Remember Me (Defiant MC) (32 page)

Maddox laughed out loud.  “You watch too much goddamn television, asshole.” 

Nonetheless, he could see that J
ensen wasn’t going to dispute Bryce’s words.  Alan crept beside his cousin. 

“Do it,” he urged in the plaintive tones of a puppy.  “Just do it and be done.”

“Jensen,” said Maddox and it was more than a word.  It was a final plea to his brother.  “Just don’t let Gaby think I took off on her.  Make sure she knows how much I love her.  How much I’ve always loved her.” 

Jensen took a few steps back and turned to the wall.  He looked at the ceiling. 

“Hey Mad,” he said in a strangled voice.  “You remember that time we got lost out there in the hills after dark?”

“Sure I do,” Maddox said slowly, remembering a night long ago.  “We were what, six and eight?”

“I think so,” answered Jensen.  “Six and eight.  We were looking for buried treasure. We dug about a dozen random holes.  Thing about holes, Maddox, is you keep digging them, and eventually you’ll find something.  God, it was dark out there.  No lights, coyotes howling from every corner.  You thought they were wolves.” 

Maddox thought he heard a sob in his brother’s voice.  It meant he had qualms over what he was doing.  It also meant he was likely to do it just the same. 

“I remember,” he swallowed.  “And I remember how you said to hush my crying and we sang that old Johnny Cash song over and over again until daylight.” 

“Shit, was Priest pissed.” 

“And every right to be.” 

Jensen turned around then.  His face was different than it had been a few moments earlier. 

“Get out of the way, Townsend.” 

Bryce
nodded eagerly.  “That’s right, man, just finish it.  We’ve got our story straight.  He’ll never even be found.” 

Jensen cocked his head.  He appeared to be listening to something.  After a few seconds he smiled. 

“You’ve forgotten something, Mr. Mayor,” he said, his gun still at his side.  

Bryce
tensed.  “What?”

“The gorillas.” 

Bryce scoffed.  “A bunch of biker gangbangers?  They’ll never even know where to look.” 

“They will,” Jensen said vaguely, holstering his gun.  “Because I called them.” 

“No.”  Bryce wouldn’t believe it, shaking his head.  He looked around wildly, centering his gaze on Jensen.  “You fucking wouldn’t.”

“I did.” 

Maddox didn’t dare breathe.  In the battle of wills between Jensen and Bryce, he had forgotten all about Alan.  Evidently Jensen had forgotten about Alan as well. 

He stepped forward and opened his mouth as if he was
going to say something to Bryce when Alan let out a cry and dove for an object beyond the doorway.  Evidently it was an alarming object because Jensen reached for his gun.  And he was a whole lot quicker than the haphazard Alan. 

“Put it down,” he told Alan sternly. 

Alan raised the rifle and pointed it at Jensen.  Maddox could see how the barrel shook. 

“Alan,” said Jensen with even more finality.  Both of his hands were now on his weapon.  He would shoot if he needed to. 

“Fucked this up,” Alan sniffed.  “It’s all fucked up and I gotta unfuck it.”  He’d begun to cry though.  He lowered the rifle with a moan.  Maddox saw Jensen relax slightly and turn to Bryce.  His instincts must have been rusty from years of desk work.  Maddox didn’t even have time to shout a warning before Alan Townsend jerked the rifle back to his shoulder and blew a hole in his brother’s chest. 

Jensen sank to his knees, the red hole in the center of his chest growing larger as blood began to leak out of it. 

“Shit!” yelled Bryce.  “You dumb fuck,” he punched his cousin as Jensen stared down in disbelief at the bullet wound.   Maddox watched in horror as his brother came to realization that the wound was bad, likely fatal. 

Bryce
Sanders began to pace, cursing to himself.  A dead biker would have been tough enough to cover up.  A dead local cop would be nearly impossible to hide. 

Finally he stopped and stared dispassionately at Jensen.

“Finish it,” he ordered Alan.  “Goddammit, I said finish it!”

Alan raised the rifle.  But his hesitation had cost him as Jens
en was still conscious.  He lifted his own weapon and fired it, hitting Alan right between his eyes. 

Maddox saw the blood spurt and heard the gurgle of th
e doomed man as he fell.  Bryce cursed again but seemed to have forgotten that he also held a gun.  He kicked at his cousin’s corpse and shouted a series of obscenities.  Maddox had always figured him as the sort who didn’t fight fair.  But he was even less than that.  He enlisted others do perform his evil.  He didn’t know how to get his hands dirty.

Bryce
didn’t even look up as Maddox crawled to his brother’s side.  Jensen still breathed, but Maddox could hear how he struggled with each gasp.  Jensen opened one eye and smiled as blood continued to ooze out of his chest. 

“You,” he wheezed, “look like hell.”  He grimaced as Maddox tried to apply pressure to the chest wound. 

“I know,” Maddox said softly, remembering the day he’d returned to Contention City, how he’d told Jensen he looked like hell when he saw him for the first time in a decade.  Maddox’s chest felt tight as he saw how the blood flowed no matter how much he tried to stop it.  It was already leaking into Jensen’s chest cavity, bubbling up into his throat and spilling out of his mouth. 

Maddox tried to gather his brother in his arms.  “Come on,” he said hoarsely.  “You’re gonna be fine, Jen.”

He had forgotten about the last threat remaining in the room until he heard the click at his back.  He shook his head. “It’s over, Sanders,” he whispered.  Looking down he saw how Jensen watched him through scarcely open eyes.  His brother gave him a barely perceptible nod.   

“It will be,” Bryce
Sanders agreed but his voice shook.  Maddox knew he would allow no witnesses.  And history was written by the survivors. 

The gun was still firmly in Jensen’s hand.  If Maddox were to grab for it
Bryce would surely shoot first.  He had to trust that Jensen still had a few ounces of strength left. 

Slowly, so slowly, Maddox raised his arms and held them behind his head.  Then he lurched to the right, clearing the way for Jensen to raise his arm and shoot.  Offic
e McLeod didn’t miss, catching Bryce right in the forehead.  The mayor of Contention City went glassy eyed and blind as he keeled over, already dead with a bullet lodged in his brain. 

Jensen dropped the gun and grimaced as more blood spilled from his mouth.  Maddox felt his body go limp and heavy as he tried to lift him.  With a painful grunt he summoned every last reservoir of strength and carried his brother.  As he staggered through the restaurant, he had to
briefly set Jensen down so he could open the door.  That’s when he heard what Jensen had smiled at when he cocked his head only a few moments earlier. 

They were riding down Contention Way and never was there was a more beautiful sight than this pack of men.  Bikers, hoods, outlaws, whatever the world wanted to call them, they were there for him. 

Orion Jackson, in the lead as always, saw him first and wasted no time coasting over, followed by the rest of them.  Grayson. Casper. Abel. Brandon.  Even Teague and a few boys from Quartzsite proper were along. 

“Jesus, Mad,” Orion said with alarm as he hopped off his bike.  Maddox immediately saw he was packing and motioned for him to hide it.  Already the sirens were wailing from every direction. 

Maddox must have looked even worse than he thought.  All the men stared at him with faces of shock.  But he had no time to worry about his own injuries. Maddox reached into the building and hauled his brother out.  Jensen’s head lolled like a doll’s.  The red stain covered his entire shirt.

“Boys,” Maddox said softly, “meet my brother, Jensen.”

  He crouched down, knowing they were all behind him, the men who’d ridden like the wind when they heard he needed them.  It comforted him, even as he held his fading brother in his arms.  The men of Defiant circled around the McLeod brothers as the sirens grew louder.  There was nothing to say. Maddox felt a strong hand on his back, trying to comfort him, as he bent his head and cried.

***

Jensen woke up once before he died.  Maddox wanted to ask him if he’d been in the gray fog, if he’d seen their father.  But Jensen had a purpose in his last gasps.   He knew he’d done wrong.  He’d taken something that wasn’t his and been seduced by it.  The other men had too.  They’d already paid the ultimate price.  Soon he would pay his. 

There were details which Maddox knew would never be clear.  It didn’t matter.  Jensen reserved the last of himself for Miguel.   He clutched Mad’s hand and looked him in the eye with intense clarity. 

“Take care of my boy,” he rasped. 

Maddox squeezed Jensen’s hand.  It was already growing cold. 

“You’ll take care of him yourself,” he said. 

But Jensen only smiled and shook his head, turning away as the machinery gauging what remained of his life began to wail an alarm. 

People rushed in and Maddox was pushed aside.  He didn’t cry as they frantically wheeled his brother off to surgery.  He was done crying.  He already knew it wouldn’t help.

“Say hi to Priest,” Maddox whispered. 

When Gaby burst wildly onto the scene she let out a shriek and leapt into his arms.  She touched his face and exclaimed over the damage.  Miguel followed quietly, his face pale and worried as he looked around.  Maddox led them out to where the Defiant men waited. 

“So they did come,” Gaby said with wonder in her voice.   She nodded at each of them in turn and
sat beside Maddox, her hands all over him as if she needed reassurance he was still solid.  The men tried to make cheerful small talk with Miguel while Gabriela explained what she knew. 

“Jensen came racing over, told me if I didn’t hear from him within an hour to pack up Miguel and get somewhere far away.  He noticed that Miguel had your phone.  I didn’t understand why he grabbed it.  It was like he was frantically looking for something.  He asked if I knew who you would call for help if you needed it.  All I could remember was Orion’s name.  God, Maddox, I was so terrified.  I heard him make the call and I didn’t know what the hell to think.”  Gaby broke a little, crying and pushing her knees up to her chest. “Jensen kissed Miguel on the forehead and told him he was the best thing in his life.  Mad, it was like he was saying goodbye.”

Maddox closed his eyes painfully.  “He was,” he said.  He knew he still needed his head wound tended.  It would require stitches.  It was likely a concussion.   He knew he would live though.

Eventually Casey, Jensen’s wife, showed up.  She eyed Orion with interest until he flipped her off.  Then she turned her attention to her phone with a bored look on her face.  

Maddox waited with Gabriela’s hand in his until the doctor came to tell them what Maddox already knew.  His brother was gone. 

Contention City, Arizona Territory

1890

Annika refused to bury James in the Contention City cemetery.  Swilling was to be buried there and she couldn’t stomach the hypocrisy of it.  The look of the town had changed in her eyes.  Everything had.  There were no more good folks and bad folks, not in the way she had always supposed.  Everyone was painted with a gray brush.  She could have stayed in Contention City, silently enduring the scorn of the locals as she passed time waiting for some word from Me
rcer.  But she could not stand remaining there for long. Como had offered to see her to the wild Black Hills. 

The last time Annika Larson Dolan passed through Contention City she paused in front of The Rose Room.  Several of the soiled doves lounged idly on the second floor balcony.  They watched her curiously as she held up a hand in greeting.  She was notorious, the wife of a slain lawman and the known lover of an outlaw.  The women waved back and Annika stared into their painted faces, wondering what stories were behind them. 

The day James Dolan died, half the buildings on Contention Way were damaged or destroyed.  They would be rebuilt quickly, and the truth behind those events would be obscured or simply forgotten. 

Annika almost didn’t dare to read the newspapers.  Posses had been organized to pursue The Dane Gang.   But Cutter, the Tanner boys, and the rest of them including Mercer had simply disappeared into the vast land and stubbornly refused to be caught. 

Como kept a low profile during his last days in Contention.  Annika knew he stayed in the old barn behind Lizzie Post’s place while he allowed his shoulder to heal and waited for her to finish wrapping up her legal affairs.  His one error was telling her where the hoard of stolen gold was hidden.  Cutter Dane himself had dug a hasty shallow hole close to the old Beehive.  In doing so, he had certainly planned on returning for it shortly.  But it was an easy thing for Annika to ride the wagon out there the day of the aftermath and find it.  She cracked open Swilling’s safe and stared at it, the simple collection of rocks which had been the cause of so much grief.  She thought she would float the contents down the Hassayampa.  But no, once pieces were inevitably discovered it would just prompt a new round of gold fever to descend.  Then she figured she would bury in the hills.   But even this did not seem safe enough.  So she brought it to the only place which made any sense to her.  Where it could keep company with the men who had died because of it, either directly or indirectly. She buried it in the ground close to them.