Have Gun, Will Travel (The Bare Bones MC Book 5) (2 page)

Tony Tormenta, that soulless human trafficker, loomed large above her like some kind of puffed-up superhero. He’d been famous for his Facebook page where he’d posed pouting like he’d had collagen injections in his lips in front of piles of cash, guns, and drugs. Facebook shut the page down, but not before Tony Tormenta’s fame had spread beyond the underworld, into the region of ordinary people like me. I had even heard about the poor
sicario
, the hapless hitman of Tormenta’s who had displeased him in some way. His head had been made into a soccer ball for Tony and his cohorts to literally kick around. These iconic stories always resurfaced whenever Tormenta came into Flagstaff to do business with Leo.

I could’ve sworn I saw a drop of blood flick from the blade of the knife Tony brandished. He’d been hard at work cutting Cassie’s face to ribbons when we busted in, and he took a step back from her. He looked like he admired his handiwork, nodding with pleasure, barely noticing us. Cassie looked like a latticework cherry pie, diamond-shaped pieces of hanging skin leaking blood down her chest. He’d even managed to slash a few canals across her boobs, where they pulsed almost with a life of their own, beating in time with her heart.

Having been trained to assist the needy, I rushed forward and gathered Cassie to my chest. Rhetta was the only one with the balls to actually confront Tormenta. She showed him her knife. “You scum-sucking epic
bastard!
How
dare
you come into our clubhouse and hurt one of us?”

I couldn’t resist joining in, although my voice was filled with tears. “You complete and utter dirtbag! Do you know what Leo’s going to do when he finds out you’ve maimed his favorite girl?” But Cassie
wasn’t
Leo’s favorite girl. Rhetta probably was.

Folding his knife back up, Tormenta actually laughed at Rhetta. “Leo’s not going to do a damned fucking thing, you worthless slut. You think he’s going to risk our valuable business partnership over some piece of shit sweetbutt who bit my salami? Not a chance in hell, sweetheart. Now get the fuck out of my way.”

He strong-armed Rhetta so forcefully that she smashed against the wall, not having had the chance to use her knife before he flashed out the door.

I said, “Call Gudrun McGill, Slushy’s daughter. She’s going to nursing school on the other side of town.”

“She’s on her honeymoon,” said Missy, squatting next to us. “We’ll have to get Maddy out of Pure and Easy. She’s the only other nurse I know.”

“Get her!” I snapped, and Missy pulled her cell from her bra. It would take Maddy an hour to get up to Flag. I wondered if Cassie’s wounds would require stitches or plastic surgery of some kind. It was hard to tell, so I told Brenda, “Go get me a washcloth and a bowl of water. And find out why the fuck no
real men
have come down here!”

That’s what really pissed me off, the fact that not a single “man” had come to our aid. These men were so violent, so easily riled, so ready to rumble at the drop of a hat when it came to their club. Yet it was becoming painfully evident that anyone hurt one of their sweetbutts and they all turned the other cheek. Especially when it came to Tony Tormenta.

Something weird was going on. As I cradled Cassie’s head to my breast, her blood leaking so profusely I could feel its jammy warmth seeping into my shirtfront, it struck me. Any other guy beat up a woman like this, the brothers would’ve jumped him. Any other hang-around and even a Prospect tried this, he’d come out worse for the wear on the other end. Brothers could do what they wanted with their own old ladies, but now an
outsider
had slashed a sweetbutt into mincemeat, and not one guy even came to see what was going on?

“It’ll be okay, Cassie.” Cassie had been my BFF in high school, and the reason I’d started hanging around The Bare Bones MC. I had recently lost faith in my training and changed my life completely, returning to Flagstaff where we’d grown up. That was the natural thing to do. That’s how I, a former religious novice, had come to be where I was now, if you really want to know. I’d used my horticultural learning to buy a nursery that was for sale and gotten my own apartment. I’d hooked up with a Sir who trained me to be submissive—a sort of perverse continuation of the faith-filled life I’d just given up—and reconnected with Cassie.

She’d introduced me to patch holders in the club. I really liked the atmosphere, the camaraderie of hanging around the club. It made me feel part of a group again, like I was replacing my old family with a new one. It was Cassie’s entire life. She didn’t want to be a pass-around forever, either. She was one of dozens all vying to be The One for Harte Saxonberg. I had to admit he was adorable, manly, and charming as hell, but I was satisfied with the strict discipline of my own Sir. The club was my family, not my sex life.

“We’ll get that motherfucker,” I told Cassie now. “He can’t just run around slashing up women like that.” But I wasn’t convinced we
would
get Tormenta, not with the reaction, or lack of, that I’d just witnessed.

At long last, a pair of male engineer boots came stomping down the hallway. Just one guy, by himself. But it was better than nothing.

He spoke to Brenda outside in the hall. Of course it was Harte, the only one with enough balls to defy Tormenta. “What the fuck? I just got back from the building supply store and I see Tony Tormenta blazing out of here with blood all over his fucking shirt. Navarro told me to come back here. What the hell happened?”

Not waiting for an answer, Harte pushed his way into the small, dark room. His hand hit the wall switch, but the bare fluorescent bulb above only made the scene look even gruesomer, if such a thing was possible. His adorable Cupid-shaped mouth was now an
O
, and fire flashed in his eyes when he looked at Cassie. Brenda squeaked past Harte and set the bowl of water down next to me.

His voice was aghast. “What…the…” Then he collected himself, and shouted. “What was Tormenta’s excuse for doing this?”

Rhetta made a lip fart. “She bit his winky dinky, apparently.”

“By accident,” added Brenda.

“Well, shit happens!” Harte cried, logically. “He gets
this
fucking postal over a bitten dick? This is
beyond
fucking outrageous! And no one came to your aid?” Wiping his face with his hand, he paced in circles.

“No one!” I snapped. As I patted the trickles of blood from Cassie’s face, I could see that luckily none of them were terribly deep. But she’d be horribly scarred for life if Madison Illuminati couldn’t come up with some sort of plastic surgery for her—which I was sure Maddy could. “What is
wrong
with you fucking people? The bar is packed with patch holders, yet you’re the only ones with balls enough to come down the hallway?” I could afford to snap at a member of the MC. I wasn’t a sweetbutt. I had no stake in this. I just hated to see my friend injured.

“Not
one
person came to assist you? That’s
it
, man, that’s fucking
it
.” Harte started back into the hallway, but he ran into another solid pillar of a man. I could only see the silhouette of the guy, but I could easily hear their pissed-off words.

Harte yelled, “What’s the fucking meaning of this, Dad? You let that Tormenta asshole get away with something like this and don’t lift a fucking finger? I don’t care if she bit his ding-dong clean
off
, there’s no fucking excuse for this sort of shit!”

“Let me see,” Leo Saxonberg said gruffly, shoving past his hulk of a son.

Leo took a look at us crammed into the corner of the room. He blinked once, then returned to the hallway. Even
he
couldn’t look. His voice was lower now, mumbling. “Listen, Harte. You know how important my connection with Tormenta is. Let’s just keep this under the radar for now and not make a big fucking stink about it. She’ll get better and forget all about it. Get her a gift certificate for a spa treatment or something down in Pure and Easy. Send her to some vortexes.”

“
Vortices
,” Harte said hotly, his jaw tight. “And her injuries aren’t going to be helped by any woo-woo spa treatment, Dad. That anusbrain cut her good. I can’t imagine a woman doing
anything
to warrant such fucking treatment.”

Leo put his hands on Harte’s shoulders. “I know, I know, Harte. It’s inexcusable behavior and so on. But you gotta understand Tony. That’s the world he lives in, the circles he moves in. That’s the sort of shit they do. I’m sure you’ve heard the story of how they took Roman Serpico’s father’s face and plastered it onto a soccer ball.”

What?
That was Roman Serpico’s
father
who was turned into a sporting good? Roman was the newest member of the Pure and Easy Red Rocks Original chapter, where it’d all started. He’d transferred there when the Tucson clubhouse had blown up. I could easily see the former rocker—and hitman-in-training—Roman go on the warpath against Tormenta once he heard about his latest stunt. But according to Missy, he was on his honeymoon with Gudrun McGill. Maybe Harte would take up our cause. He’d been known to go against his father. He wasn’t just a brainless, mindless robot following his father’s orders. That was yet another attractive thing about Harte. He was his own man.

“Of course I’ve fucking heard that, and I fucking believe it, Dad. That’s why we’ve got to put a stop to this asshole. He’s out of control. Can’t you keep your business arrangements with him but not let him near our fucking clubhouse?”

Leo shook his head with certainty. “No. No. No, I can’t, Harte. You know how it goes. It’s the reaching out. It’s the courtesy between associates. It’s the common hospitality we show each other when we visit each other’s backyards. When I go down to Tucson on business, Tormenta hooks me up with a fucking time I’ll never forget.”

Harte exploded. “Well isn’t that just fucking lovely, then? You’re going to invite that maniac
back
into our clubhouse just so he can do the same thing—or maybe worse—to another one of our women? You know what? You disgust even
me
, Dad. I don’t expect you or Birdseye to do anything about it, seeing as how no one has even bothered walking down that fucking hallway to see how Cassie is. That’s it. I’m washing my hands of you motherfuckers. I’m calling Uncle Sax.”

“
No!
”

Leo’s bark stopped Harte cold in his tracks. Harte had his cell in his hand as if about to punch his uncle’s number. But Harte chuckled with disdain. “You think you can stop me? Sax is the only one who’ll do anything about this. He’s the only one left with any decent, human emotions. Maybe because
you
drove him away ten years ago. He was never under your vicious influence.”

Harte made as if to split, but Leo grabbed a handful of the front of his leather cut. Touching a man’s cut was an unforgiveable offense, but Leo was the Prez, as well as Harte’s father. Harte stopped.

Leo snarled, rattling Harte mercilessly. “Let’s keep this buried, boy. I don’t know where you get the idea that that nomad
loser
Sax is suddenly going to ride over here from Maine or Bumfuck or whatever hellhole he’s currently growing moss in. But he’s going to care about some slashed-up pussy even less than I do. You give him far too much credit and I don’t know why. He’s a worthless, shifty nomad, and always will be.”

Harte finally wrenched his cut from his father’s grip. His angry voice spewed from him, lizard-like, as though possessed by a demon. “Don’t fucking touch me. And I don’t know why you’re always badmouthing Sax when all I’ve seen from him is good.” He stalked off down the hall.

Leo shouted, “You fucking call Sax and I’ll send you on that run to Nogales tomorrow.”

“I won’t go,” bellowed Harte from the end of the hall.

“That’s what
you
think!”

Leo, too, stormed off. We women breathed easier. Like I said, never a dull moment around here. Normally that was why I liked it, but I was starting to question my attraction to the club. There was good excitement, and bad excitement. This was definitely the bad kind of excitement.

Missy said, “Maddy will be here in an hour with her medical bag.”

Brenda sighed. “I always knew Harte was a sweetheart. Now I’m convinced of it. Can you believe he’s the
only one
who bothered coming to see how Cassie was?”

I said, “And he wasn’t even
here
when it happened. You know what? Let’s put a fucking bounty out on Tormenta’s head.”

Instantly, things seemed to brighten up the dark room. Rhetta was on it like sonic. “Yes!” she cried. “We’ll all put money into the pot and give the bounty to whoever manages to…” She trailed off, unsure what the desired outcome was.

I wasn’t even sure, and I was the one who’d proposed the idea.

I wasn’t quite so hardass, so faithless, as to propose what truly lay in my heart. I’d trained for years to assist the downtrodden, not kill the pathetic, the hopeless, the heartless. I could never truly wash my hands of my charitable, altruistic nature. How could I verbally propose what went so against the grain of all I’d stood for, until recently? Just because I’d lost the conviction of my beliefs, my hope for humanity, didn’t mean I could verbally propose—aloud—something that went against everything I used to believe in.

But I was holding a slashed, bleeding girl in my arms. I’d finished dabbing her wounds. The bowl of water was now a solid, deep red. Her face looked like a bowl of chili, already swelling, puffing up around the canyons of the knife cuts. There were far fewer cuts than I’d originally feared. A few of them slashed her nose like a hashtag.

It was Cassie herself who finally spoke. “Whoever manages to kill that douchecanoe.”

Her speaking it aloud gave us all more courage.

Brenda nodded emphatically. “Yes. Yes! Whoever manages to bury that fucker gets the bounty.”

“Like in the old west!” cried Rhetta. “We need a hired gun, that’s what we need!”

I was carried away with enthusiasm for the plan. Someone else had dared give voice to it, and now I was only going along. “No one even has to know who did it! Just hit him in the dead of night—like his
sicarios
do to Mexicans and people who try to escape from their cartel clutches. Hit him when he’s down, and
boom
! Whoever does it gets the money.”