Page 1 of Sleeper

1

SLEEPER

CIRCA 2008

Riding with the Royal Bastards had never been a question for me. Being a brother in the club came as naturally to me as breathing and working as a nurse. To a lot of people, the two lifestyles may not mesh, but for me it was the perfect mixture of benevolence and hell. Doing both kept me sane. By day, I was busy saving lives and pouring compassion into every bit of the care I gave people. Yet, when nighttime fell, it was like a switch was flipped and I did the complete opposite. I took lives. Occasionally the weight of the latter was heavier than others. Today was a heavy day.

As I stood over the body of a man whose name I didn’t care to remember, there was a lingering feeling inside that I wanted to get rid of. Despite the horrific things this dead piece of shit had done, I still held remorse for taking his life. Remorse he didn’t deserve. I didn’t regret killing him specifically, it was more the aftermath that bothered me. When someone laid lifeless, without even a milliliter of blood coursing through their veins, they looked helpless. Which, technically they were, I guess. Really a better word to describe them was hopeless. The thing was, he was hopeless long before I ever got a hold of the sack of crap. My brothers and I had been tracking this man for well over two months. He was a weaselly sneaky shit but the thing about predators was they have a type. Once you learned their pattern the rest was just a waiting game.

I knew the feeling all too well, because like him, I was a predator, too. However, the vast difference that set us apart was the fact I was a predator by nature, not choice. Maybe it was environmental, who knew? Where someone picked up every minute trait that made them who they were was hard to pinpoint. Scientists and doctors believed they were able to track a good deal of personality traits right down to a molecular level, but I remained skeptical about the data they collected for their results. The marginal slope allotted for human error wasn’t something I was entirely comfortable with when it came to the decisions I made. Just because I worked in the medical field didn’t mean I followed the research outcomes to a fault. Medicine wasn’t referred to an exact science for a reason.

Anyway, what or who had influenced this asshole to become who he was didn’t matter. He preyed on the unsuspecting and some of his victims were the holiest of women. The man had a list longer than at least forty-five women that he had assaulted but he was smart, so he never left enough evidence for the police to catch him, even though they were certain he was their suspect. That was how he landed on our radar. The local law wanted to see him pay for his sins and we weren’t called the Royal Bastards for nothing. Typically, we didn’t take on local problems, mostly because they weren’t ever this large. This was personal, though. His last victim worked at the hospital with me, and she was the nicest woman I had ever met. I was on shift when she was admitted on the floor. All it took was five minutes talking with her and then my mind was made up that whoever was responsible was going to pay. I took the subject to Ghoul and the rest of the brothers at the clubhouse at the end of my shift and we were in agreement. Whoever hurt her was going to pay with their life. Although, at the time I wasn’t aware he was a serial rapist. It wasn’t until a month had passed that we found out she wasn’t his first victim.

Wiley tipped his hat. “Fuck stick is gone. Good riddance,” he said as he kicked the man’s boot with his own.

“You said it, brother,” I agreed, eyeing his now blood covered leather gloves. “Man, you know you really should ditch those gloves, there’s a lot of DNA on there. If a lab were to ever run those things, you’d be locked up for the rest of your life.”

He shook his head in response. “Nah.” He flipped the remnants of blood off his gloves, and it splattered across the cement. “It’s part of who I am, and it makes me, me.” He shrugged his shoulders.

“I guess so, Wiley.” I kicked the guy’s boot just for good measure just as Wiley did only moments before me. Kicking the dead wasn’t something all of us did, but I did it when I thought about it. Although, I usually forgot. A couple of years back we thought a fucker was dead and we turned our backs on his body. Minutes later the same man tackled Sac and we had to go through the whole process of killing him again.

“You know I have a swing shift tonight?” I asked as I checked the time on my wristwatch. There was still six hours before I had to clock in, enough time to get my ass home and nap before I had to stay up all night.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Got to go save all those people,” he joked, with a wink.

“Yep.” When I wasn’t working on the med/surg unit, I almost pulled parttime hours patching up the guys. At the very least I spent enough time to fulfill a per diem job. Unless it was a life-or-death situation, we didn’t go to the emergency room for club related injuries. Hospital visits meant stuffing medical records with sensitive information that held the ability to lay all of our asses in the pen if it fell into the wrong hands. If I kept my brothers out of the hospital as much as possible there was less of a paper trail for prying eyes.

There were certain instances even the police didn’t have enough pull to clear us of, but so far, we’d found a way to dodge most of the serious charges. We didn’t see eye-to-eye with the law on a great deal of topics, but we understood each other. It took the copsandthe RBMC to keep Cleveland running like the well-oiled machine it was.

The nursing board was a different story all together. If I got one charge on my record, depending on the severity, they’d rip my license from me quicker than I was able to blink. Of course, lesser offenses like parking or speeding tickets weren’t things they sought disciplinary actions for, though. The rules the board set in place were mostly to keep people safe. No one wanted a nurse drugged out of their skull on heroin to take care of them. I didn’t anyway, but I guess I didn’t speak for everyone on the planet. The way I kept a level head about all of it was, what the board didn’t know didn’t hurt them. A no harm, no foul kind of situation.

My coworkers were aware I was a biker and after one or two lengthy conversations they stopped asking questions about my club and my involvement. Surprisingly, that even included my boss, despite her being a stickler for the rules. She customarily didn’t veer too far off the straight and narrow for anyone, but I guessed she left me alone because I was a damn good nurse. That opinion heavily depended upon if it wasn’t taken into account all medication, bandages, syringes, and random other supplies I was constantly stuffing my pockets with as I walked out the door. I took it as part of my pay. Working as a nurse in the United States didn’t pay nearly enough, unless you were a traveling nurse. I considered doing that for a while, but the further I embedded myself into the club, the more the opportunity didn’t fit what I needed anymore. I chose to stay in Cleveland with my brothers and take a smaller paycheck.

“Let’s get out of here,” he called over his shoulder, heading in the direction of our motorcycles.

“It’s done,” I told Tin Man after dialing his number, letting him know to send a cleanup crew.

“I got you, brother,” Tin Man responded in a knowing tone, before I ended the call.

“Are you coming or are you going to stand around and play with your dick all day?” Wiley asked as he straddled his bike and knocked the kickstand beneath his ride with his boot.

“Yeah, just tying up loose ends.” The tread of my boots ground against the gravel with the first step I took off the cement and my body soared forward like I was wearing a pair of roller skates. As fast as I was able, I flexed my opposing leg forward, barely catching my balance before I face-planted.

“Is that what you call that? Looks like a bunch of fucking around to me,” he guffawed, and I flipped him off.

“Looks like I’m going to beat your ass back to the clubhouse and you’re going to buy the first round tomorrow morning is what it looks like.” I ran toward him, hopping on my motorcycle as I finished my sentence and started it in a hurry.

“You’re on, brother,” Wiley yelled over his engine’s roar when he turned his key.

While we zipped through the outskirts of Cuyahoga County, I was a good car length ahead of him. When we had almost reached our clubhouse Wiley motioned his hand to his left. Of course, I slowed my speed to see where he was pointing. There was absolutely not a damned thing, the fucker whizzed past me like I was standing still.

My tires screeched to a halt just as his feet touched the ground. “Dirty trick, Wiley,” I said, shaking my head and killing my motor.

“If you weren’t out sightseeing you would have beat me here.” His body shook with silent laughter.

“Sightseeing my ass, I thought something was wrong.”

“Something was.”

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