He was right when he said I'd have been frightened to return to my old life, knowing that there were still dangerous people who wanted me dead for what I'd seen. But after everything I'd been through, I felt like fear was something I could have dealt with more easily than I had before.
I didn't think I could deal with losing Rafe, though. I was worried that would shatter me into a million pieces.
Bard drove us back to Chicago, with Boomer riding shotgun and Nic crammed into the back with me and Rafe. I wanted to reach over to touch Rafe, or lay my head on his bare shoulder, but it didn't feel right with so many people sitting around us.
The radio was tuned to the same '50s music station Ham had been playing in the diner, and The Kingston Trio were singing for Tom Dooley to hang down his head because he was bound to die.
As long as Tom Dooley's the only one who is, I thought grimly.
During the drive, Boomer made a few phone calls to Reapers, letting them know what had happened and telling them to meet at the Devil's Nest to protect me until this was over.
# # #
Over an hour of doo wop songs later, the Lincoln Town Car pulled off of Lake Shore Drive and into the Rogers Park neighborhood in northern Chicago. It pulled into a small parking lot next to a shabby-looking little bar with a row of motorcycles standing out front. There were bullet holes and scorched patches on the front of the building. Heavy metal music shrieked and roared from inside.
“This is the Nest,” Rafe told me.
“I probably could have guessed that,” I replied dryly.
We got out of the car and walked into the Devil's Nest. There were about a dozen men wearing vests with War Reaper patches on them. As they turned to look at us, most of their faces appeared to be full of contempt and scorn. At first I thought it was directed at me, but then I realized they were looking at Rafe. I felt a surge of pity for him. I didn't know much about bikers or their gangs, but I knew how much it must have hurt for him to be looked at that way by people who he'd considered his brothers.
One of the only Reapers who didn't look at Rafe that way was a younger member with acne scars and a wispy mustache. As he got up and walked over to us, I saw that the name on his patch was “Sperm.” I asked myself how he'd gotten that name, then decided I didn't really want to know after all.
“Hey Rafe,” Sperm said. He turned to me and added, “You must be Jewel. It's a pleasure to meet you.” He extended his hand awkwardly, and the gesture and the absurd formality of his tone almost made me want to laugh.
Instead I shook his hand. “It's a pleasure to meet you too.”
“No jokes about my mother today, huh, Sperm?” Rafe asked ruefully.
Sperm grinned, but his eyes looked pained. “Sure, I got a whole bunch of 'em. Just survive this mess so I can tell 'em to you, okay?”
Rafe nodded and reached for my hand, giving it a small squeeze.
“Here, we got the back room set up for you so you can wait this out,” Sperm told me, leading us to a door at the back of the bar. “TV's not in great shape, but I can go out an' grab a book or some magazines or somethin', if it'll make things easier for you. An' there's a cot back there if you want to get some sleep.”
Sperm opened the door to the room. It was clearly intended for storage, with cases of cheap beer stacked against one wall next to boxes of cleaning supplies. Several tables and chairs had been piled high to make room for the narrow cot, and I could see that the dust on the floor had been hastily swept into the corners. There was a back door marked “Fire Exit.”
“I, uh, know it's not much to look at,” Sperm said sheepishly, “but it's the best I could do on short notice. Sorry.”
“It's fine,” I said, trying to sound upbeat. “Thank you, um...Sperm.”
Sperm laughed. “I know. Stupid nickname, right? I usually forget until I hear a girl say it, ha.”
“We should probably get going,” Bard said to Rafe. “The sooner we do, the sooner we can put this fiasco behind us.”
“Right,” Rafe said, turning to me. “Just hang out here and try to relax, okay? I know how hard that's going to be, but trust me, this will all be over in a few hours.”
“Okay,” I said. I felt a crazy urge to tell Rafe that I loved him, but I couldn't. Not here, not in front of all these strange bikers. As badly as I wanted to, I knew it wasn't the right time or place and I was afraid he wouldn't be able to say it back, even if he felt it too. Instead I kissed him on the cheek and said, “Good luck. Oh, and take this. You might need it.” I handed the .22 back to him, figuring if a bar full of bikers couldn't keep me safe, the pistol probably wouldn't either.
Rafe nodded and walked toward the front door of the bar with Bard and Sperm. As he did, I saw Sperm reach into his pocket and pull out a handful of memory sticks, saying, “So when Boomer told me about the thing you grabbed from the Chayner brothers, I got an idea...”
Before I could hear what it was, the back room door swung shut behind them. The sound had the flat, terrible finality of a tomb being sealed, and I shivered.
I wished I would have told him what I’d realized in the car. The realization had been as quick as a lightning strike—I love him.
I'd wanted to tell Rafe that I loved him, regardless of how short and crazy our time had been together so far. Now I was afraid that I'd never have another chance.
I sat on the cot, wondering what to do next. It seemed like my only options were to either stare at the walls or try to sleep, and with my stomach feeling like a writhing nest of snakes from worrying about Rafe, I didn't think sleep would be a viable option.
I was tempted to open the door and see if I could find Sperm so I could take him up on his offer of something to read, but then I remembered the other Reapers sitting out there in the bar. I thought they might somehow blame me for Rafe's betrayal, or at least associate me with it, and I wasn't sure I could handle the thick atmosphere of disapproval from a room full of strangers. Better to just hunker down and wait for news, I decided.
After a few more minutes, the door to the back room opened. I looked up, hoping it would be Sperm with a magazine or two.
Instead, I gaped in shock and disbelief at the figure filling the frame of the door.
He was extremely tall, with skin that was even more scarred and ragged than Boomer's. His hair was long and dirty. He had a patch over one eye, and one of his arms was missing at the shoulder. He was limping slightly, and when I looked down, I saw that both of his feet were prosthetics fashioned from curved black metal. He had a deck of cards in his hand and a small blackboard under his remaining arm. He wore a denim vest with a Reaper patch like the others, and his name tag said “Growler.”
All in all, he looked like something I'd have expected to see staggering across the screen in a horror movie, chased by angry villagers with torches and pitchforks.
“Um, hi,” I said uncertainly.
Growler nodded a greeting and gently closed the door behind him. Then he walked over to the cot and sat down at the other end of it. I felt myself instinctively flinch away from him, my back against the wall. I felt bad, but I couldn't help it. I'd honestly never seen someone so maimed and hideous-looking in my entire life.
Growler didn't seem particularly surprised or offended by my reaction. Instead he tossed the deck of cards on the cot, carefully removed a piece of chalk from his pocket, and scrawled on the blackboard. Satisfied, he turned the board around so I could read the words.
“Know any good card games?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Uhhh...well, I guess I know Rummy, and, um, Go Fish...”
Growler shook his shaggy head, erasing the words and writing new ones to show me.
“Games where you don't have to talk?”
“Oh,” I said meekly. “Right.”
This is going to be the longest few hours of my life, I thought.
Chapter 34
Rafe
Sperm told me his plan with the memory sticks, and it sounded like it was worth a try.
Before I could head for the door, Sperm grabbed my shoulder. “Hey, uh, if you're gonna ride out to face Jester and his guys, you should probably grab a shirt first, not to mention a new pair of pants. Unless your plan is to get them to laugh themselves to death when they see those fuckin' khakis.”
Shit, I thought. I left my other clothes under the seat of the fucking Saab, which is still parked in front of the farmhouse. And Jewel's stuff is there too, which will probably make her pretty upset, since she said the clothes were a gift from her folks.
Sperm hopped behind the bar, rummaged around for a moment, and came up with a black t-shirt, a huge pair of jeans, and a belt. “You might need to cinch that belt pretty tight,” Sperm said. “Remember Orca? He used to keep this stuff behind the bar for when he got too drunk and puked all over his clothes.”
I remembered Orca, the 400-pound former VP of the Reapers. He had indeed been known to regularly drink entire cases of beer in a single night before passing out on the floor in a pool of his own piss and vomit. I'd heard that he'd died of a heart attack a year after I'd been sent to Potawatomi. I'd been pretty sad about it, but then again, there were definitely worse ways to check out when you were in our line of work.