Chapter 4
I stood at my porch, smiling as he walked his bike toward the four way stop near my house before letting the accelerator rip and bolting out of site. I pulled my keys from my purse to open my front door and noticed that my cell phone, which had been placed on silent, had twenty-one missed calls, all of them from Damian.
I slid my key into the door to find it unlocked. Opening it I found my lights on and the smell of cigarette smoke wafting through the air. I placed my purse on the ground and took out my gun, gently pulling the hammer back. I walked toward my living room, toward the smell of smoke.
“Hello? Who’s there? You’re trespassing and I’m armed.”
“Relax, Jessie. It’s Damian.” As I came around the corner I saw him sitting comfortably on my leather sofa, one leg on top of the other, enjoying a cigarette.
He looked me dead in the eyes, taking a drag of smoke. “Just where in the hell have you been? I’ve called you a couple dozen times out of sheer worry alone. I spoke with the local police who told me they chased after a man on a motorcycle, said a woman was on the back. I heard that loud motor, I’m guessing you’ve been out with the Assassins?”
I nodded. “Yes, I’ve been with Colt, working an angle to gain his trust. I’m sorry, Damian. I lost communications earlier. I was going to brief you tomorrow. Believe it or not I feel like I’ve had a breakthrough. He trusts me.”
He laid the sarcasm on thick, all but laughing at me. “Trusts you? Really? Colt doesn’t trust anyone. He’s a hardened criminal. You can’t get too close Jessie. You were to stay on the outside, remember? Sounds to me like you’re flirting with danger.”
I started to feel the pressure. On one hand my boss wanted results, and on the other my heart ached for another ride on the back of Colt’s steel horse. “You’ve got to trust me, Damian. I know what I’m doing.”
“Do you? Do you really? This is your first rodeo. You’re green. It’s easy to get caught up, to get in too deep. Can you walk that tightrope with your current training and experience?” He doused his cigarette butt in a glass of water on my living room table, pulling out another and putting it between his lips.
I sighed. “I have to. What other choice do I have? The FBI demands results, and I’m going to deliver. You have to trust me. Like Colt trusts me.”
Damian flicked his lighter and lit the fresh cigarette hanging from his lip. He took a drag and stared at me. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking but he didn’t look happy. “There’s a war brewing, you know that. I just want to make sure you’re going to be ok. The streets are going to get hot here soon and by the looks of it, if tonight is any indication, your life is going to be in danger.”
“And what makes you think that?” I said.
“It has come to our attention that this hit by the Mexicans was in retaliation for the Iron Assassins moving meth in Indian Wells and Ridgecrest. We don’t foresee that activity stopping any time soon. We’ve got reason to believe that the Irons Assassins will seek revenge against the Vatos Locos MC. We don’t know when, but given the history of the Iron Assassins we are confident it will happen, and when it happens it will be brutal.”
I sat on my couch facing Damian, clearing my frazzled hair from my face. “And what do you want me to do, Damian?”
“I need you to find out when and where the hit is going to take place. If we catch them red handed we can take out their leadership for good and pull you out. I know you don’t like it here. I know you want to leave. I guess that’s ok, but we won’t leave this job undone.”
I wanted to hand him my badge right there but I couldn’t. “Ok. I’ll see what I can find out.”
Damian took another drag of his cigarette, the cherry burning red-hot. “You’ll see? Or you will?” he said, exhaling the smoke. “Don’t fall into his cult of personality, Jessie. He’ll burn you down just like he’s done with everything else in his life.”
“I’ll find out what I can,” I said, waving the plume of smoke from my face that he’d blown in my direction. I couldn’t stand the smell of cigarettes and Damian knew it.
Damian rose and put his cigarette out in the empty glass on my dining room table. “Well ok then, it’s late. My wife probably thinks I’m cheating on her out at this hour. I’ll be in touch.”
He walked out the door, letting it slam behind him. He knew something was up, but I didn’t know what. The vice began to squeeze me from both sides. My desires as a human and as an agent of the law were incompatible. At some point soon they would face one another, and I would have to choose a side. I could only play both for so long before I was sniffed out by one or the other. Or both, and in that worst-case scenario I’d be cast aside by both the man I cared for and the job I sacrificed the better part of my twenties to obtain. It couldn’t all be for naught.
I stumble toward my bedroom. It was hard to remember a time where I felt more exhausted or sore. I took of my clothes and ran a hot shower, stepping inside of it as the water blasted the dust from my skin. With each pulse of water I imagined Colt’s hands on me. He hadn’t been away for more than an hour and I already missed him. I wondered if he missed me too. With his best friend dead I figured he had too many other things on his mind.
I pleasured myself in the shower, releasing the built up tension from my night with Colt. Even imagining him inside of me made me squirm. I knew that my imagination would never sate the itch that was brewing. Soon, I’d need the real thing, consequences be damned. The train had left the station, never to return.
I crawled into bed my body still damp from the shower. Rest seemed so far away. I tossed and turned, pulling up my sheets from the corners of my mattress and writhing in my comforter. Three in the morning came and passed, and then four, and as the clock struck five I finally bit the bullet, drifting off into a turbulent sleep mixed with hard driving emotions that made for crazy dreams of fast moving bikes, outlaw men and a helpless woman, hopeless to stop them. And I never wanted to wake up.
Steel Horses - Act 1 (MC Erotic Romance) Page 4