His to Protect: Midnight Riders MC

by April Lust

  Lucky for me, a few regulars came over to say hello. They were here for most of my gigs, and we’d struck up a casual friendship. It was nice to laugh with them for an hour or so. It took my mind off of the mess my life was becoming.

  I was almost feeling lighthearted when I left the bar, and that familiar flash of guilt washed over me, just as it had in the morning when I felt guilty for being happy. What right did I have to be happy when my sister was suffering? Maybe this was the same sort of guilt people always went through after losing a loved one. But I didn’t want to believe she was gone. Shouldn’t I be devoting every spare second of my time and energy to finding her? What right did I have to be happy?

  I was still going over this in my head when I reached my car, and was so deep in thought that it took a moment to register what I was seeing. Big, angry red letters on my windshield in what I first thought was blood but realized was spray paint.

  STOP LOOKING OR YOU’LL END UP LIKE YOUR SISTER

  I froze, terrified, gasping for breath. My heart stopped for a second, then picked up like a speeding train. I thought I might be sick.

  Once I could move again, my head swiveled from side to side. Who did this? Were they watching? I didn’t want them to see they’d scared me, but something told me my face gave me away. I looked at all the nearby cars but didn’t see anyone. They could have been hiding anywhere. I was totally exposed.

  I ran back to the bar, clawing through my bag for my phone as I did. I cowered in the entryway, panting for breath, and called Cole. He was the only person I could imagine reaching out to, the only one who could protect me when I was so terrified.

  “Cole!” My voice shook so badly, I could hardly speak.

  “Alena? Is that you?”

  “Y-yes,” I managed to gasp. There were tears on my cheeks—how had they gotten there? When had I started crying?

  “What’s wrong?”

  “My c-car! Someone…spray painted…”

  “Slow down. Breathe. Tell me what’s happening.” His voice was sharp, commanding. Something about it snapped me out of my panic.

  “Someone spray painted my windshield. Stop looking or I’ll end up like my sister.” There was no forgetting those words. They burned into my brain. I knew I would see them when I closed my eyes to sleep that night—or tried to sleep.

  He was silent, so silent I thought I’d lost him. “Cole?”

  “I’m here.” Now he was angry, his voice a bark. It made me cringe. “Stay where you are. I’m coming to get you.”

  I wasn’t going to argue. I was too happy to wait for him. I sat on a little bench by the front door where I could see the parking lot. My car was visible, just barely. Who had done it? A club member, I was sure. The one with the knife? Probably. Though spray paint seemed a little tame for him. I hadn’t checked to see if the vandal had slashed my tires—if they had, I’d know it was him for sure.

  No matter who did it, they were serious. Following me around, intimidating me. I couldn’t go anywhere to get away from them.

  Then the message behind the words filtered through the noise in my head. I’d end up like my sister.

  What had they done to her? How had she ended up? Oh, my God. Did this mean she was dead? It couldn’t mean anything else. I leaned my head against the wall, sobs wracking me. I didn’t care who saw or heard me. My sorrow was too heavy to keep hidden. Sara. My Sara. There was no way for me to help her, now.

  Had she been afraid in those last moments? Had she wished she’d listened to me? My poor girl.

  Chapter 14

  Cole

  I hung up the phone. The sound of Alena crying kept playing in my head. It took everything in me not to go straight to Skull’s and beat him half to death.

  I got on my bike and headed straight for the bar. A million questions ran through my mind. Who would do that? Why were they so desperate to keep her away?

  I knew I was asking the wrong questions. After what had gone on between Skull and me that afternoon, I knew anything was possible. He was desperate, sneaky. He wouldn’t stop until he was sure he was safe. But from what? He wouldn’t even tell me what he had done to be so worried about.

  He didn’t need to, though. The longer this went on, the better an idea I had. And I hated to think about it.

  ###

  I wasn’t looking forward to going to the police station after leaving Alena’s. What criminal did, even if it wasn’t to be locked up? It was like asking a kid to go to school over vacation. Why be there when you didn’t have to be?

  But then, I did have to be. I had to bail my friend out.

  Some friend. He was fucking my life up. I reminded myself not to have thoughts like that. Before I knew it, I’d start resenting him. It would all go downhill from there.

  I couldn’t help it, not after I thought about the things I told Alena at her house. He was the only normal thing in my life during those crazy times. He had been the only thing I could count on when everything else was going to shit. If I couldn’t count on him now, what was I supposed to do?

  I rode my bike back to my house so I could pick up my car. I didn’t know if Skull would be in any shape to ride his bike, or whether he still had his license. With a DUI, it was probably suspended. How could I lead the club with a VP who couldn’t ride? That was one of the first rules of the club—you had to be able to ride to be a member.

  He was causing more complications lately than anything else. I had to have a serious talk with him when I got him out. I didn’t care if he felt like talking or not. It was time to get serious.

  I couldn’t miss the dirty looks I got when I walked into the station. I loved knowing how uncomfortable I made these assholes. Some of them I used to know in school. I’d beaten a few of them up, too, back when we were kids. They all had a beef against the club, and with me personally.

  I walked up to the desk. “I’m here for Skull,” I said.

  “You have money for bail?” the clerk asked.

  “How much again?”

  “Ten thousand dollars.”

  I made sure all eyes were on me—and they were, just waiting to see if I could pay that type of fee—before I pulled out a wad of hundred dollar bills.

  “This might take a minute to count out,” I said. “I assume you take cash?” I heard one of the cops snicker in the back of the room.

  Once I paid the bail and got a receipt, I sat down to wait for Skull to be processed and brought out to me. How many times had I been here? More than I could remember, for sure. Sometimes to bail out friends, most of the time for stupid things I’d been picked up on. Drunken fights, causing trouble in town. Sometimes for no reason at all. Club members were always being brought in anytime things happened, just because of who we were.

  “Mr. Sutton?” I turned my head when I heard my name called. One of the deputies was looking at me. I knew him well. He was one of the assholes I went to school with. Aaron McGuinness.

  “Yeah?”

  “Can I ask you a few questions? You know, while you’re here?”

  Fuck. What was this about? I shrugged like I couldn’t have cared less. The last thing I wanted was for one of these guys to think they had an edge on me.

  I got up and walked back to Aaron’s desk. He waved at a chair, and I sat.

  “How’s it going, Cole?”

  I didn’t want to show him how irritated it made me when he called me by my first name, like we used to be friends. We hated each other. He didn’t let an opportunity pass to drop a snide comment about me when we passed in the hall. He and his friends would laugh and mutter things about my parents. I hated the hypocrisy people were expected to live by when they grew up.

  “Fine, thanks. What can I help you with?”

  He looked over a file. “We’ve had someone in here a few times recently, asking questions about her sister’s disappearance. She seemed to think your club might have had something to do with it.” He glanced up at me. “Ring any bells?”

  Damn it. I frowned a
s if I was thinking about it. “I don’t think so.” I shrugged.

  “Really? Because we have a few people who are willing to go on record, stating they saw you with the girl shortly before she disappeared.”

  I nodded slowly. “Do you know exactly when she disappeared? Like…did she vanish into thin air? Did these people see that happen?”

  Aaron smirked. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “I’m just saying, how does anyone know I was the last person to see her? Anything could have happened between whenever that was and whenever she actually disappeared. Something to think about.”

  Aaron nodded. “Gotcha. Let’s just say we have a good idea when she disappeared. She didn’t call her sister the next day, so we guess she vanished sometime between when you saw her and the following afternoon.”

  “Seems a lot of people might have crossed paths with her. Right? Have you guessed that?” I couldn’t help myself. He was basing this on a lot of guessing and maybes. Meanwhile, where the hell was Skull?

  His eyes narrowed. I knew he thought he was dangerous. “Just a heads up, from one guy to another, we’re gonna be taking a look at your club a little more closely. Now that we have these signed statements, and this girl’s been missing for over five weeks without a sign from her, we want to hit the gas pedal. Especially when guys like your buddy here get themselves into the sort of trouble he’s in right now.”

  “What? DUI?”

  “Ehh…not exactly.” He nodded toward the door, behind me, and I turned to look.

  When Skull came out behind one of the cops, I almost did a double take. He looked worse than he had when I saw him at the bar. I saw what Aaron meant. He’d gotten into a fight, too. I hoped it wasn’t with the officer who pulled him over.

  “It was with the officer who pulled him over,” Aaron muttered. “Took a swing at him.”

  Fuck. Now the whole club was being looked at because Skull couldn’t control himself. It was all I could do to keep my temper while we were in the station. I waited until we were in the car and out of the parking lot before I lost it on him.

  “What do you think you’re doing? Are you insane? Hitting a cop? It’s bad enough you got caught riding drunk, but then you had to hit him? What the hell is your problem, Skull?”

  He was slumped against the door with his eyes closed. “Please stop yelling,” he said. His one eyebrow had been split open, and he had a pretty mean black eye. I was glad for it. It saved me the trouble of doing it to him. It wasn’t half of what he deserved, either. I growled in frustration, wishing I could wail on him.

  “You need to tell me, now, what’s going on with you. This isn’t you. If something’s that wrong, let me help you with it.”

  “I keep telling you. There’s nothing wrong.”

  “Since the police are gonna start looking into the club thanks to you, I’m glad there’s nothing wrong. I’d hate for this all to have happened for a reason.”

  “What do you mean?” I straightened up and stared at me.

  “They’re going to start looking more closely at everything we do. It’s bad enough Sara disappeared— “

  “What about Sara?” His voice went from foggy and disinterested to sharp just like that.

  “I’m the last person anyone saw her with, outside your house. That’s bad enough. Now they’re pissed at you for hitting one of them, so they’re gonna be on our asses.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because Aaron McGuinness fucking told me, that’s how!” My roar echoed through the car. Skull flinched. I calmed, but only a little.

  “See the problem?” I asked. “Now they’re going to look at everything we do. Remember the last time this happened? Back when all that shit was going down? It was bad enough Nails and everyone else died, but then the cops were on us because of the way it went down.” It was a tense, terrible time. We had a cop car in front of the bar almost every day. They’d follow us everywhere, from a distance. Not enough to obviously get in our business, but enough to make sure we knew they were watching. Pricks.

  “You know we can’t have that right now,” I said to Skull. It seemed like he was finally starting to get the picture. He looked a little sick.

  “Shit,” he said. That was all he said for a long time. I let him think it over. I hated getting mad at him like that, and I knew it only made him shut down, so I hoped giving him a minute to think about what I said would help.

  He laughed bitterly. “Remember when we were kids, and it seemed like the world was gonna end over the most stupid things?”

  I frowned. “Not so stupid, man. We had a lot more to worry about than a lot of kids our age.”

  “That’s true. But I mean the really stupid things. Like whether a girl liked us, or if we were gonna pass chem class or something.”

  I laughed, too. “Yeah. Those were the days, or something.”

  He was looking out the window, away from me. I glanced at him. Where was he going with this?

  “Sometimes I think it would be easier to go back to those days,” he said.

  “Not me. Stuff’s hard now, but it wasn’t any better back then. I thought about that for a minute earlier. When I was talking with Aaron. Remember what a dick he always was?”

  “Yeah, him and his jock friends. He’s one of the types you just knew was gonna become a cop, so that he could be a dick to people and call it his job.”

  “Exactly. He’s the type to do that.”

  “What was his problem, anyway?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe because I stole his girlfriend.”

  Skull laughed. “That’s right. Way to go, pissing him off like that.”

  “I only did it so he would know he didn’t have everything going for him. He always thought he was hot shit because he played baseball and football, and because his parents had a little money. There was one thing I could do better than him. A lot of things, if you listened to his girlfriend.” We both laughed. It was good to laugh with him. It felt like old times.

  “You had to go and piss him off, though. Then he was worse than ever. All over a woman.”

  “It was worth it,” I said, grinning. “She was sweet. I had a good time with her. Sex-starved.”

  “It’s never worth it.” I almost didn’t hear him, he spoke so low.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said it’s never worth it. Getting in trouble over a woman.” Here we were again. I knew he had to mean Sara. I thought about Alena, and how much she loved her sister. I loved Skull, too. I knew how it felt to want to protect someone—as much as I told myself for years that I had no attachments, it wasn’t totally true. I knew I might end up having to sacrifice Skull for Alena and the club, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to go that far.

  “What do you mean?” I hoped I wasn’t pushing too hard, but I needed to know.

  “Women aren’t worth it.”

  “I thought you and Teresa were getting along well together.” Skull had been seeing her for a couple of weeks. It was a casual thing, which was unlike Skull. He was always jumping into living with a woman before he knew her.

  “We are. I didn’t mean her. And even then, though, she can be a pain in the ass.”

  “Can’t they all? That’s just the way women are. But I know I’m not gonna give them up.” I tried to laugh, to keep things light. He didn’t laugh with me this time.

  “All they do is cause problems. Being too mouthy, or too needy. I can’t stand that shit. And even when you tell them in the beginning that you don’t like it when women are that way, they’ll tell you whatever it is they think you wanna hear just to get into bed with you. And you think it’s all nice, right? Like this girl is gonna be different. But there’s no such thing. They’re all alike. Pretty soon they start asking you where you go at night, why you don’t call them more often. Why you didn’t check in with them, like you’re in jail, and they’re the warden.”

  “Yeah. That does suck.” Did Sara do that to him? I never knew her very we
ll, but she didn’t seem the type. I had known my share of demanding women, so I knew what to look for. She had always struck me as being very sweet and quiet. But you never knew what went on behind closed doors.

  “Then they wanna know why you haven’t called in awhile. Maybe because every time you do, they give you a raft of shit over one thing or another. Who needs that? Why would I want to call someone and get yelled at?”

  “This is why I’ve stayed single,” I told him. “I don’t have time for that shit.”

  “You were smart. You were always smarter than me.” He sounded miserable and scared, like a little boy. Who was this person? Even when we were kids, he didn’t whine like this. It was like he was breaking down.