by Cathryn Cade
"He’d better say yes," Tawnequa said, "We're sure busy enough."
Shelle glanced at the big clock on the wall behind the counter. "But for now, I'm off. Gotta go clock out. You ladies have a great lunch shift."
Ronelle's eyes went wide. "Hey, your shift ain't over. Harry catches you, he'll dock your pay."
"No, because I'll be in his office talking to him," Shelle said. Her shift ended at eleven am. The big wall clock over the register read five minutes to. "Besides, I was here early this morning—twenty till five. Couldn't sleep, figured I might as well get a few extra tips."
Truckers pulled in and out of the Travel Center at all hours, so the cafe was open twenty-four seven, and breakfast service started picking up at the butt-crack of dawn.
"Okey-doke, but don't be hunched over your laptop all afternoon studying," Tawny said. "It's looking like a real nice day out there. And the rains will move in for fall soon enough."
"Okay, mama." Shelle gave her a grin, and walked back through the booths, around the corner past the manager's office—now empty, darn it. That meant she'd have to try and catch Harry the next morning.
She walked on into the tiny area by the kitchens where each employee had a locker. Since drums holding used cooking oils sat below the lockers, Shelle's jacket and purse always smelled like stale fries, but right now all she cared about was getting her combination padlock open. If she couldn't talk to Harry, she wanted outside, into the sunshine.
She grabbed her purse and polar fleece—it might be early September in the Pacific Northwest, but it was chilly before dawn—and let herself out the back door.
Her '83 Tercel was parked there, in all its battered glory. The compact car had once been dark blue, before the wet climate and salty sea air had their way. Now the blue was rusted in spots. The replacement hood was yellow, with more rust. But the car ran, reluctantly at times. And the seats were hidden under cute purple-and-white Hawaiian flowered seat covers, so the interior was better than the exterior.
At least today was sunny, and a temperate seventy-something. She could drive with the windows down, instead of inhaling stale car smell. One of the past owners had been a smoker, and Shelle could not get the smell out, no matter how hard she scrubbed and shampooed the interior.
She slid into the driver's seat and shoved the key into the ignition. The motor sputtered to life, and with one push of the accelerator, she backed out, shifted and putted toward the west end of the parking lot.
She had to wait for a line of semis waiting to roll out of the parking lot onto the street. As was their habit here, they took the right-away.
A big red-and-yellow Frito-Lay rig was at the end, and the driver waved for her to turn onto the street before he pulled out. She waved back and headed east along the truck-lined street that led up the hill toward her apartment complex.
Which was when she felt the lump in her apron pocket. The wallet. She'd forgotten to turn it in to lost-and-found.
Oh, hells bells. Shelle made a horrible face at the street ahead, then slowed to make the turn to the SeaTac Shore Apartments. Now, instead of showering off the cafe, changing into shorts and sneakers and taking her laptop to a nearby park to make some headway on her paper, she had to deal with the wallet.
Which would probably just mean taking it back to the Travel Center to hand over to the over-all manager's secretary, but still...she'd hoped to be done with the place for the rest of the day, not headed straight back there.
God, she was sick of waitressing, of coming home smelling like grease and stale pancakes, or in her last job, of cigarettes and stale booze. The 'no smoking' rule was laxly enforced in many bars.
Only a couple more years, she reminded herself. She could do it, even if it meant walking into the Travel Center Cafe every damn day.
And she'd return the wallet, too.
Because, the alternative was to keep it, which she was not going to do.
No, nope, nopity, no-to-the-nth power.
She was done with stealing, forever.
CHAPTER TWO
Shelle didn’t mind doing the right thing.
But was it too much to hope that doing so would get her a ‘thank you’ instead of insults and threats?
When she called the brunette's phone number—which she found in a simple Facebook search for Delicia Garza—apparently online security wasn't important to Ms Garza, the woman had demanded that Shelle deliver the wallet to her.
Shelle hesitated.
"Unless you want me to call your boss," the woman said in the nasty tone of one who truly enjoyed flaunting her mean girl. "Or the cops."
"I'll bring it," Shelle said hastily. "What's your address?" After being clean for nearly three years, she was not going to be brought down by possession of a wallet through no fault of her own. And she believed the bitch would follow through, just to mess with her.
"My boyfriend's address is 1600 Slamamish Road, Belleroy."
"Belleroy?" That was an hour away. "I'll FedEx it."
"I want it hand-delivered."
Shelle took a breath and let it out, scowling at her phone. "I can't afford the gas.”
"Oh, that's right...you're just a waitress. Never mind, my boyfriend will give you a tip. It's noon, have it to me by two o'clock."
The call ended, and Shelle let out a growl of frustration and anger. "Bitch. Selfish, entitled bitch."
And she’d thought her day was all sunshine and roses, now that her shift at the café was over.
She stared at the wallet, currently resting on her worn quilt like a jewel in the wrong setting. The quilt had once been brightly flowered, but now it was so faded the flowers were merely echoes of their former selves. The wallet, by contrast, was glossy and perfect. New, with none of the worn edges that wallets acquired from being handled and slid in and out of purses or backpacks.
And Shelle knew, because she'd opened the wallet to search for the owner's driver’s license, that it held a quantity of cash. She glared at it, as if it were its owner.
She really did need money for gas.
And she'd dealt with wealthy customers before. Most never bothered to count their change. Garza probably didn't even know how much money she had in there. Which meant if she was going to be a bitch, she could pay for the privilege.
Shelle would take exactly the amount of money she needed to fill her gas tank, and no more.
This decided, she felt a bit better. Although still pissed, and a touch humiliated. She pitied with all her heart anyone who worked for Garza. Probably made them back out of every room, vacuuming away their footsteps, like the employees of a billionairess Shelle had read about.
Back in her car, she entered the address into Google maps on her phone and set off. Her route took her east through the patchwork of towns that made up the Seattle Tacoma bedroom communities, and then up the side of one of the area's low mountains, and into the trees.
The Pacific Northwest rain forest was beautiful, but it was also, in Shelle's opinion, scary. She was not much of an outdoors-woman. She'd been camping once with her foster family, and it had been a disaster including rain, leaky tents and soggy provisions. And that had been at a campground just out of the city.
The highway crossed the Slamamish River and wound up farther into the trees. All she could see was a strip of blue sky straight over head, and evergreens towering on both sides of the road.
Her phone suddenly directed her to stop at an extremely business-like gate with twin stone towers. Bright security lights flashed on even though it was early afternoon, and a glance at the towers showed the red recording light of cameras zeroed in on her Camry.
Eep! Garza's boyfriend, whoever he was, must be seriously wealthy.
The sight of two Rottweilers, panting against the razor wire fence, hungry eyes looking at her like she was their next meal, made her hands tremble. Great, Garza lived in some kind of creepy, forest compound—not only terrifying, but fah-reakin' unbelievable! Who did that out here? Wasn't the remoteness
of the place enough of a deterrent?
Also, the guys who guarded the gate were even scarier—if possible—than the dogs.
Lean, dressed in suits way too fancy for their jobs as wilderness gate guards, and sporting not only too much gold jewelry, but also guns that they did not even bother to conceal, they were her idea of 'thugs'. And not the lumber-sexual kind that one might expect to find out here, but city thugs. The kind that hung out around a bar owned by a crime kingpin.
Which brought up the even scarier thought...was Garza's boyfriend a crime kingpin?? That would totally fit what she was seeing. And the brunette—she could easily be the pampered, spoiled mistress of a kingpin. Okay, she had to stop using that word, even in her head, before she blurted it right out.
Anyway, she was imagining things now. Lots of people had serious money without resorting to crime to get it.
Thug One tapped on her driver's side window, and Shelle rolled it down a few inches. "Who're you?" he demanded.
"Shelle Mason," she said, her voice quavering only a little. "I'm here to—"
"What's your business here?" Thug One demanded, ignoring her effort to explain. He was messing with her, she realized. Smirking a little, while checking her out, his gaze landing on her breasts with no attempt at subtlety.
"A wallet," she repeated, a spark of irritation flaring through her nerves. "I'm returning Delicia Garza’s wallet. She left it in the cafe where I work."
Without bothering to acknowledge her, he lifted his wrist and spoke to some device on his wrist, while continuing to eye her in a way that said he might be interested in her, if she wasn't too much trouble. Too bad she wasn't interested in him. Thugs were so not her jam.
A cord emerged from his collar to an earpiece. He listened, and his gaze flicked back to her and narrowed. Was it her imagination, or did he shift his gun to point more in her direction? Shelle held up the gold wallet where he could see it and tried to look harmless instead of seriously freaked out and pissed off.
"Boss says leave it here with us," Thug one began. "You're not on the approved list."
"Then why did his girlfriend demand that I drive clear out here?" Now, she was really pissed.
Thug One shrugged. "I dunno. Mr. Albany says you don't come in, you don't come in."
"Well, fine then," she snapped. "You take it. I have to get back to town." She lowered the window some more and thrust the wallet at him.
He took the wallet, but he was no longer looking at her. His body language had changed, going from 'hey, I'm hot and in charge here' to 'incoming threat'.
Hearing the roar of another vehicle, Shelle peered in her rear-view mirror. A big motorcycle slowed to a stop behind her car, followed by a battered, dirty, green-and-white pickup truck.
Great. Could this situation get any better? Thugs with guns, big dogs and now bikers. She rolled her car window back up, muffling the deep, throaty rumble of the motorcycle.
She hated bikers. Bunch of dirty, foul-mouthed braggarts who thought all women should just drop at their feet. And yeah, she cursed too, but the creative and ugly ways she'd heard bikers do so made her want to stab her ears.
Plus, they were criminals, everyone knew that. There had been a huge shoot-out in central Washington just in the last year. Rival biker gangs warring in the Tri-Cities. To culminate the festivities, one gang had blown up a bar. Apparently, all in a day's fun for them.
Surrounded by these men, she felt chilled, vulnerable. The way she'd felt when she was a kid, knowing her first foster parents' creepy son was going to try and get into her bedroom again. And that the only way to escape him was to run and hide outside, no matter how cold and wet it was in the Seattle-area night.
If Delicia Garza's boyfriend was a biker, or hung out with them, Shelle wanted nothing more to do with any of them. “Okay, wallet delivered,” she said hopefully.
Thug One merely stabbed a finger to the side of the drive.” Pull over there.”
Okey-dokey, then.
She put her car in reverse and backed around to her right, so that she was out of the line of fire, in case they decided to have a thug-biker shootout, just to liven up a quiet afternoon in the forest. Her hands, damp with nerves, slipped on the steering wheel, and she wiped them on her denim-clad thighs before grasping the steering wheel again.
The biker and Thug One stared her way, all scowling as Thug Two hit a control and the big gates began to swing open.
Shelle gave them all a jaunty little wave. Probably looked more like constipated beauty queen, but whatever. She shifted into drive, ready to get the hell out of there the moment the road was clear.
The motorcycle rider put his booted feet up and rolled on through the gate. The biker was big and rawboned, clad in jeans and boots spattered with mud, with long, black hair tied back with a bandanna, and a beard. Over a faded tee, he wore a black leather vest with a colorful emblem of some biker gang on the back.
The truck roared after him.
As it passed, Shelle could see the driver only in silhouette—most likely another biker, this one older and stocky—but the passenger was leaning against the passenger side window, head propped on his hand as if he felt ill.
He gazed down at Shelle without interest, his face slack. Blond, clean-cut, wearing a suit and tie, he didn't look like a thug, he looked like a guy who worked at a desk, then went to the gym and maybe walked his trendy dog for exercise.
Alarm bells pinged in her mind. He was so...out of place in the rattly old truck, and with bikers.
Then the pickup was past, the road free.
Shelle acted without conscious thought. Her foot hit the gas, her hands turned the wheel, and she drove out of there, as fast as the Tercel would take her.
Whoever those guys were, what they were doing, was none of her business. For all she knew, the guy was one of Garza’s pals, who’d been partying too hard, too early.
However, she didn't relax until she was out of the trees and back onto the busy highways feeding into Seattle traffic.
Awesomeness. She’d survived that weirdness, she had a full tank of gas, and the rest of this sunny, beautiful afternoon to get some work done on her paper, and then maybe crack open that new sexy romance on her phone.
And, she'd never have to see Delicia Garza, her fah-reaking gold wallet, or her boyfriend's biker-thug associates again.
So, she might not be living the good life on some tropical paradise, but like the tee-shirts said, life was good.
CHAPTER THREE
Matthew 'Moke' Ahuelo had come home.
He just wasn't sure it felt like home anymore.
Hawaii's Big Island felt like what it was, a tropical paradise. A green, lush island crowned with Pele's volcanoes, and traced with the black, lava crusts of their latest eruptions. Surrounded by the blue Pacific Ocean, white surf dashing against the shores.
Up here on the mountainside overlooking the southwest Kona Coast, clouds massed overhead, keeping it temperate, around eighty degrees. But down below along the palm tree-lined beach, bright sun shone. Beyond, the azure ocean waters beckoned. He could almost feel the silky water closing around him, waves lapping over his head, washing cares away. Yep, it was paradise, all right.
But the five acres of paradise in which he stood? The place had turned into a fucking mess.
He swiped a forearm over his forehead, then grimaced. The motion hadn't wiped away any of the sweat dripping down his face, just smeared it around. Might be only in the low 80s, but the humidity was high, as always. This, he didn't miss about his home island. Eastern Washington, where he lived now, was much drier. Even in the summer's heat a man's sweat had a chance to evaporate. Here, it soaked his skin and drenched his clothing. Moke was a big man, and he was sweating hard, because he'd been working hard.
He looked around him with mingled satisfaction and disgust.
Satisfaction because he'd cleaned up most of the trash that had piled up on his family's Mauna Loa mountainside property.
Disgust be
cause of what that trash entailed. A shoulder-high pile of food wrappers, dirty clothing, ratty awnings, rope and other shit sat ready to be hauled away. He'd found worse, too. He was ready to use his fists on whoever had been camping out here, using Ahuelo property and not bothering to take the slightest care of it.
Squatters.
Idiots who came to the islands with the idea that they could live the good life, work or beg just enough to get by, play the rest of the time, and camp out wherever they liked. They ended up trespassing on private and public lands, trying the patience of the cops, annoying the hell out of the locals, and creeping out the tourists with their aggressive panhandling.
Moke had no beef with those who ended up homeless through misfortune.
He’d lend a helping hand when he could. Let them camp out, even buy a meal and some gas. Especially if they had kids.
That was the Hawaiian way, and the way of the motorcycle club he belonged to—the Devil's Flyers MC. Like his people, the brothers gave to each other, and to those less fortunate.
But when someone mistreated that hospitality, it made Moke mad as hell. Especially the natural hospitality of this island, the way these human cockroaches had.
If they tried to beef with him about leaving, he'd show them how a pissed off Devil's Flyer took out the trash. And he was extremely pissed off—he was hot, drenched in sweat, the usually pleasant smells of damp earth, flowers and vegetation were smothered by the rank smell of an untended camp.
Also, he'd forgotten to charge his phone, so instead of listening to his music on his headphones as he worked, the way he liked, he was listening to the occasional screech of mynah birds in the shrubbery, and muffled traffic from the highway above.
Nor did he have either of his best brahs here to work beside him and joke him out of his foul mood. T-Bear and Brews were both back on the mainland, living their lives, while he sweated his ass off, shoveling shit.
At least the mess was confined to this top half-acre of the property. The rest of the Ahuelo acreage fell away steeply down the mountainside. Suitable for the coffee plants planted down there in terraced rows, but not for much else. At one time, the Ahuelos had farmed the coffee, but now the land was leased to a neighbor, Micki Lo. She was the one who'd called Moke and let him know squatters had moved onto the homestead, and that Timo was nowhere to be found. The disapproval in her usually serene voice came through loud and clear.