Before I even made it onto the main park road, my cell phone buzzed in my hip pocket. What now? I had to answer it. The road was way too unpredictable to ride one-handed, so I pulled off the road.
The number on the screen made my stomach clench. I pressed the talk button and put the phone to my ear.
“Yeah?”
“Get your ass back to the clubhouse, Cruz. We have six guys that want new tats before the run this weekend.”
“I’m on my way, Bill.”
“You better not be thinking of slinking off, fucker. We can leak this info to the feds as fast as you can ride your wussy ass to Mexico,” said the VP of the Black Blades Motorcycle Club.
“I’m on my way, you sick piece of shit. Just keep your panties on.”
“Better not disrespect me, kid.”
“I thought sick piece of shit was a compliment.”
“It ain’t me that wants you around. If it were my decision, you’d already be in a shallow hole somewhere with fat yellow slugs feeding on your face. We don’t need disloyal fucks in our club.”
“I’m not in the club. Remember?”
“Technicalities. Just get the hell back here and do your job.”
The phone went dead and I cringed. Another damn day in that cesspit of a clubhouse giving free tattoos to ungrateful drunk bastards.
I was paying for the mistakes of my past — a past I thought was dead and buried until a month ago. I throttled my Harley and peeled out onto the road.
As I drove, my bike curved with the road, and my mind turned to the girl. What I wouldn’t give for a simple life with a woman like that.
At twenty-five, I felt ready for a change. My early life had been full of enough drama to last a lifetime. I was tired of bars and slutty girls with too much eye makeup. I was tired of cocksuckers like Bill and the violence that followed them. Unfortunately, my less than scrupulous past had caught up with me, and it wouldn’t let me go.
After the long drive from the trail, I turned off of the park road and onto Highway 101. The Black Blades clubhouse was twenty miles south of Leggetville, right off the highway and across from a seedy bar called The Clutch.
I pulled into the clubhouse parking lot alongside a few bearded older dudes drinking cans of Budweiser. The sun faded behind the treetops, and I could smell the scent of exhaust and barbeque.
Friday nights were a special kind of stupid around here. They brought in a bunch of hoes from across the street, fucked them all over the place, and drank until they puked. Someone always ended up in a fight, and they all wanted free tattoos.
I couldn’t keep my equipment clean enough for how fast they expected me to work. They bled all over the damn place because they were so drunk or high it made their blood thin.
That was my life now, giving bloody tattoos to fuckers who threatened to turn me into the feds. I often wondered if I’d be better off in prison, until I met that ray of sunshine — Claire MacKenna. I wondered if I’d see her again. It was a small community. It was inevitable I’d run into her.
I stepped into the dark stink of the clubhouse. Someone had cleaned the main room so it didn’t smell quite as strongly of vomit as it usually did. Some dudes cheered at my arrival inside. Everybody loved the fucking tattoo guy. Yeah, right.
They’d given me a damp little cell of a room down in the basement. I kept my equipment locked in there so they didn’t try to use it themselves. I’d brought all my guns, needles, inks, and an autoclave with me from LA. Had I known the volume I’d be facing, I would have brought more.
I checked my equipment and lined everything up on a sterile tray. Most of the club leaders wanted professional tattoos and planned them out before, even having me make original sketches. The rest of this bunch of cocksuckers just wanted to cover themselves in whatever I could put down as fast as possible.
In the last five years, I had become one of the most sought-after tattoo artists on the west coast. I took pride in my art, even for these assholes. They made it hard to care.
I had to tattoo a lot of stock art because I didn’t have the time or the equipment to do original designs on the fly. Tonight would be one of those nights. I could feel it. If the women got in on the action or another crew came in from out of town, it would be a fucking nightmare.
I briefly imagined forcing them to make appointments and to sign in before seeing me. I laughed bitterly at my equipment. Anger surged in my chest, and I felt like smashing my tray against the wall.
Chapter Three: Claire
When I got home an hour later, Rose had passed out. Her little head was slumped over to the side. I let Bradly run into the front yard and carefully removed my sleeping baby from her seat. With Rose cradled in my arms, I walked inside, praying things hadn’t gone batshit crazy while I was gone.
When I entered the living room, silence greeted me. Bradly ran around my legs straight for his food bowl. I looked into our old-fashioned kitchen and found my little sister Zoe sitting at the ancient oak dining table reading a magazine.
Rocking Rose in my arms, I nodded to Zoe and tiptoed upstairs and into the room I shared with Rose. I gently deposited her in her crib. With one last glance, I closed the door.
Zoe turned to me as I came down the stairs. The first floor of our house had a narrow living room on one side of the stairs and a dining room and kitchen that wrapped around the other. Down the hall, under the stairs, was a bathroom and Mom’s old room. We still didn’t use that room.
My sewing machine and folded lengths of fabric were tucked behind the dining room table on a shelf that sat under a big dusty window. A half-finished sundress hung from a makeshift clothing rack on a wire hanger.
“How is everything?” I asked Zoe. Her wavy, strawberry blond hair shimmered around her slim shoulders. She wore smoky eye makeup around her emerald-colored, almond-shaped eyes. A loose shirt fell off her shoulder to show the strap of a tank top. She looked cute and young. A tinge of envy washed through me, but I brushed it aside.
“There was a massive asshole at the diner today that didn’t tip after he spent almost an hour complaining about everything I did. How was the hike?”
“Sorry about the asshole. The hike was nice. I met a guy.”
“You and a guy? Do tell.”
“There isn’t really anything to tell. He was super hot, and he gave me a drawing of me and Rose.” I pulled out the drawing and flattened it on the table in front of her. Her eyes widened at the skill it displayed.
“Wow. Nice drawing. Who is this guy? Where is he from?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Claire, you’re hopeless.”
I sighed and looked over at Zoe’s fashion magazine, examining the clothes. I hated that Zoe was still in town after graduating high school last month. After Mom, her grades went to hell. Unless she wanted to go to community college, she didn’t have a lot of options left. She insisted on taking a job at the diner to help pay the bills during her junior year. Now she worked full time.
The front door slammed open and Bradly barked like a lunatic. Regan, my older sister, stood in the doorway, her eyes as wild as her hair. While Zoe was slender and blond with fine features, Regan was Amazonian with kinky red hair that was so disheveled I felt mortified she had been out in public. We all looked different in our own way, but we each had the MacKenna eyes. They slanted slightly in an almond shape. Regan’s eyes looked like twin green voids.
She slammed the door and strode to the piano in the living room. Her long fingers flipped open the lid of the upright with a crash of strings. Zoe and I watched in shocked silence as Regan’s fingers fell over the keys. Her playing was frenetic, chaotic. Her talent was painfully obvious, and if I weren’t so annoyed at how loud she was being, my heart would hurt for her.
It was something by Beethoven. The chaotic pounding twisted in my brain, and I wanted her to stop. Her head bobbed over the keys. She didn’t acknowledge us. She was in one of her moods. That was the nicest thing to possibly call it — a mood.
It was too difficult to call it what it was.
I heard Rose scream from upstairs, and I stood. I let out an exasperated sigh and rolled my eyes. I gave Regan one last disgusted look before I ran up the stairs. If I said anything, she would probably flip out. I’d rather listen to her pounding on the piano than have her freak out at me.
I opened the door to my bedroom and picked up Rose from her crib. I held her to my chest, soothing her the best I could. I heard Zoe’s voice downstairs. “Could you shut the fuck up, Regan?” Damn it, Zoe! The piano slammed shut, causing a sickening jolt of piano strings.
“What did you say, you little cunt?” Regan’s voice sounded threatening but low.
I held my whimpering baby in my arms as I charged down the stairs, hoping I could defuse the situation before it got too out of control.
Regan gave Zoe a death stare, but she looked away once she saw the baby. She ran her hands over her face and twisted out of the piano bench. Wordlessly, she sprinted up the stairs. Her door slammed, and it made me jump.
“Don’t antagonize her, Zoe,” I pleaded.
“She needs to be in a psych ward.” Zoe looked down at her magazine like she’d just said the sky was blue and not that our sister was mentally ill. I let a deep breath rush out of my lungs, and put Rose in her high chair next to Zoe.
“Please don’t, Zoe. We went through all that after Mom. It didn’t help.”
I riffled through the kitchen for something for Rose to eat. A nearly empty box of baby cereal sat in the cabinet. There wasn’t much else. I ran warm tap water into the bowl and mixed in the cereal. Bradly sniffed at the air and got under my feet. I ordered him to his bed, and he skulked away.
“I just don’t see why we have to deal with her crazy shit.” Zoe flipped the page of her magazine and scowled. I’d be irritated too if I’d just been called a little cunt.
I sat down and scooped cereal into Rose’s waiting mouth. What the hell was I supposed to do? Demand she take her meds? Threaten her? None of that ever worked. I couldn’t force her to leave. Regan was only twenty-two. She didn’t have a job or even a driver’s license. I wasn’t going to make my sister live on the street.
Zoe huffed. I understood. We were all struggling. After I finished feeding Rose, I pulled the last package of cheap spaghetti from the cabinet and filled a pot with water. Zoe took Rose out of her high chair and carried her into the living room to play with the mess of toys strewn across the floor.
Sunlight streamed over them from the window on the far wall of the living room. Dust motes twirled into the air as they played on the ratty old carpet. The sight of them made my heart twist. They both deserved much better, and I couldn’t give it to them.
I placed the pot of water on the glowing electric burner and looked in the cabinets for anything else. There just wasn’t anything there. I opened in the fridge and found a stick of butter and a nearly empty bottle of salad dressing.
“I’m going out to the garden for some vegetables. I’ll be right back,” I told Zoe as I approach the front door with my vegetable basket. She nodded at me. Her irritation had subsided with a few minutes of baby time. Rose giggled at a sock puppet on Zoe’s hand. Her pudgy round cheeks were pink from laughing.
Outside, I strode around our old hand-built hippie house to the back garden. My grandparents built the place in the sixties, and it had been in the family ever since. The good part was there wasn’t any rent. The bad part was it hadn’t had maintenance since Grandpa died. I gazed up at the cracking shingles on the roof and cringed.
My hair blew behind me in a soft breeze as I opened the garden gate. I could smell the scent of compost from the windrow. The garden was arranged in neat rows of raised beds surrounded by a six-foot-tall wire fence to keep out the deer.
The first tomatoes were ripening on the vine, and foot-long zucchinis lay under huge, scratchy green leaves. I picked the ripe vegetables and relished their colors in my wicker basket.
My eyes went to the garden shed. Dark memories cramped my stomach. Zoe had told me Regan found her there.
Mom.
Dead.
In the dark and damp.
She’d hung herself with a telephone cord, from the long wooden beam that ran across the ceiling. Looking at the shed, I couldn’t believe that rickety old building had been strong enough to hold her. It looked as if it were on the verge of collapsing under its own weight.
Mom had always been a little bit psycho, like Regan only not as bad. She had her moods, and we always knew to stay the hell out of her way.
A frustrated tear fell down my cheek, and I wiped it away. I couldn’t let it come out or it would never stop. I sucked air deep in my chest and breathed out slowly before I turned to go back inside.
Zoe roughhoused with Rose, who shrieked with laughter. Bradly hopped all over the place, tossing a stuffed animal around the room.
I took the food into the kitchen. The water boiled, and I washed and chopped the zucchinis, throwing them in another pot to cook. Then I put the noodles in the bubbling water. While everything cooked, I chopped a salad.
When the pasta was done, I drained it, then added melted butter and garlic powder. Zoe brought Rose to the table, and I set us each a place. I wondered if I should get Regan. Nerves tingled down my spine. I couldn’t not offer her dinner. I wasn’t a jerk. I just wasn’t sure I want to risk a Regan attack.
Luckily, Regan trotted down the stairs and took her place at the table. I didn’t have to decide. Her hair had been brushed back into a neat ponytail, and she looked a lot calmer. I handed her a fork and sat down across the table with Rose. She wasn’t always a chaotic mess. Underneath, she was still my sister…
Chapter Four: Damien
My door swung open. Bill stood there in his his leather vest over a black t-shirt. He looked me up and down.
“You look like a pussy in those shorts.”
“Thanks,” I said, adjusting my gun needle. I wanted to jam it in his eye.
“Change your clothes or someone’s going to mistake you for a bitch. We’ve got a crew coming down from Oregon for the run tomorrow. Gonna be a busy night, kid. Strap on your balls.”
I rose to my full height. I stood four inches taller than Bill. I was young, fast, and healthy, which was a hell of a lot more than I could say about sick-ass, natty-bearded, potbellied motherfucker Bill. I stepped toward him and expanded my chest. Cargo shorts or not, I could kick his ass in about two seconds and he knew it.
He crossed his arms over his fat chest and sneered at me. I stared him down, my arms flexed and taut at my sides. I was so tempted to throw a punch into his jiggling beer belly that my fingers twitched. He took a step backward, trying to look like he was still in control.
“Just get upstairs.”
I relaxed as he practically ran away. Better not mess with me. They could hold my past over my head all they wanted, but that didn’t mean I would let them talk to me like one of their whores.
I shut my door and changed into a pair of dark jeans and a black t-shirt. I didn’t want to risk getting biker blood on my legs anyway. These dudes put their dicks in anything. Who knew what kind of diseases they had festering among them?
I pulled on some black boots and frowned at myself in the cracked, full-length mirror behind my door. I curled my lip in my best badass expression and rubbed my chin. I was a state-level mixed martial arts, champion after all. I could best any of these guys one-on-one. I sure as hell wouldn’t let them know I preferred drawing roses to busting heads.
Before I started working full time in the shop on Hollywood Boulevard, five years ago, one of my clients offered to exchange martial arts lessons for tats. I figured what the hell. You never know who might jump you on the streets of LA at night. Little did I know I’d become a black belt. I had two state championship belts stored in a dusty storage unit back in LA along with the rest of my stuff from my old life.
I gathered the tray of guns, needles, inks, and rubber gloves in one hand and tucked some tat
too art books under the other arm. Upstairs, the party was already getting loud just as the sun set. They had a fire blazing in a steel barrel and a gas barbeque in the other corner of the clubhouse yard.
I could smell the scent of hamburgers and hot dogs, and my mouth watered. I hadn’t eaten anything all day. The food in the clubhouse was usually questionable at best unless there was a barbeque. The dudes with wives lived at home. Only the losers lived at the clubhouse. Those guys were worse than the worst frat boys.
My diet and training had gone to hell since I’d arrived. Keeping fit had become a way of life for me back in LA. I enjoyed the discipline, much like the discipline of drawing and tattooing. I couldn’t do much about my diet now. I just needed to eat.
A cooler full of bottled domestic beer sat at the end of a table of condiments. I snagged one and popped off the cap. I would need it tonight. Classic rock roared through the stereo speakers inside the clubhouse and blasted through the open windows into the yard. A group of scantily clad women tumbled out the door, already holding beer bottles.
Mike, the club treasurer, stood over the grill and nodded at the girls. The sound of rumbling motors sounded even over the music. I turned to see a group of ten new men pull their bikes into the parking lot beyond the chain-link fence of the yard.
Mike left the barbeque and shouted greetings to them as they parked and stepped through the front door of the clubhouse. The girls got giggly about the new arrivals. What was the matter with these chicks?
I set my stock art books and tray on one of the picnic tables. There wouldn’t be enough light out there to work, but I wanted to avoid the chaos of the main room for as long as possible. Hopefully, I could use one of the well-lit bedrooms. I didn’t want a replay of last time. The last time I set up in the main room, people pushed and shoved to get tats from me. It was fucking anarchy.
Bill came through the side door into the yard and spotted me sipping from my beer bottle. He glared. What the fuck? I was there, wasn’t I? Bill hated me. He didn’t want me around because I wasn’t one of them. The feeling was mutual. Their cocksucker president was the one who was holding my past over my head. He wouldn’t let me leave until I’d tatted up every inch of every degenerate in northern California.