My car is a normal, mid-sized sedan, but when Striker climbs inside and closes the door, it feels like a sub-compact with him in it. He definitely doesn’t fit comfortably. I almost feel bad that he doesn’t have any room to stretch out, especially not in the smaller passenger side. But I force myself to ignore that, because I’m mad at him for being a jackass and I want him to suffer.
I pull out of the lot and start driving east, toward the main highway out of town.
“You know where you’re going?” Striker asks in a clipped tone.
“I know how to get out of town, yes,” I snap. “When we get closer, you can navigate, or I can plug the address into my phone.”
Striker huffs. I gloat.
Yeah, this is starting out real well.
I’m normally a very careful driver, but having Striker in the car watching my every move makes me nervous, especially after our tug of war. I’m hyper-aware of everything I do, down to when I put on my turn signals and how smoothly I brake. As I drive, I continue our argument with him inside my head, telling him that I don’t give a damn what he thinks. But even I know I’m trying too hard to convince myself of that.
By the time we reach the next town I’m jumpy and wishing we were already at our destination.
“I didn’t check to see how long the trip is going to take us,” I mumble at Striker when I pull up at a stop light, trying to thaw the ice a bit. “Could you get on your phone and —”
Thump!
My head snaps forward on my neck as we’re hit from behind.
“Shit!” I gasp, adrenaline spiking through me. “What the hell?”
A car door slams. I look in the side mirror to see a man approaching, waving his arms and yelling.
Eyes wide with confusion, I glance at Striker, then hurriedly put the car in park and open my door.
“Goddamnit!” the man is shouting as I emerge from the car and stand to face him. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with me?” I sputter. “What are you talking about? You hit me!”
“The fucking light was green!”
“It was not!” I protest. Quickly, I look behind me at the intersection. “I mean, it is now, but…”
Right on cue, other cars behind us start honking their horns.
“God damnit!” The man swears again. He stalks forward, eyes flashing. He steps even closer, until he’s towering over me and I’m backed up against the side of my car. “You’re gonna pay for every red cent of the damage to my truck, lady!” he shouts, spittle flying.
“Please back away, sir,” I choke out, trying and failing to sound authoritative.
“You better fuckin’ have insurance…” he snarls.
“I have insurance, but I’m not the one —”
“Hey, what’s the problem?”
Behind me, Striker’s door slams. The man looks over my head at him.
“What the fuck is wrong with your wife’s driving, buddy?” he shouts, his chin jutting forward.
Striker steps around the car. “Ain’t nothing wrong with her driving. The light was still red. You hit her.” He pauses. “Buddy.”
The man curls his lip. “Sure, sure, buddy. Why the fuck aren’t you drivin’?”
Striker comes up to stand next to me. He shrugs. “Her car.”
The man narrows his eyes. “The way she drives, you oughta take that car away from her. Or don’t you got the balls to keep her in line?”
“You better stop now,” Striker warns. “Before you say somethin’ you’re gonna regret.”
“What?” the man sneers. “Like you’re pussy-whipped?”
In a flash, Striker reaches forward and grabs his throat with one hand, and a fistful of his shirt in the other. He slams him backward against the truck, then starts punching him repeatedly in the face. The man tries to duck the second blow, but by the third the only thing he can do is cover his face with his arms. But Striker doesn’t slow; if anything, he hits him harder with every punch, his face a mask of rage.
“Striker, don’t!” I beg. “You’ll kill him!”
I’m afraid I’m going to have to pull him off — which given how strong Striker is doesn’t seem likely — but to my surprise, Striker stops in mid-punch. He looks over at me, pauses, then releases the man’s shirt, letting him slump against the truck.
“Looks like I ain’t the one gettin’ whipped,” he remarks drily.
“Oh my God…” I whisper, feeling dizzy.
Striker takes a step back, shakes out his fist. “You wanna wait for the cops on this?” he asks me, nodding toward my car.
Shaken, I look over at my back bumper. “N-no,” I stammer, just wanting this to be over. “There’s not much damage.”
“Okay.”
Suddenly, Striker grabs hold of the guy’s shirt with both fists again. He yanks him forward, then slams him back against the truck so hard I hear his skull rattle.
“You’re fuckin’ lucky I got someplace to be, asshole,” he hisses through clenched teeth. “Now get the fuck outta here. Before I change my mind and give you what you deserve.”
With one final, violent shake, Striker lets go. Very deliberately, he crosses his arms in front of him, signaling he’s waiting for the man to do something stupid.
Furious, the man gets shoots us both a look of loathing, then spits noisily on the ground. We watch as he gets in his truck, slams the door, throws it into reverse, and then back into drive — peeling out in a U-turn that takes him up the curb on the other side of the road as he drives away, engine roaring.
“Holy shit,” I whisper.
“Yeah. Hope that piece of shit learned his lesson,” Striker scowls.
I suck in a breath. “Don’t you think you overreacted just a little bit?”
The traffic light has turned red again. I can’t believe that whole exchange happened in less than a minute.
“Maybe,” he growls. “But that son of a bitch is gonna think twice the next time he decides to go balls-out threatening a woman. So fuck it, he got what he deserved. I ain’t sorry. Now give me the goddamn keys.”
“What? Why?” Oh my God, not this again.
But Striker isn’t having it this time. “Because I. Am. Driving,” he roars, glaring daggers at me. “If you don’t want me to pull out my piece and shoot the tires out on the next car that gets too close for comfort, you’ll do what I say. And if you got a problem with bein’ a passenger in your own car, I’ll drive us straight the fuck back to Tanner Springs to pick up my Tahoe, and drive us in that. Your choice.”
It’s not lost on me that he’s tossing my exact words back at me. Judging from the fury in his eyes, Striker is completely serious about everything he just said. I’m not going to win this battle a second time.
“Whatever. Fine.” I know when I’m beat. I pout a little, to save face, but I give him my keys.
In the car, the tension is thick enough to cut. I get out my phone and plug it into the speakers, then turn on my Girl Power playlist — badass female artists like Pink who aren’t afraid to yell and raise hell. I’m daring Striker in my mind to say something about my choice of music, but he doesn’t utter a word.
Jutting out my chin, I stare out the window and try to ignore the fact that honestly, deep down I’m sort of glad that he’s driving right now. I’m pretty shaken up by my encounter with the angry truck driver, and it’s a relief to let someone else take the wheel for a while.
I’ll be damned if I tell that to Striker, though.
As we get closer to our destination and the two of us have both had a while to cool off, we start to tentatively discuss possible strategies for talking to Jess’s parents. I ask Striker to let me take the lead in asking the questions. I’m afraid he’s going to argue with me on that, but to my surprise, he doesn’t.
“We play to our strengths,” he grunts. “You’re the talker.”
I shoot a quick glance at him, to see if he’s mocking me, but his face is neutral as he scans the road.
“I don’t remember talkin’ with her much,” Striker tells me. “Jess wasn’t exactly around the clubhouse for the conversation.”
“What was she there for?”
“Bluntly put, she was lookin’ for sex or drugs. Or both. She had a thing for bikers. Wanted to be an old lady.”
I mull over his words. “Did you ever sleep with her?”
“Yeah.”
My stomach drops unpleasantly. “More than once?”
“Yeah. Few times. She was around a lot.” Striker glances over at me. “She wanted to get with Tank most of the time, and when he didn’t pay enough attention to her, she’d try to get his attention any way she could. I happened to be around a fair amount, so…” He shrugs.
I try to swallow around the lump of jealousy forming in my throat. “Tank didn’t have a problem with that?” I ask.
Striker chuckles. “If Tank had a problem with it, I wouldn’t have done it.”
The town we arrive in is small and run-down. The kind of place whose better days were decades ago. We pull up at the address we have for Jess’s parents, and find a small box of a house with a single dirty window in the front covered inside by what looks like an old chenille blanket. An off-center front door hangs over crumbling front steps. The only landscaping consists of overgrown day lilies that partly obscure the cracking cement foundation.
I look over at Striker as he turns off the car. “You think this is it?” I ask.
He lifts a brow. “We’re about to find out.”
As we make our way up the front sidewalk, I find myself wishing I’d taken Striker’s offer to ride the bike here. At least that way I would have changed into something more casual. My power suit now feels like more of a hindrance than a help. Striker knocks on the front screen, which rattles on its hinges. About fifteen seconds later, the inside front door opens. A severe-looking woman’s face peers out. “Help you?”
“Ma’am, my name is Ember Wells,” I say. “I’m looking for Ray and Shirleen Anderle. I was given this address as their most recent place of residence.”
The woman grunts. “What you here for?”
Hoping the woman is Shirleen, I plunge ahead. “We’re trying to find Ray and Shirleen’s daughter, Jessica. We’re having some trouble locating her, and we thought her parents might be able to help us out.”
The woman scoffs. “What you want with that girl? What’s she done now?”
“I’m a lawyer, ma’am,” I say in a respectful tone. “I’m looking for her to get some information about a case I’m working on for a client. Jessica isn’t in any trouble,” I add hastily. “We just need some details that only she can provide.”
The woman pushes the door open further, steps into the doorway. “We ain’t seen Jessica in years,” the woman hisses, her face contorting. “That girl’s been bad trouble from practically as soon as she could walk. The little bitch was shoplifting whatever she could fit under her shirt from before she was even outta middle school. We kicked her right out the house as soon’s we could.”
There’s a rustling noise behind her, and then a man appears behind the woman. “What’s this?”
“They’re asking about Jessica,” the woman says sourly.
“I got nothin’ to say about that girl,” the man spits. “She’s no good. Got Satan in her. Nothin’ but a useless damn druggie.”
“You are her parents, yes?” I ask.
“I ain’t her father no more!” the man declares. “She’s no daughter to me. Only good thing she ever did for us was disappear.”
“You don’t have any idea where she is?”
“Don’t know, don’t care.”
“Do you know anyone else who might know her whereabouts?” I ask.
“Why should we tell you?” The woman narrows her eyes. “You ain’t nothin’ to us.”
I don’t have a good answer to that. But Striker speaks up.
“Jessica has hurt someone close to me,” he rumbles. “If you could help us find her, it would help out my friend a lot.”
The woman’s angry gaze shifts to him. For a second she doesn’t say anything, and then lets out a humph.
“Her slut friend Payton is living over in Reynoldsville,” she scowls. “They used to be thick as thieves. Maybe still are, I don’t know. She works over at the bar on Main Street there.”
“Thank you very much for your time,” I say politely, and hand the woman my card. “If you happen to hear from her, please give me a call. Have a good evening.”
I don’t expect them to do any such thing, of course.
Neither of Jess’s parents say anything in response. The woman peers at my card, but she doesn’t give it back to me. She moves back from the threshold, and then the door closes in our faces.
22
Ember
“Well, they’re awful people,” I murmur as we walk back toward my car.
Striker agrees. “I think I’m starting to see how Jess got to be the way she did.”
“One thing’s for sure, though.” I say fiercely. I fling open my car door before Striker can do it for me. “We have to make sure that whatever happens, those two never, ever get guardianship of Wren.”
He blinks. “Shit. You think that could happen?”
“In a perfect world, no. But I’ve seen some pretty wild things happen in custody cases. And the courts have a preference for placing with relatives whenever possible.” I lock eyes with Striker. “We have to make sure Wren stays with Tank and Cady. She has a loving family, and we have to protect that. No matter what.”
Striker stares hard at me for a second. I see something going on behind those dark, brooding eyes of his, but I’m not sure what it is. Wordlessly, he waits for me to get in the passenger side, then closes the door for me and goes over to get behind the wheel. Something is telling me to wait for him to speak first, so I settle in and make myself try not to fill the silence.
“You know,” he eventually says, “when I first met you, I thought you were a stuck-up rich bitch who was gonna take Tank’s money and let his kid get taken from him.”
“Whoa.” I let out a startled laugh, trying not to feel hurt. “Um, okay. Tell me how you really feel.”
“It’s true.” He pauses. “I don’t think that anymore, though.”
“Well, that’s nice of you.”
“Look, it didn’t really have anything to do with you as a person.”
“No,” I say sarcastically. “Just with your assumptions about my profession and who you thought I was as a person.”
“Well, yeah,” he agrees. “But I had my reasons for that.”
“What? You’ve had a bad experience with a lawyer?” I guess. “Well, you could choose any number of the thousands of lawyer jokes out there, and most of them would have a grain of truth to them. But we’re not all bad, Striker.”
He doesn’t reply for a minute or so. Then:
“Remember you asked about my family?”
“Yes.” My mind flashes to that day, and how angry he seemed at the question. “You said you don’t have any.”
“Yeah, well. Technically, that’s not true.” He hesitates. “I have a younger brother.”
The raw edge to Striker’s words makes me worry that the brother is dead. But then, Striker just said have, not had, so maybe that’s not it.
“Where is he?” I ask, half-fearing the answer.
“Fuck if I know. Chicago, maybe. That’s where he was the last time I talked to him.”
I wait for more. Striker starts the car and pulls away.
“Richie’s eight years younger than me.” He exhales tiredly, suddenly sounding a hundred years old. “Our parents got killed in a car crash driving home one night. It was their anniversary — the firs
t night out they’d had out in who knows how long. They both worked hard, but we didn’t have a lot of money, so they didn’t do shit they saw as frivolous very often.
“I was sixteen at the time, almost seventeen. Shit, I still remember how much I bitched and moaned when they told me I had to babysit Richie that night. I remember it was a Saturday, and I was pissed because I had to take care of my brother, instead of going out and raising hell with my buddies.
“From what they say, my mom was killed instantly in the crash. My dad held on for a couple days, but he died in the hospital. It was a goddamn nightmare. Like I said, they didn’t have much money. Not enough to do much more than pay for the funeral, and for a lawyer to deal with wrapping the legal shit up. We didn’t have any other family to speak of, either, which meant we didn’t have anywhere to go. I thought I could keep Richie with me,” he goes on. “I was almost seventeen, after all, right? Practically an adult. But with no money, and some juvenile offenses on my record…”
Striker trails off, leaving me to imagine how hopeless his case was. A few seconds later, he keeps going.
“They took Richie and put him in foster care. I barely saw him for months.” Striker’s jaw is tight. “Then, he hit the jackpot: a wealthy family decided they wanted to adopt him. That shit hardly ever happens with kids as old as Richie, but he was a cute as hell kid, so I guess he beat the odds. It wasn’t what Richie wanted. That kid yelled bloody murder, and said he wanted to go back to living with me. But they placed him with the family anyway. And his new parents didn’t want him to associate with jail bait like me, of course, so I saw him even less than before after that.
“I guess bein’ with the rich folks for a while changed his mind.” His voice turns to gravel. “Because after a while, Richie stopped wanting to see me at all. I remember once, about a year after he got officially adopted — by now he was twelve — I went to his school one afternoon, right at the end of the day. I was just hoping to see him, you know? I was gonna tell him to ask his parents to let me take him out one day that weekend.” He gives his head a quick shake. “He looked embarrassed as hell to see me. I gave him my number, but he never called. I took the hint.”
STRIKER: Lords of Carnage MC Page 14