“Ow―fuck!” I smack the hand stitching my scalp.

“Knock it off, ya bitch.” Doc blows me off, stabbing me again with his needle. Stings like hell. A bee. Whatever.

That always happens when someone's digging around in an open wound. 

I exhale in anger and fold my arms, literally gritting my teeth through the entire ordeal.

“There,” he says with a lilt to his voice, seemingly happy with his handiwork, “only ten stitches.”

“I've had more.”

“Yeah, but this wasn't a good wound, Noose.”

What wound is?

“Ready, ya pussy?” Snare asks.

I flip him off, hopping off the table my ass had been perched on for that fun little event. 

“Yeah.”

We step out of the mini-hospital room we have at the club and make our way to the large room where we meet for church. Snare opens the door and walks in.

Vince sits at the head of the Road Kill MC table that runs nearly the length of our windowless meeting room. 

His eyes rove over me, clearly taking in the head wound. “Looks like you figured out shit with your girl.”

I plop down in my seat. My fingers drum the glossy wood of the table for a few seconds. “Yeah.”

“Snare tells me Chaos took her, gave you a little love tap on your nogginʼ.”

My eyes run over the faces gathered. Most have patched in after me, some before. They're all my brothers. Some were with me in Afghanistan. 

I'm uncomfortable with emotion. Gotta lock down the feels. 

Unfortunately, Rose shattered my composure like a hammer to glass. One minute, I live to ride, fuck, and slam booze.

The next, there's Rose. Now's it all falling under “before Rose” or “after Rose.”

“I figured it out.”

“So out with it. Gotta know where you are before we know where we're going, Noose.”

I look at Vince. He's got his Prez hat firmly screwed on, and I know he's not gonna back me unless I admit the truth. “I want her to be my property.”

Snare whistles, and there's some good-natured chuckling around the table.

I don't have it in me to join in the humor. Rose is in the tender care of Diablo.

And his care is brutal. 

I tense. “Listen, you fuckers. Rose has some kind of medical problem. Hypo-fucking-whatever. Gotta take in food every few hours. That sick bastard doesn't care about her as anything but vengeance because she has his kid. Now, Rose impresses me as being just stubborn enough to run her trap to this dick. He won't respond well to that mouth of hers.”

An image of Rose screaming as Diablo pumps between her legs rises in my mind, and my stomach takes a greasy turn.

I meet each of their eyes. “He'll hurt her. Maybe is hurting her while you guys are laughing at my weakness for wanting Rose.”

The laughter dies out like a candle flame without oxygen. 

“Hey, man, I got an old lady. I'd be fucking frothing at the mouth if some other club had my property.” Rider shrugs.

I am frothing. I'm trying to keep my shit in one sock until I can get a plan moving. 

“Okay, so you're throwing down for her, right, Noose? Because we're not jeopardizing what, at best, is an uneasy alliance, just so you can play white knight or some shit.”

I nod. Reasonable. Horrible. I swallow through a dry throat. “Yeah, I'm throwing down for her.”

“She worth it?” This comes from Lariat, our bean counter.

I slant my gaze in his direction. “Yeah.” My eyes fall. This is where shit gets real. “She's not into club life. Doesn't understand. Diablo killed her sister―got away with it through greasing some select palms. Fucking obviously, she's not down with everything. Yet.”

Lariat leans forward. His long brown hair is swept back at his nape, and his pale-green eyes feel like they're nailing me to my seat. “You want Rose for your old lady, but she may or may not be on board?”

I swivel my neck, trying to smooth the knots. I nod.

He leans back, folding his arms. 

Prez looks at the fifteen assembled members. “I'm behind Noose. He's never thrown down for any female I've ever known. Hell―we thought he'd never want permanent pussy.” Vince shrugs. “But the context of the request makes shit more real. Let's vote.”

“Everyone in favor of Noose's crazy bullshit…”

Twelve hands slowly rise like flesh flags around the room. Three don't.

Lariat's one that doesn’t. “You know I love ya, brother. But we're saving a bitch who might not even want you, man. No can do.”

Vince lifts a shoulder. “No biggie. When you get an old lady, we'll remember that you don't need our help if a rival club scoops her up for kicks.” Vince grins, eyebrows hiked. 

It's more like an animal growling without sound than a smile.

Lariat looks uneasy. “Won't be bullied. Don't want no woman forever. Just easy, temporary tail.” He inclines his head.

I stare at him. 

“I'll drive. But I'm not putting my ass on the front line for an unclaimed woman,” Lariat states.

I nod. He's sort of standing up. Not that it matters. I would have gone after Rose no matter what―no matter who had my back. Nobody, everybody. Whatever.

Snare stands. “I got you no matter what. I think you're an insane asshole, but I'll take your brand of crazy.”

I smile for the first time in what feels like forever. 

Prez hits the gavel. Everyone stands. 

Each clap on my back feels like a pill of energy I swallow down deeply, fortifying me for what I might find. 

For what I might do. 

The knots are already forming in my mind, cleverly weaving into shapes of murder.

* * *

Vince taps the map. “We can GPS this bullshit to death, but the reality is my old ass just likes a map on principle. I don't even care if the GPS girl has a sexy English accent. I don't like being told where to go. I like to know.” Vince thumps his chest with a fist. 

I don't mind my cell finding a place I've never been. But whatever. 

Snare looks over Prez's shoulder. At five, nine, Vince is the shortest of all of us. And the bravest. He's done shit in war I didn't even know could happen.

He did it. Lived it.

His thick finger runs along a road I know well. In the very eastern part of Kent, 132nd runs all the way through Fairwood to the north. Before Renton, lots of little offshoots take off like veins from the main artery. Kent is the beating heart, and a lot of those lifelines go east. 

It's where tons of shit goes down. 

“Pretty sure they have an old warehouse. On this road.” His finger stops about five miles east, off 132nd. 

Unmarked asphalt. 

They can look at the map. I bring up Google Earth like an old friend and tap street view.

I turn my cell around and say, “Looks like someone's been maintaining it.”

Vince squints, sighs, and jerks his eyeglasses out of his front pocket. He flicks them open before seating them on the bridge of his nose.

He looks again, studying the image of a thickly wooded side road, then turns to Snare. “This is the only holding for Chaos where you think they have the girl.”

“Rose,” I say, not bothering to curb my terse answer. I take a drag off my smoke and blow rings into the night sky, trying to put one inside the other before it dissipates.

Vince says nothing. 

I use my cell app for a flashlight and turn it on the map. Daylight's fading so fast, the graphics have sunk to dim outlines. 

“I'm sure, Viper.” Snare stabs the map then jerks his thumb in my direction. “Diablo clobbers Noose―needs to get Rose somewhere fast before she wakes up.”

“Wakes up?” I ask, straightening.

The men don't meet my eyes.

I. Am. An. Idiot. Of course Diablo subdued Rose.

“Sorry, hoss.” Snare dips his chin. “I thought you would have known he'd probably knocked her out. You guys being in the park―witnesses―the whole fucking thing. Can't get a screaming struggling woman out of there as easily as an unconscious one.”

I nod, taking another deep inhale of smoke. I hold it in my lungs like weed. Shooting a ring like a blast from a cannon, I flick the butt to the ground. The ember glows like a distended orange eye then flickers to darkness. 

My fingers curl into fists as my temple throbs in time to my heartbeats. “Gonna kill that cocksucker.”

“Can't, Noose,” Vince says.

I turn on him. “The fuck I can't.”

“She's not your property right now. Diablo took her before there was any claim. She's just fair game. Just a random girl in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hell, that prick probably thinks she's unclaimed sweet butt, if he thinks anything at all.”

I measure my breaths, trying to calm my shit down. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Rose is no sweet butt.

Just as I think it, Crystal walks by, gravel crunching under her platform high heels. Her rack is shoved up around her neck, over a skirt so short that a flip of the hem would reveal both cracks. “Heard you had a boo-boo,” she flips her fake-blond hair out of her face and runs a finger down my arm while her other hand spreads against her cleavage. “Want Crystal to kiss it and make it better?” Her lips pop into a pout.

I shrug her off. “No, get lost.”

“You can kiss mine and make it better,” Snare says, wagging his inky eyebrows.

I sock him in the stomach.

He bends over, sucking air. “Asshole,” he gasps.

“Stay on task,” I hiss back.

He glares at me as Crystal's braying laughter follows us to the parking lot outside the club.

Cars wait, idling. Exhaust curls like lost smoke as we approach four vehicles. There won't be any Harley's in attendance for this trip, announcing our arrival. Can't have that shit. 

I move to the back of my 1972 Nova. Its ass end looks like it's been abruptly cut off. There's a variety of dents and unhealed contusions on the body as well as a shotgun spray of peeling paint, meticulously covered by gun metal gray primer. 

Didn't buy this set of wheels for its beauty, but for the engine. A Chevy Corvette 327 is plunked dead center in all that steel. This car gets up and moves. 

But I don't slide behind the wheel. I move to the squat trunk. Small compared to some, it’s big enough to hold a body.

I pop the lid and tally my weapons. Ropes of all lengths and sizes are neatly looped and knotted. Each one has a different application.

Killing by rope is intimate, kinda like knife fighting. Can't kill someone easily at a distance with either thing, though if you can throw a blade accurately, that can work in a tight spot.

I won't be in a tight spot. 

I'll be behind Diablo, choking the life out of his body.

Snare moves to my right, looking at all the neatly knotted ropes. 

He chuckles. “Looks like a bunch of rope to tie off shit in the back of a truck.”

Not to me. 

Every rope holds a different fiber, a knot specifically designed to match the material and the need.

My eyes caress a short length of rope, knotted at either end. The knobs are just big enough for my closed hands to not slip beyond the ends. The rope fiber is slightly abrasive. Just enough to catch on flesh.

Stubble. Sinew.

Whatever human is beneath me will feel the burn of my ropes. 

The lump of my knots.

The power of my will.