by Blair Grey
This was exactly the kind of thing that I didn’t want to get tangled up with. Mobsters. Life in Las Cruces had been pretty easy since I’d joined the MC, but it wasn’t going to stay that way if the mob was intent on wiping us out, on eliminating us as a threat.
Already, here was this guy, Ryan, brandishing a gun at us. And from the way that he said it, he wasn’t even one of the mobsters. He was just some guy that they had hired. He could shoot us at any minute, and we could be dead by dinnertime.
I had done away with a lot of the fears that I’d had when I first joined the MC. I no longer minded, really, when Braxton and I had to rough somebody up when we went to collect dues and the guys tried not to pay us. That sort of thing just didn’t bother me anymore.
But there was something very visceral about seeing a gun pointed at you and knowing that there was nothing that you could do to get out of the way of that bullet quickly enough. Not at this range. If he shot, he was likely to hit exactly where he wanted to.
“Braxton, we should get out of here,” I said in a low voice.
Braxton rolled his eyes. “Why?” he asked. “You don’t actually think that he’s going to shoot us, do you? You just heard him. He needs us behind bars, not dead. That’s probably stipulated in his contract. He won’t get paid unless he follows it.” Braxton paused. “He probably wants us to testify against everyone else. Turn in Ray and all of them.”
God, the idea of Ray in jail with his cancer as bad as it was was just brutal. If nothing else, we needed to take this fucker down just so he couldn’t do that to Ray. Of course, Ray knew the risks of leading a life like this. And I was sure that they would take care of him in jail, at least as much as they could. But both those things were beside the point.
“Don’t worry about that,” Ryan said, shaking his head. “We have compelling cases on all of you scum, some of it fabricated of course. But the jury will hear exactly what the jury wants to hear. All those terrible things you’ve been doing in our community, stealing money, dealing drugs, and black-market weapons sales? It’s all going to stop the minute we can throw the lot of you in jail.”
I stared at him for a long moment, hardly able to believe my ears. Was he really threatening to make up evidence, just so that he could get us put away behind bars? I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me since I could tell that he had reasons for wanting us in jail. But I also liked to think that sort of thing wouldn’t fly with the police force.
Again, I had to remember that Holly was part of all of this. That she was probably just as terrible as this guy Ryan. Or if not so terrible now, she might one day be.
For now, though, we were at an impasse. He wouldn’t shoot us, but we also couldn’t fight him. I grabbed Braxton’s arm and yanked him backward out of there and then back to his car. “Come on,” I muttered under my breath. “You know there’s nothing that we can do.”
Braxton growled and yanked his arm out of my grasp. “We have to do something,” he snapped.
“He’s going to get what’s coming to him, I promise you,” I told him, pushing him toward the car. I hadn’t realized that I was stronger than Braxton, but apparently, all my gym work had paid off. I didn’t have time to feel proud of it now, though. Instead, I just wanted to get out of there as fast as possible.
We were going to have to tell Ray that we had come here looking for a fight. The information that we had learned was too important for us to keep to ourselves. But I had no doubt that Ray was going to be both annoyed and disappointed that we had done this. He would have expected more. Especially from me.
He might have expected that Braxton would want to go out looking for trouble, but Ray would be disappointed that I hadn’t kept him from going, that instead I had gone along with him. This from the guy that Ray wanted to take over as leader of the MC once he could no longer run things.
I had let my emotions get the better of me. I should have known not to come here. Braxton had been so sure that the guy couldn’t actually have mob ties, but it sounded like they were worse than what we could have imagined. The mafia was paying him to take us out.
Holly was still working her seduction on me, even when I hadn’t seen her in days. She was still impacting my life with the MC. She was still making me do brash things, things that ended up being the wrong thing in the end. I wondered if that was why Ryan had planted her in my life. If she was meant to be a distraction rather than a rat. Not that it really mattered either way. Either way, I was compromised.
“How do you know that he’s going to get what’s coming to him?” Braxton grumbled as we got in the car and he shoved the key into the ignition.
“I just know,” I said. “That’s what happens when you’re in with the mafia, isn’t it? It always comes back to burn you up.” I just had to hope that Ryan got what was coming to him before he was able to ruin much else in our community.
36
Holly
The more I talked with Vera about it, the surer I was that I had to do something about Ryan and the rest of the undercover guys. It wasn’t just about getting my job back, or getting any job back with the force. Although if things worked out and I could plead my case, I wouldn’t be opposed to going back to work for the actual police force.
Maybe. If I could prove that they weren’t all corrupt and terrible, that they weren’t all the sorts of people who would burn a business to the ground just to send a signal as they tried to gather other information.
The thing was, I had always wanted to be an undercover cop, or so I thought. But that seemed to be where the heart of corruption lay in this force. And I wanted nothing to do with that. I’d rather take an office job than have to deal with that for the rest of my life.
I didn’t want to seduce people. I wanted to do the kinds of jobs that anyone could do, male or female. If that meant traffic stops, then so be it. I didn’t know how to be the girlie girl, not like Vera was. I didn’t know how to be one of those women whose one-night-stands meant nothing to them.
I should have known that I was going to have a problem from the minute I started to get involved with Grant. There was too much potential for me to get attached to him. Especially since he wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought that he should have been.
But what was done was done. Grant didn’t want to see me anymore, but what I could count on, at least, was that there was still something that I could do.
Or at least, I hoped so.
Because in all the time I had been trying to think of someone in the police force who I could talk to about all of this, I had been thinking about other people in the undercover unit, or other people who were of the same ranking as me, or nearly the same ranking. I hadn’t thought about going straight to the top to the chief of police. But I had a feeling that if anyone could stop Ryan, he would be the one to do it.
I headed to the police station on Monday for a meeting with the police chief. He was a good friend of mine, a guy who had known me ever since I joined the force. If anyone was going to vouch for my abilities as a cop, or an undercover agent, he was the one. And if anyone was going to make sure that Ryan and the rest of them were properly disciplined for the things that they had done, he’d be the one.
“Holly, it’s good to see you,” Andrews said as I walked into his office. “Have a seat, make yourself comfortable. Can I get you something to drink?”
“No thanks,” I said, shaking my head. “But thank you so much for agreeing to meet with me. I know how busy you are.”
“I’m never too busy to talk to the academy’s star pupils,” Andrews said, winking at me. “But I do have to wonder what’s going on. Why did you need a temporary guest pass to be able to access the building?”
I grimaced and shrugged, staring down at my feet. “You have to know,” I said. “I’m sure it’s all official in the system by now.”
“I want to hear your side of what happened,” Andrews said gently. “Put it this way: your being here leads me to believe that the system may not be updated altog
ether correctly.”
I gave him a sharp look, wondering just what Ryan had put in my file. It hadn’t even occurred to me that he might lie.
“I don’t know where to start,” I finally said. It was one thing to come in there knowing that I had to tell the police chief about how Ryan and the others were doing things, but it was another thing to actually accuse one of my superiors of doing things the wrong way.
And in terms of wrong, where did I even start? By telling him about the misogyny and the seduction task? I wasn’t sure I could bring that up at all without my feelings getting too tangled up in it. I didn’t need the police chief to know that I had fallen in love with my target. That wasn’t going to get me my job back.
Besides, it was no secret that the police force was still sort of a boys’ club. It was unfortunate, but I knew that Andrews probably would not be able to do anything about that.
That wasn’t what I wanted him to fix anyway. I wanted Ryan and the rest of them to quit burning down the buildings of innocent shopkeepers. But in order to explain how I knew that Ryan was the one behind the burned-out husk of Candy, I would have to explain about Grant, and that put me right back where we had started.
It was a mess. The whole thing. And there still seemed like there was no way out of it.
“Why don’t you start by telling me about Ryan?” Andrews suggested. “What was it like, working for him? Was he fair to you? Did he do things the right way?”
I looked at Andrews in surprise, and he frowned, his lips thinning. “I’m afraid that you’re not the first person to come to me with complaints about Ryan,” he said. “I thought that all of this was fixed for now, or else I never would have vouched for you to join Ryan’s team when you asked for that transfer.”
“You’re the one who vouched for me?” I asked in surprise. But that wasn’t the matter at hand. I shook my head and bit my lower lip. Those questions at least narrowed down where I needed to start.
“My working relationship with Ryan wasn’t the best,” I said. “Right from the start, he made it clear that the only reason he had me on the team was because I was a young female. He wanted me to seduce one of the targets, one of the Red Eyes bikers. When I told him that type of assignment made me uncomfortable, he basically told me to man up or else get sent back to working a desk job for the rest of my career.”
Andrews grimaced. “That shouldn’t be the way things are done, no,” he agreed.
His encouragement and willingness to listen made me bolder. “But misogyny is one thing. The real reason I came to you today is because I’m afraid that he’s putting our citizens in danger. He’s not protecting them the way that we’re meant to.” I paused. “It’s the reason that I quit the other day. I just couldn’t work for him anymore.”
“How exactly is he putting them in danger?” Andrews asked sharply.
“I don’t know all the details of his plan, because like I said, he’s had me trying to seduce this one guy for the whole time that I’ve been over there. But I do know that when one of the local business owners wouldn’t give him the information that he wanted about Red Eyes, he burned the whole building to the ground. It was that place Candy, over on Anderson.”
The chief’s eyebrows shot toward his hairline. “Ms. York, correct me if I’m wrong, but are you accusing Ryan of arson?”
“I don’t know if he’s the one who did it, but I do know that he’s told his guys to use whatever methods they have to get the shop owners to talk,” I hurriedly said. I had to assume that even if Ryan had been there at Candy the day that it had gone up in flames, even if he himself had been the one to drop the match, he had to have some sort of alibi. The guy was an undercover cop after all. He would have pulled out all the tricks to make sure that things couldn’t be traced back to him.
He was clever that way; I had to give him that.
Andrews sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Like I said, I hate to say it, but you’re not the first person who has raised some complaints about Ryan. He’s apparently done things like this in the past. I’m not sure how he continues to get hired, to be honest, but I suppose all the evidence against him seems to be gossip more than anything else. There’s nothing concrete. But I’ve suspected him of corruption for a long time.”
That was all well and good, but what did he plan to actually do about it? That’s what I had to wonder.
“Well, thank you for bringing all of this to my attention,” Andrews said, nodding at me. “Obviously, I will have to look into it, but you can rest assured that I will devote my full attention to it until we’re able to find some concrete evidence against him. I will take care of it.”
He paused. “I also want to thank you for your work here. I have to admit; I was pretty surprised when you requested the guest pass. A look into your file showed that Ryan had made notes to the effect that you were no longer interested in this field of work and you had decided to do something else with your life. But I remember you bright-eyed and excited to join the force, that first day, and I’m sorry that it’s come to this. I think it’s best that you take a bit of a vacation for now. Consider if you’re really willing to put up with this in the future or if you’d rather explore your other options. We’ll revisit it once this thing with Ryan blows over.”
I wanted to protest, but I knew he wasn’t mentioning that ‘bright-eyes and excited’ version of me who had originally joined the force. I had to admit, I was more exhausted than I had ever expected to be. Maybe it really was a good idea to take some time off, recharge my batteries, and think about what my other options might be.
I was kind of frustrated that he was thinking that partially because what Ryan had written in my file, though. It had nothing to do with not being interested in this line of work anymore. It had everything to do with the fact that Ryan wasn’t treating his position the way that he should have been.
Let them get rid of Ryan in my absence. I’d told them everything that I could for now. I only hoped that it was enough.
Then again, there was so much more to the story. So much that I hadn’t told him. I hadn’t mentioned Grant or the vendetta against Red Eyes. Would that have hampered my credibility? I had to think that it would. Andrews wouldn’t want to hear that I was certain that all the members of the most notorious biker gang in the state were all innocent.
They couldn’t all be innocent. I knew that they were taking money from local businesses. I just didn’t think they were as guilty as Ryan said that they were, with murders and drugs and everything else.
I headed out of the police station, and immediately I pulled out my phone to call Grant. I still hadn’t gotten the chance to explain things to him. To make things right. And I really wanted to. But I wouldn’t be able to explain things to him unless he picked up his phone or I managed to find him somewhere else around the city. I had gone by the diner a few times, but I hadn’t seen him there once, and even though I was tempted to hang out outside his home, waiting for him, I also knew that wouldn’t get us to anywhere good. He would just be frustrated to see me there, and with my luck, he would call the cops.
Or worse.
I had to admit; there was a part of me that was still worried about what he might do to me. He had just seemed so angry the other day, and I knew that he had every right to be.
I wanted to tell him that he wouldn’t have to worry about Ryan, that the police were going to handle him. But I realized that even that was a lie. I didn’t know that the police were going to handle him. Andrews was going to have to find something to nail the guy on first. Some sort of evidence. Until that point, it might be best that Grant and the rest of Red Eyes be on high alert.
Mainly, I just wanted to talk to him. Not about any of this. Not about anything in particular. I just wanted to hear his voice and to know that he was listening to me when I spoke. But I knew that was silly. That wasn’t something that I could have.
His phone went straight to voicemail. I hung up.
37
G
rant
I was having a difficult time with the recruits at the moment. Not because of anything that they were or weren’t doing, but more because my mind was just on so many different things. I had debated telling Ray that he needed to have someone else take over their training for now, but I knew that that wasn’t fair. Everyone else was dealing with a dozen things too, trying to figure out how to bring down these godforsaken undercover cops.
Of course, they weren’t dealing with heartbreak on top of that. But then again, I couldn’t tell Ray that I was dealing with a heartbreak. First of all, he might want to know who it was, and if he found out that I’d been sleeping with the enemy all along, he’d be upset. And second of all, most importantly, I just plain didn’t want to tell Ray that heartbreak was the reason I was shirking my duties. It seemed like a pretty lame reason.
Still, I was having a difficult time concentrating. I couldn’t even remember what we had already gone over and what we still needed to go over. I was afraid that they were probably all ready to get down to real work by now, that they were all ready to get their hands dirty, and I just wasn’t there enough to notice it. On the other hand, I was afraid to say that they were ready to go, because if it turned out that they weren’t and one of them got hurt or killed, that would be on me.
It was nerve-racking, and I didn’t know how Ray managed to juggle all of this stuff and still seem so calm. Hell, his lungs were riddled with cancer at this point, and he still managed to handle everything with more grace than I could ever hope to exude.
What’s worse is that everyone seemed like they were tiptoeing around me, like they knew exactly what was going on and they were all just waiting for the point when I finally snapped. I hated that feeling. I didn’t want the recruits to be scared that I was going to kick them out, and I definitely didn’t want Cameron avoiding me because he thought I might throw a punch.