by Evelyn Glass
The more Dirk thought about it, the less he was able to figure out just how it had happened. She was only supposed to be a temporary guest. She was supposed to be a nuisance, even, considering the position she had put the MC in with the Tar Mongols. She was supposed to be a temporary distraction from the mounting tension of the upcoming war. Instead, even though he didn’t like to admit it, Dirk had begun to fall. He had fallen for her tricks, sure, but he had fallen for her, too.
Which was one of the many reasons why he was so furious with her. He felt used, betrayed. And he was enraged with himself for caring that she had done that to him. Without his even realizing it, he had begun to trust her—and she had repaid that trust by pulling this stupid, stupid stunt that would certainly put him in an awful position with the club. Because let’s face it, there was no way this wasn’t going to come up, even if Stephan kept his mouth shut.
Dirk sighed heavily. He could not believe himself. He could not believe he had put everything in jeopardy for a woman he barely even knew. And here he was thinking he had completely lost the ability to feel anything. He was surprised enough when he first began to experience the first signs of lust for her, and he was absolutely stunned now that he was realizing that he did, in fact, care.
“Can you at least see her?” Stephan’s voice from the phone’s speaker almost made him jump out of his skin.
“Shit!” Dirk cried, swerving as he almost drove the jeep off the road. “I forgot you were there.”
“Well, I am,” Stephan chuckled. “Sorry. Well?” he asked again. “Can you see her?”
Dirk squinted in the distance. “Not yet.”
He pressed down onto the gas pedal, his urgency to catch up with Camilla renewed. It was another ten minutes’ drive before he finally spotted the shape of his Harley in the distance. He would recognize that bike anywhere.
“I see her now,” he said.
Even though he was furious with her, he had to admit that he was impressed with how well she was controlling the bike. It wasn’t an easy task, particularly considering how heavy it was, and how unpredictable. Bikes were like horses—they mostly responded only to their riders.
“So she’s riding your bike?” Stephan said.
“Yeah.”
“How’d she look?”
Dirk frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Does she look hot riding your bike in the middle of the moonlit desert?”
“I swear to God, Stephan,” Dirk growled. “What’s gotten into you? Are you ghostwriting for Harlequin?”
Stephan laughed. “Wouldn’t that be a great job!”
Dirk groaned. “Oh, God.”
They lapsed back into silence, and even though he hated to admit it, Stephan had a point. Camilla did look hot, as she rode his bike in the middle of the moonlit desert. She looked like an Amazon. Dirk suppressed a moan when he felt himself getting hard within his pants.
Jesus. Get a fucking grip, you idiot, he reprimanded himself sternly.
His erection, however, was short-lived, because soon enough, something entered his line of vision that he did not like at all. Two bikes came from the sides, emerging from the desert. They weren’t his men, he would have known. He would have recognized them. He watched as the riders sped up and caught up with Camilla. He watched in horror as they stopped. And then he watched with renewed consideration for the woman who had amazed him in so many different ways when she recognized the Tar Mongols for who they were and pushed past them with a roar of the Harley-Davidson. The Tar Mongols, however, recovered quickly and were soon in hot pursuit again. And Dirk was still too far away to really do anything.
“Shit!” he cursed loudly.
“What?” Stephan asked, and the cheerfulness was gone from his voice. He could tell immediately that something had shifted, and that it was not a good thing. “What’s happening?”
“Send backup!” Dirk roared. “Send backup now!”
“What’s going on?”
“Tar Mongols. They’re after her!”
There was a moment’s silence.
“Turn around.”
Dirk was so stunned that he almost slammed on the brakes. Instead, he gave even more gas to the already straining jeep.
“What?” he said.
“Turn around,” Stephan repeated.
“What are you talking about?”
“Let them.”
“What?” Dirk roared.
“Look, we’ve done enough,” Stephan snapped. “I don’t like it, either. But there’s nothing else we can do.”
“The hell there isn’t!” Dirk yelled back. “I can help her!”
“Backup is not going to reach you in time.”
“It doesn’t matter!”
“It does!” Stephan all but screamed into the phone. “Look, we’ve already lost good men. We’ve lost a lieutenant and a friend and we’ve lost children, for fuck’s sake, Dirk! We’ve lost children! I’m not losing you, too. Now turn that car around and get your ass back home. Now.”
Dirk was so shocked it was a wonder he had yet to drive the jeep off the road. “Stephan, you can’t be serious—?”
“As a heart attack,” Stephan snapped. “This is an order, VP.”
Shit. Dirk’s mind raced…and then it came to the only possible conclusion. “I’m sorry, boss,” he said. “You’ve just given me the one order I can’t obey.”
He disconnected the call, tossed the phone to the backseat and drove as fast as he could.
He came into view of the canyon just in time to see the Tar Mongols drive Camilla off the road and down into the ravine. He watched in horror as she fell, bike and all, into the desert precipice.
Dirk’s heart jumped to his throat. He watched as the Tar Mongols dismounted from their bikes and carefully headed down the ravine themselves. It was all too clear that they weren’t finished with Camilla. A chill ran down Dirk’s spine as old, unwanted memories crowded his mind. He clenched his jaw and shut his eyes, and he swallowed hard against the onslaught.
No, he finally decided, opening his eyes again and driving up to the canyon. He was not going to let it happen again.
He left the car a mile or so away from the steep ravine, so that the Tar Mongols would not be alerted to his presence. Then he secured his gun and got out of the jeep, heading towards the abandoned bikes.
The night was quiet, and it seemed like the desert was mocking him with its peace. There were countless stars in the sky. Coyotes howled in the distance from time to time. He wondered if they were finding anything to eat tonight. He wondered how their hunt was going. His hunt, he decided, would go splendidly. His prey was just down that canyon, that red mouth opening in the desert soil that now looked bloodless in the moonlight.
Dirk felt his blood rush with adrenaline and anticipation. He couldn’t wait. He couldn’t wait to watch his bullets embed themselves in the scumbags’ skulls. He wouldn’t kill them right away, he decided. He would see the fear in their eyes first. He would hear them scream and cry and beg.
He would not have mercy. He would shoot them for Eleanor and for Alex and Maggie and the children. He would shoot them for Camilla, who hopefully was still alive and was fighting them off. He would shoot them for the rage that threatened to consume him every time the Tar Mongols were even mentioned. He would shoot them for Herman Ruiz, so that he would know that war was coming to his MC. So that he would know that Dirk Coleman was coming for him.
Chapter 23
Camilla had thought she knew fear. If anything, she had thought she had learned about it over the past few weeks, first with Tobias Alvarez kidnapping her and then with the Minutemen and Stephan Walker’s unpredictable hazel eyes, and then again with the killing of Alex Hurley and his family.
But none of it had prepared her for this. None of it compared to the fear that was gripping her now, so strong and palpable that she could almost taste it on her tongue. None of it had prepared her for cowering within the rocks of the canyon, hiding from two men who wer
e hell-bent on seeing her dead or at the very least delivered to Herman Ruiz, whose ruthless fame preceded him.
Camilla still had no idea how she had survived the crash. Dirk’s bike was a mess of crushed metal, and it was only by some miracle that the heavy Harley-Davidson hadn’t crushed her on the way down. Somehow, instead, she had rolled away from it. She was bruised and scratched and sore, but she was more or less whole.
She had managed to crawl away from the scene before the two thugs could reach the end of the ravine. She wished it was a moonless night, or at the very least a cloudy one. Instead, the waning moon was still half-full and the night sky was clear—which meant there was plenty of light for the two men to spot her. So Camilla kept to the shadows and hugged the rocks. She hoped she could somehow escape this.
“We know you’re here somewhere,” one of the men called, tauntingly.
Camilla swallowed past her dread. She barely dared to breathe for fear that they might hear her.
“We’ll find you,” the other man said. “You’ve got nowhere to go.”
She hated to admit it, but they were right. Even if she reached the end of the canyon, then what? She was on foot and she was lost. They still had their bikes and their knowledge of the terrain.
Camilla wanted to cry. She wanted to sit down in the desert dirt and cry her eyes out, give in to the panic that was climbing up her throat and begged to be released in a scream. She clamped her mouth shut and swallowed fiercely. She had no idea how to escape this situation. Was there even a way at all?
She searched her pocket. She had a pocketknife that she had also stolen from Dirk’s garage, but somehow she doubted it would be a very formidable weapon against the Tar Mongols. Nonetheless, she curled her hand around it and held on for dear life to the only, tiny hope she had—a three-inch blade.
Fuck, Camilla thought, disheartened. I am so screwed.
She tripped then, like in a bad horror film. Her slightly twisted ankle betrayed her and she tripped again, and she fell down. Small rocks and dirt cascaded down from where she had tripped over them.
“Ah,” one of the men said. “Found you.”
Camilla felt the sudden urge to throw up. She hurried back up to her feet, but she wasn’t fast enough. They were on her before she could run any further.
She cried out as rough hands grabbed her. Camilla tried to resist. She kicked and screamed and she even bit, receiving a sharp slap to her face for her efforts. You’d think and investigative reporter would have made sure to pick up some self-defense skills on the way. Camilla did admittedly have a few moves, but nothing that could have prepared her for this. Not only was she fighting against two men who thrived on fights and violence, she was also fighting against her rising, mounting, almost irresistible panic.
“Be still now,” one of the men said, shaking her roughly. “We’re not gonna hurt you.”
“Much,” the other one said, in a horrible cliché.
There was a panicked voice in one corner of Camilla’s mind screaming over and over that this couldn’t be, it wasn’t happening, she must be having a bad dream. Her brain simply refused to process the information. One would think that when something like this happened, one’s mind would focus on the faces. It would focus on details, trying to grasp as many as it possibly could. Camilla’s mind drew a blank. Her attackers’ features were a blur to her eyes; she simply couldn’t get herself to focus.
She screamed and kicked, and they hit her again. Next thing she was aware of was being pinned to the rough desert ground. Camilla screamed loud, and the men didn’t bother to cover her mouth.
“No one’s gonna hear you except the coyotes, sweetheart,” one of the men said.
“And they might like it,” the other one echoed with a horrible laugh.
Camilla’s eyes were wide. Her heart was thumping so fast and furious in her chest that she almost feared she might be having a heart attack—on second thought, however, that might be a blessing in her current situation.
“And why on Earth are you wearing a Minutemen jacket?” one of the men growled, as he pulled it forcefully off of her. “Were you screwing one of them, you slut?”
Camilla wanted to spit in the man’s face. She wanted to tell him that Dirk Coleman was ten, twenty, a hundred, a thousand times the man this scumbag would ever be. But all of her feistiness had evaporated, leaving only panic and chaos in its wake. She heard the ripping of her V-necked cotton T-shirt next, and she thrashed and screamed in a renewed frenzy to get away. She remembered too late about the pocketknife in the pocket of Dirk’s leather jacket.
By contrast, the Tar Mongols were very much aware of their blades. They pressed one against the side of her throat, and Camilla had enough presence of mind left to freeze her movements.
“That’s better,” the man said. “Now, let us do this like a good girl, and we’ll deliver you to Ruiz in one piece.”
Camilla swallowed, and she shivered when the knife cut a little into her skin as she did so. She wanted to plead with these men, but even in her panic and despair, she still had enough pride left not to do that. So she played the only card she had left, even though she knew it was a weak one. “Dirk Coleman will skin you alive if you hurt me.”
Both men burst out laughing at that.
“Dirk Coleman?” one of the men said, snarling in disgust as he spit out Dirk’s name like a curse. “Is that who you’ve been screwing, bitch?”
Camilla clenched her jaw.
“Oh my God! It is!” the man laughed again. “That’s rich. Ruiz’ll kill another one of Coleman’s whores. The man’s just got no luck.”
Camilla’s mind raced. She wondered just what the hell he was talking about, but even in her current state she realized this was not the time to ask questions.
“What was her name, Julio?” the man asked. “Coleman’s whore whose throat Ruiz slit open after he fucked her.”
“Eleanor, I think,” the man pressing the knife to Camilla’s throat said, coldly.
“Right, Eleanor. Memorable woman, that one. Wouldn’t just roll over and die.”
“Kinda like this one, huh?” the other man said.
“No,” the first man argued. “That one was even feistier.”
Camilla’s heart broke for Dirk, even though she didn’t know the full story—and probably she would never get to know it. She held no delusions now that her run across the desert was well and truly over. They would do to her what they wanted, and then they would take her to Ruiz, who apparently would do the same to her before he put a bullet in her skull. Tears of fear and rage sprung to Camilla’s eyes, but she refused to let them fall.
“Anyway, sweetheart,” the man with the knife said, his voice rough with too much beer and whiskey and his breath smelling of it, too, “Dirk Coleman is not here. You’re on your own.”
There was a loud shot that echoed off the canyon’s wall like cannon fire. Camilla cried out in surprise, and then her eyes widened and her brain raced to catch up with what was happening as the man with the knife went limp on top of her, a dead weight for all purposes.
“What the fuck—?” The other man had his gun out and turned around sharply.
“Wrong, asshole,” Dirk’s voice spoke from outside Camilla’s line of sight. “I am here.”
The wave of relief that swept over Camilla then was so strong that she almost passed out from the sheer force of it.
“Let her go,” Dirk growled. “Now.”
“Or what?” the survivor challenged.
“You must be even stupider than I thought to ask that question.”
Camilla didn’t have much room to see, what with the weight of the dead Tar Mongol on her, but she could make out shapes and shadows. She saw the remaining Tar Mongol move, and she heard another shot. She screamed, terrified for Dirk.
But Dirk wasn’t the one who was hurt. The Tar Mongol fell down, grunting and cursing in pain. Dirk left the shelter of the rocks and walked forward. He looked like a vigilante in the moonlight,
blue eyes shining coldly and the gun in his hand reflecting the white half-moon that shone in the night sky. He walked past the writhing man on the ground.
Next thing Camilla knew, the dead weight of the other Tar Mongol was finally lifted off of her. She scrambled to her feet with Dirk’s help, and she clung to him, trembling. Dirk held her with one arm for a moment, his other hand keeping the gun trained on the Mongol who was still alive. Then he gently pushed her away, picked up the discarded leather jacket on the ground, and held it out to her.
Camilla accepted it gratefully, hastily putting it on. She immediately felt safer, like he was still holding her.