Page 11 of Biker's Collar: Property of Scrap

Deacon gives me a look that says, “We’ll address this later,” and then he turns to Abraham with a cold, expressionless face. I can tell what he’s about to do, but Abraham seems ignorant of Deacon’s hand shuffling around in his pocket before producing his vice.

Deacon slams the entire baggie of powder against his chest. “Finish it.”

“That’s at least two days’ supply.”

“And it’s all yours,” Deacon says. “Don’t wander off too far.”

Dorn looks at him almost hopefully. His eyes are almost crystal clear, his pupils tiny fucking dots. “You won’t kill me?”

“No buddy. I won’t shoot you,” Deacon says. “Now go on somewhere and thank the Lord for all that he’s provided.”

I help Abraham out of the room and shut the door behind him. He won’t get far and if he does, he won’t be too hard to hunt down. Addicts are predictable. Vickie doesn’t take her eyes off me, but I don’t need to look at her right now. Deacon releases a sigh and glances around the room.

“Three of them look Indian. Oske will be happy,” Deacon says.

Three Indians, two white women, and two black women. The other black woman is a little smaller than Vickie – shorter and skinnier.

“Care to tell me where the fuck these women came from?” I ask Deacon, but really there’s only one woman I need answers about.

I look at Vickie again. This woman robbed me and ran off, so the last place I expected to see her ass was tied up in a fucking desert warehouse. That woman kicked me when I was down on one of the worst nights of my life. Just seeing her activates my darkest desires for revenge.

“Steel’s new wife had this ex-husband involved with buying and selling women to the Midnight SS biker gang… Southpaw wants us to put a bunch of them in the ground and interrupt thistrade route. Once we get these women out of here, we wear their jackets and impersonate a few Nazis for a meetup tonight.”

Clearly, we don’t have to worry about these women ratting us out. They seem appropriately nervous that we’re talking so frankly in front of them. It would be smarter for me to take one of the white girls – the plump, excessively plain one who looks like a ‘Kelsey’ would be appropriately submissive. Shit, I could train her to respond to Kelsey like a dog if I wanted to. Doesn’t matter what her name is.

Unfortunately, I blew up my ability to think straight the first time I won big at a poker table. My dad gave me a five dollar poker chip when I was seventeen. I escaped the clubhouse with my older brother after the club meeting and that five dollars was just enough to sit at my first ever table.

I won $6,000. For a kid to win six grand off a five dollar bet does something to him. I got completely fucked up in the head from it, incapable of looking at a poker table without remembering how good it felt to win that big. Vickie reminds me of the only thing that feels just as good at winning big. The taboo rush of losing everything.

She looks away from me now pointedly, like she’s sure of who I am and thinks there’s a chance at hiding.

“Are we letting them go?”

“Southpaw didn’t mention what happens to them next,” Deacon says. “We give back the Indians, that much I know but… I don’t know about the rest. Why?”

“Doesn’t matter. We’ll do what my brother wants tonight. Get through this meetup… worry about it after that.”

“We’re not gonna sell them,” Deacon says. “So you have nothing to worry about ladies. Nothing to worry about at all.”

I don’t blame the women for not seeming completely comforted by Deacon’s reassurance. Times like this, Oske would be a good person to have around. I can’t believe I’m saying that,but it’s true. If Vickie is proof of anything, it’s proof that I’m no good with women.

Just because we’re not gonna sell them doesn’t mean moving eight women across the country is safe or legal. They don’t have documents as far as I know, unless the situation Deacon discussed about Ryder’s wife somehow led to us getting the documents.

I’m glad Deacon Hollingsworth takes the lead here. I’d rather be the muscle than the club mouthpiece and I’d rather be sitting at a poker table instead of doing any of that.

He explains to the women that they will soon experience their rights and freedoms, but he has to take care of the bastards that did this to them. He makes them swear to God that they won’t do anything stupid when we cut them loose. I work on freeing all of them from their binds with my knife, sawing away at the tight ropes and giving these young women — some of whom look like girls instead of women — relief.

I leave Vickie for last. She doesn’t look me in the eye as I cut her free and I don’t acknowledge that I know her or what happened between us. Currently, I have more important shit to worry about. But I’ll get to Vickie. Best she thinks of herself as scot-free for a while before I piss in her cornflakes.

Once they’re free, Deacon calls the Indian girls over. They all look around at each other. They still don’t trust us.

“Listen, do you see either of us tatted up in that weird Nazi shit?”

The tallest of the Indian girls glares at him. “What about that guy who brought you here?”

“If we’re lucky, he’ll be dead,” Deacon says. “Any more questions? Now, a woman named Oske went through a lot of trouble to get you free. If you want her to leave my balls intact… you’ll come with me.”

That statement leads me to believe Oske might have actually made a direct threat. The only thing that crazy Indian girl loves more than smoking weed is threatening to chop mens’ balls off.

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