Holy hell, was she gorgeous. Even crying and red, she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
“Y-yes,” she breathed. “I think I’m having this baby. Right now. I can’t make it to the hospital.”
My stomach dropped down to the ground, seemingly without warning.
“Um,” I hesitated. “I could drive you.”
Of course, I’d just taken my car to an auto shop to be housed with a good friend of mine.
At one point in time, we’d been in the military together. He was on his way out when I was on my way in. We’d bonded over the uncertainty of our lives to come, and that was how I’d found myself in the middle of nowhere, otherwise known as Kilgore, Texas.
Why was she in the middle of nowhere?
Like, quite literally, the only thing in this entire area of Texas was a park bench. The nearest damn town was over thirty minutes away because my friend liked to make sure he could see around his property for miles. Meaning there was nothing but rolling hills for as far as the eyes could see.
Everything but this one stupid bench.
Was this a bus stop?
I’d been walking for a while.
Originally, I was supposed to catch a ride from my friend back to town. Then, from there, I had a bus ticket back home that would drop me off at the courthouse just in time to be processed. However, something big had come up that had not just him but his entire family bugging out of the compound at the same time. Racing toward something that I would never figure out.
I’d meant to figure out a ride, but hell. I really needed the walk to clear my head.
That’s when I found her.
“You don’t have a car,” she said, looking around with confusion.
Another contraction must’ve hit her because she doubled over.
“I feel like I really need to push,” she hissed. “Like, with everything that I am, I feel like I need to push.”
I felt my belly drop out.
“Um,” I said. “What…what do you want me to do?”
She squatted down, blew out a breath, then screamed.
Seconds later, her pants were being ripped down, and I was staring at a half-naked woman with a baby hanging out of her.
A baby about to hit the dirt road underneath our feet.
I lurched forward just in time to catch the baby, my knee scraping painfully against the ground as I lunged.
The baby landed in my hands, and I saw the moment that the baby took her first breath.
“Holy shit,” I breathed.
• • •
“For the love of God.”
I woke up with a start.
My eyes were heavy, and I nearly cursed.
I’d gotten all of twenty minutes of sleep.
Son of a bitch.
That dream.
Why was I always having that fucking dream?
“Yeah?” I managed to say.
“I’m trying to get ahold of you for a reason, motherfucker.”
I felt my stomach drop.
Looking around, I saw the phone in my hand and realized that during my sleep I must’ve answered the ringing phone.
“Sorry, sorry,” I said to the person on the other line. “What’s up?”
“My grandson is missing.”
I looked at the phone a little harder, trying to place where I knew the voice from, and realized that the readout said “Sam.”
Sam McKenzie.
The man that’d stored my vehicle for me all those years. The man that, at one point, had been my superior officer and had led me into my first year as a green little grunt.
“Sam,” I said, trying to blink the sleep from my eyes. “Tell me everything.”
“My daughter,” he started. “She was grocery shopping with her youngest. The cops were conducting a traffic stop that she was unaware of, and when she went past this large van in the parking lot, shit hit the fan with that traffic stop. Some young kid threw away a bag of drugs that was laced with fentanyl. Shit hit a tree, exploded and my daughter inhaled it. She dropped to the ground and started seizing right then and there. At that point, due to the van that she was beside, we don’t know what happened with her son. But when her husband got there, they discovered that the boy was missing. Cops never even knew there was a kid there. Though if they’d taken half a second to see all the baby shit in her cart, they would’ve known. God fuckin’ dammit.”
I felt his worry and the strain in his voice over the phone line.
“I can be there,” I looked at my watch, “in roughly two hours. Send everything that you have to my phone.”
Sam breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks. Will do. Fly safe.”
I would fly safe.
I always did.
Ten years ago, almost to the day, I’d gotten my pilot’s license. Though, I already had the certifications to fly helicopters thanks to the Army.
I’d been taught by the best, a man named Cleo, who, funnily enough, was also in a motorcycle club like me.
Though ours was much more unofficial than theirs.
The Gator Bait MC had been founded on a whim by Wake, our unofficial president’s wife. The Dixie Wardens MC, which was the MC that Cleo was a part of, had been around for so long that there were chapters all over the Southern US.
Getting up, I felt the aches and pains in my bones.
I was sick.
Sick as fuck, actually.
On a scale of one to ten, I was a “you shouldn’t be out in public” seventeen. But life didn’t decide to stop when you were sick. And there was no way in hell that I would leave my friend, that’d done quite a bit for me, out to dry.
The first person I called was Wake.
He answered on the second ring.
“This better be fucking important,” Wake growled. “I was just getting to sleep.”
I would’ve felt bad if I was a better person.
But I wasn’t.
“I’m going out of town,” I said. “A friend’s grandson is missing. Can you check on my place while I’m out?”
My place of business was also my home. I lived on the second floor of a downtown storefront, and it happened to be right next door to a building owned by another member of Gator Bait, Davis.
Davis was better known as Kyle “KD” Davis. He was a forcibly retired ex-MLB star first baseman who, like me, had been wrongfully prosecuted for a crime that should’ve damn well been wiped off his record for why he’d done it.
Like me, he’d protected his sister.
Unlike me, his sister actually liked him and supported him.
“What’s your issue?”
I blinked. “What?”
“Why do you sound so bad?” Wake asked.
“I think I’m running a fever,” I admitted.
Though, I knew I was. I was freezing my ass off while simultaneously sweating. There was no other reason for me to feel as I did unless I was running one.
“Shit,” he said.
“I have to go,” I rubbed my neck. “Just check on my fish for me.”
I’d had no animals for my entire life—my father didn’t believe in having animals as pets—and when I got out of prison, that was the first thing I did. Got some fish.
I’d killed quite a few of them before I found a way to help them live. And that way was just making sure they were fed and had clean enough water.
Hopefully, Wake was able to keep them alive while I was gone. I was on a two-month streak with these fish.