Vicious: Steel Jockeys MC

by Claire St. Rose

  "You're also an accomplice," said Colt. "Of sorts."

  "I've got to see him, Colt. It's my fault he's in there."

  "The hell it is. You were trying to help him. That greedy little bastard knew full well he shouldn't have done that deal alone. Without a gun, no less. What was he thinking?"

  "He thought it would be a walk in the park. Aaron Beeson was one of our closest suppliers. I mean, he knew Kyle back in the day. They used to shoot pool together.”

  “This wouldn’t have anything to do with that cousin of his, would it?”

  Lydia. Joe’s stomach twisted at the mere thought of that name, and not in the good way it had when they’d first gotten to know each other. No, it hadn’t been about her, but it certainly complicated things--as women always did. He tried to steer the conversation elsewhere.

  “I just had bad feeling about it, so I followed him. And then when we got there, it wasn't Beeson."

  "I don't care if he was going to meet his grandma. You don’t play fast and loose with your life or the club's money. He's lucky he didn't come home in a body bag." This was another reason people trembled when they met Colt--his absolutely unrelenting scorn for anyone who went against the M.C. Joe pitied Tony--even if he made it out unscathed and with no charges, he'd still have Colt to deal with. "Who was the guy, anyway?"

  "No clue. He just ran at me as he was on his way out after stabbing Tony. Got the stuff, the money. Everything."

  "How much?"

  "Tony said it at was at least fifteen grand."

  Colt's eyes grew hard. Joe didn't blame him.

  "Did you get a good luck at the guy?"

  Joe looked down at the asphalt, trying to picture the guy’s face. "Tall, dark-haired. A lot of acne scars. Nobody I knew." Joe tried to change the subject; he'd get enough of the third degree when he got back to the bar. He set one of his boots on the pedal, prepared to hop on the wide leather seat, inhaling the smell of leather and vinyl and gas, folding into it. Then he remembered it wasn’t his bike. "Mind if I drive?" His lip turned up daringly. "I know, I know. One scratch and I'm going to be the one in a body bag."

  "No. One scratch and I'll make sure there won't be enough left of you to bother with one."

  Joe grinned and slid forward, flexing his gloved fingers on the chrome handlebars, warmed by the sun. He kicked the engine into gear.

  But wait. He froze. There was something he had forgotten to check, and it was the one thing he owned that was irreplaceable; the one thing, along with the photo of his sister, that Kyle had entrusted to his best friend in the moments before the life drained away from him, as softly as drawing a curtain closed. Was it still there? Had it fallen out? Had one of the jail guards pawned it downtown? Heart now racing, he shoved his hands into the tight pocket of his jeans, and exhaled audibly as his fingers closed around the gold chain, then sliding down to the heart-shaped ruby to which it was attached.

  CHAPTER THREE

  "As you can see here, sir, its mileage is actually above what the EPA recommends for bikes and cars. I don't mean to overstate things but," she lowered her voice. "If Al Gore were a biker, this is what he would ride."

  The customer's eyes widened. "Is that so?"

  Just as Ruby reached for the spec sheet to prove it to him, her eyes chanced over to a nearby desk. Instead of fixing on the spreadsheet he was innocently scrolling through, the glacier-blue eyes of her boss, Fox Keene, caught and held hers. She swallowed and stammered, stomach buckling, trying to direct her eyes away from his gaze. Anything would be better than that Hollywood-cool blond fauxhawk, or the way he balanced casually on the edge of his desk in his vintage maroon t-shirt, skinny black jeans, and Frye boots. This was her sale, and she was determined to complete it on her own. But like it or not, Fox Keene was a presence, even when he was silent.

  The owner of the Harley-Davidson dealership was a biker born, and even though he'd left the Steel Jockeys, he wasn't ashamed of his outlaw-gang roots. He wore his tattoos with pride. He was in his mid-thirties and looked younger, tan, broad shouldered, and steel-eyed.

  Now, noticing her glance, he parted his full lips in a cheeky smile and gave her a small thumbs up, and Ruby's breathing steadied. She could do this. She could make the sale. She'd done it before. Encouraged and just a little bit red, she turned back to the customer.

  Suddenly, a door squeaked open, and Chace Pillard poked his head out of his office. With his receding hairline and a popped collar on his Izod shirt, he was the eternal frat boy at forty-three years old. He cleared his throat. "Ruby, Heather Albright will be here in a few minutes to pick up the donation for the Boys & Girls Club charity auction."

  "Tell her I'll be with her in a minute," Ruby said smoothly, without a touch of irritation in her voice that Chace, the dealership's lead salesman, never resisted the opportunity to sabotage someone else’s deal.

  Ruby took a deep breath as she shook hands with the man in front of her now, trying not to make it too obvious that she was sizing him up. He was short, probably in his early fifties, had a reddish goatee and thick dark-rimmed glasses, and was wearing a new-looking sport coat, tailored jeans, and deck shoes. She noticed that he moved uncomfortably in them, as if he found the clothes constricting. But glancing at his forehead, Ruby noticed something that gave her an idea. She returned to her desk and handed him a certificate from the EPA.

  He paced around the bike one more time, his face reflected in its impossibly shiny black chrome. But he didn't need to have another look; Ruby noticed how his eyes had brightened. "How much?" he asked, reaching for his pocket. Ruby had sold enough bikes now to recognize that the fish was on the hook; all that remained was to reel him in, net him and gut him--or at least that was metaphor Chace always used. But Ruby still had one last trick up her sleeve.

  She took a deep breath, braced herself, and swung one skinny-jean clad leg over the saddle, her red velvet ballet flat toeing the kickstand. Immediately, she felt the guy's eyes trained on her--nobody ever looked away. As always, she felt a little frisson of excitement as she fingers curled around the handlebars and she leaned down, as if facing a stiff wind, though she had a feeling it would evaporate quickly as soon as the motor revved. The first time she'd tried it, she had felt uncomfortable. She'd never driven one before, though Kyle had forever been offering to teach her, and she hadn't loved the idea of playing the part of the bimbo car-show model. She closed her eyes against the vision of the open road in front of her, the curves and tricks and switchbacks, the gravel crunching under the tires, the caress of the bike as it worked with her body as she leaned into a turn. For most of her life, she'd hated the fact that since she was child and Kyle had first developed his fascination with Harleys and the guys who rode them, these bikes were a part of her; they ran in her veins. But now, settling into the squeak of the brand-new leather, she knew, though she had run from that world, she couldn't outrun it. Not completely. Not ever. And so she might as well use it.

  "A beautiful woman on a Harley. It's kind of like poetry, isn't?" said an approving voice spoke behind her. It was Fox addressing the customer, who agreed almost too eagerly, like he was embarrassed to have been watching Ruby so intently. She fell out of her daydream, hopping off the bike and beckoned the customer over to her desk. He followed like a lamb after its mother, and ten minutes later, he walked out with the keys swinging from his fingers, a dazed expression still on his face. Ruby followed him to the door, hands on hips. "How--?" Chace came up behind her. "I wouldn't have pegged that guy for a tree hugger."

  "It was obvious. Didn't you notice how his thin his hair was up there?" She pointed to her forehead.

  Chace frowned. "So what? He wouldn't be the first. Mid-life crises almost single-handedly keep us in business."

  "Right," said Ruby. "But it wasn't standard male-pattern baldness. It was the kind of thinness right above the forehead," she pointed, "that comes after years of wearing a too-tight ponytail."

  "In other words, up until quite recently, he was a long-
haired, tree-hugging, Birkenstock-wearing, granola-eating hippie," Fox's voice broke in. Ruby laughed.

  “Even the most liberal among us aren't immune to mid-life crises." Ruby went on. "I'd bet you a shot he's recently divorced."

  "There was no wedding ring line," pointed out Chace.

  "Maybe he thought a ring was too square?" Ruby suggested. "In any case, I figure he's dating someone new, who wasn't down with the ponytail. Bottom line is, he may not be hugging trees anymore, but that doesn't mean he's not concerned about the size of his..." Chace raised his eyebrows. "Carbon footprint." She jumped up to sit on the desk, arms crossed modestly.

  "Ruby, you amaze me," said Fox, high-fiving her. As their hands met mid-air, Fox clutched her small, olive-toned hand in his for a second longer than normal. Ruby looked down at her shoes.

  Earlier at her desk, idly flipping through a spreadsheet but really listening to Fox go around in circles, it had only taken her a split-second to recognize his special signal: asking "What can we do for you?" instead of "What can I do for you?". He couldn't straight-out announce that he was handing the sale over to Ruby, because that would represent a lack of confidence. Instead, the key was for her to just casually step into the conversation.

  Since she'd first started working at Fox Keene Harley-Davidson, she couldn't have imagined being so bold. Even back at the candle store, when a customer had asked her a question she couldn't answer, even one as simple as, "Does this come in French vanilla?" she'd usually turn it over to her boss. But that had been before she had met Fox, who seemed to not only recognize the dynamo that lurked within Ruby, but to open her up, scoop it out, and light the fuse.

  It was the first thing she'd noticed about him when she’d finally come out of her daze of grief long enough to form an opinion of the man into whose care she’d entrusted herself after Kyle’s death. He was confident and cool, never hesitating for a second, but he didn't drip smarm the way Ruby had assumed all salesmen needed to. He never insulted his customers' manhood by implying they needed a Harley to pick up chicks or compensate for their obviously smaller-than-average genitalia. He simply was himself. Customers liked him because he was likeable. They laughed at his jokes because he was funny. They looked up to him because he was smart. They trusted him because, underneath it all, they knew he could be trusted. And all of that translated into sales. Even better, he didn't jealously guard his customers the way Chace did, clawing and scraping for every sale; he had a fundamentally generous soul. He never made anyone feel like they owed him--even when a customer was writing him a check for a quarter of a million dollars for a brand-new bike.

  Ruby, for her part, wasn't a saleswoman; it wasn't in her job description, and she'd initially resisted the idea that she could do anything else for the dealership but file and answer the phone. Besides, her talent didn't necessarily lie in sales. It lay in reading people. At figuring out their motivations, fears, insecurities, and their deepest desires. She’d always had that ability; it made people want to make themselves vulnerable to her. It was much more difficult for her to make herself vulnerable to them. As far as she was concerned, her family had been the only ones worth revealing herself to, and they were gone. But since she’d met Fox, it seemed that had, at last, begun to change.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  "They kill one of ours, put another one in the hospital and maybe in prison, and now they're going after our suppliers in our territory? How the hell can we let this go on?" A.J. Monaghan, who looked dangerous normally with his spring-wired body and shaved head, coal-black eyes, cop-killer facial hair, and spiky jewelry, practically rippled with tension and heat. He was around thirty and the son of A.J. Monaghan, Sr., a close friend of Colt's and another former president of the club, who had died a few years ago of lung cancer. A lot of the Steel Jockeys of Colt's generation had been taken too soon, as many from natural causes as from unnatural ones. That left the forty-eight-year-old Colt, who had three daughters but no sons, the only active member of his age group. Billy Monaghan, A.J.'s uncle, was still around, though he hadn't been active for a decade since an accident on his bike had left him unable to walk without a cane.

  Joe rented an apartment above the Thunderbird, although the term "rent" wasn’t exactly accurate, since, as a member, he technically owned one-sixteenth of the business. One would think that he’d be entitled to more luxurious accommodations, but he never complained--he’d spent far too much of his life without any kind of a roof over his head. When at last he’d showered and dumped his meager possessions off in his apartment to head downstairs, A.J. Monaghan, Rex O’Gara, and Connor "Wings" Knight had already assembled at the bar, drinking Jack on the rocks. A.J. and Red had ordered it, Joe figured, and Wings was drinking the same in a blatant attempt to curry favor with the older members. A.J., of course, had barely wasted a second welcoming his brother-in-arms back, though a brisk clap on the back was all he had offered. Joe hadn’t expected more; his friend’s eyes practically spelled “revenge.”

  "We need to draw them out in the open,” suggested Rex, who, under his bandana and long, straight, greasy hair, was already growing a beard almost as impressive as Colt’s. He had been A.J.’s buddy since elementary school, and A.J. counted on him to go along with his plans.

  "Aren't we giving these guys too much credit?" asked Wings, stumbling over his words as the older members turned to look at him. "I mean, they don't even have a leader. They're nothing."

  "They've got to have something, otherwise they wouldn't have been able to do what they did to Tony. Up till now, we've held all the cards. We control all the rackets."

  "Well, what’s changed?” Wings asked, much to Joe’s dismay. As soon as he did A.J.’s steely gaze fixed on Joe, who clenched his teeth and gulped, shoving his hands in his pockets. He had hoped this wouldn’t come up.

  “For whatever reason, they perceive us as weak,” said Colt. “It’s up to us to prove we aren’t.”

  “We need a weapon,” said Rex.

  "We have a weapon,” said A.J. pointedly. “The only problem is, Ryan here has been keeping it under lock and key. The girl." A.J.'s eyes looked black as he leaned over the table, looking straight at Joe, who felt his jaw clench.

  "No," said Joseph, looking from A.J. to Wings to Colt, whose eyes were equally hard. He needed Colt’s support, and if he didn’t get it, there’s no way he could stand up to A.J.

  "She's our best shot, Ryan," A.J. countered. "There’s no question about it. We’ve got to amass. Call in the other charters. Rally every defense we have. And she can help us do it. I mean, she's the sister of the most powerful president this club ever had."

  "I don't care,” said Joe. “Nobody touches her."

  "How are we even going to find her?" asked Wings, who, along with Tony, was the youngest member of the chapter. He sat at the table, his pale hands curled around his highball glass, his freshly inked M.C. tattoo glistening in the sun that filtered in from the western window.

  A.J. looked at Joe. "Ryan knows where she is."

  Joe gulped, looking from A.J. to Colt, eyes like onyx. It was time to come clean. He'd kept as far away from Ruby as he could, short of moving to the next county. He knew that after what she’d been through, last thing that poor girl needed was some scruffy biker trying to manhandle her. And as much as he hated to admit it, Fox had the kind of resources to keep Ruby safe, ones Joe could never dream of having, short of Publishers Clearing House knocking on his door. "With Fox."

  “Fox Keene? Are you insane? Kyle was the best leader we ever had, but even he had his blind spots. And Fox was his biggest. And deadliest. He was so intent on drinking Fox’s Kool-Aid, that he missed what was happening right in front of his eyes."

  A.J. was more right than he knew. But revealing the truth of the matter now would be as good as digging his own grave. In fact, that was the only thing that had kept him from going after Fox Keene himself--that and the fact that he knew Ruby was under his protection and seemed happy. If refusing to think about it was the o
nly way not drive himself bonkers, knowing Ruby was with the man whose scheming had ultimately cost Kyle his life, then he’d been glad, so far, to shove it to the murky corners of his mind.

  Joe gulped. "He’s legit now. Or at least so he says.” He didn’t expect any of the guys to believe that. He didn’t either.

  "Please," laughed A.J. derisively. "You sound as naive as Wings."

  "Hey!" protested Wings.

  "Fox is pulling strings with the Reapers. Or at the very least, he's the money man. I bet my bike on it."

  '"A.J.'s right," said Colt diplomatically. "I don't know what Fox is up to, but anybody who isn't a friend of ours is a friend of theirs, as far as I'm concerned."

  "Fine," Joe insisted stubbornly. "Go after Fox then. Break his thumbs. But leave Ruby out of it. She's been through enough."

  "Ryan, are you insane?" A.J. growled, leaping up from his chair. "But what if she marries him? What if she has his kid? You've got the heir to the Reapers right there. The heir to half of San Joaquin County, for God's sake. With Fox's money and her blood, they could consolidate every biker within a hundred miles under her. Think about it--all of our distributors, all of our suppliers, all of our contacts, mustered into them. If they hear that Kyle Clarke's sister is with the most powerful guy in the city, they'll think the tide is turning. They'll want to be on the winning side...”