Sicko(73)

Jade’s eyes lock with mine. Worry, pain, loss.

I’m so fucking angry at her I can’t see straight. Not even with Bonnie taking her last breaths on the ground.

I kick up my bike and ride out of there in a roll of thunder, knowing that when I get back, we will be down a family member.



Catching up to Fluff and Slim, we swerve in and out of busy streets, hunting for the Rover. I see the tail ass end of the blacked-out SUV a few cars up, turning slightly to signal for Wicked to go around the back street. They fucked us in our home, but they fucked up when they tried to get away with it on our fucking streets. People move around us here. We own this fucking town because for generations we are the ones who have protected it.

Wicked veers off to the right with a song of honks and blaring in the distance, as Fluff sticks to the middle. I pull to the left and gun it forward even more, the metal of my nine hot against my hip. The Rover swerves out to the left, heading toward a boatyard, which works perfect because there’s no one fucking around there.

Our bikes roll up as two fuckers slide out from the driver’s and passenger’s seat and make a run for the dock, where an awaiting boat was with another man behind the wheel. I raise up my gun after jumping off my bike, aiming it straight at the driver and pulling the trigger. With the first pop, blood splatters from the back of his head as his lifeless corpse falls to the ground.

The other two fucks still make a run for the boat as I bolt forward.

My boots slap against the wood when I dive and jump on the slightly heavier fuck from behind, his body falling to the deck. Wicked keeps running, attempting to catch the other and stop the boat from setting off when he just slips past him, jumping onto the boat and replacing the man I shot behind the wheel, pulling away from the dock.

“Fuck!” Wicked yells, his wild eyes flying around the place to find something he can chase the boat with.

“Let up,” I say. “We got all we need.”

Wicked’s silver orbs turn to slate as they zone in on the slob-cunt-fuck that’s beneath my body. “Lion isn’t going to think clearly. He’s going to go in with rage and could ruin it all.”

The man beneath me twists and turns, as I press my knee into his lower back farther. “I won’t say shit! Not ever!”

Rolling saliva in my mouth, I spit in his mouth. “Shut the fuck up.”

Fluff whistles from the parking lot, hiking his thumb over his shoulder as Justice jumps out of the driver’s seat. His brown eyes sorrowfully fall to the ground, his shoulders slouching. I hear what he’s telling me.

Bonnie is gone.

Rage and anger bubble to the surface as I dive my fingers into the man’s mouth, stretching it wide. He glares at me with big eyes. “You’re coming with me, and when I’m done, you’re going to wish I killed you on the spot like I did your friend.”

Dragging his heavy ass to the back of the blacked-out van, we slam the back doors closed. I stop Wicked before he leaves on his bike, with Fluff and Justice standing around behind me.

“We can’t take him back to the clubhouse. I don’t want him anywhere near Jade, and fucking also, Lion isn’t going to be thinking clearly. He won’t want him there, tainting Bonnie’s home.” Both Justice and Fluff agree, and when I look back at Wicked to see his decision, he nods.

“Agreed, but he will want in.”

“I know,” I say, reaching over to my bike and grabbing my helmet. “He can once we’ve gotten what we need. The kill will be his.”

I tell Justice to take him to the basement of one of the clubs that the MC owns. It would be risky if we didn’t have confidence in our cleanup crew. Swinging my leg onto my bike, I nod my head at Wicked to gesture to follow me.

This is going to get messy. I’m fucking on it.





Candy apples. I remember loving them as a small kid. Royce, Orson, and Storm would drag me to the fair every year, and every year that they would visit Stone View I would beg for a candied apple. Something about the way the sticky red toffee would tickle my tongue. Sugar, the first drug we craved.

I look down at the gummy red liquid over my hands and clothes, stretching my fingers wide until they’re no longer stuck together. “I’m sorry.”

Lion is curled over Bonnie’s lifeless body, her eyes now closed but the blood still seeping through her white blouse. Fresh. She was alive moments ago, and now she’s gone. “I love that top, Bonnie! Where’d you get it?” Hard to believe that I asked her that question thirty-minutes ago as she was pulling the muffins from the oven. The muffins that are sprayed around her body, soggy with blood.

“Don’t be sorry.” Lion’s voice cracks and I swipe my stray hair away from my face. “You need to go inside, Jade. Royce won’t want you out here, and we’ve got to carry out a process that you might not want to see.”

My lip trembles as sorrow sucks me in like a whirlpool in the middle of a calm ocean. Silently and carefully pulling me under. “Okay.” Standing, my legs liquify and I began falling, just as Slim comes up behind me, catching me by my back.

“You’ll make a good doc one day, Jade. Stick to your studies.” Lion’s comment throws me off, in the midst of everything, but when I look back down at him clutching Bonnie in his arms with his eyes pained and trained on me, I see why he says it. Maybe I could have saved her, had I known what I was about to learn. He’s right. This is all wrong. I never want to feel like I maybe could have saved someone had I known what to do.