Smoker had simply reported seeing Shark in our town. A man whose presence wasn’t wanted or desired, and who had been banned from ever showing his face in this part of California for the rest of his life. Just the mere mention of the sighting had caused the table to erupt. It wasn’t time for a reasonable conversation.
“So a man’s back in town who shouldn’t be here,” Niran sums up. “What’s your gut feel, Prez? He here to cause trouble for us?”
“I can’t rule it out.” I stare out over the ocean for a moment. “A sensible man, out bad with our club, would never show his face in San Diego again.”
“You want us actively looking for him?”
I think before I reply to Niran. Do I want to waste club resources searching for a man who might already be gone? A man with any brains in his head wouldn’t linger here long, however important the reason that brought him back.
“I think it’s better to have eyes out and be wary. If he’s found, I want to bring him to the compound. Need to have words and find out why the fuck he’s returned.”
“For a start, I’d like to get up close and personal with him and make sure he got that tat blacked out.”
I raise my chin at the VP. He’s right. The traitors kept their lives only on the basis they got their Satan’s Devils tattoos covered. They’d cried and begged when their cuts, their colours, had been destroyed in front of them. With a blacked-out tat, no club would give them a home, knowing they’d been disgraced and kicked out of their last, except if they were an enemy of ours. As far as I know, we’re mostly on the right side of everyone, but there can always be an unknown we are ignorant of.
“If he’s still wearing our patch, then he’s a dead man walking.” Dart bows his head for a moment. “He got family here he could be visiting?”
“I’ll get Token to have a sniff around. See if there’s anyone still here who’s close to him.” Hard Token is our computer guy. What he can’t find isn’t worth knowing. “We’ll get Shark checked out, see if we can find a trace of where he’s been or what he’s been doing.”
“Who he’s here with or who he’s visiting would be useful,” Dart agrees. “The man must have a fuckin’ good reason to show his face.”
“I’d like to know all of that,” Niran states. “The club’s in a good place now, and if Shark’s got some idea about begging to have his patch restored, I’d like to head him off before he causes upset.”
“No fuckin’ chance of that,” Dart growls.
I echo his sentiment. Shark had fucked up good throwing in his lot with Snake and Poke. He wasn’t going to get a second chance.
“One other thing, Prez. You mind me shadowing Grumbler?” Niran asks. “I seem to be doing that a lot.”
“Long as you make sure he stays shiny side up,” I chuckle. But really, it’s no laughing matter. Grumbler had hit his head pretty hard when he’d come off. Although we envy our brothers in other states who can get away without wearing one, in California, helmets are mandatory. None of us doubt wearing one had saved his life. He’d had a nasty concussion, as well as breaking his leg and wrist. He’s well on the mend now but while he was out, Niran was one of the few who’d put up with him moaning and complaining, and the two had formed a bond. Grumbler still leans on Niran, but I can’t complain. We get two sergeant-at-arms for the same price.
“Yeah, two legs are better than one.” Dart winks to soften his words as I bark a laugh.
Sometimes I think joining the MC had saved Niran in many ways, by once again making him part of a team. Over time I’ve watched his bitterness fade. He was a Marine and one who was going to make it his career for life until he’d been home on leave and a woman had crashed into him, knocking him off his bike and he lost his leg as a result. In Grumbler’s case his injury means one of his isn’t as straight as it was. Doesn’t seem to slow either of them down.
True to form, Niran grins to himself. “Better than none,” he remarks, flexing his leg with the prosthetic limb. “Anyway, I better get gone. I need to take a run past that house where the woman from Colorado is staying with her son.”
“Anyone seen anything of concern?” I haven’t been there myself, but every few days one of the brothers rides past the home we shouldn’t know about where a middle-aged woman from Colorado and her son have been housed as part of the WitSec program. I doubt if she’s had any trouble, officially, no one knows where she is. But Demon, prez of the Pueblo chapter, had managed to get the information and asked us to keep an eye out. They’re the mother and brother of one of his member’s old ladies. Doesn’t seem much of a burden doing a simple enough favour for another chapter.
“Nah,” Niran tells me. “Kink rode past a few days ago. House was looking fine, yard kept tidy. Hard to know what’s going on inside, but outwardly, nothing to worry about.”
We can’t do much looking from the outside, and obviously can’t draw attention to ourselves by stopping and trying to get closer. We need to keep trouble away, not bring it to their door. Luckily, they’ve been housed not far from the VP’s place, so throaty sounding Harleys taking a shortcut along their road aren’t out of place.
I honestly don’t expect trouble. People who the feds give protection to are normally in no danger unless they bring it upon themselves. As long as they keep their mouths shut and make no contact with anyone who shouldn’t know where they are, they’ll stay out of danger. As long as the son keeps his nose clean, too. Hopefully he’s learned the lessons of his past which had gotten him into trouble in the first place.
As Niran fastens his helmet on to his head, Dart tells him, “Drop in at my house. Alex will be pleased to see you. Isla’s got the sniffles, so she’s keeping her home.”
“Going stir crazy, is she?” Niran chuckles.
Dart raises his chin. After giving the VP a thumbs up, Niran starts his bike and takes off.
“You did fuckin’ good bringing him on board.” It’s not the first time I’ve told him that.
He raises his chin in acknowledgement, then observes, “Need to keep an eye out for new prospects. Wrangler’s getting close to getting his patch, and we need to keep up our strength.”
He’s right. We do. But after what happened with Snake, it’s not easy for us to trust. It takes a special man to wear a Satan’s Devils’ patch in any of our chapters, and even harder to gain one in San Diego.
Chapter Two
Patsy
“No luck?” Connor, no, Dan—I’m mainly used to using his new identity as I should be after three months, but sometimes mentally I slip up—looks at me with an eyebrow raised.
I let out a harrumph of disappointment. “The tallest I can find is five foot nine, and that’s the wrong shape.”
“Couldn’t you make do with that?”
Sighing, I explain, “The proportions are all wrong. If I could get a female mannequin that’s six foot or more, it would make the photos so much more realistic.”
He purses his lips. “Isn’t there a way you could get stuff shipped to Beth, then get her to photograph herself wearing it?”
No. The whole reason for moving to San Diego is that no one, not even my beloved daughter, could know where we are. Dan would be dead for real if anyone ever found out.
Beth, now twenty-seven, is nearing six foot two, and was shooting up even before she entered her teens. Growing up, none of the off-the-rack clothes would fit. Tops long enough to drape below her waist would be far too wide, as people saw girls with height as also being wide, whereas she was slender. Either my daughter would have nothing fashionable to wear, or I’d have to step in and help. It was bad enough her being mocked for towering above everyone else including the boys, but ill-fitting clothing made everything worse. At first, I’d adapted chain-store clothing, taking it in when needed, restyling dresses so she could wear them as tops, and then I branched out and started designing clothes for her myself. I hadn’t stopped as she’d grown older and had become quite adept.
One day she’d posted my designs on
an Instagram account, and to my surprise, and hers, I started to get a following. While I wasn’t interested in making clothes in large quantities myself, my eye for a style that suited taller women had come to the attention of a company that did clothing for the woman who didn’t fit in with the definition of ‘normal’.
While, technically, I could design on paper, I still prefer making a prototype first so I can see whether the ideas in my head translate to something wearable. Beth used to model for me, but she’s unable to do that now.
I push away the laptop I’d been using to Google mannequins and lower my head into my hands. It’s been twelve long weeks since I’ve last seen her, and the pain of missing her hasn’t eased. God, I miss talking to her, let alone using her as my muse.
Bethany and I had had an amazing relationship, not just as mother and daughter, but as best friends. Getting on so well meant she’d still been living with me, not thinking of moving out until she met Ink, a member of the Colorado chapter of the Satan’s Devils MC. She’d found him while Dan was neck deep in trouble. Funnily enough, Dan had been indirectly responsible for making them realise their feelings for each other, as well as being the reason I’m now facing the possibility of never seeing her again.
I’d had to make a choice no mother should be asked to, which was whether to stay with her twenty-seven-year-old daughter, watch her get married and maybe start a family, or to make a new life with a son five years younger.
Seeing the state my son had been left in, realising how close I’d come to losing him had focused my mind. Dan had made wrong choices when he was eighteen, culminating in being arrested. It was only the knowledge he’d learned that kept him from being behind bars. But you don’t snitch on those types of people without risking them taking revenge. He was inches from death when he’d been rescued, so badly beaten it was easy to pretend he’d actually died.
He was being offered a fresh start, a second chance to make something of his life.
He should have learned his lesson; God knows it had been a hard one to learn. Still, I’d worried if I let him go off on his own with no one to set him on the right path, he’d continue making mistakes. He was the one who needed me now.
He was going to have to leave everything he’d ever known behind, start afresh with a new identity and I would not even know where. He’d be as dead to me as if he’d really been in that coffin that day. How could I leave him to do that on his own? Not when I knew Beth was happy and settled. So I chose to accompany my son.
But having made the decision, I had to persuade the federal agent who was Connor’s contact.
“You want to go into witness protection with your son. That can’t happen.”
I’ve just made one of the hardest decisions in my life, I’m not going to turn back now. “It has to work,” I told him. “I’m not abandoning Connor again.”
He sighed, his finger idly tracing the ink on the paper in front of him. He shook his head, then looked up. “Think about it, Mrs Foster. As far as everyone knows, Connor died of his injuries. It’s not safe for a dead man to be walking around Pueblo, or anywhere in Colorado for that matter. He’s only going to stay alive if there’s nothing to link him with home.”
“I know that. I’m going to disappear with him.”
Agent Caruso’s eyes hardened. “Alder Cantor is still suspicious about your son’s death. He’s still out there. If you stay here, you’ll be safe. If you leave, then both of you would need to be careful. One slip-up, one attempt to contact your daughter and that’s all it would take to bring him to your door. If he finds out that you knowingly cremated an empty coffin, then from what we know of the man, he’ll likely take revenge on you both.”
There were a few things wrong with that statement. Firstly, the coffin wasn’t empty, it contained the body of an anonymous homeless man who ended up with a funeral he could never have expected, surrounded by grieving mourners, courtesy of the Satan’s Devils of course. And secondly, why hadn’t the feds found Alder yet? With all the resources at their disposal and the evidence provided by my son, they should have had him in custody by now, and Connor wouldn’t need to go on the run. As for slipping up, Connor was more likely to do that alone in a strange city and state.
Alder seems to have disappeared into thin air. When he eventually turns up, Connor may need to arise from the dead to give evidence against him. Until then, for their own benefit, the feds would do everything in their power to keep my son safe. Which included, it seemed, separating him from his family.
The agent’s mind was on the benefit Connor staying alive will bring to him. Mine was on the welfare of my son. “There’s a risk if I let Connor go alone.” My voice got an edge to it as I’d tried to get through to the man. “He’s lived a criminal lifestyle for four years. What if he finds going straight too hard? What if he falls in with the wrong people?” I failed my son once by not protesting enough when he went to live with his father whose style of living tempted my son to walk well over the wrong side of the line. Now I’d gotten him back, I couldn’t make the same mistake again.
It had taken a while, but eventually I’d worn Agent Caruso’s objections down and reluctantly he’d agreed and had given me a brief glimpse that he was human.
“So I can go with Connor?” I’d pushed for confirmation.
“Connor Foster is dead,” he reminded me. “Dan Forster is currently being moved.” He sighed. “If you’re intent on following this through, if you’ve really considered the implications, I’ll allow you to go with your son. I have to agree with you on one thing, a criminal lifestyle can be tempting and difficult to stay away from. Your son would benefit from the guidance of his mom.”
I’d promised I’d considered all the consequences leaving my previous life would mean and would be able to accept the outcomes that came along with them. As it turns out, I hadn’t even scratched the surface. The first came quickly, my telling Beth I was moving away, and of necessity, cutting ties completely. Thank goodness Ink had been there to soften the blow for her, but no one had been there for me. I had no one to support me when I’d discovered that what I’d reasoned sounded easy, putting it into practice tore me into shreds and almost broke me completely.
I could never admit that to Dan or let him see how much leaving Beth pained me. He knows, of course, but I try to make light of it in front of him. I’d made the decision and I had to live with it, it wasn’t on him.
I miss my daughter something fierce. My heart aches every day and I still cry myself to sleep often, thinking I’d left her all alone. Not alone. With Ink, her man, and her MC family.
It was the right decision but knowing that doesn’t make it any easier.
I’d been so used to talking to Beth every day, sharing jokes and insights together, which only women can understand. Although I love my son, we’d not had the same relationship, particularly in his teenage years when our dealings with each other were so stormy at times to the extent he’d chosen to move out when he became eighteen. Dan had gone to live with his father, unable to believe the man was as bad as I’d made him out to be until he’d been sucked in so deep it was hard for him to climb back out.
Here we are, after a four-year gap, getting to know each other all over again. The positive over the last three months is that I’ve found he’s grown into a man I quite admire. Somewhere along the way, he’s acquired a sense of humour that still takes me off guard.
“I’m Beth’s height,” Dan points out, bringing my attention back from the past. “Long as you avoid the headshot, I can put on a padded bra and model your stuff.”
My eyes open wide as I turn to him. He’s muscular and tattooed, with long hairy legs sticking out from his shorts.
Suddenly his face cracks as he snorts a laugh. “Your expression, Mom.”
“Get out of here.” I wave at him, chuckling to myself. Yeah, for a second I thought he was being serious. “You’re not going to be of any help. Anyway, you’re going to work soon, aren’t you?”
He’s got a legitimate job that the feds helped him get, just something to tide him over. He works as a security guard in a shopping mall. The money he brings home isn’t much but it’s at least legal. Next semester he’s thinking of going to college but hasn’t yet settled on what he wants to do.
Part of the reason he went with his father was that he thought I was always comparing him to his sister and he’s right. He and she are very different—she’s good with words and numbers and he’s good with his hands. I made enough mistakes when I was bringing him up, trying to mould him into something he wasn’t, so I’m taking a back seat now. I’m just here to support him in what he wants to make of his life, and to guide him away from anything criminal.
“Yeah, we’re open until late tonight.”
I’d like to tell him to come straight home but have to remember he’s an adult now. I also trust him to keep his head down low and not contact anyone from his previous life. He knows as well as I do that one slip-up and it could bring Alder to our door. Dan doesn’t need a reason to fear Alder, Alder’s men had given him that themselves when they’d beaten him just short of death.
Alder. As Dan leaves me alone, I think about the man who’s made our lives hell.
Phil Foster and I had been married a couple of years before his sister came back into our lives, bringing with her her husband, Alder Cantor. I’d immediately thought she was cowed by her partner. She’d been so meek, subservient when her man was around. I’d mentioned it to Phil, but he seemed entranced by his new brother-in-law who could do nothing wrong in his eyes. When his sister died, even while I thought the circumstance suspicious, Phil remained friends with the man.
Being Lost: Satan's Devils MC San Diego #1 Page 2