Unattainable (6 page)

Dirty. He was dirty. He was filthy,
both inside and out. He was a hollowed-out, rotted piece of shit
who should have quit breathing a long time ago yet, for some stupid
fucking reason, Deuce wouldn’t let him.

“
I believe the price is
acceptable,” Pamela Mooresville said, her tone every bit as hoity
as everything else about her. Turning slightly in her armchair, she
turned from Deuce to her husband, Mayor Norman Mooresville. “Don’t
you agree, dear?”

Mooresville couldn’t have been that
much older than him, Dirty guessed. He’d just turned thirty-eight
and this asshole had to be in his midforties. But from the looks of
it, the good life hadn’t been all that good to Mr. Mayor, with his
gut trying to pop through his dress shirt, his chin not doubled but
tripled, and his receding hairline that was unfortunately also
graying.

All that Grey Poupon and caviar, Dirty
surmised, that and a whole lot of being waited on his entire
life.

“
Price?” Mick laughed,
stroking his long black-and-gray beard. “You fuckers gotta pretty
everything up, don’t ya? Why not just call it what it fuckin’ is? A
goddamn payoff.”

“
A fat fuckin’ bitch,” Tap
said as he pulled a cigarette from behind his ear and brought it to
his lips. Lighting the cigarette, he inhaled deeply and blew the
smoke out slowly. “Is still a fat fuckin’ bitch,” he continued. “No
matter which way you’re lookin’ at her.”

“
We don’t smoke in here,”
Pamela said slowly, eyeing first Tap, then Bucket, then him, all
with distaste.

Tap grinned around his next drag. “That
so?” he murmured and let the cigarette drop to the carpet. Pamela
shot to her feet with a gasp at the same time the toe of Tap’s boot
came down over the lit tobacco and he twisted his ankle first
right, then left, grinding the cigarette out.

“
You disgusting, filthy
gang of—”

“
Pamela!” The mayor was on
his feet faster than Dirty thought was possible for such a fat
fuck, and grabbed hold of his wife’s arm.

Subsequently Deuce, Mick, and Bucket
had all shot to their feet as well. Dirty followed suit, more than
ready to get the fuck out of this awful place.

“
We’re done here,” Deuce
growled, his hard eyes narrowed on the mayor. “You’ll have half the
cash, all clean, on Tuesday. Shipment’s due in town on Wednesday.
If I don’t have your boys in blue on board, all you’ll be seein’ of
the second half of that money is the brand new shovel I’ll be
buyin’ to bury your fat ass. You feel me?”

“
Could just feed ’im to
the dogs, Prez,” Bucket drawled. “Wouldn’t have to feed ’em for a
whole fuckin’ month after that.”

Dirty rolled his eyes. Bucket was full
of shit; the club didn’t have any dogs.

The mayor lifted a shaking hand to wipe
the sweat that had beaded across his brow.

“
Y-yes,” he mumbled. “Of
course, everything will go as planned and everyone will be on
board. You can count on my son and his men.”

Dirty’s upper lip curled. Daniel
Mooresville was the Miles City chief of police who hadn’t just
grown up the son of a wealthy and corrupt pair of assholes, but he
loved to harass the Horsemen, already knowing full well the dirty
business they were all swimming in, knowing he was just as
involved, hell, half the town was involved. Yet the fucker still
loved to test the boundaries with everything from parking citations
and speeding tickets to building code violations at the clubhouse,
just to see how much Deuce would tolerate before blowing a
gasket.

He was a first-class motherfucker who
thought his badge could protect him, his badge and his wealthy,
influential parents.

And Deuce let him think so despite it
not being true. The Horsemen were dangerous enough on their own,
but ever since Deuce had brought Eva back to Montana with him all
those years back, the Horsemen had been working side by side with
the Silver Demons, and the Demons weren’t just nationwide, they
were worldwide. Preacher had more power and connections than the
goddamn president of the United States.

One by one the Horsemen headed past the
royal couple and out into the hall. As Dirty passed Pamela, his gut
seized and he skirted as far around her as he could get without
walking into a wall. He didn’t breathe again until they’d finally
stepped outside where Jase and Ivy were sitting on the front steps,
Ivy playing a game on her cell phone and Jase staring off into the
distance. Brother never spoke anymore. Not since Dorothy had woken
up from getting shot and didn’t remember him, didn’t want anything
to do with him. All he did was eat, sleep, and booze it up. Heavy
on the booze.

A hand came down hard on his shoulder
and he jumped, but caught himself before he took off running.
Looking over, he found Deuce standing beside him, looking straight
ahead. Dirty let out a relieved sigh.

“
Brother,” Deuce said
quietly, so not to alert anyone else to his words. “You need to be
ridin’ pavement? Just say the word.”

No. He was fine. He just…he couldn’t…he
needed…

“
Yeah. I do.”

With another slap to his shoulder,
Deuce headed down the steps, scooping Ivy up as he went. Together,
all six of them straddled their bikes and headed off the mayor’s
long stretch of property. But when his brothers turned right,
headed back toward the clubhouse, he went left, toward the
mountains.

His brothers were used to him
disappearing; he was often alone, liked it that way. He couldn’t be
cooped up, couldn’t sit still for very long, couldn’t spend too
much time with himself or his memories.

Deuce knew. Deuce was the only one who
knew anything about his past, and not even Deuce knew the half of
it. And what he did know, he only knew because he’d seen it
firsthand, had for some reason decided to turn down the dimly lit
Manhattan alleyway where Dirty had been bent over a pile of stacked
shipping crates, forcefully taking it in the ass.

He’d been fifteen years old. A foster
home runaway who lived off the streets stealing what he could,
selling it to whoever would buy it. It wasn’t an easy life, but
even being homeless had been better than the life he’d run
from.

Until one day he wasn’t strong enough
to fight a guy off him.

That’s how Deuce found him. Badly
beaten, bent over a stack of shipping crates, his pants around his
ankles, crying out in pain, begging to be released while some dirty
motherfucker ass-raped him.

It was the first time he’d seen a man
die at the hands of another. He’d lived on the city streets long
enough to have seen people die. Homeless people succumbing to the
weather, gunshot victims, drug users OD’ing.

But this was the first time he’d seen a
man kill another man…using his own two hands. Deuce first beat the
asshole half to death, then snapped his neck.

If Dirty could have, he would have run
from Deuce. Compared to him, tall but scrawny, Deuce was the size
of a fucking superhero. But after Deuce had pulled the guy off him,
all he’d been able to manage was a halfhearted slump to the ground.
Where he stayed until Deuce had walked over to him, yanked his
pants up, lifted him up and over his shoulder, and headed back down
the alleyway during which Dirty passed out from either blood loss
or fear, or quite possibly both.

The rest was fucking history. Barely.
If one could call his life “history.” The first half of it was more
like a series of unlucky events all piled on top of one another,
and the second half was just a struggle.

Every day he struggled. He struggled
with remembering, he struggled with forgetting, he struggled with
all the fucked-up, perverted bullshit that went round and round his
head, knowing that he shouldn’t be thinking these thoughts, knowing
those thoughts weren’t his own but instead the thoughts of the
motherfuckers who’d made him this way, but also helpless to turn
them off…helpless to stop…to stop what he did to make the images,
the whispers, the ugly, depraved urges that caused him to do ugly,
depraved things…JUST FUCKING STOP.

Once again in town, Dirty pulled off to
the side of the road and cut his engine. Toeing his kickstand down,
he swung his leg over his bike and stood up straight. While looking
around the dark and quiet street he lived on, he reached into his
cut and pulled out his smokes.

Miles City had been perfect. The polar
opposite of New York City and all the nightmares that place held
inside of it. He could breathe here most of the time, and ride for
hours, just him and the road.

A shrill, terror-filled scream followed
by the distinctive thump/slap of fist meeting flesh broke the
small-town silence, tearing through the empty streets, emptying
into the surrounding mountains, and Dirty felt his skin pebble with
goose bumps.

Another scream, this one garbled, more
choked than the first, then another pounding of flesh, and
then…silence.

Dirty had a well-practiced poker face.
Aside from Deuce, no one, not one motherfucker out there, could see
through his bullshit. He could throw down with the best of his
brothers, beat a motherfucker senseless, kill him without a second
thought, his stare as coldhearted as the rest. He’d done deplorable
things to a shit ton of people, men and women alike, and never once
did he so much as bat a fucking eyelash at his actions.

Until he was alone. Because when he was
alone he could shake, he could tremble, he could scream and yell,
he could punch the walls, he could punch himself.

Alone, he could cry. Alone, he could
let the fear out and, Jesus fuck, there was so much fear. He lived
and breathed fear…every day, every night, all the motherfucking
time.

It was fear ruling him that had made
him what he’d become. That had turned him into the sort of monster
he’d most hated. And it was all that fear inside of him, coursing
through his veins, pounding in his heart, making him sweat even
more fear.

It was fear that had him tossing his
cigarette aside, fear that had him running down the desolate
sidewalk, fear that had him turning down a dimly lit alleyway. It
was fear that had him skidding to a stop, taking in the scene in
front of him.

And it was fear that had him pulling
his piece and, with shaking hands, trying to blow a hole straight
through someone else’s nightmare, a nightmare that was a fuck of a
lot similar to one of his own.

The bullet cracked through the air.
Missing his target, Dirty tried again, only this time the asshole
had been alerted to his presence and was on his feet, pulling up
his pants as he ran in the opposite direction, hooked a quick
right, and was gone before the second bullet had left the
chamber.

Dirty lowered his shaking hand, his
entire body trembling, his mind a mess of all-consuming scrambled
adaptations of both the past and present.

That wasn’t him lying on the street,
that wasn’t him with his pants around his ankles, bleeding, crying,
begging.

He tried to breathe. In and out,
slowly, faster, slow again. NOTHING WAS WORKING.

That wasn’t fucking him, it wasn’t, it
wasn’t—

“
D-dirt-ty…?”

The raspy, garbled, distinctly
feminine-sounding mutation of his name caused his head to swivel
left and his eyes landed on the bloodied heap of quivering flesh
that lay no more than fifteen feet from him.

Dirty blinked. He blinked and he
breathed and his eyes refocused.

Shit.

Shit, he knew her. Sort of. She
was…Emma? Erin? Ella?

Ellie. Ellie the mulatto hottie.
Friends with Danny from way back when.

“
P-p-please…” she
continued and her arm moved, her fingers extended. She reached for
him.

He could do this. He just couldn’t
think about what he was doing while he was doing it. But he could
do it. He had to do it.

Danny was the closest thing to a friend
he’d ever had, the only woman who willingly hung around him, and
this was her friend. What the fuck would he do if it were Danny
lying half-naked on the street, badly beaten?

He moved forward, jogging quickly
toward her, bent down beside her, and froze just before his hands
could come in contact with her body.

“
Hey,” he said hoarsely,
trying to keep himself calm. “Anything broken?”

She blinked up at him through swollen
eyes. “No,” she whispered. “Just…m-my head…hurts.”

“
Fuck,” he muttered as he
retracted his hands, reached inside his cut, and pulled out his
cell phone. “I got you covered, I’m calling the
cavalry.”

“
No!” she cried as her arm
shot out and her hand gripped his wrist. The feel of her, her tight
grip on him, her skin on his skin, caused a nauseating ripple
effect throughout his body, ending with a violent
shiver.

“
No police,” she
whispered, her grip loosening as the last of her strength faded.
“Please…no one…nobody…can know.”

Dirty pressed his lips together. He
hadn’t been talking about the boys in blue, he didn’t roll that
way. But Ellie had said it first. No police, huh? He understood “no
cops,” it was a way of life for him and his brothers, the unspoken
code that anything that needed handling, they would take care of it
themselves.