Broken Road Page 14

  ***

  “What the hell is going on over there?” asked Randy, three sheets to the wind drunk.

  “Looks like Colt and Trent are getting arrested… Oh, shit…”

  “What?” Randy said as he looked up, but he knew what Cheyenne’s outburst was referring to. Averi was on the lawn giving Colt a kiss as he was hauled off by police for disturbing the peace.

  “Oh, hell no!”

  Randy was on the war path.

  “What the FUCK did I tell you about staying away from my sister?!”

  “Deal with it, man… We’re together.”

  “Averi?!”

  “You date who YOU want!”

  “Oh, fuck that! Let’s go!” Randy said grabbing Averi’s arm.

  “Stop pulling me… You’re hurting me!”

  Colt struggled against the police officer when he heard Averi’s cry.

  “Let her go! Officer, look!”

  “Averi, c’mon! He is bad fucking news! His father is a fucking murderer for Christ’s sake!”

  Cheyenne yelled, “Randy, c’mon! Leave her alone…”

  Neighbors were starting to look out their curtains. The blinds in Mrs. Hearns’ window went up and a silhouette could be seen looking out.

  “Hell no! Averi, we’re going home!”

  Averi broke free of her brother’s grasp and just before Colt was put into the squad car, she kissed him, right there in front of everyone. In front of her seething brother. In front of Trent. Cheyenne. The police officers… and little Jimmy Hearns. As their lips departed, the officers ducked Colt’s head into the car. As Averi looked up, she saw the murderous gaze of Jimmy Hearns glaring at the police car in a jealous rage.

  Jimmy was a stick of dynamite with a slow burning fuse… it was only a matter of time before he exploded.

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Present Day

  “Ave! Ave…! Tim, I think she’s in shock. Look at her face,” Shelly said with concern on her face. She stroked her hand across Averi’s face but still, Averi stared into the distance.

  Tim grabbed Jimmy by his shirt collar and tossed him back sending him crashing into an unoccupied table. He landed on the table surface and fell, taking down the table and several chairs with him. Now tending to his sister, Tim grabbed her jacket and bag.

  “C’mon Ave… We’re gonna get you home. We’ll get all this figured out,” he said with a pleading look on his face.

  Tim could hear Jimmy approaching. With an irritated look cemented upon his face and tension steaming off his neck, Tim jerked his elbow backwards crunching into the tip of Jimmy’s already crooked nose. A violent crunch sounded as Tim’s elbow met with Jimmy’s nose easily breaking the bone that had been shattered so many times before.

  “Asshole!” Jimmy shouted as blood spurted from his nose, smearing down his face and dripping to the floor.

  “Oh, sorry. Didn’t see you there…” Tim said with a smirk. “You might want to move.”

  Jax and Harlan stood up from their booth. Combined they were six hundred pounds of muscle brawn and attitude.

  “No! I ain’t goin’ nowhere!” Jimmy shouted.

  Tim turned from his sister who still appeared to be in a state of shock and faced Jimmy who was nearly a foot shorter than him. For being a shorter guy, Jimmy clearly had balls of steel. He was not backing down – he glared up at Tim with a hardened jaw, daring him to make a move.

  “What you want a fight?!” Tim asked in an amused tone.

  Jax let out a bellowing laugh. “With this shrimp?!”

  “Seriously, please dispose of this asshole.”

  Gripping Jimmy up by his arms and hoisting him up, Jax and Harlan picked him up like a screaming toddler throwing a tantrum. Essentially, that’s what he was, as he yelled back at Averi. His tirade was incoherent, laced with profanity and became more desperate as he was removed from the restaurant.

  “God, he’s a wiry thing… Hold still!”

  “Coke will do that to you.”

  Jax and Harlan threw Jimmy into the parking lot and watched as he scrambled to get to his feet, he was still bleeding profusely but he only seemed concerned with getting back inside the restaurant.

  “What’s this dude’s problem, Jax?!” Harlan said immobilizing Jimmy again.

  “This is Colt’s half-brother.”

  “No way…”

  “Yeah. This is the grease ball he was telling you about. He’s obsessed with Averi and seems to think he’s just like Black Horse.”

  “Who the fuck would want to be just like Black Horse?”

  “This asshole.”

  Jimmy was scrappy. He fought to get to his feet. Being a shorter guy, he had a low center of gravity and that worked in his favor. Taking a swipe at Harlan. Jimmy had clearly lost his mind. Grabbing Jimmy’s arm, Harlan glared at the Seventy Devils brand on his arm. Harlan’s nails dug into Jimmy’s skin. He knew the only reason that Jimmy was a Devil was because he needed someone… anyone… to have his back when he went against Colt. What Jimmy failed to realize was that if he had even tried to push himself onto Averi, she would lay him out pregnant and all. She wouldn’t hesitate to knock him out. Not that anyone would allow that. Shelly would be more likely to get in a fist fight that to have Averi deal with this madness right now.

  “You need to back off of her.”

  “No!” Jimmy protested, spitting blood on the asphalt of the parking lot.

  “Do you have a death wish?!” Harlan demanded to know as he glared at Jimmy with a set of infuriated eyes.

  “Dude. Leave. Seriously. Just go before you get yourself hurt,” Jax said.

  “Go ahead and try it. I have an army behind me!” Jimmy shouted angrily.

  Jax brought his hand to his brow and peered around the empty parking lot.

  “Hmm… Harlan. He has an army. They must be invisible because I don’t see anyone!”

  “Wait. Just wait asshole. You’ll see. I’ll find out where they live and there will be hell to pay.”

  “Oh really?” Jax asked.

  “Really. Y’all better be ready for a fight, because we don’t play nice.”

  Jax pulled a pocket knife out of his back pocket. He exposed the blade as a glimmer of madness shone from Jimmy’s eyes.

  “Do it!” Jimmy dared him.

  “Do what?” Jax asked, playing stupid.

  “Go ahead, do it! You know you want to!”

  “Fine, I will!” said Jax as he griped the knife tightly. Pulling his arm up, he plunged it into the front left tire of Jimmy’s truck.

  “What the FUCK?!” Jimmy screamed as the air rushed out of his tire.

  “What? You thought I was going to kill you?”

  “My tire!!!”

  “I have a sneaking suspicion that Colt will want to do the job himself.”

  “He’s going to jail.”

  “Don’t expect him to stay there,” Harlan said calling after him.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” said Jimmy as he ran off, beating a path down Leamann Avenue.

  ***

  “Bitch-faced asshole! Motherfucking cock sucker! Let me out!” Randy screamed through the bars of his holding cell.

  “Simmer down in there!” an Officer yelled from the front of the station.

  “It was self-defense! Let us out!”

  “Not happening… Ford,” Officer Riley said as he clutched the keys on his belt and walked off with a whistle echoing from his lips.

  “Asswipe!” Randy screamed his face turning a violent shade of red. He looked like he was about to blow a gasket.

  He turned around to face Colt who was standing in the corner of the cell stony faced with a dangerous look in his eyes.

  “Say something! You should be as pissed off as me!”

  “Trust me. I am.”

  “Because you’re not showing it!”

  “Good. I’m bottling it. Saving it for the moment I face my brother and his posse of losers. Then, when I finally have his ugly fa
ce in my sites, I’ll unleash it.”

  “What’s your plan?”

  “Make no mistake. I plan to take down as many Devils as possible, but the one non-negotiable factor in all of this… Jimmy Hearns will die at my hands.”

  Suddenly, Randy looked excited.

  “Now, you’re talking. We need to get out of here first.”

  “We each get a call. Get your uncle on the horn.”

  “Who are you going to call?”

  “I have no idea.”

  ***

  Averi wiped tears away from her eyes as she started to come to. Shelly was becoming hysterical and Tim sent her a few booths over to get herself together, because he was afraid that she’d further upset Averi. Jax and Harlen walked back through the doors with enraged looks on their faces.

  “Tim… We gotta go,” Harlen said.

  “Okay…” Tim said, expecting Harlen and Jax to turn around and be on their way.

  “No. A war’s broken out. He is hell-bent upon finding out where she lives, and he wants to capitalize now that Randy and Colt are out of the way.”

  “What the fuck, man… She’s six months pregnant! Can’t he leave her alone?!”

  “Dude, his mind is wracked. Gone. Warped. He’s coming, one way or another. We immobilized him, so if you want to get out of here without being followed, we need to leave now.”

  “Thanks for your help,” Tim said, holding his hand out for his friends.

  “We’re coming with you…”

  “What?”

  “You expect to guard the farm all by yourself? With seventy of them on the loose?”

  “It’s about forty now, with so many of them in the can.”

  “Whatever. We’re coming.”

  Torian and Will rose from their booth and walked over to where Averi was sitting. Her tears were dry and nothing but pure unrelenting rage was visible on her face.

  “Miss Averi…” Torian said approaching her.

  “Hey T. How’s it going?”

  “It’s going. You’re going to ride with me. We’re all gonna stick this out together.”

  Picking up her purse and grabbing her hand, Torian led her out to the parking lot. Opening the passenger side door for Averi, Torian looked around the parking lot nervously, making sure they were alone. Tim called from the front door of the restaurant.

  “Hey T! Any trouble… call me immediately. Take the back roads. No stops.”

  Tim went back into the restaurant to address Jax, Harlan and Will. He found them all huddled up in the same booth as Shelly, trying to cheer her up. Her eyes were red and her mascara had started to run.

  “Tim, give Jax and Harlan your credit card. They are going to hit the store for us.”

  “What? Why?”

  “For one, we have no food.”

  “And for two,” Harlan added, “We need ammo.”

  Shelly’s eyes went wide.

  “Just to be on the safe side,” he said winking at her.

  “Don’t worry, darlin’” said Will, “Nothing’s gonna happen. They are a bunch of pansies.”

  Though Shelly laughed at Will’s comment, she wasn’t so sure that nothing would happen. In her stomach she knew something big was about to happen, she just prayed that they would fare well through the storm.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Cheyenne’s lungs felt like they were about to explode. She heaved herself into the dark of the alley, doubling over as she grabbed her stomach in pain. Her hands trembled, withdraw was kicking in. Her skin itched, but matter how she scratched, the agitation was not relieved. She knew she was in trouble. It wasn’t just cocaine in her system. The shakes, the itching, the upset stomach… Trent had pumped heroin into her system. Paranoia skyrocketed. She knew she was being hunted. She knew it. But she couldn’t help but wonder if she would feel this freaked out were she not coming down from a high.

  She tried to run through the darkness but she was light-headed and fell to her feet. Crashing to the hard concrete ground, Cheyenne hit the ground hard, her mind drifting somewhere between unconsciousness and sleep.

  ***

  Jimmy Hearns walked across the parking lot of the Seventy Devils HQ where he found about twenty of the Devils gawking at their badly damaged building. Trent was leaning against the telephone pole that stood just feet from where Randy had gunned through the wall. Trent puffed on a cigarette and non-chalantly nodded at Jimmy when he showed up with a smug look on his face.

  “Sup?”

  “I need something from you.”

  “What?”

  “Bring Cheyenne in. She has something I need.”

  “She ran.”

  “Well bring her back in because she knows where they are living.”

  “She’s probably dead in a gutter somewhere.”

  “You better pray she’s not,” Jimmy said with a threatening look in his eyes.

  Trent squinted his eyes and tossed his cigarette on the ground. Stamping out the lit ember with his boot, he whistled to Gunnar who was standing against the wall, talking to several other Devils.

  “Gunnar and I will take care of it.”

  ***

  Leaning their heads against the concrete wall of the holding cell, Colt and Randy tried ignoring the riffraff from their cellmates. While insults were tossed, fists were thrown and order cast to the wayside, Randy and Colt were trying to come up with a plan.

  “And what do you plan to do about Cheyenne?” Colt asked with a pained expression on his face.

  “I have to find her. I have a really bad feeling.”

  Colt could relate. All he could think about were Averi and the baby. There was a sick feeling deep in his belly that he just couldn’t shake.

  “I know the feeling.”

  “Ford! Phone call…”

  Randy stood up and stretched his arm through the bars as he took the phone from the officer. Randy got one phone call and he knew whose number he had to call – his Uncle Shawn. The phone continued to ring, which was unlike Shawn. He always picked up on the second or third ring. Finally his voicemail came on, and Randy had to leave a message.

  “It’s Randy. Come down to the station. We’re in trouble.”

  “He didn’t answer?” Colt asked with an urgency in his voice.

  “No…” said Randy clearly bewildered.

  ***

  Cheyenne woke up in a fog. Every nerve in her body felt like it was on fire. The alley was dark and if she was in a bad state before she passed out, she was even worse now. Climbing to her feet, she stumbled but she was able to steady herself by grabbing the rock wall. She remained quiet for a moment, listening to her surroundings. Once she determined that she was completely alone and could only hear the low hum of a failing motor, Cheyenne stumbled out of the alley and into the afternoon light. She pulled out her cell phone but the screen was cracked. Tossing it to the wayside, Cheyenne picked up speed. She could see the light of the Gas ‘N Go in the distance. She bolted for the store and kept her eyes locked on the pay phone that was situated in the back of the store.

  “Damn it, Randy! Pick up the phone!” Cheyenne West yelled into the receiver of the pay phone. Her voice shook as she spoke and her typically tan skin had taken on a blanched appearance. Something had her spooked.

  Cheyenne listened to the phone ring as she eyed the graffiti that covered the pay phone in the Gas & Go on Route 1, just minutes outside of Oakeley. Her red hoodie covered her wavy ombre hair and her beautiful face was hidden under heavy eye make-up and the unmistakable remnants of a black eye. Her right eyelid had turned a deep shade of blue while a nasty bruise across her left cheek was fading to a sickly shade of green. Trent always did have a mean left hook. The sleeves of Cheyenne’s hoodie fell over her hands, the right of which tapped nervously on the side of the pay phone.