A body.

A body hangs from the tree, upside down, suspended by one foot. The other leg hangs at an awkward angle. The foot which should be at the end of that leg is missing. The hands which should be at the ends of the arms hanging freely below are also missing. And the head… the head is gone, too. Blood mottles the naked flesh, covering the torso, the buttocks, the legs…

The rope, looped around the thick bough of the tree, creaks as the body spins, facing us, revealing that it’s the body of a woman. There’s what looks like a scrap of blood stained paper stuck to her body, black writing typed across it, but I don’t see what it says. I drop to my knees instead, and vomit into the red dirt beneath me.

“Jesus. A gift, from Los Oscuros? What the fuck is wrong with this guy?” Rebel hisses. From where I’m bent over double on the ground, I can see that his hands are shaking. I lock onto that sight, willing myself not to look up at the poor woman hanging from the tree, at the awful things that have happened to her. Rebel’s hands shake and shake and shake. And the woman’s hands are…are just gone.

Cade grunts. “And what the fuck is up with their choice of font, too?”

“Yeah.” Carnie spits on the ground. “Really says a lot about your intentions. I mean, how are you meant to take someone seriously when the message they send you is printed in motherfucking comic sans?”

“You cut their body into small pieces. That’s how you take them seriously. Hector’s fucking with us,” Rebel says softly. They continue to talk, but my ears are ringing. I can’t focus on the subdued conversation that takes place over me, but I can feel the tension pouring off the three men. I can literally taste their rage. I throw up again, screwing my eyes shut, unable to breathe.

Oh my god. I can’t… I can’t… I can’t…

“Bron,” Cade says. “Her name’s Bron. She’s Keeler’s girl. I recognize the tattoo.” I make the mistake of looking up, then. I see the small tattoo of a rose on the inside of her right forearm, just above her wrist. The bloody stump where her arm terminates is still dripping blood. I heave again, though nothing comes up this time.

“Fuck.” Rebel sinks to his knees beside me, his face now completely ashen, devoid of all color. He reaches for me, pulling me to him, though he doesn’t really look at me. He’s staring at the piece of mutilated flesh hanging from the tree like a slaughtered cow. Slowly, he strokes a hand absently over my hair, the cool blue of his eyes hardening, darkening somehow, turning steely and cold. “Sick motherfucker,” he whispers. “That sick, evil motherfucker picked her off because she wasn’t inside the compound.”

Cade laces his fingers behind the back of his head, turning away from the woman. He squints into the distance, out into the desert, his mouth pulling down at both sides in a grimace. “Yeah. Yeah, looks that way.”

“Does Keeler know?”

Carnie kicks at the dirt, shaking his head. “No. No one else knows. I found her this morning when I came back from town. I went straight to Cade.”

“Good. You did the right thing. I—fuck. God knows how we’re gonna break this to everyone.” Rebel sounds composed but his voice is utterly empty. I cry in his arms while he strokes my hair, wishing I hadn’t been so damned stubborn. If I’d just let him have his way, I wouldn’t have the image of Keeler’s dead girlfriend burned into my memory. This isn’t something that will ever go away. This isn’t something I’ll ever forget about. This is something that will give me nightmares for the rest of my life.

“They’re gonna want blood,” Cade says.

Rebel’s chin rests on the crown of my head, and for some reason the intimacy of the action calms me a little. “I know,” he says. “And they’ll get it. We just have to make sure we go about this the right way. He’s trying to bait us. Trying to provoke us. If we’re angry when we go after him, we won’t be thinking straight. We get sloppy, we make mistakes. This has to be contained.”

“I hear you. But this woman had a foot, both her hands and her fucking head chopped off, Rebel. I’d like to see how you’re gonna contain that.”

SEVEN

REBEL

Turns out Keeler spent the night away from the compound, visiting his sister in Cedar Crest. At the moment he’s one of our primary tattoo artists at Dead Man’s Ink, though. Today is his day to cover the shop, so Cade and I ride into town and to wait for him. We cut Bron’s body down and drive her back to the compound first, of course, hiding her out of sight, where the other guys won’t find her before we have chance to tell Keeler. Cade and I sit in the shop in silence, me bleeding through my stitches, staring at the walls, neither of us knowing what to say to one another. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen fucked up shit. Afghanistan was a savage place. The things we saw there… That was the first time I really understood, really knew the evil man was capable of committing against his fellow man. Nothing will ever be more brutal than the atrocities we saw there. But this is different. This is here, on our fucking doorstep, and this isn’t fucking Kabul. This is regular small town Americana, and this was one of our own.

Keeler’s first appointment is at ten thirty, so Cade and I sit and stew for a good hour and a half before the low rumble of Keeler’s motorcycle rattles the glass in the shop’s window frames.

“How you gonna handle this?” Cade asks.

“I don’t know. I guess we’re about to find out.”

Keeler looks surprised when he opens the shop door and finds Cade and me sitting at the counter. Concern flashes across his face. He’s young, mid-twenties. Good guy. Not ex-army like most of the Widow Makers. He was beaten by his father from the moment he could walk til the moment he ran away from home—spent some time pin-balling between different drug gangs before he wound up on the wrong side of the law and serving three years for possession with intent to supply. He got his shit dialled in prison. He’d been out for a month when he walked through the doors of Dead Man’s Ink for the first time, looking for work. Cade gave him a job on the spot. Took him a clean year to convince me to let him prospect for the club, though. Now I’m feeling really fucking guilty that I caved and swore him in.

“Hey, guys. What’s up? Did I leave the door open or something?” He eyes us cautiously, like we’re about to ream him out.

“No, dude. Come in. We gotta talk to you about something.” I pull out a chair by the counter, gesturing for him to sit down. He looks like he’s about to shit his pants.

“Uhhh… should I be freaking out right now? ‘Cause I’m freaking out.” He slowly walks into the shop and lowers himself into the seat.

“You haven’t done anything wrong,” Cade tells him. “It’s—it’s about Bron.”

I watch the nervous smile fall from Keeler’s face. “What about her?” he says slowly.

I take over. I’m the president of this club. I’m responsible for the people who have joined, and I should also be responsible for their loved ones. I should have known this was going to happen. I tell Keeler what’s happened, doing my best to provide as few details as possible. It’s impossible to keep the truth from him for long, though. The guy stares at me, as though I’m making it all up.

“Come on, man, stop fucking around. That shit ain’t funny.”

“I’m sorry. I swear to god, I am so sorry, and we are going to make this right, Key.”

“She’s dead? She’s dead?”

“Yes.”

“They…they cut off her head?”

I scrub my hands over my face, blowing all the air out of my lungs. “I’m sorry. Yes.”

“Where is it?”