Page 35 of Property of Baffle
I giggled at the thought.There were perks to living in the clubhouse with my husband.The crappy part was the opposite side of the same coin - little to no privacy.Our meals, when we were able to eat together, were usually shared with whoever else was in the clubhouse and hungry at the time.That was why I was so damn giddy at the thought of our date night and going out to eat.Yes, we would still be surrounded by people in a restaurant, but they wouldn’t be inserting themselves into our conversation the way everyone does when they live on top of one another as a giant family.
The one update I hadn’t heard yet was if Johnny Culver had finally stopped being useful.I really couldn’t wait for the day that he was no longer a concern of mine and I didn’t care what that might mean for him.If he ended up as food on a pig farm, I wouldn’t be upset about it.The man used and abused women for fun.As far as I was concerned, if my husband and the Kings took him out, then they’d be doing a lot of potential, future victims a huge favor.
I worked through most of the day and only realized, hours later when my welding helmet came off, that the prospect from the clubhouse never showed up.When I glanced around, there was a note sitting under my phone from Brady.
Nell,
Assuming your prospect went to take a leak or something.Going to help Angel with a sewage problem she’s having.Back soon.Call if you need anything.
555-0272
Brady
It looked like I was completely on my own for the first time since Vegas.About five minutes after I read the note from Brady, I got a text while I was cleaning up my workspace.
HUBBY: Need you to get a ride back to the clubhouse with the prospect.If he’s on his Harley, see if Brady can give you a ride instead.We got an emergency call and I need to head out to go collect Roxy and Lila.Some devils were harassing them.Sorry to cancel on tonight, sweetheart.No one else able to do it.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”I growled at my phone as if my angry response would change the message my husband sent me.Our first real date night as a married couple and that drama queen was probably just playing the whore who cried, ‘save me’ so the biker she wanted would come running.I threw a wrench across the bay and accidentally broke the clock that was on the wall.
I winced because that clock wasn’t mine to break.That had been something that was already in the space when the guys moved my stuff in.I’d have to apologize to Brady when I saw him again.Unfortunately, that wouldn’t be today because I was too mad to stick around or go off in search of him to beg for a ride back home.Chances were, he was still helping Angel, though I had no clue how long ago he had left the message for me.Still, I had a sneaking suspicion that Brady had a crush on the youngest Mendoza sibling and I wasn’t about to get in the way of someone else’s personal time with the opposite sex.
That left no choices.One thing Violence didn’t have was public transportation of any kind.We didn’t even have a single Uber driver.It was a three-mile walk to get from where I was to the highway and then another mile or so on the other side of the highway to the clubhouse.It would take me more than an hour and some change to walk that far, but I desperately needed that time to cool down.I didn’t want to take my anger out on anyone who didn’t deserve it.My idiot husband probably wouldn’t be there when I got in, since Roxy was far more important.
He canceled our date that was still hours away at this point, which meant that the bitchy-duo couldn’t be very close to the clubhouse.At the same time, if they were near enough that the Kings could dispatch someone to their location, they might continue to be a problem - for me.I was sure the club didn’t care.They seemed to take keeping their people secure pretty fucking seriously.I thought the club’s protection on them had been revoked, so that left me with an even shittier feeling in my stomach because my husband chose to ignore that and go save her anyway.
Then again, my shadow, as Brady always put it, was missing all day.So, maybe the club taking security seriously had been an illusion all along.Either that or the shiny newness of me had warn off and I was no longer important or a priority.I put those horrible thoughts aside and continued to clean up my mess from the day.I made sure everything was secured, unplugged, and back wherever it was supposed to go.Then I tossed my phone in my open messenger bag and moved to the sink to fill up the two water bottles I had with me.I drained them earlier and truthfully, should have had more on site with me.New Mexico was a pretty cool place to live but water was scarce in this part unless you had some deep wells on the property.The Mortons had running water in the shop, but I had never asked if it was coming in from a tank they refilled from another site or a well on the property.As large as their property was, chances were they had their own well, but that didn’t mean there was one near the shop.Then again, there was water access at the RV park across the street, so I guessed it had to be close.
Ugh!
I was so frustrated with bullshit that I was making up problems.Not really.I knew, because I had looked into local real estate to find a place for a shop of my own, and maybe a future house, that having water access or hookups to water might be an issue.So, it wasn’t a made up problem, but it wasn’t something I should dwell on.It just kept me from thinking about the whorish skank who called my husband with a sob story and how he went running at the drop of her whore-bag hat.
After my bottles were filled, I took off.Before I made it out of the bay assigned to me, I was startled by the sound of something getting knocked around and skidding across the floor.When I didn’t see anything right away, I assumed I’d left a tool out and I could find and put it away whenever I came back to work.I was too angry to stop and deal with it.I needed the long walk that was ahead of me.
By the time I got close enough to see the highway, and the Kings of Anarchy’s gas station across the street, I was sweating buckets and had already finished one of the bottles of water and half of the other one.I would probably need to stop at the V-KOA Fill-up to get another water before finishing my last mile to the clubhouse.I don’t know why I always operated under the false assumption that the hottest part of the day was around noon.It was not.The hottest part was around dinner time when the sun had been baking the ground and everything around it all freaking day long and not only was the sun still streaming its rays down on you, but then the thoroughly baked earth seemed to throw the day’s heat back at the sun.Unfortunately, I was in the middle of that brutal battle as I made my way back to the clubhouse.
Once I was nearly to the end of the Morton’s property, I noticed a man sitting on a Harley staring out at the Kings of Anarchy’s compound across the way.Since he was on the Morton’s side of the highway, I figured maybe I hadn’t been left all alone after all.Maybe, because he was a prospect that wasn’t as trusted, they wanted him to keep an eye on the access to the Morton Compound but do it where club brothers could also keep an eye on him.I couldn’t make out his cut because he was angled just so that I had a better look at his side profile than the front or rear of his body.
“Hey!I’m headed home, so I guess you can go back to the clubhouse now,” I called out to him.It sucked that he was right there and couldn’t give me a ride for the last mile, but I wouldn’t hop on the back of his bike.Rick had explained a little bit of biker etiquette to me and while this might be one of those times where it was acceptable, I could spare the potential issues and just walk the extra mile.
At first, I didn’t think the prospect heard me, so I called out again, but then I realized he was already facing my direction but looking down at where he twisted the key in the ignition.The minute his head snapped up, I knew I was in trouble.That wasn’t a prospect waiting to protect me.It was Johnny-Fucking-Culver lying in wait.I’d basically delivered myself straight to him and wrapped myself up in a proverbial bow when I let him know I was there.
“Shit, shit, shit!”I glanced around, looking for anything I might be able to use as a weapon because heaven help me, it was too far to turn around and get back to Brady and Angel.I’d have to cross the highway to get to the V-KOA and I’d never make it with Jonny on a motorcycle and me on foot.I reached down and grabbed a sizable rock and made sure I had it fisted tightly in my hand as I slung my messenger bag over my shoulder in a cross-body fit.By the time I had it secured, so hopefully I wouldn’t lose my phone, Johnny was already riding directly for me.
I stopped and took a deep breath and let it out.I had one shot at hopefully knocking his ass into next week and it was imperative that the opportunity wasn’t wasted.It only took seconds, though it felt like forever, for him to close the distance between us.I lobbed the rock right for his head, and to my complete and utter shock, it hit dead center.Johnny lost his seat on his motorcycle and fell to the ground with a thud.Unfortunately, his motorcycle had a mind if its own and it continued on the same trajectory without its rider.
I leaped to get out of the way but wasn’t quite fast enough and the damn thing clipped my lower leg as I dove for safety.I felt the bone snap and cried.It then became an agony worse than anything I’d ever known as my body rolled a few times, thanks to the momentum from the hit and my dive, before I came to a full stop.My leg was the main source of pain but I could feel where my hip came down on a rock and my shoulder and head took a good knocking around as well.
Every fucking thing hurt, but I still had my messenger bag and with any luck, my phone would be undamaged.I glanced back over to keep Johnny in my sights, but he didn’t seem to be moving.That was good.I hoped he stayed down.I dug into my messenger bag to find my phone and it wasn’t there.I peeled the damn thing open and looked inside again only to find it missing.A quick glance around at the ground was all I needed to know that it hadn’t flown out anywhere.
“Why?”I called out to the heavens as I laid there on the hot fucking road baking in the late afternoon sun.The half-full water bottle that had been in my hand was launched somewhere out of reach and I was too far from the actual highway, or the gas station across the street, to be seen easily.Screaming wouldn’t get me far either.There’s no way they’d hear me while sitting inside with the air condition and music blasting.
I was going to die one mile from home while my husband was off playing white knight and rescuing another woman.
19Broken
Baffle
I didn’t even lookwhen my cell phone started to ring.Instead, I picked up immediately in case is was Nell or Bigfoot.The first for obvious reasons, the second because my club president was due back today and no one had heard from him yet.I should have looked.The call could have gone to voicemail and been ignored from there.That’s what should have happened.
