Midnight Obsession: A Midnight Riders Motorcycle Club Romance Part 4

by Olivia Thorne

  “Thirty.”

  “Thirty grand?! Jesus fuckin’ Christ!”

  “Something like this could end my career if somebody found out, Lou.”

  I didn’t point out that just about everything he’d ever done for the Riders could have ended his career.

  “I ain’t Bill Gates, Dan.”

  “I’m not either. I got a kid in college, and another one in high school. Kids are expensive.”

  “Shit, don’t blame me ‘cause you didn’t pull out in time,” I said.

  He didn’t like that too much.

  “I can’t do thirty right now. How about five up front, and another ten over the next three months?”

  “Ten up front, fifteen next month.”

  “This is highway fuckin’ robbery.”

  “More like extremely personalized service,” he said.

  “Yeah, if ‘extremely personalized service’ means takin’ it up the ass.”

  He set his jaw and looked at me angrily.

  “I meant me getting’ taken advantage of financially,” I said, though really I’d meant it exactly the way he’d heard it: Buttboy for Hire Dan Peters.

  He didn’t say anything, just kept glaring at me.

  “Seven upfront, ten next month – ”

  “Ten upfront, twelve next month.”

  We haggled for a bit until we settled on 19 grand.

  “Alright,” I said, pretending to relent, even though I’d figured we’d wind up here based on past transactions. “But I want those phone numbers as soon as they come in.”

  “Soon as I get my nine grand up front.”

  “You’ll have it by the end of the day,” I promised as I got in my car.

  127

  I paid the nine grand and got my phone records, as promised.

  There were a dozen or so calls from ‘No Number’ over the last month – but there were also a lot of outgoing calls and texts to that 310 number, too. Including the night she and Benjy were in Vegas, and for several weeks before.

  Interestingly enough, the number that had been disconnected? The one she’d called and talked to Robert Smith in front of Jack? Two days after she stopped calling the 213 number, the 310 calls started.

  Just like I figured. Fuckin’ bitch had been playing us all along.

  This time I really did get one of my dancers to call the 310 number, the one I’d taken the picture of.

  “What do you want me to say?” Chantal asked, frightened and confused.

  “Tell ‘em Venus gave you the number in case anything ever happened to her, and you think you know who offed her.”

  “Do I?” Chantal asked, her eyes wide.

  “No, dumbass,” I snapped. “I think this is the guy. Just try to set up a meeting.”

  “Well shit, Lou, I don’t want to get mixed up with the fuckin’ guy who killed her – ”

  I grabbed her arm hard enough to leave a bruise. “If you don’t fuckin’ call, Venus ain’t gonna be the only dead stripper they find this week.”

  That motivated her to play ball – but when she dialed the number, she looked at me and shook her head. “Disconnected.”

  I took the phone and redialed. Sure enough, there was the familiar recording: “The number you have reached has been disconnected. Please check the number or try again later.”

  Shit.

  Nine thousand dollars was a lot of money to pay for useless bullshit.

  128

  Speaking of useless bullshit, Jack insisted we get alibis from every single member of the Midnight Riders – so we did, for almost all of them. The few who couldn’t produce one swore they hadn’t done it, and had absolutely no reason to lie.

  Unless, like Chuck, Wild Bill, and Cowboy, they’d been ordered to.

  At the meeting where Jack told the club what was going on and how we were going to keep this in-house, Benjy was teary-eyed and sullen, but nobody (except Chuck, Wild Bill, and Cowboy) thought anything of it. After all, he had just lost his designated fuck.

  Oh, excuse me. ‘The love of his life.’

  129

  With the Riders scratched off the list, Jack had no choice but to trust the Richards PD to solve the case. He thought that I’d just paid Peters off to make sure there wasn’t any blowback on the club.

  Little did he know.

  I paid Dan Peters the whole nineteen grand, and the case dragged on for months with no progress. Everyone eventually forgot about it, even Jack. After all, she was just a stripper with a coke problem. No great loss.

  Benjy hung on to it longer. He didn’t talk, which was good. Unfortunately, any time anybody saw his mopey face hanging around the Veils or the Roadhouse, it was a direct reminder of what had happened. In fact, Jack wouldn’t mention her for weeks, then he’d see Benjy and ask me, “Have you talked to Dan Peters recently? What the fuck is going on with the murder investigation?”

  That shit had to stop.

  I suggested we go ahead and patch Benjy in to cheer him up. “After all, man, he’s been through a lot.”

  Jack happily went along – but he gave Benjy a stern talking to first. Said the only way he was getting in the Riders was if he stopped the cocaine.

  Without a cokehead whore egging him on, the kid stayed clean and sober, so we put him up for a vote.

  I warned Eyeball and his buddies to either vote yes, or shut the fuck up and abstain. Eyeball knew from picking me up the morning of Venus’s murder that something was up, so he kept his mouth closed.

  That was how Benjy got patched in, which definitely cheered him up – for a while. Two months later, I overheard him drunk in the corner of the Roadhouse crying about how he was “so sorry, Ali, so sorry…”

  Okay, that shit really had to stop.

  Short of killing him, I figured there was one other way: get him laid. I paid a high end call girl from LA to hit on him at a bar, take him home, and show him the time of his life. Next morning he was back in love, and all was right with the world – until she never called. More heartbreak… that is, until I paid the next hooker to blow him. Three months and a steady string of whores later, and Venus was completely forgotten.

  It put a dent in my pocketbook, but hell, you can’t put a price on true love, right?

  It lasts forever… or at least until the next good lay comes around.

  130

  There was one other loose end in the whole thing: the DEA.

  I was a paranoid motherfucker for the next three months. Always looking over my shoulder, checking my rearview to see if I was being followed – but nothing ever materialized. No strange cars tailing me, no busts, no new guys in town looking to patch into the MC.

  It started to make me question whether she’d actually been talking to them in the first place. Maybe that dog and pony show she put on for Jack really was for a drug dealer who wanted to horn in on our territory.

  Or maybe she really had been telling Benjy the truth in Vegas about working with another gang. Who knows – maybe the Santa Muertes? I’d made plans with Rodrigo, after all –but maybe he wanted the whole pie instead of just a piece.

  In the end, though, nothing ever came of it – so what did it matter who she’d been talking to? As long as the situation stayed the way it was, I didn’t give two shits about Venus and her little drama parade. It was all over, I was free, and the future was looking up.

  Now all I had to do was get rid of Jack Pollari.

  Which I did, without having to fire a shot.

  Well, not at him, anyways.

  Venus was dead, the two scumbags I’d hired were dead – but Benjy wasn’t. Those dipshits had fucked that one up good.

  Meanwhile, a good-looking PI bitch from LA had come sniffing around, trying to find out who killed her cousin…

  …and everything wound up in a showdown in front of a meth lab in the desert.

  131

  Fiona

  I stood there frozen in shock.

  No – this couldn’t be right –

  Benjy?
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  The simpleminded, sweet guy who’d been shot the night of the armed robbery?

  “Bullshit!” Jack yelled, enraged. “You’re lying!”

  “Tell him,” Lou said to Benjy, gesturing with the gun. “Tell them the truth.”

  When Benjy looked back at us, his eyes were afraid – but there was more shame and guilt in his face than there was fear.

  That was when I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt.

  It was like someone had hit me in the stomach with a baseball bat.

  Benjy’s mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear him.

  “Louder!” Lou yelled.

  “I’m sorry!” Benjy cried out, and began to sob violently. Tears ran down his face. “I’m sorry – I’m sorry, I’m sorry – ”

  “Shut up,” Lou snapped, and cuffed him over the head with the butt of his pistol.

  Benjy stopped talking, though he still kept whimpering like a sick animal.

  I wanted to vomit.

  I had finally found out who Ali’s killer was… and the truth was even more upsetting than not knowing. At least five minutes ago I still believed it was some scumbag who deserved the electric chair.

  Not a guy with the mind of a child, who probably hadn’t known what the hell he was doing.

  “Jesus Christ,” Jack whispered, his voice full of shock.

  I glanced over at him. He looked physically ill.

  Exactly how I felt.

  “Now you know,” Lou said. “So – we good now? You get Benjy, and I get Einstein there, and we all go our separate ways?”

  “Wait a minute,” Jack called out. “How did you find out, Lou?”

  Lou seemed confused by the question. “…what?”

  “How did you find out it was Benjy? And when? And why the hell didn’t you tell us?” Jack yelled.

  “I only found out in the last two weeks, asshole. You and I weren’t exactly on speaking terms, remember? Now are we gonna – ”

  “She was gonna mess up the club, Jack,” Benjy wailed. “That’s why I did it – ”

  My stomach knotted up.

  The DEA – Ali was going to mess up the club by ratting them out to the DEA –

  But there was something strange there, too.

  According to Jack, Lou knew Ali was a snitch.

  So why hadn’t he mentioned it?

  “Shut up!” Lou barked at Benjy.

  But Benjy kept going, almost stumbling over his words in a panic. “She was working with some other biker gang – Lou said so – ”

  Biker gang?

  “SHUT UP!” Lou screamed, and pistol-whipped him in the face, sending him to his knees.

  It felt like ice water flooded through my body.

  She was working with some other biker gang – Lou said so –

  Even though Lou knew she was snitching for the DEA.

  Lou said so.

  Lou was behind all of this.

  Benjy might have pulled the trigger, but Lou had put the gun in his hand and whispered in his ear. I would have bet my life on it.

  “You fucking son of a bitch,” Jack murmured.

  I could see by his expression that he’d come to the same conclusion.

  “The kid’s fucked in the head,” Lou shouted. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

  “I think he does,” Jack yelled.

  “Look, this can be a win-win for both of us. Fiona, you can bring your cousin’s killer to justice.”

  “So you’re going to turn yourself in?” I yelled.

  Lou ignored me. “Jack, with what I’ll give you plus the insurance money on your place, that’s a quarter million or more to start over someplace new. All I ask is that you give me my guy, leave my set-up here in peace, and then just… walk away. Look – I’m gonna prove it.”

  Lou held out his hands to his side so that his gun was no longer aimed at us.

  Simultaneously, the other four bikers behind Lou lowered their pistols to point at the ground.

  Lou smiled. “I’m negotiating in good faith here.”

  I hesitated.

  No matter what he said, I was convinced Lou was behind Ali’s death.

  But he’d lowered his guard. Why was he doing this if he wasn’t sincere?

  Unless –

  “Guys?” Sid said into my earpiece. “Don’t freak out.”

  A single gunshot rang out.

  CRACK!

  Someone screamed over to our left, far away from the other bikers.

  Kade, Jack, and I all swung over to look at the side of the main house, where a body toppled over lifeless onto the ground.

  In his hands was a rifle with a scope attached.

  Lou had been distracting us.

  The whole thing was a ploy so someone could sneak up and kill us from behind.

  “Negotiating in good faith, my ass,” Sid muttered.

  “Wait – hold on, this isn’t what it looks like!” Lou yelled.

  Jack got a look on his face like You motherfucker, then turned to the right, aimed the rocket launcher at the barn –

  “NOOO!” Lou screamed.

  – and pulled the trigger.

  132

  I felt the blast of heat from the back end of the rocket launcher, just six feet off to my right. An earsplitting BLAM! nearly deafened me.

  I caught a brief glimpse of a straight line of smoke spewing from the rocket launcher’s mouth –

  Then the barn exploded.

  You know when you’re watching fireworks on the 4th of July, and you can feel the air thump against your skin as they go off?

  It was like that, but about fifty times worse.

  We all staggered back as the shockwave slammed into us.

  Lou and his cronies threw up their arms to shield themselves from the blast as burning bits of wood rained down from the sky.

  “GET DOWN!” the Hazmat suit guy screamed as he flung himself to the ground.

  I barely had time to register a single thought:

  It already exploded, so why’s he screaming ‘get down’?

  A split-second later I found out why.

  The second explosion must have been chemicals inside the meth lab. The blast was even bigger than the first. It knocked me and Jack clean off our feet.

  A gigantic fireball shot up a hundred feet into the air over the flaming ruins of the barn.

  “YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKER!” Lou screamed at Jack. He must have been shouting extremely loud, because I could still make out his words over the ringing in my ears. “KILL THEM!”

  The bikers crouched down behind their Harleys.

  Gunshots filled the air.

  Bam bam bam bam bam bam bam!

  Bullets hit our truck like ball peen hammers on metal.

  Ding ding ding ding ding!

  The tire nearest me blew out.

  Shattered glass from the passenger door’s window sprayed all over my hair.

  Bullets flew past like angry bees and kicked up dust from the ground.

  Kade had escaped the explosion relatively unscathed on the other side of the pickup. He was the first of our group to open fire with his automatic rifle.

  BRATTA-TATTA-TATTA-TATTA-TAT!

  Hazmat Suit Guy started crawling through the dust towards the bikers as bullets whizzed over his head.

  “NOT THE COOK!” Lou bellowed. “DON’T KILL THE COOK, YOU FUCKIN’ IDIOTS!”

  I thought about shooting the meth guy in the leg or something, but I didn’t care about him. I only cared about getting out alive.

  I stood up and returned fire through the shattered window of the truck’s open passenger door. BAM BAM BAM BAM!

  Lou and his four thugs hunched over behind their bikes as they fired back at us.

  Benjy lay on the ground covering his head with his arms.

  Jack crouched at my feet fumbling with the next rocket, trying to load it in the launcher. “We could use a little more help, old man!” he yelled.

  I guess Sid heard, because another CRACK! rang out f
rom up in the hills behind the flaming barn.

  The Biker with the Willie Neslon braids toppled onto the ground screaming, hit in the chest.

  “One down,” Sid said in my earpiece.

  “Shoot Lou!” Jack yelled.

  “If you hadn’t put a giant fuckin’ smokestack between me an’ him, I mighta been ABLE to,” Sid snarled.

  “Move, then!”

  “Why don’t you use that fancy peashooter of yours?”

  “I’m workin’ on it!”

  The Hazmat suit guy had belly-crawled all the way to the bikers. Lou grabbed his arm and drug him behind the nearest cycle.

  As soon as Benjy saw the Hazmat guy move past him, he must have realized he didn’t have to stay put with the bikers, and he started crawling towards us.

  I was torn. I wanted to hate him – he had confessed to killing Ali, after all – but I knew that Lou was behind it all. Benjy had been no more than a puppet.

  Not only that, but I could see from Benjy’s expression that he was terrified. I was scared to death, so I could imagine how afraid he was right about now. Tears streamed down his face as he crawled through the dust towards us.

  Jack finally loaded the rocket launcher. He sprawled out on the ground, ready to fire – but Benjy was right in his path, fifty feet away.

  “God DAMN it!” Jack roared, and swiped the air with his hand. “Get out of the way! GET OUT OF THE WAY!”

  Benjy’s face registered shame as well as panic, and he started to crawl off to the side.

  He wasn’t exactly in the direct path of the gunfight, but he still had a hell of a long way to go to reach cover.

  His best bet to survive was our truck. Otherwise he was probably going to die.

  Jack looked up at me. I could see the question in his eyes:

  What do you want me to do?

  No matter what Benjy had done to Ali – no matter what he’d done to me and my entire family – I didn’t want to see him die right in front of my eyes like an animal. I certainly didn’t want him to get blown to bits by a stray rocket.