by Jessie Cooke
“What’s that, baby?”
“You. I want to be with you, wherever that is. And before you say anything, remember, I am not good at not getting my way. I always figure it out so that in the end, I win.”
He laughed. “I absolutely won’t argue you going, but we might bicker a little about who the winner is here.”
Beck reached up and pulled him down into a hot kiss. It was so hot that he almost forgot what else he had to tell her now. His hands were already wandering all over her sexy body when it suddenly occurred to him...he could give her everything she wanted. He pulled out of the kiss and had to catch his breath. Once he did he said, “Wolf offered me the position of president for a new chapter they want to start in Phoenix.” He watched as her eyes widened. Then suddenly, she punched him in the arm. “Ow! What was that?”
“You turned that down? President? Are you kidding me?”
He chuckled and rubbed his arm. “I turned it down because I thought you would be here prospecting and I’d be so busy getting this club up and running that I wouldn’t get to see you.” The look in her eyes went from shock to awe, that quickly. She reached up and moved his hand and rubbed his arm herself.
“I’m sorry I hit you.”
Laughing he said, “I’ve heard this is how it starts. First you apologize, then you buy me flowers and candy...” She hit him again.
“Stop it. President. Motherfucking president. Are you kidding me?”
“Not kidding, baby. And guess what? I get to recruit my own crew. That means I can recruit my own VP. What do you think, wanna run a club with me?”
Her eyes had so much passion and fire in them at that moment, he could hardly stand it. He wanted her, right then and right there. “Abso-mother-fucking-lutely!” He saw the wheels turning in her head again for a few seconds and then she said, “But not as your VP. We can’t have you trying to start a club with a strike against you.”
“Baby...”
“No. Seriously. I want to help you. I want to be there every step of the way, but the way we’re going to change how this works is that you’re going to have an old lady that knows every motherfucking thing that goes on in that club.”
“You’re going to be my old lady?” He felt the sting of tears in his eyes and even before she said it, he knew he was in for a ration of shit.
“Oh my God, you’re such a girl. Of course I’m going to be your old lady. Did you think I was just going to follow your big ass around to wash your underwear and pick up after you? I don’t cook, by the way, but I spent seventeen years in the navy, so I’m pretty clean...you wanna have a kid? We could have a boy and he could be the next president...my mother’s going to have a fucking fit! For the first time in almost twenty years I’ll be home! Fucking Phoenix, baby! Hell yeah!”
“You want to have a kid with me?”
She laughed and jumped to her feet. “Hell yeah, baby! I want to build a motherfucking empire with you. Go tell Wolf you’ll do it, before he gives it away to someone else, because I’ll cut a motherfucker...” Jace pulled her back down into his lap and covered her mouth with his while reaching around and grabbing a handful of her hair. This kiss was passionate, but there was nothing soft or sweet about it. He kissed her so hard that his lips hurt and hers would probably be bruised. He had an old lady...the hottest one on the planet. And to top it off she was smart and savvy, and strong and brave...she cussed like a sailor but he didn’t care about that, and she called him a girl...often...but he could live with that too. She was going to make a fantastic partner and a fucking fabulous old lady and mother to the kids he had already given up on having. He had no idea what he’d done to deserve any of this...but he wasn’t going to question it...just in case.
32
“I’d feel better about this if we had been able to identify that body. Anyone go missing this past week that might fit the same description?” Meeks was standing on the edge of the cemetery, watching the gathering of Skulls and bouncing ideas off his partner.
“Not that I was able to find,” she said. Detective Schroeder was a rookie detective. She’d only had her gold shield for a few months, but the brass thought they needed more women out in the field, and they’d assigned her to Meeks because he was a veteran who could teach her what she needed to know. So far they were working well together. They had caught a murder case and they were investigating Michael “Granite” Parker for the DA. Parker had made bail almost as soon as he turned himself in, claiming to be the one that sold the guns that had recently flooded the streets. He told a story about Coyote keeping them to spite Morrison and dying before they had a chance to get rid of them. He had books, accounting books and bank books and deposit receipts, showing where he’d taken the money he got from the guns and funneled it back into the club. The DA was ecstatic. Granite would give him the collar he needed to use as his platform for the upcoming election...the DA who not only got the guns off the streets but went straight to the source and took down the big guy. But Meeks found the whole thing a little bit too convenient. It would distract the DA from going after Wolf and the Westside Skulls. It gave him his fall guy, and once Meeks talked to Parker and watched him suck at that oxygen in his nose, he was sure that’s what he was. He had no problem believing that Coyote was capable of putting his entire club at risk by stealing from the devil, and he didn’t necessarily want to go after Wolf and have him pay for the sins of his father. But a part of him had looked for a way to take that club apart for so long that he just couldn’t stop looking.
Then a week after Parker walked out of the police station on bail, Meeks got the call that somehow he’d been waiting for all along. Parker was dead. He’d driven his bike off a trail in the foothills above. The bike had gone down into a twenty-foot ravine, landed on a pile of granite (and no, he didn’t miss that irony), and exploded. The bike and the rider were both burned beyond recognition. The fingertips were melted off and all that was left of him were a few teeth. They identified him thanks to a “miracle.” Meeks rolled his eyes at that as well. These guys thought they were so smart...and maybe they were. He didn’t believe their bullshit, but he never found a way to prove it was bullshit either. The miracle was that on the way down, one of the rider’s saddlebags had taken a hit and come off the bike. Inside they’d found an oxygen tank that was identified as being left for Parker by the company that supplied him, and Parker’s wallet, ID and all. Also in the saddlebags was a gun registered to Parker and the registration for the bike. All tied up in a big, fat, red bow. It was killing him.
He watched the hearse pull up and then the procession of Harleys that had followed it over from the church. A limousine was in the midst and that door was opened first. A woman that Meeks knew from photographs was Michael Parker’s sister stepped out. She’d flown in from Ireland for the funeral. Parker had a son who also lived in Ireland, but no one had been able to find him. From what Meeks heard the kid was a heroin addict so that wasn’t too unusual. He was probably lost in the streets somewhere...or even dead himself.
The first person to get off their bike was Wolf. Meeks had taken a lot of shit over the years from his coworkers and even his family over his relationship with the young biker. It started with Wolf doing something kind and saving his grandfather’s life...but from there it grew into a mutual respect, and even an odd sort of friendship. Meeks had been accused more than once of doing special favors for the Skulls, but his accusers had never been able to offer proof. That was, of course, because there was none. His relationship with Wolf was odd indeed, in the fact that he never stopped looking for a way to take his “friend’s” club down. He believed in his gut that the club wasn’t operating as legally as it appeared on the surface. People turned up missing and dead every so often that Meeks could trace back to the club somehow, but never prove it was them. Over the years he’d made many arrests of club members for things like car theft, drug or gun possession, or assault...but he’d never been able to pin a murder or anything big on them. He was scheduled for
retirement...soon. As a matter of fact, he was past due. But he stuck around, mostly because he wanted to go out with at least one big win against the Skulls.
Wolf and his VP Manson walked over to the hearse and Meeks watched as the funeral director opened it up. There was a coffin inside, with what remained of the man they’d found in the ravine. He was sure that man wasn’t Granite, but for now...as far as any of them knew...he was here to pay his respects.
Wolf, Manson, Bruf, Maz, Ash, and Sledge pulled the coffin from the hearse...and all six of them nearly buckled underneath its weight. They did their level best not to show the strain on their faces as they walked in a straight line toward the awning over the spot where “Granite” would be laid to rest. Wolf had picked out the rosewood coffin. It was lined with blue silk, fancy, like Granite. He’d almost hated that they had to put what was left of the burnt corpse in it...but just in case anyone checked before it was dropped into the ground, they had to keep up appearances.
The ashes and leftover bones didn’t deserve a funeral as far as Wolf was concerned. The man they used to belong to had worked for Alex Morrison and he’d been the one that supplied the alibi for him the night Alex had raped and almost killed a young bartender who worked at the bar, Spirits, where the bikers often gathered. Coyote had tried to warn the girl when he found out she was seeing Morrison. He had no idea the pig was a rapist, but he did know he was a lowlife with no respect for women. But the girl had been drawn in by the fancy gifts Alex had given her, at least for a while. Morrison wouldn’t do any time in jail once again, thanks to his deal with the DA...but Wolf had a feeling he might just meet up with an accident himself soon. Alex Morrison would be the only person on earth to miss the man in this box...and before he had a chance to put two and two together, he’d be in his own box not far away.
The six men walked through the path the crowd of mourners had made for them. Wolf felt slightly bad that most of the people in attendance believed they were watching their old friend Granite be laid to rest. It was necessary, however. This was all on a need to know basis, and not very many people needed to know. Granite was already in Phoenix with Beck and Jace and Ian. Ian’s aunt had just made a horrific “discovery” not long before she got the call about her brother’s “death.” It seems that her nephew had been hiding out in the basement of his grandparents’ abandoned house in Dublin. She’d sent the caretakers to do some work there, to get the place ready to sell, and they’d found the withered remains of the young junkie with a needle in his arm and a suicide note for his aunt, thanking her for all she did for him. If she hadn’t been in the know, Wolf would have felt badly for her too. Instead he had a lot of respect for her. When the MC member in Ireland, the friend of Doc’s who still rode with them, knocked on her door and told her the plan, he told Wolf the lady hadn’t so much as blinked before asking:
“Will they be in a safe place once this is over?”
He had assured her that they would. She wouldn’t be in the know about where that would be, but knowing they were both safe was all she needed. She had done everything they asked her to up to this point and she even had real tears streaming down her face as she watched them set the heavy coffin down. Maybe she really was grieving the loss of her family. She’d never see either of them again, but she had been willing to make that trade for their lives.
Ian would be known as Finn “The Snake” McGregor from here on out. Finn McGregor was the name of the junkie who had really taken his own life. The MC in Ireland had only searched the streets for twenty-four hours before they found the stand-in. “The Snake” would come from the new tattoo that Wolf’s artist inked on the boy’s back a few days before. It was of a black python, head raised and looking ready to strike. Wolf hoped that Finn would serve Jace well, but he was confident that if he didn’t, Jace would know how to deal with it.
Jace and Beck had left for Arizona three days before the funeral. It did Wolf’s heart good to see how happy they were. He looked forward to watching them build the Phoenix Skulls together. Jace had found a place for his sister only a seven-hour drive from where their club would be and he would be working on moving his business. It would be a long, hard road for them, getting things built and recruiting new members, but he felt confident that he and Dax had picked the right man for the job.
He let go of his part of the coffin and took a step back. He knew it wouldn’t be the last time he laid eyes on it. They had taken all Granite had left of the “things” Coyote had pilfered from his “business associates” all those years and put them inside with the charred remains of Morrison’s flunky. It might sit in the ground for a few years...but the rosewood coffin would definitely rise again.
Two Months Later
Ian watched as the tattoo artist, and newest member of the Phoenix Skulls, inked in the last touchups to the art he’d been doing on Jace’s back. Beck came in, freshly inked herself, and sat down next to the kid. Ian looked at his president’s old lady and smiled. “He said he can do one for me on my arm.”
“Nice. Hopefully your arm and your back never meet. That would be one hell of a fight.” Ian laughed and to Jace, who was lying flat on the table and looking in their direction, she said, “It looks really good, babe.”
Jace smiled. “We’re like bookends now.”
Beck laughed. “Such a fucking girl. Has he cried much, Streak?” Streak was one of Beck’s old shipmates. She had called a few of them when they first got to Phoenix and Streak had been the first to arrive. Jace liked him and Beck trusted and respected him...and it would be nice to have their own personal tattoo artist in the club. The phoenix was the first tattoo Beck had ever gotten. She’d always thought about getting one but hadn’t been able to decide on anything that she’d want permanently etched into her skin...until now.
“A li’l,” Streak said with a laugh. Jace laughed too and Streak said, “You’d better stop that shaking, Boss, or this bird’s gonna have a unibrow.” Beck smiled again. She loved to hear them call Jace “Boss.” He deserved it. For the past two months he’d worked his ass off getting Rosie moved and making sure she was taken care of, moving his business, and building the club. Beck had been working hard alongside him and so had Ian. The kid had a lot to learn, but he was growing on them both, quickly. So far it was just the four of them, but by the time they had the bones of a club up on their new property, she was sure they’d have more. She was happy...happier than she’d ever been. Jace was the second-best decision she’d ever made in her life. When she had a need to remember the first one, she took out the little photograph that Hunter had given her of Sarah and looked at the little girl’s smile. Beck might not have been a mother to her, but she had given her life, and she’d given her a family regardless of whether they were blood or not.
Her mother and grandmother were ecstatic to have her back in Arizona. They both liked Jace...but Beck hadn’t been able to imagine how anyone couldn’t. You just had to give him enough of a chance to get past that dark, scary exterior. Her mom and grandma were like her in the fact that they didn’t scare easily. Beck was glad for that. She credited both women with her strength, at least that of her character. She knew that she was far from being the perfect woman that her mother had probably hoped she would be when she grew up...but Sarah Golden had never let a day go by when she didn’t remind her daughter of how much she loved her, and that was what kept Beck going for a lot of years, before she finally found herself. It was funny that it took a decades-old promise and an outlaw biker club to do that. But had she never shown up at the clubhouse that day, she never would have met Jace and she never would have been sitting there today with her hands protectively covering the belly her baby was growing inside of.
Beck had realized the first week they were in Arizona that she’d missed her period. She took a home pregnancy test and it was positive. Today she’d gone to the doctor and she’d gotten confirmation...she was eight weeks pregnant. She smiled at Jace again. She couldn’t wait until Streak finished inking that tattoo
so she could tell him. She was sure he was going to cry like a giant girl.
Excerpt from Rise of the Phoenix
Phoenix Skulls (Book 1)
Chapter One
“Yazhi, where have you been? We closed up half an hour ago. Why do you have blood splattered on your hands?” Ajei was looking at the spots of blood that dotted her son's big, brown hands. When she looked back up at his face, he was looking down at them, with a look as surprised as hers had been.
He frowned and after a minute he said, “I hit a rabbit. It darted out in front of me. I didn't realize the blood had splashed up so far.” He was still frowning when he said, “I'm not going with you today, anyway. I thought I was clear about that.”
“Yazhi...”
“Mom please! Stop talking to me like I'm a child! And stop calling me “Little One!” I've been taller than you since I was thirteen. I'm a grown man, mother, look at me. I'm twenty-two years old. I've told you and father both that I'm not going to greet these bikers like they're welcome here.” She had the feeling his indignation was an effort to hide something else, but she wasn't sure what. He'd disappeared most of the afternoon and she wondered where he'd gone.
“Tommy,” she said, softening her voice even more. “We've talked about this so many times, and the tribal council has even tried to be reasonable with you. That land has not belonged to us for decades...almost one hundred years. They bought the land from a developer who bought it from the government. We can at least feel better about them being there, knowing this developer isn't going to put up a strip mall or something that will draw in a big residential crowd.”