by Nessa Connor
“Oh I don’t think that will be necessary,” Greg said calmly.
“No?” Donna looked at him closely for the first time.
“If he doesn’t leave peacefully, I’ll toss him off the school grounds myself.”
“Are you threatening me?” Innes raged.
“Actually, I’m just giving you the opportunity to consider how stupid you’ll look in front of your son when a little guy like me hands you your head. I don’t really want to embarrass you, but I will if I have to. I’d be delighted to spell out for you everything that’s not right about your actions, but then I’d probably get angry and say things that children shouldn’t hear. I don’t want to have to do that as it sets a bad example, but I’m not as patient as Mrs. Turnbull clearly is, and I’m not a fan of the police. I don’t have the time to wait for them to get here either. Carly and I are supposed to be rebuilding a bike engine for a guy who makes you look like a midget and has a real temper. So we want to get on the job quickly, so I’m forced to be crude.”
“I would appreciate it if you refrained from violence.” Donna turned to the teacher behind her. “Mr. Affir, do you have your cell phone with you?”
“Yes.” His voice shook.
“If any fighting starts, please call 911 immediately.”
Ignoring Affir, Innes glared at Greg who stood there calmly, showing no sign that he was worried. Melanie could see the conflicting emotions that flashed over Innes’s face. He clearly wanted a fight, but part of him wasn’t so sure he’d win it. This biker was an unknown quantity and not afraid of him.
After a long moment, he turned away. “Fine. I’ll leave, but this isn’t the end of this,” he roared. Grabbing Brian’s arm he headed for the gate with his son glancing back at them.
Donna Turnbull let out a long breath. “Thank you for not escalating things, Mr. Jones. Under the circumstances, your show of restraint was admirable.”
“You’re welcome. I don’t approve of brawls in front of children anymore than I expect you do. And if I got into it with him, it might be difficult to convince the police I was only lending a hand.”
Donna’s eyes smiled. “Ah yes. Well I could wish you hadn’t threatened him, but the way you did it… actually, you were a great help.”
“I was glad to be of assistance. The truth is, I wish I hadn’t threatened him either, but I can’t abide bullies and I lost my temper.”
Donna’s eyes grew wide. “You certainly didn’t show it. And I’m surprised. I would think a biker would automatically resort to bullying tactics.”
Greg smiled. “I understand, we have that image. We need better public relations people. And I’m sure that a lot of ‘my clan’ would be happy to start with violence, and some clubs far more than others. And in no way are we pacifists, however if we were all as prone to resorting to hitting people as the movies portray us, there wouldn’t be many of us left.”
“I suppose not.”
“The truth is that we are just people, ma’am, and you’ll find all kinds of men wearing motorcycle club colors.” He looked her over. “Now, I won’t insult you by claiming to be a nice guy, or a solid citizen. You seem like a conscientious and efficient principal and I’m quite sure you’ve read my record.” He gave her a wink, and Melanie was sure Donna blushed. “I’m just saying that I don’t put up with bullying. But never fear, I’m sure if you got to know me well, you’d find lots of things to dislike about me and my biker ways.”
“Now you are making fun of me for making a stupid generalization,” she said, making Melanie laugh. “Very well, point taken. I stand rebuffed.”
“And I am standing here when I should be fixing a motorcycle. I’ll leave you two to discuss the apparent shortcomings in the approved textbooks and the poor manners of irate parents.”
As he walked away, Donna smiled at Melanie. “There is a lot more to that man than I would’ve expected.”
At that moment, Melanie liked Donna Turnbull a lot more than she ever thought possible. “I think there might be a lot more to you than meets the eye as well. That was impressive of you, standing up to that big man, coming between two men like that. Impressive, not to mention brave.”
The woman brought herself erect, smiling. “You think so? I’d like to think I can be brave when the occasion requires it.” Then she shook her head. “There isn’t a thing wrong with the textbooks, Miss Wilford.”
“No, I don’t think there is.”
Then she watched the principal head back to her office with her head in the air and a noticeable spring in her step.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Much to her delight, Greg dropped Carly off at the garage and told her to start closing up Tiny’s engine. “Maybe we can get it back to him today. So you get to work. I need to go to the clubhouse.”
When she scampered into the garage, he rode to the clubhouse. “Luc?” he asked the bartender.
She pointed to a man sitting at a table working on a laptop computer. “Where else would he be?”
Greg walked over and watched him as he typed intently. When the man straightened and reached for his beer, he tried to drink and found his glass empty. Greg waved at the bartender. “Tawnya can you bring us two beers, on my tab?”
The man smiled. “Oh, oh. Wrench wants something. I can smell it.”
Greg pulled up a chair and sat down. He looked at the screen, seeing a maze of almost familiar words and numbers, and equations. “Luc, can you check up on a person on that computer of yours, find out shit about who they are?”
The man looked over at Greg and grinned. “Tell me, Wrench, can you go to the minimart on that motorcycle of yours, buy a bag of chips?”
“Okay, that was a dumb question, huh?”
“Yeah. Dumb. Fact is, I can find out about almost anything about anyone, even people not dumb enough to get themselves into the system.”
“Even if they don’t use computers?”
“The other guy like you? Sure. I can find out about you in a heartbeat, dude. But then you’re easy meat because law enforcement does all the hard work for me. They’ve got your address, the garage address, your cell phone number, your rap sheet… All I do is hack your parole officer’s computer and I can access more shit than any two people would ever want to know about Greg Jones.”
Tawnya came over with a beer in each hand. As she put them down, she rubbed her hip against Greg suggestively and smiled at him. “We don’t see you in here much during the day, Wrench.”
“Cause I’m usually busy getting greasy.”
“Come by when I’m getting off and we can get sweaty. Sweat goes nice with grease.”
He looked up at her, and she leaned back, smiling and making sure he noticed her ample breasts. “What’s with you today?”
“I heard you passed on Sheila. Made me think you might be holding out for something better. I’m much better.”
“The offer is noted, but I’m kinda busy.”
She grinned. “Your loss.”
As she left, Luc chuckled. “She’s in lust. You should think of her needs.”
“She’s got an old man.”
“He’s in the Middle East playing soldier in the sandbox.”
“And she’s fooling around?”
“She’s fooling around. Now what do you need in return for lavishing a beer on me?”
“Come over to the garage and set up this magic box in the office. I’ll tell you over there.”
* * *
When Luc had his computer open on the desk and a cold beer in his hand he nodded at Greg. “Okay, what do you need?”
“I want you to find out about someone.”
“Like I said, no worries, but a name would be a good place to start.”
Greg looked through the door. Carly was totally absorbed in her work. “Malcolm Innes.”
Luc put down the beer in his hand and smiled. “A name like that makes it easy. Not common. Even a simple search engine run through should find some stuff. If it’s special stuff, we can a
vail ourselves of data collected with our tax dollars. So is there anything particular you want to know?”
“His wife is dead… see if there is anything about that, like if it was suspicious or anything. Other than that, any arrests or bust ups. He’s got a kid, and if there is anything that might point to problems for him…”
“Anything you do know about him?”
“He doesn’t think much of the government.”
“Who does? Bad mouthing the people at the top is about forty percent of what you find on social media.”
“Whatever that means.”
“So all those things… what do you really want to know?”
“If he’s serious trouble or a whack job.”
“Some are both.”
“Sure enough. Look him up and make your best guess.”
“You targeting him for something?”
“No. He was giving Carly’s teacher a bunch of shit at the school. He backed down when I suggested he wouldn’t like the consequences of pursuing that particular line. I thought he was just a loudmouth, but now I wonder if I didn’t take him seriously enough.”
Luc chuckled. “Carly came in for a soda and was talking about what happened. She said you were sweet on this Wilford lady.”
“Oh, she did, did she?”
“She also said she was disappointed when you didn’t kick Brian’s father’s ass right on the playground.”
“Her words?”
Luc held up his hands. “I paraphrased. Can’t remember her exact words.”
“I bet.”
“It shouldn’t take long to find out the basics.”
“Basics, that’s what I need.”
“Give me a few minutes of peace and quiet.
Greg left Luc to his work and went to check on Carly who was wearing grease-covered overalls and a huge smile. “I about got her done, Wrench.”
“Did you really say you wish I’d kicked Brian’s father’s ass?”
She grinned. “Something like that, but I said it more ladylike.”
“Right. And if I had, how do you think that would make Brian feel?”
She scowled. “I didn’t think about that. It’s just that he needs someone standing up to him. You did, and I was just wishing you’d take him down a notch, so that maybe he’d stop being such an…. being something I get in trouble for saying, but everyone else says around here.”
“Fair enough, but I don’t think Mrs. Turnbull or Ms. Wilford would have been impressed if I had.”
“Probably not.”
“Think of a situation like that as if you are working on an engine. You don’t just do the obvious thing and call it good. You need to consider the problem from all the angles if you want it to run right. Besides, Innes is a big guy. He might’ve kicked my ass.”
She laughed at the idea. “No way, Wrench.”
Her confidence was flattering, but Greg wished he could be so sure.
“I’ll be in the office with Luc if you need anything.”
As Carly picked up a wrench and went back to work, Greg returned to where Luc was waiting.
“Done?”
“Well, there is quite a lot on your man. It would take time to sort through it all, but he is a real vocal hater. He comments on blogs that are pro and con almost everything the government does. If the government blinks, he’s got an opinion, not just on what they did but why they did it. He seems to fall into the group that thinks there is a conspiracy to create a one world government, but there’s stuff about aliens and them putting implants in our brains. Thing is, I can’t tell whether he’s for that or against it.”
“Anything besides crackpot politics?”
“His wife died of cancer. Somehow he got it in his head that her cancer was a side effect of a government program. She was involved in some kind of experimental treatment that didn’t pan out. Right after her death he went a little nuts and was in an institution for a short time. They took note of his paranoid ideas but decided he was harmless, and functional enough to have custody of his kid. Since then, he’s been in a few bar fights, was arrested at some protest and then released—nothing to write home about.”
Carly’s thin voice floated into the office. “Uncle Greg, how much torque do I give the head bolts on this engine?”
“She’s taking point on Tiny’s bike,” Greg said by way of explanation. “Doing a fine job, too.” He turned to the door. “I’ll be right there, Princess. I don’t remember offhand either.”
“Never mind.” She sounded disgusted. “I thought you’d know. I can find it in the shop manual all by myself.”
Luc smiled. “When she takes over, things will be different around here. Real bad ass.”
“Don’t I know it?” He got up and stretched. “Keep digging a bit for me will you? I better go fix something or she’ll be telling people she does all the work.”
Luc laughed. “She does already. The only advantage you’ve got over her at the moment is that she’s not old enough to hang around the clubhouse drinking with the gang. I figure that gives you about six years before forced retirement. At the outside.”
“If she wants it that bad, maybe I’ll give her the place and move to Mexico.”
“With your teacher?”
Greg grinned. “You too, Luc? What is it these days? The chatter around this motorcycle club is starting to sound like a soap opera.”
“Okay, I’ll say it like a biker. Are you taking your pussy with you when you split?”
“That’s better. The answer is: None of your fucking business.”
Carly’s voice came into the office again. “I can hear you assholes cussing loud and clear in here.”
Luc blushed. “Damn. Caught out being bikers again.”
* * *
The next Saturday, Melanie got a call from Greg.
“Can I buy you lunch?”
The sound of his voice sent a shiver of pleasure through her. “Well hello, stranger. I wondered if you’d call again.”
“Well, I’m embarrassed to say it’s only partly for the pleasure of your company. There is someone I want you to meet. He’ll join us for a beer, then take off and we can have the rest of the day.”
“This is all mysterious. What’s going on?”
“I don’t want to talk about it over the phone, and I think you need to hear the story direct from my source.”
“Your source?”
“So you can ask questions.”
Intrigued, and sensing that it was something he thought important, she agreed.
And so, when Greg picked her up, sweeping her up into his sensual world again, she found herself dealing with a new set of questions and concerns. This relationship, if that’s what it was, had gotten complex quickly, and she hadn’t even sorted out the basic issues yet. She struggled with the fact that she wanted him so badly and wasn’t sure it was a good idea. She was concerned that she might be romanticizing him—if she was, maybe she wasn’t seeing clearly who he really was. She even had to wonder if her loneliness didn’t factor into how attractive, how sexually exciting he seemed.
They stopped at a small Mexican place she’d never known existed. Of course they were in a part of the city she’d never spent much time in. It was downmarket, what she’d considered a high crime area.
The idea made her laugh—at herself. As she got off the bike she was seeing the irony of worrying about being in a dangerous part of town, while riding with a biker, an ex con. He was the kind of person she was supposed to be worrying about running into, not the man she arrived with. So much for preconceptions.
The man Greg wanted her to meet was already there and waiting. “This is Luc St. Pierre,” Greg said. He was in his early twenties, with a lean, fit build, dark brown eyes and dark olive skin. He had black, curly hair and she spotted a mischievous gleam in his eye.
“I’m happy to meet the hot teacher.”
“Hot teacher?” She glanced at Greg.
He looked embarrassed. “Carly’s pronounce
ment to the club was that I like picking her up at school because she has a hot teacher.”
Luc smiled. “This is true. She was quite adamant about it. I’m afraid I’ll have to report that the Princess was not exaggerating.”
“Other than so he can flatter you, the reason for us meeting with this dude is that he has a quality that I don’t—he knows and loves computers.”
Luc held up a finger. “In the interest of accuracy, I want to correct that statement. For the record, I hate computers. I do know a lot about them and I love to hack them, make them reveal their secrets, but that is only my small action to help make them ineffectual and to rid the world of them.” Then he grinned. “It’s a philosophical distinction that’s clear to me, not some sort of manifesto. In case you wondered.”
Melanie couldn’t help but grin at his obvious pride. “A subtle distinction to most of us.”
“Anyway,” Greg went on, “I asked him to check up on Malcolm Innes.”
“What?”
“After the run in, I couldn’t stop thinking about some of what he said. He made me nervous.”
“So you asked your friend to spy on him?”
“Me? Spy?” Luc sat up straight. “I never spy on anyone. I simply steal the information that spies collect on people.”
“Another subtle distinction.”
“But an important one. Philosophically, ethically, in many ways a far different beast. I never, ever, violate anyone’s personal security.”
“Then how do you learn things?”
“From the sites of people that do. For instance, most of what I learned about Mr. Innes, the important stuff, was easy, because I hacked the FBI computer. They had it all collected and sorted.”
“Should we be hearing this?” Melanie asked.
He shrugged. “It was just the computer of the local office, but if you object to being an accessory, probably not. It doesn’t matter though, because they won’t ever notice and we aren’t making it public. My point is, they have an interest in him and they conveniently supplied most of what you might want to know, plus they provided links to some of his more unstable rants.”
“How unstable?” she asked.