Under Locke

by Mariana Zapata

  He didn't even bother responding. Flicking two tattooed fingers at me, he waved me forward. Leading me toward a life I wasn't so sure I'd been destined for. "C'mon, I don't have all day to show you how to do shit."'

  Chapter Two

  "I need you to update this every Friday. Got it?"

  Got it? Got it?

  Ef me. No, I didn't have it.

  How the heck does someone go through the inner workings of QuickBooks in less than twenty minutes? I was going to need someone to explain to me how that was possible because I had no clue.

  I wasn't an idiot, or slow by any measure—or so I liked to think—but he'd blown through the program with mouse clicks quicker than my poor eyes could keep up with. One minute he was explaining something about expenses and the next he'd started babbling about saving the files into a specific folder. I'd caught onto...maybe half.

  Okay, realistically, more like a quarter of it.

  For a brief moment, when I was looking down at the legal pad he'd slid across the desk when I'd followed in after him, I thought about asking him to show me one more time so I could write better notes. Because that wasn't uncalled for, right? I mean, who learned things perfectly the first go around? It'd taken me at least three tries to figure out how to use the cubed ice feature on Sonny's refrigerator correctly.

  And then I glanced up at him, Dex Locke. His big body leaned over the edge of the dark brown desk, a red tattoo peeped out at the world over the collar of his shirt, the side of his surprisingly full mouth twisted just barely to the side...and I balked.

  "Got it."

  What. A. Liar.

  A little coward of a liar. Pathetic.

  He nodded at me briskly and started pulling up a file on his desktop that said 'Waivers' on it. We were off again.

  Curt words. Brisk nods. All business.

  At one point, he got up to "go take a piss" and I took the opportunity to look around for the first time after following behind him like a lost puppy. When I'd come in, those hard, pure blue eyes were some form of impatient so I focused in on sitting at the chair he'd dragged over around the desk, and followed along. My chance to snoop had finally presented itself.

  The office wasn't at all what I would have expected. The walls were a plain bright white, nearly empty with the exception of two framed pieces and… were those television screens mounted in the corner? Maybe. He didn’t seem like the type to watch daytime soaps though.

  The colorful art was the first one to catch my eye. An angry, flaming red octopus looped across the paper in what looked like oils. Tentacles swirled and curled in bisecting lines. Bright and full of so much life, it seemed strange to be held captive on paper.

  The other frame, directly next to the octopus, was done in black ink. Black ink that sketched out an immaculate replica of the Widowmakers' Motorcycle Club insignia. The one I'd seen bearing down on my father's bicep for years. The one that up until coming to stay with Sonny had only been a sign of the supposedly terrible things I'd been shielded from.

  Bad things my mom had told me about to keep me fearful but I pushed that thought away and kept looking around. My mom's memory was meant for a different time. She already took up so much room in that designated little area I let her memory rest in. A place that I didn't want to get sucked into.

  The rest of the small office consisted of the large desk, two matching padded chairs, and a cabinet that crowded the corner. It was almost immaculately clean. There was also a hint of cigarette smoke that clung to the air.

  Huh.

  "It smell in here or somethin'?" that deep, husky voice I'd heard for the last hour asked from the door.

  I looked up at him and smiled. Did he smile in return? No. But I brushed it off and lifted a shoulder. "Do you smoke?"

  Dex took a breath so deep and long that it seemed to last a solid minute in length. "When I want."

  I almost scrunched up my nose. Almost. Because I hated cigarettes though I doubted the barely-there trace would bother me. I nodded at him again, taking in the dark Rangers cap he had pulled down tight over his head, the ends of his raven hair peeping out in tufts. Realizing that my hands were still damp, they hadn't stopped sweating from the moment I'd been in the car, I wiped them over my pants.

  He blinked, breaking the silence. "You got legal ID?"

  There were illegal IDs? Yeah, I wasn't going to ask for clarification.

  ~ * ~ *

  I left Pins and Needles at seven that night. In a little more than three hours, we’d crammed a tutorial on how to use the appointment log and calendar on the computer by communicating via two-word groupings of instructions and grunts after our marathon accounting overview and paperwork for payroll. Dex had then pointed at a digital camera sitting on the edge of his desk and said I needed to upload pictures onto the computer and hard drive daily.

  Did I ask where to upload the files? One look at that twist of his mouth had me agreeing to the job. Nope.

  I learned where everything was hidden in the studio by watching where he pointed: inks, needles, gloves, water bottles, paper towels, disinfectant, cleaning supplies, everything. Dex briefly explained how to time appointments. How to handle walk-ins in every situation. What to say and not to say to clients. He mentioned that there were four tattoo artists that worked in the studio including himself. The only other person I got to meet was a nice bald man named Blake, who had a double piercing through thick black eyebrows and multicolored tattoos that went up to his jaw.

  Everything seemed easy enough.

  I still couldn't get a solid feeling about the job and much less Dex since he hadn't so much as smiled once, but oh well. The job wasn't worth jumping for joy over but I wasn't exactly dreading the idea of going back. And it wasn't like I had any other option after looking at my bank statement.

  I'd take what I could get, damn it.

  Plus there was something about the shop that called to me. Maybe it was because I'd been expecting some seedy place with customers that were stinky, old men that got into fights over old ladies, and had more body hair than I had on my head.

  Then again, was Sonny what I'd imagined a biker to be? Sonny with his gaming system obsession. Sonny who I'd caught watering his potted plants one morning. Sonny who made me tofu recipes without batting an eyelash.

  No. He wasn't.

  So I tried to push my worries to the back of my brain, accepting the fact that maybe I'd been wrong to be worried. Maybe.

  ~ * ~ *

  Sonny’s bike, a sleek deep red Harley that cost as much as my car, was in the driveway when I parked in front of his house a few minutes later. Sonny's bungalow was small and located in an old, lower middle class neighborhood. Families and young couples populated the homes up and down the block, loud and constantly in motion.

  It was nice and I liked it. After living in an apartment where the walls were so thin I could hear every television show my neighbor watched, his place was friggin' great. The house was painted a deep tan with a front yard that would've been nice if he mowed it more often than every leap year, and comfortable. It wasn't exactly what I'd envisioned him living in before I'd punched his address into my GPS. While he wasn't necessarily neat, it wasn't a pig-sty but it was nicer after I'd spent two days cleaning the floors for what seemed like the first time since he'd bought it seven years before.

  I whipped out the key he'd given me the day I showed up, and let myself in. The television blared from the other side of the wall.

  Sitting on his favorite recliner, Sonny grinned at me the minute I closed the door. He leaned forward, clutching the remote to his PS3 in one hand. "You survived, Ris?" he asked, his grin widening so much it made his thick, auburn beard twitch with the movement of his facial muscles.

  The resemblance slapped me out of the blue. When had he started looking so much like our dad? Not that I would ever ask that out loud while he was around unless I was in the mood to get pinched.

  Instead I smirked, plopping down on the couch perpendicular to hi
m. "Barely."

  He laughed, loud and deep. Curt Taylor all over again. I wonder if he even knew how much alike they were? Probably not. I'd only gotten ten years out of the old man before he'd taken off, and that was ten more years than Sonny had gotten. And while I wasn't exactly our dad's biggest fan anymore, Sonny had fallen out of love with him a lot sooner than I had. A shitty father who only showed up once a year wasn't going to win any awards, much less one that disappeared out of the blue leaving a wife and two kids behind.

  As much as I wanted to, I had to beat back calling him an asshole even in my head. I'd promised myself I wouldn't do that anymore. Another promise I'd lined up neatly in a row along the way.

  "That's just the way he is," yia-yia had said time and time again despite how much mom and I had wanted to fight his true nature.

  So, so ignorant to the fact that you can't fight a person's instincts even if they were awful, even if they caused bad and painful things to those they should have cared about.

  "I knew you'd be the one to make it through the whole day," Sonny claimed in his own individual voice that resembled nothing like our dad's gravelly draw. Thank God.

  Wait a second though.

  "What do you mean?" I suddenly had a feeling that my brother had fed me to the heavily tattooed wolves—well, one wolf in particular. On friggin' purpose.

  Sonny looked at me, his hazel eyes—the color that we'd both inherited from our sperm donor—narrowed. And then he coughed. "There were a few people before you, kid."

  He'd been calling me kid for so long that it didn't even faze me anymore. Even if it did, he'd probably call me that more often. What did faze me was the gnawing feeling he was hiding something. "And?"

  "Most of them didn't last past the introduction. Much less a couple hours." He flashed that lazy grin again. "I knew you would though."

  It was my turn to narrow my eyes at him. Sonny had never lied to me before. He was unapologetic about everything he did. If anything, it'd been me who had kept things from him until the absolute last minute. Even past the last minute, and yet, he'd always forgiven me for lying. At least eventually he did. I wasn't going to think that he'd start spouting crap now.

  "I don't think that he likes anything very much."

  Sonny snorted. "Last I heard from Trip, he'd called six people into the shop to get interviewed for that job."

  Six people? Oh boy.

  Before I could focus on the idea of six individuals before me getting the boot, he thrust a game controller into my hand and tilted his head toward the massive flat screen mounted to the wall. If it was strange that he was changing the subject so abruptly, I didn't catch onto it. "You can survive anything, kid, right?"

  Damn him. Those were the same words I'd thrown back at him each time the rabbit hole had seemed to pop out of nowhere.

  Chapter Three

  "So you just moved from Florida?"

  I smiled out of the corner of my eye at Blake, who was sprawled out on the empty couch by the reception desk, casually.

  It was only my second day at Pins and Needles. Dex had already been waiting when I'd shown up ten minutes until four. Under the natural sunlight, his tattoos seemed to pop out even more starkly against the smooth, lightly tanned skin beneath the ink. Blues and reds and blacks fought a battle I didn't think any of them were capable of winning on the majestic scale.

  Especially not when they were stamped onto the nearly flawless, somewhere around six foot three form.

  Why couldn't he have been ugly at least? For some reason, dealing with an impatient, unattractive person seemed easier to swallow than a smoking hot one.

  He was standing outside of the building—why, I didn't have a clue. He had a key, he could have gone in but I wasn't going to bother asking. The less interaction we had the better, it seemed.

  His fit frame leaned against the stonewashed walls that separated Pins from the real estate agency. He had a cigarette nestled between two fingers, taking deep drags as he faced forward. Just like the day before, his black t-shirt stretched across his chest and arms, the only light color on him was the faded denim jeans that molded to his legs.

  Nice legs. Thick thighs. But most importantly, the thighs of a jerk.

  “Good afternoon.” The words had barely left my mouth and I was cringing. Had I really just said good afternoon? Awkward, so friggin’ awkward, Iris. I had to shake myself out of thinking about his thighs and how uncomfortable I’d made myself feel as I pulled my purse closer to my chest and forced a tight smile on my face.

  The moment I was close enough to him, he flickered his gaze over in my direction and glanced at his watch. "I don't like waitin' around." Dex took another pull from the cigarette before dropping it on the ground, crushing it with the sole of his motorcycle boot.

  What?

  For a split second, I got the urge to check my watch but I didn't. I knew what time would be on the face. Three-fifty. Not four o'clock. Three-fifty. What in the heck was this psycho babbling about?

  "I'm ten minutes early," I told him, standing five feet away so that I wouldn't come in contact with the fumes from his smoking.

  Dex raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, and I've been here for ten minutes."

  Something mean tickled my lips, teasing me to take the bait and be as callous with him as he was with me. I couldn't do it though. I couldn't risk pissing off a man with very little patience that I needed a paycheck from. So I swallowed hard and in the blink of an eye, hoped that he'd get explosive diarrhea at some point in the near future.

  "Okay."

  God, I was such a friggin' pushover.

  Dipping a hand into the front pocket of his jeans, he pulled out his keys, giving me a once over before tilting his head up. "And quit wearin' that fancy shit. I know you ain’t got any ink but you don't need to look like some sorority girl either."

  Fancy? I bought most of my clothes from the clearance rack at Target.

  By the time his words—insulting my clothes—settled into my brain, Dex had already unlocked the front door and let himself in.

  Maybe it should have bothered me that he told me to change the casual work clothes, but it didn't. The thing was, I couldn't get that pissed off. I felt resigned and annoyed.

  Halfway down the hall by the time I came in, Dex called out on his path toward his office. "There's a week's worth of pictures to upload."

  Did I have a clue what I was doing? Nope. I connected the camera to the computer anyway and thanks to my investigative skills—and the search option on the operating system—found where I needed to dump and arrange the thirty five pictures.

  That's exactly what I was in the middle of doing when Blake strolled in, plopping onto the couch like they were old friends.

  I nodded at his question, not wondering once how he'd found out where I lived before. "Yep. Near Miami, well, really Fort Lauderdale. Miami's way too expensive." It was. It totally was. Completely out of the price range of a customer service employee. Astronomically out of the price range for two unemployed girls, which only reminded me that I should check in with Lanie at some point.

  He made a whistling sound. "Always wanted to go to Miami. Why the hell would you move here?"

  At the risk of not wanting to be rude, I didn't laugh. "My old job had a lot of cutbacks. Since I was one of the newest hires, they let me go first. I couldn't find another job, one thing led to another, and I thought it'd be best to—," come mooch off my brother? "Come here. Mr. Locke knows my brother."

  Blake laughed, loud. "Mr. Locke?" He laughed again. "Call him Dex. Please."

  I smiled at him and shrugged. It wasn't like he'd told me what to call him. Plus, with as quiet as he seemed to be, the last thing I wanted to do was piss him off and call him something that he didn't approve of. My last boss had lost his mind if he wasn't referred to as a sir.

  Which I figured completely merited the fact that we called him an asshole when he wasn't listening.

  "I heard Sonny's sister or something was visiting the last
time I went to Mayhem," he threw in.

  "Are you... a member of the Widows?"

  "No," he answered instantly, his face flushing out of what I could assume to be embarrassment for shooting down the idea so quickly. "I've known Dex for a long time. That's it. I know all those guys." Then he plunged in the knife. "Only heard of your dad though, never met him."

  It took such a small part of me to smile like what he said wasn't a big deal, when it still was. Which was stupid. I was too old to still let him bother me. I'd been through too much to care about where he was and who he'd kept in touch with, when he hadn't kept in touch with his own kids.