“I’ll think about it,” Kade said without so much as a smile, then walked on over to the bathrooms.
As I watched him go, I noticed Lou watching from the shadows. He and Kade nodded to each other, and then Lou disappeared into his office as Kade walked into the men’s room.
“Wow, your friends’s a regular Mr. Sunshine,” I muttered.
“He’s not a natural blond like you,” Jack smirked.
“Ha ha,” I said, not laughing. But I did pull off the wig.
“Ah, getting ready for Round Four,” Jack nodded. “I like it.”
“I think we can drop the boxing metaphor.”
“Ohhhh, you know what a metaphor is now.”
“I’ve been reading more,” I said sarcastically.
“Well now that you know what it is, why should we drop it? Unless it’s because you already went down in the Third…”
I gasped in indignation, shock, and hilarity – and smacked him hard in the arm.
He just laughed all the harder. “As I predicted, I might add!”
I hit him a couple more times. “Your ass is going down in the Fourth!”
He grabbed me roughly and pulled me to his waist, pressing me hard against his muscled body. “Gladly,” he whispered into my hair, his hot breath tickling my skin, his lips brushing my ear.
Oh God.
I got wet just from the heat against my skin and the rumble of his voice, so low, so… animalistic.
I was about to tell him exactly how long he was going to have to spend on the mat when things went suddenly, disastrously to hell.
9
“HANDS UP!” a man’s voice yelled from behind us.
Two guys in leather jackets and black ski masks walked into the room from the back of the club.
Several strippers screamed.
“SHUT UP!” The apparent leader advanced towards the bar, his pistol pointed straight out in the air, right at Benjy and Shelley. “OPEN THE REGISTER AND GET OUT THE CASH!”
The other guy was sweeping his gun over the group of Midnight Riders, who were still seated.
My heart was hammering in my chest.
Even as a private investigator, I’d never encountered anything like this. I was used to cheating celebrities, not armed robberies.
I suddenly wished I hadn’t ignored Sid’s advice about keeping my .38 on me at all times.
I felt Jack’s strong hands clutch my arms. He maneuvered between me and the gunmen. His broad body shielded mine as he pressed close to me.
“Don’t do anything,” Jack whispered in my ear.
Suddenly the lead guy opened fire.
BANG BANG BANG!
Benjy’s body thrashed, then crumpled to the ground.
I heard Shelley shriek. In fact, every woman in the place screamed – except me.
Jack tackled me to the ground, but broke our fall with both his arms behind me, one hand cradling my head.
“Stay down,” he hissed, then wrenched around with his body still lying atop mine. He pulled a pistol from the small of his back –
But Lou was already there, stepping out of his office.
He had a shotgun.
The robber never saw it coming.
BLAM!
At the same instant, there was another gunshot, though I couldn’t see where it came from. All I knew was it wasn’t Jack’s, because I didn’t see his gun flare, and the noise wasn’t close enough to deafen me.
BANG!
The robber slammed against a nearby support column and collapsed to the floor.
More screams.
The other masked man panicked and darted out the back door. The second he disappeared, every rank-and-file guy in the motorcycle club rushed after him – though they were smart enough to pause at the door and scope it out in case the guy was waiting in ambush.
Jack jumped to his feet and rushed over to the bar, his gun trained on the robber slumped against the support column.
Lou stalked over, shotgun at the ready.
Kade suddenly appeared, the smoking .45 in his hands trained on the robber. His must have been the other gunshot I’d heard.
“I think we got him at the same time, kid,” Lou growled. “But I’d say mine finished him off.”
Kade didn’t say anything. He just kicked away the robber’s pistol, which had fallen out of his slack hand onto the floor.
Jack pressed his hands against Benjy’s chest wounds, trying to put pressure on them. “Shit – hold on, Benjy – hold on, kid – SOMEBODY CALL 911!”
I know it was absolutely awful of me – after all, a man’s life was on the line – but every cell in my body screamed in panic when Jack said that.
If the cops came here, they would ask my name – and find out that Fiona Christensen, cousin of murder victim Alison Levitt, was here in town. Someone would make the connection; God knows I had harangued the police department enough for dropping the ball on her murder investigation. All of the detectives and probably some of the rank-and-file had come to hate me.
Before long, word would get back to Jack. My entire cover would be blown.
And maybe something even worse would happen.
But I couldn’t run. That would definitely blow my cover. So I just stood there, frozen and helpless.
Kade whipped out a cell phone with one hand and kept his gun trained on the robber with the other. Lou seemed to be right about him being dead, though; the guy wasn’t moving at all.
“I need the police and an ambulance here right now,” Kade said emotionlessly into the cell. “Seven Veils strip club. There’s been a shooting.”
While Lou barked at the strippers and told the remaining customers to stay put, I got unsteadily to my feet and stumbled over towards Jack.
Shelley was sobbing behind the bar on the ground.
“Are you okay?” I asked her, my voice shaky.
She looked up at me, confusion in her eyes.
“Are you shot?” I asked.
She shook her head ‘no.’
Suddenly Eddie raced into the club through the backdoor, alone.
“Did you get him?” Lou snarled.
Eddie shook his head. “He took off the second he got out there. He must’ve left his bike running.”
“Well go the fuck after him!” Lou roared.
“The other guys already are. I came back to tell you.”
“Call them and tell them to wait for me before they do anything,” Lou ordered as he headed for the front door.
Eddie nodded and pulled out a cell phone.
“What are you doing?” Jack said angrily to Lou.
“What the fuck does it look like I’m doing?”
“Let the cops handle it!”
“FUCK THE COPS!” Lou raged. “Those motherfuckers killed one of ours! I’d shoot this son of a bitch again if he wasn’t already dead!”
With that, Lou rammed the stock of the shotgun into the side of the gunman’s skull.
The body slumped over, away from the support beam. For the first time, the emblem on the back of his leather jacket was clear: a skull wearing a hood and a crown of grey roses across her brow.
“Shit,” Lou seethed. “Fuckin’ Santa Muertes.”
Somewhere in my memory, a bell chimed.
The Santa Muertes were an Hispanic biker gang. Really scary, really bad news. Jack had gone to jail for beating up one of their members years ago.
Lou stalked towards the front of the strip club, still carrying his shotgun.
“Lou – ” Jack warned.
“STOP BEING A PUSSY AND BE A GODDAMN MAN FOR ONCE, JACK!” Lou roared as he slammed through the front door and out into the night.
I could see murderous rage on Jack’s face as he watched Lou disappear. “EDDIE!” he yelled.
The mustached man looked around in surprise. “What?”
“Get your ass over here and take over for me. Put pressure on Benjy’s wounds till the ambulance comes.”
“But – ”
“DO IT!”
Eddie muttered something into his phone, then shoved it in his pocket and squatted down on the other side of Benjy’s body.
As they switched out, Jack taking away his hands and Eddie covering the bleeding wounds, Jack looked at Kade but pointed at me. “Get her to my place. Now.”
For the first time ever, I saw an emotion on Kade’s face: confusion. “What?”
I spoke at the exact same time. “What?!”
Jack slid his gun into the back of his jeans. His hands were red with Benjy’s blood. “Get her to my place and keep her safe until I get there.”
“But the cops – ” Kade protested.
“Just do it,” Jack ordered, his voice cold and hard as steel.
“What are you going to do?” I asked, doing my best to hide the panic in my voice.
“Try and stop another killing,” Jack said, then followed Lou out into the night.
10
Jack
I roared down Highway 27, following the taillights on Lou’s Harley.
There were only a limited number of ways out of town; the gunman was apparently heading into the desert rather than the interstate towards LA. If he’d gone for the interstate, he might have ducked and weaved through traffic and eventually lost us. Maybe.
Instead, he was heading into open desert down a largely deserted road, with nothing but sand and darkness for 50 miles.
He’d signed his death warrant with that choice.
Unless I got to him first.
It wasn’t that I wanted him to live. Hell, I wanted to beat him to death with my bare hands. I fucking hated the Santa Muertes with a passion to begin with, and Benjy was only a kid, a goddamn kid.
But the asshole who’d shot him had already paid with his life. And the rider up ahead would spend the next 20 years behind bars as an accessory to murder.
If he didn’t get murdered himself in the next few minutes.
No, the reason I wanted him alive was because after three years of infighting and bitter struggle and near disasters, I’d finally put the days of gang warfare behind us. We operated inside the law now. No more bribing and threatening the cops, no more dead bodies left out in the desert for the coyotes to rip apart.
But my guys from the club were frothing for blood. That lone rider was going to bring back the bad old days all on his own – unless I stopped the lynch mob from a summary execution.
I just had to reach them before Lou did.
God DAMN Lou. I knew exactly how this was going to go down: he was going to spin the tragedy into an attack on my leadership of the club. He was going to rant and rave about how we needed strength, not weakness – how we’d lost our balls since we’d gone legit.
Lou’s whole motto was ‘Never let a good crisis go to waste – especially if it’ll bring down Jack Pollari.’
Fuck Lou.
He might take me down one day, but not over this.
My Harley V-Rod Night Rod Special was rigged for speed; Lou’s older Dyna was geared more towards cruising. I blew past him as soon as I knew exactly where we were headed.
I wasn’t disappointed. Five miles later I could see the taillights of nine bikes, tiny red pinpricks in the distance. In a matter of minutes I’d overtaken them.
Eyeball and Chuck were in the lead. I pulled up next to them and motioned for them to back off.
Chuck didn’t look happy, but he complied.
Eyeball was one of Lou’s guys. A down-the-line thug. The reason we called him ‘Eyeball’ was because he’d had the whites of his left eye tattooed to black.
He shook his head ‘no.’
I knew what that meant. He was waiting until Lou showed up, and then the party would get into full swing.
I pointed savagely behind me, ordering him back.
He still shook his head ‘no.’
Fucker was going to pay for his disobedience.
But since I couldn’t very well talk them out of it at 100 miles per hour, I figured I had two choices: wait for Lou to catch up, then watch the gunman take a shotgun blast to the back of the head… or take the guy down myself and try to keep the wolves off him.
I accelerated past Eyeball and took off after the lone rider.
11
Fiona
I stood outside the strip club. Sirens were wailing in the near distance.
Kade stood astride his motorcycle, the engine revving.
“Get on,” Kade ordered. “Now.”
Ordinarily I would have argued and stayed behind. Ordinarily I would have said, If you’re a witness to a crime, you ALWAYS wait until the police show up and tell them what you know.
But I was in Richards, California to solve a murder the police hadn’t been able to.
Or had chosen not to.
Or maybe even been paid not to.
If one of the cops happened to remember the name Fiona Christensen, cousin of murder victim Alison Rivers – and I was sure someone would, after my hundred-plus phone calls over the last year – my cover would be blown. Either by accident, or maybe by outright ratting to the motorcycle club.
I trusted in Jack’s innate goodness. He was chasing down a scumbag to try to save the guy’s life; he wasn’t going to do anything to me. He might run me out of town, but that was all he would do. I was sure of it.
But if Lou got the information?
Or the person who had actually killed Ali?
I didn’t want to think about it.
Not only that, but the murderer was dead. Nothing I could do about that.
And as far as I was concerned, the other guy deserved whatever was coming to him. As fucked up as it might sound, I halfway hoped Jack didn’t catch up to Lou in time.
Before Ali’s murder I wouldn’t have felt that way. In fact, I would have been horrified at my thoughts.
Not anymore.
I was here in Richards for one reason, and one reason only.
And waiting for the cops would destroy any hope or options I had.
I got on the bike, and Kade took off down the street in the opposite direction of the sirens.
12
Jack
I pulled out my Glock and roared up about thirty feet behind the guy, slightly to his right.
He twisted around to look at me, but in the darkness, I saw little more than a silhouette against his bike’s headlight on the road.
Part of that silhouette was the gun in his hand.
I swerved directly behind him as the fucker’s pistol went off.
BLAM BLAM!
It’s damn hard to aim a gun on a motorcycle. It’s even harder to do it when you’re shooting backwards and driving 100 miles an hour down a desert road at night.
He didn’t even get close to hitting me.
But he sure as hell pissed me off.
I thought about shooting him in the back myself, but that would defeat the purpose of why I came out here. Might as well have let Lou finish him off.
So I’d go with Plan A.
If he broke his neck, though, I wouldn’t be too upset over it.
I moved to his far left. If he wanted to take another shot at me, he would have to reach around his body and put the gun right up against his face and ear, which I doubt he was going to do. Or he could switch the gun and try with his left.
I was betting he wasn’t a leftie.
Even if he was, it would take him a couple seconds to shoot again.
A couple seconds was all I needed.
I said it’s hard to aim a gun on a motorcycle.
It’s a hell of a lot easier when you’re shooting straight ahead and you can steady your arm against something.
I braced my arm against the handlebars of my bike and aimed.
BLAM!
BLAM!
On the second shot, I blew out his tire.
At 60 miles an hour, he might’ve been able to handle it.
Not at 100.
Down went Mr. Santa Muertes, scraping all over the desert highway in a shower of spar
ks on the asphalt.
13
Fiona
Kade drove up in Jack’s driveway and parked the bike. He cautioned me to stay behind him, then pulled out his .45 as he crept up to the front door.
Everything was quiet. No sign of life at all.
Kade dug out a key, opened the front door, and punched out a code on the beeping alarm. Then he shut the door behind me, put a hand on my back, and hustled me into the kitchen.
“Stay here while I check out the rest of the house,” he said emotionlessly. Before I could object, he was gone.
It was a little creepy standing there all by myself in the dark, so I turned on the kitchen light and crossed my arms uneasily.
Kade returned about sixty seconds later. He was unemotional as always, but he seemed less tense. However, rather than put up his gun, he set it on the kitchen island and sat down on a bar chair.
“Was all that really necessary?” I snapped. I was shaky and on edge, and Kade’s theatrics were annoying the hell out of me.
“What?”
“Pulling the gun, checking the house – ”
“Yes,” he said simply.
“Why are you acting like there’s a serial killer around the corner? It was an armed robbery, not a – ”
“No it wasn’t,” Kade interrupted in a monotone voice.
“Why, because it was two motorcycle gang members who did it?” I scoffed.
“No, because it’s obvious it wasn’t an armed robbery.”
The guy was infuriating.
“He told them to open the cash register,” I pointed out.
“And shot Benjy instead of getting the money.”
I grappled for some plausible explanation. “Maybe he thought Benjy was reaching for a gun.”
“No.”
“How do you know? You were in the bathroom.”
“Soon as I heard them come in, I cracked the door open. I was watching the entire time. Benjy didn’t make a move.”
“Maybe the robber just freaked,” I suggested.
Midnight Lust: A Midnight Riders Motorcycle Club Romance Part 2 Page 3