Saint pulls up next to me, killing the engine of his bike. “Where the hell are we?” He squints against the bright sunlight, looking all around, taking in the heavy brush and trees in a random spot along the highway.
“We’re close to Jude’s trailer.” I’m surprised he didn’t catch on to that already. Although he was in a car last time, so maybe that’s why it looks a bit different.
“Why are we here?”
“I need your help with something,” I reply ominously, toeing the kickstand down. I climb from my bike and take off in a quick stride.
“Jesus man, wait a sec,” he huffs, copying me. We walk for about five minutes as I retrace my steps before he interrupts again. “The fuck, Sin? You want to share with me what’s going on?”
“You said you didn’t want me to lie to you or omit shit anymore, right?” I stammer, buying myself more time before I have to bite the bullet and have the serious conversation with him. One that I know will most likely piss him off by bringing up a past fight.
“Shit, what now?” he groans, placing his hands on his hips as ideas already start to run through his mind. I can only imagine what he’s thinking after the recent events.
I halt at a specific, strange shaped rock, staring down at it and tune him out momentarily.
“What, brother?” He follows my gaze, seeing nothing but regular scatterings of yellow-green grass, packed dirt, and some random rocks. It’s nothing special to the untrained eye, and that’s one reason why I’m so good at what I do.
Wiping the sweat from my brow, I mutter, “I need you to do something for me, Saint.”
“All right, but you have to stop being so evasive about it.”
Gesturing to the peculiar rock, I kick an X in the dirt with my heavy leather boot. “I have to destroy evidence.” My eyes flick up to meet his confused stare and give him the final bit of information I’d been holding out on. “This is her mom.”
He blows free a deep breath, caught off guard. “You’re sure about this?”
“I don’t have another choice. If anyone finds it and discovers a lick of evidence, then I’m going away for a hot minute. Prez was pissed, telling me to make sure it doesn’t come back to haunt us down the road. I can’t let this possibly fall back on the club or us.” He’ll understand that, I’m sure.
“That’s not it,” he comments, calling me out, “You don’t want her to find out it was you.” It’s true, and he knows it as well as I do. That’s the last thing I want her to discover; she’d hate me for the rest of my life.
“She can never know.” Agreeing, I chew on the inside of my cheek, wondering if I’ll eventually wear a hole in it. What kind of man kills his woman’s mother? A bad one, obviously.
“Look, you keep it straight with me until I’m done living my life, and I swear to you, she’ll never hear it from me.”
I nod, grateful for his promise. The only others that are aware of what went down are my brothers. I can trust them with this secret, I know that much. We all have skeletons in our closets that we keep for each other; it’s part of the brotherhood.
“You bring anything to dig with?” He moves on, cracking his knuckles, ready to get to work. This isn’t the first time we’ve had to do this, and I’m confident it won’t be the last, either.
“Yeah, I snatched a few of the foldable camping shovels. They’re in my saddlebags. I’ll grab ‘em.”
“Bet. You bring along anything else or are we having a campfire to fix this problem too?”
“The smoke might tip someone off, so I took a page from Viking’s book.” I’ve definitely gotten more careful and creative with time; we all have.
His brow raises, intrigued.
“I brought some of the acid Spider had around so we could skip any uninvited visitors showing up. I didn’t want to chance it with the highway so close.”
“Ugh, that shit smells fuckin’ rank.”
“How do you think she’s going to smell when we dig her up? Not like roses, brother; that I can assure you. The bitch didn’t even wear any good perfume.”
“Jesus,” Saint gripes, shaking his head. He tugs his bandana free and ties it over his face, covering his nose and mouth while I jog back to my bike and grab the foldable shovels. It’s going to be a pain in the ass uprooting this bitch with these, but they’ll have to do.
We get a few inches of dirt shoveled off, and he mutters, “Next time you kill someone, just call so we can come pick them up with the truck. I fucking hate digging.” We’re sweaty and dirty already and have only just begun.
“I will. I hate this shit too.”
“You need to persuade baby girl to give up that shit hole town. Ain’t a thing for her there,” he adds while shoveling like a man possessed. I don’t know how he does it. The movements hurt my back. I end up getting on my knees, copying him and find it goes by quicker.