Next to last chapter of this "first season" of my story! The next chapter will be posted on Wednesday, then the "second season" first chapter will be posted on the first (or second) or July. As always, Kurt Sutter owns all SOA likenesses and names, and I only own my original characters. I make no money from this story.
Note: This chapter is very brutal. Tough. Really tough. If you are very sensitive, I suggest maybe you skip it. It's quite important to the story, sort of, but not worth losing sleep over. If you slept just well with all brutality that happened on SOA, you should be just fine.
Everett sat there, smoking cigarettes after cigarettes, torn with her inner dilemma as she looked at this couple having late night dinner together in the quaint little house she was sitting on.
Her father's golden rules had been pretty basic. If it came to club business, one tried their best to avoid harming women. Sometimes, it just couldn't be avoided, but 98% of the time, her father had obeyed to that rule. So he could live with himself the rest of his time with the Sons. Esther had been one of the only women he'd ever hurt on purpose. But herself had been at stake in that story, so it was different.
The guy was a double life scumbag. He had messed with the club. He had his legit little front, there, kept that obsessive-compulsive clean, no cop or detective or private eye could find a fault to it without having to scratch a lot of layers. But the asshole also did club business. And he had just burned bridges with Lawrence and Jack and ended a professional and courteous relationship without any professionalism to it, and made off with a pretty loot that Law wanted destroyed, no matter the cost. Lawrence would do no jail time over the incriminating proofs inside of this house.
The guy, Everett wasn't paid to think much of him. He was just a guy, and she had no qualms taking him. The woman... She looked like a school teacher. When Everett had arrived, she seemed to be grading papers while making dinner, she'd made the two of them carbonara spaghetti, not that sauce in a jar bullshit, no, carbonara from scratch, it had smelled good all the way across the street where Everett sat. She looked fairly young, maybe thirty, and when the breeze carried her voice, it sounded like a school teacher, Everett could never make out any of her words, but her voice was soft. Sort of like Miss Maltais' voice, the first teacher Everett had when they moved to France. Miss Maltais was such a soft spoken old lady that Everett had strained for eight months to hear what the woman was saying in the classroom.
It's the bastard's smug smiles that made Everett decide to go on with it. The students would sure miss their teacher in the morning, but Everett needed to act before the incriminating things whatever they were left that house. She still wished she could get that woman out of the house, to go run an errand or anything. But this late at night, it was unlikely. At least they had let the dog out, Everett had opened the gate of their fenced yard, and the dog had wandered off. They hadn't realized that yet.
Arson was something she was really good at. Within two minutes, tall flames were rising in three different points of the house, blocking all doors to get out of the house, and one large windows they easily could have escaped from. Everett couldn't stay long at all, it would be a matter of a minute before neighbors were woken up and would phone the fire department, the response time was seven and a half minutes on average. Plenty of time to do the job. Everett had already retreated outside of the yard when a window broke, it was high up, like a bathroom window, and a kid was shoved out, Everett just froze, horrified. Her brown eyes widened as a piece of the roof fell just beside the kid, far enough not to crush him, but too close to not harm him or her, in the dark, Everett couldn't tell. The kid was holding a baby blanket, a binky in his hands as he was trying to get himself up, he had to be no older than three, getting up required getting on all fours. And the blanket caught fire. And the sleeve of the pajama caught fire. And Everett let out an anguished scream of terror, this was going all sorts of wrong, she should have walked away. He'd already been crying when he got tossed out a window, he started screaming in panic the second the flames started licking his short.
-Good Lord, please just first degree burns, please.
She'd forget everything that had gotten her to this point as she rushed the kid, she had probably started walking back when the binky caught fire, by the time the flames were reaching the elbow, she was running full speed, yelling "Stop drop and roll" in English, not that the kid would understand that, she had no recollection if they taught that in France or not. By the time she could shove him to the ground to either cover him with her motorcycle jacket or roll him, his whole pajama was burning, and another piece of roof fell, this time, across his chest, and it was far too heavy for Everett to push it off. The kid had two screams, and it killed Everett, who whimpered "what have I done?" twice before un-holstering her gun. He couldn't be saved. She put him out of his misery before fleeing.
She couldn't see the road, and she wiped out about ten minutes outside of the quiet little town she'd just left. Her leg was pinned, she could easily push her motorcycle up and free it. Instead, she just laid there and cried for a good moment, until a late night motorist stopped to check on her. So she fled again. It reeked of gasoline, fire and guilt, but she didn't care, she had a loaner with no licence plate.
She had no clue where to go. If she went home, she might throw herself down the balcony. If she went in her parents' bed, her mother may say something in the effect of doing the right thing, which she couldn't do, that was arson and triple homicide. And her dad would probably take it to Law. Happy was in no shape to fight that kind of fights anymore. And she didn't want to bother Randy. He was probably sleeping anyways.
There was Joker. But she couldn't bring herself to. It was probably best she just went home, took a bath. Wash the smell off, even if there was nothing she could do about the guilt.
She made a few steps inside of her one and a half bedroom, and sat on the first seat she came across, before starting to cry again. She should have listened to herself, and walk away when she saw that teacher-looking woman. And now she had just murdered that baby.
-Lord, oh Lord, why? Why?
-Bug, what happened?
Seeing Randy there in nothing but his boxers made it even worst. She came here to be alone and there was was in all his glory and care for her, hugging her and trying to pry from her what had happened. She wailed and weeped through the recollection, most likely making herself hard to understand, but Randy just kept quiet, he listened through it, rubbing the short hair peering through the bottom of her motorcycle helmet.
-Shit bug, that's terrible. I'm sorry.
Didn't make her feel any better, but Randy would never try to downplay any of it. It happened, it was out there, now they just had to deal with it. But it wasn't the type of incident you could bounce back from after a night of sleep and seeing the sunshine. In the sunshine's light, she felt even more miserable of what she had done.
Randy had managed to drag her out of bed by ten o'clock, said nothing about how much of a mess she looked like, the television was open on a random channel. Neither of them cared to listen to its white noises as Randy tried to get her in a state of at least getting their stories straight should the police show up. He would give her an alibi for sure, even if it meant the whole club knowing that they'd been having sex together for over a year. He'd tamper the paperwork and video surveillance of his gym if he had to. Make it look like he was there with her half of the night. She didn't want him to, but it still meant a lot that he would if she had asked him to.
The day was terrible, the night sleepless, but Randy had to go to work, so Herman Losique was called over to stay with her for the day. And Herman came over with the ugly truth of what she had done, it was all over the papers. She was indeed a school teacher, their twin children were two and a half years old, and he wasn't an accountant. He was the Son's former lawyer. So anyone with a kutte roaming the streets today would be picked up. Herman had left the house in his Volvo and nothing but a plain band shirt. Rain had left on his motorcycle with his kutte on. He probably wouldn't make it to the gym. And the newspaper had a quote from Lawrence, calling it an unfortunate tragedy, but denying any involvement from the Sons. Everett wasn't a son yet, still. The whole afternoon was just one big anxiety crisis of being thrown under the bus as the culprit by the club she cherished more than she did her own family. Herman had a lot of work trying to keep her inside and trying to calm her down.
It helped little to none at all to have her mother come upstairs around eight at night, absolutely livid that the cops had barged their apartment downstairs and taken Happy, and they were looking for her. She had came to ask "did you do it?" but her tears and panic attacks spoke for themselves. Yes, yes she had done it. And it would be a matter of a few hours before they got their hands on Everett's address, which was the same as her father, apartment number aside.
-You need to leave, pumpkin. My keys are in the truck, just get out of here. Lay low until it passes. Take him with you. I'll take care of daddy and Randy, ok? Don't speed, don't drive erratically, just go to gammy's house, ok?
Grandma Marjorie's old house, near Arcachon, with view and a beach giving on the Bay of Biscay, it had been sitting empty or so since Marjorie had died of old age ten odd years before. They sometimes went there during vacation. Sailor hugged her tightly after packing her a bag, brought her downstairs and hugged her further as Herman went around to go and get the SUV. He had just came back in the lobby when the cops stormed the lobby to arrest her and Herman both, he was known from the authorities. There was a lot of yelling, someone grabbed Everett roughly, it made Sailor scream bloody murder, and stopped everyone involved in the chaotic situation.
-She's having a miscarriage! Can't you see her face? Isn't she suffering enough? Let her go to the hospital! I swear if you stuff her in the back of your car without giving her medical attention, I'm suing everyone's asses in here for their pension!
Meaning, Everett would have to have an obligatory stop at the hospital, but Jack's wife Lara worked there. She would help Everett slip out the back to make her escape. Everett was still very grateful for her mother's quick thinking and sublime improvisational skills. Sailor would motherly rub Everett's back to the truck, saying stuff like "maybe the doctors can save him, you know?" and "technology is a lot more advanced then when you were born, pumpkin."She still whispered as she put Everett in the back seat of the SUV "You make a break for it first chance you get, Eve.", her mom would never tell that Everett was heading for Arcachon.
-I love you, mom.
Sailor smiled, rubbed Everett's cheek before closing the SUV's door. It wasn't Herman behind the wheel, it was a cop, that put another obstacle in her way, as he asked what hospital she had called ahead to go to. Shit.