Page 76 of Biker's Enemy
I don’t even know where I’m following her. We get to the top of the winding staircase and I have to convince myself to stop death-gripping the railing because I nearly slipped on the carpet twice on the way up.
“I think it came from that room,” Juliette says, bounding down the hallway towards a white door with a crystal handle left slightly ajar.
“Juliette!” I yell at her as she swings the door open when an armed killer could be in the room.
“Stand back!” Deb Shaw yells. I jump back into the doorway and I have to grab Juliette’s forearm so she doesn’t stumble immediately into the line of fire. Avery is still in her crib, which instantly calms my nerves. The bedroom window is wide open next to the crib.
I wouldn’t normally have noticed such an insignificant detail — it’s hot in this part of Missouri. But there’s a woman standing next to the open window with her hands up and her back pressed against the wall. The sheer white curtains billow around her, highlighting the open window and the woman’s likely entry point.
The second I catch sight of her face… I know who we’re dealing with. The gunshot hit the exterior wall and it must have gone straight through because there’s a tiny hole with light filtering through.
“It’s just a .22, but it can put a hole in a bitch’s head just as good as a shotgun can,” Deb says.
“That’s my baby, you bitch,” The woman says in a low, desperate voice.
I can’t help it, her voice tugs at my heartstrings. The rest of her sends chills down my spine. She looks like Avery. Now that I see her, I see how the baby doesn’t look like Tanner at all. She has blue eyes like her mother — exactly the same shape. The woman with her back pressed against the wall doesn’t look like she’s very young, but the story I heard about Tanner’s dad involved a young woman. I guess she looks older than her age.
For her age, she’s somewhat tall, not like that makes it any better. She also dresses like it’s about ten degrees warmer than it actually is, which shocks me because there’s barely any body fat on her. Lots of cuts though – and some of them look self-inflicted. My stomach turns. Anything that even remotely reminds me of the life I left behind makes me feel… sick and detached.
How did this girl end up with a bunch of gangsters? She has a busted lip and her hair looks like it hasn’t seen a brush in weeks. There are deep round sores at the crease of her elbow. I don’t know what those are from but they look weird…
The tattoo on her arm stops me from feeling sorry for how rough she looks. My stomach turns again for an entirely different reason.
I almost don’t want to believe what I’m seeing.
What the fuck? She literally has a swastika tattooed on her arm. I barely paid attention in history class, but I’ve seen enough movies to know that you don’t get that symbol tattooed without knowing what it means and without knowing that it means something fucked up beyond belief.
“I don’t care if it’s your baby,” Deb says. “I have another round in the chamber and if you move a muscle, I’ll paint her bedroom walls with her mother’s brains.”
I freeze in terror. I always assumed Southpaw got his terrifying demeanor from his biker dad, but clearly, he got at least a little bit of that heat from his mother. Juliette puts her hand in front of me to hold me back this time. None of us want to move.
“You dumbass,” Avery’s mother says. “If I know where you live, her daddy knows where she lives.”
“Her daddy is dead,” Deb says. “But not her family. If you want to live, you will listen to my instructions, little girl. You think you’re all tough with those tattoos, but I’ve been beating up whores like you since I learned how desperate you were for biker dick.”
“I’m not a whore,” she says. “I’m a respectable white person. I carry myself respectably. I don’t let niggers around me or my kids.”
She glares at Juliette and I, clearly trying to get a reaction out of us. It works on Juliette who flips Avery’s mom the middle finger, but I just purse my lips and try not to laugh. Deb Shaw might not care about this crazy hoe dropping the n-word, but I won’t let her get the upper hand by thinking she gets under my skin.
“What did you just say?” Deb says. “Because that doesn’t sound like something a respectable lady would say.”
“I said,” the girl says smugly. “They’re niggers.”
She screams. Loudly. Because Deb fires at the wall over her head. Two inches above her to be exact. She covers her ears and keeps screaming — clearly not hit, but maybe not aware of it. Juliette and I have our ears covered because we didn’t have any warning that Deb was going to actually shoot her. The gunshot nearly blows out my eardrums.
“Calm down,” Deb yells. “When I’m ready to put a bullet in your whore ass, I won’t leave any room for all that carrying on. Now shut the hell up.”
Thirty-Seven
CASH
Southpaw hasn’t stopped yelling for the past fifteen minutes. Every minute without Quin has been living hell. Now, she’s found some way to add to that mess. Ruger yells an incomprehensible string of insults at Darlene behind the door. She calls him the n-word. I hear the sound of furniture getting knocked around. He better not be whooping her again…
“ARE YOU LISTENING?” Southpaw yells.
He blames me, somehow, for Quin Nash’s deviant behavior. If she learned a fucking thing from living with me, she would have never done this.
“Yes, I’m listening,” I growl. “I don’t have the privilege of losing my fucking cool. I have to convince Ruger not to beat the shit out of a pregnant woman back there and now… this.”