They all heard a maniacal laugh coming from the tree line. “You still alive there, Junior?”
Four of the men standing in the hall recognized the voice of the man calling out. It was Wilder’s brother…the man they used to call their brother. The man who went by the handle of Hogg, named after Boss Hogg from the Dukes of Hazzard.
“You lousy bastard,” Nash called out. “Yeah, I’m still alive. No thanks to you. You never could shoot straight.”
“What do you want here, Hogg?” Wilder called out.
“I want what should have been mine all those years ago, brother. I want my place in the club,” Hogg yelled back.
“You broke the rules, Hogg,” Hawkins called back. “You knew what they were and what the consequences would be if you got caught and you broke them anyway.”
“Rules were made to be broken, old man,” Hogg shouted. “The club could have been set up for life if you would have allowed the drug trade to come in. You lost out on a lot of green, not only for your family but for all the rest of the brothers.”
“No one stopped anything,” Cash replied. “We all made up our minds that the club would be clean and legit. You got kicked out because you lied to us and no one could trust you.”
“Fuck you all then. Prepare to find hell!” Hogg screamed out his rage.
Suddenly, they all were left to scramble out of the way, as he let loose a barrage of bullets. They all headed back to the interior of the clubhouse while crouching until all the shooting stopped. They stayed low the deeper they went into the main room.
Hawkins looked around the room and snarled, “A few of you get up top with rifles and see if you can find that motherfucker… you find a shot, you take it. We need him alive if we can get him that way. Just don’t get yourselves dead. Don’t let that bastard win.”
Wanderer, Brute and Titan grunted and disappeared for a few moments then reappeared with their own rifles. They took the stairs to the roof.
The others got their own weapons and took their places to defend their own house.
Nash was over at one of the windows facing the back.
Hawkins crouched low and went over to him. He looked at Nash and had to ask, “Did you know he was here? In the area, I mean?”
“Fuck, no.” Nash snarled. “I haven’t seen that crazy old man since the day I left and came back here. I told you then I’d left him behind.” Nash shook his head. “Shortly after we left here he got a job muling for the cartel. He worked his way up the ranks and then he began using the product he was dealing.” He shook his head. “I watched him falling deeper and deeper into that death trap, then he started blaming me for losing some of the money he was making. He never realized he was using more every day. One day when I was sixteen, he came home and was really pissed. He said he went to turn in his balance and he was short by thousands of dollars. The cartel gave him three days to make it right. He came home and asked me where the money was. I tried to tell him he used it all up but he didn’t believe me. That’s when he beat me so badly that I had to wait a day to leave, I could barely walk.”
Hawkins nodded. “That’s what you told us nine years ago when you came back. I believed it then and I believe it now but he doesn’t.” He pointed outside. “Something must have happened that pushed him out of favor with the cartel and now he’s looking to use us as a scapegoat for that.”
“They probably got tired of losing money with every load they gave him and kicked him to the curb,” Nash suggested disgustedly.
Hawkins shook his head. “Naw son, the cartel doesn’t just kick you to the curb, they get their pound of flesh then they slice you up and put your parts out in the desert.”
Nash shrugged. “Ok, so I don’t know. And what has he been doing to survive all these years unless he’s been on the run all this time?”
Wilder crouched nearby with his gun as he scoffed. “If he’s been on the run from the cartel for the last nine years, he’d be half crazy by now. Hogg was never one to deal with his own guilt. He always laid the blame on someone else.”
Nash nodded. “That’s for sure, he tried to blame me, and it never occurred to him that he was the reason the money was always short.”
“Well, he’s here for a reason, we just gotta figure out what that reason is before he kills too many of us.” Wilder shook his head. “Beau never was one to take responsibility when he could just let it slide and lay the blame on someone else.”
Cat snapped her head around and stared at Wilder. “What did you call him?”
Wilder glanced at Hawkins then turned to her and said, “His real name is Beau, Beau Noble.”
Cat sat on the floor up against the wall with Luna beside her. She slowly shook her head, something was on the tip of her memory, but she couldn’t remember it. Something she heard a long time ago. Cat looked at Luna and took both her hands. “I need you to help me remember something if you can.”
Luna frowned and nodded slowly. “Ok, now you’re scaring me, what is this all about?”
“An alliance, three people in an unholy alliance,” Cat whispered. “I was trying to remember this Bojangles person but I can’t. Then I remembered the time I saw my mother in the woods confronting two young men. I think those two men were Robby and Nicky. Something about that time bothers me, but I can’t remember what it was. I was just a little kid and I don’t think I knew what I was seeing at the time.”
“What do you mean?” Luna frowned.
Cat sighed heavily. “That’s just it, I don’t know but it all hinges on the word Bojangles. There’s just something about that name that I need to remember. I heard it used a long time ago, but it’s just not coming to me.”
“The names are similar, could that be it?” Luna asked her.
“I just don’t know. It’s like right there in my mind but I can’t seem to bring it forward. Kind of like the saying ‘being on the tip of your tongue’ yet you can’t say it. Something happened when I was taken from here but… I just can’t remember it.”
“Cat, you were in shock I’d say, after watching your mom shoot your dad. That had to be traumatic, especially for a little kid.”
“Yes it was.” Cat nodded. “I was under the table hiding because they were screaming at each other. Dad was asking her how she could have done it, all her lying, and dealing poison to kids. Mom was screaming right back, saying she was doing her job and that was all she was doing, her job. She went on to tell him that’s all he was too, a job. She never loved him but he lived in the area and she needed to be here to make the connection.” Cat gasped and her eyes widened in awe. She turned her head slowly and looked at Luna. “I never recalled hearing the words they were saying before now. All I ever remembered was the tone of their anger when they fought. They fought a lot and most of the time I blocked it out by covering my ears. But that day, I couldn’t.”
“What else did you hear, girl?” Hawkins had been listening to her. He frowned in anger at what she had been saying.
Cat recoiled at the look on his face. She leaned against the wall and shut her mouth.
Luna reached over and patted her arm. “Tell us honey. Don’t keep her secrets anymore. Everyone needs to hear this.”
“I didn’t cover my ears that day. I was sitting there under that table listening to my world fall apart. My Dad was just so mad,” she whispered. “He called her a liar, a whore, and a murderer. He asked her if she ever loved him and she laughed in his face. She told him he was nothing more to her than a cover she needed. He was respectable and that’s what she needed to hide behind but even that was getting old. She wouldn’t need him for much longer and she would enjoy putting a bullet in his head.” Her words faded into silence as tears rolled down her cheeks. She looked over at Luna. “He asked her about me and she cackled again, as she told him I was nothing to her but a means to an end. She said she never intended to have me but her boss told her to trap him and have the damn baby. Then she called me her burden, her culpability but that I wouldn’t be her problem much longer. She told him he would go to his grave knowing that I would be gone and no one would ever find me. She would leave me somewhere and I would be lost to him and his MC. She would walk away and never think about me again. She sounded so cruel and yet, even at the age of three, I knew she meant every single word.”
Luna squeezed her hands. “It’s okay. Take your time.”
Cat hung her head and shook it. “Then the other voice told her they needed him a little while longer. There was a big shipment coming in over the next few days and she needed to be there to accept it. She told the guy that her boss knew she wasn’t staying here any longer. That’s when she shot my dad. When he fell to the floor, the other guy panicked and screamed at her. When he bent over to check Jesse, she stabbed him in the back. He fell on top of my dad and she pushed him over and he called her a name.” Cat frowned and hesitated. “I don’t remember what he called her but I’ve never heard that name before or since. That’s when she told him she didn’t need him anymore either but that she would be sure and tell his father that he had betrayed them all. She said she could sell his father any story and he would believe her. She would just lay all the blame on him. Then she started the fire and dragged me away.” Cat began to shake. “She drove away and never looked back. That’s when she took me straight to her parents’ house. At least I think it was her parent’s house. She called out her mother’s name but she called out the name of Paulette.” She looked up at Luna. “Why would she call out her mother’s given name?”
Luna frowned and shook her head. “She wouldn’t. Most people call their mother, Mom or Ma.” Shaking her head, she admitted. “Something isn’t making sense here.”
Cat shrugged while feeling so lost. “I was just so upset that day. I didn’t remember any of this back then. All I knew was that she took me somewhere and dropped me off. She turned and walked away from me and never looked back.”
Cash looked over at them and said, “I think you need to try and remember what the other bastard who died that day called her. It sounds like Isobel is hiding secrets about who she really is.”
Hawkins glared at Cash. “What the fuck are you saying?”
Cash shrugged. “We knew her as Isobel, but what if she was never Isobel at all? If this place was nothing more than a link in the cartel’s chain of distribution, they could give her a name that wouldn’t cause any problems. What if Isobel is only a name she used for her cover?”
Wilder agreed, “You could be on to something. Working with and for the cartel for a very long time. She would have to establish a working name that wouldn’t necessarily have to be her own.”
Cash nodded. “She would have to establish her family too, if Jesse were to believe her story. She might not have been related to those people in the first place.”
Cat stared at him in horror. “She left me with them and they weren’t her parents? Why would she do that?”
“Because she was a number one grade A bitch of epic proportions?” Hawkins offered.
“Then who is she? And who am I?” Cat whispered as she curled herself up against the wall.
Luna looked scared for her as she scooted closer and flung her arm around Cat. “You are Cat Lamond and my best friend, lady. She can’t take that away from you if you don’t let her. Please remember that.”
Cat looked up at her friend and nodded. “I’ll try.” She whimpered as she snuggled in and let Luna hold her.
Hawkins and the others just stared at her.
The pieces were coming together now, and the more they saw of the real picture, the more their rage grew against the woman who not only betrayed them but seemingly, her daughter as well.
