Savage Redemption Read online

  Savage Redemption

  Carter Steele

  Contents

  1. Brock

  2. Heather

  3. Brock

  4. Heather

  5. Brock

  6. Heather

  1

  Brock

  Cracked glass lay all over the pavement. The building inside had dishes thrown on the ground, ceiling tiles torn from the roof, and blood everywhere. The sheriff, Craig Jones, stood inside, examining the place, having put up the yellow “CAUTION” tape around the perimeter of Hop Feng, the only Chinese restaurant in Romara.

  But the worst part of it?

  It was six a.m. in the morning, and I hadn’t even had my morning coffee yet. Hell, I wasn’t even supposed to have my morning coffee until about eleven. But I suppose an incident like this didn’t exactly allow for the luxury of my normal sleep schedule.

  “The Anarchists really fucking tore this place to shreds, huh?” my brother, Landon, said.

  “We don’t know if it’s the Anarchists yet,” Sheriff Jones said from the outside, his voice much clearer than either of our gravely, half-asleep voices.

  “It’s the Anarchists,” I grumbled. “You really think a bunch of bored high school jocks did this?”

  I understood that Sheriff Jones had to respect due process, not jump to conclusions, and follow the law to a T. But for those of us in the Savage Kings MC—especially for me, the president—the only process we followed was making sure those who wronged us and our loved ones suffered a far greater fate than their victims. And in our small town of Romara, there was only one group that had the gall—or the stupidity—to wrong us.

  The Anarchists of Death MC.

  “We’re coming in,” I said to Sheriff Jones.

  “I haven’t investigated—”

  “Just tell them we found out and we called it in after we looked around ourselves,” I said, flashing a folded hundred dollar bill between my index and middle finger.

  The veteran of the police force smirked, gave a half-hearted chuckle, and stepped out to his cruiser, ostentatiously to procure some weapons just in case hooligans still resided in the building. As soon as Sheriff Jones had exited the building and turned his back to us, Landon and I went straight for our hidden stash of rifles, protected under a regular dining table. I wondered just how many Romara locals had dined at Hop Feng, not knowing that a stockpile of weapons that would make the police force envious lay less than a foot from their feet.

  The table being turned over was a bad enough sign. It got even worse when the carpet came up much too easily, suggesting that someone had already torn it up from earlier.

  “Fuck, Brock,” Landon said nervously.

  “Easy,” I said, but calm wasn’t exactly something that I was feeling.

  Sure enough, as soon as I pulled back the layers of carpet entirely and pried open the already-dislodged wood, I could see that our guns were all gone. The only thing remaining was a note from one of the Anarchists, which read, “This is for Sam.”

  “Guess they’re not happy about—”

  “Not in the slightest,” I said with a sigh.

  I sat back on my heels, put my hands on my thighs, and closed my eyes for a second. We still had plenty of guns at the clubhouse and at our homes. We had more than enough manpower to hunker down and defend ourselves in the event of an attack by the Anarchists.

  But if we went on the offensive, we’d have to plan things out mighty carefully. I didn’t need to put any of our men at risk, not when, for the most part, our tension with the Anarchists was tough but not yet fatal.

  “We’ll need to call an officer’s meeting,” I said. “Message the others. Get back to the clubhouse and make sure we still have everything there. Tell everyone we’re going to have a meeting at seven o’clock tonight. I don’t want to retaliate tonight—they’ll be expecting it—but I don’t want us to sit on our asses any longer.”

  “Get to the clubhouse now?” Landon said with a sigh. “I was going to go back to sleep and then head to the library—”

  “Landon,” I said. This wasn’t going to be an argument. “You know we allow you to do your thing most of the time. But I need you to step up right now.”

  “But if we’re not striking—”

  “Landon!” I snapped.

  He looked shook. Good. He needed to be reminded that he was the Vice President sometimes and not just an officer because of his last name.

  “Get back to the clubhouse. This is not chess time, this is not library time, this is not intellectual time. This is get shit done time. Understood?”

  “Yes, brother.”

  “Thank you.”

  Landon rose, muttering something under his breath. I didn’t much care what it was that he said. Even if he said “I fucking hate your guts and hope you die,” it would pass. We were brothers before we were MC officers, after all; sibling rivalry and in-fighting was in our blood from the time he was born three years after me.

  I eventually rose from my spot in the restaurant, dusted myself off, and turned to see Sheriff Jones returning.

  “Why didn’t you call me in sooner?” he said with faux outrage.

  I couldn’t help the smile that formed on my face.

  “I just haven’t had my morning coffee.”

  I left Sheriff Jones a couple minutes later and rode my motorcycle to City Brew Coffee, the one coffee shop in town that wasn’t some money-grubbing chain store. I would have loved to headed home and fallen asleep, but once I was awake, there was no chance of falling back asleep. I’d had about as many naps in my lifetime as I’d had kids—which was to say, zero.

  But City Brew would offer me a quiet place where I could ease into the day, brainstorm some ideas for retaliation, and maybe even consider alternative revenue streams for the club. I had tried to avoid the more illegal stuff—guns, in the state of California, already pushed a bunch of boundaries—but as the legitimate business of car repairs faded and as more drugs and pornography studios came into the vicinity of Romara, it became harder and harder to ignore. That, and it wasn’t like we were a cash-rich club either.

  I pushed opened the door, my mind still struggling with the early hour. Not surprisingly, in a town this small—the population was barely above 5,000 locals—there were only about three people in the coffee shop. The barista, a young girl named Nikki with multiple piercings, a neck tattoo, and wavy green hair that always knew exactly what I wanted. There was an old man I always nodded to but never spoke to—I swore he read the same page of the newspaper for five hours. And…

  Her?

  What was she doing here today?

  I gulped and turned away before she could make eye contact with me. I didn’t need this morning to get any crazier than it already was.

  “Brock?”

  Nikki’s voice woke me from my stupor.

  “You’re here early,” she said with a smirk.

  “Yeah, sometimes, life ain’t rich,” I said dryly. “The usual, please.”

  “Double it, considering the time?”

  “Hell, triple it.”

  Nikki laughed. I didn’t change expression. Too damn early.

  Even as Nikki rang me up, I couldn’t help but turn around to look at her. The tilting of her head suggested she had looked at me as I was ordering. We were both playing the game of looking, looking, looking, and then quickly looking away when the other turned.

  Again, I hated talking in the morning. I hated doing everything in the morning. Just this little cat-and-mouse game of constantly switching roles annoyed me.

  But I wouldn’t be very presidential if I didn’t just fucking get to the end game, right?

  I waited by the counter for Nikki to make my drink, but I chose not to
look at the other player in our little game for the time being. I needed a giant swig of that coffee before I could even get my eyes halfway open. The aroma itself of the grounded coffee beans was working a little bit of magic, but I still had a ways to go.

  Finally, it came.

  And so finally, I walked over.

  I pulled the chair out, sat down, and leaned forward. The girl looked up, gave a nervous smile, and sat up straight.

  “Heather Richards,” I said, a smirk on my face. “I haven’t seen your pretty face since ten years ago. You’re still just as beautiful as you were then.”

  It wasn’t a lie, though it certainly had an element of flattery to it. Heather was lithe, athletic, and always dressed nicely. She had long, curly blonde hair, rosy red lips, and curves that were always hidden just enough under her attire. She was like the girl next door, but even being next door didn’t let you see all that her body had to offer.

  Heather gave a short, nervous giggle as she moved some papers to her side and closed her laptop. I subtly checked her fingers. She had no rings on any of her fingers.

  “You certainly look a little different than you did then,” she said.

  “Yeah, I grew my facial hair out.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” she said, playfully rolling her eyes. “You… you just have a different air about you. You’re… you’re grown up.”

  I smiled, the closest I would come to laughing this early in the morning.

  “I would hope so. I’m not eighteen anymore.”

  Heather’s cheeks were starting to blush. Seems like some old feelings don’t die as easily as I thought they would have.

  “Yeah, but you look older than twenty-eight. Not to be mean or rude! Just—”

  “I am an old soul. My work makes me that way. Anyways, what are you doing here now?”

  Heather arched an eyebrow at me for saying that my work made me that way, but she had a better chance of being the thief of my rifles than she did of getting me to confess in a public setting what I did beyond “car repairs.”

  “I’m a fourth grade teacher,” she said. “I was just working on my lesson plan and grading homework for the day.”

  “Fun,” I said.

  “Yep,” she said. “Not quite as fun as the old days, though.”

  The old days. The days when we were naive and young. The days when the most violent thing I ever saw was a Rambo movie. The days…

  The days when we…

  “Well, I’ve got to get going,” I said abruptly. “Have a good day.”

  “You’re leaving now? Brock?”

  But I didn’t say a word back. I knew what had happened the last time we had hung out. I knew how bad it had hurt.

  And I knew that it could have hurt a lot worse if we hadn’t gone through the pain that we did.

  A coincidental encounter was acceptable.

  But I really hoped, for both of our sakes, that we didn’t see each other again. For our safety’s sake, we just couldn’t.

  2

  Heather

  Did I just see a ghost? What was that all about?

  I watched Brock King leave City Brew Coffee so abruptly, it was like he was a puppet and the puppeteer had pulled him off stage. He gave no warning, not even in his body language, and the lack of explanation only further confused me.

  He hadn’t said much in what couldn’t have been longer than a minute, but even in that short a window, I felt like I was seeing a different human. And he was right, it wasn’t just because he was ten years older.

  The Brock that I knew in high school had a rebellious streak, but it was a playful kind of rebellious; the kind that would let a domestic dog loose in the high school and laugh as the dog darted in and out of different classrooms. He was never the cruel kind of rebellious that would hurt someone or cause psychological damage.

  But seeing him in person… there was something much darker and heavier about him. For one, his dress and his grooming made him look much more like a bouncer than he ever did before. His blonde hair was slicked back with grease, and he had a long, lightly-colored beard that extended an inch or two from his chin. He wore a black, sleeveless jacket with a logo that looked like a royal crown with blood dripping from it on the back. He wore jeans and a blue button-down short-sleeve shirt underneath the jacket, but I thought I saw traces of tattoos on his upper arms and perhaps even on his neck.

  And on top of it all, he smelled like gasoline.

  I guess that made sense from having heard the motorcycle approach the shop before. It was confirmed when I heard the bike, not visible from my seat in the coffee shop, drive off into downtown and out of audible range. But the overall picture of Brock King didn’t make much sense.

  But what should I have expected? I’d left town for college and hadn’t returned for ten years. I’d only come back in the last month, and if Brock wasn’t a morning person like I was, then I never would have run into him. From his perspective, that was probably for the best, but from mine, I could never quite understand why things had ended the way they had ten years ago.

  And unfortunately, the way my mind worked was that once I came across a problem of great mystery, I could never let it go until I had either solved it or exhausted all possibilities. And right now, the problem wasn’t a “what” or a “how.” It was a “why.” Why had Brock left me as he had? Why had he left so quickly into our first adult conversation?

  And why did I have the feeling that this was far from the last time I would have a mysterious conversation with him?

  I fell behind on my lesson planning and grading as 7 a.m. hit. I had to get to Romara Elementary by 7:15, and though the town’s size meant nothing was ever more than a ten-minute drive away, I always felt like I never had quite enough time to finish what I wanted to. Being a teacher had its fulfilling perks, but it offered very few practical ones. And catching up with an old flame you had never quite let go of was not something that would help me overcome said lack of real perks.

  I had to hurry out the shop, stuffing my students’ homework in my laptop while trying not to spill what remained of my coffee. I didn’t put things in my Honda Civic so much as I just kind of dropped them in at just a low enough height that I knew I wouldn’t break anything. It was a bit of a chaotic mess, but being a teacher meant that I was used to things being a chaotic mess. I would be more worried about my students if they were militantly organized than if they got more maddening.

  I got to school just in time for the teacher’s bell, and the irony of me telling my students they needed to get to school when I could barely do it certainly crossed my mind. I passed by my close friend, Jess, a second grade teacher, and smiled at her.

  “Heather!” she said with an upbeat voice. “You look exhausted, hun. You OK?”

  Jess, a perky, excitable girl from Los Angeles, could make a funeral feel upbeat. She also, though, was quite good at keeping secrets and avoiding the gossip rounds.

  “I ran into an old friend at the coffee shop today,” I said in what may have been the most understated description ever.

  “An ‘old friend?’” she said, already suspicious.

  “OK, OK, some boy I used to date named Brock. It was a little awkward, but—”

  “Brock King?”

  Wait… what?

  “Yeah? You know him?”

  “Who doesn’t?” Jess said, and the expression over her face was not exactly encouraging. “Brock King runs the Savage Kings MC.”

  The blank expression on my face only further frustrated Jess’.

  “The motorcycle club? Although they’re probably closer to a gang,” Jess said, lowering her voice.

  “He did ride a motorcycle to the coffee shop, although—”

  “Was it just him? Did he have a jacket on that showed a symbol of a crown with blood on it?”

  I nodded yes to both questions.

  “Stay far, far away from him if you can help it, Heather,” she warned. “I don’t know what you two were like in hi
gh school, but if that’s the same Brock King, then you hanging out with him means you’re hanging out with a criminal.”

  “Jess—”

  “I’m serious, Heather. If you want to know what I’m talking about, just look up his rap sheet.”

  I’m not sure that’s something I want to do. That’s not the Brock I know. He’s probably just got a few speeding tickets, maybe some public intoxication citations. The Brock I know wouldn’t do anything to harm anyone.

  “OK,” I said.

  “It’s for your own good, I promise,” I said. “It’s just when I knew him, he wasn’t that way, you know? And I don’t think people change that much. They might slide up and down the scale, but I don’t think they become fundamentally different people.”

  “Heather, sweetie,” Jess said with a sympathetic smile. “I only wish that were true.”

  I hope I’m not agreeing with you when it’s all said and done.

  The school day came and went without any significant problems. The perk of teaching elementary school children was that they celebrated when they didn’t get their homework back; instead of stressing over their grades, they just enjoyed not having to tell Mom and Dad. I ended up finishing their homework on recess and distributing it at the end of the day, but by and large, it was one of those days when I was glad that my students were kids, not teenagers.

  The beginning of the day, though, had caused me to change my evening plans. Instead of going an hour out of my way to the jujitsu studio, where I had obtained my brown belt and would soon get my black belt, I felt a need to unwind at a local brewery with some beers. I invited Jess, but she declined. While not usually someone that went places like that alone, I didn’t mind making conversation with the bartenders, especially since it never got more crowded than just a few people before 5:30.

  When I pulled to to Porter Ridge Brewing, I checked to see if any motorcycles were there. I didn’t see any, which brought about both relief and disappointment. I tried to push Brock out of my head as I entered the brewery’s bar area.