The Road Back (The Unknowns Motorcycle Club Book 3)

  This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places, events, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  The Road Back copyright @ 2015 by Ruby Reid. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

  Book 3 of the Unknowns Motorcycle Club trilogy

  CHAPTER 1

  The noontime sky was darkening a bit as Amanda stepped slowly across the graveyard. After the dreams she’d been having about this place, it was the last place she wanted to be—especially on an afternoon that was threatening rain and thunderstorms. But on the other hand, she wasn’t quite sure of where else she could go.

  She felt like she had been betrayed. More than that, she felt naïve somehow, as if she should have seen this coming. Had she really thought that she could escape the weight and pressure of Stephen’s murder so easily? When she thought she had, she had met someone and fallen far too quickly for him. And now here she was, once again walking to her husband’s grave, not caring much about the world that seemed to enjoy harassing her.

  She came to his grave and sat the six roses he had purchased at a Kroger on the way to the cemetery down by his headstone. She ran her hand along the smooth surface of the stone and smiled.

  “So this is a fine mess, huh?” she said.

  She paused, as if giving Stephen’s memory or spirit or whatever existed of him here in the cemetery a moment to respond.

  “I guess the good news is that after all this time—after the cops and I gave up altogether—I found out who your killer is. And I think he may have his justice shortly. Do I agree with the sort of justice he’ll be getting? I don’t know.”

  Overhead, a peal of thunder rolled across the sky. The grey clouds seemed to shudder in response.

  “Stephen…I’m handling this the right way, aren’t I? I mean, even if Alex is sincerely apologetic and had nothing to do with what happened to you, isn’t he sort of guilty by association?”

  While her dead husband could obviously not fill the silence that followed, some smarter part of her did. Sort of, yes, that part said. But you can see why he would try keeping it from you, right? You can demonize him all you want, but he’s just as lost as you. You were trying to get out of the shadow of Stephen’s death, and he was trying to get out of his life of crime and disorder. Which, by the way, your rejection of him is likely leading him straight back towards.

  “I’m pretty sure I was falling in love with him,” she told Stephen’s headstone. “It was so fast and scary that I didn’t even think to call what I was feeling love. But that’s what it was. I know it now that it’s gone. How messed up is that?”

  She could see him in her mind’s eye, giving her a shrug and the sarcastic wink that had become a staple of their communications. It was one of the things that had come to define him. God, she missed him.

  “Sorry,” Amanda said as an afterthought. “You probably don’t want to hear about me falling in love with some other guy, huh?”

  The silence basically answered for her. It’s okay. I don’t care.

  “I just don’t know what to do,” she went on. “I still have his number, so it’s not like he’s gone forever. But he could be… if I wanted him to be.”

  Another rumble of thunder roared out, and the sky seemed to be growing darker by the moment. It was the sort of storm where you could actually smell the rain in the air before it started to fall. It was on its way now, probably poised above her and only seconds away from falling.

  “I had to come see you,” she said. “Just to let you know about the man that took your life. Through some very messed up circumstances, I found out who it was. And I don’t think he’ll be a free man for much longer.”

  Saying this, she thought of Alex. She tried to imagine the determination on his face as he went looking for this man. She wasn’t certain that was what he would do, but everything in her heart told her that this was the case.

  And ultimately, it was her fault. If she asked him to stay with her and not lost her mind over the news he had given her, he might be one step closer from severing ties with that part of his life.

  “Bye for now, Stephen,” she said, feeling the first drops of rain fall, striking her on the head and arms. “I love you.”

  With that, she got back to her feet and reached to the edge of the cemetery where her car was parked. The drizzle had become a steady downpour by the time she was behind the wheel. When she pulled out, the thunder rumbled again, and to Amanda, it sounded like a very large door being closed to block out a dark and quiet room.

  CHAPTER 2

  Alex was in a parking garage when the rain started coming down. He was at the far end, waiting for the storm to pass. The thunder was muted through the concrete walls and platforms of the garage, and it was almost like some ambient heartbeat. He could not get his mind off of Amanda, and he wondered where she was right now. He tried to imagine both of them sitting in her kitchen, sipping coffee as the storm rolled by.

  He was sitting on a used Harley that he had purchased with cash that he withdrew from a bank less than five hours ago. It was nowhere near as good as the bike that Marco had destroyed with his car, but it was decent.

  Looking out to the haze of falling rain, Alex tried to figure out how he might be able to locate Marco. If he was to believe his gut, he didn’t think the asshole was very far away. Marco was not the kind of guy to let trouble rest only to regroup itself. He was probably still in the city, looking for Alex in the same way.

  Of course, Alex hadn’t had long to look. It had been only yesterday that Amanda had sent him walking away from her home and her life. The remainder of that day had been spent walking aimlessly about town after visiting Jameson in the hospital. He’d stayed at a rundown motel, ate a few fast-food burgers, and killed a six pack while watching Duck Dynasty reruns.

  After waking up and eating breakfast at a small diner, he headed for the bank, withdrew twenty thousand dollars, and purchased the bike forty minutes later. He still had a little over two grand to spare in his wallet as he looked out to the traffic and the rain.

  He didn’t quite know what his options might be. The only real idea he had involved heading to the seedier parts of town because that would be where Marco would find people to hire for his menial little duties — duties like helping to finding Alex. The other option was to see if he could find a way to access some medical records from local doctors over the last few days. If Marco or Larry had to be treated for any injuries sustained from their fight, that would be a great place to get leads.

  Of course, without the assets or resources of the Unknowns, coming by such information was going to be next to impossible. It was one of the many things he was beginning to understand would be drastically different about living without the benefits of being in the Unknowns. Even now, as he sat alone in the parking garage, the world felt lonelier than he could ever remember.

  He had no ideas at all, and to make matters worse, he was simply unable to get his mind off of Amanda. Twice since it had started to rain, he had thought about simply firing the bike up when the pour lessened and driving back to her house. He thought she might talk to him, maybe even give him another chance to explain himself.

  But that seemed like a lot of trouble. And besides that, he didn’t think he would be comfortable seeing her again until things with Marco were under control.

  T
his would have been so much easier if I just carried out Jameson’s original instructions and beat the shit out of Marco the first time. Keeping my ass in Chicago would have probably helped, too.

  When his phone rang, he jumped a little bit. The sound was like some mechanical alien in the tomb-like silence of the parking garage. He checked the caller ID and was surprised and delighted at the name he saw there. He answered the call with a smile.

  “Slim,” he said. “How are you?”

  “Been better,” Slim said on the other end, “but been a hell of a lot worse, too.”

  “How are you doing?” Alex asked.

  “Well, I could have done without having my boss beat the hell out of me to find out where you had gone. Sorry about that, by the way. But hey… you’re a good friend, but not quite worth getting my ass handed to me.”

  “I understand,” Alex said. “There are no hard feelings.”

  “Yeah,” Slim said, waving the issue away. “So look… the rest of us are all here in Chicago now. With Jameson in the hospital and you being out on your little quest, things are sort of all over the place. But we’re hearing talk about Marco O’Brien being down there in the same area as you guys. Any truth to that?”

  “More than you’d think,” Alex said. He then proceeded to tell Slim everything that had happened with Marco and how Jameson had narrowly avoided death.

  “You think that slimy little bastard is on the run now?” Slim asked.

  “I doubt it,” Alex said. “I bet you anything he’s still sticking around here. He won’t come back to Chicago until he knows I’m dead.”

  Slim chuckled nervously and said, “Then you better make sure he ends up dead first.”

  “I’m trying. I don’t know this city all that well. It’s pretty tricky.” There was a pause on the line which Alex broke by adding, “Look, Slim… I’m sorry I put you in that situation. Especially now. Things here are going to hell, I think.”

  “With that girl, you mean?”

  “Yeah.” He thought about trying to explain the situation with Amanda’s husband and Marco but didn’t see the point. Besides, the more he thought about it, the more insane it seemed. It even sounded crazy when he tried explaining it to Jameson. He didn’t want to go through all of that again.

  “Water under the bridge, man,” Slim said. “Shit happens. I just hope to see you up here in the Windy City at some point.”

  “We’ll see,” Alex said. “Thanks again, man.”

  “Yup.”

  In typical Slim fashion, he ended the call almost abruptly. Alex looked to his phone with a slanted smile on his face. He pocketed it and then looked back outside. The rain had let up, and the sky was clearing out a bit.

  Alex kicked his bike to life and headed out.

  It was amazing to him how quickly the feel of the revving engine calmed him. It had always been like that. He’d first stepped onto a bike when he had been fourteen. That had been a little Yamaha dirt bike, but the gist was really the same. He’d known at once that he was hooked. He’d jumped dirt hills, raced across open fields and meadows, and wrecked a bike or two. He graduated to Harleys when he turned eighteen. He spent every penny he’d had on his first bike and never regretted it.

  What was peculiar was that the interest had come out of nowhere. He’d never really cared much about motorcycles at all until that fateful day when he had thrown his leg over that little Yamaha. Sometimes when he was out on the open road with his bike roaring between his legs, he thought of that bike.

  He’d found it in a junkyard and tuned it up himself. This had been a little more than two years after he had killed his father, and seeing that the bike kept Alex’s hands busy, his mother had helped buy it. She’d even got him a helmet, which he never wore.

  That bike and the mother that had helped him buy it felt like a part of some other world now. He could barely remember that boy he had once been; he could only remember the anger that had controlled him and often revisited him in the form of his father’s face.

  CHAPTER 3

  Alex was getting tired as hell of the hospital, but he figured he at least owed Jameson one final visit before he set out to try to put an end to this chapter of his life. He wasn’t even sure what the end looked like, but he sensed it approaching. Things were crumbling down around him, and if he didn’t make order of them soon, things were going to get bad. And if they went really bad, Jameson and the Unknowns were going to be the only place to go back to.

  That’s why he found himself walking down the third floor hallway again that afternoon. He didn’t know if Karla would be there with Jameson or not, but he hoped not. Jameson often seemed like a more diplomatic man when she was around as opposed to his usual shoot-from-the-hip self.

  Alex had first run into Jameson not too long after he had purchased that first Harley. Jameson and Karla had been dating then, and her open flirtatiousness with other Unknown members had been even worse. She had been much harder to resist then, twenty-six years old with a tight little body made for skin magazines, but the years had been a little harsh on her. Her husband provided graciously for her; Karla usually stayed in hotels in whatever city Jameson was staying in, drinking beer and eating takeout.

  Although Alex didn’t think much of her, he knew that she was very good for Jameson. Without Karla (and her new, glaringly fake boobs), Alex was pretty sure that Jameson would likely be just as nuts as Marco O’Brien. Maybe even worse. But Karla kept him grounded, and she was the reason he tried to often think with a level head. He had a wife to consider, a life outside of the Unknowns, albeit a small one.

  When he poked his head into Jameson’s room, Alex was happy to see that Karla was not there. Jameson was sitting up in his bed, looking through a magazine. He looked much better than he had the day before. Alex noticed that some of Jameson’s clothes were out in the guest chair.

  “How you holding up?” Alex asked.

  “Not too shabby. They’re planning to discharge me this evening around five o’ clock.”

  “That’s good.”

  “It is. But Karla is going to have to pick me up and drive me to Chicago. The doctors say I probably shouldn’t drive a bike for at least a month or so. That’ll make it very interesting when I’m trying to get things started, huh?”

  Alex snickered but wasn’t sure what to say. A large part of him knew that Jameson’s current ordeal was his fault.

  “You know,” Jameson said, “what I told you yesterday… I meant it. Once this is all over—the business with Marco and the girl—you’re welcome back. Some of the other guys might be hesitant, but I’ll smooth it over.”

  “Thanks, Jameson.”

  Jameson shrugged in response. “I almost died, Alex. Do I love the club and would I die for it? Yeah. But being so close to death makes you wake up. There’s more to life than this. And if you think you’ve found that, then I’m not going to make it harder for you.”

  “I appreciate that,” Alex said. He was embarrassed to find that he was close to tears.

  “One more thing, Alex,” Jameson said.

  “What’s that?”

  “If you ever tell anyone that I just said that, I’ll personally hunt you down and beat the hell out of you. Understood?”

  “Crystal clear.”

  Alex walked to Jameson’s bedside and extended his hand. Jameson grinned and shook it with his usual vice-like grip. “You’re an ok kid,” Jameson said. “Whatever it is you decide to do, I wish you all the best. Particularly the business with Marco. If you need some outside help, just let me know, and I’ll make some calls.”

  Alex shook his head. “No thanks. I can handle it.”

  “I’m sure you can,” Jameson said with a knowing smile. “I’m sure you can.”

  ***

  When he made his way back the hospital’s parking deck, Alex felt as if someone had just granted him a pardon. He thought it must be like what people in those old Western movies must have felt like when they went to the gallows, feeling that
rope slip around their neck only to get a pardon from the governor just before the trap door was dropped open under their feet.

  Sure, he was still anxious about trying to find Marco, but now that he knew he could walk away from all of this with Jameson’s genuine blessing, it made it all a bit easier. It also fed him with an energy and motivation that he hadn’t felt in a very long time. Hell, when it was all said and done, maybe he would go back to Amanda and try to win her back.

  Win her back, he thought. Do you think you’re in a lame romantic comedy or something? Things don’t work like that in the real world.

  Although he knew that was true, it still did very little to sour his mood.

  That changed when he came to his motorcycle, though.

  He stood in front of it, aghast. He had purchased it less than seven hours ago, and it was now useless. The tires had been slashed. The headlamp had been shattered. Someone had taken a knife—probably the same one used on the tires—and gutted the seat.