Rising Heat (7 page)

“I was out late last night, just barhopping, you know, the regular Friday night drill. Trying to meet some women.”

“Any luck?” I asked, moving toward the couch and sitting down at the other end. Alice was fine for now.

“I struck out, but who the fuck cares. I wasn’t much in the mood for conversation, you know? Just looking to get my rocks off.” He grinned his shit eating grin. “But you know when push comes to shove…”

I nodded. It wouldn’t be the first time either one of us had solicited a prostitute, or when prospects were even worse, taken things into our own hand. Come to think of it, I hadn’t had sex in months, but until I met Kathy last night, I hadn’t given it much thought.

But dammit, I’m thinking of it now.

I turned to Bones. “I’m seriously thinking of selling this place and heading to one of my other places.”

He snorted. “Don’t blame you. Same here.”

“You still thinkin’ of leaving the gang too?”

He nodded. “It’s time.”

Like me, Bones was considered the black sheep of his family. Not because he had contributed to anyone’s death like I had, but because he’d resisted family pressure to become a doctor. Not just any doctor, but a specialist. Cardiology to be precise. His father was a nationally respected cardiologist. His uncle, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather had also practiced medicine. In fact, Bones had once told me that there was a physician in the family dating back to the 1700s. Naturally, it was expected of him as well, as the only child, to also follow in his family’s footsteps.

Bones had rebelled. After going through two years of medical school, he had finally put his foot down. He told his father he wasn’t sure exactly what he wanted to do, but he knew it wasn’t being a doctor. Which was a lie.

Actually, Bones didn’t have a problem with practicing medicine, but he didn’t want to focus on cardiology. Even I had been surprised when he told me he had been thinking of becoming a pediatrician. A kid doctor? Looking at Bones, you wouldn’t think he had an affinity for kids. He didn’t look like the Mr. Rogers type.

Bones was like that though, a chameleon. Depending on his mood, and even his clothing, one might get any number of impressions about who or what he was. Put him in a suit and he looked like a damn fine professional: banker, accountant, teacher, or hell, even a funeral director.

Put him in tattered jeans and a t-shirt and he looked like your average blue-collar construction worker. Take off his shirt and put him in swim trunks and you’d think he was a surfer dude. In jeans and a black leather jacket, you’d think he was a troublemaker, a wannabe gang banger. But Bones was much more than that. He could be a badass, but only when it was expected. Inside, Bones was a lot like me. Looking for something but not sure what. He could fight, and often had, but he was never the instigator.

Maybe that’s why Bones and I had become such good friends. I didn’t try to fit him into any peg hole. He was who he was. I knew he was well off too, not that I had access to his bank records. But our backgrounds, at least family wise, was fairly similar. That was probably another reason why we were such good friends. We understood each other.

“What’s going through your mind, Ash? Any regrets?

I scoffed. “Can’t count that high, but about leaving? Just one. Wished I’d done it sooner.”

“Yeah me too.”

“Any shit going around about me?”

He shrugged. “A couple of have mentioned they haven’t seen you around lately. Mops asked me the other day where you were.”

“What’d you tell him?”

Bones gave me a look. “I told him what I’m telling you right now. I’m not your babysitter. You can do as you damn please and I couldn’t give a flying—”

I laughed. Bones grinned. “Okay, I get it.” He took the last swig of beer from the bottle and placed it on the coffee table.

I gave him a look. He laughed again as he picked up the bottle and put it on top of the latest issue of Newsweek. He sat quietly for several moments, and I just sat there too. I knew that sooner or later, Bones would get to the point of his visit. In the meantime, I wanted to talk to him about Kathy. I didn’t know why, maybe just to gauge his reaction.

“That lady that came over with the snake tank…”

After several seconds, Bones took the bait. “What about her?”

“She wasn’t at all what I expected. I asked her out.” That got his attention.

“You serious?”

“She wasn’t what I expected,” I repeated, sounding lame even to myself.

“You already said that.” He stared. “Is she a knockout or something?”

I shrugged. “Not really.” Bones looked confused. “Don’t get me wrong. She’s pretty. But a girl-next-door pretty. Not all fake this and fake that or slathered in makeup.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“She’s the exact opposite of the type I’ve gone out with before.”

“So why did you ask her out?”

“Hell if I know.”

Bones lifted a shoulder. “Oh well, maybe a little distraction would do you good. You’ve been wound pretty tight the past few weeks.”

“And with good reason.”

He nodded. “Which brings me to the reason for my visit.”

I glanced from him to Alice, who had wrapped herself into a tight coil. My gut tightened too as I waited for him to spill.

“I got a message tonight,” he finally said.

Alarms clanged in my head. I didn’t scare easy, but I wasn’t a fool either. “What kind of message?” He didn’t even have to tell me who it was from. I instinctively knew.

“The kind thrown through a window tied to a rock.”

Shit. The Biker Boys. “What did it say?”

“I could only make out half of it. I recognized Spider’s chicken scratch. The part I could make out said, ‘tongue cut out.’”

It didn’t take much interpretation to figure out what the rest of the message must’ve said. Keep your mouth shut or get your tongue cut out. Six months ago, I would’ve scoffed at such a threat. Today? Not so much. The up-and-coming leadership in the gang was out to prove themselves. Much like traditional gang behavior, leadership roles in the gang depended on how much the members respected you.

“Any sign of Digger lately?”

Digger was the leader of the gang. Mops was his second-in-command, and the third man down the ladder was Spider. They’d all grown increasingly violent in a relatively brief time. Spider was bat-shit crazy. Seriously. He was a narcissistic psychopath who didn’t care about anyone but himself. Much to my disdain, the three had been taking the gang down a road that I wanted nothing to do with.

Rumors of prostitution. Rape. The hint of a murder or two, and drugs. Most disgusting to me were the whispers of the developing relationship between the gang and one of the Mexican cartels down south. Human trafficking. That had been the last straw for me.

It had started when the old gang leader, Stubbs, had gotten arrested and sentenced to ten years for some past sins. Then his second-in-command, Digger, had taken over, but he brought in two new guys from out of nowhere: Spider and Mops. No one I’d talked to knew anything about them or their histories. That they were bad dudes was becoming quickly apparent. Screw ‘em.

I’d pretty much grown out of the need for “camaraderie” anyway. I was going on thirty years old. Time to grow up. Time to take a damn good look at myself and figure out what the hell I wanted out of life. This wasn’t it. So, without a word, I turned my back on them. Stayed away from their hunting grounds. Kept to myself. I ended up in the foothills a lot, just pissing the days away thinking.

And it wasn’t just me. For the past year or so, a member has disappeared every couple of weeks. Just melted away into the darkness. Never to be seen again.

Unfortunately, I, like Bones, knew what the gang was getting into. Not much, but enough to get those three top assholes into some deep shit. While the hierarchy of the Outlaws prevented
all
of the members from knowing
all
of the details regarding
all
of their activities, gossip, rumors, and bits and pieces of conversation overheard made it clear that everyone was pretty much aware of what was going on, even if they didn’t know the details.

The problem was, knowing such details and leaving the gang didn’t actually coincide with each other. Digger hadn’t hesitated to threaten me before, especially when I expressed my “displeasure” over the direction he was taking the gang. It wasn’t like I’d put in a request for retirement or submitted an official termination notice. I had simply quit showing up at the gang’s main hangout at a bar in southeast Denver.

“Sarge told me to tell you to watch your back.”

I turned to him. Sarge? I didn’t know much about Sarge. A quiet man. One of those quiet ones that you knew… just
knew…
you didn’t want to mess around with. He was a watcher. For him to pass along a message, a warning…?

But I should have known. After a several day absence, I’d been driving through downtown, not far from my loft, when I’d spotted Spider on his motorcycle, following me.

While I was pretty certain that none of the gang knew where I lived, I wanted to keep it that way. I pulled into a parking lot and waited for Spider. After he asked where I’d been the past few days, I told him that I was moving on. Spider wasn’t happy. Told me that Digger and Mops wouldn’t be happy either.

I didn’t give a shit about any of them, and couldn’t care less about their state of happiness. Spider had left me with an idle threat that if anyone even got a hint that I was talking about the gang with others, I would pay. I merely stared at him, not reacting, not showing any fear. Not that I
was
afraid, because I wasn’t. But I wasn’t stupid. I knew that Spider was serious, and I was incurring the wrath of the gang leadership by leaving.

I turned to Bones. “Man, sorry about the troubles. Hope they don’t go through you to get to me.” It was no secret that Bones and I were close friends. Maybe only one message was necessary, knowing that it would ultimately be delivered to me too.

“No problem. Just more incentive for me to make my move sooner rather than later.”

“Have you seen any of them?” I asked.

Bones shrugged. “Here and there. Last week I got the impression that I was being followed. Every time I hear a motorcycle now I try to place it.” He looked at me. “I don’t have to tell you, Ash, that I don’t like having to look over my shoulder every minute. Whether they’re just blustering or whether their intensions are more serious, I have no idea, but I’ll tell you, I’ve been pretty on edge lately just thinking about it.”

That was the thing I liked most about Bones. He was honest. He wasn’t afraid to admit fear. We’d had a few close calls on our bikes over the years; a few spills, nothing terribly serious. We’d also been involved in several fights, not only with other Biker Boys, but other gangs in the Denver area. We didn’t scare easy, neither one of us, but we watched our backs.

“So what are you thinking? You leaving town?”

He shrugged. “I have a third cousin up in Fort Collins. I was thinking it wouldn’t be a bad idea to go up and visit for a week or two while I figure out what I want to do.”

He glanced around at the interior of the loft, at the snake, and then at me. I had put down more roots here in Denver than Bones. He rented an apartment in Aurora but I owned this loft. I had Alice. And finally someone I might be interested in.

But I wasn’t ready to pull up stakes just yet. I wanted to see where this thing with Kathy might go. Not that I had high hopes or expectations, but I was curious. It’d been such a long while since I had been attracted to anyone. To be brutally honest, I was sick of being alone.

“You do what you gotta do, man,” I said. “No apologies, no explanations. If you feel it’s right, do it. If you need to stay at one of my places, just let me know. I’ll overnight a key anytime, anywhere.”

He made a few throat clearing noises. “You know, Ash, I think I’m sick of all this. Maybe it’s time for me to settle down. Find someone. Do something.” He chuckled. “You know, it’s one thing to act like a rebel when you’re in your teens and twenties, but getting close to thirty? Act like that after you’re thirty and I say you’re nothing but a loser, right?”

I grinned. I had been thinking much the same. I was getting rather sick of not having something to live for, to work for. I had a shit load of money. I could be putting it to much better use. Bones was right. I was getting too old for this shit. Time to grow up and act like a man, make something of my life. Be proud of myself.

Which brought me right back to thoughts of Kathy. What if someday I did find a woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with? What could I offer her? Money sure. But the life of a rebel? I couldn’t be antisocial forever. Well, I could, but did I want to? Problem was, I wasn’t passionate about anything. At least I didn’t think so. I hadn’t exactly been in the right frame of mind for the past decade to think beyond my own interest in wallowing in self-pity. Blaming everyone but myself for my own misery. This had nothing to do with the accident, but with my reaction to it.

“Done being a loser, my friend. Time to move on.”

Bones grinned again and slowly stood. “Better late than never.” He held out his hand. I stood and shook it, and he pulled me into a brief man hug, ending with a slap on the back. I didn’t have to tell him what a good friend he was to me. He knew it. He also knew that he could count on me if he ever needed anything.

“Gimme a call, let me know how things are going.”

He gave me a little salute as he headed for the front door. As he turned the knob and opened it, he looked over his shoulder. “Watch your back, Ash.”

And he was gone. I stared at the door for several moments and turned toward the snake enclosure. I don’t think I would ever look at Alice again without thinking of Kathy. Why should such a brief meeting with a woman who was my complete opposite capture my attention so? I couldn’t figure it out.

As I focused on setting up the enclosure and transferring Alice to her temporary home, I wondered if it was such a good idea to take Kathy out, even for coffee. It would be a dick move to stand her up though. I’d just wait and see what happened tomorrow.