Page 133 of Roses Are Dead
Three rows of five. While KC used to drive us nuts by failing to see the obvious, sometimes he saw things we all missed. Like knowing new marks had been added. I didn’t doubt him anymore. I traced the last full row of marks that was fresher than the previous three.
KC killed this one. I ran my thumb along the first mark in the row. Then moved to the next mark.
Sketch got that one. Self-defense, but still, we didn’t need him getting fingered for the kill, justification or not.
My thumb lingered on the two marks that followed. Mine.
I’d gone to “talk” to the gangbanger KC and Sketch jumped in an alley and let walk away. He wasn’t alone, though. His buddy, the fourth member of the squad was with him. I’d beaten confessions out of them both. Their bodies were at least sixty miles away. Maybe someday some curious sort might find their bones. If they dug deep enough.
Each mark told a story. I wondered at the ones between. Who were they? What had they done to warrant being enshrined on Carl’s altar.
What bothered me most, Carl took credit for kills that weren’t his.
Except for Fish taking up the diagonal. If only I could prove that one, we’d all sleep easier.
And perhaps the line in the last row. It sat all by itself, like the first one. Rose. Something whispered her name to me. The mark was faint, as if it wasn’t a done deal yet.
I tore the hidden cameras and motion detectors KC and I planted down. Any evidence we’d ever been at Carl’s got bagged. I called Skinner to let him know what I was doing.
“Wolf’s pissed. Why aren’t you here?”
“Carl’s setting us up. It’s going down tonight.” Or tomorrow. Knowing Carl, it would be tomorrow. Which made it strange he wasn’t here right now.
Skinner’s silence wasn’t comforting. “Are you sure?”
I stared at that mark. “Yeah. He’s got Rose.”
“The fuck, man? When? How’d he grab her? I’m getting my keys.”
I stopped him from doing something stupid like leaving before a major meeting. “Sit your ass back down. She went to him all by herself.”
The squeak of his rolling chair told me he’d followed orders. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”
I wasn’t. It had taken me too damn long to get pissed off enough to move. She’d gutted me. Watching her walk out that door almost took me out of the game. I tried to talk myself out of going after her. But then I remembered that KC and I planted shit at Carl’s house. That gave me the incentive to come here, if only to protect the club. Because nothing else mattered.
They were all I had left. And even that connection felt empty, as if it had met some previously unknown expiration date and I was just acting out the motions without any meaning behind them. I cared enough to warn Skinner to stay put, but was I leading by example? No. I was doing unauthorized and likely unnecessary dirty work when I was supposed to be basking in a promotion.
The celebration, with all those clubs present, was important. Yet I was making no attempt to rush back.
A big part of my heart was asking, “So what if I was late for the vote?” I rationalized that ambivalence, telling myself that even if my actions here cost me the spot, I’d protect the club with my dying breath. Or, if killing Carl and Rose myself was what it took to keep my brothers out of the crosshairs, then, in the words of that damned woman, so mote it be.
Skinner sputtered out a single word. “Why?”
“What?” His question came at me sideways because my head was elsewhere.
“Why the fuck did she leave you? What the fuck did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Oh, you fucking know you did something. You always do something. Did you boss her around or some shit? Did you threaten her again?”
Asshole. “Since when are you on her side?” I was hanging my ass out at Carl’s house to protect the club, and he had the nerve to accuse me of causing this bullshit?
“Listen—”
“No.”
“See? That’s why she left your ass. You never fucking listen to anyone. FYI, I’m voting against you for that. We don’t need another egomaniac like Jackson in this place.”
