Ruthless

By C.M. Wick and Christa Wick

AVERY: Maybe making the call to the cops was a dumb move on my part, but I had to do it. Callan's life was at stake. Yes, I know we exist in different worlds—his far darker and more dangerous than mine—but I've been stupid for him since high school all the same. And now, with that one phone call, my life becomes irrevocably tied to his. 

CALLAN: If ever there were an angel here in my hell on earth, it'd be shy, sweet Avery Watkins. She's always been too good to belong to a biker with a past as ugly as mine. Still, I've had a soft spot for her since high school all the same. For years, I've kept my distance to keep her safe. But all that changes the moment she risks her life for me. 

Because now, she's mine.

Mine to watch over.

Mine to keep.

 

Previously published as Callan (c) 2014, edited with revised and added content throughout.  

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christa Wick
• Release date: Dec 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223131571

Book preview

1

AVERY

Maybe making the 911 call was stupid, but that’s just me—stupid Avery Watkins. My dad will tell you it’s true, only he’s more likely to say I’m a dumb cunt, followed by just like your mother. Only she’s a dead dumb cunt and has been for ten years.

My high school teachers and the guidance counselor, Miss Rawley, will back up his opinion, only they prefer to sugarcoat it with nicer wording like inattentive and doesn’t apply herself. I doubt any of those ladies at Thunder Valley High could have applied themselves any better at school if they had grown up with a drunk dad making them fetch beers and light cigarettes until two in the morning, and then find it impossible to fall asleep because there was no telling if the old man would wake up and light his own smoke before promptly passing out with a burning cigarette hanging from his lips.

I’m doubly sure none of them ever applied themselves after emptying puke buckets for the last three months of their mother’s life as the alcohol abuse finally finished her slow suicide of the last two decades.

But that’s all water under the bridge, more or less. I finished high school on time a good five years ago and I work two jobs in a town were a lot of people can’t even find one. I’m a server three mornings a week at the truck stop by the interstate and I fetch beers and light cigarettes for drunks who aren’t my dad four nights a week at a bar called Freya’s.

Not a lot to lose, is it? Maybe that’s why I thought nothing about making the call when I overheard that the Steel Tide, the local motorcycle gang, were about to kill one of their own members. It didn’t hurt that the soon-to-be dead member was Callan Tilley, someone always one grade up from me since I first noticed him when I was in fifth grade.

I was bringing four beers and a whiskey to the back room at Freya’s when I heard the low-voiced execution order.

We have to take Callan out. With all this shit going down with the other chapters, he's our weakest link.

I almost dropped my tray of drinks but somehow managed to round the table like I hadn’t heard a word of what they were saying. The speaker was Little Red, the club’s vice-president. His father, not at the table, was Big Red and had been the club's chapter president since Callan’s father was sent to prison for thirty years on some kind of racketeering charge.

Placing the drinks on the table, I did the mental math. Six years had passed since the cops slapped the cuffs on the elder Tilley. Callan had been a senior in high school and less than three years would pass before he was the last Tilley in Thunder Valley, one brother dead and the other in federal prison for the murder.

Manslaughter, not murder.

A waitress, not a lawyer, I didn’t understand the difference or how the prosecutor had made a case against Lincoln Tilley without a body. But everyone in town seemed to agree that Lincoln had killed his older brother Boone. Everyone but Callan—and maybe me.

Placing the whiskey and beer Little Red had ordered in front of him, I felt the brush of his knuckle against my knee. My stomach lurched to the opposite side of my body. I was damn near invisible to everyone at Freya’s and the rest of Thunder Valley, but Little Red always touched me at the bar. He did it out of sight or in a manner the other club members wouldn’t notice, but then he made a point of catching my gaze to let me know the contact had been intentional.

Little Red downed the whiskey then slammed the shot glass against the table. He wrapped one hand around the beer bottle and pointed it at Weaver, so named because everyone thought he was a basket case. Really, he was a crank monkey, the circuits in his brain fried by years of drug abuse. He was the only other member of the Steel Tide who was Callan’s age, but the two men were worlds apart. Callan, like the rest of the Tilley men, treated his body like a temple. Good food, plenty of activity, no drugs, no hard alcohol, and only the occasional beer as best as I could tell.

You down with it happening? Little Red asked Weaver as he continued pointing his bottle at the man.

I couldn’t believe the bikers were continuing the conversation while I was at the table serving their drinks. But if they thought I hadn’t heard the beginning, then they likely figured I wouldn’t put two and two together when Callan wound up dead.

Weaver offered Little Red a dopey smile, whatever drugs he’d taken earlier and the two rounds of alcohol I’d already delivered to the table clearly having an effect on the muscles of Weaver’s face.

Whatever the club needs, brother. He tried to tap his bottle against Little Red’s and missed.

Little Red looked at the two other club members at the table. I knew them as Chain and Hash, one because he smoked too much, the other because he supposedly lived on alcohol and hash browns.

Both men nodded, their gazes more serious than Weaver could manage.

That shit down in West Bay, Hash grumbled. You know who is unaccounted for.

I didn't know who was unaccounted for, but I knew about the shit down in West Bay. An entire chapter of the Steel Tide was busted. The chapter president and his wife were in jail awaiting trial for everything from drugs to murders that included win-or-die cage matches.

Little Red reached out and snagged my elbow before I could leave with the tray of empties. As he kept me trapped, he looked at the men.

I'm glad we're in agreement. Bolo is back from Atlanta tonight.

My lungs seized in my chest and I had to force myself not to gasp to restart them. Had Red just insinuated that Bolo would kill Callan tonight? I wanted to run from the table, find a quiet corner and whip out my cellphone. Only I didn’t have Callan’s number and Red still gripped my arm.

He brushed his thumb softly against my inner elbow. Bring us all a round of whiskeys, baby. We’re celebrating.

Tears threatened to well in my eyes, but I forced them down. Not only did I have to figure out some way to get a message to Callan before Bolo found him, but I also had to figure out this baby shit with Red and the way he had openly caressed me. And I had to do both without Red knowing or feeling insulted. I’d seen more than once what happened to women who crossed him or his dad.

Skin crawling from the sustained contact with the biker, I nodded and extracted my arm from his grasp. Four whiskeys coming up.

With the bikers at one of the backroom’s three tables, the other two tables were empty. I practically ran from the room and ignored my four stations on the south wall of Freya’s main room. I blew past the pool tables, deaf to the slurred honey, bring me another, from one of my regulars. Every patron in the bar could have been yelling drink orders at me and I wouldn’t have heard a single word. My heart beat too heavily, the blood it pushed through my veins pulsing too loudly for other sounds to penetrate.

Down the narrow hall I went to the only refuge a woman could find inside Freya’s—the restroom. After making sure the door latched properly, I pulled my cheap pre-paid cellphone from my waitressing apron. With no Internet on the phone, I went old school and dialed information.

A recorded voice asked me for city and name.

Thunder Valley, Callan Tilley, I whispered, my gaze on the sliver of space between the bottom of the bathroom door and the floor to make sure no one had followed me down the hall.

I’m sorry, the mechanical voice prompted. I didn’t get that. Please try again.

Thunder Valley, Callan Tilley, I said just a little louder.

I’m sorry...

I waited, eyes closed, blood continuing to rush past my ears in a thick roar, for the machine to tell me whether I wasn’t loud enough or that Callan had an unlisted number.

There’s no listing for that number, the voice finished. Would you like to try another listing?

I hung up. My stomach see-sawed from too many emotions rolling through me and the permanent stink of vomit and piss that no amount of bleach or other disinfectants could wash out of the floor and walls of Freya’s bathrooms. Moving toward the sink, I reached up and pushed at the bottom of the rectangle of glass that served as a window. Like those in any other bar, the bathroom window was built high and was too small to crawl out of unless you were a toddler. But if I stood on my tiptoes, I could just catch a whiff of slightly fresher air.

The window faced the back of Freya’s but on the opposite side of where the dumpster and recycling bins were placed. There were a few parking spots