Midnight Obsession: A Midnight Riders Motorcycle Club Romance Part 4

by Olivia Thorne

Then I walked back over to my bike next to Tyler’s.

  He was not happy. His forehead was all bunched up like an angry toddler’s.

  “I don’t understand why you’re so friendly with a fuckin’ pig,” he said.

  I straddled my bike. Only big thing I’d had between my legs in the last 24 hours.

  “Cuz like I told you, I had to make him think we’re on the same side.”

  “But you’re not – you’re gonna let him walk off with that meth, you said so – ”

  “Don’t try thinkin’, honey, you’ll hurt yourself.” I raised my voice so everybody in the gang could hear me. “Alright – back to Phoenix, you Bastards!”

  I did enjoy calling my men ‘bastards.’ One of the perks of the club name.

  Tyler looked at me in shock. “Why the hell did we come all the way out here just to watch some pig get in his car and drive off?”

  I cranked the engine and shouted, “Sometimes you need an overwhelmin’ show of force to be convincin’. Shock ‘n awe, and all that.”

  He pulled the Unhappy Toddler look again. “I don’t understand.”

  “That’s why I do the thinkin’ around here,” I said, and patted his mutton-chopped cheeks. “You just keep lookin’ pretty for me.”

  Then I gunned the engine and led my pack outta town.

  167

  Lou

  This was it. Time to get paid.

  We roared up on the gasworks at a few minutes before eleven – over 40 of us, including the dimwits Jack had tried to warn earlier in the day. Tex was the only one sitting this one out, on account of his fucked-up shoulder.

  Lou, he’d said, watch out – Jack’s comin’ for you, and he’s loaded for bear.

  Let the motherfucker come. It’d be the last thing he ever did.

  I wasn’t too concerned about him fucking up the deal with the Santa Muertes, though I did have Sloane on speed dial just in case.

  I figured there were a couple different ways things could go. Either Jack would show up with the DEA in tow, in which case I’d call Sloane and let her and Rodrigo shoot it out with the Feds while I took off with the cash. And maybe the meth, if I got lucky.

  The other option is Jack wouldn’t show at all, in which case I’d call Sloane over to ‘negotiate’ with Rodrigo, and the Santa Muertes could slaughter the Bastards on the spot and pick up Arizona as part of their territory.

  Either way, I should walk out with three and a half million dollars.

  I had the MC park several hundred feet from the gasworks, with all their bikes in a line. I drove my Harley twenty feet farther out than the rest of them, then got off and lit a cigarette. Gunner was driving a pickup truck with the three barrels of meth in the bed, and he pulled in behind the other club members.

  Down the highway, sixty individual headlights flared in the darkness.

  “Get ready – but be cool,” I called out to my men.

  The motorcycles pulled off the highway and slowly rode over to us. Rodrigo was in the lead, followed by the ugliest collection of tatted-up Mexicans you ever saw. They slowed down and stopped about a hundred feet away.

  I figured we’d start with a nice little charade to begin the evening.

  “Rodrigo,” I called out, all friendly-like. “Where’s Hector?”

  Rodrigo responded in kind and played it to the hilt. “Your fuckin’ presidente Jack Pollari killed him – AND Loco!”

  The Santa Muertes on the bikes snarled and grimaced like they were out for blood.

  My boys were decidedly freaked out by the news. I could see a few edging for their guns out of the corner of my eye.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa – I kicked that cocksucker out of the Riders two weeks ago!” I yelled. “You know that, Rodrigo!”

  I walked away from my Harley, out into the no-man’s zone. I figured it showed I wasn’t afraid – and that I was willing to put myself on the line for the deal. Another cute bit of theater for the crowd.

  “In fact, Jack fuckin’ attacked four of my guys today, tryin’ to get revenge! Shot one of ‘em in the shoulder. Ain’t that right, Indiana?”

  Indiana was quiet.

  I turned towards him and put an edge in my voice. “I said, ain’t that right, Indiana?”

  “Yeah… yeah,” he mumbled. Didn’t sell it at all.

  I was going to have to have a talk with that shithead after this was all over.

  But I continued my performance. “I got no love for Jack Pollari – in fact, I put 50 grand on the motherfucker’s head last night. Any of your boys wanna bring him to me, I’d be happy to pay up. And you can do whatever you want with him beforehand. He can show up in pieces for all I care.”

  “I’m gonna skull-fuck that pinche puto!” Rodrigo raged. “I’m gonna cut off his fuckin’ balls and shove ‘em down his throat!”

  “Be my guest. Just don’t blame me or my boys for somethin’ Jack did.”

  “I heard he ain’t alone!” Rodrigo shouted. “I heard he’s working with his puta ex-wife and her gang of marícons.”

  I was glad Sloane wasn’t here to hear this. Would’ve made my plan a little tougher to execute.

  “That’s the theory,” I agreed.

  “If what you say is true – if the Midnight Riders didn’t have nothin’ to do with Jack killin’ Hector and Loco – I want you cabróns to back us in takin’ out Sloane and the Bastards!”

  I pretended to mull it over. “Okay… I can do that.”

  My guys murmured. They hadn’t been expecting that.

  “…alright, then,” Rodrigo relented. “We do the deal.”

  “Excellent. You got the money?”

  “Yeah. You got the ice?”

  “Up there on the truck. I’ll even throw the truck in for free.”

  “Alright,” Rodrigo said, and clicked his fingers. One of the Santa Muertes got off his bike and started walking towards me with a black duffel bag over his shoulder.

  God damn, I could smell that money from here. I was drooling.

  The bag man was ten feet away when I heard the engines.

  168

  They were coming down the highway, revving hot – but no fucking lights. I couldn’t tell how many there were, but it sounded like a lot.

  “Who the fuck is that?!” Rodrigo shouted as he and the rest of the Santa Muertes drew pistols and assault rifles.

  “I got no fuckin’ idea,” I yelled back, although I was worried it might be Jack. Maybe even Sloane double-crossing me.

  Rodrigo looked like he was about to breathe fire. “If this is you tryin’ to fuck me, Lou, I swear to God – ”

  “I got no fuckin’ clue!” I roared.

  And I didn’t.

  Not until the headlights came on and the blue and red lights started up.

  Oh God, NO.

  A voice came over a loudspeaker as the cop cars roared up from all directions.

  “This is the police – you are surrounded. Throw down your weapons and put your hands in the air.”

  The police cruisers stopped out in a perimeter about three hundred feet from me, the Riders, and the Santa Muertes. Sixty cops leapt out of the cars and positioned themselves behind their doors, guns aimed.

  All my guys were behind their rides, and all the Santa Muertes were behind theirs, guns aimed at the cops.

  This was fucked UP.

  Rodrigo screamed, “You said you had the cops nailed down tight!”

  “I do!” I yelled. “Don’t worry – hold on, I got this!”

  I put my hands up and stepped forward. “Dan?”

  “Stop right there, Lou,” Dan’s voice rumbled over a bullhorn.

  “What the fuck, Dan?” I yelled.

  “Get down on the ground, Lou, and tell everybody to put down their weapons, or it’s going to get ugly.”

  “Dan, this is bullshit – look, let’s talk this out – ”

  “You get ONE warning shot, Lou. ONE.”

  “Dan – ”

  BLAM.

  The dirt ki
cked up at my feet.

  “Whoa, whoa, WHOA!” I screamed. I ran for my Harley and crouched down safe behind it.

  “I told you – one warning shot, Lou. You’re not gonna get a second one.”

  I saw my guys all looking at me to see what to do. I held my hand out at them.

  “Don’t shoot!” I yelled.

  In my mind, though, I added one word: yet.

  I pulled out my cell phone and sent a text to Sloane:

  At the gasworks

  Dan and cops are here

  need help NOW

  As I texted, Dan prattled smugly over his bullhorn. “That’s right – listen to Lou and play it smart. All you Midnight Riders and all you damn Mexicans, lay down your weapons or – ”

  Rodrigo apparently didn’t care to play it smart.

  “VAMANOS!” he screamed as he cranked his engine while standing next to his bike, then jumped on. His entire gang followed suit.

  “STOP,” Peters yelled, “or we’ll open fire!”

  The Santa Muerte with the duffel bag – the only one of Rodrigo’s men not standing next to his ride – ran for his Harley.

  Shit – there goes my fuckin’ money –

  One shot rang out from the cops, and the bag man went down.

  Or maybe not.

  That gunshot was like somebody starting a race. The Santa Muertes took off in a dozen different directions, a blur of chrome and leather.

  As I hunkered down with my back to my Harley, I glanced over at the duffel bag, just twenty feet away. A dozen motorcycles sped between it and me, cutting me off from the prize. Three and a half million dollars – so close, and yet so fucking far –

  Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw my screen move as the text came in from Sloane. I couldn’t have been happier, until I read the one-word reply:

  Naaaaah.

  My eyes widened.

  WHAT THE FUCK?!

  Another text came through immediately after the first one:

  Spa day, bitches.

  I about went nuclear.

  That fucking bitch – SHE’D FUCKING SET ME UP –

  “Lou, what do we do?” Doc yelled from the Midnight Riders side of the line.

  “GET OUT OF HERE!” I screamed, waving them off.

  My guys got on their bikes and took off.

  Me, I still had my eyes on that money.

  Since nobody was firing at the cops, they weren’t shooting back. At first I thought it was just restraint on their part – until three squad cars roared in and surrounded the pickup with the meth in it.

  At the same time, a lone patrol car skidded up right by the dead guy with the duffel bag.

  The Santa Muertes were all trying to get away, and they sure as hell were going to avoid any patrol cars.

  Dan Peters opened the driver’s door of the cruiser. While staying inside, he reached down and started to haul in the bag. It wasn’t easy, because Dan grunted and strained. If all the money was hundreds, then the bag probably weighed about 70 pounds. If there were 50’s and 20’s mixed in, it could run up to 80 or 90 pounds, easy.

  It was an extraordinary risk for a police chief to take, and I wondered why the fuck he was doing it – but there was a simple explanation:

  He didn’t trust anybody else to handle that money.

  Fifty feet away on my left, Gunner came out of the truck cab with his hands up – and a cop promptly shot him, then took his place behind the wheel.

  I finally realized that this wasn’t a drug bust.

  This was a rip and run.

  Mother FUCKER – they knew about the meth and the money! That’s all they were after!

  But how did they know…?

  They would have gotten away with it, too, except that was when we all heard the sound.

  whup whup Whup Whup WHUP WHUP

  Helicopters. And gettin’ closer by the second.

  Dan looked up in surprise, the bag half in, half out of the car.

  Spotlights went on and flashed across the field as bikers roared through them in clouds of dust.

  “THIS IS THE D.E.A.,” a voice boomed out over a loudspeaker. “STOP WHERE YOU ARE AND DROP YOUR WEAPONS.”

  Hahahaha! I thought as I glared at Dan from behind my Harley. See how YOU fuckers like it.

  Now there were sirens, too – far away, but pouring in from the highway and headed right for the cop cars.

  I could see Peters practically shitting himself as he stared up into the sky, a look of pure terror on his face.

  He was only twenty feet away, and he was watching the helicopters – not me.

  That was when I pulled out my gun, aimed, and shot him in the head.

  169

  Peters dropped the bag on the ground and slumped over, hanging halfway out the door.

  The cop in the passenger seat looked freaked. He tried to pull Peters in –

  So I shot him, too.

  He slumped over in the car on top of Peters.

  There was so much dust getting kicked up by the motorcycles and helicopters that I wasn’t even sure the DEA saw any of it happen. It’s not like it was a big firefight out in the open.

  I had one chance to make this happen.

  I ran through the dust cloud over to the cop car, grabbed the duffel bag, and dragged it over to my bike.

  It was heavy, but not too heavy. Peters had just been too much of a pussy to haul it into the car, that’s all.

  I dumped the bag on the back of my Harley, started the engine, and took off in the opposite direction that everybody else was going. They were all heading toward the highway –straight for the DEA’s cars. My plan was to make it to the gasworks and then hopefully slip off in the darkness on the other side. Let the helicopters keep on trying to catch the hundred bikers roaring around.

  I was thirty feet from the gasworks when I saw the muzzle flash on top of one of the rusted towers.

  I might have heard the crack! of the gunshot, too – can’t be sure, because my front tire blew out.

  Everything went crazy. I almost flipped head over ass onto the ground, but I managed instead to lay the bike down into a hellacious slide. I stepped off it at the last second so I didn’t get my leg ground into hamburger meat, but it banged me up pretty good as I tumbled across the desert floor.

  As I lay there, my bike fifteen feet away at the end of a gouged-out trough, my mind was scrambling.

  Who the fuck was THAT?!

  Does the DEA have snipers up on the gasworks?!

  And then I thought back to the last time a sniper had given me hell – the other day at the barn, when somebody up in the hills had taken out Chuck and Wild Bill.

  Is Jack Pollari up in the gasworks?! MOTHERFUCKER –

  That was when the money started blowing past me.

  I sat up in a panic as I saw bills ripping through the air, carried on the wind from the helicopters’ blades.

  Shit – NO!

  All those dollar bills –

  I paused.

  DOLLAR bills?!

  I smacked my hand down on the nearest one that flitted past.

  Sure enough, it was a fucking George Washington.

  I hobbled over to the bag, which had been torn open by the slide and had strewn out stacks of cash all over the place.

  It made no sense – there were stacks on the top with hundred dollar bills –

  But as soon as I flipped through them, I could see it was just a couple hundreds on top of a shitload of ones.

  MOTHERFUCKING RODRIGO –

  He must have been planning to massacre us and take the meth, then sell it on the side. That way he wouldn’t have to risk getting caught by the cartel, and he could just pocket a cool $20 million when he sold the meth off on the street.

  Shoulda known never to trust a fuckin’ Santa Muerte.

  I thought about grabbing a few stacks, but what was the point? I couldn’t carry enough to make it worth my while, and it would only slow me down.

  I was furious – enraged –
but I made myself calm down. There was only one thing worth thinking about now, and that was escaping.

  Which way?

  The DEA was behind me, and somebody – Jack, most likely, and maybe that whore of his – was in front of me.

  A hundred Feds, or a couple of assholes. No choice at all.

  I’d already killed two cops tonight – might as well bag me an asshole ex-president.

  I pulled out my Colt .357 and headed into the gasworks.

  170

  Fiona

  I could hear Sid over my earpiece: “I just shot out Lou’s front tire.”

  Sid was on top of one of the towers and was using a night scope on his rifle. He’d been trying to give us updates on the showdown, but the dust kicked up by the motorcycles had made him think he’d lost Lou –

  Until the dumbass came roaring out of the dust cloud, straight for the gasworks.

  Jack and I were hiding behind a rusty tower of the gasworks, listening to the motorcycle engines roaring and helicopter blades chopping the air. We’d managed to sneak in using the Escalade by swinging in from the highway four miles away and coming in with our lights off. We’d been worried about someone seeing us, but luckily Dan Peters had arrived with a huge amount of fanfare that distracted everyone concerned. We’d been able to get pretty damn close to the gasworks and then hoof it the rest of the way on foot.

  “Is he dead?” Jack asked.

  “Naah, he’s on his feet. Apparently the Mexican fucked him over on the money, cuz he’s not takin’ any of it. Okay, now he’s headed your way on foot. You want me to put him down for good?”

  “No,” Jack said. “He’s mine.”

  “This guy just popped Peters and another cop. He ain’t gonna take it easy on you for old time’s sake. And if I don’t shoot him now, I ain’t gonna be able to see him once he gets inside the gasworks.”

  “If you shoot him right now,” I said, “the DEA will charge you with murder.”