Lurch

Chapter 1

Lurch couldn’t help the slow grin that spread across his face when he spotted the sign for a restaurant tucked away in the corner of an aging strip mall.

Mon Cha!

Mon Cha!It probably didn’t mean much to most people but to him it meant home. And hopefully some food like he hadn’t had in years. He didn’t have time to stop now, besides he was acting as security for London on a grocery trip. When he went in, at least the first time, he didn’t want any witnesses, at least anyone he’d have to deal with daily. At least until he knew what he was getting into.

Lurch had only been in Gillette for two weeks. He hadn’t even settled in yet. No one had. They were still working on setting up a routine. Tuck was still getting a feel for the place, as were all the others who’d more recently arrived.

Lurch was one of four of the Demented Souls who had come up from Arizona with a couple of pickups, bringing with them everything Tuck would need to live here for a year.

Not all of the brothers who had come had been volunteers, but Lurch had been. He’d been looking for a chance to get out of Tucson for a little while for some time. This seemed like the perfect opportunity. He wasn’t really looking forward to middle of nowhere Wyoming, but it had to be better than the heat of Arizona, especially this time of year when the temperatures often hit 110 sometimes as high as 115. The summer wasn’t too bad when you had air conditioning, but more often than not, Lurch ended up on the road somewhere. And 115, even at 60 or 75 miles an hour was still 115. After an hour tops, you felt like you’d been stuck in a convection oven for days. It sucked all the moisture out of you.

At least up here it was well under a hundred degrees, and it was nice weather for a ride. Even if he didn’t get out on his bike as often as he would like.

In fact, he’d only had a chance to get out and ride once since he’d arrived; the rest of the time was in a vehicle. With at least one other person, usually escorting London somewhere.

His attention was drawn back to London and Stretch, who was her other guard for this trip. London had insisted they needed groceries, and while they were in town, they also picked up feed and some hardware they needed around the ranch.

Lurch could tell London wasn’t happy with the restriction of not more than once a week into town, but he hadn’t heard her complain yet. She also wasn’t happy with so many men hanging around the house much less living in it. Hopefully it wouldn’t take them long to get the bunkhouse ready, so the Souls who were there for security could spend most of their time there unless they were on duty at the house.

The extra space and not being in each other’s ass pockets all the time would go a long way to ease the occasionally flaring tempers. As well as restoring some of the privacy they were all used to. Lurch wasn’t sure about any of the other brothers who had come up from Tucson, Stretch, Watt and Ghost, but he was tired of walking in on his president and London in various states of embrace, and once, undressed. London had been mortified. Tuck hadn’t been fazed. The Souls president had used his body to shield her until Lurch and the others had left.

London’s voice drew Lurch back to the present. He shook his head and focused on her where she sat in the passenger seat of the king cab pickup.

“I’m sorry, what was that?”

“Nothing much, just asking what you were thinking about. You seemed a million miles away.”

“I kind of was,” he admitted.

“What were you thinking about?” she asked.

“Everything up here. The differences from Tucson, all of it. Wondering if we’re going to see any action, or if it’s just going to be boring for the next year.”

London shot a disgusted look in the mirror. “Do you think you’d be here if it had been boring so far? Tuck has only been in the north for a month and we’ve already had more excitement than I care to deal with.”

Lurch didn’t ask why she was there if she didn’t want to deal with the drama. It would only get him in trouble with Tuck. And in trouble with the president was the last thing Lurch wanted.

“What are we waiting for on the bunkhouse?” London asked.

“We just got the water leak repaired. We have to do a little bit of sheetrock and tile work before anyone can move in and before the shower is usable. And we’re still waiting for the beds to be delivered. The place was in decent condition except for the damage from the water leak. I don’t know how long it’s been since anyone lived there, but it was in surprising shape for someplace that’s been empty for a while.”

“Do we have an estimated delivery on the beds?”

“Not off the top of my head. We probably have one, but I don’t know what it is. We’re trying to get out of your hair as quickly as we can. We know you’re sick of us.”

“It’s not that.” A flush rose up London cheeks all the way to her hairline.

Lurch didn’t say what he was thinking. That she was tired of them of being walked in on as much as they were tired of walking in on them.

“I just think we’ll be more comfortable when we all have some space of our own.”

“And you only have people around up at the house when you need them. Not all the time and underfoot twenty four/seven.”

“I didn’t say that,” London said.

“You didn’t have to,” Lurch put in. He glanced over at Stretch, who was driving, and was oddly silent through the whole conversation. “What do you have to say?” Lurch asked.

“I’m not saying a word,” Stretch said. “I know better than getting in the middle of this.”

London fell quiet, and Lurch’s mind turned toward the bunkhouse. At one time, Lurch wasn’t sure how long ago, it had been a long, narrow building full of bunk beds for all the hands. Sometime in the past it had been divided into rooms, but there still weren’t enough rooms for everybody to get their own. But at least it wouldn’t be all four of them in a single room.

There were two bedrooms. A kitchen, a seating area and the bathroom. The bathroom had several stalls with toilets and a locker room style shower. After discussing their options, the men had opted to stick with bunk beds for the bedrooms. It would mean more room for other things, though Lurch wasn’t sure what other things yet.

He thought about the options for roommate and suspected he was going to get stuck with Ghost. It wasn’t that he disliked the other man. Only that he didn’t know him well enough to know whether he liked him or not. Stretch and Watt got along and tended to understand each other’s jokes and make jokes that only the other got. It seemed natural that those two would go together in one room.

Lurch wasn’t sure that anyone knew Ghost that well. The other man was kind of a loner. He did his own thing and didn’t care about what the others were up to. But wasn’t that kind of how snipers were supposed to be? Lurch shook his head and pushed those thoughts from his mind, turning instead to think about the group and the reason that they were all here.

The local group that had been harassing Tuck and London while Tuck was here for his mother"s service and business. They"d found out that they had been sent by the Diablos. Lurch wasn’t sure what was happening with that, but he knew the Souls still in Tucson were working on trying to find out what was going on with the Diablos.

It had been suggested that Ruger try to contact his father-in-law and ask what the hell was up. But after only a little discussion, the whole club had vetoed it. Neither Ruger nor his wife Krissi wanted anything to do with the old man. And they didn’t want to tie him to the Souls in any way. Unless of course they were putting him behind bars.

Switchblade was someone a lot of people didn’t want to cross. Hell, Lurch didn’t want to cross him. Not unless he had the full might of the Souls behind him. And he did. Lurch knew he had the full strength of the Souls behind him. He had since he’d patched in. The brotherhood of the Souls was something he had dearly missed. He’d had brotherhood to an extent in the Marines, but not like with the Souls. He hadn’t felt anything this close to tight knit since before he lost his family.

As Stretch turned off the highway onto the dirt road that led into the ranch, Lurch let his mind drift back to the restaurant he’d seen. He would have to take the time to go in and try to check it out. If he was lucky it would serve food similar to what he’d grown up on. Just the thought made his mouth water. He’d have to be careful though, because right now the rule was no one went into town on their own. At least not on ranch business, or club business. Maybe he could take a night to himself, take a pickup into town. Not that he wanted to do anything wild, just to have some alone time.

He had to find something to do while he was stuck in Wyoming. He didn’t think anything else would remind him so much of home. Even just spotting the sign had taken him back years. He couldn’t help but wonder just how good their food was.