Beneath His Ink (Highway Reapers Motorcycle Club Book 3)

by Hampton, Sophia

  The loud detective had turned on a tape recorder and the quiet one was scribbling notes as he stared at Tyson like he was trying to figure out if this story was bull shit or not.

  “How did the girl get involved?” Jackson didn’t seem to be very good at waiting, but Tyson wanted to stay on his good side.

  “They gave her five thousand dollars to find me and bring me to them, but I met her while she was looking for me. I didn’t give her my real name right away, and she didn’t have a picture of me so we became rather close before she figured out who I was. By then, she didn’t want to turn me over, and she tried to buy me a little more time.”

  This story was confusing, and when he heard the story out loud he didn’t know if he’d have believed it if someone else was telling it to him, but it was the truth. Both of the detectives looked riveted and interested in his story, so whether they thought he was full of shit or not wasn’t apparent.

  “When she tried to help me out, they told her that if she didn’t turn me in the five thousand dollar advance they gave her would turn into a loan and she would owe ten thousand dollars.”

  “Come on, buddy, don’t make us ask what happened next like this is some damn fairy tale. If you want to tell us, then do it.” The loud detective got up out of his seat, but the quiet one remained looking at Tyson.

  “Continue,” McCullough urged.

  “We didn’t make the money back the next day when we wanted to, and then Ella was called to say that they’d bugged her sweater and they were coming to get me. We weren’t where the bugged item was, so we went to my other apartment. We won the money the next day at the casino where you got that picture, and I tried to return the money to Bruce so our debt could be paid. I walked in on the same scene you guys probably did except it was fresher.”

  “So you want us to believe that you’ve been set up?” Johnson said still standing by the mirror.

  “I can’t control what you believe or what you don’t. I can only tell you the truth.”

  “Don’t think we missed that you used to work for this ‘club,’ so you had a bit more anger invested.” Johnson wouldn’t believe Tyson wasn’t the bad guy.

  Tyson thought about the way he looked. He wasn’t dressed up like he normally would be since he was in hiding and wanted to look like your normal Joe Some. The tattoos that covered his arms weren’t visible, and neither were the ones on his chest. He wasn’t pierced anywhere but his ears, and he was acting respectably. He usually decorated his language with the best and harshest cuss words just because they felt good to say, but he’d held himself tight for him and Ella’s sake; however, he could still tell that Johnson wanted to take him out back and shoot him like a dog.

  “That’s true. I did what Bruce did, but I never killed anyone for money they owed. We may have roughed a few people up. The other thing is whoever did this killed the person who was trying to get the money back for the club. That doesn’t even make sense.” Tyson looked at the faces of the two detectives, and they could be poker players their faces were so blank.

  “You know how to move around your words, son. I’ll give you that.” The way McCullough was looking at him made him think that he may have had a small chance to worth this out with him, but he still wasn’t sure. “You said you’ve been out of the game for over a year?”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “I know you’ve kept your nose clean because you’ve not come across our radar, but we both know that don’t mean jack shit. Sounds like you know how to fly around those barriers and look like you’re clean as snow.” Tyson didn’t have much interaction with his father, but the squinty eyes and the furrowed brow is what he’d always expected to come if he had a father and behaved badly.

  “I can see where you’d say that, but the truth is I’ve been trying to get this money back for the men I know want their money back, but when I got too close, they changed the finish line. I have spent most of the year trying to make sure I don’t end up with cement shoes.”

  “You’re small fries, Adler, and we want the big fish. The Headless Reapers have been getting stronger and more violent the last few years, and we want to take them down. They are all slippery like pigs but maybe you could do something for us, and then we can let this go.” Johnson walked back over to the table but sat on the corner so that he was near Tyson, and everyone should have recognized that “I’m in charge here” stance.

  “Let what go?” Tyson said knowing that from his story he’d done nothing wrong.

  “Evading the police, leaving a crime scene, kidnapping a female…” The loud man counted on his fingers like he was having trouble keeping all his crimes straight.

  Tyson wanted to debate that, but that may be the only way that Ella would get away with leaving town without telling her parole officer.

  “Alright.”

  Johnson looked shocked that Tyson didn’t put up a fight, and a smile cracked his lips. “Looks like he’s really in love, Detective McCullough.” Johnson said to his partner with a gotcha expression that was hard to take, but he’d said he’d be honest, so that meant not denying what he couldn’t even admit to Ella. “We’ve heard her name a lot in the few days. Was she into the club scene?”

  “No. She did have a problem with drugs, and I know she was going to get something from one of the dealers when the deal went bad and they pinned the drugs on her. That’s the only involvement I know of.” Tyson hoped that was enough to satisfy them about Ella. It was killing him to have her name come out of their mouths, because they weren’t fit to even speak of her.

  “We need some solid proof about your old club, and we haven’t been able to infiltrate them with anything. Maybe you can prove this loan sharking business, and then we can let you go.” McCullough looked like he was thinking of something that would work, but Tyson bet they had this plan before he showed up to talk to them.

  Tyson looked at McCullough and wondered if he knew what he was asking. These Reapers weren’t the same kind of club that he was in only a year ago, and what this sounded like to him was a suicide mission.

  “That’s going to be hard to do, because these men aren’t going to just let me waltz back into the club and start asking questions.”

  “We know that, but we knew some things about what was going on, and you just matched it all together for us. The man who killed Bruce is the Reapers’ new fix-it guy, and he has a history that’s followed him across the country, but he’s getting worse. He was brought in by Stephen for some reason, but no one can figure out why. The plan is to bust up the whole operation and get a lot of those jokers off the street or at least make it harder for them to hook up.” Johnson piped up when he could see there was going to be some dispute about what they were trying to get him to do.

  “What’s the plan?” Tyson asked and wondered if he would actually get to see the inside of the pretty little apartment that held his most valued person.

  “You tell the Reapers you’ve got their money, we catch you in the exchange, and that’s a federal case. Money laundering isn’t a happy spot for the United States government, and they have special places for people who try to clean up their dirty money.” Johnson stood up and walked back to the seat he was occupying before he started pacing.

  “Okay, I can do that. Do I get to go home?” Tyson was actually excited, and that’s more than he thought he’d be for the last few days.

  “Let us look into that. We need to talk to our chief, and then we can get back to you with the details.” The detectives got up and picked up all their pictures, information, and tape recorder as they shuffled off to see what they could do.

  “Wait!” Tyson had a question, and win, lose, or draw when he lay down, wherever he was going to be allowed to place his head this evening, he would be pondering this question. “If you didn’t think I killed Bruce then why did you put it all over the news that I did and that I was dangerous?”

  “Like we said, we didn’t know the whole story. We had you checked out, but we needed to t
alk to you. You shouldn’t have run at all because that makes you look guilty, but with all the forensic evidence we had, it was rather slim that you were the actual murderer.” That was more than McCullough had said the whole time he’d been in the room with him.

  “I thought you’d ordered a hit, but I guess I was wrong. I still have my eye on you, Adler.” Johnson was the last one out of the room, and he kept his eye on Tyson in what had to be him proving his point.

  It wasn’t as bad as he thought it would be, but he’d feel better when he had more definite answers. He wasn’t fond of being locked in boxes, but the thought of him being able to see Ella again had him sitting quietly and willing to wait all night for a chance to get a piece of his life back. He wouldn’t think of how long it would last; he just knew that he would savor it.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Ella had never been in an apartment that came decorated and filled with almost everything she’d need. There were towels, plates, pots, pans, silver wear, bed linens, and all the other things that make a house a home. The only thing she didn’t have was food and Tyson, and she didn’t know what, if anything, was going on. There was nothing she could do, and the television couldn’t keep her attention. A few days ago, she didn’t have a true lock on her door and had to share a bathroom with a floor full of strangers, but now she had a two bedroom, and one and a half bathroom townhouse. She was happy that she had privacy, but she missed Tyson, and with the way it was looking she wasn’t going to be seeing him anytime soon.

  The soft knock on the door made Ella draw in a deep harsh breath. She wasn’t a coward. Her height had made her have to act tougher than she probably would have if she had been blessed with height. Walking over to the door, she couldn’t quite make it to the peep hole, but no one even knew she was there. It was probably someone from the front office with papers for her to sign, so she opened the door.

  She didn’t even get to see who it was before she was partially picked up and moved into the doorway.

  “What the fuck was that?” The harsh voice made her heart leap into her throat. She shouldn’t have opened the door without knowing who it was. “Ella, don’t fucking open the door unless you at least ask ‘Who the fuck is it’.”

  “Tyson?” Ella reached up to touch his face. She didn’t think she’d ever see him again and was so happy, it didn’t even matter that his face looked like the worst thunder cloud before an all-night storm.

  “Lucky for you it was me, but you do know that we are in a city where people are looking for us. US. It would benefit you to be a bit more cautious.”

  “No one even knew I was here,” Ella wanted to revel in her joy of him being with her, but he wanted to fuss and complain. It was a good point he was making, but she didn’t have time to get the ladder out and check the peep hole. She would make sure that she knew who it was before asking because that is the smart thing to do whether they were in this crazy situation or not.

  “That’s what you think, but the people who are after us were willing to cut a man up in small pieces and leave his intestines in a bucket. It makes it hard to believe they haven’t seen us everywhere we’ve gone.” He froze when he completed that sentence and then swore under his breath. The facts he’d given to her about what had happened that night were minimal at best, and there was no meat and potatoes to the story, but he’d just plopped down a big chunk of what had to be hard to keep in.

  There it was… the ugliness he’d been dealing with for the last few days said out loud in the light of day. She couldn’t help the look of shock and fear that had to be on her face. She’d seen him respond to the expression while they were on the run and would try to contain it when the story would appear on the news. When he’d wanted to return to clear his name, she knew a peace and excitement she couldn’t remember having before. The few pictures they’d shown on television with the scene of the crime had been one of a bloody footstep that had an imprint of the word Need within the shoe. He’d told her that his ankle had been slightly turned since birth the one thing he did enjoy was comfortable shoes. The exclusive custom fitted shoe company Needs Know Improvement was very expensive, and not many people who walked around had the trademark bottom. She’d gotten a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach when she saw the image that had been made with the bloody shoe print. She knew who wore those shoes.

  He walked to the couch and sat down, and she followed behind him.

  “I didn’t kill Bruce. We’ve gone through a lot, and I know you are aware of my history of being with the Reapers and that I’ve done the same job as Bruce was doing while I was with them, but I decided to turn around and walk into that police station because I didn’t do anything wrong that time. I was set up.” She was trying to figure out if he was telling the truth when she searched his eyes, and if he was, she wanted to know why he’d left her in the dark about what kind of people they were running from. These weren’t just small time money gatherers; these men were killers, and they were looking for them.

  “Good things happened at the station since you’ve been here with me, because I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again without bars between us.” Ella looked at him and tried to hold herself together. She was breathing funny and trying to blink back tears, but she was suddenly so happy that they were together once again. When he had dropped her off at the curb and told her to secure housing, she had really thought that this was going to be the end of any time they’d have together.

  He must have realized she was getting emotional because he pulled her into his arms and they sat on the couch quietly wrapped up together. Sometimes when he held her, she remembered how small she was. That was both thrilling and scary.

  “They want me to use myself as bait to get the Reapers to admit information about the loan sharking program so they can close the Reapers down for good.”

  “If they know that you didn’t do anything, why do you have to get involved?”

  “They’ve been trying to get something on the Reapers for years, and they see a chance. It looks like they’ll use anything they can to get me to comply. I just want to be done with the whole damn thing.”

  “When is this supposed to go down?” Ella knew if she didn’t get this information from him as soon as she could, he’d clam up. Just like she knew he wouldn’t want her to go along with him, but to hell with that. Those fuckers had framed her, and she’d done time for it; she would be a part of them going down if it were the last thing she did.

  “They didn’t tell me, but I did talk to Stephen, the new leader of the Reapers. I knew him a little bit before I left, but he is the one making all the decisions and calling all the shots so he was the one I had to talk to.”

  “You talked to him? About what?”

  “We talked about me giving him the money we owe him, and he told me he’d call me back soon so I’m supposed to wait for his phone call then meet them at the location they tell me so I can get wired up. They have my phone tapped, so they will know when the Reapers call me.”

  Ella lifted her head from his chest. “You have to wear a wire? This sounds dangerous.”

  “It is dangerous,” he blew out a breath, and she knew what was coming next like he’d already said it, “that’s why I don’t want you anywhere around there.”

  “I’m going, Tyson, we are in this together.” She knew he was going to be like this, but if he thought she had gone through all of this with him just to be the cute—damn she hated that word—girl in the background, he was sorely mistaken.

  “Let’s not talk about this now.” The man had a way of making her want to change the topic, but he would realize what a bulldog she was when she wanted something. From information to items, she was willing to wait, but she was stubborn as all get out.

  “What do you want to talk about?”

  “How about we talk about how glad I am to see you and how glad you are to see me?” He rubbed her back, and she swore that there was something magical in the way he touched her. It wasn’t going to let her drop th
is whole “Let’s save Ella” deal, but she could let it go for now.

  She straddled his lap and looked into the face she swore she could look at every day for the rest of her life. “I’m unbelievably happy to see you. I wasn’t sure if that was ever going to happen after I looked at the story they’d been running on the news. The police said you were a person of interest and showed what looked like a shoe print that has been your trademark in my opinion so I didn’t think you’d be back in my arms and ready for more loving in a few hours. The news didn’t say that you turned yourself in or that they had any more information.”

  “Yup, here I am ready and willing, and I don’t know why they didn’t say anything about me trying to make amends.”

  She didn’t know how he always looked like he was in the just past five o’clock shadow with his beard, but the scratchy texture felt good on her skin. She rubbed her neck and cheek against it softly and started to feel her motor start like his beard was the key. He normally took control of almost everything, so it was nice to get to be the aggressor in this, but she didn’t know how long she’d last before either he jumped in and took over or she just came from rubbing herself against his jeans.