by Zoey Parker
“Really?” The boy’s face lit up like I’d just handed him a puppy on Christmas morning.
“Kid, you’ve got to man up if you want me to help you, though. Man the hell up,” I told him.
“Okay, I-I can do that.”
“No more talking,” I laughed. “Not unless I ask you a question. Got it?”
“Got it.” He nodded emphatically.
“First, did you tell my dad anything about the MC?” I asked him.
“Yeah, he asked me to tell him everything I knew.”
“Did he threaten you?” I hoped he did, and I hoped it was worse than making him work overtime.
“He did. He told me he was going to turn me over to some of his mob friends,” he said.
“No one’s turning you over to the mob. But good. That’s the kind of information I need. So you told him everything you know about the MC?” I asked again, just to be sure I understood him.
“Everything.”
“All right, that’s very helpful, Bobby. Do you think you can help me more?” I asked, catching myself using the same tone I would have with a child.
“What do you need?” he asked cautiously.
“I need you to keep your eyes peeled. Let me know if you see or hear anything else, like that meeting with Carlisle. Can you do that for me?”
“I think so. And if I do that, you’re sure I can stay in the MC?” he asked eagerly.
“That, and grow a pair.”
It was like watching a balloon deflate, the way his face and shoulders sank.
“Now get out of here and go home,” I told him.
He hurried out the door, slamming it behind him. So, Bobby wasn’t actually in on the setup to get Brawn arrested. My father had manipulated him. That was a relief. I just needed something concrete to help me take my father down. I needed a list of some of his clients, some of the shell businesses setting up in his business parks.
“Carlisle,” I said aloud as I turned back to the papers on my desk. Why hadn’t I thought about it sooner? Carlisle was a great place to start. There was no one to call to talk to about what I was thinking. I had told Brawn to keep out of it, and I certainly wasn’t about to drag anyone else from the MC into it. It was bad enough I had little Bobby out there playing detective.
But Carlisle. Cory had told me about the gambling ring. Everyone knew the story, apparently.
“If Carlisle’s back, and he’s not running another gambling ring, what else could he be doing?” I asked the empty office, as if the paperwork strewn across the desks could speak and give me the answers I needed. But I already suspected Carlisle was behind some of the office suites. I just had to find proof of it.
My phone buzzed. I picked it up and looked at the screen. It was Elissa. Her timing couldn’t have been worse. Or better, depending on how I looked at it.
“Hey, Elissa,” I said, answering the phone.
“What’s up? You sound tense. How’s school going?” she asked.
“It’s not. I’ve had to put all of that on hold,” I told her, looking around the office for where to start digging for information on Carlisle or the companies he was running.
“What’s going on? You really sound stressed out,” she said.
“I am. Um, I’m at my dad’s office right now. Something has come up, and he needs me to cover for him,” I lied. I felt like that was all I had been doing lately. I was either lying, telling half-truths, or just omitting information altogether.
“Is everything okay?” She sounded concerned.
“Yeah, everything’s fine. He just had some business to come up out of town. I’m watching the office until he returns, and man, it’s a train wreck.” I talked absently as I got up and rummaged through paperwork on every desk in the office.
“You sound distracted,” she said.
“I’m trying to find paperwork on a guy I think my dad is doing work for. I think his name is Carlisle.”
“Carlisle? Is that all you have to go on?” she asked.
“Yeah. I don’t know if it’s his first or last name, but it’s what everyone calls him,” I answered her.
“Sounds like someone who would have criminal connections,” Elissa mused.
“Funny you’d say that. That’s why I’m trying to find his information,” I told her.
“What the hell is going on in your life, Maria?” she asked, astonished.
“I have no idea anymore, Elissa. I really don’t know.” I laughed.
“You’re living with a biker. You’re digging through your dad’s office trying to find information on a criminal he’s doing business for. What in the world? I thought you’d been kicked out of your dad’s house. I thought you said he ran you off.” Her tone switched like she suddenly shifted gears.
“Yeah, but he decided he needed me, so he called me out to work for him,” I said, covering myself.
“Is there anything I can do?” she asked.
“Google Carlisle. See if you can find any information in our area about a man named Carlisle who may have mob connections,” I told her.
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah, and thanks. You know, you have perfect timing,” I joked.
“Something told me not to bother you while you were at work tonight. Give me two seconds and I’ll have something for you.” I heard her clicking away at her laptop keyboard on the other end.
Meanwhile, I kept flipping through papers. “This office really is a mess,” I remarked. “I never noticed it before, but it’s a disaster.”
“At least you have an excuse if you get caught going through stuff. You can always say you were trying to straighten up,” Elissa said, offering up the excuse.
“I guess so. You’re a genius.”
“I know, thanks. What exactly am I looking for over here?” she asked.
“A name or something else to help me find this guy. And I mean it. You’re a genius. I’m going to organize the paperwork as I go through it.”
“Good idea. Okay, here you go.” She paused for a moment. “I don’t have a real name, but I think I’ve got another alias here – Edgar Banks. It says here he is tied to this person, who is a real estate developer.”
“Carlisle’s name is Edgar Banks?” I asked. “Where does Carlisle come from then?”
“Carlisle might be part of his real name. This article makes Banks sound like another alias.”
“Excellent. Thank you so much, Elissa.”
“You’re not about to let me go, are you?” she asked. “You can’t. I want to be on the phone when you find this guy. It says here Carlisle was the head of a gambling ring a few years back until he was taken out in a dispute with a local motorcycle club? Are you kidding me? Isn’t your boyfriend a member of The Twisted Ghosts?”
“He’s not my boyfriend, but yes, that’s the name of his MC. Was that in the news?” I asked, suddenly distracted from my search. I grabbed a pen and wrote down the name she’d given me before I forgot it.
“Yeah, it says here that ‘members of the MC, The Twisted Ghosts, tipped law enforcement off.’ I guess they led the cops to them?”
“I guess so. I mean, the story is legendary in the MC, but they make it sound like they just convinced him to retire,” I said. “If they got him locked up, that explains why he’s been out of the game.”
“That also explains why he’s suddenly back around. Be careful in there, Maria. Let me know if you find anything interesting or if you need more help,” she said.
“Thanks. I’ll talk to you soon,” I told her, hanging up the phone.
The paperwork stacked up around me was overwhelming. There was no way I was going to find his information in anything in the office. I knew what to look for, though. I checked to see if anyone was still at work. There were a few people still working on the lot. I cut the lights out in the office and put a note on the trailer door to let the workers know I’d adjust the time cards the next day to make sure they got paid for the time they put in.
I got back in my car and drove
to the house. I had a name, and I knew some of the addresses of the other buildings my dad had built. It occurred to me on the way home that I could pull up the county records and see if any of my father’s properties were owned by someone under Carlisle’s other name, or by someone named Carlisle. If those names were connected, it would have been easier to find them that way, I supposed.
I thought about calling Brawn, but I didn’t want him to get mixed up with my father again. I wanted to keep him as far away from my father as possible. It wasn’t safe for him to get too close. I didn’t want to call anyone else in the MC either. If I reached out for their help, it needed to be to Brawn. That would have been the respectful thing to do.
I got home, parked my car in front of the garage, and went inside. I went up to my room and pulled out my laptop. I had been surprised that none of my things had been touched since I left. My father hadn’t looked through anything. He’d left me alone while I was gone.
I opened the laptop and pulled up my web browser. I went to the local county records and started searching by owner name and addresses. If there was any information available, I was going to find it.
Chapter 20
Brawn
“Piece of shit,” I shouted as I chucked a fucked-up chair leg across the workshop.
“Hey, Brawn, take a break, man,” Cory said, holding his hands up to tell me to chill. The kid had really started to shine around the shop since I had become too preoccupied with Maria’s absence to focus.
“Brawn, you have a phone call,” one of the girls from up front called to the back.
“Tell them I’m dead,” I snapped.
“No, tell them he’s busy,” Cory suggested, correcting me as he walked over to me.
“That’s the third one today,” I told him, gesturing angrily at the wooden leg.
“Yeah, one more and you might as well use them for a chair,” he remarked.
“Funny,” I said, not at all amused.
“Okay, look, what’s going on, man?” He grabbed my shoulder and pulled me away from my workbench.
“Just having a rough day,” I told him, jerking my shoulder away.
“No. You’ve had a rough couple of days. Maybe you need to step away and clear your head.”
I shook my head but he was right. I laughed.
“Something funny?” Cory asked.
“You, man. You’re funny. You came in here as this punk kid who didn’t know anything about anything, and now I can walk out of here whenever I feel like it, and I know you’ve got this place locked down.” I couldn’t help but think someone like Lucas Kelly would have felt threatened by someone like Cory. But I was thankful to have him on board, helping me day in and day out to continue to grow this business.
“That’s how we do, brother,” he said.
“Brother,” I mused. “You know, it’s this kind of thing that can get you moved from junior member to full member. This kind of involvement in the MC. I might have to talk to James about that.”
“Are you serious?” he asked.
“I’m dead serious, Cory. I guess I should talk to your dad, too, huh?”
He rolled his eyes. “Sure, but I’m confident he’ll be happy about it. He won’t say no. But are you serious right now?”
“I mean, it would be a shame if you made it farther here than in the MC, right?” I laughed.
“Yeah, you’re right. But, back to work. Take a break if you need it. We can get to those chairs if you need us to,” Cory said.
I looked at the chair sitting there, waiting for its legs. The chair wasn’t what was aggravating me. I knew what was getting on my nerves, and it wasn’t work. Worst case scenario? That set of chairs would still be waiting on me to finish it after I took care of my personal business.
“If you don’t get around to it, don’t worry,” I told him. “I can do it tomorrow. I’m going to go ahead and handle my personal stuff. Thanks, brother.”
“Yeah, get out of here,” he said, dismissing me with a smile on his face. “We got this.”
“If not, just shut it down,” I told him as I walked through the shop door.
“Go get your old lady, man. We all know that’s what you’re doing,” Cory joked.
If he’d only known just how right he was. I grabbed my helmet and hopped onto the back of the Harley and gunned the engine. I could see Cory shaking his head and laughing as I pulled through the parking lot, heading for the road.
I knew where Maria was. I knew she’d be home from her dad’s work already. And getting her from her dad’s house was a piece of cake. I’d done it before.
I rushed through the streets to her dad’s neighborhood, back to the ritzy houses surrounded by walls to keep their neighbors out. Sure enough, Maria’s car was in the driveway. I had flashbacks of when I’d pulled up in my truck and forced her into it. I laughed as I realized Kelly didn’t ask me what had happened to the truck when I saw him. The truck was hidden somewhere safe.
I parked the bike behind her car. I wasn’t going to hide out of sight. I was going to be in and out with Maria before anyone else had a chance to realize what I was doing. I tried the front door: Unlocked. I stood in the foyer for a moment and looked around. I assumed Maria was upstairs, so I carefully took the stairs, watching each step so as not to make any noise.
At the top of the stairs, I stopped and looked around again, trying to decide which way to go. All I could hear was the clicking of keys on a computer keyboard. It took a moment to figure out with direction it was coming from.
The upstairs was carpeted, so my steps were silent. There were tables and sets of drawers in the upstairs hallway with plants and little statues on them. It was the kind of shit my brother, Shift, had in his house. All it did was create clutter and make it hard to walk around.
“What the hell are you doing here?” an angry voice snapped at me. I froze, as if I had become one of the little statuettes standing on the shelves and tables in the hallway.
“I figured I’d come see you,” I said, trying not to laugh as I turned my head from one of the Buddha statues.
“I told you to stay away while I did this, didn’t I?” Her voice sounded angry, but I couldn’t figure out why.
“I tried that, but it didn’t work. I’m going to take you back with me,” I told her.
“No, Brawn. I’m not finished. I’m so close,” she said, walking back into her room and closing the laptop sitting on her desk.
“Then grab your laptop and come with me. You can finish whatever it is you’re working on back at the house,” I told her. “I’m not taking no for an answer, Maria. You’re coming with me.”
She surprised me by actually obeying the order. She grabbed her laptop and stuffed it in a backpack. She also grabbed her new phone and put it in her pocket.
“Okay. But I’ve got to be back here before my father gets home. He’s taking care of some other business, but he’ll be back later tonight. I’ve got some information to give you anyway,” she said as she put the backpack over her shoulder.
I put and arm around her and pulled her to me, kissing her. Her fingers touched my cheek tenderly. Nothing had changed other than distance.
“Let’s go,” I told her, running downstairs with her behind me.
“Wait.” She put out a hand when we reached the door, holding me back while she peered outside.
“What?” I asked, eager to go. I didn’t want to wait.
“My father might have people watching the house. I can’t have you running around out in the yard in case anyone sees you. You know?” She stepped outside and looked around some more before waving me out through the door.
“All right, come on,” I said as I took her hand and started to pull her with me to the driveway.
“Where’s the…?” she started to ask, but she stopped herself when she saw the Harley. “We’re riding your motorcycle? You know how loud that thing is right?”
“I know,” I assured her. “I just don’t care.” I tossed her my h
elmet as she put the backpack over both shoulders.
She slid the helmet on and climbed onto the bike behind me. She slid her arms around my waist to hold on as I cranked the bike up. I walked her in a circle in the driveway so we were facing out. I revved the engine a few times, listening to the power in it. Then I gunned it, and we launched out of the driveway onto her street. Her grip tightened as we sped away from her house.
We pulled up to my house and parked next to the car. She cautiously hopped off the bike and pulled off her helmet. Her hair spilled down out of it as she pulled it off. The golden light of the afternoon caught it and created a glow around her head. She was radiant, but I could see she wasn’t pleased.