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  “Roman.” Myrna knew he loathed being called Manhole. She squirmed with all the shapely hourglass power of her surgically enhanced figure. Roman had seen a brother dogging her once, and he’d paused to observe, detached, to see if a sight like that still aroused him. It did, and he stayed long enough to reason out the mechanics of Myrna’s breast implants as they bobbed there statically, not swaying, more like speed bumps than plastic bags full of jello. He’d been experienced with implants in his groupie years. He wondered why a club whore bothered getting them. Bikers fucked anything that moved. Rock stars tended to pick the ones with the implants. “Now that you’re a fully patched member, maybe you can switch your vows around. I know you thought you were being celibate as part of your initiation rites. Now that’s over. I see your top rocker. I feel your giant hard-on against my cunt bone. You can’t pretend I’m not getting to you.”

  “I never said you didn’t make me hard,” Roman gasped, trying to enfold both her wrists in one of his hands. She was trying to run her fingers through his slicked-back hair, and he vowed to tie his bandanna around it before putting his brain bucket on to ride out. “I’m only human. But being celibate wasn’t part of being a Prospect, Myrna. I never said it was. It’s a way of life for me. A way of keeping me focused, keeping my concentration sharp.”

  Myrna jutted out her botoxed lower lip. Roman thought she worked for a beauty salon in her citizen life. “You need to relax sometime, sugar. Look how wet you make me.” Before Roman knew what was happening, Myrna had twined her fingers vine-like around his free wrist and was jamming his hand between her thighs. She wore only a spandex minidress and his hand was thrust into the humid jungle of her crotch. He didn’t yank his hand back in time. His knuckles were coated with pussy juice, and now he really had to run to the can.

  He shoved her. Teetering on her four inch heels, she staggered back like a drunk on an ocean liner, arms pinwheeling. She hit the opposite wall between a couple black and white portraits of past club presidents. He started sprinting to the can, then felt a little silly, so pivoted to face the shocked sweetbutt. He pointed at her, accusing.

  “Why won’t you take me at my word, Myrna? I have no fucking interest in banging you—or anyone else for that matter! It’s a Zen thing with me. I need to conserve my strength. Like a boxer. No sex before a fight.”

  Myrna jammed her hand onto her hip. “Sex gives you more energy.”

  Whatever. He slammed into the Prospect who was exiting the bathroom.

  He washed his hands before peeing, that was how eager he was to get the scent of a woman off him. Myrna was exactly the sort of plastic, shapely twat he would’ve been greedily banging up against the hallway wall over a year ago. He wouldn’t have even used a rubber, trusting the girl to take care of matters. A year ago—or maybe more, because he was with Andrea then, and never would’ve cheated in a bazillion years—he would’ve been all over that gash, because free sex was free sex, and never the twain would meet. Roman liked to think he was more highly sexed than the ordinary guy—thus why this challenging celibate ordeal was his biggest feat to date. If he could accomplish this, he could do anything. Lots of jacking off helped. He hadn’t deemed that off-limits.

  Someone hit the swinging door and barreled on in. “I understand, Valentina,” Slushy was saying into his Bluetooth. Slushy’s Spanish had always been laughable. For a guy who had been a cartel book cooker, he should’ve brushed up on his language skills. “Yo me encargo de ella. I’ll take care of it, Valentina. Just text me the address. Texta mi address.”

  Tapping the off button on the Bluetooth, Slushy started unzipping his trousers. Seeing Roman, he seemed to think twice about it, then decided to pee and talk at the same time. “You’re giving me ideas, son. I’ve got a new mission for you. I’ll run it past Birdseye first, of course. I don’t want to get between you and that other Dotard op they had planned for you.”

  Roman was incredibly crushed. Here he was, a fully patched one percenter, and he was still being ordered around by his stepfather? “Wait. What the fuck? Is this club business?”

  Slushy stared at the wall as he peed. “Not club business per se. Let’s just say you’d be doing me a giant favor.”

  Roman didn’t care about that last part. In his mind, it was Slushy who owed him a shit-ton of giant favors after vanishing like he had and leaving his mother in the lurch. He knew logically Slushy had been protecting Yvonne by not trying to contact her. He was probably being followed around by the Sinaloans. Still. He could’ve texted Yvonne or something. “Well I’m not doing it if it’s not club business. You know my motto. All for one and one for all—as long as you’re a Boner.”

  Slushy turned to Roman. “Listen, son. Part of the credo of this club is to never allow a woman to be molested—harmed, or drugged without her knowledge, or just in general done violence to, right?”

  “Right,” Roman said cautiously. He couldn’t turn down a woman in distress, that was for sure.

  “Well, that was my first wife, Valentina. You may remember her name.”

  Roman sure did. “Yeah. Didn’t you dump her too, just up and vanish in the middle of nowhere, about ten years before you met my mom?”

  “To start working for the Ochoas,” Slushy said, almost irritated, as though this explanation should have been self-evident. “Listen, I don’t have the most stellar track record with women. I’m the first to admit that. But I’m trying to make it up to Yvonne now, and helping out my ex-wife might raise my image in Yvonne’s estimation. She needs to see that I’m on the up and up. Not only am I not going to abandon any women from here on in—working for The Bare Bones, there will never be a need to do that—but I’m stepping up to the plate and acknowledging my past responsibilities. Now I’ve got a chance to do this favor for Valentina.”

  Roman nodded. “Valentina’s somehow in trouble?”

  Slushy’s eyes became hooded. He clearly didn’t want to discuss this, but had no choice. “Not Valentina. Our daughter.”

  Roman vaguely recalled some talk about a daughter, but he’d never met the girl. He estimated she’d be around twenty, twenty-five by now. She’s been about ten when Slushy had abandoned that family. “Right. I don’t remember her name…”

  “Gudrun,” said Slushy, as the door banged open and two brothers entered, guffawing madly.

  One was saying, “And that’s why you don’t throw explosives into the campfire.”

  The other said, “Well, how was I to know it’d shoot up half a mile into the air?”

  Slushy and Roman washed their hands again.

  Roman asked, “Gudrun’s in trouble? She lives here in Tucson, right?”

  “Right, up in Flowing Wells.” The Bones’ clubhouse was located in South Tucson, not far at all. “The trouble is kind of imminent. I’ll need you to go right away, the second Valentina texts me the address.”

  “What sort of trouble?”

  “Well.” Slushy looked reflective. “It’s hard to be precise. But Gudrun’s always been a troubled soul. She got a good job, being a sort of nurse’s assistant at an assisted living facility, but ever since a couple years ago when her husband died in that car crash, well…things began to go south for her. She was injured as well, now one leg’s shorter than the other, so being in chronic pain can’t be easy for her either.”

  Slushy’s phone beeped with a text, so the men moved back down the outer hallway.

  Roman said, “Well, what am I saving her from? She’s troubled, so I’m supposed to get her to…stop taking pain pills?”

  “That’s part of it. She’s become vulnerable, a bit too soft of a touch for anything that numbs pain. That’s probably how she got herself into this jam. Some fucktard picked her up at a rave last night, took her back to his stash house, maybe some kind of trick house from the sounds of it. It’s hard to get the straight story from Valentina, not understanding the fluent use of that particular Romance language in that particular vernacular. But Gudrun has no wheels and no way of getting ou
t.

  Roman snorted. “Or voluntarily took a massive dose of something, more like. Listen. You sure she wants out of this place? Or would I just be busting into the middle of a bunch of gangsters and dope boys just having a good ol’ time?”

  Standing at the end of the bar, Slushy made his mouth a thin line. “No. No way. Val said she was crying, sobbing hysterically, and there were some men yelling at her in the background. Calling her a slut, Val said. That’s why she called me. She knows I’ve got an in with muscle like you.”

  Roman’s ego naturally pumped up, being called “muscle.” “I’ll do it for you, Slushy. You’re the one who introduced me to Birdseye and these amazing men, so I do owe you something.” Myrna sauntered by with her arm draped over the shoulders of another brother. She gave Roman a distinctly snooty and haughty grimace. Maybe now she’ll leave me alone. “But tell Birdseye, so he knows exactly what I’m doing. And shouldn’t I take someone with me, some backup?”

  “Excellent. I thought about that. Let’s leave that choice up to Birdseye.” Slushy clapped Roman on the shoulder, giving him that supportive thin-lipped smile of approval. “Good. You won’t regret it. You just shoot right on up there and save your stepsister, bring her back here. Hey Birdseye, there’s something I need to discuss with you…”

  Stepsister. Roman had never thought of Gudrun McGill in that way before. He’d never thought about her much, period. He knew she wasn’t close with Slushy, probably holding a grudge against him for the abandonment.

  Roman knew very little about her at all.

  So, while he was pissed that he’d been taken off the Dotard detail where he was so eager to prove his mettle, this job might make his bones just as well. Saving a damsel from some violent fucktards who had possibly drugged her? That was a heroic feat right up his alley.

  And maybe, just maybe, there would be some runner or spitters working for the cartel. He didn’t care how low-level they were. They might get in his way, and he’d have to take them out. This had been his dream, his motivating factor for everything the past year. He’d best take an AK with him on this job. With a semiautomatic, he could spray bullets one-armed like Rambo while saving the damsel with the other arm. Kill two birds with one stone.

  Get his revenge on the cartel, and look good to his new club.

  CHAPTER TWO

  GUDRUN

  “God fucking dammit!”

  I slammed the medicine cabinet so hard, the door bounced back open and a ton of toiletries came wobbling out and into the sink.

  That made me even angrier. I slammed the door again, hoping even more worthless shit would fall out. Bottles of aftershave, lipsticks, toenail fungus medicine. I grasped at a plastic amber bottle that only wound up containing some kind of menopause medication.

  “Now what are you yelling about?” my mother bellowed from the kitchen. “It’s always something with you!”

  I yanked open the other medicine cabinet over the other sink, hoping beyond hope that somehow my mother’s painkiller bottle had wafted over into her boyfriend’s side of things. But he was some kind of driver for a meth superlab, I thought. He wouldn’t have a bottle of legitimate prescription painkillers. He was far too sleazy for that.

  Clinging to the bathroom doorjamb, I shrieked, “Don’t you have that liver pain anymore, mamacita? That mysterious pain in your stomach that doctors could never figure out?”

  At that point in my life, I think I was still so self-absorbed and oblivious, I had no clue that anyone knew I abused painkillers. Either I didn’t give them credit for being that intelligent, or I was so self-righteously justified in my quest for pills. The car accident that had taken my husband has also ruined my ability to ever walk pain-free again. Why did God do things like this to people? What was the point, the lesson to be learned? Not only had he taken away the only person who had ever truly loved me for who I was, he had left me with this little fucking everyday reminder that life was fucked, pointless, and just there to be obliterated.

  I had every right to want to make the pain go away.

  Problem was, doctors didn’t agree. Oh, they still gave me a few pills each month, admitting I’d be in pain the rest of my life. Those few pills didn’t even begin to cut it. Lately, I’d been stealing pills from the med cabinets at the facility where I worked—yes, taking medication from old folks! I was a horrible, horrible person. They overmedicated those poor people anyway. You should see the cocktails of various meds some of them were on, clashing medications, one trying to wake them up, another trying to put them to sleep. My theory was they threw prescriptions at seniors for lack of anything better to do for them. It was sheer laziness, just so they could say “well, I did something to help.” It alleviated their guilt at not being able—or willing—to do anything constructive.

  “What liver pain?” Valentina bellowed back. “Oh, that. Mi Dios. No, I haven’t felt that pain in a long time.”

  With a shock that might’ve almost been realization, I remembered that I had taken Valentina’s last bottle of Percocet. I had stolen it a couple of weeks ago. The pills had given me enough relief that I’d gone dancing—well, not dancing per se because it still hurt to dance. But I’d gone clubbing and at least got to laugh and joke around with my friends for a few hours. That reprieve had been a golden, cherished time for me. If it meant I had to medicate myself into oblivion like a senior citizen, so be it. For a few hours, I’d been able to have actual fun. That was such an alien concept to me, it had come as a pleasant shock.

  I wanted to do it again.

  “What’s the problem, mija?” Armando came slouching into the bathroom in his Ben Davis pants, only the top button of his flannel shirt buttoned. I cringed back into the towel rack. Armando was the epitome of a drug-dealing criminal, with his beanie pulled low over his eyes, his gold tooth, and his teardrop tattoo. Thank God he didn’t sag his pants.

  Normally I would have slithered out of the room clutching the wall. Today, though, my desperation got the better of me, and I became curious. “Armando,” I said, suddenly friendly. Even before the car crash, I had been an outspoken girl. That part hadn’t changed much. “I’m looking for something to kill the pain in my hip, my leg. Do you, ah, deal with the marketing for anything like that? Painkillers?”

  He was leaning over the sink, his fingertips snagging his upper lip, the better to inspect some food product he thought was stuck in his teeth. But when I said “painkiller” he drew back from the mirror, a sly look coming over his mottled face. Wiping his hands on his pants, he leered at me in the mirror. “Drogas? Of course I can get you drogas.”

  I frowned. “What sort?” I’d become particular about my painkillers. Codeine made my heart pound, so there was no point in being wide awake, even if it was sort of pain-free.

  “Well, let’s see.” Turning to face me, he came uncomfortably close. I smashed myself so firmly against the flimsy towel rack, I could feel the screws coming loose from the wall. “I’ve got a guy who can get methadone. Monkey, syrup, oxy, percs. You said you like percs?”

  “Yes, percs,” I admitted.

  “Well, then,” he said, as if it were self-evident.

  “Yes?”

  He lifted a hand to my ribcage. His lazy smile was gross, drugged, perverted.

  “What?” I said, beginning to panic. “Payment? What, what sort of payment do you want? I mean, how much for how many percs?”

  “Percs,” he repeated dully, as though he were on them himself. He gripped my ribcage just below my breast. I’ve always been fairly well-endowed in that area, so have to wear super industrial underwire bras. That contraption was the only thing keeping his grotesque flesh from mine, as I couldn’t possibly press myself into the wall any harder.

  I squirmed to one side, winding up clutching the shower curtain. “Yes, payment, Armando! How much do you want? How many can you get?”

  “Mando?” my mother was calling. “Can you come here? I need your advice on something.”

  He ignored her. �
�Whoa, whoa,” he said, feigning concern that I was going to fall into the tub. He grabbed my wrists, yanking my torso against his. Even in their constrictive cage, my boobs smashed suggestively against his stupid plaid chest. I may have been half-Mexican, but I was raised an American through and through. My hair was dyed a magenta shade of red with St. Patrick’s Day green candy stripes, I was pale as the dark side of the moon, and my father was a seedy and white lawyer for the cartels. There was nothing upstanding about me in any way, shape or form, but I had grown to loathe the cholo dope boy who sidled around saying “what up, homes?” and calling everyone “esé.” My mother couldn’t seem to have a boyfriend who didn’t call girls “hyna” or “sancha” and were always on the creep. Accosting me in the bathroom wasn’t completely unexpected, from this Mando or any other man of Valentina’s.

  Mando made the most of it, flashing his smelly grill in my face and squiggling his chest from side to side. “Papa wants some sugar, hyna. Then I’ll get you all the pills you want.”

  Eyeww. Just, eyeww. I shoved with my hands flat against his stupid chest, but he had me in a vise grip. “Listen, pinche guey, I’ll pay money,” I lied. I had no fucking money. I’d had to move back in with Valentina after I got out of the hospital. I had lost my apartment with Vince, no one having paid the rent in four months. It was hard enough getting back into the swing of things at work, me being equally as disabled as some of the residents.

  Armando knew it. There was a fucking reason I had to sleep in my little sister’s old room. She’d gone off to college and left me with her Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez posters, Fallout Boy and Bruno Mars. I was twenty-five, a married woman more concerned with making a bitching chile verde stew or finding something delicious to do with kale. The room didn’t reflect me in the slightest, but I was stuck there until I could find a supportive roommate or three to share another dumpy apartment with. Contrary to popular belief, being a nursing assistant in an old folk’s home isn’t all glam and bucks. I was barely clearing minimum wage and a big chunk went toward paying off my copay for all those hospitalizations.