She was probably ticked at her man because he hadn’t changed that too, when the woman had two working legs, two working arms, and all ten fingers were functioning, and she could change the damned bulb.
She stopped and looked through the dark, right at him.
“Well fuck me,” she said snidely. “You got balls after all.”
Okay.
He was done.
He lifted the gun in his hand, aimed and pulled the trigger.
She fell flat on what was left of her face. Dead before she hit the ground, the barely filled white plastic bag of garbage drifting to the ground at her side like a big, sad, deflated balloon.
Chew pulled out his little Maglite, searched the ground, found the casing, picked it up with his gloved hand and palmed it. The metal was too hot for him to pocket just yet.
He’d dump it somewhere nowhere near there.
He saw a light go on next door, doused his Mag, shoved the flashlight in his back pocket, turned and slipped through the gate.
He stayed close to the shadows cast by the back fences in the alley until he hit the street where Harrietta’s car was parked.
He got in, started it up and drove off like he had nowhere to be.
And he did all of this not thinking of the body he’d just left behind.
Not that first thought.
Harrietta
Harrietta Turnbull listened to the phone ring.
Then she listened to what she’d heard a fucking million times over the last coupla months.
“You got Rush. I know you, leave a message. You’re tryin’ to sell me something, fuck off.”
Beep.
“You want to talk to me, asshole,” she bit into the phone. “Call me back.”
Then she took it from her ear, hit the button to disconnect and threw it across the room.
The phone slammed into the wall and dropped to the floor.
Tarantulas all over the place scattered.
She shivered at the sight despite having seen it a fucking gazillion times over the last too many fucking years.
“Where is that asshole? It’s fucking four in the morning,” she snapped at her phone on the floor.
Goddamn it, it had to be Chaos that took Chew down.
If Chaos was behind it, the years he’d rot in prison would eat him alive.
He’d hate it, motherfucking hate it, if she gave him to that girl. That Tallulah. It’d drive him crazy if some pussy turned him over to the cops.
And it was getting tough to string that bitch along.
She wanted done with porn, Valenzuela, the whole gig.
Harrietta didn’t blame her.
She wanted done with all that shit too.
But it had to be Chaos.
Harrietta didn’t think on the fact she took it in stride that not only had Chew been stepping out on her, stepping out with a girl that was only slightly older than Harrietta’s own daughter, a daughter Chew helped raise (if you could call it that) then got murdered, but also, he’d ended up getting rough with her (his norm, the sick fuck) and killed the snatch.
No, she didn’t think about what it meant, taking that in stride.
She had to admit, it sort of stung the bitch was a porn star junkie with a cunt so used, half the skeeves in America had seen it in close-up.
But even if he didn’t do it, he was going down for Cammy’s murder.
He was also going down for that other bitch, Natalie’s murder, and he didn’t do that either.
And he was going down for the porn junkie’s murder, something he did do (she was relatively sure seeing as those two cops that kept showing at her other place told her his fingerprints and DNA were all over the scene, cripes, how stupid could the dickhead be?).
Last, he was going down for killing whoever those two skulls belonged to that had been in the body bag with that Natalie chick, and Harrietta didn’t even know who those sad, dead fucks were. She just knew Chew did and it had something to do with his years with Chaos.
Oh yeah.
He was going to go down for them too.
Harrietta was going to see to it he took the fall for all of it, went away for good, not that first shot at getting out.
And she was going to see to it that not only Chaos took him down, but in the end, he’d know it was her that brought him low.
So, Rush fucking Allen had to return her fucking calls.
Or she was going to have to figure something else out.
The door opened and she turned to see Chew walk in.
Christ, she couldn’t even stand the sight of him.
She thought that, but she didn’t think about the fact he now had to hang in this pisshole, what he called his “safe house,” but she actually didn’t have to hang there.
Her name was the only one now on the lease at the old place they still had.
Her name was the only one on anything now.
That said, she had no idea whose name was on this place. She just knew no one had found them there.
Though her name was not on the apartment they used to have across the street from Chaos. When shit went ballistic, Chew had done the same and she’d paid the price with her flesh. But after years of her using that place to spy on Chaos, with the cops and Chaos all over it trying to find him, they’d had to let the apartment go.
That hadn’t made Chew happy either.
And she’d paid for that too.
Harrietta could attest to the fact that Chaos was also not super pleased to learn the news that Chew had eyes on their island of motorcycle club wonder for years.
She could attest to this because she’d spoken directly to the big man himself.
Kane “Tack” Allen, the mighty president of the Chaos MC, had come calling with five men at his back.
Not one of those men had been Rush.
It took no time at all before Tack Allen had seen right through her.
This was why he’d said approximately one point five minutes into their chat, “You want him taken out maybe more than we do. All you gotta do is give him to us.”
But Tack was tight with a coupla cops, and Harrietta had no screaming desire to wear orange for whatever they might wanna pin on her. Even if she’d done dick. Chew would drag her down with him without a blink. And the animosity clouded the air, those Chaos boys were so choked with it (it was probably the spying, she really couldn’t blame them, she still had no urge to wear orange and be made somebody else’s bitch, so fuck that).
She needed a slice of Chaos she could manipulate, and Tack was absolutely not that.
It had to be a young one.
Icing on the cake was that it would be an Allen.
Chew detested Tack.
If Tack’s golden boy son led to Chew’s downfall, Chew’d choke to death on that, but it would be a slow death since he’d be choking for the rest of his days.
Harrietta liked that idea.
With two sets of cops after him for a variety of crimes, Valenzuela wanting his ass, Chaos wanting his ass, and the Bounty MC wound up in this mess and maybe finding out it was Chew who got their asses swung out there, he had to lay low. His movements were seriously hindered.
He still went out at night because he was a dumbfuck.
And she still was at his safe house when he got there, as ordered.
Harrietta didn’t think on this, so she hadn’t come to the realization it came from years of conditioning.
She could run.
This time, he could not follow. He had some money left from what he thought were the “Glory Days of Chaos.” The days before Tack cleaned up the Club, when they pimped and ran guns and sold pot. But he had no leverage left with the players he used and left hanging to try to bring down Chaos.
What he did have was cops and criminals alike wanting him taken out, one way or another.
But she did not run.
She stayed instead, because that was what she’d always done.
But now she did it while she plotted.
He’d taught her that. The plotting.
He’d lived years for vengeance, and Harrietta had lived them with him.
So she’d learned that real good.
But now it was her who was living for vengeance.
Vengeance for Cammy.
Vengeance for years of putting up with his fucking creepy spiders.
Vengeance for years of taking his shit.
“Bed, bitch,” he ordered, slamming the door shut behind him. “I’m in the mood to fuck.”
She stared hard at his face.
Shit.
He’d done something fucked up.
He only got that worked up when he’d done something psycho.
This was gonna hurt.
In the end, he took her ass unlubed.
When he was done and snoring, she was in the bathroom, bleeding.
Not the first time.
Yeah, it hurt.
But she was used to it.
And in the end—Harrietta vowed to Christ—he’d hurt worse.
Way worse.
Those boys in orange might not bother with raping some washed-up biker.
But maybe, just maybe, they would.
And when they did, maybe, just maybe, he’d think of her when some big built guy with a huge dick was driving up his ass, tearing him apart, making him bleed.
Or maybe, just maybe, he’d think on Cammy. On whoring her out. On all he made her do.
On how he got her dead.
No, Harrietta didn’t think about the fact she’d put her daughter in that position, not when the abuse started, also not when Chew breathed life into his revenge fantasy, not ever did she protect her girl.
She didn’t think on that at all.