If I Should Die: A Kimber S. Dawn MC Novel (5 page)

No. He doesn’t. And he’s known for it too.

“Yes, sir. I just think I will. Thanks for mentioning it.”

It probably lasts longer for me to assess the damage than required, but I make my circles around Linda, my black on black Sportster 48, and I’m not too terribly upset about the damage she’s sustained thanks to Ben and his bullshit. She’s not my only bike, but she’s definitely one of my favorites, so it doesn’t sit well with me to see her like this. But I’m not pissed, either. Well, I’m not
pissed
pissed.

I pull the sunglasses off my face before hooking them to the neck of my t-shirt then I knock twice on room 233. “’Lo?” I call out as I open the door. “Anyone home? I’m stepping in. Don’t swing or shoot, or I swear to fuck—” A whimpering causes my words to trail off and I follow the sound to the bathroom door to the right of the room.

“Hey, it’s Jacques. Arch’s kid. You okay in there?” I tap my knuckle on the door and wait, uncertain if I should enter or not. She’s a freaking kid; is it even legal for a twenty-year-old of the opposite sex to
be
in the bathroom with someone underage? Holy shit. This sucks.

I decide to just crack the door when I hear her sniffle.

Her voice is so quiet I have to strain to hear her words, “It’s me. It’s Eden.”

“Well, are you freaking
clothed,
Eden?” I ask, exhausted. “’Cause I’d like to come in, or have you step out. This talking through the door shit is pissing me off.” I growl, before kicking the door open and note that she is, indeed, dressed.

Thank. Fuck.

I step into the bathroom, but not any closer towards her. I actually kinda hover over threshold, if you will.

“Look. Ilsa hasn’t even been around, kid. In months. What the hell were you even doing out at the club the night of the bonfire? Eden, you’ve been told. Not only by Pops, but by me and your mother. You don’t have any business being around the club anymore. Do you understand? None, Eden. None whatsoever. You’re supposed to be in Brooklyn with your ma, anyway. How’d you even get to our side of town—” I stop, entirely too frustrated to deal with this right now. “Do you have someone here? Anyone who has a place you can stay at for a while? At least for the night. Pops said he’ll fly you home first thing tomorrow morning.”

Her head pops up from where her arms are folded around her legs and her eyes pin to mine. “Yeah. I have my sister. My sister lives here. That’s why I’m in Chicago. For her. Bentley only promised to take me this far.”

“Jesus, kid. Did you fuck him?” My hands shoot in the air the instant my words register. “Never mind. I—Pretend I didn’t even ask. Your sister, kid. Your sister. What’s her name?” I ask the crossover between a woman and a child huddled in front of me.

“Eve.” Her singular word ricochets through me for reasons I’ll probably
never
know and I tip my head to the side and try and place why for a brief moment. But nothing clicks.

Hmm… “Eve? That sure is a cool name,” I tell my step sister. “Come on, kid. Let’s go find Eve, then. Get you back with your sister. When’s the last time you saw her, anyway?”

“The last time we were here. Of course. When Mom got pissed and took the truck?”

But none of what she is saying is making any sense to me. Even as she babbles on while pulling her backpack onto her shoulders and explains how the two of them always assumed they were twins. Even though Eden is pale blonde and blue-eyed, and Eve has dark hair and dark eyes, and an even darker complexion.

No connections are made. Nope. None.

As far as I’m concerned, I’m listening to a rambling teenage girl,
again.
For the second fucking time today. And all I really want is to drop this kid off, get my bike, then go to the airport, return my ticket, and get the fuck back home.

   I was done with my duties for the day.

I rescued the bitch’s daughter. I left her safe, and in the care of her extended family. Two birds-one stone. Let the kid be Ilsa’s damn problem now. Not ours. Not my club’s.

It didn’t take long to for me to track down the name and address of an Eve O’Malley. Not long at all. In fact, after dropping Eden off at the end of the driveway containing her sister’s last known address, I stopped by the old motel’s front office and put a call into Pops. Once I’d let him know what I’d done with his step kid, I informed him I was headed home, and less than thirty minutes later I pulled onto I-80 East. Headed home. And the hell away from Bentley and his crazy antics.

Pops just wanted me to get the kid. Mission accomplished.

I love Ben. He’s always been like a brother to me—he’s my best friend. But it seems like the wider this fracture in our family splinters, the more of his mind begins to split.

He’s not even on one side or the other any longer. The last time he and I spoke, he made it clear the only side he was on was his.

And well…it’s like Pops said before I left,
“We can’t have a bunch of motherfuckers just jumping up and deciding to make their own sides now, can we?”
If Pops wants him killed, though, then let him do it. I understand what Ben’s doing to the club isn’t right. I understand what his father, my Uncle Chase, has already done is unforgivable. But what Pops can’t understand—and what I can’t explain to him—is that I love Ben. Like a brother. Hell, he was the only other tot in the bunch when we were kids. He was the only other motherfucker in diapers in the yard with me. Pushing our little plastic bikes up and down the gravel drive of the salvage yard. His mom and mine were best friends. I think they planned it that way—at least to hear it the way my pops tells it.

Mom was the greatest, too, man. She really was. In all of her four-foot-nine stature, she was every bit as fearless on a bike as my dad was when they were younger. But that was way before she got sick. Ma’s family was French. Actually, Mom didn’t move here until her twenties. When she met Pops outside of a Waffle House one night off I-1-something, and that was all she wrote. They were married two weeks later, and eight months after that I came out in this world, feet first. Kicking and screaming. The very next week, Ben was born.

The rest of life was easy after that, or at least until the doc found the lump. Everything went to shit so quickly after that, it seems. It was like life was normal one day…and then when I buried my mom, it was like my little teenage world couldn’t take it. It just shattered. And shattered. And shattered. Until there was nothing left that resembled it. Just dust of the past. And the same old walls of the club’s building that once felt so much like home…

I miss those days. The days before the partying. Well, the HARD partying. Along with the revolving door of women, sex, bikes, drugs, and rock and roll.

The biker life my mother had planned for the Cain family didn’t quite pan out the way she imagined, God rest her soul. Hell, I think I’ve actually heard her turn over in her grave a few times when I’m out there talking to her at the cemetery.

No…us Cain men, and the life we were supposed to have, the one Ma had envisioned for us, was nothing like the actual life we had after she died. After her motherly, or womanly, little touches faded around the club—which didn’t take long with the copious number of people my dad liked to keep around. Trash, and I mean trashy women. It only took two weeks and almost every member had moved into the compound that used to function as a shelter for abused women on the back of the property behind the club’s Church. The same Church we hold meetings at every Tuesday and Friday night, even now.

The compound quickly turned into more of a fraternity house than the club house Jacqueline Cain used to use it for barbecues and cookouts during the summer, and football get togethers for the MC in the fall.

And now?

Now, quite frankly, it reminds me of some of the most run down bars I’ve ever been in. And I’ve been in some hole in the walls, believe me.

I pull my bike up along the side of an eighteen-wheeler, and switch down a gear to speed up and get over in front of him. I usually prefer to ride long rides in a group. Not only because it’s safer, but also because it’s makes the ride livelier. I hate that all this shit’s caused so much turmoil in our club—I hate it. I can’t even tell you the last time we rode as a pack together. And I don’t know if it’s because Ilsa looks so much like Ma that this has happened. Or if it’s just history fucking repeating itself again with these two.

In the last foster home Eden and I stayed in, we had another kid living with us named Tracy. Tracy’s story, although much sadder than ours, wouldn’t be as sad had the young girl made a few different decisions. Like her proclivity to pickpocket every chance she got. But the girl kept money—which was something I’d been running short on. What with the price of the bus ticket, food and break stops, and any extra supplies I’ve needed? I’m lucky to have the one hundred and seven dollars I had. Well, at least before I picked up Tracy’s little proclivity on the bus ride over to the Big Apple.

I’m sitting in a bathroom stall when I count my last recovered
, okay borrowed,
dollar. Over two freaking grand! I
somehow
accumulated two thousand sixteen dollars between the cat ladies and the freaky looking pervs. I swindled my way into being a thousand-aire.
Yeah, I like the sound of that.

Thousand-aire ain’t bad for a thirteen-year-old kid.
Surely I’ll be a millionaire by my twenties
, I think as I step from the dirty bus station bathroom, still packed to the gills with my luggage. After glancing at the main signs and deciding which gate to exit out of, I head to my left.

    And I’m not sure if it’s because I’m in shock at the sheer magnitude of my surroundings or what, but I feel like I can barely breathe, much less catch my breath as I take the place in. The size of it alone is baffling. And I’m not sure if it’s because I’m distracted, or maybe they were a whole hell of a lot stealthier than I originally gave them credit for. I usually watch out for things like this to happen, though—that’s all I’m saying.

Freaking cops.

I’m in mid-motion, reaching out my hands to push open the double doors exiting the bus station, when suddenly…and I mean suddenly, out of nowhere, I’m being spun around and cuffed by two cops. As big as you please. And I never saw the first one. Not once.

“Ma’am, we have reports of a girl being seen coming off the bus from Chicago, and she matches your description. She’s being accused of pickpocketing some of the patrons on the bus. Do you know what Miranda rights are, sweetheart?”

The cold cuffs dig into the skin around my wrists to the point of bruising as soon as he slides them on. Then half a second later, I’m being wrenched off the ground, and my entire body's weight supported by the cop’s hold on the cuffs between my wrists. And then I swear, he yanks as hard as he freaking can.

I briefly remember wishing I still had my lucky charm necklace I swiped from Jacques’ bag before tossing it in the trash in the boys’ bathroom at the park before the darkness around the edges of my consciousness finally closes in.

I remember the cold feel of it against my hand when I’d pray.

I always wanted a crucifix growing up. Always. They’ve always been so beautiful to me. So simple, yet significant.

But no one has ever really taught me much about religion, besides my grandmother. My mom doesn’t believe in anything, or at least that’s what I get from her spiel about reincarnation and how the body returns to dirt ‘cause the body was from it. My sister and I were named by our grams. She taught us what she could before our mother took us from Florida when we were really young.

I’ve read snippets of the good book. Or scriptures. That’s what Grams called them. She was more churchy than Mom pretended to be. And when I lived with Donna and Darrell, we usually only went to church on Easter. And even then, it was hit or miss. But from what I’ve gathered from the few scriptures I’ve read, I like to believe in a greater power, I think. I don’t like the idea of turning into dirt after I’m buried. I don’t like the idea of becoming worm food, not one bit. My last nagging thoughts then finally cease when my face connects with the hood of the cop car. And as I feel the good officer’s knee shove between my thighs before the metal grate of the car’s grille digs into my hip bones, the car under me tilts sideways…and then the world just goes dark.