Billy Daily Read online

  If I was expecting a tearful request, I was sadly mistaken. That salty ice queen sauntered over to the table, chin-length brown hair swinging a bit as she walked. It had to have been 75 degrees outside, and she was still in jeans and a purple long sleeved shirt. Anyone else would be sweating to death. It was hotter than a two peckered goat and here Billy was, dressed for fall. The only reason I wore sleeves was because I rode in leathers for safety. Only a dumbass wore shorts or short sleeves on a motorcycle. That was asking to sacrifice your skin to the road gods. I didn’t know why Billy always wore long sleeves though. It was a damn shame in my opinion. Shitty personality aside, she had a body that would make a corpse sport wood. Her short hair emphasized the slender length of her neck, her jeans hung just right on her thick waist which flared out into some righteous hips that looked like they were made to be gripped from the back like handlebars, and that ass... Let’s just say I’d never had a thing for peaches before I’d met Billy fucking Daily. It was such a damn shame she was a lunatic.

  “I need you to buy some drugs.”

  Okay, what?

  I wasn’t expecting a hello or a hug, but that particular request coming out of her mouth still struck me as odd. Every woman who made their way into the Sisters’ clubhouse had their own tale to tell, but for some reason I’d taken Billy to be a little more innocent than that. I didn’t know why, just a hunch.

  “Yeah. Okay?” I said it more as a question because I was pretty damn confused. I was going to need a little more information about the job than just that. I didn’t object to it if there was a reason and I was getting paid. In fact, I’d done much worse, but I was failing to see why she needed me in particular or what the fuck she needed drugs for, since no way in fucking hell would Jean let her bring that shit into their house. She moved faster than I’d thought she was going to, and to be honest, I might have almost flinched a little thinking she was going to take a crack at me. I mean, that was kind of our thing, Billy and me. I would do something completely harmless, and she would try to put my lights out. Being the gentleman I was, she got the hits in and I got to take them.

  She slapped the picture on the table in front of me and crossed her arms again, almost defiantly, daring me to say something to her. Still confused as to what the fuck was happening, I looked down at the photo and my stomach dropped.

  The boy in the photo looked to be about seven or eight years old. It was a school picture, the kind where the kid is wearing an awkward button down collared shirt, showing gap teeth, and there’s a bland, solid colored background. This particularly awkward kid had dark brown hair and eyes and was a tiny little version of the woman standing right in front of me.

  “You got a kid, Billy?” I choked a little on the words and not because I was crying, but because I was as manly a man as there was and still, there wasn’t much I wouldn’t do to help a kid. In war, fuck…in war, the babies were the biggest victims. I would see them walking the streets in rags, looking for food or even just some clean water. Some had parents but most didn’t. With no one to take care of them, they usually starved to death before the bombs destroyed their cities. I couldn’t handle anyone hurting a kid. I still struggled with nightmares of their bloated, hungry bellies and their huge glassy eyes. In times of discord, it wasn’t necessarily enemy forces that destroyed lives. War brought out the scum of the earth, and there were always people around who would take advantage of the vulnerable. Whether bombing, enemy attacks, looters or crime syndicates – regardless, the children suffered.

  I was staring at the picture of that kid, but I still wasn’t any closer to finding out why Billy needed me to buy drugs. Someone needed to explain better what was happening here, real quickly.

  “He’s my brother,” Billy said. Her jaw trembled briefly before firming up, making me wonder if I had ever witnessed her falter at all. “Denny’s eight years old and in the third grade,” she continued. “He doesn’t have the same last name as me. My mom remarried after my dad passed away, and we went to live with her shit-show new husband.” I didn’t like Billy’s tone as she talked about her step-dad. When a woman has that much acid in her voice, you have to wonder what happened to put it there. I didn’t interrupt her though. I let her get out what she needed to.

  “I stayed around as long as I could,” she said, and she rubbed her arms as if she was cold, but I knew that couldn’t be true. She was dressed for winter in the middle of summer. If she was cold, I would think there was something wrong with her. Well, besides her massive attitude problem.

  “I don’t know if Mama knew he was a dealer or if she just didn’t care, but it didn’t take long before she was strung out. She made it through the pregnancy and she survived for a couple of years after that, but the addiction rode her hard and by the time Denny was four she OD’d in a bar bathroom. They found her at closing time in a toilet stall with a needle in her arm.”

  Jesus, Billy, I thought to myself, but I held it in. Billy didn’t look like she needed my sympathy, and I didn’t need another punch to the nuts.

  “I raised Denny the best I could—the best I could when Steven would let me. He thought I babied him, so he would always try to do things to toughen him up.” Billy looked like she was going to throw up and I felt a sourness enter my gut. ‘Toughening up’ to douchebags like that usually meant slapping around and even just thinking about the possibility made me want to choke the life from her step-dad.

  “It got to the point where I should have left the house and gotten my own place. I’m in my twenties, you know? And Steven would say things like, if you’re going to stay here, you’re going to need to work the family business. Earn your keep. She flicked her gaze to Jean again and did that weird thing where she rubbed her arms with her hands. Jean caught me looking and gave me the side eye that said under no circumstances was I to even act like I noticed what she was doing. I obliged because I enjoyed living and wanted to continue to do so. “In the end, some things happened, and I couldn’t stay anymore, I had to go, so I came here to Grandma Jean’s.”

  “What’s the family business, Billy?” I asked the question I already knew the answer to, but I needed to hear her say it.

  “Steven Colsen sells meth,” she spit the words out like they tasted dirty, and they probably did. “He sells a shit-ton of meth, and he made my eight-year-old brother a delivery boy.” Emotion rode her hard, and I could tell that Billy was not the ice queen she portrayed herself as. Right now with a couple of tears leaking out the corners of her eyes, even though she fought for them not to fall, Billy Daily was every inch the reluctant damsel in distress. Hell, I felt her pain.

  Now, being in my line of work and traveling around, I got to know a lot of people from all walks of life. He wasn’t anyone I had actually met before, but I recognized the name Colsen. Steven Colsen didn’t just sell meth, although that was probably a real fucking money maker for him. He sold heroin, cocaine, just about whatever you could want. He was a man who made a living feeding addictions. It was easy to see why he’d set himself up in a quiet country town, but he did business all the way up to Detroit. The guys in the AOG MC even knew about him. He was a nasty piece of work, mostly because he had a very loose moral code and no qualms about exploiting weaknesses to make a dollar. Apparently, he was also not above making his own flesh and blood run drugs for him. Was he the reason Billy Daily was so mean? What had happened to her under his roof? I wanted to ask, but thought better of it.

  I looked down at the photo of that little gap-toothed boy and thought about what his life was like. Did he have friends? What were his interests? Did Billy get to see him anymore or was she hanging out at Grandma Jean’s just to stay close to him? I had so many questions, but I didn’t get to ask any because Billy cleared her throat, wiped the tears out of the corners of her eyes quickly, and continued talking.

  “My brother is a good boy, Max. He goes to school and does his homework, and he likes video games and ninjas. I never wanted him to know about that life. I would have take
n him away if I could – I planned to. But it is very hard to take a child away from his father, even if his father is a straight-up piece of shit.” Billy frowned hard, and her big brown eyes narrowed into thin slits. I knew she was right. The courts weren’t going to take a kid from his father without some amazing proof.

  “Have you gone to the police?” I asked, knowing full well she’d probably tried to if she had anything.

  “I would, if I knew which ones were in his pocket and which weren’t,” Billy said. The bitter tone was nothing new, but the tired slump of her shoulders was a little distressing to me. I didn’t like seeing Billy beat down. I didn’t necessarily like seeing her getting ready to beat me up either, but she looked like she needed help, and something about that chipped away at my insides.

  “I bet no one questions a little kid with a backpack,” I said slowly, gears turning, trying to figure out the game. This was Pemberville; it was a farm town. Who was he selling to out here in the boonies with a population of about 2,000 people? “He can’t be making money out here. Where is he selling?”

  “Denny is Steven’s weekend runner,” Billy said as her face shut down even more, and it made me wonder what a smile would look like on her face. I’d never seen it. I scooted over on the bench at the table and made room for her to sit. She looked tired, and it was clear her head was in another place because she just sat down next to me without giving me the suspicious glance she normally would. For some reason, me being nice to her got under Billy’s skin. I had no idea why. This time though, she just sat next to me, close enough for our legs to almost be touching, and I thought it was probably the closest me and Billy had ever been without her trying to take a chunk out of me. With a different subject matter, it would have almost been romantic.

  “Steven takes him on field trips, and on those trips, they go to wherever Steven has drops to make. Then, so he isn’t visible, he sends Denny in all by himself. Just a little boy and a backpack of drugs to made the drop and come out with the money. If Denny does everything right, he gets a reward, like a new video game or a pack of Pokémon cards. If he doesn’t do what he’s supposed to do…” Billy’s voice trailed off again, and once more I noticed how she rubbed her hands up and down her arms. This time I knew she couldn’t be cold, but I did know sometimes memories were enough to make you shiver. I knew that from personal experience; the memories of war woke me up often enough, teeth chattering and sheets soaked with a cold sweat that made me feel like the bedding was freezing to my body.

  Trauma. That’s what it was. Billy had suffered a trauma, and without even knowing what that trauma was, I wanted to kill the fuckers responsible for it. I was just about to open my mouth and demand an explanation of what was going on under those sleeves when Grandma Jean slapped her hand on the table and brought our attention back to her.

  “I tried to help, but I can’t get near him either.” Jean sounded pissed and I got that, but with the care she gave these women, they’d feel like a responsibility to her. Having one of her own feel so threatened and not being able to do anything about it must have really stuck in her craw. “I thought about squirreling him away on the back of the trike, but that butt face Colsen knows me and makes sure Denny is never by himself.”

  “Never by himself unless he is making a drug run, right?” and suddenly it was clear to me. The only time Denny was alone was when he was making a drop. I needed to somehow be the person Denny was making his drop to. Then what, did I grab the kid? How did we know where the drop was going to go down? I had so many questions.

  “Let me see if I am getting all of this,” I said. “You need me to essentially buy some drugs from Steven. There is no way he is just going to make a deal with some dude he’s never met; that’s suspicious as hell. The most effective way to do this would be to interrupt a deal that was already scheduled to take place. I don’t need to make a deal with Steven directly, I just need to be in the place where the deal is supposed to happen, right? How will we find out where and when that is? I mean, it could be anywhere from here to Toledo to Detroit.”

  “It’s actually not that hard,” Billy said then, tapping her hands on the table. It was an anxious gesture I assumed. “I get to talk to Denny once a week. I usually ask him what his plans are, but he can only tell me certain things. Denny’s eight years old. If I ask the right questions, I can get the answers I want without making him think he’s telling me too much. That’s how I found out about this shit in the first place.” Billy brushed her hair behind her ear, and it immediately sprang back to skim her cheek and chin. I found the move fascinating and couldn’t tear my eyes away. She turned her head slightly and caught me staring, but instead of throwing a punch or making a face, a faint red stain painted her cheeks.

  So Billy didn’t mind me looking, huh? Was it just touching I wasn’t allowed to do? I felt like I was looking through a window at a whole new woman and I wanted to learn more, I really did, but we had some important shit to sort out first.

  “So he can talk to you on the phone? Steven isn’t worried about you trying to take him or find out where he is going?” That didn’t sound terribly bright, but what did I know. Even idiots could make money.

  The blush was gone now, and her face became pinched and angry. “Steven doesn’t consider me a threat. Not anymore, and that’s okay. I’m out of time though. I’m out of time, and I need to get him out of there, Max. Denny will do whatever Steven says now. My little brother has started to do whatever Steven tells him to without question.”

  I didn’t like the way she said the word ‘now’ like maybe she had put up a fight at some point and lost, so now this Steven guy didn’t consider her a worthy opponent. What had happened to my Billy girl to make her act the way she did… and since when did I think of her as my Billy? She was nuts, and I was nuts for thinking any other kind of way.

  “Ok, so we need a plan then,” I said, but Billy and Grandma Jean had clearly been working on the particulars for a while.

  “I’ve already got it all worked out, Max,” Jean told me confidently as she smoothed the sides of her cardigan down over the bulge of her shoulder holster. “You are the last puzzle piece; we just need to get you in place.”

  4

  They did, in fact, have a pretty solid plan. After another two hours of them talking and me listening, and I had to admit, I was impressed. The only thing we needed to do was lock in a location and work on schematics. Until that happened, we were pretty much on standby.

  Grandma Jean left to run to the store. I told her I would go but she insisted, said she needed to take the Milk Man out for a ride. Milk Man was her 1941 Harley Davidson Servi-Pro in beautiful condition. The trike was a classic and in mint condition, pearl white custom paint job with the large metal cargo box on the back, also white. I could definitely appreciate the status and the condition she kept it in, but you would never catch me straddling something that was essentially an OG cop car. She rode that antique service bike everywhere and the only time she took her old Buick out was when it was raining or snowing. Otherwise, she rode the Milk Man.

  Billy disappeared somewhere, God knew what she was up to, and I went for the only thing that was on my mind – a hot shower. I loved a good ride as much as the next guy, but two hours on the back of a bike that shook like a dishwasher would make anyone need a break. The hot water was amazing, and I took my time too. Thinking about Billy sitting next to me on the bench, her leg almost, but not quite, touching mine. Sheeeit, she was a fine woman, even if she was mean as hell. I thought briefly about rubbing one out in the shower, just to take the edge off my attraction to Billy, but it felt wrong to do such a thing in Grandma Jean’s house. Plus, some paranoid part of me thought Billy would know I had been thinking about her. I didn’t need another hit to the junk from her. She’d only got me the once, but a man doesn’t need to take more than one hit to the crotch to make it a lasting memory. Even after that one time, every occasion I ran into Billy she kept looking at me like I was going to take somethi
ng from her. What she didn’t know, was that I would never take from a woman something she didn’t want to give. I wasn’t going to correct her, it just grated my nerves that she was so obviously distrustful of me and she didn’t even know me. I didn’t realize the real trouble I was in until I turned off the water and got out of the shower.

  I had forgotten to bring my change of clothes into the bathroom.

  Shit.

  I really didn’t want to put my other jeans and shirt back on. They were covered in road dirt, and I was nice and clean. The towels weren’t much better. Grandma Jean had bath towels, but they were regular sized, and I was a big dude. I managed to dry off with it, but I couldn’t get it to tie all the way around my waist. I had to hold the gap closed with one hand. Grandma Jean was at the store, thank God, but I needed to be stealthy like a ninja if I was going to avoid getting caught by Billy walking bare-assed down the hallway with a postage stamp sized towel covering my Johnson.

  Not that I would have minded her seeing me half naked, but I don’t think she would have been too happy about it. Billy was skittish, and when she got uncomfortable, she started lashing out. I wasn’t aggressive with women as a life rule, but I was getting about tired of getting mean mugged by Billy because she didn’t know what to do with me.

  I opened the bathroom door a crack and stuck my head out. A quick glance to the left into the kitchen showed not a soul. To the right and down the hallway – no one there. There were two doors to get past until I made it back to the guest room and home free. Making a mad dash down the hallway, I yanked open the door to the room I would be staying in, closed it quickly behind me and let out a long sigh – I made it.