Hard Rider

“Not really,” he said, and I saw the way he grimaced, only to cover it up with another smile. “I just...”

He looked away for a second, eyes somewhere else, before he managed to finish his sentence.

“I just really wanted to make you happy today,” he said.

“Well, you did it, baby,” I said. “I’m happy as a clam.”

“We can watch Legally Blonde, if you want,” he said. “I never did throw out that DVD you damn near wore out…”

“Alright, Cross, you just blew right past sweet, straight into cavity territory,” I said, narrowing my eyes even as my smile widened. “What’s up?”

“Can’t a man love his woman without bein’ interrogated?” he growled, crossing the room quickly and sweeping me into his arms; I nearly dropped the plates I was holding, but all I could do was laugh, until he grabbed my chin and forced my eyes to meet his. “I’m serious, Bex. I just want to love you right, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, touching his stubbled cheek with my hand. “Okay, baby. You’re doing a mighty good job of it so far.”

I rose on my toes and kissed him, feeling his fingers twitch and then pull me in tighter, kissing me like a man in the desert kisses the mouth of a water pump. He tasted of whiskey and cold air, and I let him infect me all over again, the sweetest disease, no cure in sight.

Dutch

“So what you’re tellin’ me, boy, is that you and Blade and Cross were just sittin’ around, talkin’ about the Real Housewives of Atlanta?”

“No,” Hunter protested. “But we were just talkin’. ‘Bout, you know, girls and shit. Nothin’ serious, Dutch, I swear.”

“And why on earth would two ranking officers want to spend their free time chattin’ with a fuckin’ prospect?”

“I don’t know,” Hunter said. “They just like me is all. I don’t know, Dutch. Ask them. Please, man, untie me…”

“I’ll untie you when you stop lyin’ to me,” Dutch roared, and boxed the boy’s ear, so hard that the chair nearly toppled onto its side. “You want out of here, you want to do right by me, you tell me the truth.”

“I am tellin’ you the truth!” Hunter cried, his ear ringing, pain like a thunderstorm rolling across his flesh. “Shit!”

“Shit!” Dutch mocked him. “I tell you what’s shit. Everythin’ you’re sayin’ to me, you little prick.”

This time, the punch did send the chair over onto its side, but Dutch was quick to right it again, Hunter’s face half-covered in blood. It dripped from his nose, his ears, his lips.

“Please…”

He was whimpering now. Sylvia, watching from the shadows, was happy to hear it. The kid had taken a lot before he started whimpering, but whimpering was good. Whimpering meant he was gonna break soon.

“You like your fingers, Hunter?” Dutch asked, pulling his knife out, letting it glint in the basement’s dull light. Hunter couldn’t rightly see the glint of the knife, through the blood that caked over his eyes, but he could see the blade just fine. “How do you like your balls? You ever hear of a guy named Picasso?”

Slowly, gently, Dutch lowered the tip of the knife to Hunter’s chest. The blade tore down his shirt, snagging here and there but eventually leaving his chest bare, his stomach white, his heart thudding so hard his body seemed to shake with it.

“You like havin’ a liver, Hunter?”

Dutch lowered the blade to Hunter’s gut, and in a single slice he tore across the flesh, making the boy scream.

“Alright!” Hunter howled. “Stop! Please! Jesus, stop! They asked me…I told them! I told them, what you told me, what you asked us, the Blackhawks, they wanted to know and…”

“And you betrayed me,” Dutch intoned. But he sheathed his knife, and even as blood trickled down to wet the top of Hunter’s jeans, he felt his body start to relax.

“I’m sorry,” Hunter mumbled. “They just…”

“Shut up,” Dutch said, turning away, walking to his long, cool woman as she waited in the shadows.

“I told you we couldn’t trust Blade,” Sylvia hissed. “But you…”

“Shove it, woman! Not now,” Dutch growled, rubbing his temples, feeling the comedown begin, slow and steady and predictably awful. He needed another hit, if he was going to think about all this clearly.

“Here,” Sylvia spat, shoving the pipe into his hands. “And then we have to move. Quickly. Tonight. Before they can warn the Blackhawks and ruin everything.”

Too fast. This was moving too fast now. Dutch hadn’t been able to get everything in place, in line. If the kid hadn’t squealed…

The kid.

“What about him?” Dutch asked, nodding to the prospect.

“What about him? Do you have any further use for him?” Sylvia shrugged.

“No,” Dutch agreed.

“Then kill him,” Sylvia said. “He’ll just run back to his buddies and squeal some more, little piggy he is. He betrayed you, Dutch. He took what you told him in confidence, and he used it against you.”

Hunter could hear every word, his eyes filling with tears. He hadn’t cried since he was six years old and buried his first dog. But if he was going to die, who was going to care whether or not he cried? He was 18 years old and looking down the barrel of a gun.

Don’t, some voice inside him said, and when he blinked, the tears seemed to evaporate. He may never have gotten his patch, but he was still a prospect of the Dead Crusaders, and Crusaders didn’t cry. Even when a man raised a gun to his head and cocked it, a Crusader showed no weakness, no fear.

Hunter’s blood stained the cement, the echo of the gunshot lingering for many long seconds after Dutch pulled the trigger.

Cross

I fell asleep in heaven, twined in Bex’s embrace, and woke up in hell. In the early morning, my phone started buzzing, and it didn’t quit until I roused myself and grumbled my way across the room to answer it, not even lookin’ at the caller ID.

“What?” I snapped. It wasn’t even 6am.

“We’re too late,” Blade’s voice came over the line. “One day too fuckin’ late, Cross. Holy shit, we gotta meet, now. Get y

our old man and…”

“Slow down,” I urged, rubbing my eyes, trying to make sense of it. “What happened? What were we too late for?”

“Dutch,” Blade hissed. “Last night, 3am, he sent Soldier and Marty over into Blackhawks territory, took three of them by surprise, put two of them in the hospital and the third in a coffin.”

My heart dropped out of my chest, and the world stopped spinning. No, I thought. That couldn’t be right. We’d only just figured it out. We needed time to make it right. We should have had time to stop it before it started…

“Cross? Cross!”

Blade’s voice sliced through my mind, brought me back to reality. Reality didn’t allow for what should be, only what was.

“Fuck, fuck, alright,” I said, stealing a glance over my shoulder at Bex, who was moving around in bed, probably about to wake up from the sound of my voice and the absence of my body. I moved into the living room. “We gotta get together, we gotta get the men together, anyone who…”

“I’m already working on it,” Blade said. “I told them to come to your place. Safer than mine, I expect.”

“How do you figure that?” I growled, thinking that I didn’t want Bex anywhere near this shit when it hit the fan.

“Because I live in a house, and you live in an apartment, and it’s a lot easier raiding a house without anyone noticing than an apartment.”

I clenched my jaw. Seemed to me that Blade just wanted to keep his precious living room from becoming rubble. But this wasn’t the time to squabble; it was time to move.

“I only got Fleet and Mack so far, but they’re spreadin’ the word, anyone who wants to keep the truce needs to come to us and stay away from Dutch,” Blade kept talking. “You can get in touch with Grinder? He didn’t pick up for me but…”

“Yeah,” I said, feeling a little better now that I knew what we were doing, had something similar to a plan forming. “He’ll come round. When should I be expectin’ company?”

“I’ll be over in thirty,” Blade said.