Biker’s Property: Property of Steel (Rebel Barbarians MC #5)

Chapter 24 – RUGER

Chapter Twenty-Four

RUGER

I ’d rather go back in there and crack the fuck out of Darlene’s jaw than answer Cash Hollingsworth’s question about what the hell she knows about the murders out in the desert. She watched it happen. Southpaw sent Ryder out to investigate the murders to find out why they were killed. They stumbled upon something they shouldn’t have — the Neo-nazi plans. Southpaw had sent them out on a secret mission that should not have been dangerous – surveying land – not war, not theft, not some type of felony.

What they found was far bigger than any Shaw could have expected. Wyatt… I wonder what my uncle would have thought of this situation and the man in charge.

Part of me doesn’t want to tell him, because I know when shit gets to talking with these boys, they end up taking the rational way out. I don’t plan on handling any of this shit in a rational manner. Not Darlene. Not those weird cult fucks out in the middle of the desert.

I don’t fuck with Nazis. My grandfather died fighting the Nazis and our family’s blood runs deep in the military. I stand for what’s American, and there’s nothing American or proud about dragging six white brothers out to the desert and ending their lives. Nothing noble or patriotic about that.

Cash keeps a steady gaze on me, his presence reminds me of Uncle Lyle and the way he used to tell me to calm my anger.

i You get into a situation where you’re hotter than a two-dollar pistol, you have to cool it, or you’re gonna make mistakes. /i

It’s hard to keep it cool with the news about Darlene. I loved that woman. I gave her my virginity, promised to love her until the end of time. The tattoo on her stomach I did myself, hands shaking as I did it. I don’t know if she covered it up before or after she fucked another man.

He must have felt so damn good holding onto another man’s property. Defiling me just as much as he defiled her. That bitch just had to get pregnant.

“Stay calm,” Cash repeats. “Just talk it out, Ruger. I’ll leave you to your business if you promise not to take it too far.”

I try not to make my eyes look so dead. Uncle Lyle taught me how to do that. Said it would make folks less afraid of me and the strange way I have of thinking.

“I promise.”

I know I’m lying. Every minute that bitch has with me will be nothing but pure hell. Cash nods, which means even if he suspects I’m lying, he’s sticking to the story, doing what’s right and protecting a brother while he handles his property the way he sees fit. Saying the words twists me up with deep, intense pain. Almost as bad as losing the man who raised me. What they died for wasn’t worth dying over.

The bastards that killed them didn’t have to do it.

“The Midnight SS want some land they claim belongs to Harlan Shaw and his Indian children.”

Cash raises an eyebrow. Doesn’t take a genius to understand what he’s thinking.

“Not Oske. I asked her. And she threatened to filet my balls with a special Indian technique.”

Cash grunts, but clearly doesn’t feel too sympathetic towards me.

“Southpaw must know about these alleged Indian children.”

“If he does, he never shared it.”

“He didn’t see the need,” Cash said. “I can’t blame him for not wanting his father’s dirty laundry aired out…”

One thing we both agree on. This isn’t the fault of anyone in the club. Fuck, if the land belongs to Southpaw and these Nazi fuckers think they can take it from him, my opinion is we ought to show them how wrong they are. We ought to take revenge. Not just for Southpaw. But for my dead brothers.

Brothers in the way we mean it in the club, brothers in the way you mean it at the pearly gates. The Nazis killed both kinds of my brothers out in the desert.

I grew up with Jairus and Jotham. The two of them started off picking on me. I was skinny, always sunburnt — redneck from my first years waddling out into the sun. But I earned my way into being one of them. They gave me my first cigarette when I was eleven. I shot my first deer with Jairus’ gun when I was ten years old. I still have the antlers on the dashboard of my truck.

If I hadn’t been in Libya and watched two friends die just a year before Uncle Lyle, it would have been easier for me to cry. The tears feel all washed out of me. All that’s left is the dark part of me that Uncle Lyle never wanted me to fall into.

“They’re planning on doing more than just killing a bunch of us out in the desert,” I continue, hoping to get Cash off this property so I can get back to my unpleasant business. “They want that land for themselves and they’re not gonna stop hitting us.”

“Why would they want the Shaw land?”

“I don’t fucking know.”

I have my own problems. Darlene, for example.

He reaches into his pocket and offers me a cigarette. He thinks I look tense, and I am — but not for the reasons he thinks. I take the cigarette, appreciative of the offer, even if he’s dead wrong about my nerves.

“You got all that from Darlene?” Cash asks as he lights me up, reminding me of my fucking problem. If he thinks he can smooth this over and draw information out of me faster with a smoke, he’s absolutely fucking right. I nod as I take that first perfect drag of nicotine. Nothing hits quite so good.

I keep telling him what she told me — the dark secrets that were apparently worth betraying me for. I hate her more with every word.

“The man she was fucking talked when he was drunk. They’re talking about moving onto the reservation with a pack of hogs and slaughtering Indians on the border of the territory, scaring them into selling the land.”

Cash betrays no emotion. He’s a businessman at heart, well aware of how valuable land can be out here in the desert, but he’s not the type to agree with the cold-blooded killing of other people. And I agree with him. That type of killing goes against God.

Just like beheading members of my family.

“I don’t know anything about this land…”

“Neither do I,” I answer. Cash and I exchange glances that are equally distrustful of the other. I don’t trust him not to screw me if it meant making more money – they call him Cash for a reason. And he doesn’t trust me not to lose my shit and do something that will send me to federal prison.

I’ve rid the world of bodies before and turned consciousness into dust. Prison doesn’t scare me. I’ll never end up there. What’s the difference? When the government paid me to kill turbans out in the desert, nobody had a fucking problem with it. What’s the difference if I choose to kill for personal reasons?

It’s the same man pulling the trigger. I know what the fuck I’m doing.

“Southpaw must have his reasons for keeping it private,” Cash says.

“He doesn’t want us sticking our hands in the pot.”

Cash shakes his head. “Don’t be a dick, Bucky.”

“I’m not.”

“Darlene fucked you up. I get it.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine. And you don’t have to be fine. Just don’t torture her while she’s pregnant. You don’t want an even bigger burden on your hands than the one you already have,” Cash says. “When you find the baby’s father–

“I’m not giving the kid away.”

Cash raises a skeptical eyebrow, but I can tell he isn’t eager to stand around talking to me and I’m not eager to stand around talking to him, either. I might not poke at Darlene with knives or screwdrivers anymore, but he can’t stop me from talking to her. Or leaving her in the dark until she begs for food…

“She’s yours,” he says. “Just… think about what Doc would say if he could see you.”

I understand Cash’s efforts to appeal to my better senses. It’s a logical instinct. Most men have the capacity to have their logic override their baser instincts. Not me. Not after the military. Not after the shit I did in the Middle East.

“I’ll be good,” I tell him, but from the way he looks at me, I know Cash doesn’t believe me.

I light up an unfiltered black Camel as I watch him disappear across the horizon. Alone with Darlene…

How can they expect me not to fuck that up? I doubt Southpaw would even trust Gideon in this position. Problem is, the club is up to their fucking eyeballs in shit going on. Southpaw doesn’t have time to keep his eye on me or Darlene. They’ll call me if they need any dirty work done – Nazis in the ground.

I keep smoking all the way back to the trailer, and still have about half the Camel left as I walk inside. Oske has weird Indian shit all over the place and if I didn’t know any better, I would say that she was trying to put a curse on me. I walk into the trailer, looking for where I set down that ashtray when Darlene lets out a loud ass moan from the back room.

“Let me out,” she whines after unleashing a dramatic groan that damn near shakes the entire trailer. I ignore her and keep smoking while looking for the ashtray. She calls me a few names. I put on the television. Nothing worth watching since Oske doesn’t have cable or anything worth viewing. There are reruns of Murder She Wrote playing on some fucking channel…

The television barely drowns Darlene’s noise. I find the ashtray in the kitchen next to a cold cup of instant coffee I forgot earlier. I don’t plan on sleeping tonight with Darlene back there moaning and crying away. Before I kill her, there’s a lot of shit I want to know.

I can’t kill her right away. I understand that.

But once I have that baby in my arms, the right thing to do is to put this woman down like a dog that lost its use. She betrayed me. She cheated on me. She fucked a Neo-Nazi biker and got pregnant with his baby. She lied when she got out of prison, spent tens of thousands of dollars that I put my ass on the line for, and then she chose some sick bastard over me.

That’s not the type of wound a Blackwood man tolerates. I appreciate Cash Hollingsworth’s instinct to appeal to my better nature, but nothing can stop me once I set my mind to something. I learned to ride when I was eight years old, stealing Doc’s bike in the process. Didn’t even care that he whooped me so hard I couldn’t sit for a week. Second I regained the ability to sit, I got my ass right back on that bike and did it all over again.

Nothing could keep me away from riding. Fucking nothing.

She cries out again and I put the kettle on. More coffee. That’s what I need. Not all that damn hollering.