After finishing the second book, I ate, exercised, and got some sleep. Living on the high created every time I finished a good book, I went to work feeling refreshed. Ready to talk to Tate about his ability to create a well-crafted story, I eagerly filled the food cart with the men’s meals and pushed it down the corridor toward the cellblock.
I wanted to be a police officer for as long as I could remember. There were two things that prompted me to choose it as a profession. First, I’d always enjoyed helping others. I saw law enforcement as an occupation that would allow me to measure my successes in doing so. Secondly, I was fascinated with people. A career in law enforcement would give me a broader understanding of cultures, beliefs, and human nature. Meeting all the different people would be my reward.
My weight prevented me from being accepted into the academy. As much as I tried to make changes to alter that fact, I was eventually forced to accept it. So, I owned it and became a prison guard. My second choice of professions fed one of my desires, however.
My fascination with people.
I pushed the food cart to the first cell. Jerry Porter Price created a collection of videos depicting sexual acts with young boys, all of which clearly displayed his active participation. The videos were then sold to other men who desired to view such disgusting filth. As the electronic files crossed Tate lines when they were emailed, the crime became a federal offense.
He was confined to his cell twenty-four hours a day. Prosecution realized if he was released into population, that retaliation for his crimes by the other inmates would be swift and deadly. There were other ways, however, that the inmates chose their own means of justice.
I unlocked the steel slot, let it slap against the door, and smiled when the sound caused him to jump from his sleeping state.
His tray was specially prepared by the cook, who was an inmate incarcerated for a six-month stint on bankruptcy fraud. It wasn’t merely society’s belief that Jerry Porter Price was a vile human being, it was the belief of the staff and the inmates as well.
I had no idea what was in his food, but I knew it wasn’t good. I pushed the tray into the slot – satisfied that he was at least getting a portion of what he deserved. As he rose to his feet and began to speak to me, I turned and walked away.
He lost his right to have any meaningful interaction with me when he touched the first boy.
The second cell housed Tracey Tillman. A meth cook who lived in a camper in the middle of the Mojave Desert, he was facing life in prison for the amount of drugs he sold an undercover DEA agent.
I couldn’t fathom the amount of lives he had ruined with the drugs he manufactured. The lives lost. The families that had been torn apart. The innocent people affected by the actions of the addicts who took desperate measures to obtain the drugs they were dependent upon. It made me sick to think about it.
I opened the slot, allowed it to slam against the door, and shoved his tray through the slot. He began to speak to me, but I turned away before he made eye contact. Pleased that I once again escaped a moment of interacting with him, I pushed the cart to the next cell.
James Grossman. After two years of unemployment, and a few hundred missed job opportunities, the thirty-seven-year-old father of three robbed a bank. Using nothing more than a note, he obtained $1,200 from the teller.
Before he escaped, he was caught by an off-duty officer who happened into the bank.
I turned the key, lowered the slot to the open position, and pushed his tray through the opening. “Time for breakfast.”
“Thank you,” he said.
I smiled. “You’re welcome.”
It saddened me to think about his children growing up without him. I realized what he did was wrong, but sentencing a man who wanted nothing more than to feed his family to ten years in federal prison seemed extreme.
After a few cells of sleeping inmates, I pushed the cart to cell number twenty-four. Surprised that Tate was sleeping, I unlocked the slot and let it bang against the door, hoping to wake him. As he stirred, I grabbed his tray and pushed it into the slot.
“Reynolds, it’s time for breakfast,” I said.
A stranger turned to face me. “No one named Reynolds here.”
My face went flush with frustration, and then disappointment set in. I turned away, grabbed the handles on the cart, and pushed it forward – but not to the next cell. Standing between the two cells, I slowly filled with anger.
The way Perry treated the men was uncalled for.
Certain that he took Reynolds to the SHU for some minor infraction, I decided after my distribution of the meals that I’d let him have a piece of my mind. Senior officer or not, he needed to know that his actions and attitude did nothing but encourage the inmates to react unfavorably toward him.
I passed out the remaining meals, trying the entire time to hide my disappointment. After returning the cart to the kitchen, I stormed into the observation station.
Peering toward the cellblock while he twirled his ring of keys by the chain that connected them to his belt, Perry looked the part of a warden at one of yesteryear’s second-rate institution.
I barely made it through the door before I unleashed on him. “You took Reynolds to the hole?” I snarled. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He turned to face me. His mouth twisted into a half-assed smirk.
I glanced at the blur of swinging keys and then met his gaze. “Quit swinging those God forsaken keys and answer me,” I seethed.
His eyes narrowed.
“Well?” I asked. “What did he do? Have enough guts to challenge one of the snide remarks you always make?”
“Shouldn’t get attached to the inmates, Madden.”
“I’m not attached to anyone,” I snapped back, although it was a lie. “We were in the middle of a conversation about something.”
He stopped twirling his keys. After crossing his arms and looking me over, he arched an eyebrow. “What were you talking about?”
I doubted he knew anything about Tate being an author. I wasn’t about to enlighten him on the matter, either. “Nothing, really. We were just talking.”
He chuckled a laugh. “Well, that’s a conversation that’ll never go anywhere.”
“What did you do?” I asked, my voice thick with anger. “Pepper spray him and take him to the hole?”
He looked me up and down. “You better change your tone, Madden.”
I pressed my fists against my hips. “Answer me.”
“He shipped out.”
There was no way he’d gone to court, been convicted of his crime, and then been assigned to a prison since we last spoke.
I cocked a hip. “Excuse me?”
“Prosecution dropped the charges. He’s a free man. Shipped out yesterday. Sheriff gave him a ride to impound to get his bike. He rode out of here like a rocket.”
My throat tightened at the thought of never seeing him again. “He left?”
“Scurried his ass out of here like a rat from a sinking ship.”
He didn’t have any idea what manner he left in. There was no way he could have seen him. He was trying to get under my skin, and as much as I hated to admit it, he was doing just that.
“Did he say anything before he left?”
He glanced at the floor. After a moment, he looked up. “Nothing that I can remember, no.”
“He just left?” I couldn’t believe that he simply walked out without saying anything. It didn’t seem like him. “When was it?”
He unfolded his arms. “While you were doing paperwork yesterday afternoon.”
“I was right here? In this office? You didn’t think to walk him by here and let him say something to me? If they dropped the charges, he was a free man. You could have let him say something.”
He shrugged and turned away. “I wasn’t aware I needed to. I took him out through R and D.”
“The long way?” I gave him a look. It was obvious he took measures to make sure Tate didn’t see me on his way
out.
It wasn’t surprising, considering the things he’d said about Tate and the men he rode motorcycles with.
Tate Reynolds’ file, or jacket as we called them, had every bit of information on him that the federal government could gather. I had access to his name, where he lived, and his closest of kin’s names and addresses.
I wasn’t about to turn into a stalker, or a creep. His personal life needed to remain just that. Personal. Despite my attraction to him, I needed to remember that he had a life before he showed up, and him returning to that life was more important to him and his family than anything.
My fleeting thoughts of there ever being anything between us were nothing more than a one-sided dream. I needed to forget about talking to him and learn to embrace the bits and pieces of him that were expressed through the characters of his books.
I had more than forty to go.
Chapter Six
Tate
I hadn’t spoken to anyone in the MC about my legal situation. One unwritten rule in the club was that if anyone was incarcerated, the first contact always came from the person imprisoned, not from the other members.
This prevented prosecution and police from attaching any of the club members to a crime, and made applying the RICO act – a law that extends prison sentences to anyone involved in an ongoing criminal organization – more difficult. Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, or OMGs, were high on the federal government’s list of organizations to prosecute.
I was sure the prospect I was with at the time of my arrest had made the MC aware of my situation. To keep everything a surprise, I hadn’t contacted anyone regarding my release. I thought an unannounced visit to the clubhouse would be more interesting.
When I turned the corner, the shop’s open door came into view. I was surprised to see nearly half a dozen members gathered inside. Crip, the club’s president, was sitting on the work bench drinking a beer. At his side, Pee Bee, the Sergeant-at-Arms, stood.
Eyes widened as I rolled to a stop alongside Crip’s old-school hardtail Harley. Cholo, the club’s enforcer, hopped off his bike and turned to face me.
Smokey, a newer member of the club, but a man who had more character and heart than many of the original members, stood talking to P-Nut, the club’s skittish practical joker.
As soon as they realized who I was, their mouths fell open.
“What’s shakin’, motherfucker?” Pee Bee asked. “Looks like you lost some weight.”
“Maybe a pound or two,” I said. “Hell, all I’ve been doing is working out. Not much else to do in there besides that.”
I flipped the engine off and draped my arms over the handlebars. After scanning the group of men, I let out a dramatic sigh. “What’s with all the somber faces? Thought your pricks would be glad to see me.”
“Grab Meat a cold one, Smoke,” P-Nut said. “Man just did a couple of months in club fed, and he needs a drink.”
Smokey grabbed a beer from the fridge and handed it to me. “How long you been out?”
“Long as it took me to ride here,” I said. “Maybe an hour and a half. I’m guessing Tank told you what happened?”
P-Nut alternated glances between Crip and me a few times, and then fixed his gaze on Crip. “You telling him, or am I?”
“Telling me what?” I asked.
He looked at me, and then shifted his eyes to Crip. “Well?”
“I’ll tell him.” Crip slid off the edge of the workbench. After tugging at the bottom of his kutte, he took a long drink of beer and then sauntered the twenty feet to where I was parked. “This could be a really long story, but I’ll give you the short version.”
P-Nut paced back and forth behind him. Puffing on his cigarette as he made laps along the length of the workbench, he seemed anxious. With him it was hard to tell if there was a real concern, because he was always nervous about something.
The rest of the fellas faced me with their arms crossed over their chests.
During what I would expect to be a joyous occasion, it seemed everyone was nervous and subdued. I looked at each of the men. If I didn’t know better, I’d think they were preparing to tell me about some horrific catastrophe that happened while I was away.
“Jesus.” I glanced at each of the men. “What’s going on?”
“Your prospect was an undercover ATF agent, and he set you up on that gun charge,” Crip said. “The men fighting in the bar were ATF agents, too. The whole thing was a set up. They knew you were a felon, and Tank was trying to get a gun in your hand, so they could arrest you for it. They thought it would--”
The words hit me like a punch in the gut. I hopped off the bike and stepped in front of him. To suggest that I was mentoring a dirty cop made me no better than the piece of shit I was mentoring.
“Hold on a fucking minute,” I retorted. “Tank’s the cousin of One-eyed Bob. He served this country as a Marine, and I’ve known him since he was ten fucking years old. He ain’t no cop. I don’t know who you’ve been--”
Crip raised his hands and turned his palms to face me. “Nobody’s accusing you of anything, Meat. I’ve talked to One-eyed Bob, and he had no idea either. The kid got back from Iraq and went to the ATF’s training center before he even came home. He was deep undercover. Hell, his family didn’t even know he was a cop. This information isn’t opinion, it’s fact.”
I had a difficult time believing that a kid I’d known for fifteen years was willing to set me up on a crime. “Are you sure he was a cop? Shit, Crip. That kid--”
P-Nut stepped between us, waving his arms frantically as he spoke. “Soon as I figured out he was an ATF agent, I kidnapped the prick. Locked him in a metal storage container outside of Temecula for a couple of months. I tortured that fucker every night. Finally, he gave it up. Told me everything. So, I made a deal with the motherfucker. He testified that the gun wasn’t yours and that he lied under oath. In trade for his testimony, you got set free, and I quit torturing that asshole.”
P-Nut was crazier than hell, and hearing that he’d kidnapped a suspected cop didn’t shock me at all. The thought of him being locked in a metal storage container in the fucking desert made my time in prison seem luxurious.
I looked at him in disbelief. “You kept him in a metal box in the middle of the fucking desert?”
“Edge,” he said. “On the edge of the desert. You know, by it, not in it.”
I looked at Crip. “This fucker’s serious, isn’t he?”
Crip’s mouth twisted into a smirk. “He sure as fuck is. If it wasn’t for brother ‘Nut, you’d still be in there. Hell, you’d have been convicted and sent up the river for five years or more.”
I looked at P-Nut and lifted my chin slightly. “Appreciate it, ‘Nut.”
“Wasn’t nothing.” He shrugged. “Hell, I enjoyed it.”
I scanned the men. “So, the fucker’s still alive?”
Crip nodded. “Yep.”
“Not for fucking long,” I said through my teeth.
“Nope,” P-Nut said. “We’re done with that fucker. Had to promise him when I let him go that there’d be no retaliation. I gave the prick a choice. Either get you out of prison, or I was going to kill him. He picked first deal.”
I looked at Crip.
“Don’t look at me,” he said. “‘Nut made the deal.”
“So, that’s it? We just forget it? I’ve been locked in that shit-hole for months. Hell, I paid thirty grand for an attorney.”
“This wasn’t an easy deal,” Crip said. “The fucking ‘Nut found out he was a cop, and he kidnapped him and hauled him out in the middle of the fucking desert. Hell, he had the fucker--”
“Edge,” P-Nut interrupted. “He was at the edge of the desert.”
Crip looked at P-Nut, let out a heavy sigh, and then shifted his eyes to me. “Edge,” he said. “He was at the edge of the desert. Hell, ‘Nut had the fucker in that storage container for over a month before any of us knew about it. He was getting ready to kill the prick, and his Ol’
Lady stopped him. If it wasn’t for that, you’d be long gone.”
I looked at P-Nut. “Ol’ Lady? You’ve got an Ol’ Lady? Since when?”
He shrugged. “While back. Since you been locked up. Remember Smudge? My neighbor?”
“The lesbian that lived beside you?”
“She ain’t a lesbian. And, yeah. We’re together now.”
I would have never guessed P-Nut could commit to be with anyone. Truthfully, it seemed like all the club’s principals had Ol’ Ladies. Well, everyone but me.
“I’ll be damned,” I said. “Never would have guessed that’d happen.”
“When the right woman comes along, a man’s a damned fool if he argues it,” he said.
“No argument from me on that.” I glanced at each of the men. “I met a chick in jail. She was cool as fuck.”
Everyone gave me the same look of confusion.
Pee Bee chuckled. “In jail? You met a chick in fucking jail?”
“She was one of the guards.”
Crip’s eyes thinned. “A fucking cop?”
“She’s not a cop,” I said. “She was a prison guard.”
“What’s the difference? She works for the feds. A cop’s a cop.”
“She helped me keep my cool in that place. I can tell you that much for sure.”
“Maybe you should send her a fucking card and a box of See’s candies,” he said with a laugh.
Convincing the men that Officer Madden was not a threat to the club’s safety, especially after a trusted prospect ended up being a cop, would be a tough sell. It didn’t matter. Regardless of my desire to do so, seeing her again would be highly unlikely and I needed to realize it.
She was a cop, and I was a convict and an outlaw biker. Despite my attraction to her while I was locked up, we’d never spend a moment together outside the walls of the jail. It certainly wasn’t my hope to continue along this path, but it was a realistic outlook on what the future held.
I decided a change in subject matter was necessary to clear the air. “So, other than Tank being a fucking cop and P-Nut shacking up with his gay neighbor, has anything else happened?”
F*CKERS (Biker MC Romance Book 7) Page 102