Page 36 of Lady Sings the Blues

10.

Mark/Beau

“Calm down, brother.” Chaos orders me as I take another swing at the wall, ploughing my fist through the drywall. The third hole I’ve made in the last five minutes.

“She won’t answer her phone. No one could find her yesterday after she left the house. It’s like she’s fallen off the face of the fuckin’ earth, and you want me to calm down? Elise is gone. What if the Horde have her? She told me that son of a bitch Houdini attacked her. He’s dead. They’re all dead.”

Bloodhound and Carver each grab a side forcing me into a chair.

This time Duke gets in my face. “I understand your motives, but you brought this on yourself by not telling her the truth sooner.”

“Don’t think I know that? It don’t matter, none of it matters if they have her. I’ll die before I let a Horde touch what’s finally mine. My Elise. After all these years.”

“Which is why we already got Sneak on it shadowing Rage.” Rage, the piece of shit president of the Horde, spends more time gettin’ off and gettin’ high than governing his club. I can’t understand a MC prez loosin’ control of his men that way. You ain’t got respect, you might as well put a bullet in your own brain, because you’d be of that much use to the club.

“It’s Houdini who’d have her.”

“If he does, you think the head Horde won’t know? Sneak gets wind of anything, we’ll set Bloodhound on the scent. We’ll find her. I promise, we’ll find her.”

I drop my head to my hands, elbows to knees, on the verge of breaking down completely. Something I’ve never done before. Not in front of my brothers, at least, when Duke drops a photograph of Dawna on my lap.

I pick it up, staring at the face who comforted me like a mother when I couldn’t turn to my own any longer. She wasn’t even a full decade older than me, but she lived and breathed maternal instincts. We were the children—the family she knew she’d never have.

“I ain’t good with this soft shit,” Duke says. “But do you really think she’s worth this reaction?”

“You of all people gonna ask me that?” With the glare I level on him, if my eyes could shoot lasers, he’d be a pile of ash at my feet.

“Seriously? We’re gonna compare old ladies here?” Duke pulls a pack of Reds from the front chest pocket of his cut. He puts a cigarette between his lips and hands one off to me before lighting up. “Fill me in,” he continues. “’Cuz I ain’t seen her do much more than cause trouble.”

In the picture still grasped reverently between my fingers Dawna’s laughing, hair rustling lightly from a breeze. Her eyes have that familiar twinkle in them, the one she had, even on her deathbed for Duke.

I clear my throat. “This shit’s all my fault. I never gave her the chance to prove herself. But you don’t know the kind of woman she is.”

“Sureyoudo?” he asks. “Doc was a good man, and I suppose did the best he could, but maybe this is a sign to walk away.”

“You didn’t know her back then, and you sure as hell ain’t been alone with us. Heard the things she’s said to me. Dawna was class all the way. Hard and soft exactly when she needed to be. That’s my Elise. We spent ten minutes out here while she tortured herself with how to apologize to y’all. I didn’t force her to come, she asked to come. She was worried about how her reaction would affect the respect I’ve built with the brothers.

“After only three days, she was willin’ to give us a real shot. Even knowin’ she’d have to spend time in a town that hates her.” I shake my head slowly, and light up the cigarette Duke gave me. “Sound like a woman not worth my time? I should just walk away from?”

“We’ll find her.” That’s all he says as he pats my shoulder a couple times then turns to leave the room.

“I need to ride,” I tell Chaos, Bloodhound and Carver. Aside from Duke and Tommy, these are the closest men in the world to me. Brothers among brothers.

“Anywhere in particular, or we just riding?”

“Just me today.”

Chaos stabs me in the face with one of his infamous Chaos looks. “Fuck that. State you’re in, you’re liable to lay your bike down. You go, I go.”

“What about Doc’s funeral?”

“We’ll pay our respects when you’re ready. We’ve got men already over there making sure Elise hasn’t shown up.”

“She won’t.”

“Probably not. But we got it covered anyway. And we have two prospects on Hadley’s house just in case. So again, we riding anywhere in particular or just riding?”

“Just ridin’.”

“Then lead the way, brother.”

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