Saving Axe

  "I haven't brought anything to her," I said, though I knew it wasn't true. I was dragging her down, with my shit. What was I thinking, buying her a ring? It was laughable, the thought that I could somehow escape the club unscathed, bring June with me, that we could somehow leave everything behind. My darkness would always follow her. There was no escaping it.

  "I want you out of this town," Jed said. "Do you understand that? You're not welcome here. Your kind isn't welcome here."

  "You don't have to worry about that," I mumbled, distracted by my thoughts. In fact, I needed to leave, right now. "How long ago?" I croaked, my throat dry.

  "How long ago what?"

  "How long ago did you pick up my little buddies?"

  Jed shrugged. "A couple hours ago. Not bikers, though."

  Jesus Christ. "What are you talking about, Jed?"

  "The guys following you, the suits."

  What the fuck was he talking about?

  I needed to leave. I stood up.

  "You're not going anywhere, Cade."

  "If I'm not under arrest, I'm free to go."

  Jed's radio squawked, and he picked it up suddenly, turning up the volume to listen. "Engines en route to County Road Twelve. Reports of heavy smoke from a structure fire. EMS dispatched. Fire department is fifteen minutes out."

  My stomach lurched, my head spinning so much that I could barely hear every other word. I didn't even need to hear the address. I knew where it was. I knew what was happening.

  When Jed looked up at me, his face was pale, no longer colored by his hatred of me. "It's your dad's ranch," he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

  "What have you done?" I asked.

  What had I done?

  It's all my fault.

  Just a structure fire, I told myself. Just the barn.

  The problem was, I knew it wasn't.

  "You can ride with me," Jed said.

  "Crunch," I croaked out as we headed to the door.

  He shook his head. "He and the kid stay."

  June

  The second I saw the smoke rising from Stan's ranch, I made the 911 call, my hands trembling. Stan's barn was on fire, I could see it clear as day.

  The horses.

  Stan and April.

  They were okay, I reassured myself. They were inside, cooking. Not in the barn. Stan had plenty of experience with fires. A barn fire wasn't that unusual, not out here.

  The horses.

  I rode, my heart racing, digging into the horse's flanks, urging her on as fast as I could get her to gallop.

  Everything would be fine.

  It had to be.

  Axe

  Fear clung to me, a vise grip on my heart so tight I could barely breathe. Jed raced along the back country roads, hugging the turns and driving like his life depended on it, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. He tried to say something to me, but I couldn't hear him. All I could think about was them.

  June, my dad, April.

  If anything happened to them...

  Jed pulled in the driveway, two police cruisers and an ambulance blocking the front of the entry. The barn was consumed by fire, and the local volunteer firefighters were trying to contain it.

  I couldn't see behind the vehicles to the house.

  I heard Jed call to me, but everything was on mute, soundless as I squeezed through the handful of medical personnel and cops near the vehicles. The air smelled acrid, smoke from the barn still billowing up behind the house, but I could barely hear the crackle of the flames and the rushing sound of the fire.

  Someone put a hand on my chest, tried to push me back from the house. "You can't go in there, sir."

  "It's my father's fucking house." I pried his hand off my chest. "Move out of my fucking way."

  Jed's hand was on my back. "Cade, don't," he said.

  "Don't fucking touch me," I said. Then, yelled. "Get the fuck off me."

  And suddenly, June was there, in the doorway, running toward me.

  Covered in blood.

  Blood on her hands, splotched on her tee-shirt like some macabre design, stark against the white fabric. She stood in front of me, inches away, her eyes red.

  "June." I touched my hand to her hair, and pulled it back.

  Blood on my fingertips.

  I don't understand.

  "Cade," she said, her voice choking.

  "Are you hurt? You're hurt. What happened?"

  "Cade." She put her hand to my chest, and shook her head. "Not me."

  I looked behind her, at the EMTs, who weren't rushing to take anyone to the emergency room. At the medical personnel seemed to have stopped in their tracks, looking at me, then down at the ground.

  No.

  This is not happening.

  "No," I said.

  "Cade." June shook her head, tears beginning to stream down her cheeks. "I tried. I tried to save them, but I couldn't. There was nothing I could do."

  No.

  I couldn't hear anything except the blood rushing in my ears. It drowned out everything, leaving my head swimming. I stepped around June, and felt her catch my arm.

  "Don't go in there, Cade," she said. "Don't."

  I yanked my hand away, and heard her scream at Jed. "Stop him. For fuck's sake, don't let him go in there."

  I had to go inside.

  I needed to see it for myself.

  Inside the doorway, I stopped short. April was in the kitchen, her body still, eyes open. Her face looked calm, peaceful even. Not like the rest of her body.

  I heard one of the medics beside me. "Gunshot wound to the chest," he said. "She would have died quickly."

  I couldn't look in the other room. I knew what was waiting for me there. I didn't want to face it. "Did she-" I swallowed hard. I couldn't look below her waist. I didn't want to know what those animals had done to her. "Was she -?"

  "We don't know anything yet." One of the medical personnel - or was it crime scene investigation? Someone in a jumpsuit, with lettering that blurred in my eyes, stood beside me. "It's best if you wait outside."

  "Where - " My voice faltered. "No. I'm not leaving. Where's my Dad's - " I couldn't bring myself to say the word.

  "Cade," June said. "It's not good." She put her hand on my arm.

  "I need to see him."

  I felt like I was walking through quicksand as I made my way to the living room, like my limbs were made of lead, weighing me down as I tried to move. And then I entered the living room, and everything was still. Silent.

  There he was.

  My father.

  Tied to a chair in the middle of the room, his head hanging down on his chest.

  Beaten.

  Covered in blood.

  Nothing else mattered, not June trying to stop me as I ran toward him. Not whichever cop tried to hold me back, keep me away from the body. I dropped to my knees in front of his body, clawed wildly at the rope holding his feet to the chair.

  He couldn't be like this, tied to a chair, beaten beyond recognition.

  I felt a dam burst inside me, a cry of anguish that rose up from my soul, loud enough to startle anyone within earshot. It sounded like it came from someone else, not from me. And I collapsed there, my head against his legs, racked with heaving sobs I couldn't control. There was so much I had left to tell his man, so much more I needed to apologize for. He couldn't be gone.

  Not now.

  I reached out to touch his battered face where it was cut open, the wound still oozing freely. Tears stung my eyes, but I wanted to remember his face. The face of the man who raised me, the man I secretly aspired to be. I wanted to tell him I loved him.

  I felt someone's hand on my shoulder, pulling me back.

  "Cade," June said, her voice soft. "You have to stand up. You can't be here."

  I nodded, numb and rose to stand there, beside June.

  I stood there, before his lifeless body, my fists clenched so tightly I could barely feel my hands. The only thing left now, the only thing I felt, w
as rage, pulsing through my veins. The Inferno Motorcycle Club had taken everything from me- my soul, my honor...

  And now the life of the man who meant everything to me.

  Mad Dog had done this.

  This eclipsed everything else.

  They would pay. He would pay.

  I would burn the club to the ground.

  I would kill them all.

  VENGEANCE

  I entered on the deep and savage way.

  ~ Dante's Inferno, Canto I (Longfellow's translation)

  And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.

  ~ Revelations 6: 8

  June

  "I can't bring you into this, June," Cade said. He sat, in my bedroom, his head in his hands, his voice tired. The murders had only happened yesterday, but Cade's face looked like he had aged twenty years. His skin was grey, and the circles under his eyes were nearly black in color. He spoke in hushed tones, glancing toward the doorway. "We should go out there. I don't know if Crunch is okay out there watching Mac. I've never seen him like that."

  "I put on a cartoon," I said. "He's on the sofa with her. I tried to tell him he should get some rest, but he wasn't about to let go of her. They'll be okay for a few minutes."

  "We need to leave, get back to California," Cade said.

  "What will happen to MacKenzie?"

  "Crunch's mother-in-law," Cade said. "She's flying in from Puerto Rico. She'll meet us in Los Angeles. You should stay here. It won't be good, what needs to happen. You can't get involved in this."

  "I'm already involved in this," I said, the words coming out before I even had a chance to think about the implications. But I knew what the implications were, didn't I? I knew what Cade was talking about.

  Revenge.

  He was talking about murder.

  "I want to kill them, too," I said. I meant every word.

  Cade shook his head. "That's what people say," he said. "You say you do, but you don't. People like you, they might say they want revenge, but when it comes to it, they don't really. It'll destroy you, June."

  "I've already killed." It came out a whisper, like saying it that way would make it not quite true. As if it would make it not really real. "I've already killed someone. On the operating table."

  "I'm sure you killed lots of people, June. Having people die in surgery doesn't count. It's not the same as murdering someone."

  I shook my head. "No, not like that. I didn't just lose someone in surgery," I said. "I was operating on this gangbanger, back in Chicago. Came in after shooting at a witness to something the gang had done, I don't know what. The witness was a mom, walking back home from the corner store with her toddler. I couldn't get it out of my head, that they would just shoot at her, no regard for the kid. The kid died at the hospital, and I had this guy, right there, on my table. I'm supposed to save, you know? Heal. The Hippocratic Oath and all that. But my hands shook, and I nicked an artery. He was already close to being gone, and my supervisor stepped in, tried to save him."

  "That's not killing someone, June."

  "He described it as accidental, the hospital ended up settling with the family, and my supervisor chalked it up to nerves, from the deployment. But it wasn't nerves," I said. I looked up at Cade. I wanted him to understand what I understood about myself. "I nicked that artery on purpose. I did it because he didn't deserve to live."

  "June," Cade said. "This isn't the same thing."

  "It's a difference of degrees," I said. "I don't give a shit what you say. I'll follow you to California if I have to. But I'm coming out there. Your dad meant something to me. So did April. And you mean something to me. It's not a question - it's a fact. I don't care where it leads, and I don't care if it means I have to kill someone myself."

  "You're going to throw everything away, just to follow me out to California," he said, shaking his head. "No."

  "No," I said. I'm not throwing anything away. You're my family. And I'll do anything to protect my family."

  Maybe it was shock. Or maybe there was just something fundamentally wrong with me. But I knew what Cade was going to do when I saw Stan and April.

  I knew what he had to do.

  And I knew what I would do.

  The image of Stan and April, there in the house, would never leave my head. It was burned on my brain. I kept replaying the scene in my head, like some kind of horror movie on a loop. I'd arrived there first, could hear the sirens wailing in the distance as they approached. I knew they were both dead when I saw them, they couldn't be alive, not with those injuries. But I'd still gone to the bodies, felt for a pulse, choked back the bile that rose in my throat, looking at them.

  I slipped, fell, in April's blood that pooled on the floor, and then everything after that was a blur. Someone in a uniform picked me up off the ground, took me outside, asked me questions. I think he thought I'd killed them. Then I saw Cade, running toward me, Jed behind him.

  The look on Cade's face....

  I'd seen death before, been in the thick of it. But to have someone bring it to my front door, kill the people I cared about... that deserved an equivalent response.

  Eye for an eye.

  So maybe it was shock, what I was feeling right now. What I'd been feeling since it happened. Like I was operating on auto-pilot, emotionally detached from everything. Just like what Cade was doing.

  But I had no anxiety, felt no panic thinking about what I was willing to help Cade and Crunch do. I wanted to dole out revenge.