Lawless (King #3)(41)

Bastards.

I knew there was a possibility that the second I left Logan’s Beach on my bike these f*ckers could be trailing me. The problem was that I was too wrapped up in finding Thia before they did that I hopped on and sped off without even telling King where I was heading.

Fuck, maybe they already did.

My chest stung like I’d already been hit with a bullet.

The Beach Bastards might have been lawless, but they weren’t soulless, one of the codes we lived by was ‘Always look a man in the eye when you are about to take his life.’

The club must have gone even more to shit then I’d originally imagined because the two pussies behind me, firing at my back, had chosen to ignore that particular code.

CRACK.

I felt the heat against the skin of my neck as the bullet whizzed by.

I passed the Welcome To Jessep sign and tried to shake the f*ckers following me by taking a sharp right.

No such luck.

Bullets might have been flying, Thia might have been in danger or already dead, but when I picked up speed and leaned forward pushing the machine between my legs to its limits I was reminded of another time, another cloudless night when going fast wasn’t fast enough.

I’m five years old and I’m in the passenger seat of a car I’ve never been in before. My mom is driving.

She’s mumbling to herself and biting her nails.

When she picked me up from school I’d gotten into her red convertible, but she passed the street we always turn on, the one that takes us to the clubhouse. The only stop we’d made was when we’d traded her car for this one behind the Stop-n-Go.

The little Toyota we are riding in smells like the time I got sick after drinking Tank’s special soda he’d left on the pool table. The only special thing about his soda was the amount of puke it made me spray all over the floor of my dad’s office.

Dr. Pepper is way better.

Mom lights a cigarette and rolls open her window, but just a crack. The car fills with the smoke she breathes out, but it doesn’t bother me because I’m used to it. Everyone in the club smokes. I saw a commercial on TV once that said that smoking makes you stop growing, and I want to be real tall like my old man, so I’ve decided I’m gonna wait until I grow a lot taller before I start smoking.

It’s dark outside, but since we are on the highway, every time we pass a street light the inside of the car goes bright and then dark, like someone is flipping a light switch on and off. I don’t count how many times the switch gets turned on, but it’s a lot. I stop when I get to a hundred because that’s the highest number I know.

Every time a motorcycle passes, Mom grips the steering wheel really tight and holds her breath until it speeds by. She keeps checking the mirrors and wiping the hair out of her eyes. She’s got bubbles of sweat on the top of her face and when the car lights up the next time, I notice she’s got tears leaking from her eyes.

“What’s wrong, cunt?” I ask.

Mom rolls her eyes and shoots me an angry look. “Just because your father calls me that, doesn’t mean it’s a nice thing to say to someone. You just stick with calling me Mom, okay?”

“Cunt doesn’t mean beautiful girl?” I ask, confused because Tripod is the one who told me what it meant, and he is the VP of my old man’s club, so he knows a whole lot.

“No honey, it doesn’t mean that. It’s a bad word so don’t ever say it again, okay?” She ruffles my hair with her hand and goes back to checking the mirrors.

When I get back to the clubhouse I’m going to ask Tripod about that word again. My old man says that girls sometimes don’t understand things the way boys do, so Mom is probably just confused.

“How can a word be bad?” I ask.

“It just can, Abel.” She says with a huff. Mom has the same look on her face she gets before she sends me to time-out, but at least her eyes aren’t leaking anymore.

I don’t like it when her eyes leak.

I also don’t like it when her nose leaks blood after she argues with Chop, my old man.

“Mama, what’s wrong?” I ask her again.

She shakes her head at me and smiles. “Nothing baby. Nothing’s wrong. In fact everything is great.”

“But I want to go back to the clubhouse,” I whine.

“No!” Mom yells, slamming her fist against the wheel. She takes a deep breath and another drag of her cigarette, stubbing it out in the ashtray. She reaches over and grabs my knee. I giggle because it’s my ticklish spot. “Abel, we are going somewhere you are going to love. It’s even better than the clubhouse. I promise.” She removes her hand and lights another cigarette.

I shrug and start to get excited, mostly because I think my mom might be taking me to Disney World. I have never been there, but it’s the only place I could think of that could be better than the clubhouse.

I go back to stretching the arms of my Stretch Armstrong and tie them behind his back the way I saw the cops do when they took Uncle Gator away yesterday. Cops aren’t friends of the club, so I didn’t tell my old man how cool I thought the lights and sirens were. He said Uncle Gator won’t be home anytime soon, but that we can visit him next month in a place called Up-State.

I hear a familiar rumble and I turn to look behind us. “Hey Mom, Dad’s here,” I say, but she only looks ahead and nods. Her eyes start leaking again. Motorcycles surround the car and my mom slows down but doesn’t stop. I recognize Tank and his bike when he pulls up close next to us. Even with his helmet and yellow tinted goggles I can tell he’s angry by the lines around his mouth. He’s shouting something, but I can’t hear him over the other bikes. My mom hears him because she shakes her head ‘no’ like she’s answering him.