Bones by the Wood (12 page)

Ferret was working on a bike, some sort of crotch rocket, next to him.  Since both machines were relatively small, they were sharing a bay.  Shaggy didn’t even blink when Ferret called over, “Shit, bro.  You gonna fix it or ask it out on a date?”

Scooby chuckled, but his laugh cut short when Dizzy walked into the middle of the semi-organized chaos.  He, along with Fitz, Cage and Easy, were working on an assortment of cars and bikes in the remaining space. 

Scooby nodded towards Dizzy’s hands; the knuckles were still a little raw from their repeated connections with the tweaker’s face.  “You party without us last night, boss?”

Dizzy found the radio and turned it down to a tuneless murmur.  “Somethin’ like that.  You guys got five minutes?”

All six men downed tools and came closer.

“Had a situation at the store over on Westway last night, brothers.  A junkie tried to pull a stickup.  Must’ve been flyin’ high, he didn’t check the place was empty before he launched right in.”

“Lemme guess.  You just happened to be there,” Cage asked with a grin and a suggestive note to his tone.

“I was.”  Dizzy nodded.  “Must’ve been fate or somethin’.  Long story short, I made sure he realized he wasn’t welcome in town any longer.”

Fitz folded his arms across his chest as he leant back against the truck that was parked behind him.  “Do we need to worry about you showin’ up on any security feed?”

Dizzy shook his head.  “No.  Got the tape at home courtesy of the clerk.”

“Who was it?”  Easy asked.  “Not that skinny manager dude with the stick up his ass?  I don’t see that fucker not holdin’ this over you somehow.”

“Wasn’t him.  It was Thea.”

Dizzy was mildly surprised at the blank looks on every face.  “She usually works the late shift.  Black hair.  Blue eyes.  That ring any bells for you fellas?”

“Ahhh haaa.”  Ferret crooned in recognition.  “Noticed those eyes did ya?”

“Pretty fuckin’ hard to miss those baby blues.”  Scooby chimed in.

“Pretty fuckin’ hard to miss that rack, too.”  Shaggy added with a grin as he and Scooby high-fived.

Dizzy had an urge to call them out on it for disrespect or something, but there was nothing he could say.  Thea wasn’t his. Not yet, at least.  He hadn’t even decided if it was a good idea to do something about that, but he didn’t like the idea that the others had been checking her out.  He really didn’t like it.

Fitz, single-minded bastard that he was, got the conversation back on track.  “She’s not going to develop a conscience?  Run to the cops or anythin’?”

“No.  She won’t.”  Dizzy wasn’t sure how he could say that with such absolute confidence, but he knew it was true.  “She did say, though, that the store’s been held up before, and the Rabids never did anythin’ about it.  Considerin’ how often it happens, they should have.  And that we can’t let slide.  This is our town.  It don’t belong to the tweakers or the degenerates, it belongs to the decent folk.  We need to start makin’ that true.”

Cage spoke up.  “We’re spreadin’ ourselves pretty thin ‘tween the clubs and the town.”  Dizzy gave him a hard look, but bit his tongue when Cage held up his hand, palm out, before continuing.  “But that don’t mean it’s wrong.  You’re right.  It’s right.  It’s what we should do, what we will do.”

Dizzy nodded, relieved that his VP saw things his way even though it would be problematic.  “Ferret, I need you to hook up with Crash.  I spoke to Samuel this mornin’.  It concerns me that if the Rabids weren’t keepin’ a close eye on business that there’s a bear trap waitin’ for us.  We need to scout, make sure there’re no surprises on our horizon.”

“Sure thing, boss.”  Since he couldn’t smoke in the bays, Ferret was chewing the end of a pencil which had teeth marks along the full length of the shaft.  If he wasn’t chewing it, he was twirling it between his fingers.

Dizzy glanced around the group again.  “We need to find out where that junkie came from, too, where he buys his shit.  That operation gets shut down hard and moved the hell out of town.  Meth is poison.  We don’t want that here.  Ain’t nothin’ a meth head won’t do for a fix, even slit their own throat.”

A murmur of agreement rose and fell as Dizzy continued.

“I know we’re not goin’ to get rid of all the junkies, there’s always goin’ to be someone using somethin’, but we need to get word out.  Keep your fuckin’ issues to yourself, don’t bleed ‘em all over innocent citizens and the town’s businesses.  This don’t happen in our yard.”

There was another, more emphatic hum of agreement.

Cage’s face had split into one of his wide smiles.  “Ah, we few, we happy few.  We band of brothers.”

Shaggy was the very caricature of nonplussed.  “Huh?”

Ferret looked disgusted.  “It’s Shakespeare, you Neanderthal.”

At Shaggy’s blank look at the use of a word with so many syllables, Ferret shook his head and went back to the Honda.  Dizzy moved over to foreign car that would keep him focused for a couple of hours at least.  The others all took the signal and returned to their projects. Easy turned the radio back up on his way.  Shaggy went back to trying to will the Beetle to fix itself.

~o0o~

After a productive day, they downed tools and shut the garage up.  Easy took care of the phone calls to inform the owners of the vehicles that would be ready for collection in the morning.  They all made use of the small bathrooms that adjoined each dorm room.  Even though several of them did not actually live at the clubhouse, there were enough rooms, and few enough of them, that they could still claim a room each.

After washing up, they shared a beer.  After the first round, Ferret left to head home to his wife.  Dizzy didn’t blame him one bit.  The remaining members ordered takeout and settled in to enjoy themselves.  As the falling night began to shade the world beyond the latticed windows, the sweetbutts started to arrive.  They were followed shortly, to Dizzy’s surprise, by Annelle and a couple of her girls.  Annelle must have registered the questioning expression on his face, because came straight over to him with an explanation.

“Cage called. Let me know you boys were playin’ at home tonight.”

Dizzy turned to look over at Cage.  His diminutive VP was staring in wonder at the leggy blonde who was twirling around the pole.  It was obviously not an entirely selfless act on his VP’s part to call in some extra pussy.  Cage seemed to have taken quite a shine to the tall girl that could only be described as golden from her skin to her hair.

Dizzy returned his attention to Annelle.  “Thank you.  You’re takin’ care of us.”

“I’m only repayin’ the favor.  We had a car full of frat boys turn up last night.  A set of young guns that didn’t know how to hold their liquor yet or how to treat a lady, whether she’s workin’ a pole or not.  Your yeti over there sorted them right out.”  She tilted her head in the direction of Shaggy, who was enjoying head from Reba.

“Glad to hear it.”  Dizzy paused.  He wasn’t sure what he wanted to ask, but then words were just spilling out.  “You know Thea?  Works at the store on Westway.”

“Yes.  I do.” 

Suspicion clouded both Annelle’s tone and expression.  Dizzy didn’t care.  He wanted to know something about Thea, something outside of that damn store.  He really didn’t think that she’d sic the police on him for throwing the tweaker a beating.  The bastard had been trying to rob the store and, from what Dizzy had overheard, that hadn’t been the only thing on his agenda.  But Fitz had been absolutely right to ask the question of him.  When it came down to brass tacks, Dizzy didn’t know a damn thing about Thea other than that she was responsible for black hair and blue eyes featuring heavily in his dreams these days.  He knew that he liked making her blush as much as he liked it when defiance shot sparks right out of her eyes, and he knew that she smelled like woman and tasted like home.

“She said you introduced her to the club, when it was here.”

“In a roundabout way, yeah.”  Annelle thawed only fractionally.

“She said she’s a friend of yours.”

“You two had quite the conversation didn’t you?”  Dizzy wasn’t sure why Annelle’s suspicion had suddenly developed an edge of smugness.  “Yeah, she is, a good friend. She doesn’t have it easy, so I’m gonna be blunt here, maybe more than I’ve a right to be.  What’s your interest in her?”

Again Dizzy couldn’t take offense.  He’d brought the subject up after all. And he didn’t have the first clue how to answer that question properly.  He shrugged.  “I helped her out with an issue at the store last night.”

One of Annelle’s eyebrows climbed up her forehead. Yeah, she could have been Moira’s sister.  Dizzy felt the inexplicable need to defend himself to this woman.  He didn’t even realize that he’d tugged his hat down further over his brow, a defensive gesture.

“She’s alright.  Someone tried a stick up.  It didn’t work out at all well for him.”

The eyebrow came down but the hint of suspicion stayed.

“Thank you.  I don’t meddle in her life, but that girl needs someone to take care of her sometimes.  She’s been on her own a long time.”

Dizzy didn’t have an explanation either for the sudden need to poke a finger in a sore that had been festering in the back of his mind since his conversation with Thea a couple of days previously.   “Lookin’ like that, hangin’ round here.  She couldn’t have been lonely long.”

Annelle was trying visibly hard to stop her outrage from becoming disrespectful.  “It wasn’t like that.  There’s not a whole lot else to do in this town, not for a woman on her own.  She was safer here than she was at a regular bar.  She don’t get the chance to cut loose often.”

“You’re not jokin’.  I’m beginnin’ to think she lives at that damn store,” Dizzy scoffed

“She works hard.”

“That she does.  You’re protective of her.”  It was an observation, not a question.

“I am.  Like I said, she’s a good friend.  Wouldn’t say she’s like my daughter, although she’s certainly young enough to be.  She’s more like a niece to me, maybe.”

Something in Annelle’s tone was censorious, a hint of a warning.  Dizzy had known that Thea was younger than he was, that was obvious to anyone with a set of eyes, but he did wonder just how much younger she was.  His thoughts were traipsing down a dangerous path.  He’d been on his own a long time, too, and was becoming a crusty bachelor, set in his ways, he could feel it.  It had been so long since he’d made any effort past casual flirting with a civilian woman that he wasn’t sure he even remembered what to do.  And he really wasn’t sure why he was even worrying about that.  He was too old for her.   Thea was a tough cookie, but she had no place in a life where you had to watch out for people shooting at you or boiling you alive.  The horny little devil on his shoulder reminded him that she wasn’t in this life, and someone had still pulled a gun on her the night before.

He decided to call Annelle out on her attitude.  “Okay.  Okay. Message received and understood.  You and the girls can help yourself to the booze.”

He pushed away from the stool he was sitting on, and waved over the length of the bar.  He settled into one of the unoccupied couches, but no sooner had his ass hit the seat then Little Miss Tits and Streaks was kneeling in between his legs and sliding her hands over his thighs.  He felt his cock stir half-heartedly.  Even his dick registered that this wasn’t what he wanted, not really.  The eyes were blue, but they were the wrong ones.

“Not tonight, darlin’.”

She made an exaggerated disappointed pout.  His cock went back to sleep; it absolutely did not have any appreciation for pussy getting bent out of shape.  He spotted Fitz, still over at the bar, drinking alone while watching the show taking place on the pole.

“Fitz is lookin’ lonely, darlin’.  How ‘bout you keep him company.”  The blonde piece still didn’t look happy, but she did as he suggested.

Having lost any enthusiasm to keep on drinking while his brothers were getting laid, Dizzy finished his beer and left, but not before telling Fitz where he was going.  He knew Annelle was watching him as he walked out of the clubhouse, but he couldn’t find it in him to care what anyone thought of his early exit.