by Kara Parker
“He’s at the altar, looking rather nervous, but also very handsome. Let’s not keep him waiting any longer.” Olivia reached for her mother’s outstretched hand, and with her bouquet in the other, they walked together towards the chapel. They waited in the wings and watched as Olivia’s cousins and nieces acted as flower girls and bridesmaids. Each one of them waited on the sideline, and then their cue came on and they took a step down the aisle and out of Olivia’s view.
Olivia Waters had taken on bikers and drug dealers and murderers, but she had never felt as nervous as she felt at that moment. She held tightly to her mother’s hand as the last bridesmaid began her walk, and then the processional music began. Olivia could hear the sound of throats clearing and fabric moving, as people out in the chapel stood up to watch her walk down the aisle.
The music was playing as Olivia took a deep breath and then took her first step and emerged in the church. She could hear people sighing sweetly and whispering to each other. On every face she saw, whether biker or cop, there was only happiness and love. Finally, Olivia looked up at the aisle and there was David, wearing a perfectly-fitted suit and tie. His hands were crossed in front of him and a smile spread across his face, as his eyes finally met with Olivia’s.
At the end of the aisle, Olivia kissed her mother on her cheek and watched as her mother hugged David. Then, she put Olivia’s hand in David’s and took her seat. Olivia looked up at the handsome man before her, her soon-to-be husband. In mere minutes, they would be married, bonded for their entire lives. In his eyes, she saw moonlight bike rides and passionate love; she saw them walking hand-in-hand down the street with nowhere in particular to go. She saw her whole life with David Creely stretched out in front of her, and she smiled, as the priest began to speak.
THE END
BONUS BOOK 2 – OUTLAW
Chapter One
There was a bear trap hidden under the leaves. That’s a lie. There were many bear traps hidden under the leaves. They waited, buried underneath piles of fallen debris, well hidden from any prying eyes. Some of the leaves were green and shiny and still had a little bit of life in them, others were brown and dry and they crinkled and crunched when stepped on. The leaves, and the bear traps hidden in them, surrounded a grey, unassuming building set far back in the woods.
There was only one dirt road that leads to this building. It wasn’t on any maps, no one owned it, and no one paid taxes on it. Technically it did not exist. It was a single-story, cement, rectangular building. It did not have any utilities connecting it to a power grid; there was no electricity, gas, or plumbing. There was only one large generator sitting in the leaves outside of the building and it was used to power a few weak light bulbs when the men had to work late into the night.
No GPS could bring you to this building; only someone who had been there before could show you where it was. But Falcon had been there many, many times. He had been one of the first people to see the large empty landscape and realized they could put a building there and no one would notice. One hundred and fifty miles outside of LA the grey, cement building sat unbothered on the northeast corner of a large hunting preserve.
The bear traps weren’t for the bears, though Falcon always thought it would be cool if they got one. No, the bear traps were for rivals and the rare inquisitive hunter who forgot curiosity killed the cat. Fortunately, hunters had yet to be a problem. The sounds of motorcycles, the noise of the generator, and the smell of other alpha males kept any game away. Since the animals didn’t go there, the hunters didn’t either.
As he drove his bike down the dirt road that led to the Screaming Eagles processing building, Falcon saw a hunter high up in a tree stand. The hunter had built his tree stand atop one of the tallest and oldest trees in the reserve and it gave him a good view, potentially too good. Falcon had stopped his bike on the road in order to watch the hunter, a pair of binoculars in his hands. He was facing west, away from the processing center, and he hadn’t turned around at the sound of Falcon’s bike.
Fingering the Glock he kept in his holster, Falcon watched the man for a few minutes. But the hunter remained high up in his tree and Falcon decided killing him would be more trouble than it was worth. He got back on his bike and left the lone hunter behind as he rode the last mile the low, grey, cement building. He stayed on the dirt road, being careful to avoid the traps, as his spotless, black and chrome Harley Davidson took him quietly to work.
He sped past the places he knew the bear traps to be hidden and smiled to himself. If that hunter did get curious he would quickly come to regret it. The low, cement building had no front or back, no distinguishing marks of any kind. There was one large receiving bay door on the north-facing side and Falcon pulled his bike around to it to key in his code on a sophisticated lock. After a few seconds the large receiving bay door rolled open and Falcon Marks had ten seconds to push his bike through the doorway before the doors would automatically close crushing anything that was in the way.
The warehouse had exactly the kind of stale chemical smell you would expect a drug-processing center run by bikers to have. The chemical smell was mixed with the smell of stale cigarettes, weed, coffee, and oil. There were a few pin-ups taped to the cement walls, but other than that the place was barren. There were rows and rows of table with small scales and hundreds of little baggies and boxes stacked up along the walls with bare light bulbs swinging gently over them.
Falcon pushed his bike into the processing center and quickly put it with the others. It would look to obvious and suspicious to leave a dozen gleaming motorcycles outside of the building that technically didn’t exist and so they were always brought in where they could be hidden from view. As Falcon turned away from his bike Billy the Killer, a tall and well-muscled man and a leader in the Screaming Eagles club, greeted him. He was the boss, and Falcon a foot soldier.
“Going smoothly?” Falcon asked.
“Smooth as a Megan Fox’s ass,” Billy answered holstering his gun. “You run the route?”
“All one hundred and fifty miles of it. It’s wide open and there are no detours and the cops are in all the usual places,” Falcon answered. It was his job to do the dry run the day of the transportation. He needed to travel the route himself with his eyes open looking for anything suspicious or out of the ordinary: roadwork, detours, random police searches. He had done the trip in seventy-five minutes and was feeling, at that moment, rather confident.
To Falcon’s left, a plain white U-Haul truck had been backed into the processing center and it was currently being filled with drugs by the members of the Screaming Eagles. Hundreds of kilos of meth rocks and pseudoephedrine had been packaged inside of crates of travel mugs.
“A cup of joe keeps you from looking like Moe!” The cups declared with a picture of Moe Howard making his grumpiest expression. The drugs were stashed in the mugs with the lid attached securely. The first three rows of boxes would be nothing but the travel mugs; the last eighteen rows would hold the real goods.
Falcon had arrived just in time. As he watched, the last few boxes were piled into the truck and then they were ready to go. The driver was a young kid named Eric. He was new to the gang and got the job as driver because of how clean cut he looked. With no beard and no visible tattoos the cops had no reason to harass him, and he was often able to get out of jams on charm alone.
“You ready, hoss?” Falcon asked as he walked up to Eric and clapped him on the back. Falcon liked Eric; the kid was young and didn’t look like a traditional biker, which had made it hard for him to feel included in the club. But Falcon had taken him under his wing and Falcon looked like he could have been a cover model for Bikers Monthly. He was big guy – 6’5” with major muscles and full tattoo sleeves on each arm. He had dark hair and dark brown eyes, so dark they almost obscured the pupil. But the thing that most people talked about was the enormous falcon tattoo on his back. It stretched from his neck all the way down his back and from shoulder blade to shoulder blade. It had cost t
wo thousand dollars and taken seven sessions. It was beautiful and terrifying all at the same time.
“There’s a hunter in a tree out there, but he wasn’t looking this way. I don’t think we need to worry about it,” Falcon said to Eric and Billy.
“Probably best if bodies aren’t piled up around the bunker,” Eric said with a scoff as he climbed into the driver’s seat of the truck.
Billy led the way, the truck following right behind him. The rest of the Screaming Eagles waited their turn and, as the headlights of the truck disappeared into the forest, Falcon lit a cigarette and took a heavy drag. Once the cigarette was burned to the filter they would follow the truck. The bikes needed to stay with the shipment just in case any rival gangs tried to jack it. But they couldn’t look like they were following the truck. A truck escorted by ten bikers was like a big flashing sign for the cops. Falcon took another drag from his cigarette. He was sitting astride his bike, the engine not yet on.
He smoked his cigarette all the way down to the filter and then he tossed it on the ground. Making sure to stomp out any embers so the dead leaves didn’t turn into burning leaves, he slipped his helmet over his head and the rest of them followed suit. They were ready to go. Ready to get this job over with, make their money, and go home.
But before he could start his bike, Falcon heard someone give three loud, long hits to his horn. He whipped his head up at the sound in time to see Billy racing back towards the processing center.
“Fucking cops! Scatter! Scatter!”
“Shit,” Falcon hissed under his breath as he brought his bike to life and turned away from the road, sending clods of dirt up into the air. He drove back through the fallen leaves, sending them scattering and flying in his wake. He drove quickly, swerving around the dangerous bear traps, hoping that at least one cop stumbled into one. The men around him did the same, each one riding as if his life depended on it. It was every man for himself now.
Behind him, he heard the scream of police sirens as they sped down the dirt road towards the grey building. There were a lot of them and the sirens were bleeding through the thick forest as Falcon’s heart started to pound. Every biker knew his life would end in death or jail, and they had always been told death was preferable. But while he had always known it would end this way, being faced with the reality sent his heart racing and his eyes went wide as he searched desperately for some way out.
Chapter Two
Falcon made a hard right and turned down a path that the Screaming Eagles had cut through the hunting preserve. But the path was dangerous and in order to stay in control of his bike, he had to slow down. There were exposed roots, broken branches, and rocks that jutted far out of the earth and Falcon sped past and through all of them praying the cops hadn’t seen him. He had never felt more alive. His eyes were wide open and they saw every danger seconds before they became deadly. He saw a rock and instantly swerved to avoid it, sending him into a fallen tree branch that he managed to run over and compensate for, staying in his seat and continuing to run.
The forest was filled with paths and trails to get the bikers out in a situation just like this. Falcon knew that in five miles this path would spit him out onto a busy highway and he could disappear into the crowd. He just needed to make it. He heard the roar of a bike behind him and he took a moment to glance in his rearview mirror, but what he saw was the last thing he expected.
It was a woman. She wasn’t wearing a helmet, and she knew how to ride a bike. She was speeding down the path and to Falcon’s surprise she was gaining on him. He glanced at her again in the mirror and saw her getting even closer, her long, dark hair flying behind her like a flag as she zoomed down the path.
I can still make it, he thought as he gunned his engine. But an increase in speed came with an increase in danger and he saw the rock only as his front wheel hit it. His bike jerked to the right and he compensated, but then heard his engine began to cough and he felt his bike shudder beneath him. “No, no, no!” Falcon cried out, his voice rising in panic. An image filled his head, a little girl with bright blue eyes and a thick head of curly dark hair. He could see her clearly and as his bike died beneath him, Falcon knew he had failed his daughter.
He jumped off his bike, letting it fall, not caring about how many scratches and dings it would acquire.
“Get down. On the ground, dirtbag, now!” Her voice was stern and strong sounding.
Behind him she jumped off the motorcycle Falcon recognized as Eric’s. For a second he didn’t move, his hand hovering over the holster to his gun. Finally, he turned to face the cop and saw she was almost as tall as he was and curvy, with vibrant green eyes and he had to stop himself from doing a double take. She was gorgeous, full bodied and confident. Falcon wondered how she had come to be a cop. A woman that beautiful should have been on the cover of magazines, not arresting bikers in the woods.
“Reach for that gun and I will end you. You really want to die in these woods?” Her gun was out and aimed at Falcon. He stared at it in disbelief; had this really happened? Was he about to be arrested by a woman more beautiful than any he had ever seen before? He knew his prints had been found at over seven murder scenes, and there was no way of knowing what the police knew about the Screaming Eagles operation. He was going to go to jail, probably for the rest of his life. He would never see Sophie again.
“Get down on the ground and keep your hands where I can see them,” the cop said.
Every time Falcon had imagined this scenario he had watched himself go out in a hail of bullets. They’ll never take me alive, no sir. How many times had he said that? And, yet, here he was, hands raised as he awkwardly got on the ground.
His face was in the dirt as he felt the cop rifle through his jacket and remove his gun. She roughly grabbed his arms and placed his wrists in handcuffs.
“You have the right to remain silent,” she said as she started to recite his rights to him. His hands were cuffed behind his back and she grabbed his arm and helped him stand up. Now, informed of his rights, they started back down the path towards the processing facility.
“What’s your name?”
“Falcon, Falcon Marks,” he said with a huff. He was furious with himself. Had he been a coward? There would have been no way for Falcon to get to his gun before the cop shot him, but, still, he should have at least tried. But what would have happened to Sophie?
“Yeah, right, and I’m Princess Bubblegum” she scoffed. “What’s your real name?”
“Falcon Marks is my real name,” he answered.
“We’ll see about that. I’m Detective Santiago. You can refer to me as Detective Santiago.”
“How did you find out about us?” Falcon asked.
“A hunter reported some very strange activity in the area. We had some other tips come in recently, but the call from the hunter pushed us over the edge. It was a real risk bringing the whole team out here, but, boy, was it worth it,” she said and Flacon could hear the smug edge to her voice.
As the path opened up before them Falcon felt his heart sink. There were over a dozen police vans and what looked like a hundred cops swarming the facility.
“Grace! You got one!” he heard a voice call out and as one every officer on the field turned to look at the two of them and a cheer went up. Standing handcuffed next to the woman who arrested him Falcon had never felt more exposed or humiliated. They were celebrating his defeat and, what was worse, they were making him watch.
Officer Grace Santiago led him to the stump of a long dead tree and sat him down on it.
“What do we got, Summers?” she asked a petite looking blond woman.
“The mother-load,” the blonde said with a grin that was about a mile wide. “Hundreds of kilos of meth rocks, pseudoephedrine, and thousands in lab grade equipment. And,” she turned to face Falcon, “there is definitely evidence that this isn't their only operation.”
“Good to know,” Grace said, turning to stare at Falcon with her arms crossed. “Boys, put h
im in a truck, take him to the precinct. I’ll meet you there. You're under arrest,” she said, speaking directly to Falcon. “For conspiracy to manufacture and distribute a commercial quantity of a class A drug. Say goodbye to your life. You’re going to jail for a long time.”
Falcon was driven back to the precinct alone in a police van. He was the only one who had been captured.
“Fuck!” he screamed into the empty van, his voice echoing around him. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” he repeated. He kicked out at the bench, but it did no good. He was finished. He was going to be arrested and thrown into prison. He wouldn’t get a trial. Whatever crappy, court-appointed attorney he got would just tell him to take a plea deal that wouldn’t be a real deal at all. He would spend his last good years inside a cement box surrounded by enemies of the Screaming Eagles who would want to do him in.
He would never see Sophie again. She was only two years old. Her mother would never bring her to visit; she would grow up not knowing her father. She would describe him to her friends as another deadbeat dad serving out a life sentence. He wouldn’t be there on her first day of school; he wouldn’t get to watch her grow up. Sophie was the only thing in the world he cared about and now he had lost the chance to ever see her again.