Page 38 of My Three S**y Bikers

“No doubt Mel locked her door, like I told her to do. We won’t be too long. There’s a bar just across the street.”

He didn’t need much more encouragement as he led the way. It was a welcome distraction, because people were dancing outside and drinking as if they didn’t have a care in the world.

I smiled at a couple who were kissing, and for some reason, I thought of Mel. I imagined the night she’d stayed over, I remembered the kiss we shared, and became lost in my thoughts.

“You coming in or what?” Scar asked as he walked in and I stood like an idiot watching the couple like a perv.

“Sure. Wait up.”

I jogged inside. The music was too loud, and the crowd even louder. I decided that coming here wasn’t a good idea.

Scar seemed to think so, too. “We’ll get beers, smoke and talk outside.”

I nodded in agreement, and after Scar gave me his cigarettes, I headed outside. We’d spent all day and night planning the rescue for the last three days and I hadn’t even had a meal during that time. I had my friend who is a hacker make sure we took enough cash out so we wouldn’t be traced. If Randy was fucking Steel, like Paul said he was, then we could easily be traced by our cells and money withdrawals. We’d sketched our route to this motel with a pen and hadn’t used the GPS on our phones, which we left at home once we had a lead on where they were being held captive.

The guns had been provided by another friend, and then we had our plan. We knew things took time, but we were scared shitless we could be too late. When day turned to night the second time, Scar had questioned when we’d make our move.

Coming out, he handed me the beers and a bag of chips, and I realized I hadn’t eaten all day yet again.

“I figured you must be hungry,” said Scar. “So I bought these, too. I know we don’t know how long we’ll be here, and how long the dough will last, but we have to eat, right?”

I nodded. We’d spent a lot of money on clothes and food for Dwayne and Mel, which had been silly because we could have taken some from the house before we left. That was the one part of the plan I’d fucked up. All I’d thought of was moving forward, but it didn’t matter. I’d budgeted that we would be here for at least a week. We should have remembered her things, but we’d been so caught up in rescuing her that we hadn’t thought it all through properly. Or maybe, we had, but our mind was only on one thing, making sure they were both safe.

I assumed a week was as long as we needed, but I could be wrong. I put in all precautions to make sure we were well covered. I supposed I hadn’t thought the barn would be as heavily guarded as it was, otherwise I wouldn’t have brought Scar with me, but Greyson instead. His uncle, Greyson, might be older and a lot heavier than he’d been back in the Navy, but he still had it in him and his skills should never be underestimated, not even by someone like me.

“I’ve shot someone before. I’ve never confessed that to anyone.”

Scar’s confession surprised me, because I’d wondered why he was taking everything so lightly.

“I made out that my stepdad killed himself after he shot mom, but that wasn’t the truth. It wasn’t the only reason I came looking for Dad. I was running.”

“Running?”

I took a swig of the beer, thinking that for someone like Scar, killing a man was a significant matter. I had done it so many times in the Navy, that when I began to experience PTSD, it affected me badly.

“My stepdad was never trying to kill Mom. He was trying to kill me. He broke a bottle just to scar me, then as he spun me around, I fucking kicked him and tried to push him off me. Mom used the gun as a warning to shoot him.” His eyes were wide as if he were reliving his worst nightmare.

“Fuck man! You never said all this before…”

“I wanted to kill him, then he grabbed the gun and shot her. I ran up to him with all the anger in the world, and the gun in his hand went up and if he shot himself. But my hand was over his…and there was no safety.”

Shit, this thing was deep.

“But it was mom’s fault. After he lost his job the year before, his abuse got even worse. I didn’t know why he lost it,” Scar continued bitterly, “but he became more violent and drank as a result. Maybe, Mom thought he would get a new job and be great, like he was before. He was never a saint. He wasn’t the monster he became, but he was never completely innocent. At the point she saw what he’d become, she should have left, but she stayed. My only comfort was knowing I would be away in college soon.”

We were in the dark, away from the loud music, but I could tell Scar was hurting from the skeletons in his past. I did the thing anyone would do in his position, listening to his nightmares. I hugged him.

And he cried in my arms. His disappearing acts, his strange behavior since Mel came onto the scene, it all made sense.

Later, I’d encourage him to tell her the truth about what happened, so she could make sense of it all. For now, all I did was hold him as he cried in my arms.

20

LUCKY

It had been four days since Playboy had left, and Greyson had told me more than once, “No news is good news. He ain’t going to come back here. Maybe not for a week, unless we give him a sign he could come back.”

I was just about to pick up the phone once I saw Frank was calling, but Steel stormed into the club.

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