Shelter (Red Rebels MC Book 5)

by C. D. Breadner

  “1st Infantry? The Big Red One?”

  Knuckles nodded, smiling. “Yeah. That’s the one.”

  “You see combat, son?”

  “Yes sir.” Again, the military rearing was deeply imbedded. He could even feel his back straightening. “Operation Iraqi Freedom. Served in Baghdad. I was in the shit for Bloody Wednesday.”

  “Private First Class?”

  “Yes sir.”

  Mad Dog nodded, his lips curled in a slight smile. “Fantastic.”

  He had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but he took the second offered handshake and then Mad Dog approached Fritter.

  “Sir,” Fritter greeted the senior McClune the same way, hand out.

  “This is your SAA, son?”

  “Yeah, that’s Fritter.”

  “Fritter?” Mad Dog laughed, then shook Fritter’s hand. “Oh yes, I remember you. You’re nailing the sweet little sheriff.”

  Knuckles sucked in a breath as Fritter’s face darkened.

  “Dad, actually, they’re together together now. Downey lost the election.”

  Fritter’s jaw was tight, but he held it together. “Oh yeah. I forgot about that.” Mad Dog slapped Fritter’s shoulder. “Ease up, son. I’m just yanking your chain. Not that we all weren’t wondering what was under that uniform.”

  Shit.

  “Dad, that’s enough.”

  Mad Dog’s eyes twinkled with plenty of shit-stirring delight. “I forgot. Jayce did see what’s under the uniform a few years ago.”

  Fritter stood strong, then Mad Dog extended a branch of sorts. “I don’t mean to piss you off. Or hell, maybe I do. Wanna take a shot at me?”

  “Yes.”

  That answer shocked the shit out of Knuckles, but Mad Dog was completely unfazed. “Go ahead, boy.”

  “Fritter,” Tank warned, shaking his head slowly.

  “It’s okay, Tank. I deserve it. Back at the clubhouse, son. I promise.” In an odd, Cro-Magnon way Mad Dog seemed pleased with Fritter’s anger and control in spite of it.

  “Well, I’ve been locked up for way too fucking long to stand around here circle-jerking with you guys. I need to ride, eat, and fuck. Doesn’t have to be in that order, but I don’t intend to do it in the shadow of this fucking place.”

  With a round of knowing chuckles, they all headed for their Harleys, waiting for Mad Dog to reacquaint with the ride. Not that a person ever forgot how to ride, but from the way the guy settled, handled the grips, and looked her over, it was apparent he needed a moment before he was mentally ready to ride anywhere. They gave him space, taking their time strapping helmets on and walking their bikes back to position to ride off behind him.

  Mad Dog was to take the lead back to the clubhouse. That was just the way it was done when one of their boys got out of holding. No one fired up an engine until their patriarch pulled his helmet on, leaving it unfastened, and turned his own motor over. As the founder of the club pulled a U-turn and rode past, Knuckles saw he was grinning.

  After thirty minutes of riding it wasn’t a surprise when Mad Dog signaled the crew to turn off at a truck stop diner. It was one of those huge gas station complexes, with a separate card lock for truckers that also tended to house showers and rooms for short stays. The other building, attached to a huge convenience store, was a modern diner that looked like it tried to attract families that were road weary and hungry with fake plants, cheerful curtains in the windows, and a sign outside that bragged “Kids Eat Free!”

  All the trucks, bikes, and haunted-looking women strolling around out front pretty much guaranteed that families who actually liked their kids weren’t stopping for that free meal.

  Knuckles’ antennae went up when he spotted the bikes from a distance, but as they pulled up it was apparent this was just a group of people that liked to ride. There was no matching theme to the bikes—one was robin’s egg blue—so this definitely wasn’t trouble waiting to happen.

  Fritter and Tank seemed to have the same thought. After parking they strolled past those bikes, leaning in to examine the paintwork. One bike’s rear fender had some pretty cool engraving, almost a Navaho pattern.

  Not bikers, not in their sense of the word.

  Inside the diner, they were met with a sprawling, open expanse of booths and tables. An old-style eat-at counter was front and center, very modern and stainless steel. The table tops were retro-style with bright patterns of red and blue, gold and green. Even the condiments were in replica-sixties chrome and glass containers.

  A step up from most truck stop diners.

  One corner had a large booth, vacant for the moment. Since they were a group of five they headed that way. Knuckles’ eyes ran over the people assembled, easily picking out a group with two tables pushed together off on the other side of the counter from where they were headed. Seven people with leather jackets over the backs of their chairs, seven mismatched bikes outside. Mystery solved. Those seven pairs of eyes watched them though, no doubt about it. This was a nice enough place that the Red Rebels were stand outs.

  No menus needed. The waitress poured out their coffees automatically and took their assorted burger and fries orders. Mad Dog added a beer. It may have been ten in the morning but the waitress just raised an eyebrow and went off to do as bid. Clearly their clothing spoke for why one of their ilk was having a beer at ten in the morning.

  Mad Dog took a sip of coffee, eye going shut as he set the mug down. “Now damn, that’s a good cup of coffee.”

  “How was it inside for you?” Tank asked, setting down his own mug. “Banshees watched out for you?” He only stuttered on the word watched but as Knuckles happened to be looking at Mad Dog in that moment he caught that the man noticed the speech impediment.

  Oddly, Knuckles hoped the guy didn’t give Tank a hard time about it. It got worse when the big guy was flustered. Usually if he stuttered and was allowed to keep talking, a person barely noticed. If he got fixated on it, though, it just got worse.

  “Banshees did exactly as promised,” Mad Dog, thankfully, answered easily. “And thanks for arranging the pot. Helped keep the guards reasonable, too.”

  Jayce nodded. “Good.”

  “Now, fill me in on Sachetti.”

  Not so casually their entire group, save the man who asked the question, surveyed their surroundings. The waitress was approaching with the bottle of beer so they waited for her to set it next to a beer glass before anyone spoke.

  Jayce cleared his throat. “Uh, fine. His transports usually run really clean. He pays off the right people and all we have to do it move the shit for him.”

  “You know what you’re moving?”

  “There have been guns, for sure. Narcotics.”

  “What kind?”

  Jayce shrugged. “We don’t ask. Can’t admit what we don’t know.”

  Mad Dog nodded, tipping up his beer now, ignoring the frosted glass. “Surely you suspect.”

  Jayce sighed, then looked around the table. “There’s been tainted product making is way through central and southern California. We think Sachetti’s doctoring it all up to make his stuff look like the only safe supply.”

  “Pot?”

  “Sunshine. Homemade Oxycodone.”

  Mad Dog whistled low. “That’s pretty complicated stuff to be making in a squat house.”

  “It isn’t made in squat houses. One source is a pharmaceutical college up in Canada. They got the equipment and a few chemical-savvy minds to get the mix close to accurate. But it’s not exact, obviously. And there’s no quality-control measures.”

  “In Canada? How they getting it over the border?”

  Their crew exchanged looks. “We don’t entirely know. But there was one instance of blackmailing a woman to send it to herself through company mail during her business trips.”

  Mad Dog laughed at that, an insane cackle. “Holy shit. That’s almost brilliant.”

  “Almost,” Knuckles agreed. “But she was an addict and got canned for failing a
drug test at work.”

  “Easy to blackmail, though,” Mad Dog murmured, eyes up on the roof. “Desperate people do desperate things.”

  Knuckles didn’t want to be discussing Gertie like this, even though no one said her name, and even though he was the one that brought it up. But luckily Mad Dog had been staring out the window and his mind went back to his itinerary for the day.

  “Who’s got a few bucks? I want one of those whores out there to suck my cock while we wait for our food.”

  “Jesus,” Jayce muttered, leaning to the side and pulling out his wallet. “You’re a grandfather, don’t forget.”

  “Yeah, and how’s that woman of yours doing? Still in Tacoma?”

  Jayce offered no answer, just handed over the money.

  “That’s what I thought. Pay a bitch to suck your cock. It’s the simplest way to live, boys.”

  Everyone squirmed as he left. While Jayce’s wife may have left for a while to get her head around the fact she nearly died because of her relationship to him, and he was liberally availing himself of the pussy on offer at the clubhouse every night, he was still married. Which meant Knuckles was the only one not attached, and therefore the only one that Mad Dog’s wisdom should to apply to.

  It left him feeling hollow. He rarely paid for sex. It was easy enough to find with someone willing for free. And yet, with that said, the same tainted feeling of fucking your way through a roster of prostitutes remained. He may have, on occasion, felt affection for one or two women. Like Neenie. But there was nothing emotional or permanent there. Just mutually agreed upon body parts rubbing together until he got off. And maybe her, if he felt like it.

  That was what he had to bring to the Prince household. His own filthy past, hanging over his head while spending time with Danielle and her daughters.

  What the fuck was he thinking?

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Damn,” Danielle muttered, eyes on the form draped with a white sheet from the neck down. The face she looked down on couldn’t be more than sixteen. Grace’s age. Which made her one of Grace’s classmates.

  Found dead and not breathing in a bathroom at a house party. Only discovered because some little asshole at the party had the gall to take off her clothes and start tweeting out the photos.

  That little prick was in holding. Danielle didn’t let her mind go there, knowing that nothing would likely happen to the asshole. Young, stupid, and drunk seemed to excuse a lot of people from decent behavior these days.

  Danielle was pretty sure, considering the temperature of the body, that the girl had likely still been alive while the kid was doing all this. Which means immediate medical help would have had her, at this hour, at the hospital instead of the coroner’s office.

  This explained why Danielle often considering moving to an island and homeschooling her daughters.

  Her best bet to determine the cause of death was toxicology. There was no trauma to the body at all, and genetic heart defects would also need to be considered. A healthy girl, suddenly dead.

  She conducted a quick visual inspection of the body. The girl had fading bruises on her shins, not caused that night. A relatively fresh bruise, barely visible, was forming on one elbow. Maybe from falling or stumbling into something, but she knew it had been from that night. If the kids were doing Oxy, this wasn’t surprising.

  Again, she measured and weighed the girl to start.

  There was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary on her body. She was perfectly fit, the picture of health. The family agreed to a full autopsy, so at midnight she started the procedure while McTavish observed and assisted.

  The girl’s heart showed some signs of damage, not unlike a heart attack. All other organs were healthy and of usual size, with no internal bleeding. A heart condition could be to blame, but death also could have been linked to something she ingested. So, Danielle drew the blood samples for processing at the lab in Bakersfield; they weren’t set up for that kind of thing in Markham. To keep the chain of custody on the level, one of the sheriff department’s finest would be taking a road trip that night to deliver the sample. She stored the vials of blood in a travel case, then called for help getting the body back into the drawer.

  Deputy Troy collected the blood evidence with a stoic face. Danielle liked cops like this. Some joked or tried to lighten the mood in difficult situations, but Troy didn’t. She saw no indication that he struggled with the difficult aspects of the job, yet he conducted himself with respect for the victims. Even if they couldn’t appreciate it.

  “Thanks, Dani,” Troy mumbled, eyes on the plastic box in his hands. “Better get this out of here.”

  She could only smile.

  “Fuck, this one pisses me off,” he grumbled. “Not just because a kid died, but that little prick...”

  Danielle swallowed. “I know. Trust me, I’m terrified for my girls.”

  His red-rimmed eyes met hers, and she realized her was probably coming up on his twenty-fourth hour without sleep. “That’s right. Grace, right? Your daughter?”

  Danielle nodded. “Yep. Pretty sure she went to school with this girl.”

  Troy shook his head. “Well, hug her when you get home.”

  Her laugh was humorless. “Trust me, I’m already planning on it.”

  Troy made sure she got to her car, and he waved as she pulled out of hospital’s staff parking lot. Another hour and twenty spent at the office to get her report written while everything was sharp in her mind, then she headed home.

  Her eyes were plenty wide as she made that drive, and she doubted she’d be falling back asleep any time soon. The house sat dark as she parked, and it was a relief the girls hadn’t woken up and waited for her.

  Annie slept through the night and Danielle could count on one hand the times her youngest broke that pattern without being sick. If Grace woke up, Danielle left a note on the kitchen island explaining she had to go to work. If Grace was home, Danielle wasn’t worried about Annie.

  The note still sat where she’d placed it, so she scrunched it up with one hand and tossed it in the recycling bin, poured herself a glass of milk, and had her usual, late-night insane thought that maybe her neighbor was awake, too.

  A few deep gulps of milk went down, cold in her throat. If she had a friend considering the types of things that came to mind when she had her nightly imaginings about Knuckles, she’d absolutely tell that friend to smarten up. Everything about him was more of a warning than a sign of safety. He cared about her girls, a sure way to endear himself to her, and he’d done that without any promises of any relationship with her. He liked her kids, and he liked her, too.

  Plus, he really turned her on.

  She leaned against the stove to finish her milk, eyes on the square of cheap Formica next to the sink. The previous night she’d been a second from climaxing, just from one suck of the nipple. Jesus, any more than that would likely be embarrassing. So, did she want to go there?

  Abso-freaking-lutely.

  Setting the glass in the sink, Danielle cast a look around the kitchen, searching for anything out of place before turning off the lights and heading down the hallway.

  Unable to stop herself, she turned on the hall light and cracked Annie’s door open. The squeaking hinge wasn’t a worry; the little girl slept like the dead, a skill to envy. After watching the blankets rise and fall evenly for a few moments, she shut the door and moved to Grace’s door to check on her oldest.

  And nearly had a heart attack.

  The bed was empty, covers tossed to the side. The window was wide open. Her room faced out into the backyard, and Danielle held her breath as she rushed to it, shoving the curtains out of the way.

  Nothing. The yard sat empty, a bright moon almost mocked her by showing every nook and cranny nearly as bright as day.

  “Okay, okay,” she chanted, returning to the hall, and heading back to the kitchen, flicking the light back on. Where the fuck was her fucking purse?

  Oh. In the fucking
fridge, next to the milk.

  She woke the cell up, went through contacts and dialed Grace. As she brought the phone up the Jaws theme began playing in the living room. From the entry, she saw the iPhone’s screen, lit up on the coffee table.

  “Goddammit,” she snapped, ending the call. Shit. Where the fuck was that kid?

  Snatching up the iPhone, Danielle swiped the screen only to come up with a locked screen.

  “Fuck!” she cried, tossing both useless phones onto the wooden table top. No looking up Grace’s friends, then.

  Get hold of yourself. You’re an adult. Settle down and think.

  Getting tough with herself helped. As the panic receded, her logical side kicked in, and she had the sinking feeling that she might know exactly where her daughter had gone that night.

  She checked the clock on their cheap DVD player. Three forty-five in the morning. She’d gone in to work before midnight. Grace might have snuck out after her mother left, but Danielle doubted it. No, her daughter had claimed to have a headache and went to bed an hour before Danielle turned in herself.

  No, that little shit snuck out while Danielle was still in the house.

  She grabbed her phone again, then dialed Deputy Troy. Hopefully he wasn’t one not to take a call while driving.

  “Deputy Troy.”

  She sighed in relief. “Troy, it’s Danielle.”

  “Dani? What’s up?”

  “That party tonight. Were you at the house?”

  “Yeah, I got called when the found out about the girl. Why?”

  “Was Grace there? Would you tell me if she was?”

  “I don’t think she was there, and of course I’d tell you, Dani. A lot of kids scattered when the cops showed up. They usually do.” He stifled a yawn. “Why?” Then he seemed to clue in, asking sharply, “Is she gone?”

  “I got home, her room’s empty.”

  “Shit. I’ll call Martin, get him out looking for her.”

  Suddenly, she felt stupid. All of Markham Sheriff’s Department out looking for her daughter, when there was likely no reason to panic. “No, I’ll go out looking for her. I should’ve done that before I called.”