Kale, p.3
Kale, page 3
part #2 of Texas Kings MC Series
I turned around and looked at the people on the ground behind me. I stared at the driver for a second and he defiantly stared back at me.
“John. Grab his phone. Find a listing for a wife or something. Whatever number he calls most. Pretend there’s been an accident and get her here now.”
Before John could get any closer to him, the driver yelled out, “No! I’ll tell you how to get in to them.”
“Yeah. I thought you might.”
John yanked the man up and half drug him to the truck. They spoke for just a second and then John was jumping up into the back of the trailer. I gave it just a minute and then John jumped back down. I turned to see that Mattie was still covering the people on the ground and I walked toward John. My brothers and I all met him in the middle of the yard.
“There are seven girls in there. One can’t be more than ten years old, man.” John shook his head and looked back at the truck. “Jenna’s not in there.”
“Can one of our guys drive that truck?” John shook his head at Bird’s question. “We’ll leave the girls in there for now while I think of a plan. We can’t have them see all of us, or what I’m pretty sure we are about to do. Go in there and tell them we’re here to help them but they just have to be patient.”
John turned around to head back to the truck as Lout drug the driver back into the wash bay.
I addressed the people on the ground, all of whom were staring at me, most of them were crying silently. One man wasn’t in tears. He looked angry and defiant. He was going to be my very favorite.
“I’m going to give all of you the opportunity to tell me where the fuck my sister is at right this moment. Now, all of you are going to fucking die today, but the winner of this game gets to go quickly. The rest of you who don’t give me lots and lots of information, well, we’ll take turns doing whatever the fuck sounds good at the time until you finally die. It could take hours. Until I find my baby sister, I’ve got nothing but time on my hands.” I turned to the prospect who had just come back into the bay. “Go get my tool box out of the Bronco, please. Now, people. Ready? Go!”
The bay echoed with their voices, each one trying to explain, deny or beg. I looked at the defiant one for a second. He stared me in the eyes, not flinching.
“Lout.” I turned to look at the large black man as he walked toward me. “Figure out which truck he is from and find me a nice long list of other people I can kill before I start on him. See if you can find his phone. I’ll get his Mom or his Old Lady Over here, work on them until he starts to talk. He looks a little like he’s not going to cooperate. I can’t have that, now can I?”
I watched the man’s eyes go wide as Lout turned to him and smiled broadly. “I can do that. I’ll go ahead and get the personnel files from the office too. See if some of them have a few emergency contacts listed. We can just have a family event up here today.”
“The truck is gone. It has a stop in Clovis. Scheduled to be partially unloaded at 6 tonight. Then it will go to Roswell to drop more. Final destination is El Paso.”
I tilted my head at the company’s owner as he spoke, his wife screaming at him not to tell me anything. “What is the truck number and the drivers name?”
“Truck 6926. The driver is our son. Since I told you, let my wife and kid live.”
I shot his wife in the leg. She fell sideways and knocked him down with her as she screamed in pain.
“No.”
“Now, tell me who you are working for.”
O=O=O
We found the truck just outside of Roswell when the driver pulled into a rest stop and went into the bathroom. When he got back up into his cab I was sitting on the bench seat behind him so we could have a discussion about his future. He helped us open the hidden compartment in the trailer. I found my baby sister tied up and gagged, a black cover on her head, she was crammed into a space no bigger than a closet with eleven other women.
I pulled her to me and removed the cover but left her gag in until we got out of the trailer. I didn’t want her to call any of us by name in front of the other girls.
When I asked her which ones of the women in the truck were her friends she sobbed and told me that they were both dead. One had died of an overdose while the other was killed after the four men who had taken them raped her. I untied her and worked the circulation back into her hands.
“Did they hurt you, baby? Do we need to get you to a doctor?” She shook her head rapidly.
“No. He knew I was a virgin. When we were on a date and talked about sex I told him that I wasn’t going to have sex with him. I told him he didn’t have a chance. He laughed and said that was fine with him. I just thought he was a nice guy who was willing to wait. He told me when he put me in the truck that I was lucky I didn’t put out. I would be worth more money. I want to kill him!”
“He’s still alive if you want to do that, sweetheart. I can save him for you.”
“He killed my friends. He sold me, Kale. I want to do it.” She put her head down and cried as I held her to my chest. “I thought he was a nice guy. But he told me not to tell you guys about him yet. I should have known. I’m so stupid. I want to kill him. Let me do it.”
“Think about it on the drive home, baby. You don’t have to make that decision right now. I’m going to let them stew for a little bit. We need to ask them some questions.”
“Okay. I’m sorry, Kale. I’m so sorry!”
“Baby, you didn’t do a fucking thing wrong. You have nothing to be sorry for. Let’s just get you home.”
I held her as she sobbed. I nodded my head at Lout and he yanked the driver away by his hair. He drug him to the van the prospect had driven behind us and forced him to his knees. He pulled some zip ties out of his pocket and bound the driver’s hands. He forced the gag I had pulled from Jenna into the man’s mouth and then covered his head with the hood she had been wearing. I saw Lout stand him up and bash his head into the side panel of the van before he tossed him into the back floorboard and shut the door.
Bird and a few other men were silently carrying the women out of the hidden section of the trailer and handing them down to the men on the ground. The women were taken into the bathroom of the rest stop and settled in there, never knowing who was moving them.
I called Bear, one of the prospects who had ridden in the van, over to me. He was the same man who had driven the truck of women and girls this morning when we dropped them all off at a rest stop right outside of Rojo. We left them with a brand-new burner phone to call for help and then we all disappeared. While I spoke to Bear, my sister still sobbing in my arms, we watched the guys close the truck up and get it ready to move.
“Start toward El Paso. Chandler will call you with details of where to drop the truck. We’ll have a ride arranged home for you.” Bear nodded his head. He took his cut off and handed it to Lout who then folded it and put it in the saddlebag of his bike.
Without another word Bear got into the truck and drove off into the night.
“Sweetheart let’s get you in the van, so we can take you home.”
“No! I want to stay with you. Let me ride with you.” Jenna clutched me even tighter. “Please don’t leave me, Kale.”
O=O=O
We pulled into my parents garage at 6:05 in the morning, less than twenty-four hours after I got the first call about my sister.
Bird had called my parents and let them know we were headed back to town. I saw that the lights in the house were on, they were waiting on us to bring their baby girl to them.
Daughtry and Bird went into the house to talk to Mom and Dad for a second as Clem tried to talk Jenna into getting off my bike. She still had her arms wrapped tightly around my stomach and wouldn’t let go even though the bike was parked and shut off.
“Sissie. Come on. Let’s get you inside to Mama.” Clem was standing beside us, I could see that he was brushing her hair back from her forehead. “Come on, baby girl.”
I looked up to see our Mom walking out into the garage. Her face was dry now, but I could tell she had been crying.
She put a hand on my cheek. She put her other hand on Clem’s face. “You took care of the problem, boys?”
“Yes, Mama. Still a few to deal with but we have to talk to them first. She said she wants to take care of them herself.”
“Okay. You can let her. Your Daddy will take care of whatever she leaves. You’re my good boys.” She patted our cheeks once before she took her hand down and touched Jenna’s hair.
“Come on, love. Let’s get you inside. Your brothers need sleep.” Jenna moved away from my back at our Mom’s words. She let Clem help her off the bike and then she walked into the house with our mother’s arm around her shoulders.
Jenna would be better with our Mom beside her. Our Mom was the strongest woman I knew. She had a shit life before she had kids and for a few years after. She moved herself to Rojo with Clem and Bird while running from her abusive husband. When he caught up to her she made sure he would never bother her again. She married Smokey a few years later and raised me and Daughtry as if we had always been hers. A few years after that, she gave birth to our baby sister, Jenna. She treated us fairly and equal whether she gave birth to us or not. She, along with our father, taught us right from wrong. She and our father also taught us that sometimes you have to do wrong to make things right.
In the eyes of the law my brothers and I had done a lot of wrong in these in the last twenty-four hours. Tomorrow we would do more, and my sister might join us. I knew our father would.
But to men in our way of life, and our family, what we had done and the blood we had spilled was the only way to make things right.
3.
O=O=O=O=O=O
TERRA
I propped myself up in my bunk and carefully pulled out the letter I had just received from my friend Lisa. It had been a little more than two weeks since I had seen her and her new man when they came to the prison to visit me.
A few years ago, Lisa had come to prison as a scared young girl. She was a tiny little thing with a bright halo of blonde curls and a terrified expression on her face. I did something that was entirely unlike me. I walked up and spoke to her out of the blue. From then on, we were friends. I protected her as best I could for the years she was here, and I’ll admit that even though I was happy for her when she got out, I was sad that she was leaving me.
She wrote me regularly for a while and then the letters stopped. After a year or so they started back up and she explained the hell she had been through since she had last written. I was glad to hear that now she had a life that most of us girls could only dream of. A nice house, a loving man and a sweet baby of her own.
As I unfolded the pages a stack of photos fell out. I grabbed them up and flipped through them slowly. The picture of her baby girl brought tears to my eyes.
Lisa had propped the baby up on a pillow with a note beside her that said, “Can’t wait to meet you, Auntie Terra!”
I stared at the photo for a long time. Lisa’s baby girl, Brighten, was beautiful. The picture showed her white blonde hair with little curls on the top of her head. Her eyes were stunning. One of them was bright blue and the other a mossy green. Her little lips were puckered, and one hand was pressed into her cheek.
She was dressed in a little black onesie with words in bright pink that said, “My Daddy is a Knight, My Godfather is a King, I am the Princess” across the front of it. She had on little pink socks and a pink bow stuck to the side on the top of her head.
I could feel my ovaries waking up to say hello.
The next picture was of two little kittens, one calico and the other a dark gray, laying on top of a large dog. They were in the grass, the sun shining down on them. I could see chair legs and boots in the perimeter of the pictures. All of the boots were those big, black, motorcycle boots that the hot bad boys wore in high school.
I remember noticing that Zeke, Lisa’s man, was wearing boots like that when he came in with her for their visits.
Sweet little Lisa was with a bad boy biker. She said she had one for me to pass some time with when I got out of here. I might just take her up on that offer if he looked anything like her man.
The next picture was of a man leaned back all the way in a recliner, Brighten curled up asleep on his chest, his hand up resting on her little butt. The calico kitten was laying farther down on his leg, the gray kitten was curled up next to the large man’s head. I looked closer to see if that was Zeke, her little girls Daddy, but I couldn’t tell. I had only met him twice and hadn’t really had that much time to study his features.
The man in the picture was damn sure handsome though, I could see that much. His arms were covered in tattoos from his knuckles all the way up to where the t-shirt stretched across his bicep. His profile showed a strong, clean shaven jaw. His lips were parted just a little bit in sleep, but they looked like they were full and just a little bit pouty. His brows were dark as was the hair falling around his face.
Whoever this man was, even in sleep he was sexy. I smiled to myself as I hoped that wasn’t her man but instead it was the one she picked out for me.
The last picture showed the stairs leading up to an apartment on top of a garage. There were potted plants on every other stair, their bright blooms giving the otherwise boring metal a cheerful appearance.
After studying the pictures for every little detail, I sat them aside and opened the letter. Lisa wrote about the pictures, explaining that those were her kittens on top of her best friend’s dog. They were laying in the yard together at a family picnic. The apartment was the one Lisa lived in before she moved into Zeke’s house with Brighten. This was the apartment that Lisa assured me was mine as soon as I could get to Texas.
Lisa didn’t mention who was sleeping with the baby in the chair, so I had to assume it was Zeke, Lisa’s man.
A postscript at the bottom of the letter gave me the address for Zeke’s friend Kale. Underneath that was a short note from Lisa that said, ‘Write to him and get to know him. Let him get to know you. Both of you are beautiful inside and out – I want the two of you to see the inside before you know about the outside. No details about your looks from either of you. Promise?’
I laughed at her suggestion. So, that means he’s ugly as a dog’s butt, right? I shrugged as I picked the pictures up from the bed. I could still make a new friend, looks didn’t really matter all that much to me. If I got to know the guy through letters and then saw him and was disappointed, that reflected on my personality, not him.
I heard the first buzzer warning that line up was coming and dinner was soon to follow. I folded the letter back up and put it in the envelope with the pictures. I notched the letter in between two of the books on my little shelf so I could look at it again when I was finished eating.
I straightened my blanket and pillow and then walked to the door of my cell to get ready for the second buzzer announcing it was time to line up for chow.
As I waited patiently, I pictured myself walking up those stairs, looking at the beautiful flowers as I made my way up to my apartment.
The vision changed in just a second to me walking up the stairs to my apartment, the man from the recliner was in the doorway. He was shirtless with a smile on his face, waiting for me to reach him.
As the buzzer rang, I noticed there was a new spring in my step. Six months. Only six months left, and I could meet him at the top.
O=O=O
KALE
“Anything big happen last night?” I was sitting at the bar in the clubhouse having a beer with my brother, Clem. It had been two weeks since we had rescued our sister and in that time, I had worked nonstop trying to find out more details about the group that had kidnapped her and the other girls. Clem had been taking up the slack at the bars we owned so that I could focus my new task.
“Not too much. Had a customer get handsy with one of the girls at The Slipper. Bear was bouncing and got a little too rough. Broke the dude’s jaw. He’s not gonna sue but we’re gonna have to pay his bills for a while.”
“It’d be cheaper to kill him.” I said with a sigh. “Who said we’d pay for his medical shit?”
“Marcus said we had to. Made a deal with him. Fucker’s a lawyer.” Clem uttered that word like the gravest of insults. Lawyer.
“I know Marcus is our lawyer, numb nuts. Why did he make a deal?”
“Fuck you. Not Marcus. The broke jaw guy. He’s a fucking lawyer. Doesn’t want his shit all over that he was in a strip club getting handsy. Married to some rich chick.” Clem reached behind the bar to grab another beer out of the trough. He looked at me and raised an eyebrow. I nodded, and he plopped a fresh beer down in front of me.
“Maybe since we’re making nice he can help us out in the future. Once his jaw heals he won’t want it broken again.” Lout, one of our club brothers, was sitting next to me on my other side. He laughed at my not so veiled threat. “Did you store the video feed?”
“Yeah, I handled it last night. Got three good angles. You been by to see Zeke and the new baby again yet?” Clem asked me after taking a long draw of his beer.
Clem and Lout had both been at the welcome home party the girls had arranged for Zeke, Lisa and their little baby girl, Brighten, when we got home a few weeks ago.
Clem and Daughtry had hogged her attention for at least an hour, not letting any of the rest of us hold her while they made up for the time Bird and I had with her in Utah before we came home.
“Yeah. Got by there this morning.” Lout laughed out loud at my comment.
“I was by there this morning while he was there. Lisa said he goes by there at baby girls’ nap time. Picks her up, walks her to the chair and they pass out for a while. Little girl needs a hearing check, sleeping through his snoring.” Lout chuckled. “Lisa said that in the afternoons Bird comes by and does the same shit.”
“Bright Eyes is the best chick to hang out with. She doesn’t talk too much. She doesn’t want money. She doesn’t nag or give me shit. Most of the time she smells good. I like her.” I shrugged as Clem and Lout laughed at me. “She’s the perfect female.”
