by Zoey Parker
We pulled down an alley lined with stolen or otherwise forgotten dumpsters and loose newspapers. Real rats wouldn’t even live down there, I thought.
“So, where is this guy?” I asked Dante after we killed our engines. I glanced around at the tired, old gray concrete buildings with their empty windows. They were merely vacant husks providing homes for the derelict and the feral, the lost souls who roamed the streets down here on the edge of civilization.
Dante just nodded to the building to our left. I followed him, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching us. It felt like we were walking right into a trap.
“Listen, do we know we can trust this guy?” I asked.
“Yeah, he’s cool. He’s helped us out before, man. Chill out, paranoid. It’s not a trap.” He crept carefully in through an empty doorway.
“Hey, man,” a voice croaked from the shadows, and a shifty-looking dude in ragged clothes appeared, merely a shadow himself, his skin as gray as the concrete surrounding us. His rotten teeth—what few he had—smiled at us as he drifted towards us in the darkness of the abandoned building.
“Good to see you, buddy,” Dante said as the guy approached us. “I brought my boss with me, man. I think he’s got some questions for you about the drugs.”
“I’m not in trouble, am I, boss?” the rat asked me. There was a fear in his eyes that pleaded for his life with me.
“No, you’re fine. Do you have any of it left?” I asked.
“Nope, it was just a little bit. I already used it, which is why I think it was yours,” he said.
“But you told my partner here that this new guy has been trying to get you to come on board for a while,” I pushed.
“Yeah, man, he’s been around for a while, keeps telling everyone to buy from him, but he’s never had any product, not until last night. Last night he shows up, and he’s actually got something,” our rat told us. His face lit up as he told us about this new dealer.
“What did he look like?” I asked.
“He looked like a snake, man. He had these dark, narrow eyes and a long, forked tongue, man.”
I shared a suspicious look with Dante. Can this guy be for real? I wanted to ask him. He shrugged, as if answering my unspoken question.
“Okay, so he looked slithery and shady, right?” I asked, trying to rephrase and make sense of the rat’s description.
“Right. Except he had dope on him this time. He met with some other guys and it looked like they gave him a large sum of money for a good bit of the stuff.”
“Okay, so you witnessed the deal go down?” I asked. Now it felt like we were getting somewhere. Our village idiot might have had some real information.
“Yeah, but I didn’t see the other guys very well. They just looked like business men. You know, gray suits, sunglasses, even at night, ties, the whole nine, man,” the rat continued. He was really more of a specter than a rat. He was barely even there, and at times it was like I could see straight through him, but he was our rat, and according to Dante, he’d been a good rat.
“That’s fine. As long as we know who this other guy was, we can find the guys who bought from him,” I assured the guy.
“Cool.” He nodded.
“So, where do you come in, man? You said you tried some of the shit he was selling? How did that go down?” I asked.
“Okay, so, he pulls up between the two buildings here, just like you guys did, and his buyers pull up in front of the building.” He pointed to the road crossing in front of the alleyway where we’d parked our bikes.
“Right.” I turned to look where he was pointing.
“So, of course, the headlights get all kinds of attention. We aren’t used to headlights around here unless it’s the cops, right?” He laughed coarsely before continuing. “Anyway, I kind of crawl up close to the window over here to keep an eye on what’s going on. You know, this guy’s been coming around telling everyone he’s going to have a stash of his own soon, and he’s going to keep a regular supply. He’s going to let it go cheap, too.”
“This motherfucker,” I said, interrupting him with the words falling out of my mouth before I could even think to stop myself. “Sorry, man, keep going.”
“He’s kind of become friends with everyone. He buys us food and shit, sends the weed man around, and brings us liquor. You know, he takes care of us, man. So, yeah, I’m going to watch him when something goes down, just in case shit turns ugly and he needs some back up.”
I heard a gun cock in the shadows behind our rat, and my veins ran cold with ice. Dante didn’t even seem to notice.
“Hey, man,” the rat laughed, “as long as you’re not here to bust anybody or hurt someone, nobody’s going to mess with you. He’s just back there letting you know we can defend our people when we need to.”
Okay, I’d been on the streets as long as I could remember. I thought of myself as a badass. I’d seen a lot, and, hell, I’d done a lot. I was the youngest president of Hell’s Overlords, and still the youngest chapter head even at twenty-eight years old, after being president for a few years. But I’d never seen some shit like this. I had no clue guys like this even existed out here in this little ghost town. I shot a nervous glance at Dante. It was time to get the information we came for and get the fuck out of dodge.
“So, how did you end up trying some of the heroin?” I asked again, dropping the fake friendliness from my voice.
“After the deal goes down, old Snake Eyes sees me hiding in the darkness by the window. I mean, he looks right at me and calls me over to him without saying a word. So I slink over to him. He reminds me that he told me he’d have some dope soon. He says it’s good shit, and he gives me a little to try. From the moment he breaks it out, I know it’s not legit, you know?”
“What do you mean?” I asked him, urging him to keep talking.
“I mean, I knew it wasn’t his. I knew it was yours right away, man. From start to finish, that shit acts just like what you guys have given me. So, as soon as I felt clean, I gave you guys a call. You told me to get with you if I ever saw anything strange on these streets, man, and I saw that shit last night. That dude saw me like he’d shone a light on me, man, and I was hiding.”
I pulled a twenty dollar bill out of my pocket and slapped it in the rat’s gray hand.
“Thanks for looking out, man,” I told him. “Get something to eat with that, okay? Maybe a drink or two, but no dope. We got you on dope, okay?”
“Yeah, thanks, man. I guess your dealer will be around again soon?” he asked.
“Someone will be,” Dante told him.
I looked at Dante with my eyebrows raised. I couldn’t believe the story this guy was telling us, but that was something Dante and I would have to discuss once we got back to HQ. Lizard men who could see in the dark, dope that was immediately identifiable. I didn’t use heroin, so I didn’t know if he could tell from the high or the color or what. I knew it was pretty obvious with other drugs sometimes, but I really didn’t know much about heroin outside of selling it. I figured I needed to learn a little more.
“Hey, man,” I stopped him before he faded back into the darkness. “Look, is there anything else you can remember about this new dealer who’s been coming around?” I pulled another twenty out of my pocket so he could see it in my hand.
“Yeah, man, wears a necklace with a large tooth on it.”
“Like a fang?” I asked.
“Yeah, man, a fang. That’s it. He wears a fang around his neck.”
I slapped the twenty in his hand without a word, shot Dante a look, and started walking back towards our bikes.
I knew who had our dope, which meant I was pretty sure I knew who Sasha’s boss was. Her former boss.
Chapter 9
Sasha
“Hey, do you mind if I slip off to the bathroom real quick?” I asked Andre.
“Yeah, it’s down at the end of the hall,” he said, walking me to the door and pointing down the hallway to where the bat
hroom door stood open. He watched behind me as I walked down the hallway.
Poor kid. He was big like a lot of the younger guys, but he just didn’t have the brains like Cole and Dante had. He was pretty much just muscle. He wasn’t bad muscle either. It was good to have a guy like him around, a strong yes-man, as long as no one made the mistake of relying on his brain power.
The upstairs looked like an apartment building or a hotel where the rooms didn’t have their own bathrooms. Each room was essentially just a decent-sized bedroom. I didn’t want to know why they felt the need to have so many rooms, but as much as these bikers liked to drink, I figured it was a good thing to have somewhere for them to crash if things got a little too wild at night.
I walked into the bathroom and closed the door, locking it behind me for privacy. I didn’t really have to go. I wanted to check my phone and see if Fang had called me back yet.
As I fished it out of my tight pocket, it started to vibrate with an incoming call.
“Hello?” I answered quietly, turning on the water in the sink to cover my voice.
“Hey, where the hell are you?” he asked.
“I’m hiding in a bathroom at their headquarters,” I told him.
“Do you have anything?”
“No dope. They didn’t move it, but I’ve got some intel,” I whispered.
“Good girl. Look, get the hell out of there, okay? Meet me at the city park,” he said.
“Got it.” I killed the phone and stuffed it back in my pocket. I cracked the door and looked down the hallway. Andre was still standing in the doorway to the room where he’d taken me.
“Is everything okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, I just, um, I just need some toilet paper,” I told him.
“Shit, we’re out?” he asked.
“Yeah, there’s none in here,” I said, taking a second to look into the bathroom. There was a full roll next to the toilet, but I figured he couldn’t see that from where he was standing.
I also noticed for the first time it wasn’t just a toilet. I was standing in a full bathroom, complete with a tub and a linen closet, where the extra toilet paper probably was, just in case I really was out of toilet paper.
“Alright, I’ll get you some. I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere,” he said, hurrying to the stairs. I heard his footsteps as he rushed down the wooden stairs and chuckled to myself. Poor kid.
I closed and locked the bathroom door. I cut off the water. I opened the linen closet and found a stash of towels. I went to the window, raised it all the way, and looked down to the ground. Surely, between the towels and the shower curtain, I had enough makeshift rope to make it downstairs.
I hated to have to leave behind Cole’s back while he was gone checking on the drugs I’d given to Fang, but regardless of my physical desire, my loyalty still rested with my boss. Fang had been a father figure to me. He took me in off the street and raised me. He put me to work, taught me a work ethic, and showed me how to manage the money he gave me for what I did. He showed me there was a life better than the one I’d been living on the street. I owed a lot to Fang. I certainly needed to get away from here before Cole got back. Surely he knew by now who was selling his stolen dope, which would bring him right back to me.
I climbed down from the bathroom, surprised that it actually worked. I figured it only worked in the movies, but I dropped down in front of a bare wall facing the street. No one saw me, and no one would know until someone decided to break down the door to the bathroom.
Now, I had to get to the park on foot. That was several blocks across town from where I was. I had to hurry.
Walking through alleyways to stay off the main roads and avoid being seen by Cole or anyone else from the MC, I had plenty of time to think about what I was doing. I was actually surprised at myself. I felt myself falling for the compassionate side of Cole that I was seeing. He wasn’t just the brutal, nightmarish thug I heard about in the stories on the street. He was a kind, caring man who wanted to take care of me.
There was also Fang, who had taken care of me for so long. I was pretty much his right hand gal. I’d helped him grow his organization through sabotaging his rivals. I wondered, though, if it wasn’t time to move on.
Cole had gone after one of his own for me. He hadn’t kicked him out of the Overlords, but he’d been sent packing. And somewhere down the line, I knew that Gage would probably end up coming back to haunt Cole for his decision. I was sure Cole understood that fact as well, but it didn’t seem to bother him or deter him in any way. I couldn’t buy that kind of loyalty. I couldn’t even expect that kind of loyalty from anyone.
Of course, it was possible that everything I saw had been staged just to get me to talk, but I doubted it. Cole seemed to be a very upfront kind of guy. I didn’t see him going through all that trouble just to make me trust him.
Trust was an important issue in our business. I had to know I could trust and count on him before I moved on. I knew I could trust and count on Fang. We’d relied on each other for far, far too long for me to just run out on him. But I was starting to feel like Cole was building some trust with me. Yet, as I crossed the street into the park a few blocks from Cole’s headquarters, I knew I was doing everything I could to throw away any trust I had earned from him.
I’d made it too far to turn back. I pulled out my phone and texted Fang.
At the rendezvous point.
After I sent the text, my battery gave out. I sighed and slid my phone back in my pocket. Hopefully, I’d be able to charge it soon enough, back at home, away from bikers and gangs, drugs and money.
I walked over to the bench and sat down. It was all going to be over soon enough, and I would be home relaxing in a hot bath, letting the danger and the drama of the last few days wash away from me.
That was when I noticed three men standing next to a black sedan with the windows blacked out. They looked like Secret Service agents with their black suits, black sunglasses, and small earpieces. I narrowed my eyes at them, keeping an eye on them as they started to approach me from across the park.
“No fucking way,” I cursed, getting up and breaking out into a run. I knew I was too far away to try to make it back to the Overlords’ HQ. I had to duck down an alleyway or into an abandoned building. It was time to get creative and use my skills to survive.
They were fast, though, and they closed in on me quickly, before I even had a chance to get back to the sidewalk. They surrounded me silently.
“Come on, guys, no cat calls, no greetings? What are you trying to do?” I asked them.
In response they tried to close in on me. One of them stepped around behind me and tried to put his arms around me to hold me. I broke the hold easily and slipped away from him just to be grabbed by another one.
“What the hell is this?” I asked as I tried to fight the second one off.
“Sasha Winters, you’re coming with us,” the second one said as he pulled me towards the car. I struggled, but he was easily as strong as any of Cole’s men.
“I don’t think so,” another voice snapped. Speaking of Cole.
I heard a couple of guns cock and looked over to see Cole, Dante, Andre, and a couple of guys I didn’t recognize yet. They all stood with guns trained on the men who were trying to kidnap me.
“Go,” one of the men in black said to the guy holding me. “We’ve got them.”
Before he was able to turn around, a hole appeared in his head and he collapsed to the ground right in front of me without another word.
“Anyone else?” Dante asked in a threatening tone.
Number One darted off, but one of his legs exploded underneath him and he fell over himself.
“Shit, sorry about that,” Cole taunted Number Two. “I don’t know what happened, but I will tell you this. You need to put her down. Now.”
“I don’t think I can do that, Cole,” Number Two said, and I felt the barrel of a handgun press against my temple.
“You’re not go
ing to shoot me,” I groaned. “You were just trying to take me away with you, and you expect anyone here to believe you’re going to waste me? Your mom must be so proud,” I taunted him.
I saw smiles break out on the faces of Cole’s men as they tried not to laugh.
“If it comes down to me or you, bitch, I’m killing you,” he said.
“Excuse me,” Cole said, stepping forward. His words hit like a punch.
Number Two took a step back. I felt his barrel pull away from my head ever so slightly, and his grip lessened just a little. His eyes were obviously on the rifle trained at his head.