Page 5 of Absolution

“No one has the right to question my loyalty,” I scream at his corpse.

Stowing my firearm and retrieving the book of matches from my back pocket, I look at each one individually, before selecting the last one in the pack. Striking its red tip against the grit, it ignites. I watch the red glow of the flame dance for just a second, before tossing it onto Hog. His body begins to illuminate as the flames spread and when they finally reach his face, my body stills. It’s in that moment when peace fills me. The moment when someone evil is wiped from this Earth at my hand. Some might call me an arsonist or a firebug, but until they’ve experienced what I have, they’ll never truly understand what it means to watch fire remake something so new again. Fire chars everything in its path, but even in the blackened soil, life can renew.

I only linger a moment, before turning away from his now fully engulfed body and gather my tools. Quickly glancing back to make sure nothing is left behind, I leave him alone to burn for his crimes and ascend the stairs to my brothers waiting for me.

I can hear Hero’s heavy boot steps pacing on the floor above, so I know time is running short.

“Here’s Ratchet-y,” Voodoo mimics one of the classic horror movies he’s been forcing us all to watch lately as I hit the second floor. “Did someone have fun?”

“It’s fucking work, Voodoo. Not fun,” I bark back at him.

“Someone pissed in your cereal this morning. I figured you’d be in a better mood with Hog cooking downstairs. Oh!” Voodoo squeals. “Can we stop for BBQ on the way home?”

Voodoo has always had a screw lose, but I think all those hours in front of his computers is starting to fry the brain cells he has left.

I glare at him as Hero takes long strides towards me.

“Is it done?” Hero asks, eyeing the blood on my shirt.

The smoke begins to billow out from the basement below and pools around my feet.

“It’s done, and we have about five minutes to clear out before we end up extra crispy like Hog.”

Hero nods before turning back to the men with us.

“You heard the man. Time to ride.”

Falling out behind Hero, we stalk to our bikes as the fire begins to burn the first floor of the abandoned house we used for our interrogation. Sliding onto the cool metal of my Harley, I pop the kickstand and turn on the ignition. My bike rumbles to life as I turn to watch the flames just one more time, before riding out with my brothers at my side.

As soon as we hit the road, the calmness I felt dissipates with each mile ticking away bringing me closer to the clubhouse and to finding Ricca. I knew before I even opened the clubhouse door, after Mexico, that she was gone. Call it a hunch or intuition, but I just knew. For weeks, she hinted at leaving so why should I be surprised that she took the first chance to bail. After what she’d been through, I couldn’t blame her, but I still wanted to know why. Why she ran after our one night together? Why she waited until I finally broke down her walls to stomp all over the progress we’d made in her past issues? Why she couldn’t give me a chance to help her learn to trust again?

All I wanted was a chance to prove to her that even though my monsters still lingered, that they would play nice with hers. She could hide her emotions from her time in Twisted Tribe’s dungeon, but she couldn’t hide from me. I could see through the façade and look beneath it to find the pain she had behind her beautifully haunted eyes. She was broken like me, and it only made my attraction to her stronger. Unlike other guys, I didn’t want to fix her. I wanted her just as she was, a tattered soul that understands me.

But everything would be for nothing, if I couldn’t track her down again. Voodoo had been hot on her trails for months, while I forced myself to stay behind to clean up Maj’s mess. Raze tried for weeks to make me go, but I wasn’t the kind of person who walked away from their duties and let someone else pick up the slack. Even with that beast of a guy named Thor that Raze called up from another chapter, it wasn’t enough to make me leave.

I still had a job to do and no one else was going to take my place.

But with Hog on his way to hell, I was free to find her.

And come hell or high water, she will be mine.

---