“Will do. Thanks.” I hang up and dial my grandma’s phone. Thank Christ for Judge’s stupid “no nudity on the first floor” rule.
“Hello there, Van, how are you?”
“Grandma, isn’t it late for you? What are you doing at the granary?”
“Honey, just because I’m a member of the AARP doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate a late night or two but actually, I came out here to find you. I confess I’m worried about your librarian friend.”
“Annie?”
At the sound of her name, Michigan straightens up and flicks his cigarette on the ground.
“Yes, her.”
“Why’s that?”
“Mrs. Erickson lives by the parish house, you know, and she said the other evening she heard some yelling between Annie and her father, Pastor Bloom. So we went over to the church to see her today and her father looked very agitated. I asked about her and he said that she was sick. Perhaps you could look into it for me. I’m just so concerned.”
“What aren’t you saying, Grandma?” She wouldn’t just call me up because her neighbor overheard some yelling.
Grandma hesitates and then says, “Mrs. Erickson thought she saw Pastor Bloom go into his cellar with a big bag. A really big bag—and he never goes into his cellar. She found it very odd. I’m sure it’s nothing, Van.”
Holy shit. I shove the phone into my pocket and run around to the back of the house. Annie’s house has external cellar access meaning the cellar doors are on the outside of the house. The two small slanted doors are covered with a bright new padlock.
“What’s going on?” Michigan asks. He’s been right behind me the whole time.
“Annie and her dad were heard fighting last night. She missed an appointment with Pippa.” I kick the cellar door, testing its durability. There’s a little give. The doors rattle against the foundation and the lock.
“So what?” He’s impatient and staring at me like I’m a crazy man.
“Later Mrs. Erickson saw Pastor Bloom carry something big into his cellar. Something real big.”
Michigan stares at me until he processes just what I’m accusing Pastor Bloom of. He bursts into action. Together we start kicking in the door, right around the padlock. We just need to weaken one side. I don’t want to shoot the lock off because, fuck, I’m not a sniper and I might miss and fucking hurt Annie if she’s inside.
“You stop that right now,” Annie’s dad bellows, appearing at the backdoor.
“You open this cellar right now,” Michigan snarls.
“I’m calling the police. You have entered my property without permission.”
Michigan’s on Pastor Bloom in about two strides. “You do that, fucker. You do that and you’ll have to answer to the whereabouts of your adult daughter. Now where’s the fucking key to the fucking door?” Michigan is holding Pastor Bloom by his collar and the stiff white cardboard thingy in his shirt has popped out. His face is red, partly from anger and partly from Michigan’s death grip around his neck. Michigan’s holding on by a thread. I know he wants to end this guy’s life. We’ve already had one Death Lord go to prison for three years. We don’t need to lose another. It’s one thing to kill a biker who needs killing and it’s a whole ’nother ball of wax to kill a preacher. You get the death penalty for shit like that.
Even though I don’t want to, I pull Michigan back. He drops the preacher man who gasps for breath. Michigan wheels around and goes back to kicking the door in with a ferocity I’ve never seen before. The lock plate loosens and Michigan reaches down to fling one of the doors open. Pastor Bloom gets up and tries to stop him but I jab my elbow into his windpipe and he falls back once again.
I run over and dive down the cellar stairs. It’s dank and musty and dark. The cellar is made half of whitewashed brick and half cement with a dirt floor.
On a table in the middle is a body and a bucket.
“Oh, baby,” I whisper.
Michigan is at her side before I draw another breath. Her back is so much raw meat. Her arms hang down over the side of the table with marks and bruises everywhere. She’s purple and raw. Her face is turned away. I round the table and nearly crumble. One eye is swollen shut and the other is closed. Her lips are torn and puffy. Michigan and I will have to carry her out of here.
A low animalistic keening sound echoes in the basement. At first I think Annie’s conscious but then I realize the wounded cry is from Michigan.
“I’d have taken a hundred beatings to prevent even one of these from happening,” Michigan says with anguish. He’s already killing himself inside.
I swallow my own bile. “Let’s carry her out on the table.”
“Are we taking her to the hospital?” Injuries in the club are often treated on the side because gunshot wounds and the like are required to be reported to law enforcement. But I want law enforcement to know. I want them so far up Pastor Bloom’s ass that he can’t take a shit without needing the LEOs to take his cuffs off.
“Damn fucking straight we are.”
Michigan nods grimly. “Let’s get the ambulance here. They can start an IV.”
We carry her out slowly, careful to keep the jostling to a minimum but I nearly die when she moans as we have to tilt the table to make it up the stairs and out of the cellar. Pastor Bloom is sitting on the edge of the back steps and it takes every single ounce of willpower not to go over there and rip his fucking head off his neck.
I pull out the phone and start dialing emergency services but stop. Schmidthead hates the Death Lords so much he doesn’t care about civilian casualties. It would not surprise me if an emergency call from a Death Lord is overlooked or delayed. I call my Prez instead.
Judge picks up immediately. I explain the situation.
“Call the sheriff, bypass the locals,” he replies. “Need any help right now?”
“No, not unless you can magically heal her.” I hang up and call the county sheriff. “We need a county EMT team out to Pastor Bloom’s house ASAP.”
“What happened?” he demands.
“Pastor Bloom beat his daughter up and she’s in a bad way. You need to turn up the sirens and get your asses out here.”
“Pastor Bloom?” He’s incredulous.
“I know,” I say and then sever the call.
The EMT team arrives within fifteen minutes and given they came from the next town over, they must have been going at least a hundred.
The two folks—one man and one woman—work with quiet efficiency, starting a morphine drip and loading Annie into the back of the ambulance. Every whimper and moan is like a dagger.
We follow her because making sure Annie’s alive is more important than beating the piss out of her old man. There’ll be plenty of time for retribution. The question is how much we’re going to mete out.
Chapter Twenty
Annie
I spend a week in the hospital. It was all surface bruising but they kept me four days because of the number of lacerations. My father was arrested. Apparently they found the belt and the paddle in the trash along with the helmet, my boots, and the remnants of the torn T-shirt.
Michigan and Easy haven’t left my side. The hospital staff tried to kick them out but they wouldn’t go.
When I’m d
ischarged they don’t take me to the small house they share but to the club.
“Why are we staying here?” I ask mulishly.
“Stuff going on at the house.”
I try not to take it personally.
I don’t like staying at the club. For one thing the bedrooms are on the third floor. Michigan and Easy ended up carrying me with me sitting on their hands. It was weird and awkward and I’m not doing that again. The pain in my back and legs makes it hard for me to get around so I’ve been stuck on this third floor. But I don’t have much energy for much of anything but peeing and sleeping.
Worse of all neither of them touch me.
I’m both embarrassed and mad. Embarrassed because everyone around Fortune knows my father beat me when he found out I’m sleeping with two men at the same time, and mad because I’m feeling embarrassed.
Truth is that if I’d heard something like this about another parishioner I would be scandalized. I can only imagine what the town gossip machine is saying about me. From saint to sinner in a matter of days. Fastest fall in the Midwest.
On one hand I get that I am too tender for any kind of bedroom antics but holding my hand isn’t out of the question. Michigan looks at me like he wants to break something and I wonder half the time if he’s mad at me because I should’ve run out of the house or fought off my dad.
And why didn’t I?
I don’t even know.
Easy keeps asking me if it happened before. Getting paddled on the ass for disobeying? Sure. Getting beaten so bad I need stitches and a hospital stay? No, that’s a first.
All of his corporal punishments were directly related to behavior that should be corrected. He had a heavy hand but I never saw him as abusive, except for that one time when he lost his temper. I never gave him cause to lose his temper again. I try to tell Easy and Michigan that but my words only make them angrier.
I want to go home but there is no home.
My only relief is when Pippa comes. “Thank goodness you’ve come. Please tell me you are rescuing me and taking me away from here. I tried hanging my hair out the window but it only reached to the windowsill.”