“Yeah,” Honey Badger mutters, looking from me to the door.
I say nothing, but they know I’m good for it. We trust each other with our lives.
They go downstairs and I stay put. Again time tricks me. Suddenly EMTs are in the room telling me I have to let her go. I barely know this girl. I don’t even know her fuckin’ name. But I witnessed something in her. It began last night when she gave herself to me. It deepened tonight when I learned her story. I witnessed her enact a vengeance that she’d waited her whole life to do, and that kind of thing bonds you to a person.
I saw her soul tonight. Hell, I saw it last night, too. She took her wall down for me. How I earned that honor, I’ll never know.
And now it’s over.
“I’m going with you,” I whisper, following them as they carry her out on a gurney.
Cops are everywhere. Searching. Listening.
The Ciphers are answering questions.
When two police officers try to stop me at the front door, my voice is firm. “I’ll answer anything you want. But I’m not letting her out of my sight.”
“How do we know you won’t leave the hospital?”
“Do I look like I’m going anywhere she’s not?”
They stare at me.
Fuse yells from behind his broken nose. “We’re the good guys here! Let him go!”
“I’ll go with him,” a female cop says to the guy. “Cantor and I will make sure he stays put.”
I head out. The EMTs have her in the ambulance and are about to close the door. One looks over his shoulder to see what the verdict is, if I’m coming or not. That’s decent of him. I motion to the bike and he nods.
Climbing onto my baby, I flip the ignition. The familiar roar calms me. Centers me. Reminds me who I am. I’m Jett Fucking Cocker. I can handle this. And if these cops wanna put us in jail, they’re going to have to fight me for the right. We help people, goddammit. They need men like us. Something my father doesn’t want to believe, except when it serves him to use me to his own ends.
Sunshine…I thought I had problems with my old man. You win.
As we speed down the canyons of Los Angeles to Cedars Sinai Hospital, cars pull over for the ambulance and do double takes at the biker then the police car, whispering to each other, “What the hell happened there?”
Jett
A cup of coffee is thrust into my hands and I look over. “Take it,” Honey Badger gruffly says. “You look like hell.”
“If I see another cop again…”
He nods and sits on the beige, uncomfortable hospital chair on the other side of Sunshine’s bed.
“Yeah,” he mutters, staring at her bandaged head.
I take a sip as I gaze at her. It tastes like nothing to me. My senses are dead. Everything feels like how she looks – colorless and empty.
“What’d the doctor say?”
I inhale and shake my head. “I’m waiting to hear. They just wheeled her in.”
Entering the room Fuse interjects, “Doctors are just educated guessers, that’s what my mom called them.”
I look over to see him carrying his bloodied jacket, his shoulder gauzed. “They fix you up?”
He shrugs and rips the small piece of tape off his nose. “Fuck this thing. First time I’ve been to a real doctor since I joined the club eleven years ago. Felt weird. Didn’t like it. But they did a cleaner job removing the bullet than you fuckers ever did.”
Honey Badger adjusts in his chair to ask, “Well?”
Fuse leans against a wall and hooks his fingers in his blood-spattered jeans pockets. We’re all covered. “After you guys finished answering all their fuckin’ questions, they double fact-checked everything, asking the same things to us. Course all our stories are the same, because we’re the fuckin’ good guys here, but they sure didn’t want to believe it, did they?”
We both shake our heads.
“Well, they’re real curious about The Ciphers now. I have a feeling word might spread. In a good way. Hell, who knows how that’ll pan out? Could put us up against other clubs. I don’t know. Then Scratch and Tonk wanted to see what would happen to the girls, so they’re at the precinct now. Said they’d call and find out where we are when they’re done. I guess Tonk took a liking to one of the women, and he’s real concerned over what happens to her after this. They don’t have families. Most of them are totally alone.”
Honey Badger and I look at each other as he tells me, “The one he consoled, probably, that’s the one. Fuse was in the other room kicking ass.”
“Right,” I mutter, looking back at Sunshine. Gently I lift her hand and hold it, closing my eyes. I have a strong feeling she’s gonna die on me. Never seen anyone this pale.