Twisted Rose: Motorcycle Dark Romance 3 (The Darkness Trilogy) (9 page)

Patrice was different. Where Serge was evil, Patrice was only weak. He’d liked Rose when she first arrived in Val-d’Or. She’d liked him too. Serge had forced him to rape her as a test of his loyalty to the MC and if it wasn’t for Serge and Fat Boy, Patrice would never have wanted to do anything harmful to her at all. But that didn’t change the fact that he’d gone along with everything they’d wanted him to do. When they told him to rape her, he’d done it without even the slightest protest. He’d found her in a pool of urine, tied to the bed, and she’d thought he might even fight for her freedom. She’d thought he might have risked his own life to rescue her, out of love. He’d done nothing of the kind. He saw what Serge and Fat Boy had done to her and when they told him to rape her, he’d obeyed. Being a part of the DRMC had been more important to him than doing the right thing. That made him weak in Rose’s eyes, and he deserved whatever justice Josh was about to give him.

She looked at Josh one last time and then turned to leave. She would wait outside by the bikes and when he came out the job would be taken care of.

As she made her way to the door of the bar she whispered something to herself. It was so quiet that Josh couldn’t hear her. “I love you, Josh Carter,” she said.

XIX

J
OSH HARDLY NOTICED ROSE LEAVE
the bar. He was focusing so hard on Serge that he didn’t notice anything, not the bodies on the floor, not Patrice standing there shaking in fear.

He could tell that Rose was torn about what to do but he had no such qualms. Serge had kidnapped her, he’d raped her, he’d done the same to countless other women and he’d do it to more if someone didn’t stop him. There was no pleasure in it for Josh but the man had to be stopped. He walked up to him, the gun by his side, and stopped just a few feet from Serge.

“I guess you knew someone would eventually catch up to you, Serge.”

“Fuck you,” Serge said.

Josh didn’t care. He wanted to make sure Serge knew what was happening to him and why.

“I’m going to kill you because of the things you’ve been doing to these girls,” he said.

“What do you care?” Serge said. “A healthy young man like you, you should be enjoying these women, not picking fights with the men that provide them.”

“Fuck that,” Josh said. “You’re sick, and the entire DRMC is sick.”

“And what makes you say that?” Serge said. “Because last I heard, the DRMC was the strongest MC in all of Quebec. We’ve wiped out every fucking competitor we ever had.”

“Not quite,” Josh said. “You haven’t wiped out the Sioux Rangers.”

Serge looked at him then. “The Sioux Rangers? We wiped out that two-bit MC ten years ago. Every single member was killed. We had a list.”

“A list provided by Rex Savage?”

Serge said nothing. Josh could see the calculations in his eyes.

“That’s right,” Josh said. “There was one name missing from that list. Mine.”

Serge looked at Patrice.

“Don’t look at him,” Josh said. “He’s not going to help you. He’s a kid.”

Serge looked at Josh then.

“So what are you telling me? That the Sioux Rangers live on just because we missed one lowlife biker? Fuck that. After what you’ve done here today, you’re going to have every fucking DRMC rider within a thousand miles hunting you down. There’s not going to be any future for you, there’s no future for your fucking girlfriend, and there’s no future for the Sioux Rangers.”

“I guess you’ll never know,” Josh said and he pointed the gun at Serge’s gut and pulled the trigger.

Josh heard the bullet hit Serge’s gut. Patrice grimaced. Blood poured from Serge’s belly and Josh had to step back to avoid it spraying on him.

“Fuck,” Patrice said as Serge slumped to the ground.

Josh looked at him. He felt nothing. He wasn’t allowing himself to feel anything. He would feel things later. He would feel guilt and remorse and the sickly satisfaction that came with revenge when he had time. But for now, all he felt was the slick sweat on his forehead and the pain in his back and leg where he’d taken shotgun lead.

Josh turned his attention to Patrice, who looked like he was going to be sick.

“You want to join him?”

Patrice shook his head. “No, sir,” he said.

“You know why I killed him?”

Josh didn’t know why he was talking to Patrice, explaining himself, but he felt like it was important.

“Because you had to?”

“Because I had to,” Josh repeated.

He was quiet for a moment. He didn’t have any time to spare but his mind was running over so many things that he had to take a second to think. Did he have a choice in any of this? Did he have any control? He almost felt that it was destiny that was controlling him and that he had no choice but to follow it. Ten years had passed since he’d ridden out from his home to kill the man who had killed his father. He felt that ever since that day he’d been fighting one long, strenuous battle. It was a battle that never got any easier, never got any closer to the end. All that happened was that he got more and more blood on his hands. He hadn’t wanted to be a killer, he hadn’t wanted any of this, and now four men were lying on the ground dead and another was standing in front of him, waiting for his bullet.

“What’s your name, kid?” he said to Patrice.

“Patrice. Patrice Dupuis.”

“You from around here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And that’s how you got mixed up with the Dark Rebels?”

“There isn’t much else to get mixed up in around here,” Patrice said.

Josh nodded. He knew that was true. The DRMC ruled this area. They were the only law. It hadn’t been that different around the reservations and border towns of his own youth.

“You know who I am?” he said to Patrice.

“You’re a Sioux Ranger.”

“That’s right,” Josh said.

He looked at Patrice. He looked into his eyes. The kid was scared. He wasn’t ready to die. Apart from that, Josh couldn’t tell much about him. He’d never had a hard time reading a man but something about Patrice made it difficult. He couldn’t tell what kind of a man he was. Whether he was good or a monster.

“Tell me,” he said to Patrice, “what kind of a man are you?”

Patrice looked at him. He wasn’t sure if Josh was toying with him or not.

“I’m not messing with you,” Josh said. “Just answer the question.”

Patrice was quiet for a moment before answering.

“I guess it’s too soon to say,” he said at last. “I guess I haven’t yet become the man I’m to be.”

“You haven’t yet become the man you’re to be,” Josh repeated and thought about it. “Well I suppose that’s true of any of us.”

Patrice nodded. “I’m still young,” he said.

Josh nodded to that too. “Not too young to be patched.”

“No,” Patrice said. “Not too young for that.”

“Tell me,” Josh went on, “have you ever done anything very bad in your life?”

“That depends on what you consider bad,” Patrice said.

Josh nodded again. “I guess that answers my question.”

Patrice looked at him. He seemed to realize what was going on. Josh was looking for a reason not to kill him.

“I’ve done bad things, mister. I’ve done some very bad things. To get patched I had to do some very bad things.”

Josh looked him straight in the eye. He knew it was true.

“But that’s not all there is to me, mister. I’ve done bad, but I’ve done some good things in my life too. I raised my brother and sister. I wasn’t always a monster. I wasn’t always DRMC.”

Josh squinted as he looked at Patrice. He didn’t know what it was about the kid that made it so hard to read him.

“You ever hurt a woman?” he said. “You ever hurt that girl who was just in here? Rose Meadows?”

Patrice didn’t answer. He looked at Josh and he was about to tell him something, Josh could tell he was about to tell him the truth, but just before he could speak Serge coughed. Josh took a step back as Serge began gasping for breath. He was still alive. He was gasping and coughing up blood.

“Jesus Christ,” Patrice said, terrified that the same fate awaited him.

Josh pointed the gun at Serge and put another bullet in the man’s chest. Then he looked at Patrice.

“I’ve got to go,” he said, more to himself than to Patrice. “I guess this is your lucky day, kid. The sun shines on us all, some days. You just do me one favor. You tell the Dark Rebel Motorcycle Club that they didn’t wipe out the Sioux Rangers on Bloody Sunday. You tell them they missed one rider. They let him slip through their fingers. And you tell them that he’s coming back for blood.”

XX

R
OSE AND JOSH RODE OUT
of Val-d’Or on highway 117 and slowed for nothing. They had no idea how long it would be before the DRMC assembled a posse to chase after them. They’d just killed the chapter president and vice-president but it wouldn’t take Patrice long to get the word out to the rest of the chapter.

Rose had expected Josh to lead them back up north toward Chazel but they were headed due east. Rose kept low on her bike and followed close behind Josh. Every now and then she looked over her shoulder to see if they were being followed but she saw nothing. A posse of DRMC members could have already ridden out of Val-d’Or. If they hadn’t they would soon. They would know what direction she and Josh were headed. Someone in the town would have seen them riding out fast like they had and would have reported them. Josh must have known that. That was the reason he hadn’t headed back in the direction of Jac’s. He didn’t want to lead the DRMC to him.

The road was straight till it met with the 113 and then it forked. Josh pulled up and Rose halted beside him.

“Which way?” she said.

He looked at her. His eyes were fierce like those of a wolf and the sight of them gave Rose a thrill. He looked up and down the road. Then he looked at her.

“Which do you think? South leads back to civilization. North is a long way before it gets anywhere. Hundreds of miles.”

Rose didn’t know which way would be better.

“I guess they’ll be expecting us to go south,” she said.

“They will.”

“So maybe we should go north.”

He looked up that way and then back at her.

“How much gas do you have?” he said.

“Three quarters, you?”

“The same.”

She looked back the way they’d come.

“How long before they’re after us?”

“My guess is they already are.”

They both sat on their bikes for a minute, their engines humming loudly beneath them. Rose looked south down the highway. She desperately wanted to go that way. That way led back to Montreal. It was the road she’d taken when she’d come up north in the first place. She felt that if she could go back down that road she would be able to undo some of the things that had happened to her since she’d come up it.

It was a long way though and more likely than not the DRMC would catch up with them on the highway along the way. There was only one way that could end.

She reached out and touched Josh’s hand with her own. He seemed surprised that she’d done it.

“North,” she said.

He gave a thoughtful smile before nodding. Then he revved his engine and pulled out onto the 113, headed north.

Rose paid hardly any attention to the landscape as they sped through it. All she could think about were the riders who were following them. She prayed they could outrun them. They were going as fast as they could and they had a head start but this was DRMC territory and they would know it better than anyone. What she was really afraid of was that they would have riders waiting up ahead for them. She didn’t think they had anyone they could call this far north but there was no telling for sure. As they sped through the forest, the deep, cold water of Lac Tiblemont on her right, she began to think about the events she’d just witnessed.

The men who’d hurt her so badly were gone. Serge, Fat Boy, Deuce, Patrice, they were all gone. Josh had killed them. She wondered if it made a difference. Did it help her heal? She wasn’t sure.

*

T
HEY RODE ON NORTH FOR
most of the afternoon. Josh set a relentless pace and took steps to make sure the DRMC would have a hard time tracking them. On the outskirts of the first town they came to, Senneterre, he left the highway for a small logging track that avoided the town and rejoined the highway farther to the north. Whoever was following them wouldn’t be able to get confirmation from the town’s residents that they’d passed through. They did the same thing at the next town, Lebel-sur-Quévillon, rounding Lac Misamiko to avoid drawing any attention to themselves.

“If we’re lucky,” he told Rose, “they’ll think we went south.”

Rose was impressed.

“Have you been chased before like this?”

“Once or twice,” Josh said.

They rode on through the wilderness for a few more hours and finally pulled into the tiny hamlet of Chapais just before dark. Rose was relieved. She’d been worried that Josh would want to ride through the night, or worse, spend the night hiding out in the forest.

“Are we going to spend the night here?” she said to him hopefully.

“I think it will be alright,” he said. “We’ve covered a lot of ground and we haven’t left much of a trail. No one should be too close behind us.”

“Thank God,” Rose said. “I don’t think I could have kept going much longer.”

Josh nodded. “We better fill up our gas first in case we need to leave town in a hurry.”

There was a small Shell garage on the way into town and they joined the pickups and trucks filling up.

“Do you think we’ll be safe here?” Rose said.

“We won’t stay long,” Josh said. “Just till sun up.”

They filled their tanks and then Rose went into the store with Josh to pay the attendant. The store was sparse but there was a counter with some candy in front of it and a fridge full of drinks.

“You want anything?” Josh said to her.

She grabbed two cokes from the fridge and put them on the counter. Josh looked up at the attendant. He was a kid in his teens.

“Is there someplace to stay around here?” he said to the kid.

The kid looked up from the till at him and then at Rose.