Spyder: An Alpha Male MC Biker Romance (Dark Pharaohs Motorcycle Club Romance Book 3)

by Ivy Black

“You all right?”

  I turn to find Spyder standing there with a wide grin on his face. I look back toward the vans and see Blake and Grease still working away. Grease’s complaints are louder, and the scowl on his face has deepened. I look over at Spyder, and he gives me a casual shrug.

  “Couldn’t deal with Grease’s constant bitching anymore,” he says.

  “Don’t blame you.”

  “They’re just about done anyway,” Spyder tells me. “Where do you think Cort gets all those guns? I mean, that’s some serious military-grade hardware.”

  “Probably has a contact at Fort Liggett or the Presidio.”

  “Makes sense.”

  Cosmo is shaking hands with Cort before turning away and walking over to where me and Spyder are standing. Monk is over talking to Blake and Grease, helping them get the last couple of boxes into the vans.

  “Looks like we’re done here,” Cosmo says.

  “Smooth like butter,” Spyder replies.

  “At ease, Nitro,” Cosmo says to me with a grin. “You’re wound so tight, you look ready to explode.”

  I chuckle but still keep my eyes on Cort and his guys. Because I don’t trust them, I’ll keep watching them until they’re nothing but taillights heading down the road. Cort is a hard guy to get a read on. And I don’t like people I can’t get a sense of. Being able to read people is a talent of mine, but he’s utterly confounding. He plays things very close to the vest, and he’ll do business with anybody so long as you got the paper.

  Some of these guys who deal guns or weed will only deal with one group or another. They can be paranoid as hell and have all sorts of conditions on who they’ll work with and who they won’t. But when you’re in the line of work we are, there’s usually a market for everybody. As far as Cort goes though, the only color he seems to care about is green—which I guess isn’t necessarily a bad thing. We’ve all got to make a living.

  The thing that bothers me most about him, though, is that I also get the idea that if he gets jammed up, he will throw anybody and everybody under the bus to save his own ass. Most everybody else seems to think he’s trustworthy for some reason unknown to me, but I just get the vibe that he’ll stab us in the back if it benefits him in some way.

  It’s only when I see their trucks and vans driving off, kicking up a cloud of dust in their wake, that I let out a small breath of relief. Cosmo claps me on the shoulder and gives me a nod.

  “All right. We’re good to go,” he says. “Let’s hit it.”

  ***

  I’ve always loved being on a bike, out on the open road. Sometimes, when I’m indoors too long, I get to feeling a bit claustrophobic. I’ll usually just jump on my bike and head out with no particular destination in mind. I just ride. It helps quiet the voices in my head and calm the nerves that are usually jingling like hell inside of me.

  There is nothing like saddling up and just riding out for a while. The sun on your face and the wind in your hair as you roar down an open highway is like no other feeling in the world. That hit of absolute freedom is better than any drug out there. And I’ve tried a lot of them.

  We round a bend and hit the forty-mile stretch of highway that will lead us back to Blue Rock, and I’m thinking about riding on for a while when I notice a couple of black SUVs behind us in my mirrors. They’re closing the gap pretty quick, and a lightning bolt of adrenaline flashes through my body.

  We’re only six months out after our big showdown with Zavala, and we’re all still a little skittish. Even though we haven’t faced any reprisals just yet, none of us have quite stopped looking over our shoulders. You don’t kill the head of the biggest drug cartel in Mexico and shatter his empire without some blowback.

  So when I see those black SUVs haulin’ ass to catch up to us, my first thought is that Zavala’s former sicarios have finally gotten their shit together and are coming for us. And hell, on this long, lonely stretch of highway, it’s the perfect place to launch an attack.

  I gesture to Monk who looks behind us, and I can see by the expression on his face that he’s having the same thoughts. He gets Cosmo’s attention who takes a look then uses the two-way radio to alert the vans. Grease is behind the wheel of one, Blake in the other, and they drop the hammer, rocketing off ahead of us, as Cosmo, Monk, and I fall back.

  The SUVs charge on, their engines roaring as they draw closer to us. My gut is churning hard, like it used to do before a battle. I pull the .45 out of the holster on my hip and disengage the safety. The roaring of the SUVs’ engines builds, drowning out even the throaty rumbling of our bikes. And when they are practically on our back wheels, the three of us split; Monk and Cosmo veer off into the other lane, and I pull close to the shoulder, letting the pair of dark SUVs split the middle and continue their pursuit of our vans.

  The three of us reform into a line and race forward. But as we do, I see a man hang himself out the passenger side window of the SUV directly in front of me. Knowing what’s coming, I fire preemptively. The bullet ricochets off the vehicle, making the man quickly duck back inside. But then somebody is already hanging out of the window of the other vehicle and takes a shot. Sparks fly off the pavement where it struck the road, and we power forward.

  Cosmo and Monk are firing a barrage of shots, most of them pinging harmlessly off the metal of the SUV, but it keeps the guys pinned down, not letting them fire back at us. Shooting on the back of a bike is a lot harder than firing off shots while perched comfortably on a door frame. But we need to keep them in that car because if we let them get a shot off, we’re just sitting ducks.

  But then somebody pops up from one of the sunroofs in the vehicle and snaps off a few quick shots that send the three of us weaving all over the road to avoid catching a piece of lead. We return fire, sending that man back down into the vehicle, only to have another guy pop up from the other sunroof and fire at us again. It’s the Whack-a-Mole game from hell.

  We keep firing, our shots ringing off the steel frame of the SUVs. One of my bullets shatter the back window but doesn’t blow it inward. The guy gets off another couple of shots, and I hear Monk cry out a moment before his bike shudders violently, and then, as if I’m watching it all happen in slow motion, he goes down. The bike flips end over end with a sickening crashing, shattering sound, and I see Monk sliding along the road. His body spins around and rolls and all I can think is that he’s dead.

  Cosmo and I lock up our brakes and after what seems like an agonizingly interminable time, we finally come to a stop. Both of us are off in a heartbeat, shedding our helmets as we dash back to where Monk is laying in the road, completely still. We drop down beside him and at first, all we can see is blood. It’s coming from his chest and arms mainly, and as we’re looking him over, he groans miserably as his eyes flutter open.

  I let out a breath I didn’t even realize I was holding and say a silent word of thanks to anybody who might be listening for watching over him.

  “Who were those guys?” Monk asks, his voice tight with pain.

  “Don’t worry about that right now, kid,” Cosmo says then looks at me. “Call for a meat wagon then call Prophet and tell him what happened. Tell him to get some guys out here with a truck.”

  “What about the vans? What about Grease and Blake?” I ask.

  “Hopefully, they’ll be back at the compound before us,” he says.

  With a feeling of trepidation in my gut, I get up and pull my phone out of my pocket. And as I’m making all of the calls, I’m replaying the whole scene in my mind. In particular, I’m thinking about the guys who were firing at us, and the one thing I keep circling back to is the fact that they weren’t Mexican. They couldn’t have been Zavala’s sicarios.

  So who were they?

  Nitro Preview

  Chapter Two

  Hadley

  “Hey, Hadley, would you mind dropping off these Notices to Appear at the sheriff’s station?” Brent asks. “You can cut out the rest of the day after that.”

 
Biting my tongue, I give Brent the sweetest smile I can muster. “Sure. No problem. I’ll take care of that.”

  “You’re an angel,” he replies.

  “So you keep telling me,” I say with a chuckle.

  What I don’t tell him is that by the time I’m done dropping off the papers at the sheriff’s station, I’ll be cutting out a whopping twenty minutes early. Woo-freaking-hoo. But still, it’s better than nothing, I suppose.

  “Oh, and tomorrow, I’m going to need you to do some research on the Bender case, please,” Brent adds.

  “You got it, boss.”

  “You’re—”

  “An angel?”

  He chuckles. “No, a wiseass. Now get out of here.”

  I laugh to myself as I grab my things. Brent is the sole practitioner in one of Blue Rock’s most successful criminal defense law firms. He’s got such an outstanding reputation and track record in the courtroom that people come from as far away as Sacramento and San Francisco to hire him.

  Brent can be a bit cantankerous, and he’s got a rep as a bit of a fuss bucket with a lot of people in town. But having worked for him for a couple of years now, I can say with some conviction that he’s a good guy. He can be ferocious, and a lot of people think that’s who he is. But Brent’s ferocity is simply him advocating for his clients. Nobody would believe me if I told them—in fact, they’d probably laugh their ass off—but Brent Polaski is actually a big ol’ teddy bear.

  He’s got a full head of iron-gray hair and blue eyes that sparkle—whether it’s with mischief or malice depends on the setting. He’s creeping closer to sixty and has a bit of a paunch around the middle. He says he doesn’t need to worry about it because he’s not out to impress anybody. After his wife passed away a few years back, Brent seems to have given up on love entirely. It’s like Jamie was his one true love, and he can’t bring himself to look for another. It’s very sweet and it’s very sad.

  Brent is a good man and a good boss. I actually enjoy working for him, and frankly, I’m learning a lot. I’d daresay I’m learning more about the law and the practical application of it from him than I am in the night classes I’m taking at the local JuCo. School was never really my thing when I was younger, and I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, but somehow, I caught the law bug. So I started taking junior college classes and convinced Brent to hire me as a paralegal. Eventually, I will get my Bachelor’s and transfer to a proper law school. And if the stars all align, it’ll be Stanford, which is my first choice.

  None of this would be happening without Brent though. Getting him to hire me as a paralegal was something of a coup since in all the years he’d been practicing law, he’d never once had a paralegal. But I somehow managed to walk in and dazzle and charm him into taking me on. At least, that’s what I tell people.

  The truth is probably that he saw a heartbroken, shattered woman—who was coming off a failed relationship she once thought would last forever, with no practical skills, no career prospects, and no real future to speak of—and took pity on me. I’m an only child and my parents passed away when I was a teenager, so I have no family. And since I’ve always been shy and a bit of a recluse, I’ve never had a large group of friends. I have those people close to me—like Robin—and that’s always been good enough for me. I’m lonely sometimes, but I just don’t have it in me to be a social butterfly. I have a very small group of people in my life, and I’ve never needed more than that.

  So I think Brent took all of that into account before he hired me on. He saw a woman who was broken and needed a boost in life. Working for him has absolutely helped with my confidence and my outlook on my future. Oh, Brent is always gracious enough to say that he saw the vast potential in me and thought it was about time he took on the role of mentor since he had no children of his own. He also likes to say he somebody needed to carry the banner of his legacy once he steps away from the game and rides off into the sunset.

  But I really don’t think Brent is ever going to step away from the game. I have a feeling the only way he’s going to stop practicing law is when they carry him out of the courtroom in a body bag. I’ve never met somebody as in love with being a lawyer or as passionate about it as Brent. And honestly, his passion is infectious. I came to him simply looking for a job, but he’s inspired me to want more. It’s because of him that I’m planning on becoming a lawyer.

  In a lot of ways, it’s because of Brent that I got my life back on track. After my breakup with Milo, I kind of went off the rails for a bit. I was drinking a lot and doing a lot of things I’m not proud of, just trying to forget him. But nothing I did worked. Even still, I miss him. I still feel the pangs of heartbreak whenever I think of him. We were only together for a couple of years, but the mark he left on my heart is indelible. And I want to kick myself for not being able to erase it.

  I head out to the parking lot and go run my errands, dropping off the Notices to Appear to a couple of deputies who were decidedly not pleased to get them. But, hey, maybe they should have been paying attention to the road and not on the group of scantily clad coeds bopping down the street. Maybe then, they wouldn’t have rear-ended the couple that’s now suing the department for a very tidy sum—the kind of sum that could put me through law school... several times over.

  Though Brent’s primary focus is criminal defense, he will never pass up an opportunity to tweak Sheriff Singer, who is pretty much his archnemesis. And this is a case that’s going to tweak the good sheriff pretty hard. Brent lives for getting over on the sheriff. It’s like one of his greatest joys in life.

  After that, I decided to use those twenty minutes I saved to run over to my favorite coffee house, Love & Grounds. I’ve been coming here for as long as I can remember. I refuse to patronize the Starbucks franchises the City Council, in their infinite wisdom, granted business licenses to. Now one sits at the northern end of Harrison Avenue—Blue Rock’s main drag—and one at the southern end. It’s annoying, and it’s suffocating the mom-and-pop shops like Love & Grounds.

  I’m a firm believer in shopping local rather than throwing my money at the big corporate chains wherever possible. Sadly, with the way things are these days, the local shops are being driven to the point of extinction by things like coffee chains putting up to brick-and-mortar shops half a mile apart.

  “Hadley, hey, girl.”

  I smile as Joanie, the owner of the coffee house, greets me with a smile and a hug. She’s a middle-aged woman with a smooth, ageless face, blonde hair, green eyes, and golden sun-kissed skin. She’s a California beach bunny through and through. But she’s also smart as a whip and tougher than you’d think at first blush.

  “Good to see you,” I say, even though I saw her just yesterday.

  “The usual?” she asks.

  “Wouldn’t be the usual if I ordered something different now would it?”

  She laughs. “Touché.”

  I lean against the counter and make small talk with Joanie as she gets started on my drink. The place is half full, but I remember a time when it was packed and it makes me a little bitter. But I’m glad to see that with the Starbucks takeover of Blue Rock Bay, Joanie still has enough loyal customers to keep her business afloat. Loyalty matters.

  “So you seein’ anybody?” she asks.

  A wry laugh passes my lips. “Am I ever seeing anybody?”

  “Well, I keep hoping one of these days, you’ll find somebody worthy of you and your time,” she says. “You’re young, smart, beautiful, and—”

  “And totally focused on starting my career,” I interrupt.

  She laughs and waves me off. “You’re a smart girl. I’m sure you could multitask if you really wanted to.”

  “Well, I suppose that means I guess I don’t want to then,” I reply with a big smile.

  She gives me a sympathetic look. “I just hate seeing you alone.”

  “I’m not alone. I’ve always got you, Joanie.”

  “That you do, dear,” she says, looking ov
er my shoulder. “Though, I still think you can do better. Not much, mind you. But slightly.”

  Knowing there is a guy behind me that she’s looking at, I resist the urge to turn around. Instead, I look in the mirror behind the counter and see a man in a sharp, neatly tailored suit. He’s about five-ten or five-eleven with a lean, trim build. He’s got a strong, square jaw, high cheekbones, and an aquiline nose. His hair is dark and cut military short, and he has dark, narrow eyes.

  He unbuttons his coat and I catch sight of what looks like a plastic ID card hanging from his belt that has his picture affixed to it. It looks very official, but I can’t see the name of his company or whatever the ID card is for. He’s a handsome man, no question about it. But there’s just something about him that sets the warning bells ringing in my mind.

  Joanie hands me my drink with a smile and gives me a wink and as she turns to the man behind me, I feel my heart sink into my stomach.

  “Hi, welcome to Love & Grounds. I’m Joanie, the proprietor of this fine establishment. And this is Hadley Larson, loyal customer, good friend, and a totally and completely single woman,” Joanie says, a smile beaming on her face.

  My face instantly grows hot, my cheeks I’m sure turning an ungodly shade of red. I shoot her a dark look, my embarrassment causing me to fumble with my cup. I look at the man, who is smiling wide at me, then rush out of the coffee house. I’m halfway down the block before I stop and lean against the wall, trying to control my breathing and stop myself from shaking.

  When I feel like I’m back under control again, I push away from the wall and start walking toward the parking lot. But when I hear his voice behind me, my blood freezes in my veins and I start trembling all over again.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Hadley Larson,” he says, a thousand-watt smile stretching from ear to ear.

  “Yeah, hi. Joanie lets her mouth get away from her sometimes and—”

  “Let’s not be hasty here,” he cuts me off. “Let’s at least talk a bit, huh?”