by Nikki Wild
“A boring answer, but the right one,” he grumbled. “Take a day and get the lay of the land. Study that shit like your life depends on it. Figure it out from there. Oh, and Detective?”
He sneered out the title, as always. Good to know that he still questioned my capabilities. “Contact me when you’ve actually got something, and not a fucking second sooner.”
With that, he hung up loudly.
I had parked outside a small diner to make the call, and I gazed over at the case file on the passenger seat. If I was going to find these girls, the answer was going to be in that folder… and I sensed that the path forward was already clear.
For late morning, the diner was only half full. This suited me just fine, and I requested a big table in the corner. While the waitress returned with my coffee, I was already up to my ass in paperwork. The case file had plenty of dirt on the Devil’s Dragons MC, and even more on Hunter. The club had arrived in town a few days after the girls went missing and started asking questions… the right questions.
For their efforts, they wound up with a great, big target slapped on their backs. Police attention was the last thing those guys wanted, but they collectively became prime suspect number one for several days. After all, they had a well deserved reputation. Half of the files scattered on this table came from the Devil’s Dragons. Arrests, statements, stakeouts, and a thick manilla folder full of details about the raid on their strip club base of operations eight years ago.
That brought back some memories…
I turned the page, shaken as I saw the pictures of the aftermath. Men lay in pools of blood, and the club was absolutely riddled with bullets. It seemed like they’d pulled every single file related to the Dragons during this investigation. The police raid on their former base in Phoenix had definitely raised some eyebrows in the Tucson jurisdiction. Half the club was killed in the shootout, and most of the others were rotting away in a prison just outside Florence. From the looks of things, less than half a dozen men avoided being charged, and they’d spent the last handful of years bolstering their numbers out of a new clubhouse in El Paso…
Most of the information in the file came from the interrogations of a few captured club members, all of whom were released with no charges filed. Oddly, the files were missing notes on how, precisely, the bikers had been captured.
But their stories filled in some of the gaps.
The club was a shadow of its former self. Whoever the new leader was, he had steered the MC away from running drugs. These days, the club was making its money in armed protection. Bodyguards, concert security, asset retrieval. It was an above-board business as far as the case file was concerned, but people used to say the same thing about that little pink strip club in Phoenix up until the shootout…
What a strange niche to carve, I thought to myself as I sipped my coffee.
When it was clear that they had nothing to do with the disappearances, the police tied up their resources elsewhere: chasing known coyotes in the area. With the girls nowhere to be found on the north side of the border, eyes shifted south.
Mexico…
This is where the Devil’s Dragons dropped out of the case. For all the noise they’d made coming into Tuscon, they left quietly in the middle of the night.
Something wasn’t adding up here.
Something to do with these specific girls…
Lost in thought, I bit the tip of my pen. There was something here that I was missing right in front of my eyes… and I suspected that I wasn’t going to learn it by reading this case file.
Why did they come to Tucson?
And why did they vanish again?
The waitress returned, carefully placing my lunch down between the pages on the table. I hurriedly shifted papers out of her way, thanking her and politely asking for the check. If I were going to make heads or tails of this today, I would have to hit the road again, and fast…
I needed answers, and I wasn’t going to find them in Tucson. The lieutenant would be pissed, but maybe, just maybe…
I needed to go to El Paso.
Chapter 36
Getting to El Paso had been the easy part. It was only four hours past Tucson, and I’d arrived while the sun was still shining above.
The hard part was finding what I was looking for…
It would have been effortless to head straight up to the local authorities and request information on the Devil’s Dragons, but that could have gotten messy. I was out of my jurisdiction and my lieutenant would quickly learn that I was asking questions in the wrong city… and that was a conversation I was intent on pushing back as far as I could.
That left the slower option: relying on my wits and hitting the streets.
I put my honed skills to work, following Sergeant Thompson’s guidance as I dug up what I could on the renegade club. The locals weren’t too eager to answer the questions of a detective, which made me wonder why they were protecting the club…
But I got what I needed.
I always did.
It was dark outside by the time my unmarked car crunched gravel in front of the old bar on the edge of the city. My knuckles went white around the steering wheel as I took a few deep breaths.
This was their base.
Hunter might be in there.
The last time I’d seen him, things had gone sideways. I’d lost my lover. My father had been wounded. People had been arrested… and others had died. I’d spent years trying to free myself of the guilt. As it turned out, the raid wasn’t spontaneous. The sheriff’s department had been planning to take down the Dragons for months before that fateful morning. The assets were in place long before my father discovered me missing… Before he checked the GPS tracking app he’d installed on my phone.
I wasn’t the reason the raid happened… The Devils had sealed their fate when they started trafficking drugs up from the border.
My presence there with Hunter did nothing except speed up the inevitable.
I stepped out of the car – a Crown Vic, just like my father’s. The police lights were tucked away behind the grill instead of planted on the roof for all to see, but under all that white paint she was all business. Patting the hood affectionately, I gave the Interceptor engine a silent moment of gratitude for bringing me this far.
My life changed that fateful morning…
Fitting, perhaps, that it was clearly going to change again tonight.
At least this time, I could see it coming.
Silence fell the moment I stepped into the bar. An endless sea of eyes glared at me from bar tops, pool tables, and the countertop straight ahead. All of them belonged to rugged, weathered bikers or the slutty women of all ages that had given them company.
I marched straight to a free chair at the bar, ignoring how the patrons parted menacingly, closing off behind me as I took my seat.
“Whiskey sour, please,” I asked the bartender. She was a fiery little redhead, frozen in the middle of wiping a grimy glass as she glared daggers my way.
With narrowing eyes and not a syllable uttered, the bartender placed the dirty tumbler down and went straight for the bottom-shelf shit. For the garnish, she made a big show of spitting in the drink before sliding it my way.
“What the hell is this?” I snarled.
The redhead flattened her palms on the bar, leaning forward to grin wickedly: “We don’t serve your kind here.” To punctuate the point, she jabbed a thumb towards the window, and the parked Crown Vic outside.
I rose from my chair, preparing to retort, when a smooth voice called out from behind: “…Elmira. That’s no way to treat our guest, is it?”
The bartender froze again, glancing over my shoulder. Similarly, I stiffened up, locking onto the redhead’s eyes as she glanced my way with a mixture of equal parts confusion and irritation.
I knew that voice.
That was the voice that had haunted my dreams for eight years…
“Give her the Van Wrinkle and the Green Spot this time, E
lmira. Use one of the clean glasses… and try to not spit in it.”
“Jack Daniels is fine,” I retorted, unwilling to take my eyes off of her own. The last time I’d seen this man I’d frozen in panic… Now that we were finally in the same room again, it was the same old song and dance…
“Jack in a whiskey sour? You always liked it a little rough, didn’t you?” I felt his breath near my ear, and a shiver slipped down my spine.
“Some things never change,” I murmured.
“True…” he chuckled, placing a strong, steady hand on my hip. God, I missed that. “But some things change for the better…”
Hunter spun me around in the stool, forcing me to face him. His piercing blue eyes drilled straight into my soul.
He was right – he had changed for the better.
Hunter was built even bigger now, his refined, sculpted physique imposing above me. Another inch of height added to his impressive frame, and broad, powerful shoulders filled my vision, sucking the breath straight from my lungs.
The ripped, worn shirt exposed his tremendous biceps, including the dragon tattoo that snaked authoritatively down one arm.
His expression was harder as well. A short layer of stubble cast a shadow across the hard edges of his chiseled face, and a thin scar glided from his temple down across his cheek.
For a fraction of a moment, I nearly caress the scar out of some place of loving concern… but I pause my hand halfway towards his face.
“That’s a story for another time,” Hunter laughed, knowing me so well even after all these years.
My face flushes red, and I feel heat rising from my core. Embarrassed, and all too eager to hide my developing arousal, I cast my eyes down to his chest. They land on the emblazoned patch above his heart, threaded into the leather – the emblem of the Devil’s Dragons MC.
But there was something else here. A single word that changed everything… President.
I’m in deep shit…
Elmira slid the drink my way. Hunter and I had been so focused on each other that, for all we know, she could have pissed all over that drink right in front of us and I wouldn’t have known it.
“Hello, Hunter,” I murmured softly.
“Hello, Sarah,” he replied with a smile.
In that second, I sensed a change in the atmosphere of the entire bar. With the exception of the bartender, the entire crowd visibly relaxed.
Did… did they know about me?
“Can’t help but notice that you’ve joined the force, just like Daddy,” Hunter tilted his head lightly. “That might just be the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard. From bad girl to good girl… Tell me, Officer… how can I be of some service?”
“Not officer,” I replied. “Detective.”
“Detective?” His eyebrows rose, and a soft smile slid across his face again. “Well now… you’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?”
“I try,” I grinned back.
Hunter lifted his chin, his eyes still locked onto mine. His voice rose to fill the room: “Ladies and gentlemen of the Devil’s Dragons, I would like to introduce a dear, old friend of mine… Detective Sarah Buchanan.”
Murmurs drifted among the crowd. It was clear to me that most of them had heard my name before, and that made things rather interesting. Apparently, Hunter hadn’t quite gotten over me either…
“Sarah here is a welcomed guest of the club,” Hunter continued. “Any preconceived notions of a detective among us come to a stop now. Am I perfectly clear?”
Glasses raised everywhere. Even Elmira begrudgingly lifted a beer, her eyes still shooting daggers my way.
“Perfect. Now then, I believe my associate and I have some… catching up to do. If you’ll excuse us.” He turned to Elmira quickly. “Oh, and to celebrate… I’m buying the full house a drink. The next round’s on me.”
The room erupted in a cheer as he led me by the arm through the crowd, drink in my hand. With the quiet exception of the redhead behind the bar, there wasn’t a dissenting voice in the entire bar.
His word was law.
If I was his guest, I was welcomed here.
He thinks that I’m the one full of surprises… but what the hell happened? The Hunter I remember was a young upstart in an established motorcycle club… Now he’s calling the shots.
Hunter and I stepped outside into the brisk El Paso night, and the merriment quieted as the bar door closed. While I took a swig, I glanced over at the unmarked Crown Vic wishing it was a bit more inconspicuous. Maybe I’d get it some old lady hub caps to hide the exposed steel wheels…
“Can we go somewhere more private?” I asked.
“I was thinking my place, once you’re done with that,” Hunter grinned. “The club’s going to want answers soon on why there’s a member of the force in our midst… they’re nice and liquored up tonight. Hopefully not too liquored up, since we’re always on call for a job… But there’ll be questions in the morning. Lots of questions.”
I nodded, kicking back another swig. The whiskey sour certainly didn’t taste like it had been desecrated, and for that, I was thankful.
“I have questions too,” I replied. “I’m not here for pleasure… there’s some business to attend to.”
“Well, Detective…” Hunter chuckled, taking a step towards me. I could practically feel the same youthful, hungry energy crackling between us… just as it had eight years ago. “Finish up your drink and follow me. I’m not far from here…”
I glanced down at the whiskey sour.
“Are you asking me to drink and drive?”
He smiled mischievously. “Last I checked, you weren’t the kind of girl who got tipsy on a couple sips. I’ve seen you drink three hundred pound bikers under the table… I’m asking you to accept my hospitality. It beats the hell out of sticking around here, especially with my bartender’s… fragile sentiments towards you.”
I realized that I hadn’t paid for the drink, and turned back towards the door. With the motion, my gaze turned inside, and I could spot the bartender glaring at us over the drinks she was pouring.
“Don’t worry,” he murmured, his hand grasping my arm. “It’s on the house, remember? Just finish that up and let’s hit the road. I’m not far…”
Chapter 37
While riding his steel, rumbling hog, Hunter led me a couple of miles away to his place – a small, single-story house off of a dirt road.
Flicking lights on as we entered, he directed me towards the den. “Coffee? Or another drink?”
“You pick,” I smirked. “It’s going to be a long night.”
“Well aren’t you optimistic,” Hunter noted coyly. “Give me a minute. Make yourself at home.”
I did as suggested, sitting down on the single sofa in the room. It brought back memories of that receded sofa in the strip club floor, and I wondered if he thought of that last night together every time that he sat here.
The wafting smell of fresh coffee came into the room, and I felt a little invigorated. Oh good, he’s behaving…
However, I knew Hunter. That’s why I wasn’t surprised when he came in with a pair of double-shot whiskey neats instead, impishly handing me one without a word.
“You just like the roasted coffee bean aroma for ambience, right?”
Hunter laughed. “Something like that.”
My former lover pulled the coffee table in the room closer, propping up his boots on it as he took a swing of the drink.
I followed his lead, watching how effortlessly he slid into this role. The last second that I’d seen him, he had looked like I’d ripped his heart to shreds… and then he’d ducked out of that window and out of my life. For all he’d known, the police could have been right on his tail…
If any of that was on the mind of this cool, confident man beside me, then he didn’t show an ounce of it. There was a scarily comfortable air between us, as if the pains of the last eight years had been nothing but a bad dream.
Worse than that, he knew i
t. His gaze fell upon me, transparently telling me that he could sense my apprehension and my fear…
“Well now, Detective…” he began, setting the drink down on the surface in front. “Let’s get business out of the way. What brings you out to El Paso?”
I blinked in confusion.
It hadn’t really occurred to me that he’d go straight for that. All these questions, all these concerns about the time we’d spent apart…
“Business…” I murmured, realizing that he was getting to me. His leather jacket was discarded again, and those rippling muscles were clearly out on display. I couldn’t help but trace his rugged, hardened physique with my gaze.
I wondered if coming here had been a mistake. Spit in the drinks or not, I was probably safer back at the bar…
“Yes, business…” He repeated, a faint smile curling at the edges of his lips. The smug bastard could see the effect he was having on me.
I swallowed quickly.
“You’ve come to my town for something, and we both know this isn’t a social visit. I want to know why you’re here, and how you found me.”
“Tell me you’re smarter than that,” I toyed.
“Right,” he answered calmly. “The girls.”
“The girls?” I asked, sipping my drink. Selfishly, I needed to know how useful Hunter would be to my case. My memories painted him as being particularly sharp and perceptive, but if he was going to be a proper ally in this case…
“You’re not the first detective to sit here asking me questions about our little investigation in Tucson, Sarah… I’m not interested in playing games here.”
“So, that was your investigation,” I confirmed aloud. I fought how my core warmed as his voice trickled over the syllables of my name. “But why you? Why them, and why now?”
“You know why,” he answered quietly, his eyes stern as he regarded me coolly. “That’s why you came here.”
“Your sister.”
“That’s right,” Hunter nodded calmly. “Eight years ago, the Devil’s Dragons MC helped me find her. In exchange, I joined the club as a junior enforcer…”