Saving Axe Read online

  just keep telling myself that.

  "Can I ask why they call him Crunch?" I followed April to the kitchen, where she was chopping vegetables. She handed me a knife and a cutting board.

  "Here," she said. "This is about the only thing I can do in the kitchen, is chop stuff up. Oh, Crunch's nickname is because he's a numbers guy. He's always done accounting stuff. Number cruncher, you know."

  "A biker accountant?" It seemed funny to me.

  April slid her knife blade down the length of a cucumber. "Oh, yeah, honey," she said. "Back in the day, Crunch used to do accounting for a couple of businesses. Totally self-taught. Course, those businesses weren't completely on the up and up, you know?"

  "Oh, I see."

  "And then he made a few bad choices, hacking into places, took money from one of the businesses," she said. "Of course, the guy was a real asshole, deserved to have the money stolen. But Crunch, he got lucky, got picked up on a federal charge before the guy he was working for took him out."

  "Oh," I said. I didn't really know what else to say. This wasn't exactly regular dinner conversation.

  "So what about Axe, then?" I asked. "You guys called him Axe. What does that mean?"

  "Axe is Axe because of who he is. Sniper, you know? Couldn’t exactly call him ‘gun’. He's the Sergeant-at-Arms for the club."

  "I don't know what that means." I didn't know what any of this stuff meant, honestly. I'd been around military guys, was used to all that lingo, but I didn't know what any of this meant in the context of a biker club. I mean, I'd been around plenty of guys who rode motorcycles, but none of it was like this.

  I was curious, but also afraid to ask many questions. I just wasn't sure if I wanted to know all that stuff about Cade. I was equal parts drawn to it and repulsed by it. Of course, that was true about Cade, too.

  "That's right," she said. "I forget when I'm talking to civilians." Civilian. That was a word I wasn't quite used to being called, even after a year out of the military. "Axe is the sergeant-at-arms. He's the President's right hand man, makes sure everything's kosher. He enforces things."

  "Enforces," I said. "You mean, enforces when people get out of line?" I didn't want to say kills, but that's the distinct impression I was getting.

  She nodded. "He used to be a Marine. Military types make good club members."

  Yes, I could see the appeal of leaving an organization with a strong leadership hierarchy to go into a similar one. So Cade had been a Marine sniper, and now he was killing people for a gang of criminals. Jesus.

  Cade was definitely not the guy I knew back in high school. The sniper part was one thing - hell, I'd deployed with the Marines, known a few snipers, all good guys. But this biker bullshit? I didn't need to mess with that, even if April and MacKenzie and Crunch seemed like a nice normal family.

  Even if it seemed like there was a hint of the Cade I used to know, the one I used to love, lurking underneath the battered and beaten exterior.

  He was a criminal now.

  A killer.

  I heard the screen door swing open, and MacKenzie clomped across the kitchen floor toward her mother. "Momma," she said. "We saw the water, and there were frogs and I saw the horses and it was really cold water. Look, my pants are all wet."

  April looked down at her. "So they are. Let's go get you changed. Stan, I cut up all the stuff and it's on the counter. Afraid I can't do much more. I'm pretty useless beyond that."

  "That's perfect. I'll take care of the rest," Stan said. "I think Mac had a good bit of fun out there."

  Stan turned toward me. "I'm glad you came for dinner, June."

  "So am I," I said. It was true. I liked being here. I liked April, and MacKenzie, and Stan. "It's nice of you to get everything together, cook like this."

  Stan threw potato chunks in a pan and filled it with water. "You have no idea," he said. "This house has been empty for a while, June. It's nice to have people here to fill in."

  "I bet you're glad to have Cade home, too, huh?" I asked.

  "I'm glad he's here. No matter what the outside circumstances are."

  I was about to ask what exactly the circumstances were, but Crunch walked into the kitchen. "Hey June," he said.

  I smiled. "Long time no see."

  "I was just in the back doing a few things online," he said. "Is Axe still out?"

  "Yeah," Stan said. "Might be a little while. He was riding out to check on the cattle. He knows what time dinner is, though. He'll make it back for that, that's for sure. Even when he was a kid, he could be gone all day, but dinner? Like clockwork, he'd figure out how to get home. Of course, that's when it was his mother's cooking, and not mine."

  "Oh, I bet your cooking is just fine," I said. "Now, your coffee, on the other hand, that's a different story."

  "Hey, I warned you I make a mean cup of coffee."

  "Yes, emphasis on mean,” I said, but I smiled.

  “Now, speaking of coffee,” Stan said. “Why don’t you ladies grab a cup - or there’s some tea right over there - and go sit out on the porch? Joe and I can take care of the cooking.”

  “Joe?” I asked.

  “That’s me,” Crunch said.

  “You just don’t want me near the kitchen,” April said.

  “Joe has told me some stories.” Stan reached into the cupboard for a bowl.

  “God, you start one major kitchen fire, and you never live it down, do you?” April asked.

  “No, and you never will, either, doll,” Crunch said. “We’ve got this covered.”

  “All right, all right,” April said. “You don’t have to tell me twice to not do work.” She held up her hands. “Looks like we’re free to hang out outside. Doesn’t hurt my feelings at all.”

  “Sounds good to me, too,” I said. We took MacKenzie outside, and sat silently, watching her run up and down the porch steps and into the yard, finding stones and flowers and bringing them back one at a time to her mother, before sitting down to decorate Bailey's collar with dandelions.

  "So do you like being part of the biker club, then?" I asked. I wasn't sure how to ask what I wanted to ask, wasn't sure if it was rude.

  No, scratch that. I was sure it was rude. What I wanted to ask was how the hell she did it, marrying a man who was a criminal, having a kid with him, following him to Colorado on the run from whatever the hell trouble they were in. I just didn't understand it.

  I would never do something like that, I thought. I just couldn't see myself following someone like that anywhere. Then I had the nagging thought that maybe I just didn't love anyone that much.

  "Yeah," April said. "I know it's weird from the outside. Trust me, I know. I used to have more civilian friends than biker ones, but that changed over the years. But I remember when I was mostly friends with civilians, how they looked at me when I went to hang out at the club on the weekends. They thought I was getting, well, you know - " April leaned forward in her chair, glancing at MacKenzie playing happily in the grass before she lowered her voice.

  "They thought I was getting raped or gang banged or something. I mean, something must be wrong with me or I must be into some kind of kinky shit if I was hanging around a bunch of bikers. Don't get me wrong. I was wild. But after a while, it became like my family. Then I met Crunch, and it was my family. He was my family."

  "I don't think many people understand it," I said. I sure didn't. The only thing I really knew about outlaw bikers was what I'd seen on television. Of course, now that I thought about it, there were rumors about a couple of the enlisted guys who worked for me during deployment, a couple of the corpsmen- that they were hang arounds with a biker gang. I didn't know what that meant at the time, and I didn't want to know.

  "No," April said. "Most people don't want to understand, either."

  "Do you ever get tired of it, though?"

  April didn't answer right away, rocking back and forth in her chair for a bit before she opened her mouth. “The truth?” she asked. “Yeah, of course I get tire