Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 80902 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80902 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Do I know him? “Yeah, yeah you could say that.” This is going to be fun.
3
HAVOC
I have a gut feeling that seeing Shelby in person again for the first time in several years is gonna mean something. Don’t know what yet, but something big.
When we met, she was working at a trashy bar slash strip club called Puss in Boots. The place was raided a couple years ago and shut down, but six years ago, it was the kind of place that attracted all sorts of castaways and we were two of them.
I knew she was young the first time she came up to take my order, with purple highlights in her brown hair, and the kind of been there, done that, know it all attitude that only the young and old can pull off. She was calling herself Nova back then, and I gotta admit, if she hadn’t already been running with an asshole called Dodger, I might’ve done more than smile when she flirted.
But that was before I found out she was fucking sixteen. At least she was just waiting tables, and not dancing.
Nah, I didn’t find that shit out until I found her behind the club, sobbing her fucking heart out, her tears washing her heavy makeup off her face and leaving nothing but a lost kid behind.
“What do you think happened to Phoenix?” Sledge asks as we get closer to Park Glen. “No fucking way he just fell off his bike. He’s been riding since he could reach the handlebars.”
I nod in agreement. “Yeah, he’s one of the best in the club. If he ended up off the road, it’s because something went wrong, or someone made something go wrong. My money’s on the latter. He takes care of that bike like it’s his fucking baby.”
“Good thing he made it to my place before the wrong person found him.”
“Yeah.” Was it?
Fuck, I feel like an asshole. Phoenix isn’t my brother by blood, he’s even closer. I should be worried about him, not Shelby. He’d never hurt her or her kid.
Scare her a little, though…
He might do that without even trying. He’s a slick asshole when he wants to be, but he’s just as fucked up as the rest of us, and he doesn’t have a clue about her history. He doesn’t know how she got knocked up and ditched by a biker who went on to join the Pit Vipers and make her life hell. Right up until he finally got what was coming to him.
My only regret is that I didn’t get to put a bullet in his skull when we put an end to the Pit Vipers a few years back. Instead, he ended up in prison, where someone did us all a favor and cut his sentence short with a shank. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer dickhead.
“Odd fucking place for someone to be causing trouble,” Sledge says, oblivious to my dark reminiscence. “It’s a nice enough neighborhood, but not enough money here to make it interesting. The flippers aren’t even looking this way yet.”
I shrug, taking in the cared for, but shabby houses as we close in. Park Glen is a nowhere kind of place. An area that sprung up between cities decades ago when industry expansion was supposed to last forever and there would be more than enough jobs to go around. It didn’t, and there weren’t, but here it still stands. “Probably junkies looking for easy targets. I’ll bet someone’s kid or grandkid that’s living in their basement gets arrested by the end of the summer.”
“Probably right. Wait, look.” He points to the side of the road, where there are skid marks leading to torn up grass where something went off the road into the ditch. We pull into the next driveway.
I’ve only seen this place once. We helped him clean it out after his grandmother died and left it to him. He tried to sell the fucking place, but the market was shit. So when Shelby got back in touch, asking if I had any leads on a place she could afford on what she was making cleaning houses, it seemed perfect.
A mustard yellow ranch from the seventies, with a big old oak tree in the front yard and cracks in the driveway. A solid, safe place for a single mom to raise her little girl.
Or at least that was the idea.
“Fuck, that doesn’t look good.”
In the ditch is Phoenix’s motorcycle, looking pretty damn beat up.
I’m no forensic genius, but from the look of it, our boy was smashed from behind. The back tire of his bike is twisted. No fucking way he did that on his own. There’s dried blood on the grips, and marks in the dirt and grass where he dragged himself out from under the wreck.