Bones by the Wood Read online

  “Go grab tonight’s. Put a blank in.”

  Thea was about to ask why, but bit her tongue. Instead she did as Dizzy asked. It was obvious, really. Of course he didn’t want anyone seeing a video of him knocking a man out with his gun, even if the man on the receiving end of the blow had just robbed the store and been about to do only god knew what else. When she came back out of the office with the tape in her hand, Dizzy just nodded his head towards the end of the corridor. Realizing that he had his hands full just at that moment, Thea kept hold of the tape and showed him where the back exit to the store was.

  She opened the heavy metal door with the bunch of keys that she’d picked up to lock the front doors. Dizzy hauled the limp body through the doorway and out into the lot. It was a dark corner, the glow of the streetlights couldn’t quite penetrate the gloom, and the security light had blown a fuse months previously and had not yet been repaired. Dizzy dropped the body onto the tarmac without ceremony, and then, to Thea’s amazement, set about beating the junkie to a bloody pulp.

  The would-be thief roused after the first couple of punches and weakly tried to fight Dizzy off. It was a pathetic attempt that had no effect whatsoever.

  “Learn a lesson, motherfucker.” Dizzy grunted between punches. “Shit like that don’t fly in this town no more.” He landed a right hook that crushed the junkie’s nose in a spray of blood. “Take your cranked up ass out of town and don’t fuckin’ come back.”

  Once Thea had gotten over the shock of seeing the man who had, so far, been nothing but cheeky, flirty and fodder for her fantasies unleash such methodical brutality she couldn’t tear her eyes away. She couldn’t find it in herself to feel sorry for the junkie, either. He’d been a twitch away from potentially leaving her son without a mother.

  Dizzy yanked the junkie up by his collar to receive a final jab and then dropped him like a piece of trash.

  “The tape, sweetheart.”

  Dizzy shook his hand out before holding it out to her. Thea was transfixed by the fact that there was enough blood on his hand for droplets to spatter away from it when he shook it. She stared at his reddened palm for a long moment before she placed the tape she was still clutching into it.

  “You okay?”

  She tried to shake the fog from her brain. “Yeah. Sure. I... just... I wasn’t... Mondays are usually quiet.”

  “It’s okay, sweetheart. But this is needed. The Priests won’t tolerate this shit in our town.”

  Thea was stunned, but not into silence, she couldn’t help the words that came out. “The Rabids never gave a shit about stores gettin’ held up ‘n’ stuff. We were robbed three times this past year or so. No one did anythin’.”

  “The police ever catch anyone?” Dizzy asked with obvious skepticism.

  Thea snorted a laugh. “You’re jokin’, right? They don’t come this far out unless someone gets shot and not always then.”

  “That’s good to know. What time do you finish?”

  She cast about for a clock before realizing she had no way of knowing the time out here. “Erm... two o’ clock. I don’t know when that is.”

  “Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’m gonna wait for you. Make sure you get home okay. You look a little shook up.”

  Thea wasn’t sure what to say, so she didn’t say anything. She turned and held the door open for Dizzy. A rustle caught both their attentions, but it was just the junkie staggering to his feet. His eyes were wide with fear now, and he tripped, stumbled and dragged himself away from the store, keeping Dizzy in his sights the whole time.

  When they got back into the main part of the store, Dizzy hung around to buy whatever it was he’d come in to purchase in the first place. Thea hardly even registered what the items were. She unlocked the front doors again, and Dizzy went outside. He moved his bike directly in front of the doors so that she could see him, and stayed, sitting astride it, smoking occasionally, until her shift finished. She checked the total of the register and the amount of receipts twice before she put the money in the store safe. She didn’t want anyone having a reason to ask about the security tape or they’d see that hours were missing.

  She finished locking up the store. Dizzy smiled at her as she walked past him to her car. She still couldn’t assimilate the happenings of the night, but she smiled back almost as a reflex. True to his word, he followed her all the way back to her apartment building. She was glad of it. There were a couple of times on the drive that she spaced completely. She parked in her usual spot on the street, and Dizzy pulled his bike in directly behind her car. As she slid out of the driver’s seat and carefully closed the door, mindful of her sleeping neighbors, he swung off his bike. She took a deep breath of cleansing air. The world had a different smell in the hours before dawn, a freshness, before the day had a chance to dirty itself.

  “You did good, darlin’. Don’t worry.”

  “Thank you. I don’t think I said it before. I’m glad you were there.”

  When he stepped closer, she didn’t step away. Nor did she move when he slid his fingers into the shaggy mess that had been her ponytail. She couldn’t even find it in her to flinch, knowing that his hands must still have dried blood on them, not even when his other hand slid around her waist and pulled her closer.

  He paused for a heartbeat, he seemed to be looking for something. If he was worried that she was going to push him away, that wasn’t going to happen. Thea slid her own arms around his waist and smoothed her palms up over the leather he was wearing, feeling the rough texture of the patches sewn onto it as she gripped his shoulders and pulled herself closer. She wasn’t sure what she was doing, or even if she was trying to do anything; she only knew that she somehow needed a connection with him.

  At that his mouth came down firmly on hers. It shouldn’t have been possible, but he pulled her even more tightly against his body and when she parted her lips, his tongue swept into her mouth and danced against hers. She felt surrounded by him, encompassed by his the heat, the strength, the scent of him. He ended the kiss, far too soon, with a gentle nip at her lower lip. Thea felt dazed with arousal and almost stumbled when he pulled back a little.

  “You got a phone, sweetheart?”

  “Huh. Yeah.” She fished out the embarrassing technological museum piece out of her bag and handed it over. Dizzy tapped on the keypad.

  “My number’s in there now. You need help, whatever reason, you call me, yeah?”

  “Yeah.” Thea just gave up trying to understand what the fuck was going on and nodded dumbly.

  “Good girl. See y’around, sweetheart.” Dizzy reseated himself astride his bike. Thea didn’t hear him fire up the engine until after she’d closed the door of the building behind her.

  She shed her clothes as quickly as she could and climbed into her bed where she could hide under the comforter. Curled up under the covers she felt safer, but undeniably lonely. Before sleep came she let her mind wonder what it would feel like to be loved by a man like Dizzy, to be the focus of his attention, to always be protected by him, to know that her boy was protected by him. That was a powerfully stirring concept for her. She imagined what it might feel like to be held in those arms and to be caressed by those same hands that she had seen beat a man half to death, assuming that they were capable of any gentleness at all.

  Chapter Seven

  After a couple of hours, Dizzy gave sleep up as a lost cause. Beating the tweaker wasn’t weighing on his mind. The fact that he’d had to do it all was creeping into his thoughts some. The fact that the Priests had been unaware that the Rabids had been running such a loose operation irritated him. It didn’t matter so directly now that the Rabids no longer existed, but he wondered what else they might be missing. The fact the Rabids had not even been taking care of their own town made their attempt to take on the Priests and cut them out of business all the more laughable, like a Chihuahua taking on an elephant.

  He needed to call Samuel to talk out his concerns, but that wasn’t the only thing distra
cting him, and he didn’t think Samuel could help with the other reason for his lack of rest. The attraction he had to a certain store clerk, a woman he seemed unable to stay away from, had him buying so much Jack that he might well need a stint in rehab soon if he didn’t figure out where the fuck he was taking himself.

  Dizzy ran the shower on the wrong side of cold; he needed to think clearly, and he wasn’t thinking about any of the things that he needed to be thinking about. He hissed as the icy water hit his skin, but gritted his teeth and physically shook the shock off and refused to cave and add hot water, but by god was he glad when he was clean and he could turn the spray off.

  He toweled himself dry vigorously to get some heat back into his chilled skin and pulled a clean pair of jeans on. Remaining barefoot and shirtless, he padded into the kitchen nook off the great room and set coffee to brew. He propped his hip against the kitchen counter and stared out of the window at the rapidly overgrowing lawn area while he waited. He was going to have to do something about the length of the grass soon, but he couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for the project. For himself, he couldn’t care less about it, and there was no one else who would be likely to come over who would be offended by the yard’s unkempt state.

  When the coffee was finished, he poured himself an unadulterated cup and took it to the small table surrounded by four chairs that he’d tucked against the wall in a corner of the main living room, out of the way, in front of French windows that opened out into the wilderness he was calling a yard. He sat for a moment. The entire house was silent bar the whir and hum of a couple of appliances. The space felt infinitely lonely. A house like this needed to be filled; there should be chatter and laughter and calls from room to room. With him as its sole inhabitant, it echoed, and it was just wrong. To distract himself from the melancholy, Dizzy pulled his disposable mobile phone from his jeans pocket and called Samuel.

  Samuel answered after the first ring. “Hey, Dizz. You okay?”

  “Yeah, boss. Just called with a thought.”

  Dizzy heard scuffling and a door shutting. Samuel was probably going somewhere quiet or more private “Okay, what’s up?”

  “Might be nothing, but you know how these nothings always come back to bite you on the ass. Seems like all the time we’re finding out that the Rabids didn’t give a shit what they were doin’ here. They always seemed tight enough on the runs, but they weren’t takin’ care of their town or their legit business interests. They weren’t runnin’ protection for their clubs the way they should’ve and they weren’t keepin’ the town clean either. They were just squatting here like a bad smell.”

  “You sound like you’ve got a handle on it.”

  Dizzy took a sip of his coffee. “From what I know, yeah. There’s probably gonna be more and I hope it ain’t nothin’ big, but I think we need to be careful. Fuck knows who they rubbed the wrong way or who they didn’t pay the proper respect to. We could be a bull’s-eye on someone’s target shoot and not know it.”

  “You’re right. I’ll get Crash to scan around, do that shit he does, and see if he finds anythin’.”

  “I’ll tell Ferret to get in touch. Two heads are better than one.”

  “Yes they are. I’ll mention it to Eduardo, too. Hopefully the Rabids colludin’ with the Tails was the only thing we didn’t see comin’.”

  Dizzy felt better knowing that Samuel felt the matter was due some attention. “That should cover it all.”

  “Yeah. You doin’ okay, brother? I know I sent you a long way from home.” Dizzy could hear the low level of concern in the voice that Samuel was deliberately trying to keep even. Samuel was still his President as far as Dizzy was concerned, and more so his friend. He was trying not to intrude.

  “Yeah. It’s slow goin’ buildin’ things up. Still feels small, and I don’t like feelin’ like I don’t got enough weight at my back, but what I do have is prime.”

  “I’ve had some more contacts in that respect. Maybe we can go over that next time you and your boys are in town?”

  “That’d be good. Now that we’re a full table, I want their take on anyone we might bring in.”

  “You’re good at this, Dizz. Just keep doin’ what you’re doin’.”

  Dizzy looked around the room, empty and silent except for himself, and felt like maybe he wasn’t getting it all right, but he bit that feeling back. “Thanks, boss. You take care, yeah. Say ‘hi’ to the girls for me.”

  “Will do, brother. Stay whole.” With that, Samuel ended the call.

  Dizzy slumped back in the chair and gulped back the remainder of his coffee. The silence was all-encompassing again. Fuck, but he needed to get out, be where there were some people. He didn’t mind quiet, and he sure didn’t mind being on his own, but this was getting oppressive. And wondering what it would be like to come into this room in a morning and find a certain black-haired beauty pouring coffee or grilling bacon in the kitchen was not helping.

  He rose, rinsed the mug and left it in the sink. Heading back into the even quieter bedroom, he snagged a long-sleeved thermal shirt from one drawer and a plaid shirt from another and tugged them on in turn. He pulled socks and his boots on next. He lifted his kutte from its place on the back of the chair in the corner of the room and slipped it on and made his way out to the clubhouse and company.

  When he pulled up at the clubhouse, despite the relatively early hour, he found all the club bikes lined up. That was good, he wouldn’t need to call everyone in to discuss his concerns about the town. He backed his own bike into its place at the end of the line nearest to the clubhouse door. Once he’d cut the engine he could hear the sounds coming from the open garage bays. Metal clunked against metal, a vehement curse, the revving of an engine, and music from the radio underlined it all.

  Dizzy retrieved his Stetson and settled it firmly on his head before entering the clubhouse. The main room was empty and quiet. The owners of the bikes outside were probably all in the garage. That was even better. Dizzy left his kutte over the back of his chair at the head of the table in the Chapel, then he removed his shirt and left it folded on the seat. Of course he kept his hat on. He walked out and around to the garage bays.

  Although the garage was delineated into four separate bays, each with their own roller shutter door, it was actually one long, continuous room. Keeping to the wall that adjoined the clubhouse, out of the way of the men at work, Dizzy snagged a set of coveralls from a peg and pulled them on.

  There was a desk in the corner created by that wall and the back wall. A laptop, plugged in and open, was sitting on the end of it. Papers were strewn haphazardly across the remaining surface. A squeaking swivel office chair that was hard enough to unman a eunuch was pushed in front of the grey metal filing cabinet that had been pushed right into the corner of the room. No one had the inclination to tackle the filing, and no one hated their balls enough to sit on the chair while they checked the laptop to order parts of deal with enquiries.

  Dizzy checked the job list on the laptop before looking to check who was where. There was an import with brake problems in the far bay that he would work on. Shaggy was closest, standing in front of a Volkswagen Beetle with the hood open, staring at the engine, brows drawn down.

  Ferret was working on a bike, some sort of crotch rocket, next to him. Since both machines were relatively small, they were sharing a bay. Shaggy didn’t even blink when Ferret called over, “Shit, bro. You gonna fix it or ask it out on a date?”

  Scooby chuckled, but his laugh cut short when Dizzy walked into the middle of the semi-organized chaos. He, along with Fitz, Cage and Easy, were working on an assortment of cars and bikes in the remaining space.

  Scooby nodded towards Dizzy’s hands; the knuckles were still a little raw from their repeated connections with the tweaker’s face. “You party without us last night, boss?”

  Dizzy found the radio and turned it down to a tuneless murmur. “Somethin’ like that. You guys got five minutes?”

  All six men d
owned tools and came closer.

  “Had a situation at the store over on Westway last night, brothers. A junkie tried to pull a stickup. Must’ve been flyin’ high, he didn’t check the place was empty before he launched right in.”

  “Lemme guess. You just happened to be there,” Cage asked with a grin and a suggestive note to his tone.

  “I was.” Dizzy nodded. “Must’ve been fate or somethin’. Long story short, I made sure he realized he wasn’t welcome in town any longer.”

  Fitz folded his arms across his chest as he leant back against the truck that was parked behind him. “Do we need to worry about you showin’ up on any security feed?”

  Dizzy shook his head. “No. Got the tape at home courtesy of the clerk.”

  “Who was it?” Easy asked. “Not that skinny manager dude with the stick up his ass? I don’t see that fucker not holdin’ this over you somehow.”

  “Wasn’t him. It was Thea.”

  Dizzy was mildly surprised at the blank looks on every face. “She usually works the late shift. Black hair. Blue eyes. That ring any bells for you fellas?”