TRIGGERED: A Romantic Suspense Bundle (5 Books)

by Evie Nichole

  I’ll never forget that day. It was a Tuesday evening, June 6th. One of those close, muggy summers where the air sticks to you and half the time you feel like you can’t get a good healthy breath. My mom was in the kitchen cooking dinner, macaroni and cheese. One of the only things she could actually cook well.

  They’d had an argument, my mom and dad, but that wasn’t unusual. It seemed like every conversation ended that way; a cold silence between them after the shouting had been given up on - if there ever had been love, it had been eroded by time and resentment.

  I went out into the yard and saw my dad walking with his ride to the end of the driveway. I was just going to show him some trading cards my cousin had given me. The arguments were so regular, nothing seemed peculiar. Not really… At first, as I approached him, he pulled on his helmet, jet black to go with his leathers. I don’t know why, but when I looked at him I then started to feel something strange was happening, as if I knew somehow, so I walked towards him slowly. There was fear in my belly, bubbling away. Something was definitely wrong.

  He flicked his visor open and looked at me as I got near. I’ll never forget that stare, those confused eyes which said come with me, don’t come with me. I’m staying, I’m leaving. I touched his arm. A little eight-year-old kid trying to show affection in a way he desperately wanted his parents to show each other.

  My dad started up the engine and drove off. Halfway down the street he stopped, the engine still purring, and he turned to look at me still standing at the end of the driveway. He’d reached his point of no return, little did I know that was just a few meters from our home. Did he question it? Did he think about turning back? Again, I like to think so.

  He turned and drove off into the distance, to that open road away from kids, responsibilities and routine. He became a little black dot on the horizon, and then just like that, he vanished. Like a ghost in the night who never was.

  I never saw him again.

  Sometimes, I pass other bikers on the road and I wonder if beneath the helmets and leathers my dad has just driven by. Part of me wants to shout at him, chase him down, tell him how much of a coward he was; the other part just wants to ask calmly why he abandoned me and my mom.

  But I think I know the answer to that question.

  It’s the same reason I’ve never settled down. Being able to hit the road and travel for miles in any direction is what my life has become. My life is the road. The only real difference between me and my dad is that I would never put myself into that position. Why have a family if you’re going to abandon them? I do know that if I ever see him, I’ll be caught between two thoughts; the first will be to hug him, the second will be to knock him clean out.

  If the road called to me, the Rip Bay Hornets were more of a necessity. I wanted the open road, but there are dangers, more so than a car clipping you on the highway or an icy patch on the tarmac throwing you into a ravine. A lone biker cutting across the country can run into trouble.

  The road won’t have your back, so someone has to. I was 18 years old when the Hornets took me in. Just a boy to some, a man to others. My mom had died the previous year, alcohol hadn’t killed her directly, but it had given her that push down a flight of stairs which did the job either way.

  I was cut loose, with no family, a few friends who were all heading to college for the next four years. What did I have? I had an old bike my dad had left rusting in the garage. What little money I had was put towards fixing her up. It was a 1975 Harley Sportster, my first and only love. Dark red paint, gleaming chrome by the time I’d finished with her, and she purred like a lion waiting for its next meal.

  I left my old home behind before I was kicked out by the landlord, and I never went back to that place.

  Two months later, after working a few shifts as a dishwasher at a restaurant to raise enough cash to head up state, I had… An altercation. I stopped for the night at a seedy little motel. There was a bar alongside it, mostly truckers, bikers, people passing through. Someone took a disliking to me, and he wasn’t alone. Three guys, all liquored up and looking for a fight. I’m not the type who starts a fight, but I’m also not the type to back down. Even at 18, I was willing to go toe to toe with those three guys, which is exactly what I did.

  I took a beating that night, I’ll tell you that. Out in the carpark I gave as good as I could. Broke one guy’s nose, landed a good right to the stomach of another, but the third one blindsided me, and then I was on the ground. Guess I was lucky they didn’t beat me to death, but for the next few days, I was so black and blue that I kind of wished they had.

  Someone had watched the entire thing. His name was Drake. I looked up from the pool of blood around me, dazed, thinking the shape looking back down at me was one of those idiots ready to finish me off, but the shape held out its hand and said, "I’m Drake. Let me help you, kid."

  Drake was huge, not that far off of 7 feet tall, and he was broad shouldered too. He had black hair, slicked back, and a perfectly trimmed mustache and goatee. With tattoos of stars, dragons, and demons which climbed up his arms, and a denim waistcoat which had seen better days made him look every bit the biker cliche. But his stare, dark and piercing, his voice calm yet graveled, he held your attention, and made you sure that he would be a great ally, and a terrible enemy.

  He helped me into the bar where I was cleaned up. He and a few of his biker buddies had watched the fight from afar. It seemed Drake was impressed. I guess I should be flattered, in all the years I’ve known him since, he’s never given another no-name kid a chance like that.

  "You’ve got guts, kid," said Drake as he handed me a beer. "You with a crew?"

  As I thought over my reply, I swirled some beer around in my mouth. It tasted like blood. I had never felt up to that point that I really needed someone. In fact, I was still sure that I didn’t, yet there was something about Drake. He was kind, and looking back I realize now that I gravitated towards him because he was acting almost fatherly, and I had never had that. I was caught up in it, in something I needed badly. A compass, someone to show the way.

  "No, I’m on my own," I replied. The words stuck in my mouth, and until I heard them myself I hadn’t really grasped that. I was alone. Completely and utterly.

  "Well, kid. We’re part of a crew, a gang, an association if you will." Drake feigned a polite, almost aristocratic voice as he said “association,” but that was exactly how it was sold to me.

  The Rip Bay Hornets were exactly that, an association; an association of loners, hoodlums, criminals, and free spirits; all sharing one common goal - to have each other’s back, to do what they want, to be free. To have that life, they took on jobs, and made sure they never got caught.

  Drake was their leader and founder as I later discovered. He commanded respect from everyone, and made sure the few hundred of us in the gang he had at his disposal understood the rules. The Hornets operated under the radar. They weren’t like the Hell’s Angels, reveling and broadcasting their fame and violence. No, they were secretive, and anyone who broke that secret ended up taking the long ride. Something Drake told us had been passed down to him from someone called Sanchez. You were taken off road in the desert and given enough gas to ride until the sun got you. It played to Drake’s twisted sense of romanticism. He’d let those who betrayed him go out on their bikes.

  In any case, from that night in the parking lot on, I wouldn’t be alone, and for the last 10 years I’ve been loyal. I’ve done as I was asked. Any time I got a job, I put some of the money into the crew’s pot, and while I was kept away from their "secret missions," as Drake used to call them, I never once thought that the Hornets might be bad. That at their core, there might be something very wrong.

  I discovered this to be the case that night. The night I was asked to join them on that road. It was a great privilege. Drake and his closest riders were letting me in. They were letting me be part of something bigger than myself. Sure, the gang had a few hundred members, but Drake only had six i
n his Night Riders. Another term he liked to use. It was the greatest honor a Rip Bay Hornet could have, and meant you were at the very top of the gang. I wish I’d realized sooner what it really entailed.

  "This guy has stolen from us. All we’re going to do is take back what’s ours, and we’ll even let him go on his merry way with his little fiancee," Drake said to me, smiling.

  "No one gets hurt?" I asked.

  "Of course. We just need our best guys out there tonight, Josh. If we don’t, then someone could mess up big time, and then… Purely by accident you understand… Someone could get hurt, and we don’t want that, understand?"

  Yeah, Drake had been good to me, like the father I’d never had. I had no reason to distrust him; in fact, all I wanted was to make him proud of me.

  "Whatever you need, Drake," I said.

  He was happy, all the guys were. That little Josh was coming into the fold properly. To be one of Drake’s Night Riders. His own little gang within a gang.

  How I wish I’d said no, got on my bike and rode away from Drake and his gang forever. But I didn’t. I did as he asked me. I went to that road that night, and now someone is dead.

  Chapter 3

  It’s been three years. Three long years since Daniel died. I’ve heard more than a few people say if you can’t make it, fake it. I think what the last year particularly has shown me is that, for once, such a saying proved correct.

  I have been faking it, and faking it a little too well. I even had myself convinced until last night.

  Maxine, you’re doing well!

  That’s what I told myself on the first day at my new job. I’d moved to a new city, taken the plunge. It had to be done. I wasn’t going to waste away in that house in the woods any longer, and so I went back to what I know - fashion.

  A few phone calls and about 100 or so emails later and an old colleague got me a job in sales at Audrey’s. It was a small fashion label, but one with a good reputation. They were only three years old, but their founder and lead designer, Audrey Shelby, was building a growing reputation for affordable, chic night dresses. The chain was now moving into the more casual market, and that was where I came in.

  It sounds like it would be glamorous working in the fashion industry, but unfortunately they didn’t have a job available in their design and production departments. Instead, I was made head of sales for the new casual brand. It’s my job to try and get stores and other franchises to stock as many of our items as possible.

  What does that mean in practice? Emails, phone calls, business meetings talking about profit margins and how low we can go in price before it isn’t worth our while, and... I might as well go back to the woods. At least, sometimes I think that way, but then I realize, I’ll get where I’m going eventually. Again… I fake it.

  Yeah, okay, it isn’t what I really wanted to be doing. I wanted to be back helping with designs, but there is one really positive outcome in all of this - it takes my mind off things. I’ve made a few friends, although nothing like those I have back home, certainly nothing even close to my sister. But looking at it now, I think I needed a break from everything, even the positives in my life. A new start for the new me.

  Audrey Shelby’s was keeping my mind away from losing Daniel. There were staff nights out when I had a drink, I laughed, I danced, I came home, and when I crashed out on the sofa of my little two bedroom apartment, I wouldn't even think about being alone.

  That was progress, of a kind.

  I guess I thought I was putting it all behind me. The first year in my new home passed. Christmas came and went. My sister wanted me to go home for it, but I couldn’t face the town; the sympathetic stares, the questions:

  "How are you, Maxine?"

  "It must be hard, Maxine."

  "Met anyone yet, Maxine?"

  That last one was far from my mind. There was a guy at the office, Brad, he was nice, and it was clear he liked me - but I just couldn’t think about being with someone else. It seemed like a betrayal. I know rationally that it wouldn’t be, that it would be what Daniel would want, for me to move on and be happy, but it’s not that simple. Nothing is. Deep down, I know I’d like to be with someone, to not be alone anymore, but I feel my grief isn’t done with me yet and won’t let me move on.

  That was made abundantly clear last night.

  I guess the date never entered my mind, at least I tried to not let it. But it was there, floating around inside me somewhere like a cloud ready to unleash a storm. It was the anniversary of that night. The night when I lost everything. Anniversaries are strange things. Usually they are kept for birthdays, marriages, maybe even for alcoholics celebrating another year sober, but when you have an anniversary which isn’t about celebration - one about the exact opposite - you can feel it heading towards you, and the thing is, you can’t dodge it. Not really. You persuade yourself that you can get through the day without thinking about it, but three years on and the same thing happens. You have a moment to yourself, a moment not taken up by friends or work or a favorite TV show, and in that moment you see it. Like someone from your childhood who used to bully you. The grief. Ready and able to get on with its job of kicking you in the gut.

  The night of our anniversary I opened a bottle of wine, alone in my little apartment, put on an old film that Daniel and I used to love, and watched the images on the TV. The actors moved back and forward, they said their lines. Things happened. The plot moved on, like life. I watched, I heard, but I didn’t see or listen. The numbness had returned. My old friend grief had brought that back with him.

  When the film finished, I drank the last of the wine, curled up into a ball on my couch and, finally when the numbness left me, I cried my eyes out. Then, I fell asleep, and that must have been when it happened.

  I woke to the room in darkness. The TV was off, and the only light came from the street lamps outside. They filtered through the cracks in the blinds, casting long fingers of dim light across the room. Shadow was everywhere, and for some reason the place felt more oppressive than before. Like the apartment had been filled with something, as if the very air was occupied.

  It didn’t feel cold, it felt warm, stiflingly so. Outside, I heard it. Echoing through the night. It was the rain. Sheets of it crashing on the sidewalk outside. At that moment I had a strange thought, that it had come for me. The rain, that harbinger of death, blanketing all in its soaked cloak, washing away all that’s good and pure. Washing away my happiness. It had come to flood my world and to leave me floundering in the water of misery. I lay there for a while, listening to it; losing myself in its sinister rhythmic shower.

  That was when I saw it. I gasped loudly at the realization.

  Someone was in my room.

  In the corner just a few feet from me, two pinpoints of light were looking at me, the rest covered in darkness. I couldn’t make out who it was, but I knew those pinpoints were eyes, glassy things which had caught what little light there was, and reflected it to me. I watched in disbelief. My mind tried to shake the reality of the situation, but there was no doubt that the eyes were there, and that they were watching me squirm in fear.

  The sound of rain increased, as if its voice was urging the person standing in the corner of my room to come forward and commit a terrible crime. To act against me. Slowly, the creak of a floorboard sounded, and underneath that cacophony of rain I could hear the footsteps. Methodical, rhythmic. They moved closer to me, and as they did the intruder was revealed.

  A shard of light fell across the man’s face as he drew near.

  "Oh God… Daniel…" I said.

  And it was, but not the Daniel I loved, some strange perversion of him. His skin was chalk white, and his eyes glistened with intent. He reached his arm out towards me, and for the first time in my life, I was terrified of him. Terrified of the memory, terrified of the figure in front of me. He let out a guttural, wheezing sound from the back of his throat. Like words trying to filter through blood pooled somewhere inside. I thought my he
art was going to burst out of my chest as he reached out and the tip of his fingers touched my face. They felt frozen cold.

  I screamed and leaped over the back of the couch.

  When I woke, I was in my bedroom. It had been a dream. The relief coursed through my body. I worked through the haze, those moments when you’re not entirely sure if any part of a dream was real. Yes, it was a nightmare, a horrible one at that, why would I think of my sweet Daniel as such a horrible thing? All of my memories were good ones, but that dream left an uncomfortable feeling which lingered for some time. I felt on edge, scared, apprehensive… I even felt guilty for thinking about him in such a horrid way, but there was more to it than that.

  It was then that I noticed my room was in a mess. It looked like I’d been burgled, but as my eyes adjusted to the darkness and the open drawers tipped out all over my room, there was a vague memory. I remembered doing it myself during my nightmare. Sleepwalking. An unsure recollection, but there nonetheless.

  I hadn’t done that for some time, at least as far as I knew. On a couple of occasions Daniel caught me leaping out of bed with fright at a bad dream, but now that I was on my own, there was no one there to catch me. No one there to stop me leaving my bed and doing God knows what in my sleep. When I was a kid I used to sleepwalk often, usually when I had something on my mind. Was there something on my mind? More than the obvious?

  I got up out of bed, still half asleep, and looked at the clothes and other belongings strewn around the room. The old chest of drawers in the corner; most of the drawers had been pulled completely out, left upturned on the floor. Why had I done that? It appeared almost as if… As if I was looking for something, but at that moment I couldn’t think of what it could have been. Then, I felt something in my hand. I was still in a daze and hadn’t realized that I was clutching onto something for dear life. I looked down at my hand, almost white knuckled, and relaxed my grip.