“Trying to set me up again?” She smiled weakly because it was expected, and because Mel was trying. She knew how hard this night was, and she was trying. It was enough to make Anna try too.
“You know it.”
Steve looked over at Anna and sighed, then heaved his bulk out of the chair and started across the sticky floor. Each step made a sucking sound as the rubber sole of his shoe connected with the floor and the floor reluctantly gave it up again. He picked up the trash bag she’d left at the door. “I’ll take this out,” he said. “Why don’t you help Mel clean up and we’ll all go home.”
“No,” said Anna, taking the bag from him. “Thank you, but honestly I could use a minute alone. Mel, can I have a cigarette?”
Mel’s lips tightened, but she slid a Marlboro from the pack she kept in the pocket of her apron and tucked it behind Anna’s ear, then pulled out her lighter and slipped it into Anna’s apron. “It’s going to be okay,” she said, not for the first time that night. She rose to her tiptoes and pressed her lips against Anna’s forehead, stroking her long blonde hair with a steady hand.
The summer air was hot, heavy when she pushed open the door and entered the alley. Immediately she was damp with sweat that clung to her neck and back. Fuck, it was humid. She missed Augusta, the cool summer air and the way the pine forests pressed in on the home where she’d grown up. But she was 900 miles and 21 days away from seeing it again. Her mother had probably already made a list of foods she was going to make for Anna’s visit, had planned ways to lure her only daughter back home for good, even if they both knew she didn’t really want her home.
The Easy Bake wasn’t the classiest place to work, but the neighborhood wasn’t the worst Detroit had to offer, either. Her skirts were long enough that none of the groping regulars got a look at her ass, but short enough that she could go out for a real drink after a shift without having to change clothes. Maybe tomorrow she’d find an open bar that served cheap drinks and get well and truly smashed, say a toast to Carly and end up in some anonymous guy’s bed.
She heaved the large black bag over the rim of the dumpster, then slumped back against the wall, disappointed with everything in her life. One year ago tonight, her best friend, partner-in-crime, and roommate had been kidnapped from an alley behind a club they’d frequented, leaving only frantic voicemails and shadows on a convenience store surveillance video. Carly wouldn’t have gone out alone that night if Anna hadn’t been a bitch and snapped at her about the guy she was seeing.
It was her fault.
That night, she’d brought home a guy from the bioassay lab where she performed tests on wastewater from industrial operations. He’d had short-cropped blond hair and was slightly soft in the way guys are when they spend all their time at a desk. When he’d gone down on her, she’d tried to focus on his mouth and fingers, but really she’d been regretting making another nasty comment about the guy Carly was causally seeing. He was also seeing four other girls, but Carly was convinced she could change him.
“You can’t ever change men,” Anna had argued. “You’re throwing your life away on losers. Just date someone nice.”
“Maybe I don’t like nice guys,” Carly had said, tears welling in her eyes. “Maybe I like this one. I love you, but back off.”
“Fine.” Anna had stormed into her room and refused to come out when Carly asked if she was ready to go to the club. “Go by yourself if you need to spend so much time with shitty men,” Anna had told her through the door. “I can’t stand to watch it anymore.”
Her phone buzzed on the nightstand and she reached over to check who it was. Carly. Anna hovered a finger over the Call button, then pushed the phone away. “Keep going,” she said to the blond guy, reclining on the pillows and trying to lose herself in the tentative motions of his mouth.
A minute later, the phone rang again. Anna reached over and silenced it, sending the call to voicemail. She couldn’t take another night of hearing about that useless guy or whatever loser Carly had found in his stead.
The blond guy left after they’d fucked and now, just a year later, she couldn’t even remember his name. A few hours after he’d gone, loud pounding against the front door of her apartment jolted her out of sleep. She wrapped an old blue bathrobe around herself and pulled open the door, ready to do violence.
It was two police officers who proceeded to hammer her with questions about Carly, about the bar where she’d gone for a drink, about the man who’d taken her. Someone had taken her.
She’d called 911 from the trunk of the car, but was put on hold. She didn’t get through. She called the police and begged for help, but the call had disconnected.
Anna had pulled her phone from the charger, listened to the desperate messages and then given the phone to the police. The next afternoon, she had enough presence of mind to log into her mobile provider’s website and download the voicemail messages to her computer. It had turned out to be a good move, because she’d never gotten that phone back. After the police had stopped looking, they told her it had been lost.
The first message had been whispered and hard to decipher, muffled. “Anna,” Carly’s voice sounded like she was speaking from far away. “Anna, please help me. Help me. I don’t know who, but someone, there’s a man, and I’m—.” The call cut off there.
The second message. “I tried to call for help. Where are you? I don’t know how long I’ve been in the car, the trunk, I’m in a trunk, I can’t see anything. Help me, please.”
The third message. “Blue car. Vine tattoo. The alley behind Dungeon. Help me. Please.” The sound of brakes and a metal clang. “No. No, motherfucker! No! Let go of me.” A deep voice said something unintelligible. Then the sound of something breaking and the call disconnected.
No other calls had ever been made from her phone.
Anna had listened to the messages again before coming into the Easy Bake tonight, but it was just to remember Carly. Her long red hair and easy smiles and metallic eyeliners. She’d lost her job after Carly had been taken, locking herself in her apartment, buying a gun and spending every night at Dungeon with low-cut dresses and her weapon strapped to her thigh. No good.
So she hired a PI and paid him all of her savings. The report, delivered two weeks ago, was grim. Carly had been taken by a professional cartel of men who sold women for profit. She’d been shipped to Thailand, then China, and killed in Shanghai. Her body was already buried in a pauper’s grave.
Anna cringed, imagining her friend’s delicate limbs splayed out in soil, then shook her head to clear it. She reached for the cigarette again, put it to her lips and then abruptly snapped it in half.
She’d spent too much time out here already, reliving a tragedy. Carly was gone and there was nothing else she could do to find her best friend or make up for ignoring her when maybe, maybe it could have made a difference. It was time to accept defeat, buy a new transmission for her car with her tips from the Easy Bake, and head back to Maine for good. Detroit was nothing but trouble and bad memories.
Before she could push back through the steel door, she heard a cry and the sound of shattering glass. Mel had probably dropped the last tray of coffee cups. Anna took a last, deep breath and then pushed through the steel door to help with the cleanup.
The kitchen was empty. Jim’s eggs were hardened and smoking on the griddle, so she rushed across the room and flipped the switch, shutting down the power. She grabbed a spatula and pried them off the bar, sweeping them into the trash bowl that they used for old food, then turned to the swinging doors to see what was so important that they’d left the griddle unattended.
She looked through the door just in time to see an enormous mountain of a man lift a gun to Jim’s head and pull the trigger. His corpse slumped to the floor, next to the wasted bodies of Mel and Steve. Their faces were empty. No. No. Not them.
Anna jerked back, the breath leaving her lungs so that her mouth opened and closed like a fish on the line. She needed to make it to the steel door and out
into the alley, but couldn’t take the steps. Her legs felt like spaghetti noodles, weak and limp, unable to move. She cartwheeled back, blindly reaching behind herself for the door and slammed into the cart with plates. They fell to the floor and shattered, glass raining across the tile floor.
“What the fuck?” The man who’d shot her friends pushed through the door and surveyed the room, his eyes stopping on Anna. Before she could move, he grabbed her by the arm and marched her into the dining room. The wall behind the bodies was smeared with blood and brain matter. She clapped her free hand to her mouth and swallowed back the vomit that threatened to erupt. Her body felt like it didn’t exist anymore, like it was light and this was a dream and in a minute she’d open her eyes and they’d be alive again.
Except they weren’t.
“Who’s this pretty little thing?” A handsome man with tanned skin and coal black hair crossed the room and took her face in his hands. They were dry and rough against her cheeks. “Hello, girl.” The large man took her other elbow so that both arms were trapped behind her and she could do nothing while the handsome man examined her. A spatter of blood was casually smeared over his cheek. Anna gagged, averting her eyes before she lost the omelet Jim made her. The man’s gaze was a violation, lingering on her breasts before dipping lower and moving slowly back up.
“Why?” she asked. He brought his eyes back to hers and smiled softly.
“He didn’t want protection,” he said. “Didn’t want to be part of the team. Think of this as an object lesson.”
“Want me to add her to the pile?” Her stomach dropped when the big man spoke, his voice a low rumble. She turned to meet his eyes, but stopped halfway when she spotted the tattoo peeking out from his black shirt sleeve. It wrapped around his arm, a black curved line covered in thorns, ending near the elbow. Her mind shut down, all thoughts of safety evaporated like a puddle in the desert as the surveillance video, the phone messages, the man with the black vine tattoo all jumbled together in her head.
“You,” she finally said, the words barely a whisper as they slipped past her trembling lips. “You took Carly. You motherfucker.” She pushed back against him, her shoes slipping against the floor, and elbowed him in the gut. He coughed, but gripped his fingers harder into her arm. The third man walked over and punched her hard in the gut so that she doubled over, only held up by the large man’s hands.
“You know Little Red? Interesting.” The handsome man looked at her again, his gaze sharper this time. “Maybe we should consider a reunion.”
“I thought I recognized her,” said the man with that tattoo, tightening his grip. “You don’t really want to keep this bitch around, do you?”
“Let’s keep her for a day or two. She might be fun.” They both laughed and Anna tried to control her breathing. Red spots danced in front of her eyes and she fought to stay conscious. “Help me drag this mess behind the counter.” The tattooed man passed her off to the man who’d hit her and joined the other to begin to move the bodies. The sound Mel’s shoes made as they dragged her over the floor resonated in Anna’s head and she closed her eyes, slumping against the man who laughed as his nails dug into her skin.
Chapter Two
Jack was already having a shitty night when he spotted the massacre at the Easy Bake. The daughter of a man who pushed heroin for the club had reported a break in at the shop her family owned, and Ace had sent him to check it out.
“It was three men,” Becca said. “I didn’t really get a good look at them.”
“They weren’t violent?”
“I carried Daddy’s shotgun down the steps with me.”
“Why did they target you?” Jack wondered aloud. The shop sold food and wasn’t particularly large or profitable. It was a front for the drugs the family sold and a way to justify the money they made. Now that things were changing for the Storm Runners, it was time to cut ties with Minute Mart, but Jack wouldn’t let them fend for themselves in downtown Detroit. He’d known Becca since they were both kids and her family raised her right, keeping her out of the worst of the drug shit.
She’d looked at the ground then, not willing to meet his eyes. “Dad had a visit recently from a man who wanted money for protection.”
“What? Why didn’t you call the club?” Jack placed a hand on her arm. “You’re our friends. We’re still going to look out for you.”
“He didn’t think it was a good idea. Now that Max is gone…” She trailed off, still not looking at him. “I guess he thought it would be better to consider our options. I’m sorry.”
Jack nodded. The same shit was going on in his head. Since Max, the founder of the Storm Runners, was killed, nothing made sense. He told Becca to call if anything came up and left without another word.
It was cold for a summer night in Detroit and the streets were empty. He drove slowly through downtown, taking his time. He was really just stalling, Jack admitted to himself. He didn’t want to tell Ace, the new president of the Storm Runners Motorcycle Club, what had happened, what Becca had said. Everything was a clusterfuck and he just didn’t feel like dealing with it.
He thought about stopping at a greasy spoon diner for coffee and maybe taking a second look at the waitress who’d served him and cleaned up a wound he’d gotten in a fight a few months before, then rejected the idea. They were probably closed anyway. Besides, driving slow was one thing, but actively stopping was a completely different beast. Ace was having enough problems getting the club under control. He didn’t need Jack creating more. Max would have expected more from his adopted son and Sergeant-at-Arms.
He thought about the waitress, a cupcake of a woman with wavy blonde hair, perky tits and bright blue fuck-me eyes. The week after Max and half the club was slaughtered, Jack had gotten into a knife fight with a low-level dealer downtown. The fucker was holding back information and tried to slice out Jack’s heart when he didn’t like the questions he was being asked. Jack pulled his hunting knife from his boot and dug it into the man’s jugular—quietly thanking the Marine Corps for the training while the man died without time to retaliate—but his arm was bleeding like a stuck pig.
He’d been close enough and the Easy Bake had been open, so he’d gone in to use the bathroom. Instead of screaming and calling the cops, the cupcake had sighed, pushed back his sleeve and gone to get a medical kit.
“I’m not gonna ask what happened,” she’d said, swabbing the cut with something that burned like fire. He gritted his teeth against the pain.
“Best you don’t,” he’d said.
“I am going to recommend you get this to the hospital.” She used some kind of bandaged to hold the wound together. “An infection here could get nasty.” Jack watched her from the corner of his eye, saw the blood staining her hands. His blood. She knelt down to grab something else from the kit and he was struck by just how pretty she was. Nothing like the women who hung around the club. Fresh, clean. Too pure for the likes of him.
Half-formed plans to get her on the back of his bike evaporated. The woman gave him a cup of coffee—on the house—and chatted with him about movies while he gained his equilibrium. No sense in taking off early and crashing, he’d reasoned, staying for an hour more than he needed to just so the pretty waitress with the bubblegum lips could lean on the counter and make small talk with him.
The lights at the Easy Bake were still on, even though it was late. As he approached, he saw Axel, Axel’s enforcer Dominic, and a wiry man he recognized as Alvaro, Axel’s younger brother, enter the building. He sighed and prepared to give them a wide berth. Axel was a piece of shit who hurt women for fun. When the Storm Runners found out what he did behind closed doors, they’d kicked his slick ass out of the club with a warning about what would happen if he ever laid his hands on another woman hard enough to leave bruises. Axel hadn’t ever been patched, but they’d all been embarrassed that a piece of shit like that even made prospect.
Then Axel had gone into Detroit and gotten a gang together. Though the
Storm Runners and Axel’s gang had an uneasy peace between them, Jack knew the scum had never gotten over the indignity of being ejected from the club. He may have smiled when they did business together, but he did it with his teeth bared behind his lips.
His gang was well placed to help move heroin and guns in the city, but Jack couldn’t fucking stand being around them. Seeing them would be even worse now that Ace had decided to clean up the operation. Jack didn’t feel like getting his hands dirty if they were pissed about the lost income and decided to turn it into a fight. Especially not when it was three-on-one and the cupcake waitress might get caught in the crossfire.
They entered without seeing him and he pulled over, cutting off his engine and pulling out his mobile. He messaged Ace: Axel +2 downtown. Easy Bake. Jack swiped his finger over the screen and dragged up his email, read through a few offers on aftermarket parts and then opened the response from Ace: Don’t engage. Took it well, but not worth the risk. Come home.
He flipped the switch on his Harley to engage the engine, then took one last look at the Easy Bake. He was just in time to see Axel’s bulky enforcer blow the head off of a man in a cook’s apron.
“Fuck,” he muttered, dialing the police on his phone and reporting the incident. He hadn’t seen the woman who’d helped him in the restaurant, hoped she was off and not a corpse. Jack hung up the phone after making the report and prepared to leave. Before he could move, Dominic pushed through a pair of swinging doors with the woman held tight in his grip. She struggled against him, but it was like watching a kitten try to fight off a rabid dog.
“Fuck,” he said again. Going in to the restaurant was a good way to die, and he wasn’t ready to die today. But the men didn’t shoot her right away, seemed like they were toying with her. He had a chance to save her. He didn’t want to see her die.
He cursed again and turned on the bike, steering it into the alley behind the Easy Bake. The solid weight of the knife in his boot and the gun in his coat were little comfort when faced with three men who were just as heavily armed. He grabbed a stun grenade from the leather bag that hung over the back of the Harley.
STRIKE: Storm Runners Motorcycle Club 2 (SRMC) Page 22