Tear Me Away (Desert Wraiths MC Romance)

by Kiss, Amy

  "Climb.”

  His hands left me no option. I climbed the iron fence, dropped down. The other guy had just finished taping a helmet onto the body and now he approached me with the dark roll. He didn't look as playful as the other one, his mouth in an outright frown.

  "Don't make this hurt," he said.

  "Please, I won't say anything. I... I don't even know what happened."

  "No," he said, ripping up a piece of tape. "You don't. And that means it's more likely you'll go mouthing off."

  "I won't."

  "Oh, I know." The tape slapped across my mouth.

  I wanted to run again, but then a hand swept across my waist.

  "Listen, babe," said the one called Twist. "You gonna come for a little ride with us. We'll keep you safe, alright?"

  I shook my head, the only protest left to me.

  "Alright then, let me say it again. Either we leave your body here. Or you come work for us."

  I went still.

  "That's what I thought. Don't worry, you're a pretty little critter. We'll find a nice use for you."

  They tossed all their bags into one big trashbag. One slung it over his shoulder. The other slung the dead guy and we walked back through the cargo maze, me in between them. We came out on the parking lot. Two shiny dark Harleys stood waiting.

  They tossed the bag in the industrial waste bin. The one guy strapped the dead guy’s arms to him with tape and sat with him on one of the bikes. Twist stuffed me onto the other bike and then sat down in front.

  "Hold on tight. You let go, you die."

  I nodded and wrapped my arms around his thick waist.

  We roared out of the lot, and for a second I dreamed we would turn back towards the bar. I could tumble off and go screaming to those other bikers for help. But we turned right. The engines thrummed and we shot off past the industrial district and out into the desert.

  I didn't understand anything about where I was headed. My death, likely. I imagined those twin orbs of blue coming at me with a knife. Somehow it didn’t feel right. They just studied me, wide and revealing nothing.

  Twist had said they’d find a guy for me. That sounded even worse.

  A motorcycle had led my parents to their grave.

  Looked like I was headed to join them.

  Ghost

  The club bar parted as I went through - like water for a shark. Most of the lower guys knew better than to look my way. Some gave me a glance and a nod. A few - always the newly initiated - tried to meet my eyes, see if the rumors told true. It was the simplest thing to tighten my lips and go glassy. They would snap right back to whatever they were doing so fast you could hear their neck crack.

  That's what you do when you saw a ghost. Close your eyes and hope it has somewhere else to haunt.

  I pounded through the back door into the club room. A long wood table filled up much of it. The bottles of whiskey and half emptied beer on top jittered as I walked around. Some of the men sitting round did too.

  "Jeez, Ghost. Could you try floating in for a change?" Dyno asked. He was tall and lean, with a fuse of red hair which he exterminated with extreme prejudice. Sergeant at arms, supposed to keep the troops in line. Like an MP, not that MPs had ever managed to keep me in line.

  "Ain't that kind of ghost," I said, pulling up the seat next to him.

  "There's one that makes noise right," Canyon said from across the table. He snapped his fingers. "Shit it's on the tip of my tongue."

  "Poltergeist," I said. "And I ain't that kind either. I'm the worst of both in one nice little package."

  One of the newer officers started to snicker at the 'little package,' but I looked his way and the grin melted off.

  Fists pounded into the table on my other side. I traced em up to the club president, a plain-faced somber-eyed Latino guy that simply went by Nico. You couldn't tell just by looking that this squat hunk of muscle led one of the most vicious biker clubs this side of the border. That was part of the charm. He pulled off an aura that drew men in about as well as mine made people stay away.

  He never went dramatic unless he got worked up.

  I met his copper eyes and nodded. "It's done."

  "Twist and Stick?"

  "Cleaning up."

  "And you just left them?"

  I shrugged, though inside it kind of hurt to go against the leader. “They can clean up just fine."

  The warm gaze stared into my own. I could spike, amp my reflection and he would keep staring. He was the only one who could. Part of the reason I’d joined up with the Wraiths to begin with.

  "Alright, Good." He made to turn away, then thought better. "No issues, right?"

  I thought of the girl again. I shook my head.

  Nico clapped his hands and actually blew a smile. "Hot damn. It'll be weeks before the Sand Shits get another supplier. Their customers are gonna be mighty open to new deals till then."

  "The Scorpions aren't going to just stand by and let us take their business, “Canyon said.

  "It's our business," Nico said. “They held it for a bit, but now we're taking it back."

  "I know jefe, but I'm saying they ain't just gonna let us off. We gotta be ready is all."

  "It's true," Dyno said. "If we move too quick, it's a pretty hard tell we knew about their guy. They might not have hard proof we took him out, but who else would do it?"

  "Maybe he just skipped town." Nico said. “Maybe one of the relatives or some cop found out he was the guy supplying the shit that's been getting people to shred their lungs. Guy who'd poison a bunch of paying customer is bound to make a ton of enemies."

  They took turns spitting on the memory of Shane Tyrell. He went by Shiny, but near the end, we’d come up with the clever nickname Shitty. Still too nice for scum like him. Guy had been paid up by the Sand Scorpions motorcycle club to approach us with a deal. Only thing was, the stuff he was slinging held 20 ppm HCl among the crystals. Burned right through our customer's lungs when they sucked in their daily poison. A couple of our own had bit it. I'd seen men die a 100 different ways back in Afghanistan, but none so bad as this, screaming out flecks of lungs until we goosed em with morphine.

  "Hey, Ghost, how'd he bite it?" someone asked.

  "Knife in the throat."

  Nico nodded. "Poetic."

  A murmur of approval washed over me, from men who had never delivered death. One death was the same as another to me, so long as it didn't drag out. Half those 100 deaths I’d seen as a soldier had been at my hands.

  This one felt lighter though - an old calculation I had used to conduct now showing a positive value.

  The man had been rightly delivered to the gates of hell.

  Now our people could return to killing themselves in slow motion. But hell, who was I to judge.

  I saw again the woman peeking out through the car, the gentle swell of her dark hair. The hazel eyes burst wide as she saw death stumble towards her. How would she judge me, if she knew the whole of it?

  She’d haunted my thoughts the whole ride back. Even with the night crawling under my amplified senses, my engine purring under me and the contentment of a job well done, my thoughts kept turning to that face.

  I blinked her out. No reason she should be in there to begin with. Club business would be going up, and I needed to have a say in the security factor. That was my purpose here. Or anywhere really. Protect the organization at all costs. Since when I did I give a damn about my own life?

  Nico was laying out expansion plans, people we were to approach. Canyon, that dumbass, suggested sneaking up on them in the dark, making them feel unsafe. I didn't know much about business, but I knew plenty about pleasing customers, and fear wouldn't buy you much loyalty. Not to mention these other guys weren't exactly trained in night ops.

  I put up formal, public, daylight meets and Nico agreed, though a tinge of disappointment went through the grown men around me. I think they wanted us attacked. They wanted to see me earn my reputation.

  I pl
ayed with an empty shot glass, and watched it tremble in my massive fist. I had only spiked a little tonight. The residuals were getting worse. If I'd actually had to let it rip, I'd be a jittering mess on the floor by now. The fearsome Ghost reduced to a baby's rattle.

  I filled the glass with something hard and downed it.

  The timbre of the meeting softened, the plans all laid and just needing time before they could be hatched.

  "You think we can just move on them?" Canyon was asking.

  "Move on who?" Nico asked, leaned back, legs propped high on the table.

  "The Sand Scorpions."

  "They outnumber us 3:2," Dyno said.

  "So we take out that clown, Gyro. No leader, they all fall apart."

  "Jeez, Canyon. Do you just say this shit cause you don't got a brain to process your own words?" Nico shook his head. "They got a VP. They got a sergeant, same as us. Imagine if a guy like Ghost took over. You think he'll just run off screaming at the sight of blood?

  "Oh, yeah," Canyon said, but he wasn't done being stupid. "We got Ghost. Ghost can take out half their crew on his own."

  "Yeah, I could. But I won't. “I shoved in my chair and walked out.

  The desert glowed under the moon. I spiked a drop and watched every inch come alive. Scorpions stalked lesser insects. A couple snakes coasted behind waiting to strike in turn. A coyote loped along the horizon sorta aimless, its belly likely full for the night. The sand swarmed at my feet, grains catching a ride with the wind only to go tumble into cousins not far away.

  I had my own bunkhouse, out back. It had been an outhouse once, but it had been modded since. Now even my augmented sense of smell picked up only smoke and pine. I stripped down on the way to the bathroom. I left the lights off, but my eyes still glowed in the mirror. The spike had already faded, but not enough for my face to look fearsome to me. I could see the bleary red around my eyes. The dark bags in the skin beneath them. The little creases on my skin that even the army's best surgeons couldn't fix. I looked like a cracked vase glued together.

  All in all, much better than when I'd joined half a year ago.

  I hopped in the shower, enjoying the warm and slightly salty water. I gargled it and spit it out. I lathered my hands with it, cleaning out any caked blood in the nails. Killing was one thing, but I never felt truly clean after a spike. The shower had a window and I stood for a long time, watching the moon creep.

  We had a fence out back. I'd never really noticed before, but now my brain used it as pretext to think about her face again. That gentle round of pale skin past those iron bars. Shining like another moon. That little glance holding my thoughts, my mind.

  I'd learned not to question the things I did. That was the first lesson in Basic. You get an order, you follow that order. Unless you shouldn't, but that wasn't for you to decide. Letting her go was an order I’d given to myself, though. I hadn’t even asked how much she'd seen or what. Her phone hadn't been recording. That was something. But her memory still had value.

  I may have been drifting since I got back, but that hadn’t kept me from riding any bar girl or junkie who didn’t fight me off too much. And killing didn’t make me seek out sex like it did for other men. It did nothing. So what was it about the sight of this one girl that left me transfixed?

  Her cowering behind that car? No, plenty of women had cowered at the sight of me outside of Kabul, hiding their kids where they could. Some, even for good reason. The special ops training had beaten the protection instinct out of me. The world was just split into acceptable targets, and no-kill ones. Nico had never spelled things out so clear, but a witness was something other than a civilian.

  Her hazel eyes. The gentle swell of her forehead. That was all I had seen of her. Why were they enough to leave me spellbound?

  I finished my dark shower, and studied my face again. My grip felt less firm on the counter, but my face also had dissolved, smoothed nearer to perfection as the chems faded. I looked as young and untarnished as my birth certificate claimed.

  That was it.

  Nothing. She had shown nothing. She had gazed at me while I was in full fury, and she had been not scared...but curious? And then, she hadn't stayed hidden, but continued to watch, safely through a lens.

  She wanted answers. And now I wanted them too. What did she see when she saw me?

  I lay on my bed, but sleep didn't come. My hands trembled across the sheets, like they had their own plans. I shouldn't have spiked again tonight. That had been idiotic.

  A roar of laughter went off in the bar, flared me with irritation. They wanted war, but they wanted pleasure too. You couldn't have both. They wanted discipline and they wanted to remove the only enemies they had left. Couldn't have those two either.

  I tried to think of the girl, her big white amber eyes, lit in my vision not like a deer, not like prey. But in wonder.

  Another roaring laugh set off. No sleep until that ended. I chucked on my jeans and stormed out across the desert.

  I slammed open the club door and a dozen faces looked my way, half between a laugh.

  "The fuck's so funny?" I asked.

  "Just celebrating, man," Canyon said. "You should too. Twist and Stick are back."

  "They're done cleaning?"

  "Stick's heading back out to get the car. But Twist is uh...gonna deal with the trash."

  They would have dumped trash. I narrowed my eyes at him. "Start making sense."

  "There was a girl, watching. Can't leave witnesses right? So he brought her back to teach her some, uh, etiquette. Took her out back."

  My hands went still. "Where?"

  Katie

  The room loomed around me stark and wooden like a coffin. If only I was alone in it.

  The man called Twist was emptying his pockets out on a chair. This was preparation for my education. The other gnarly biker had grinned and promised I was going to get some before rumbling back toward town. Twist had dragged me past an even shadier bar than the Roaring Pint and dumped me in here.

  A powder hung in the air, and I couldn't help myself. I sneezed.

  "Bless ya.”

  "Ok," I said. "Can you take me back? I get it. You guys are tough. I won't say anything to anyone."

  "We ain't that tough, sweetie," Twist said. "You might think we're hard after what you seen tonight, but we're all fluff and marshmallow deep inside. Well, most of us."

  I felt an oncoming panic, but fought it back. If I stayed busy there wouldn't be room for fear. I searched furiously for some connection. Empathy was the key to getting people to listen. I knew that from work. I needed a lot of it to convince people their little buddy was better off resting for good.

  I had to find what mattered here.

  "That guy," I said. "He was in your gang."

  "Hell no." Twist reared up and spit right on the floor. "He ain't one of us. And we ain't no gang, neither."

  "So he was in a rival...biker group?"

  "Word's 'club', honey." He leaned in over me. "We'll get to that."

  My heart pounded and the amped tension from my hangover threatened to flood me with panic. I couldn't break down. If I broke down I was just meat to this guy.

  "So he was a rival club. He messed with you."

  "Fucked us over, yeah."

  "He's not a good guy."

  "No, definitely not."

  "Alright, so he's dead." I made out a big shrug. "Why would I report it? What do I care?

  Twist stood and nodded to himself a bit. "Yeah, who gives a shit if another biker dies?"

  "No, that's not-, " I started, before realizing he was just trying to throw me. "Ok, yeah, another biker dies. Who cares? I've seen a lot of much better people die, and they didn't deserve it either."

  His eyebrows came close. "Oh yeah. You a doctor or something."

  The guy was not dumb. I wasn't going to tell him that I was an orphan. That the only person who'd look for me was probably passed out. I sank deeper into the lie. "Yeah."

  "Well, let
's take a look huh?" He dug into my purse, next to the chair with his stuff. I wished I could just run up and knock him out right now. Maybe if I was 100 pounds heavier, not hung over and had my hands untied.

  "Oh yeah, there we go." He held up my school ID. "Katie Phillips. That's a pretty name. They seem to have your job down wrong, honey. They think you fix dogs."

  I flapped my mouth aimlessly. I was out of wit. The bright yellow bulb was killing my eyes. I could feel the panic taking over the vacuum my mind had left.

  "What do you want?" I asked.

  "Oh, are we done with the part where you're being brave?" My purse flopped limp on the floorboards. "Damn, I like my girls feisty."

  He pulled up the chair and sat down before me. I peered up as defiantly as I could, but the panic grew as the air soured with his breath.

  "We're going to have a little talk. See what you saw."

  "Nothing."

  "You know you talk too much to suddenly act dumb."

  He stroked my cheek and my nose stung with the chemicals.

  "Then we figure out what's a fair exchange. We see how much you owe us."

  "Money?"

  He licked his cracked lips. "I accept all sorts of payment."

  Rape. Rape was going to buy my silence? Or was it just going to come before a more permanent silence?

  His hand cupped my face, and his eyes fell unashamed to my chest. I had always taken comfort in my ample body. If there was a button around to shrink my Cs to an A, I would have been hitting it so fast.

  "Actually," he said, without lifting his eyes. "Maybe you should show me exactly what you have to offer."

  "I have money in my purse."

  "Oh we'll get to that." His hand cupped my breast. I closed my eyes.

  Focus on the headache. Focus on the pain. Don't cry.

  My heart pounded in my skull. Twist's other hand found me and I focused even harder on that pulse of life.

  The door burst open.

  "The fuck you doing?"

  That thundering voice. I opened my eyes. The man who had killed filled the door, in the same jacket and jeans as before. His eyes went past Twist straight to his hands on my body.