by April Lust
Something told me that whatever he wanted, he could get. That kiss came to mind again, though I cursed myself for letting it get to me. A man who kissed like that probably did other things just as well. That kind of man could have anything.
So why choose this life? I couldn’t understand it. Maybe he was too stupid to do anything else. Or maybe he was just a really bad person to the core. A regular life wouldn’t suit him. I tried to imagine this rough, sexy, charismatic man sitting behind a desk somewhere. It didn’t work.
I watched as he got on his bike, strapping a helmet over his short black hair. I was parked beneath a tree, tucked into the shadows. I could watch without being noticed. At least, that was what I hoped.
He pulled out of the parking lot, hanging a right. I turned the key in the ignition, deciding to follow him. I hoped my showing up at the bar had shaken him up. Maybe he would lead me somewhere that would provide a clue.
I hung back two cars, wanting to hide my presence. Wondering where he was going. I hoped he didn’t lead anywhere too dangerous, but then again nothing was too dangerous where my sister was concerned. If I was worried about the danger I never would have stepped foot into that bar. I knew Cole was only trying to scare me when he warned me away…but there was no ignoring the obviously threatening vibe I felt there.
He turned right a few miles down the road. I followed. We were winding our way through wooded areas. Was this where my sister was left? Maybe a cabin somewhere around here? My heartbeat quickened.
It was dark out here, the only light coming from my headlights and the tail lights of the bike far in front of me. I had to hang back now that there weren’t any cars between us. How many cars came out this way at this time of night? I hoped my tailing wasn’t obvious. Or that he was too lost in his thoughts of my sister to notice.
We came to the edge of the woods, where the side road we’d been driving down met another main road. I was relieved to get out of the area, the thought of Sara alone in the thick wood too awful to bear. If he had stopped there, what would I have done? I would have kept driving. Otherwise, he could have done anything he wanted to me. There wouldn’t be witnesses. This was looking like a worse idea with every mile we traveled.
Cole turned left. I waited for two cars to pass in that direction before following him. I felt safer now, better covered. All seemed well enough. He wasn’t speeding or trying to lose me, so I was pretty confident he hadn’t noticed me.
The further we drove, the more anxious I became. Where was he heading? We were now driving through a pretty dangerous part of town, one I never visited. Rows of cinderblock houses lined both sides of the broken street. There was one car between us, while I tailed at a lengthy distance. I needed to be able to react if Cole came to a sudden stop.
And he did, turning into a driveway of one of the homes. Shit! I pulled the car into an empty space five houses down, cutting the lights immediately. I didn’t see him get off his bike or go into a house. I only knew he’d parked somewhere up there.
Why was he here? Was this where he lived? My nose wrinkled in distaste. I’d assumed a criminal like him would live in a nicer house. Evidently, crime really didn’t pay. I snickered to myself, waiting to see what would happen, if anything.
How long should I sit here? What was I even waiting for? After twenty minutes I was ready to give up. I’d been stupid to think this would lead anywhere. Who did I think I was? Nancy Dave?
A rattling noise at my passenger door startled me, before the door swung open. My hand went for the ignition, fumbling with the keys.
“Stop.” It was him. He plopped down beside me, then slammed the door shut.
“What are you doing? Get the hell out of my car!” I could hardly breathe, I was so surprised.
“Not until you tell me what the hell you think you’re doing, following me around.” He glared at me, and there was no mistaking the anger in his voice.
“Following you? Get over yourself.” I hated this man, and I didn’t care if he knew it.
“If you’re not following me, what the hell are you doing here?”
“I live around here.”
He smirked, his eyes narrowing. “You? Live here?”
I shrugged. “So what? What are you trying to say?”
“I’m trying to say you don’t live anywhere near here. I’ve never seen you around. And a girl who drives a car like this doesn’t live in my neighborhood. Because, trust me, this car wouldn’t last long around here.”
I’d hardly considered my used car a luxury item. “You park your shiny bike in your driveway, and nobody’s taken it.”
He grinned, the light from the streetlamps glinting off his teeth. He reminded me of a shark. “That’s because they know what’ll happen if they so much as touch it.”
I scowled, knowing he had a point. My argument was getting me nowhere, fast.
“So try again. Why are you actually here? Why did you tail me the whole way from the bar?”
“I told you!” Now I was shouting. “I live around here, dammit!”
“You do? What’s your address?”
Shit. I stayed quiet. I didn’t even know which street we were on right now, I’d been so intent on keeping my eye on Cole. Besides, I couldn’t name any of the streets in this part of town.
“I thought so,” he said, and I wanted to slap the smug right out of him. As it was, my hand itched to reach out and make contact with his face. I decided that would be pretty much the same as signing my own death warrant, so I fought the urge.
My heart thumped like mad. I wondered if he could hear it. It seemed like he should be able to. I could barely breathe. What was he going to do to me now that he knew I’d been trailing him? Why didn’t I think things through before I did them?
Because of Sara. She was worth this. But what good would I be to her if I was dead?
“So, what are you going to do to me?” I asked, hating the shakiness in my voice.
He looked me up and down, a slow smile again spreading over his features. I thought of a shark, again. I didn’t like the look in his eye. “Be serious,” I said, sounding angry this time. I was glad. I wanted him to know I wasn’t somebody to be screwed around with.
“Fine. Seriously, I don’t know. I haven’t decided. What do you think I should do to you?”
“I think you should tell me what happened to my sister.”
“You don’t listen, do you?” he asked. “I told you, I don’t know what happened to her. That’s the truth.”
“You’re full of shit.”
“You’re desperate.”
His words hit home. I was desperate. I couldn’t live without knowing the truth, even if it put me in danger.
I was also intensely afraid of him. I had the feeling he was toying with me. I watched him as he moved. I knew he was sizing me up, thinking about what he was going to do with me.
“You know,” he said, “if you’re gonna follow me around like this, maybe I should know your name.”
I couldn’t help smiling, just a little. “It’s Alena,” I said.
He nodded, like that made perfect sense. “I’ve already felt your claws, Alena.”
I blushed, remembering that kiss. How tightly I’d held him against me. How easy it was for him to turn me to mush.
I’d never been so close to a man like him before. None of the boys I was with when I was a kid were anywhere close to Cole’s league. It was like I’d graduated to the big leagues now, and I didn’t know what to do. My thoughts raced. What would he do to me? Drag me from the car? Take me here and now? Why were all my thoughts leading to sex? Possibly because he oozed sex appeal. Just the way he looked at me made me certain that his thoughts were going in that direction. Thanks to the way he kissed me at the bar, my thoughts were going the same way.
The thrill was the sexiest part. The excitement. Knowing it was wrong, knowing he was wrong in every way. That sort of thrill took a desirable man and made him irresistible.
I could barely
speak over the pounding of my heart. My voice quivered. “So now that you know I was following you, what do you plan to do with me?” I wasn’t trying to be coy or sexy. I really wanted to know.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “I’d like to teach you a lesson, but I don’t think you learn lessons very easily. And I don’t have the time to drill it through your skull. But I can’t have you following me or my guys around. Do you know what happens to nuisances? And that’s what you would become, really fast. Nuisances have a way of being silenced. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“You couldn’t be clearer if you tried,” I said. I did everything I could not to show him the fear in my voice.
“So why do I feel like you don’t care?”
I looked at him, just as frustrated as he was at not being listened to. “Because I don’t.”
Chapter 6
Cole
Damn this girl! Why couldn’t she take a hint? No, it wasn’t even a hint. I had full-out told her to mind her own business. So what did she do? She followed me. It had been obvious, too. She wasn’t used to doing things like this, or else she’d be better at trailing a person without being noticed.
Still…even though I was pissed as hell that she wouldn’t just go away, I admired her a little. She had bigger balls than I thought. First, she came to the bar where she knew the club hung out, now this. Even after I did everything but flat-out threaten her life.
“Why can’t you let this go?” I asked Alena.
“Let what go?”
“Your sister.” I never had a family, so I had no idea how it felt to want to risk everything the way she was doing.
“You can’t be serious,” she said. The way she stared at me made me feel like a slug.
“I am. I don’t know why you won’t move on when I tell you there’s nothing I can do and you’ll probably get yourself in trouble. You just keep dredging up the same shit like you’re Sherlock Holmes or somebody. Why? What makes you think you’ll be able to find something the police didn’t?”
She was still giving me that hard, disgusted stare that made me want to tell her to stop looking at me. Finally, she said, “Have you ever had a sister?”
“No. No brother, either. I’ve been on own for most of my life.”
“Then you can’t possibly get it.” She stared out the window when she spoke. I knew she was in pain, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. So why was she bringing it to me?
“And you don’t get the kind of trouble you could be in if you don’t cut this shit out, now. You’ve never messed with the sort of people I’m around every day. If you followed one of them home, you’d be dead right now. Or getting fucked before they killed you.” She shivered. Good. I wanted her to. She had to be scared off. Nothing I’d said so far seemed to do it.
“What if it was one of your guys?” She looked at me, hard. “You know, like a member of the club. Wouldn’t you want to do whatever you could to get them back? Or at least find out what had happened to them?”
“I’d kill whoever hurt them to even the score. But this isn’t about me. And if that’s what you had in mind, you wouldn’t have shown up alone tonight, without a weapon. What got into you? What were you even thinking?”
“I’m desperate, like you said.” Alena leaned her head against the seat and closed her eyes. God, she was beautiful. Maybe the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. It was more than being hot or sexy, even though she was those things, too. Her face was perfect.
“Desperation can get you killed.”
“So you keep telling me.” She sounded very tired. I wished she would be tired enough to go away and never come back.
“Because it’s true. I wish there were a way to get you to understand.”
“My heart won’t understand.” She sounded like she was trying not to cry. I hoped she wouldn’t get started. I could stand anything but that.
“Think with your head. If you only think with your heart, you get yourself hurt. That’s something I learned a long time ago.” Most parents taught their kids how to read and write, or how to tie their shoes or count to ten. My parents taught me what a waste of time love was. All love did was get people hurt. That was the big lesson I could thank them for. It had served me well, too. In my world, love was pointless. It got people killed. It made them overthink things, hesitate when they should make a move. Once you had a person you loved, you had to think about them and not about how to keep yourself safe.
She shook her head. “I know you have a point, but right now, I don’t believe it.”
“I can tell you don’t.” She was impossible to get through to. She was interesting, even though I wanted to scream when she talked in circles and wouldn’t listen to anything I said.
“I guess you and your sister were close, huh?” I didn’t know why I even asked that question. I wanted to know more about her, even though I knew it would lead me nowhere. The less I knew about her, the better. I couldn’t get too involved. It would only end up badly. But I couldn’t stop myself. She was something else, and I needed to understand the way she thought.
“More than close,” she whispered. “I pretty much raised her.”
“Really?” This little thing? Then again, she was strong and confident. And smart. She could probably handle anything.
“I was ten when she was born, and a few years later our father disappeared for good. He was never really around, anyway. Just when he needed something.” She shrugged.
“I know that feeling,” I said. My father was the same way. At least, I thought he was my father. I was never really sure. Mom didn’t keep records of all the men who came in and out of her bedroom.
“Our mom had to work two jobs to keep us secure. I give her credit for that, believe me. She did her best. But then, when she wasn’t working, she was at the bar. Trying to pick up guys, you know.” Another way our lives were the same. Sometimes my mom would be gone for days and come home like nothing happened. I had to take care of myself when I wasn’t tall enough to reach the kitchen cabinets without a chair.
She sighed. “So I took care of Sara. We did homework together, first mine—I told her she was helping me with it—then hers, too, once she started school. Then we would play games. I made dinner, gave her a bath, put her to bed.”
“And you were how old?”
She shrugged. “She was around six months old when I was first left alone with her.”
I was amazed. No wonder she wasn’t letting this go. She was practically the kid’s mother.
“And now she’s just…gone. I feel like part of me is gone. I don’t know what to do. Nobody will help me. It’s like I’m a ghost, just talking and talking and nobody listens. It’s a nightmare.”
“You haven’t heard anything from her at all?”
“Not for weeks. Not a word. She used to call me every day, ever since she moved into her own apartment. One day she just…didn’t call. And then the next day. By that time, I’d gone to the police. They weren’t too worried. And then…” She trailed off.
“And then?”
Alena looked nervous, now. “And then I mentioned your club.”
“Oh, thanks a lot.” I knew she would have. If she knew her sister was hooked up with one of our members, she would have mentioned it right away. Why not? We were a bunch of criminals. She jumped to the conclusion that we must have had something to do with it. I couldn’t blame her, even though it irked the hell out of me.
“I had to say something. The police needed to know everyone Sara had been spending time with, and I knew she’d been running around with one of your guys. And don’t tell me the club didn’t have something to do with it. I won’t believe it. My sister is a good, sweet girl. She’s smart, and she has a future ahead of her. She was never depressed, she never touched drugs and didn’t drink—as far as I knew, anyway. And if she started without me knowing about it, it was you who got her into it.”
“Me?”
“Not you in particular, but the club. How
the hell she got hooked up with you, I’ll never know. God knows I tried to get her away…”
How did anyone get hooked up with us? That was a good question. They heard about us. A friend was involved. Or a friend of a friend, or a cousin. Somebody vouched for them. But I didn’t know how Sara found her way to us. I didn’t know her well enough.
There was something I had to know, but the way I asked would be important. “Did you…know who she was with? Like, was there a certain guy?”
She looked at me, blinking a few times. I didn’t want her to know I knew who Sara had been with. I got a feeling she didn’t believe me.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Sara would never tell me his name.”