Page 84 of Pirate

He saw fire trucks and ambulances being moved. State troopers arrived and started to help direct traffic over half of the bridge. Motorcycles roared to life and sped off in the direction of the hospital. Pirate had no idea where his parents, the ol’ ladies,or anyone else who was going to be at the steakhouse with them were and he didn’t care.

Eventually, he heard the shouts that two men had emerged from the river downstream. Jumper and Ghost were out of the water, but they were empty-handed.

Scar was gone.

The wedding was postponed.No one was in much of a celebrating mood.

Pumpkin was on life support at the hospital. Both of his legs and arms were broken, along with three ribs, one clavicle, and all the teeth on the left side of his mouth. He had massive internal bleeding and his heart had actually stopped beating at one point on the ride to the hospital. The doctors had induced a coma to help keep him calm while they were waiting for the swelling in his brain to go down. His chances of living were better than what they had been, and increased with each day that passed, but he was still in critical condition.

His bike was completely demolished. There was no repairing it and the insurance company had labeled it a loss.

The ol’ ladies and Frankie were taking care of SJ in his father’s absence. The club did not leave Pumpkin alone, even though he was in a coma and there was a debate as to whether or not he could hear them. Each day, someone brought SJ to the hospital to see his dad. With the permission of the doctors, they would lower Pumpkin’s hospital gown down to reveal his chest and then they would place his infant son over his breastplate. There was speculation that the bond between father and son was strong enough that feeling his son against his bare skin would help Pumpkin heal. As if he could sense his father’s pain, SJwould lay quietly on his father and curl his little body against him.

The mystery of why Pumpkin had been on his motorcycle in the rain was solved by Frankie. She had indeed been driving behind Sophia and Pirate, following Pumpkin to Grumpy’s auto body shop where Pumpkin also worked. The two had planned on driving to the garage all along, knowing that Pumpkin needed to drop his hog off there. Since it was on the way to the steakhouse, it made the most sense to do it on the way.

Frankie and SJ had been the only ones in the club’s SUV. When the shooting had started, she’d put the SUV into reverse and sped away. The dash cam in the SUV not only caught the impact of theHummercolliding with Pumpkin’s bike and the first couple of shots, but also a clear picture of Fletcher’s stationary sports car as he watched from the other side of the bridge.

Frankie had called 911 to report the shooting. Not knowing where else to go, she’d taken SJ back to the clubhouse. In her shock, she’d delayed calling Steel and informing him what was going on. By then, Carlos had already gotten the call. Like Steel and many of the others, Carlos had been on his way to the steakhouse with Zoe and Kyle in his cruiser. Carlos had called Steel before Frankie got her wits about her enough to. The poor girl kept apologizing for leaving Pumpkin, Pirate, and Sophia behind, but no one blamed her. With SJ in the cage, she’d made the right decision.

The decision Pumpkin, were he awake and coherent, would have told her to make.

Just because Ghost and Jumper came out of the river empty-handed did not mean the search for Scar’s body was over. The first search into the night went on for miles. Boats were launched into the river, along with rescue divers. With each hourthat passed, the more the responders despaired that their search and rescue would become a recovery effort.

The mountain water was just too cold, the current too swift.

By the third day, the search was officially called off. That did not stop the club from searching. Keys pulled up satellite imagery, Scissors used her drones with heat sensors, Ghost and Jumper went back into the water with the proper equipment, Ranger scoured the surrounding woods for any signs Scar had survived and dragged himself onto land…

Bulldog put his efforts in elsewhere.

A jailbreak, the first in Mount Grove history, took place the night of Fletcher Montague’s arrest. The cameras caught nothing. One minute Fletcher was sitting in the jail cell, the next he was gone.

If Keys wasn’t so busy looking through satellite imagery, there was a good chance he would have added some special effects to make it look like Fletcher had been abducted by little green aliens.

Beneath the floor of the clubhouse’s main room was a hidden cellar. The club hadn’t even known it was there for the first couple of years that they owned the property. It had never been on any floor plans. Once discovered, it had sat empty for years until the club needed a secret location to put Richard Hannigan, Deputy Mark Connelly, and a cartel thug named Marcos. After that, some work had been put into the cellar to make it soundproof. Chains with manacles had been installed into the ceiling and a wall of tools had been added. A work table and single chair were also kept below.

The cellar was not glamorous by any means. To quote Demo, it was “fucking creepy”. Creaky old stairs led down to a stale and dingy eight by eight room. A single light kept the cellar barely lit, adding to the eerie atmosphere.

Nathan Moore was the cellar’s permanent resident. The child rapist was working off a debt to Angel in blood, pain, and torment. While Angel did her best to make Moore’s life hell, it was Bear’s responsibility to keep the man alive. Moore owed Angel over two more years of suffering before she would end his miserable existence.

The night of the town’s first jailbreak, Nathan Moore got a roommate.

Carlos had known that Bulldog wanted Fletcher to pay for Scar’s death. But he also knew that he could not allow his older brother to do so publicly. Fletcher was in custody and there were far too many witnesses around for Carlos to hand Fletcher over to the club or turn his back as the club took him. There’d been no choice but to let Fletcher be taken to jail.

Bulldog later confided in the club what Carlos had whispered to him on the bridge to get him to calm down.“Not here! He’s in police custody now. If you do it here, you take his place! Think about Abby. I’m sorry,fratello, but it’s too late. The only way you’ll be able to get to him now is if he somehow escapes from jail.”

Pirate, who was also owed blood from Fletcher, joined Bulldog in the cellar. While he knew of the cellar, he’d never been down in it before. As prospects, it had been Pirate’s, Star’s, and Lionheart’s job to clean the cellar and dispose of the bodies. Pirate had always been on the disposal end due to his leg giving him trouble on the unreliable stairs.

Now, he worked alongside Bulldog to exact revenge onto Fletcher Montague.

Bulldog swore to Fletcher that he would remain in the cellar until Scar was found alive.

While neither Pirate nor Bulldog asked any questions of Fletcher, he spilled his guts anyway—anything to make the pain stop.

The two men who had been helping Fletcher were buddies who had joined the Army with him. Both had washed out of boot camp. Fletcher stayed in touch with them and used them on occasion to help with his various plots to mess with people or get his way.

After Sophia had rejected him in front of her mother and then stood him up, he’d sent one of his buddies to her house. But she hadn’t been home. Fletcher actually thought Sophia would callhimif there’d been signs of a break-in or she thought someone was downstairs. Fletcher claimed to know nothing about his buddy returning to her house the next two nights and never mentioned anything about why the buddy would move her boots.

It was all useless information anyway. It didn’t change anything or his circumstances.

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