by Hazel Parker
“Simple, dear,” he said, raising his hands as if in offering. “We want you to make a video.”
“The fuck?” I said, images rushing to mind about exactly what kind of video they were intending to make. “Not gonna happen, no. I’m not fucking any of you.”
The man looked back to his cronies, and they all began laughing, a laugh I knew was very much designed to mock me and tell me that either they were all going to fuck me or, hopefully, none of them were going to fuck me.
“What do you think this is, friend, a casting couch? No, no, we are not interested in that. We have a much simpler aim. Extortion.”
“What?”
“You’re a smart girl, Jane,” the man said. “We’re going to give you a script to read. We’ll make it really simple. In fact, we already have it written out on signs for you. See? Justin here will show.”
I looked over to see a lanky man with blond hair and tats on his neck as well—two crosses, again—holding up cue cards, the first of which said: “My name is Jane Peters, and I am alive and unhurt.”
“What’s the point?”
“I see you are smart, but not a good listener, beautiful,” the Hispanic man said. “I wonder, do your patients appreciate that?”
“Who are you?” I snarled.
The man put his hands up, gave a fake warm smile, and moved over to kiss me on the cheek. Feeling like resisting him would get me shot faster than I could move, I let it happen.
“You can call me Diablo. I’m an old family friend.”
He turned to the rest of his crew before I had the chance to respond to that.
“Get everything ready. Lights and everything. We shoot in one minute.”
Only then did he turn back to me, that same shit-eating grin on his face that I so badly wanted to punch.
“I am not sure if you are aware, friend, but a few nights ago, your lover had the idea to blow up one of my warehouses,” he said. “I do not take kindly to such acts of violence. Such an act is an abomination and needs retaliation. Now, I do not like to inflict violence upon women. You are innocent in all of this, I know. I am not stupid. But, our mutual friend Trace loves you.”
“Nice try, but he broke my heart this morning,” I said, more angry than sad. “You’re not going to get anything out of me.”
“Aw, my condolences,” he said, sounding oddly sincere. “Even if so, though, Trace has much too big a heart to let anything happen to you. He will come to protect you, which is exactly what we want. You will tell him where you are. He will come to us. And we will kill him.”
“And then?”
Diablo shrugged.
“You’ll be free to go, friend. Like I said, I don’t like to hurt women. Especially beautiful ones.”
With that, he gave me one more kiss on the cheek. Oh, how tempting it was to chop him in the groin or grab his neck and choke him—but how quickly that would have gotten me killed as well. As long as I wasn’t getting raped or hurt… I had to do what best ensured I survived.
Diablo moved behind the camera and motioned for the crew to start.
“You know what to do, friend,” he shouted to me.
The red light went on, and I looked at the cards, reading slowly.
“My name is Jane Peters, and I am alive and unhurt. This message is for Trace Cole and the rest of the Savage Saints. The Devil’s Mercenaries know what you did to their warehouse, and they are not going to rely upon the law to help. Instead, they are going to give you a choice. Either you come and rescue me… or I die within four hours.”
They cut the camera before I could react.
“You said you weren’t going to kill me! You said you weren’t going to hurt me!”
“And you believed a biker?” Diablo said with a chuckle. “That should be lesson one for you, Jane. Bikers are not honest, good men. We are outlaws, men who take matters into our own hands. If we have to lie to get what we want, we do so. Case in point. Tie her up!”
I stood up and tried to make a run for what looked like the nearest door, but two men tackled me and held me down with ease. I shrieked as they bound my legs and my hands to a chair, but my thrashing did little other than make their task more difficult, not impossible. There was no getting out from where I was, not without help.
Just before leaving me, Diablo squatted down.
“You be a good girl,” he said. “And I may yet let you live if you agree to become my lady.”
With that, he smirked, kissed me once more, and then left me to suffer in the shadows.
Chapter 15: Trace
The efforts to make the clubhouse cop-friendly became a lot easier with the fact that none of them showed up until well after sunset.
For the course of the day, we all went on various runs, dropping weapons and whatever coke we had stolen to our individual homes and their respective hiding spots. None of us were naive enough to think that our homes wouldn’t get searched to some degree, but all of us also knew that while such homes would be cursory and more or less much safer than the clubhouse, which was likely to get torn to shreds.
About six cop cars showed up, all parked right outside the shop. The seven of us officers stood outside, arms crossed, not so much in a show of intimidation as in a show of “we’re here, what do you want?”
“All of you, stay outside where we can see you,” one woman from the California State Police said. I had to admit, she was kind of cute, and a couple of the Saints took advantage, whistling at her and asking if she’d like some coffee and donuts. I would have told them to shut up if I wasn’t laughing so much myself.
“Which one of you is Tracy Cole?”
Well, shit. Getting right to it, I guess.
“I am,” I said, stepping forward.
“Come over here.”
“Oh, shit, Trace gonna get the business from the lady cop!” Krispy shouted, drawing a stare down from a much larger, much more intimidating cop. Krispy leaned over to say something, but the man said something about arresting him for harassment of a cop, and even Krispy had the good sense not to say anything.
“Where were you the night of the warehouse explosion?” she began.
“I’m sorry?” I said, looking at… Officer Gregory with a shrug. “I’m not familiar—”
“Don’t bullshit me, Mr. Cole,” she said, to which I just shrugged with a smile. “You know that lying to a state official carries serious jail time, right? And that if we find any unregistered guns, any drugs, anything of that sort, you all are going in the slammer, right?”
“I am aware, yes ma’am,” I said, putting my hands up. “And I can tell you that this is just a repair shop full of mechanics who happen to love motorcycles. We just show up on our shift, do our job, and ride our Harleys around. We don’t do any of that stuff that you mentioned.”
I recognized the look that Officer Gregory gave me. It was similar to the one that Jane had given me this morning just before slapping me.
Suffice to say, I wasn’t very interested in getting hit again. At least a cop probably had to bite her tongue and keep her hands down, lest she face some aggravated assault charges.
She may or may not have known that we didn’t have the budget or the desire to press such charges, but she knew better than to risk it.
“Fine then. You still haven’t said what you were doing the night of the explosion.”
“What night was that?”
“Four nights ago,” Officer Gregory said as if in disbelief I could be so stupid as not to know.
“Four nights ago… I was at home, watching Netflix with Sensei over there.”
“Really,” she said, turning to Sensei, who had a stern look on his face with the slightest hint of a smug smile over it. “You spend your free time with a man two decades older than you? Watching Netflix? I thought Netflix was for chilling with young gals. Surely, you must get those by the boatload, Mr. Cole. Or maybe it’s the boys you want?”
“My sex life has nothing to do with this,” I said.
“I was at home, watching Netflix with Sensei. We are all good friends here. I bet you’ll find out that these boys were all either relaxing at home, on shift, or just taking care of groceries. We’re bikers, not con men.”
Officer Gregory got in my face then. I knew she was desperate; a cop who had information that could have implicated us would not have had to resort to such aggressive moves as she was. We had the advantage of perhaps being suspects but not strongly studied or tied-down suspects.
“We’ll see about that,” she growled. “You’re free to go. Stay in my sight, though.”
I smiled, said I would, and went back to the boys with a smug smile on my face.
“How—”
But Krispy shut himself up before I needed to remind him—or before the massive cop needed to remind him—of the threat from earlier.
“We talked, and I told her the truth,” I said with a shrug, feeling my phone vibrating.
Casually, I opened my phone, seeing I had a text message from an unknown number with a video.
A video that, in the preview thumbnail, had Jane Peters on a couch, looking distressed as hell.
“What the fuck?” I mumbled.
I saw other Saints gathering around me as I hit play.
“My name is Jane Peters, and I am alive and unhurt. This message is for Trace Cole and the rest of the Savage Saints.”
Shit. Fuck!
“The Devil’s Mercenaries know what you did to their warehouse, and they are not going to rely upon the law to help. Instead, they are going to give you a choice. Either you come and rescue me… or I die within four hours.”
And the video ended.
“Goddamnit, Wiggins!” I shouted, drawing the attention of the local sheriff. I pulled him aside, far away from the other state officials. “You gotta get these cops out of here, now.”
“Trace, do you think I’m the governor? I can’t just—”
With no time to wait, I showed him the video, drawing a murmur and a gasp from him as by now, her four hours left to live were probably down to three and a half.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. “How the fuck did this happen?”
“You think I know?” I said.
He shot me a look that said, “I know you blew up that warehouse,” but I didn’t give him anything back. I sure as hell wasn’t about to confess to him here when all it took was one eavesdropping state official to have us all booked on domestic terrorism.
“Christ…” he said.
“You gotta get them out, right now,” I said. “So help me God, if I have to break through all of these cop cars to get to Jane, I will.”
“Do you even know where she is?”
“I have an idea,” I said. “Previous run-ins with the Mercs have suggested a place within L.A.”
“Fucking hell,” Wiggins said. “You really know how to dig them deep, don’t you, Trace?”
If a look could kill a man, I think mine might have just mutilated the body of Wiggins. He shook his head, muttered a swear, and cleared his throat.
“Gregory!” he shouted to the female cop, now interrogating BK. “Get over here! We got a hostage situation!”
The officer looked at BK, ordered him to stay put, and hurriedly walked over to us.
“I just got this video,” I said. “I don’t know what they’re talking about, but they have Jane Peters, a very good friend of mine.”
I played it for them, acknowledging there was some risk involved with showing Officer Gregory the video. Still, if it got them off property, I’d use the chance to get us the hell out of here. We could deal with any fallout with law enforcement later; they weren’t going to kill Jane if we were found guilty of blowing up the warehouse.
The DMs, though, were a very different, very dangerous matter.
“Shit,” she said. “You know where they are?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Best guess from our run-ins with them is at their clubhouse. It’s in Compton, off of Regal Street. Called Gonzo’s Car Repairs, I believe.”
“We gotta move,” Wiggins said. “We can deal with this later. Girl being held hostage? Young doctor? Do you know what kind of bad press that’s gonna bring if we don’t take care of this?”
Officer Gregory had a serious suspicion written all over her face, but she also could not deny the veracity of the video. And if she had any doubt I had created this myself, she needed to only look at my face to see that no one could act being this pissed off and this concerned as I was.
“Shit,” she said. “OK, everyone, let’s go! We got a hostage situation in Compton!”
The other officers looked at her with confusion, but the confusion was short-lived, especially given how aggressively Officer Gregory moved. The blonde bombshell of a cop got in her squad car, activated the lights and sirens, and sped off. Within two minutes, everyone was gone, including Sheriff Wiggins.
“What the hell is that all about?” Krispy said.
“You got rid of them!” Mafia said. “Let’s—”
“Shut up,” I snapped. “Jane’s in danger.”
Everyone crowded around my phone as I played the video once more. This was the last time I was going to play the video, as we were wasting too much time watching it instead of acting on it.
“We move. Now.”
“Woah,” Sensei said, drawing a look of murderous rage from me. “Let’s pause for five minutes here, OK?”
“What the fuck are you talking about, Sensei?” I said. “I don’t know if you saw, but Jane is being held captive by the fucking Mercs, and if we don’t—”
“Leave now while the cops probably have one person outside to see if we roll out?” Sensei said. “Did you at least have the sense to give them a fake location?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Sent them to Compton. That’ll give us some time. It’s their real clubhouse, too, but I don’t think that’s where they have Jane. But in any case—”
“There’s almost certainly a cop right outside the door, Trace. We leave now, and we all get arrested.”
“I don’t care!” I shouted. “We’ll spend a year in the cell; I don’t care, so long as it means that Jane lives.”
“After this morning?” Splitter said.
Perhaps, with a clearer head, I could have better understood what he meant. Perhaps I would have realized that he wanted to understand why I suddenly felt so strongly about protecting her if I had dumped her.
But with too much rage, I just uncorked a right punch on him.
That, in turn, got Splitter going after me, leading the entire gang to try and split us up.
“What the fuck is your problem?” Splitter yelled.
“You think just cuz we had a fight that I wouldn’t save her?”
Splitter didn’t say anything, but the rest of the Saints more than made up for it with their glares which seemed to ask a thousand questions about why I had reacted so strongly.
“OK, Christ, I’ll make this quick so you all know,” I said. “Jane and I hooked up last night. We’d been feeling each other, and so I went back to her place. But I was an idiot, thinking that if we dated, she’d get dragged into this life. So I dumped her, and she got quite pissed at me, justifiably so. Seems now though I dumped her way too late since she’s on the hostage pine.”
I spat on the ground in anger.
“You can call me an asshole and say I handled this situation poorly. I know I did. But Jane’s in danger, and I’m not about to let a friend of mine die. Whether or not we ever fuck again is beyond the point.”
“We get it, Trace!”
Of all the people to yell, I never expected Sensei to be the one to raise his voice and become angry.
“We get it! You got your dick hot for the founder’s daughter. You feel you made a mistake. Guess what? None of us give a shit about that right now. The only thing we care about is rescuing that gi
rl and doing whatever it takes, but we go right now, and we’ll have an entire squadron of cops on our tail, and then they’ll shoot her when they hear the sirens or see the flashing lights. We wait just a few minutes, go in then, and rescue her, and she might live.”
“Fuck!”
I took two steps back, put my head in my hands, and tried to make sense of it all. I guessed I would have a harsh conversation coming my way, either from the men or from Jane herself, about my behavior and my actions. I had fucked up pretty bad.
But Sensei was right. It didn’t matter if Jane was my wife, my lover, or a burned date. She was the daughter of the founder, and we all had given ourselves the obligation to protect her, regardless of her individual relationships to us.
So I bolted for my bike.
I was immediately tackled by BK and Krispy. I demanded to be freed, but they didn’t budge.
“Christ, Trace, what the fuck?” Sensei said.
“OK, OK!” I shouted.
But as I rose, I did find just enough calmness that I didn’t become an idiot.
“OK. Clearly, my mind is not in the right place for this mission. Are we all in agreement, at least, that the Mercs are not pulling a bluff?”
“Absolutely, yeah,” everyone said in some fashion.
“OK, so we’re all in agreement that sometime in the next, say, two hours, we need to go on a run and rescue her?”
Again, everyone nodded and gave their assent. I breathed just a little bit easier, even though every bone in my body ached and yearned to head out there and rescue Jane now—not in five minutes, not in two hours, but now. Just… breathe.
“OK,” I said. “Here’s my deal with you. I’m not gonna think straight. So Splitter, Sensei. You two are in charge of operations. If, however, we don’t make plans to get her free within thirty minutes, I’m riding out on my own. One biker leaving the shop isn’t going to draw as much suspicion as a half-dozen or more.”
“Agreed,” Sensei said. “Shall we go to the hall?”
“Let’s make it quick,” I said.
I let the rest of the group go ahead of me, but instead of joining them, Sensei and Splitter remained behind. Once the door to the clubhouse had shut, they both turned to me.