Page 110 of Gunner

It was likely still there. But there was something else I learned in horror movies. If you looked away, they disappeared.

So, I didn’t look away.

I backed up to the counter, used my hands to feel for the edge, and made my way around to where I had eaten my dinner while scrolling through my phone. Only it was no longer there. It had been knocked to the ground. I just prayed it hadn’t broken in the fall.

It took a few minutes to find where my phone had landed. I refused to take my eyes off the dead man in my living room for longer than a second. Yes, it was irrational to think he would come back to life. This wasn’t a movie. But I had just killed someone.

I wasn’t exactly in a rational state of mind.

Once I had the phone in my hand, I dialed the number of the one person I knew would do whatever he had to in order to protect me. One that wasn’t bound by morals and laws.

“Haizley, what’s wrong?”

How did he know?

Because you’ve never called him before, and you walked away from him.

“I… I… um found Greg.” I kept my voice low. Not wanting the dead man to hear me. Again, irrational.

There was a small pause before he asked, “Where is Greg, baby?”

With a shaky breath, I spoke the words that would change my life forever.

“Dead on my living room floor.”

Chapter Thirty

Zero

“Zero! You’re with me. Let’s go,” Gunner yelled as he ran out the front the door.

I didn’t know what had happened, but I didn’t hesitate. I would have my brothers back. I followed him out of the clubhouse and hopped on my bike, starting it up immediately.

With no idea where we were headed, I’d need to push my girl hard to stay with him. Hearing the rumble behind me, I turned and saw Cash, Ghost, Jingles, and King following behind me.

We rode through town into a small neighborhood. It finally sank in as to why I was needed, and six loud bikes roaring into a quiet neighborhood wasn’t going to help the situation. It would draw attention where we didn’t want any.

I was the club’s cleaner.

It was my job to make sure that when we had to step over the line, there was no trace that we had been there.

My road name was Zero because I left zero trace that anything nefarious had happened. It was my job to clean up any, let’s say, questionable scenes that could lead back to us.

King’s brother was the sheriff, and he did what he could to protect us, but if there was evidence, his hands were tied. I made sure there was never any evidence.

As a kid, I lived in filth. Despite being a single mom with unchecked mental health issues, Delia Brooks did what she could. It just wasn’t enough. She didn’t drink, and she didn’tdo drugs, thank God. But she also couldn’t hold down a job for longer than a few months.

She did what she could to keep a roof over our heads and food in our bellies, but that drained her both mentally and physically. She had nothing left to give as far as safety and security.

The oldest memory I had was when I was five years old, and she took me to the doctor after I had been bitten by a rat. I slept on a small mattress on the floor of our one-room apartment. Rats crawled over me every night. One night, I must have had food on my leg because I woke up screaming and had small bites on my thigh.

Mom spent the whole next day cleaning the small room. Unfortunately, it didn’t last. Within a week, the room was as bad as it had been before.

By the time I was ten, Mom had been sick for years. At school, we’d been learning the effects of mold on our environment and our bodies. That was when I realized someone needed to clean the house regularly and if she wouldn’t do it, I would have to.

So, I learned.

At some point it had become a stress reliever for me. I found it to be soothing. And until the first time I rode a motorcycle, that was how I lowered my tension. By cleaning. I was sure if Gunner’s woman analyzed me, she would diagnose me with OCD, obsessive-compulsive disorder.

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