by Jessie Cooke
“I’m sorry,” Brady said again. “What happened then?”
“He tried to kiss me, and I bit him.”
“You bit him?”
“Yes, I bit his bottom lip. I think I might have ripped a piece of it off. I’m sure you’ll see it when you go arrest the pig for attempted rape or assault, or whatever. He punched me in the face and knocked me out.”
“That’s where the bruise came from?”
“Yes, of course. No one else is punching me out.”
Brady cleared his throat and said, “You don’t know about the fire?”
She looked confused. Doc fucking loved it. It was like watching the female version of himself and it was fucking turning him on. “Fire? What fire?”
“The apartment complex caught on fire this morning, not long after your friends here at the club moved you and your stuff out.”
“Oh no! Was anyone hurt?”
“Miraculously, only Mr. Rooney. Everyone was out at the time…which seems very odd to me.”
“Thank God. Rooney was hurt?” she said then, almost concerned. “Badly?”
“He’s dead,” Brady said. Dallas gasped and put her hand on her chest.
“Oh no! I wanted the pig arrested, but not dead.” Doc was several feet away, but he thought he could see tears glistening in her eyes. She was so fucking good. He might be in love.
“What about your friends here?”
She looked over at Doc then and back at the detective and said, “What about them?”
“Maybe they wanted Rooney dead, for what he did to you?”
She actually shrugged. “Maybe…or maybe one of those shitty, leaky stoves blew up, or the furnace he wouldn’t ever fix in the laundry room, or…God, who knows? That place was a dump, a deathtrap. I’m sorry that man is dead, but I’m not a bit sorry to be out of there.”
“Did you give the Southside Skulls permission to clean out your place?”
“Of course I did,” she said. “My friend, a Skull, was outside waiting for me when this all happened with Rooney. We were going to go apartment hunting. He heard me scream and ran in…”
“You screamed?”
She looked confused again and said, “Maybe it was Rooney, when I bit him. I don’t know. But anyway, my friend…” She glanced away quickly. Brady was a damned good detective and probably hadn’t missed it, but she was good. Especially, because she hardly missed a beat, pulling the name from her memory of Doc’s newly appointed Sergeant at Arms. “Coyote,” she said. “He heard screaming and ran inside. I was out of it at first, but I woke up as he was taking me out. I told him I was scared of Rooney and couldn’t go back there. He asked if I wanted him and his friends to move me out of there and I said yes. My stuff is here, in one of the storage rooms.”
Brady paused for a long time before turning toward Doc and saying, “You mind stepping out for a few?” Doc looked at Dallas and she nodded at him. As he was closing the door he heard Brady say, “Have you been threatened by anyone, Miss Paxton?” Doc wasn’t sure leaving them alone was a great idea. So far, she’d done great, but who knew what Brady might get her to say when they were alone? He’d never had a chance to open his bottle of whiskey. He walked up to the bar and tapped it.
“Give me a shot, Amy, and a beer.” Maybe one or the other of them would cause the activity in his pants to calm down. He wondered if he’d finally met his match. He sometimes believed it would happen one day…he just never suspected it would be a woman.
7
Dallas was shoveling in food faster than Doc had ever seen any man eat…soldier or Skull. He wondered how long it had been since she’d eaten. “So why did you lie to the cop?”
Her mouth was full of meat and potatoes. She finished chewing and then picked up her glass of tea and took a long gulp before wiping her mouth and saying, “It’s like this. Something about the way you’ve been following me around tells me you might just have a conscience and you might just feel a little bit guilty about my grandfather.” He didn’t even open his mouth, but she held her palm up anyway. “Don’t deny it. You don’t have to worry that I’ll ruin your heartless reputation and tell anyone. But, I figure it this way…I could tell the cops what I do know, which isn’t much, and make an enemy of you. Or, I can tell them what I think you want me to tell them, and I’ve got…an acquaintance who’s not an enemy, I guess. I need a job, and I will take you up on the place to stay, temporarily. How’s that?”
“A job?”
“Yes, you’ve heard of them, no doubt. It’s where someone does something for someone else in exchange for something called a paycheck? Look, I have one skill. My parents were hippies, free love and all that. They got caught up in a protest at Boston U and ended up dead. My grandpa raised me, the same way he raised my mom. He taught me how to grow, cut, and produce. I know you do that here…somewhere. Give me a job and you won’t be sorry.”
“And if I don’t give you a job?”
She shrugged and shoved another potato in her mouth. She made him wait again and then said, “I guess this is my last good meal in a while.”
Doc chuckled. She was definitely his sister from another mister. She didn’t like him, he could tell that, but she was willing to use him, and he was willing to respect that. “Okay,” he said. She was taking another drink of her tea. She set it down and looked surprised.
“Really?”
“Yeah, really. But…”
“Oh, I knew there was a but. What else do I have to do? Orgies with you and your buddies?”
He laughed again. “No,” he said. “When it’s time for that, it’ll just be me. But I’ll never make you. Someday, you’ll want it, though.”
“Wow, I wonder what it’s like to think so highly of yourself?”
“It’s worked for me so far,” he said with a grin. “The ‘but’ was to say that if you live on my ranch and work for me, you follow my rules.”
“Which are?”
“100% loyalty to this club, respect toward me and my crew, and you handle the cops just like you handled Brady today if you run into them. Also…women do not get involved in club business. You can say yes to all of that, we have a deal.”
She held out her hand. Doc took it, marveling at how soft it was. He wanted to feel it wrapped around his cock…so fucking bad. They shook, and she pulled it back and before sticking the last potato in her mouth she said, “Not gonna happen.”
He didn’t have to ask her what she was referring to, but he was sure she was wrong. Doc Marshall got what Doc Marshall wanted. And he had never wanted any person as badly as he wanted her. He didn’t tell her that, though. She’d find out, soon enough.
“I didn’t figure you for someone that would…know so much about drugs.” Dallas was clipping her plants in the huge greenhouse and Brandt Miller, aka Badger, was on guard duty. She wasn’t sure why they called him Badger, maybe because he was mean. He’d never been mean to her, but he had mean eyes and for no real reason, she didn’t like him. She did love the greenhouse, though. It was so much bigger than that cramped little space she’d been working in on her grandfather’s property, and the equipment was cutting edge. She’d been working and living on the ranch for over a month now. She’d only seen Doc a handful of times during that time…which was good because the more she looked into those damned sexy eyes of his, the more her resolve not to jump his bones slipped. She told herself it had just been too long since she’d had sex. She’d broken up with her last boyfriend about two months before she and her grandpa were evicted from their property, and since then survival had taken up all of her time. She looked around at the other guys sometimes, the ones that sat in the greenhouse with her every day with a gun on their hip, talking to her about mundane things, or not at all…and she thought about just coming on to one of them. They could have a quick fuck in the greenhouse and that would be that. Then, when she saw Doc, maybe he wouldn’t be so tempting.
But, when she really started looking at the guys as possibilities, she realize
d that not a single one of them had come onto her, which was weird because she saw them grinding up against the club girls on a daily basis, and their tongues practically dragged the floor when they went out in town with her to buy supplies and they ran into a hot girl. Even Coyote, who she sometimes caught looking at her with those dark, smoldering eyes of his, never tried anything. Of all of them, she would have put her money on him making a move…but nothing. If she looked back at Coyote, especially if she smiled, he’d turn his head quickly and ignore her for a while. It wasn’t that she wanted him to come onto her, but she thought it was strange that he seemed to want to, but didn’t. Of course, since she’d torn him up with her fingernails the first time they met, it might have been crazier if he had.
She did wonder if Doc had told them to leave her alone and she wasn’t sure, if he had, if that impressed her or pissed her off. She was a big girl. She should be able to fuck who she wanted, when she wanted. It was well after the dawn of the sexual revolution, after all. She wondered if he really believed she’d knock on his door one night begging for it. She laughed at that inwardly. Even if she were horny enough to screw creepy Hawk…which so far she’d never been…she’d still never beg the blue-eyed devil for it. She especially avoided even the thought of that once she realized that there was practically a parade of women going in and out of his bedroom. Jamie, the redhead, went in there – a lot – but she wasn’t the only one. Once, Dallas had been coming out of her room and his eyes caught hers over Jamie’s head. As usual, he looked amused and he held her gaze until the fire-haired slut was already all over him and pushing him back in the door. It was disgusting. She put it out of her mind…well, she put it away for now and answered Badger.
“Cannabis isn’t really a drug,” she said. “It’s been used as medication since the mid-19th century. That’s the way I look at it. It’s got a lot of therapeutic benefits. The government just jumped on board when people started using it as a recreational drug because they just have to be in control. It’s not a drug like cocaine or heroin…it doesn’t alter your thoughts.” She was parroting what her grandfather taught her, but she really believed it.
“Hmm, so who decided to make it recreational?” he asked. She knew he probably didn’t really care and was only making conversation…but compared to the usual biker conversation, at least this topic did interest her.
“Early in the 20th century there was a president in Mexico named Porfirio Diaz. He was a dictator and a big part of the population of Mexico started fleeing to the US. At that point, they were using it south of the border and had been for a long time. It followed them here and the earliest stigma about it here was racially based.”
“What do you mean, racially based?”
“Just what I said. People didn’t like it because the Mexicans introduced it. It was a racist thing.”
“You one of those love everybody people?” Brandt asked.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I am.”
He cocked an eyebrow and said, “So if say a Mexican or…”
“Let’s not have that conversation,” she said. She’d been raised to give everyone a chance, equally, but she’d been on the ranch long enough to know that wasn’t the theme with most of these guys. She also came to realize that most of them were Vietnam veterans and she had strong feeling about that…but she was smart enough to keep those to herself.
Brandt chuckled and said, “Hippies. Okay, tell me more about this miracle herb. I’m bored as fuck, enlighten me.”
“So, the non-medical use of it was banned in 1936 in every state and in 1937 the Federal government outlawed it as well. Not many people admitted to using it until the early 60s when the hippies decided they weren’t going to hide any longer.”
“Those same hippies that used to sit their asses on college campuses and call me a killer for defending their rights to do that?”
He was going to keep pushing it. She swallowed her retort and said, “Most likely. So, in 1964 a guy named Lowell Eggemeier walked into the San Francisco Hall of Justice and lit up a joint. He was arrested on felony charges and held in prison for a year.”
“Not very smart of him,” Badger said.
“Maybe not,” she said, “but he was taking a stand. His attorney actually started an organization called ‘LEMAR.’ It stood for Legalize Marijuana. It was the first dedicated, organized fight against the criminalization of weed. Allen Ginsberg was at the first rally.”
“Who?”
She rolled her eyes but said, “Never mind, some old Jewish guy. Anyway, he was from New York and when he got home from Berkeley, where this rally was at, he began putting together the first organization over here on the East Coast. He inspired chapters to pop up all over the country.”
“I’m guessing since it’s 1976 and still illegal as hell, they haven’t had much success.”
“They got the ball rolling. Have you ever heard of the Shafer Commission?”
“Nope. Another Jew?”
She rolled her eyes again. “Yeah. This one was a former prosecutor in Pennsylvania who went on to be the governor. In the early seventies Nixon put together a commission that was supposed to satisfy the rising popularity of cannabis and the government, by doing studies and making determinations. Nixon was strongly opposed to legalizing it and rumor had it that he advised Shafer to sway the report in the government’s favor. Shafer and his commission turned out a report that was over one thousand pages long. Needless to say Nixon was probably very unhappy when they put it out in 1972 and it said that cannabis was mostly benign, and its so-called dangers had been greatly exaggerated. Shaffer also included in his report that laws against it were doing more harm than good and they recommended that penalties be removed or at least made less harsh. Nixon rejected this entire report…but it led the way for those seeking reform. It was a building block.”
“So, four years later…”
“It’s still illegal here. But Oregon decriminalized it in 1973, and another study was done by the government which recommended that they should shift their resources to more harmful drugs like heroin. After that, hearings were held in all fifty states, and five more states, Alaska, Maine, Colorado, California, and Ohio decriminalized it last year.”
“So, it’s legal there? I could smoke it on the street or in a restaurant like a cigarette?”
“No. Fines are still in place, but much lower, and you wouldn’t go to prison for it. Alaska is the only state that basically made it legal to grow and enjoy in your own home. That happened in 1972 and from what I know, it solved a lot of their problems. Even law enforcement was happy with the outcome.”
“Hmm,” he said. “You talk like Doc.”
“What’s that mean?”
Badger shrugged. “He’s like this fucking genius and sometimes I have a hard time even understanding what the fuck he’s talking about. You talk like that, like him.”
She smiled. “Are you saying I’m smart?” She had a lot of ideas about their…business. She’d thought about running them by Doc, but she wasn’t so sure he would think she was smart. She thought a guy like him, full of himself, wouldn’t be amenable to a woman’s giving him suggestions. But if a guy like Badger admitted that he thought she was as smart as Doc, it was promising.
Instead of admitting it, he shrugged again and said, “So what do you know about heroin and cocaine?”
8
Doc had suffered through an entire month of knowing that Dallas was right down the hall. He had fucked Jamie, and a few of the other girls…he even caught Dallas glaring at him once as he let Jamie into his room. He’d fucked Jamie good that night, thinking about Dallas thinking about him, and being jealous. But was she? He wasn’t sure. She wasn’t like the other women, coming onto him all the time, trying to get him to look down her blouse or bending over so he’d check out her ass. She just did her thing. She worked and she socialized a little…mostly she kept to herself; but all he had to do was catch sight of her, or get a whiff of her perfume and it was on aga
in. It was like his cock had a mind of its own when it came to her. He thought about her almost constantly, even when he was with another woman. He was thankful that they’d been busy at least. Staying busy helped him not think quite so much about her.
He was in his office now, trying not to think about her again. He had a million other things he could be thinking about instead. If he didn’t get to fuck her soon, he’d be worthless. He could be thinking about the business agreement they just reached with a Colombian heroin king out of New York. It was groundbreaking, and in another week he’d be on his way to Texas to meet with a Mexican there that brought cocaine up through Brownsville and distributed it all the way to California. Lot’s to think about other than that little hippie girl’s pussy.
The club was branching out and thriving and it had only been a little over a year since he’d taken over. He’d accomplished a hell of a lot more than even he thought he would in that amount of time, with the help of his brothers, of course. He had made Hawk his VP. It seemed only right since he was there from the beginning. Hawk was also the only one who knew about the club’s involvement in Mad Dog’s death…or Doc’s involvement, to be more precise. There were still a few of the old bikers around who had been loyal to Mad Dog until the day he died. They gave their loyalty to Doc because Mad Dog told them to, and once he was dead, it just transferred over. But if they found out that this was his ultimate plan…the fallout could be very costly to him. Not that he didn’t trust Hawk in particular. It was just that he didn’t fully trust anyone.
He’d made Coyote and Badger his SAs, and Rat was their treasurer since he was so good with numbers. The communications guy, Sully, or Edward Sullivan, was their road captain and Tank their secretary, and when he had down time, their chief cook. Tank was a cook in the army and he loved it. But he was also three hundred pounds of pure muscle and that came in handy all over. Doc had a few enforcers and had patched in twenty new guys over the past year. There were six original Skulls left, but Doc hadn’t given any of them an executive position. He knew they felt slighted by that, but he didn’t really give a shit. As far as trust went, he trusted his own guys a hell of a lot more than he trusted those that used to kiss Mad Dog’s ass. They had five prospects at the moment and he had those five out recruiting hard. His vision for the club, and the rapidly expanding ranch, was that they would eventually branch out so much that they would be a bi-coastal club with chapters in major cities and nomads that would run in between.