“If a damning photograph was ever enough to put away a guy with this much immunity, God knows every one of those bastards would be behind bars by now,” says Lukas.
“It’s a good instinct,” Vasily comments. “I’m glad you thought ahead to snap that picture in the moment, but I doubt it would ever be enough to do any real damage.”
“You don’t understand,” I insist. “You can’t underestimate the power of bad PR.”
“Cherry, the FBI has enough PR points to commit mass murder and still come out spotless in the end,” Vasily explains, but I can tell he wants so badly to believe.
“I know people. I’m a journalist, guys. Okay, I was never exactly Joseph Pulitzer, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have connections. I have the names and email addresses of so many editors — at least one of them will be interested in a story like this! Human trafficking! Murder conspiracies! Dirty feds! Everybody loves a good underdog story,” I ramble, feeling my face grow flushed with enthusiasm.
Vasily looks like he might actually join my crusade. He turns to Genn and Lukas, who look much more dubious, regarding both of us with suspicious expressions.
“It might be worth a shot,” he begins hesitantly.
“It might do more harm than good,” Genn says. “And if they find out the leak came from you, Cherry, you’ll be putting yourself directly in danger.”
“I made my decision the second I met Leon, whether I knew it then or not,” I assure him confidently. And deep down, I know it to be true. “If loving him means that I have to spend the rest of my life on the edge, that’s what I’ll do. He put his life on the line for me, and it’s only right I do the same for him.”
Lukas grins, to my complete surprise. “Damn, Cherry. You’re a tougher kid than I thought. I’m really starting to dig having you around.”
“Okay, we can all do a group hug later,” Vasily cuts in, his face serious.
“Who are you gonna send the photo to?” Genn asks.
I’m already scrolling through my contacts, looking for one name in particular. When I first moved to New York City, I had a brief internship at what I call “a real newspaper.” It paid a pittance barely enough to get me a 300-square-foot hole in the wall on Staten Island, but it gave me insight into what it’s like publishing articles that really change the world. I only filed papers and fetched coffees and snacks for the editorial staff, but my cutesy name and upbeat personality helped me stand out among the other tight-lipped, buttoned-up interns. The head editor-in-chief always had a soft spot for me, giving me the kind of glowing recommendation letters that helped me land my cushy, albeit inconsequential, jobs writing puff pieces.
I find her name in my contact list and my thumb hovers over it, hesitating. I have not spoken to her in months. She may not even remember me anymore — she’s a high-powered editor who talks to a hundred people a day. It’s easy to get lost in a crowd that big.
But I have to try, for Leon’s sake. Because I love him.
So I send her a long email with the photo of Doyle and Chandler, detailing the situation and their respective roles. The three club guys watch silently as I type out the email and click send. Then I look up at them and say, “It’s done.”
“Who’d you send it to?” Vasily asks, concerned.
“An old editor friend,” I explain simply. I don’t tell them that she was only my boss for six months and I haven’t spoken to her in a long time. They don’t need to know that right now.
“And you think she’ll side with us?” Genn pipes up.
I nod firmly. “I know she will.” Ellen Hardy was always suspicious of all law enforcement, and her paper often focused on issues of police corruption and other similar topics. She’ll jump at the opportunity to run a story like this.
“So what now? How long do we wait for her response?” Lukas demands impatiently.
Just then, my phone lights up. Ellen’s email back comes instantaneously, containing a brief thank you and a phone number next to the word ‘FBI’ in bold.
She’s given me a direct line to the FBI. At the bottom of the email, there’s a line that reads: PS - You make the call. We’ll light up the print. Good to have you back.
I press the number and hold the phone to my ear, my heart pounding as it starts to ring.
“Who are you calling?” Vasily asks, his blue eyes wide and round.
“The FBI,” I answer flatly.
20
Leon
“How many times have we gotta go through this song and dance, Agent Boyle? You know for a fact I’m the most upstanding citizen in this whole damn city.” It gets to him when I mess up his name, even though he tries not to show it.
“We’re not in the city of Bayonne’s jurisdiction, Mr. Volkov,” Agent Doyle says, pacing around the interrogation table once again. This time, though, I can see a certain excitement in his eyes, and I have to admit that it’s not entirely unfounded. He has a hell of an upper hand here.
“You’re in the county lockup, and well within my jurisdiction now.” He takes a few steps forward, crossing his arms and sneering at me. “But you really should be more careful at those wild parties of yours — it looks like you got into one too many fistfights with your criminal associates.”
He’s talking about my swollen lip, black eye, and the trickle of blood running from a cut in my forehead. Not to mention all the bruises I can feel forming on my chest from the pummeling I’ve taken since getting in here. The moment I was behind a closed door, Doyle turned his pigs loose on me. The young bucks at the county sheriff’s office were eager to get their hands on a man like me. Doyle “turned a blind eye” to me for a good half hour before returning to start the official interrogation.
But I wasn’t going to let him have the satisfaction of seeing me in pain, so I spat what blood I had in my mouth onto the floor and kept that same old grin on. After all, I still have all my teeth. It’s driving him nuts, too.
“First of all, we have your men roaring up to a murder investigation, potentially endangering the crime scene and any evidence that may have been essential to the investigation, besides harassing officers of the law.”
“Trying to pin something some friends of mine did of their own accord on me after letting me go last time? That’s just shoddy detective work.”
Doyle’s fist clenches, but as long as the little red light is on the camera that’s pointed at me, I know I can goad him as much as I like, if he wants to keep his career. There’s a lot more buttons I know I could push on Doyle, but I also know that the camera’s gonna get shut off sooner or later, and this is a man who doesn’t bat an eye at burying immigrants in unmarked graves.
“You proceeded to put together a rally orchestrated by the Union Club in an attempt to align Bayonne citizens against law enforcement, are you aware that some would call that ‘rabble rousing,’ Mr. Volkov?”
I laugh at that, though it hurts a few ribs to do so.
“I think the good people of Bayonne would love to hear you call them rabble, pizdoon.”
“What was that, Mr. Volkov?”
“That was Russian, Agent McCarthy. You might do well to learn a little bit about the heritage of a town before you go harassing its workers. Or maybe that’s not really why you’re here?”
Doyle keeps his eyes even on mine for a while, studying my face before smiling. “I’m here to enforce the law, Mr. Volkov, nothing more. While we’re on the topic of your Russian heritage, though, maybe you can speak for some of your other gang members’ actions, hm?”
I snort in derision at the word gang. It got under my skin once, but not now. This is all an act. Doyle is just trying to wave the fact over my head that he’s got half the club locked up and maybe get enough of a rise out of me to incriminate one of them. I know all his tricks.
“Ms. Eva Zolnerowich, for starters. You know, the mechanics we interviewed after the arrests admitted that she was soliciting illegal vehicle modifications to them? How long has the Union Club been in the busine
ss of peddling street wares, Mr. Volkov?”
He wants me to say that I can’t account for the actions of my cohorts, but that would just incriminate Eva, and I’m not gonna throw my VP under the bus like that.
“I’m failing to see what your accusations have to do with ‘obstruction of justice,’ Agent Toyle.”
My name-calling seems to push Doyle over the edge, and he slams his fist onto the table, leaning in close to me. “Do you want me to tack on ‘badgering an officer’ to the laundry list I’m about to throw you away for, you little shit?”
I just smile at him in response, and I think I can see a little vein pulsing in his forehead as he steps back.
“Mr. Gennedy Alkaev, another of your officers, wasn’t apprehended at the scene. You ought to know that was because he’s been working with us since your first arrest, Mr. Volkov. He tipped us off about your little rally and let us show up in time to break things up before it got violent. How does it feel that your supposedly loyal little personality cult is willing to sell you out?”
I say nothing in response. I know that’s a lie. It has to be. Genn’s more than a gentle soul with a ton of muscle padding it — he’s a close friend. Cherry is a good judge of character, and she seems to get along with him fine, to boot. That on top of his years of friendship to me are more than enough proof that Doyle’s lying through his teeth.
When I keep quiet for a few seconds more, Doyle lets out a long breath and moves over to the camera, shutting it off.
“Alright then, let’s talk,” he says, walking over to sit on the table beside me, peering down at me through his glasses. I have a feeling he gets off on looking down at people like that.
“Tell me, Mr. Volkov, how much did you and that little cunt you’ve been dragging around with you see down at the docks the other night?” he asks in a still, quiet voice. My eyes narrow at him, and I lean forward in my chair, looking at him as though daring him to keep going. “Any of the ‘cargo’ look familiar? Did you recognize some of those corpses’ relatives in those containers? Mothers, children?”
My jaw is tight, and I feel my hands flexing into fists. There it is: Doyle’s confession. He’s got me locked away, and this whole interrogation is just a farce to cover up whatever trumped-up charge he’ll pin on me.
“Did your parents get here by similar means, Mr. Volkov? Is that why you’re so insistent on disrupting my business with Marty Chandler? Maybe you had a sister who met a similar fate on a voyage over here, is she buried out back behind your bar?”
My teeth are grinding together, and it’s taking everything in me not to break his nose. It’s within reach. I’m not restrained, and I want nothing more than to get my hands on him. But I don’t let him have that. I won’t give him something to pin on me. And I can see how furious my patience is making him as his eye twitches just a hair.
“My business with Marty Chandler is good, but it isn’t even my biggest paycheck, you know? Just a side gig. Maybe it’ll pay for a vacation to TJ next year, and I’ll get to fuck some of the relatives of the people I’ve shipped over, all while you’re rotting in jail for the next few years. If you make it that long, mind you — I’m sure there was someone underage at that party, and you know how well statutory rapists fare in prison.”
My face is stony as I stare him down, and it finally breaks him. He brings his fist around and right into jaw, and I feel blood in my mouth as he leans forward, grabbing hold of the scruff of my collar.
“Maybe while you’re gone, I’ll have that cunt of yours shipped down to Mexico in return for being so nosy. I can’t believe you’d go through all this shit for her. All because her old man stuck his nose into our business and had to be taken care of?”
With one hand, I seize Agent Charles Doyle by the arm and hurl him over the table, slamming him down and leaping up on top of him.
One of my fists connects with his nose before he knees me sharply in the stomach, shoving me off onto the floor, but before he can fumble for his gun, I leap up and turn the table over, knocking him back and sending him into the wall with a thud as I hop over the table.
We grapple as I reach him, his hands around my neck and mine on his collar, slamming him into the wall behind him as his weak arms try to squeeze the breath out of me. His glasses have fallen off, and I can see the nothing but hatred in his beady eyes. One of his hands lets go of my neck to go for his gun, and once again, I hurl him around, sending him toppling to the ground into the overturned table.
Before he can get his bearings, though, this time I dive on top of him, and my hand goes straight for his gun at the same time his does.
I’m faster.
In the span of a breath, I snatch Doyle’s gun from his side and point it at his head as I slip the safety off and cock it.
21
Cherry
Despite how dire this situation is, I can’t help but stifle a giggle at how ridiculous Genn looks hunched over in the passenger seat of my Ford Focus. The tiny car suits me just fine — and it’s appropriately sized for most normal people, too. But Genn is roughly the size of a grizzly bear, and he has to fold his arms inward and bow his head slightly just to fit, even after scooting the seat back as far as it can go. He’s rolled down the window, gazing out at the passing trees and highway signs as we blow down the road toward the county lockup.
I don’t exactly know what to expect when we get there. After talking to Ellen Hardy a little more, she advised me to take on this story myself. She called me last night while I was meeting up with Genn, Vasily, Lukas, and a couple other Club members at the Glass.
To my infinite surprise, she informed me that she’s been charting my progress, following my career ever since my internship with her paper ended. At first, I was embarrassed to find this out — after all, I haven’t exactly been taking on the hard-hitting, breaking news articles she printed all the time. The idea of Ellen Hardy, the powerful and influential mentor I idolized for months, reading my frilly fashion pieces was enough to make me want to crawl into a hole and never come back out.
She revealed to me that she’s actually been hoping I would come back and apply for a position on her team for awhile now, and that despite the frivolous nature of my work, my strong voice manages to shine through.
“I know you’re not living up to your full potential,” she told me, “but I wanted you to know that your talent has not gone unnoticed. I don’t know what the hell you’re doing in Jersey, or how you’ve sniffed out a scoop as big as this one, but I do know that your passion and your eye for detail qualify you as the best journalist to follow it. I will give you any information, any resource I can possibly provide, if you promise to write this article for me. This will change everything, Cherry. People need to know what’s going on down there in New Jersey. And when you’re done… just know there will always be an open slot for you back here in the Big Apple.”
I had just sat there in silent disbelief for a minute, letting all of this sink in. Here, I had assumed Ellen would sic one of her star journalists on the story, fly them down here to badger the everloving shit out of the cops until they gave up enough information for a sellable story.
Instead, she asked me to do it. She wanted me to write it.
It’s a dream come true — wrapped up in the trappings of my worst nightmare.
Because now not only do I have to find a way to free Leon and put a stop to the illicit affairs going down in Bayonne, I also have to write a kick-ass, no-holds-barred story about the whole shebang. But I couldn’t say no.
“Cherry? Are you there? What do you say?” Ellen had pressed.
Quickly I replied, “Yes. Yes, absolutely I will write it.”
And now here I am, driving down the highway dressed in my dark jeans, black blouse, black blazer, and — for once — comfortable shoes bought just this morning. If I’m gonna bust into the county jail guns a-blazin’ with Genn by my side to rescue my biker boyfriend, I damn well better wear my running shoes.
“Thanks for com
ing with me,” I blurt out suddenly. Genn looks over at me with compassionate eyes. He reaches across the console to pat my arm.
“Of course. You’re the brains, I’m the brawn. We make a good team,” he replies with an easygoing smile. Truth be told, I’m relieved he’s the one coming with me. I really like everyone in the Club, but Genn is such a teddy bear, he’s fast become my favorite.
Well, except for Leon.
And the two of us are both dogged and determined to get Leon out of jail and clear his name. Genn’s his best friend, and I’m… his girlfriend. His Old Lady, I inwardly correct myself, and I feel a bit giddy at the distinction. Because you can’t go through what we’ve gone through together without skipping a few steps in the relationship timeline.
So Genn and I are on the way to catch Leon and tell him everything we’ve found out, all the incriminating evidence we have on Doyle and Chandler, tell him we can take these bastards down without having to shed any more blood. And the feds are on their way to arrest Doyle, having finally caught on to the fact that he’s a dirty cop. But they don’t know who I am. Their information came from a journalist with a major paper — me. I knew they wouldn’t take the information seriously if it came from someone already associated with Leon Volkov and the Club so I didn’t mention it.
I just hope we get there before it’s too late.
As far as Leon knows, things are still dire. The county cops are probably goading him to hell, trying as hard as they can to force him into a corner. And when you corner a guy like Leon, he isn’t going to take it without a fight. Genn and I are going there to stop that from happening.
“Here, take a right on this exit,” Genn says suddenly. I pull the car onto the ramp and down a hill, then we drive for a few miles under Genn’s instructions until finally the building comes into view. My heart sinks at the sight of the ten-foot-tall chain link fence blocking our entrance.
Saved by the Outlaw: A Bad Boy Romance Page 16