She let out a ragged, hoarse sigh. “I’m sorry. I just…after what happened, I need to know.”
Myles looked at me again. “Crow. Your story, man.”
I shook my head. “Not telling it. Can’t. But I’m fine with her knowing. She’s already scared of me, so I may as well put it all out there for her. I just…I can’t. Sorry, brother.”
Myles sighed. Hung his head. “Fine. But I’m gonna need another hit of that.” He drank from my bottle, rested it on his knee, and drank again. “Shit. Okay. Fine. Here you go.”
And he began talking.
Charlie
I watched Crow sink into himself. His eyes withdrew, his presence just…receded. Shrank. Darkened. Iced over. His fingers moved on the guitar with a speed and fluidity that spoke of remarkable skill, even though he was only picking at it absentmindedly. He was miles away, years away.
“Right.” Myles sighed again. “So. Tania. We grew up like siblings—well, Crow and her did. I was the tagalong little brother, sorta. Didn’t grow up in the club, but when Dad was touring, I basically lived with Coyote and Na’ura and Crow, so I looked at Tania as a sister.”
“She was Yank’s daughter, not his old lady,” Crow clarified without fixing his eyes on anything.
“All the old ladies basically took care of all the kids, as needed. It was very insular. If you needed someone to watch your kids, one of the ladies from the club would do it. And usually, it was Na’ura. The kids loved her, and she loved kids.”
“Takin’ too fuckin’ long,” Crow snarled, surly and pissed off. “Quit stalling and tell her what the fuck happened. She don’t need the fuckin’ Lifetime movie version.”
The amount of F-bombs he dropped was always directly correlated to his mood, I was discovering. The more aggressive his mood, the more he said “fuck.”
Myles nodded. “Anyway, Crow and Tania were basically an arranged marriage. Yank was a founding member, and Coyote was president of the MC.”
“Yank was a top dog, but he didn’t want no real job, like treasurer or some shit,” Crow put in. “But he was Dad’s right-hand man. A good dude.”
“So. Him and Tania. Raised like siblings, but by the time ya’ll were, what, thirteen? You were…well, together, sort of.”
Crow nodded. “Thirteen. First kiss, first everything with her.”
“Right. So, then the deal goes bad, Coyote and Na’ura, and more than half the fuckin’ club gets iced. Somehow, Yank managed to get out alive. One of the few.”
Crow snorted. “Nobody says iced, moron.”
“Fine. They were killed. He probably told you this, too. Nobody could find his grandparents, so he lived with Sister Maria in Mexico for like, eight, ten months?”
“A year.”
“Yeah. During that time my mom disappeared, Grampa died, Gramma went into the home, and Dad was on tour over in Louisiana. I lived with Tran till River Dog and Mammy showed up, looking for Crow.” He was distant himself, remembering. “Shit. Anyway. They took you in, took me in, and we rode in their Airstream with ‘em for…how long was it? Two years?”
Crow nodded again. “About that. River Dog died on my sixteenth birthday.”
Myles scratched his jaw. “Tryin’ to keep it short. Anyway. Um…yeah. You started running with the AzTex, then. Earning your patch. You had it early, I know that.”
“Tran was prez after Dad and Snake both died, and he was like a second dad to me. He knew I needed that patch, and he made sure I got it.”
I glanced over at Crow and could see he was far, far away. Not looking at me, not looking at anything.
“You earned it. And them being a one-percenter MC, I don’t even want to know what you did to get it.”
“Even if I could talk about that, I wouldn’t. Can’t. Not allowed to. And wouldn’t, anyway. Nobody’s business but mine and the Devil’s.” That deep, rough voice. So hard, so cold. Yet part of me wanted to soothe it.
“What’s a one-percenter MC?” Lexi asked.
“An outlaw club,” Crow answered. “Means ninety-nine percent of MCs are decent law-abiding folks who like to ride motorcycles and shit. Rough characters, maybe, but mostly just decent folks. The one percent, like us, are not. It means the club has defined itself as being outside the law.”
“Oh. So…criminals,” I breathed.
Crow laughed, and it wasn’t a nice sound. “Yes, Charlie. Criminals.” His voice was scathing, sarcastic.
“Patching into a one-percenter club is not an easy or simple thing to do,” Myles said. “It’s like hazing, but worse, from what I understand. I wanted to join, but Crow wouldn’t hear of it. Neither would Tran, for that matter. Said I was destined for different things.”
Crow spoke again, “Well, he was right, yeah?”
Myles sighed. “Yeah, but still. Back then, I just wanted to be in the club.”
“You just thought you did. I was born into it. It’s different.”
“Just gotta get this timeline right—been a few years, hard to remember it all straight. So—your mom and dad and a good half of the club died when you were thirteen, you lived with Sister Maria in Mexico for a year while your grandparents were off-grid down on the Yucatán, and then we lived with River Dog and Mammy for two years—making you and Tania…sixteen?” He nodded. “Sounds right. Anyway, you and Tania were a thing, when you returned to the El Paso compound after River Dog died. You and her were inseparable. In luuuuurrrrvvvvv.” He drawled the word, making a joke of it.
Crow’s scowl turned on Myles. “Don’t mock, motherfucker.”
Myles sighed. “Sorry. Just tryin’ to lighten the mood a bit.”
“It’s an old ugly story. Lighten the mood later. Get to the fuckin’ point so we can be done with exhuming the memory of my dead fuckin’ fiancé.” I’d never heard anyone, ever, sound so bitter, so morose, so unhappy. The darkness in his eyes was vicious, subsuming, swallowing, boiling.
Maybe this telling of truths had been a mistake.
But I’d…I’d watched him kill someone. Watched him singlehandedly decimate eleven tough men. He’d taken a beating without flinching, taken a nasty cut to the ribs and patched it up with a T-shirt and duct tape. Speaking of which—
“I should look at your ribs, Crow,” I said.
He shook his head. Swigged from the bottle of Johnnie Walker. “Nah. I’m fine. It’s a cut. Had worse. Forget about it.”
“It needs stitches,” I said.
“I ain’t getting no goddamn stitches, woman, so fuckin’ forget it,” he snarled. “I don’t do hospitals. I don’t do doctors. It’ll heal. If it don’t, who the fuck is gonna care? I won’t bleed to death from that little cut.”
“It’s not little,” I pressed. “It’s six inches long and very deep.”
He stared me down, eyes colder than anything I’d ever seen. From him or anyone. “I said I’m fine. Quit pushing, Charlotte.”
I bit back emotions. “I’m just concerned, Crow.”
“Don’t be. I’m just a killer, right? So why fuckin’ bother?”
“That’s not—Crow, I’m not—”
He turned away from me, a clear dismissal. He took another long pull, and I realized he’d already had nearly a quarter of the bottle, yet showed no signs of inebriation.
“Just fucking tell her the story, Myles.” His voice was clear, steady, sober, and angry.
Myles shook his head. “Eighteen years old, you and Tania both. You were a fully patched-in member by then, and Tran’s right-hand man. Involved in everything. Don’t know how you managed it all, but you were everywhere, all at once. Acting as guitar tech, manager, and stage crew for me, living with Tania, and working for Tran and the club, all at once. Not sure when you slept.”
“Didn’t. Couple hours a night, three or four usually. Never needed much sleep. More than six hours a night and I get cranky from too much. Four is about my peak. Been that way since I was a kid. Drove Mom and Dad nuts. They’d put me to bed at nine, and I’d be up for the day by one
in the morning. Then they let me stay up till midnight, but I’d be up for the day by three or four a.m.”
“Makes sense. You’d run a show for me at some bar in East Texas, and then you’d haul off on your bike to do some sort of club business in Arizona or New Mexico or somewhere else in Texas. You were on that bike for hours a day.” Myles waved a hand. “Anyway. You, Tania, Yank, and Boots and their girls were all out partying one weekend. I joined you later in the night with a girl I was seeing at the time.”
“Seeing? You were screwing her. And three other women that I knew of,” Crow put in. “Let’s not paint too rosy a picture.”
Myles shrugged. “Sure, fine. Jessica was a friend with benefits.” A glance at Lexie to assess her reaction.
She just grinned at him. “I had four friends with benefits on rotation, once, during my sophomore year at U-Conn.”
Myles was relieved, visibly. “How’d you rotate them without pissing anyone off?”
She smirked. “I didn’t. I just texted whoever I felt like fucking at the time, based on which dick seemed to fit my mood. They knew the score, and if they wanted this poon, they played by my rules.” Lexie laughed, running a hand through her messy hair. “I wasn’t about to play games. It was sex, plain and simple. No place for feelings, especially not jealousy. Start acting possessive, or try to tell me what I can do or with whom, you get ghosted real fast.”
Myles chuckled. “Hard ball, huh?”
“I mean, I have a very healthy respect for my pussy. I know what I have to offer, and if you don’t wanna play by my rules, you don’t get my poon.”
I huffed. “Lexie, you are so vulgar. You’re worse than most guys I know.”
Myles grinned at Lexie. “Well, all I’m gonna say is, where do I sign up for a slot in your rotation?”
Lexie didn’t grin back. “You’re Myles North. There is no rotation.” Her gaze was heated in a way that made me deeply uncomfortable—it was too personal, too private. “You’re not sharing me as long as I’m not sharing you.”
Myles was equally intense. “You seen any groupies lately, Lexie?”
“No.”
“Then there you go.”
“ANYWAY,” Crow groused. “On with it. Enough of the sex eyes.”
Myles grabbed the bottle of whisky. Swigged. “It was three in the morning at this honky tonk in, like, McShitsville, Texas. Middle of nowhere. Not even a fuckin’ cow for ten miles. How the place stayed open, I could never figure out, but you guys loved that bar.”
“It was a front, dumbass,” Crow muttered. “We moved product through the back. I was there as an enforcer. Boots handled the product, Yank was the money man.”
“What product?” Myles asked, looking genuinely surprised.
“Dope. Coke mainly. Small amounts of meth, some acid, and lots and lots of pot. We ran some prostitutes through there, too.” He glanced at me, and then Lexie. “We only worked with women who’d chosen to be there. We weren’t slavers, and we took down any rivals who did deal in any women who were underage or there unwillingly.” A shrug. “That was Tran’s rule. His ma had been kidnapped by traffickers, of which he was a product, back in Manila. So he had a real hard-on for making sure the girls were there of their own choice, and over eighteen.”
“How decent of him,” Lexie droned, her voice sarcastic.
Crow just shrugged. “I didn’t like that end of it, personally, but I was just a kid. I did what I was told. It’s how shit works, babe, whether you like it or not.”
Myles rolled a hand. “So, to continue. That bar, which I now understand, was a business front. It was just a club for guys and their women, and a few regulars I don’t think were affiliated with the club. Some hard-looking dudes rolled in, unexpectedly. A rival gang, maybe?”
Crow nodded. “The Scorpions. A small-time local club hoping to seize some territory and influence by pulling one over on us. They’d been warned not to fuck with us, but they didn’t listen.”
“There was, what, ten, twelve of them that night?”
“At least, that’s how many had come inside. There were more of them outside. Inside, it was just me, Boots, Yank, and Tommy, the guy who ran the bar. He wasn’t a patched member, but he was loyal to the club, since we made sure he got a nice fat cut of the profits. So there were, like, four of us, and twenty of them.”
“With innocent women around,” Myles added. His expression darkened. “I wasn’t there when the shit went down since Jess and I had left to…um, you know…but as I understand it they walked in, spread out, and started shooting.”
“Jesus,” Lexie breathed.
I couldn’t speak.
“Thing about the AzTex is, we didn’t do guns if we could help it. You start shooting, shit gets real fuckin’ complicated real fuckin’ fast. We preferred to deal with shit the old-fashioned way—fists and feet, bats and chains, knives, knuckle dusters, saps. Keeps things civilized, Dad used to say.”
“A knife or a bat is more civilized than a gun?” I asked. “How is that?”
Crow didn’t look at me. Kept his eyes on his guitar, and his fingers flew on the strings, playing a complicated series of pinging tones. “Anyone can pop off a shot. Takes no guts, no balls, no skill. Literally, a kid can do it. Takes dedication and a big sac to walk up to someone and slug ‘em till they don’t get up. You gotta be real about what you’re doing. Keeps a motherfucker honest, feeling their face under your fist.”
I shuddered at the ice in his voice, and in his eyes. “I see,” I whispered. “Do you carry a gun?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Mom and Dad were shot. That turned me off guns for life. I’ve never so much as held a gun in my life, and I never will. Made that vow the day I saw Mom and Dad’s bodies in that morgue.”
I blinked hard. “You saw their bodies?”
He nodded. “I was the only next of kin—I just had them and Uncle Snake, since River Dog and Mammy were off-grid. I had to ID ’em.”
“God, I’m so sorry,” I murmured.
His eyes finally met mine. He heard the genuine sorrow in my voice, the compassion. “Yeah.”
“Well, Boots and Yank didn’t have your compunction about guns,” Myles said. “They returned fire, and they didn’t miss. Not the way the other guys did.”
“Fuckin Scorpion assholes thought it would be like a movie,” Crow growled. “Thought they could roll in with cheap Uzis and spray the room like they’re fuckin’ Rambo or some shit. Don’t work that way. Couldn’t hit the broad side of a goddamn barn.”
“Well, they missed. Boots and Yank didn’t. Took about sixty seconds for Boots and Yank to drop all of those fuckers.” A long, long silence. “When I say they missed, I mean they missed Crow, Boots, Yank, and Tommy. They hit Tania.”
“Oh god,” I whispered.
Myles sighed. “Don’t start the ‘oh gods’ just yet. That was just the beginning.” Another pause. “Tania didn’t die right away.”
Crow was silent for a long time. “She was pregnant.”
“Oh Jesus,” Lexie gasped. “No. No way.”
Crow nodded. “Four months. Hadn’t been planned, but we were excited. We had support from the club, Mama Mahalia, Mama Yank.”
I felt my eyes start to well up. “Crow.”
He shook his head. “Took a round to the chest and another to the stomach. Went septic, lung collapsed, lost the baby…they couldn’t do shit. I sat in the waiting room at the hospital for three fuckin’ days. Wouldn’t let me see her, ’cause we weren’t married and I wasn’t actual family. Got violent about seein’ her, until they called the cops. If I wanted to see her, I had to quiet my ass down, so I quieted my ass down. I was just some tattooed Indian thug to those racist fucking backwoods fuckin’ rednecks.” A pause. “Didn’t get to see her. She died. I sat in that fuckin’ waiting room for three days, not eating, not sleeping, unable to see the woman I loved, the mother of my unborn child. And she fuckin’ died.”
“Crow, my god. I’m so, so sorry.” I couldn’t
help crying.
He reached across and brushed my cheek with his thumb, a glimmering hint of the soft, kind Crow I’d known only hours ago reappearing, however briefly. “That was ten years ago. It still hurts, but I’m as over as I’ll ever be. No point in you cryin’ over it.”
“Well…too bad. Because I’m going to. You shouldn’t have had to go through that.”
“But I did.”
Myles was gazing into the middle distance, lost in the memory. “Crow eventually showed up at the club compound looking…fucking haggard. And angrier than any human being I’d ever seen in my life. He grabbed a pair of knuckle dusters and tore off on his bike. Looking for the president of that club, the Scorpions.”
Crow laughed. “He knew he’d fucked up—hadn’t been there for the hit, the pussy. He ghosted. Ran to Seattle or some shit. Never found him.”
“Crow looked for three days. Not sleeping, hadn’t eaten, drinking like a fish. Ended up in a bar outside Tucson, hammered off his ass and full of hate.” He sighed. “He’d been up for almost a week at that point. Skin and bones, surviving on liquor and hatred.”
“Don’t remember much of that week. I remember the hospital waiting room. Remember the doctor, accompanied by six security guards, telling me Tania had died and so had the baby. Remember it took all six guards and two tasers to get me off him. I remember combing most of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, going to every biker bar I knew of between Tucson and El Paso. You said it was three days—it was longer than that. She died on a Thursday, and I regained consciousness, in handcuffs, in the back of an ambulance the following Wednesday.
“All I remember after the doctor and the tasers is being on my bike, on the highway, going ninety or a hundred, reckless, not giving a shit if I wrecked. Bar after bar, every little place I’d ever been. I would drink at every bar, shot after shot after shot. Probably should’ve died of alcohol poisoning—not sure how I didn’t. Barely ate, maybe a burger once or twice. I think I fell asleep standing up at a urinal in a rest stop bathroom.”