnie, wondering what the expression on the old man’s face is, an expression that he can’t read.
“No, you haven’t and I don’t intend to either, so sit your ass down and let me do something I should have had the guts to a long time ago.” Donnie levels Ray with a look that says he’s not screwing around and, automatically, Ray obeys, watching his friend pace up and down twirling his unlit cigarette like a cheerleader with a baton. Abruptly Donnie stops and takes a deep breath. “I know what happened to your mom.”

Ray’s head snaps up towards his friend. “So do I, Donnie. She OD’d. I saw her freakin’ body.” He closes his eyes as if he can shut out the image that has haunted his nightmares since he was seventeen.

Donnie shakes his head, looking sad, like he wishes he didn’t have to say whatever is about to come out of his mouth. “I know how she got into that house. I know how the Jackals knew she was going to be in there.”

Now Donnie has Ray’s full attention. He’s taken him right back to the moment he had found his mother lying on a filthy mattress, her eyes open and the needle still poking out of her arm. Finding his mom dead had been the catalyst. But that was what had never made any sense. How had the Jackals known about his mom? How had they engineered it to make sure she was in the house? They had used her death to manipulate Ray into committing the most violent act of his life and they had done it perfectly. They’d driven him towards the moment that he had pulled the trigger – a moment that he could never take back, a moment that had given the Jackals complete power of him.

“Tell me, Donnie. Tell me what you know.” Ray is surprised at how level his voice is.

Donnie suddenly looks cagey, like he’s afraid of what Ray might do to him when he confesses the truth. “You have to understand, Ray. It took me a while to connect the dots. I should have seen it clearer but I didn’t know that the guy was your friend.”

Ray narrows his eyes at Donnie, a suspicion he’s had for years coming to the fore. “Eli.”

Donnie looks at him more anxious than Ray has ever seen him. “I only found out later that was his name. You have to believe that I didn’t know what he was up to.”

Ray takes a deep breath, calming himself down and looks up. “I believe you, Donnie. I know that you would have avoided what happened if you could have. Now tell me what Eli has to do with any of this.”

Donnie visibly relaxes, pulling up another crate to sit opposite Ray and he starts his story, twirling the cigarette all the while. As Donnie lays out all the facts at his disposal, Ray gets the urge to scream or punch something or break everything in Donnie’s store, or possibly all three.

For years he had known that he had a reason to hate Eli; he just didn’t have all the pieces to make sense of the puzzle. Now he does and it changes everything.

“Whatever happens to me, I can’t let him get away with what he did.” Ray’s voice is quiet but the threat in it is clear. But the reality of the situation hits him hard. “But I need proof, goddammit. Otherwise it’s just my word against his and my word isn’t looking so good right now.” He’s so frustrated he wants to pull his hair out.

Donnie smiles wickedly at him and virtually springs off of the crate, moving with the speed of a much younger man. He pulls a screwdriver out of one of the pockets of his cargo pants and sets about unscrewing the back of the television that Ray had struggled down the steps with.

“Is now really the time for you to try to repair that hunk of junk, Don? No matter what you do it’s never going to run again and we sort of have bigger problems to deal with!” Ray looks over at his old boss, an incredulous look on his face. Donnie had never been able to keep still, but this was ridiculous.

“You’re right about me never getting this old set to run again.” Donnie pats the top of the television affectionately. “But you’re wrong about it being junk. In fact, it’s probably the most valuable thing in this whole place.”

Ray rolls his eyes, wondering if Donnie had been drinking before he arrived. “Don, what the hell?” Ray stops in his tracks as he watches Donnie lift the back off the television, exposing row upon row of old VHS tapes meticulously labeled with dates ranging back from over ten years ago. “Donnie?” Ray’s eyes scan the videos, not daring to hope that he’s looking at what he thinks he might be.

“Guess you won’t be joking about my security cameras again.” Donnie grins widely at him.

“Is that…?” Ray can barely bring himself to ask the question.

“Enough to take your friend down, if that’s all you want.” Donnie shrugs ambiguously.

“If that’s
all
I want?” Ray raises an eyebrow.

“There’s a lot more in these videos than just your friend.” Donnie pats the top of the screen again affectionately.

“The Jackals?” Ray’s voice comes out strangled. He can barely believe what this could mean.

“If you want them, they’re yours.” Donnie keeps his eyes carefully trained on the videos and away from Ray’s face. “Think of them as collateral, a safety net.”

“And potentially the only thing that’s going to stop them from shooting me on sight.” Ray finishes Donnie’s thought out loud. He knows what the risks are. “It’s not going to take them long to figure out where I got all this from.”

“Let ‘em come. I’ll be ready.” Donnie’s voice doesn’t show any hint of fear and Ray gets a glimpse of the man he must have been before he became the Jackals’ pawn.

“You’ve kept these for years. Why, if not to use them yourself? You could have gotten out from under their thumb years ago.” Ray frowns, confused at why his friend wouldn’t have taken the first chance he got to remove himself from the MC’s influence.

“Because I knew one day you’d come back and you’d need my help. I’m an old man, Ray. I’ve had a pretty good run of things. I’m not in any hurry to live forever.” Donnie smiles sadly. “But you deserve this, Ray. You deserve a break, something no one has ever given you. And much as you may not believe it, you deserve Mia, too.”

Ray allows himself a smile at his friend’s slip. “How do you know her name is Mia?” Ray had always kept that a secret, even when he was a kid. He’d been used to keeping things to himself, especially good things, for fear that they might get taken away.

“I know things.” Donnie shrugs and smiles enigmatically.

Ray shakes his head, grinning at Donnie’s lack of tact. But he sobers almost instantly. “I’m not a snitch, Don.” As stupid as it sounded, it wasn’t in his nature. He’d wanted to be part of an MC to feel that sense of brotherhood, to be a part of something. He wasn’t about to rat out his brothers like that, even though most of them probably wouldn’t have any qualms about killing him. Eli, on the other hand, is a different story. “Besides, if I ever used this, I’d be thrown in jail along with the rest of them. And a six by eight isn’t really my scene.”

Donnie sighs theatrically, but Ray can tell he’s not surprised at his reaction. After all, he’d been the one to teach Ray that the first law of being a biker was that the Club came first, no matter what. “You don’t have to take it in to the nearest cop shop, Ray. They just have to think that you’d be willing to do it. It’s collateral and, if you’re lucky, it might be just enough to keep you alive for a little longer.

Chapter Six

“I feel like I’m being completely paranoid.” Amanda sits in the chair opposite Mia, wringing her hands and looking around her as if she expects the man she’s terrified of to jump out of the filing cabinet.

“You know I don’t like you to use that word, Amanda.” Mia gives her a serious look. “You have to trust your instincts; they’re what’s kept you alive, what brought you here. If you’re scared that he knows where you are, that’s not what I call paranoid; that’s just you being careful.”

Amanda nods quickly, chewing her nail – a safety behavior Mia hasn’t seen from her since Amanda first arrived at the shelter. Mia gets up from her chair behind the desk and goes to sit in the one next to her, gently taking the hand she’s gnawing at away and keeping hold of it, offering her some comfort.

“Amanda, tell me what’s going on.” She looks into the deep blue eyes of this girl and she can’t help but be reminded of Ray. She blinks to get the image out of her head. “You’ve never wanted to talk to me about your ex-boyfriend, not in any real detail. All I really know about him is that he’s part of a gang and he likes to hit women.” She watches as Amanda flinches as if remembering the way he’d turned her eyes black and damn near killed her more than once. “Why don’t you tell me some more about him? If you’re really concerned that he’s tracked you here, the more I know about him the more I’ll be able to do to keep him away from you.”

But Amanda has already started to shake her head before Mia has even finished speaking. “You don’t understand. I promised. I promised not to tell. If he finds out, he really will kill me!” The tears leak out of her eyes and, almost automatically, Mia hands over the box of Kleenex she keeps on her desk.

“Amanda, you spent six months in the shelter. You’ve barely been out two weeks and you look like you did that first time I saw you. What has got you so scared?” The dark rings under the young woman’s eyes are more pronounced than the last time Mia saw her and she’s trembling uncontrollably.

Mia curses herself for almost not answering the call on her cellphone. She’d thought it was Eli calling to check up on her for the hundredth time that day, but it had been Amanda; she’d finally gotten up the courage to use the number Mia had given her. She’d been sobbing down the phone so hard that Mia had sent a taxi to pick her up from her apartment and bring her straight to the shelter. That was fifty dollars she was never going to see again, she thinks to herself before pushing the thought out of her head. She doesn’t know who she’s trying to kid; she would have paid ten times that amount if she’d had to.

“Talk to me, Amanda. What’s happened? Has he tried to get in touch with you? Have you seen him?” Mia feels like she’s clutching at straws, only able to guess at what has this woman so terrified. Amanda shakes her head and Mia lets out a frustrated sigh. She knows she’s supposed to let clients tell her their stories in their own time, but she hates the idea that Amanda is in danger and won’t let her help. “If you won’t talk to me about what’s happened, can you at least give me a description so I can let the cops know he’s a person of interest?” Mia starts to rise out of her chair to get to the phone when Amanda grabs her wrist in a vice-like grip.

“You can’t call the cops. Please, Mia. They’ll know.” The girl looks up at her desperately and Mia feels a shiver of fear move down her spine, as if it were contagious.

“Who’ll know, Amanda? Talk to me. You know that whatever you say is just between the two of us.” She squeezes Amanda’s hand, trying to offer her some kind of comfort.

Amanda takes a deep breath, dropping her attention down to Mia’s wrist that she’s still clutching. She lets it go, probably realizing she’s been squeezing it harder than she should be. “I don’t know if
he’s
here, but his friends definitely are.”

“Your ex’s friends? Have you seen them? Where? Outside your apartment? Are they following you?” Mia clenches her jaw shut to keep from bombarding the woman with questions. But she doesn’t like what she’s hearing, not one little bit.

“I haven’t seen them in real life. I saw them on TV.” Amanda looks at her uneasily and Mia tries not to wonder if the poor girl has had some kind of a psychotic break.

Mia swallows hard, trying to keep her voice even. “On TV?”

Amanda nods slowly, looking like she can imagine exactly what Mia is thinking about her. “I’m not crazy. I know what I saw. They were on the news.”

Mia’s eyes widen at this tidbit of information. “On the news?” Her voice is low, but at least it’s not shaking.

Amanda nods again. “They shot a man, in his store.” Her blue eyes fill with tears and she starts to cry.

Mia’s brain starts firing in all directions at the words that have just come out of Amanda’s mouth. “When did this happen?” Mia’s voice is virtually a whisper but she knows that the girl has heard her.

She looks up at Mia with her tear-stained face. “Last night. They said he had a little boy; he was only eight.” Amanda covers her face with her hands and starts to sob loudly.

Mia feels like the world has started to spin and she’s grateful to be sitting down or else she might pass out. “The Mad Jackals. Your boyfriend is part of the Jackals.” It’s a statement not a question but Amanda nods anyway.

“They’re looking for me. I just know it! And now that man is dead and that boy doesn’t have a father! Mia, what am I going to do?” Amanda’s entire body is wracked with sobs and Mia does the only thing she can think of; she pulls the woman to her, letting her cry her heart out against the shoulder of her black dress.

Mia closes her eyes to gather her thoughts, thoughts that were dangerously filled with Ray. No matter what happened he was around every corner. What were the odds of one of the woman from his MC coming to her shelter for help? She tries to push the thought of Ray out of her mind and concentrate on Amanda. After having seen the devastation they’d wrought on her apartment, Mia is more than aware that if Amanda’s ex knows where she is then she’s in danger. That’s when a realization hits her like a ton bricks.

“I don’t think they’re looking for you, Amanda.” Mia’s voice is soft and the girl lifts her head looking at Mia uncertainly.

“You don’t know what they’re like, Mia. I do. I’ve lived with them. I know what they do to women who try to leave them. God help me, but I’ve seen it. I won’t let them do that to me. Please, Mia, you have to help me.” Amanda grabs onto Mia’s arms, holding onto her like she might fall.

Mia keeps her voice calm as she gently disengages Amanda’s strong hands. “Amanda, I’m going to help you, but I need you to take some deep breaths and listen to me.” She looks pointedly at the girl who obeys immediately. “I don’t think that the Jackals are here looking for you. But we’re going to get you some protection anyway, just to be on the safe side. I think they’re here for someone else.” Mia bites her lip, not wanting to think about what they’re planning to do with that someone else once they find him. If Amanda’s terror was anything to go by, it wasn’t going to be anything good.

“Who?” Amanda looks doubtfully at Mia.

“Ray Nolan.” Mia watches as her suspicions are proved right as Amanda’s eyes stretch wide as saucers. “You know him, don’t you? Ray’s here?” Amanda looks around as if she thinks he might suddenly appear out of nowhere behind her. I know the feeling, Mia thinks wryly to herself

It’s Mia’s turn to nod. “At least he was a couple of days ago. I don’t know if he’s left town yet.”

“Why would the Jackals be after him? It doesn’t make any sense.” Amanda shakes her head, frowning as she tries to piece together the information she has. Mia realizes that Amanda can’t have known about Ray stealing the money; it must have happened after she had run away.

“He tried to leave them. I guess that’s not something they take particularly kindly to.” Mia wonders at how cool her voice sounds, like she doesn’t even care.

Amanda’s bottom lip trembles again, signaling another bout of tears. “He finally did it.” She shakes her head in pity. “Poor Ray.”

Mia looks at her in surprise. “You knew Ray wanted to leave the Jackals? How?” She looks at the young girl, praying that she’s not going to say she slept with Ray or that they were an item. Amanda was pretty with her cornflower blue eyes and blonde hair. It wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine that she’s someone Ray would go for. The idea makes the green eyed monster rear its ugly head.

“He never said anything to me about it. But you could tell he wasn’t happy. Besides he wasn’t like the other guys, not anything like them.” Amanda’s voice has taken on a quality that she recognizes; it’s longing and Mia feels like a knife has been driven into her heart.

“In what way?” Mia forces herself to think clearly and not to be jealous of a woman that has suffered so much.

“He was nice to me.” Amanda shrugs her shoulders and she gets a dreamy look on her face. “He didn’t shout at me or call me a slut or a whore like some of the other guys did. He even stood up to my ex once when he was trying to hit me. Most of the time he’d do it behind closed doors, like he was ashamed of it, but not enough to stop.” Amanda scrubs at her wet eyes with the back of her hands. “But this time was different. I’d made him mad; I forget why. It could have been any reason. Maybe he just didn’t like the way I’d looked at him.” Amanda shrugs as if that could possibly explain the violence. “Anyway, he lost his temper with me right there in the middle of the MC bar. He punched me in the face so hard I saw stars. I remember there was blood pouring out of my nose. I thought he’d broken it. But he hadn’t, not that time at least.”

Mia reaches out and squeezes Amanda’s hand, wishing she could take the pain away. “Go on, Amanda. You’re doing great.” Mia nods at her encouragingly.

“Well, I was on the floor and I saw Jonah, my ex, lift up his boot like he was going to smash it down on my face. But suddenly Ray was there and he was pulling him off of me and yelling at him to leave me alone. Ray told him that if he wanted to hit someone so bad he should try someone who could fight back some. He called Jonah a coward.” Amanda smiles. “Jonah didn’t like that one bit. It stopped him from beating on me in front of all of them.” Her face darkens.

“But it didn’t stop him completely.” Mia speaks Amanda’s thought out loud.

She shakes her head. “That night Ray had given me the name of this place. He was the one who told me about the shelter; he told me your name and that you would help me. He told me I could trust you.” Amanda looks up at Mia with shining eyes. “Turns out he was right. I should have left the first time he told me to. But I didn’t have any money, no way of getting out of there.” She looks down at her hands.

“How long did it take for you to leave?” Mia asks the question gently, not wanting to spook Amanda now that she had shared so much.

“A year.” Amanda looks at her sadly. “I thought Jonah cared about me. I thought that deep down he loved me, that he wanted to take care of me. But one night things got kinda out of hand. He told me he was going to kill me when he got back. Ray overheard. He gave me a wedge of cash.” Amanda holds up her thumb and index finger to demonstrate how much he’d given her. “He called a taxi and sent me to the nearest bus station. He told me about you again and told me never to come back, that he would deal with Jonah. That was the last time I saw him. He saved my life.”
 

Mia feels the tears welling up behind her own eyes at the simplicity to the girl’s words. The actions that Amanda has described are the actions of a good man. Ray had gotten her out of a bad situation and he’d sent her to Mia for help. He’d believed in her in a way that Mia hadn’t allowed herself to reciprocate.

“Where is he? I’d really like to see him. – to say thanks.” Amanda looks at Mia hopefully, her previous fear forgotten.

“I don’t know,” Mia admits, looking down at her hands and feeling thoroughly ashamed of herself. “Did you two…? Were you two…?” She clears her throat not being able to quite finish her questions.

Amanda’s eyes widen in shock. “Me and Ray?” She laughs out loud, sounding more like a twenty year old than Mia has ever heard her. “Uh-uh, no way!” She catches Mia’s expression. “Not that he isn’t hot. Obviously he’s totally hot. But Jonah would’ve killed me if I even looked at Ray! Besides, he wasn’t interested in me.”

Mia doesn’t make any secret of the relieved sigh that she lets out. She knows Ray had been with other women, he’d told her as much. But there was something that wouldn’t have sat well with her if he’d taken advantage of a girl as vulnerable as Amanda, and as young.