by Kane Daemon
“Everyone here?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Zane left to go visit Bain at his club. Fucker is crazy as shit for going there.”
I knew Trucker had sent him out for a conversation, but nobody mentioned Zane and Bain's meeting. My Easy button was on the move again. Bain would kill Zane as soon as he stepped foot onto club property.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Zane
I rolled to the front entrance and put my feet down when I came to a stop. Two police cruisers sat outside the club on the street. The two officers stared at me, but I was pretty sure neither would get out.
“What’s up, Zane?”
“Harlow,” I said. Wade Harlow had once been a high school English teacher. He got hooked on the show Breaking Bad and then decided he wanted to be a badass. He couldn’t cook meth for shit, so he decided to try the MC life. The King Slayers made him a member two years ago. He lowered his gun and opened the gate for me to drive forward.
“Sorry about your ol’ lady,” he said.
“Appreciate it, Harlow.” I drove forward, and he closed the gate.
The King Slayers’ club was a technology masterpiece. Security cameras hung from a dozen different angles, two of them following me to the front of the main compound building. A few years ago, during the middle of the night, we flew a drone over the compound and found it consisted of three large structures, each of which stood two-stories. A covered walkway stretched between buildings. A fourth, smaller building sat to my right, a garage to do bike repairs.
The Slayers were the worst of the one-percenters. Not only did they break every law, but they also wanted to rid the state of any rival clubs. Like Hell’s Justice, they ran pussy across the state. But, unlike Hell’s Justice, they made their pussy do things said pussy didn’t want to do. If the price was right, the pussy had to comply.
“I didn’t think you would show,” Bain said as he appeared from the main building. “Thought you had more brains than that.”
I climbed off my bike and tossed my gloves on the seat. There would be no fighting. If a fight broke out, I would be leaving in the back of a van and never seen again. It’s the way things worked in the club life. You knew. You accepted it.
“We need to get this shit straight before more killing takes place.” I climbed the two stairs to where Bain stood. “I’m here because I know Amanda would want me to be here.”
“Even though you have an excellent possibility of dying?”
I shook my head. “I refuse to die until I find out who murdered my wife.”
“You don’t think we did it, do you?” Bain opened the door, and I followed him inside.
“I don’t. But I do think you can help me find who did it. Bain, I think we’re both looking for the same man.”
He led me past several members who stood and wanted nothing more than to take a shot at me. Bain wouldn’t let them. As much as he hated S.O.M., he had a healthy respect for me and the fact I was able to grow a business and become well-off. Unfortunately, I was being dragged back into the life Amanda wanted me out of.
We entered a large conference room lined with dozens of pictures of past members, including Bain’s father, the founder of the King Slayers, and the arch-nemesis of Trucker’s father.
“Church?” I asked.
Bain sat at the head of the table and motioned for me to sit. At the center of the table, carved into the wood, was a man holding a sword standing over another man wearing a crown. “The table is a gift from the Navajo. Pretty fucking amazing work.”
“How do we fix this?” I ignored the decorative table and pictures on the walls.
“You turn over the man who brutally killed my wife. Save those assholes a lot of dying.”
“I’d know if the club put a hit on your ol’ lady, Bain.”
“How the fuck would you know that? You’re out playing millionaire. You have no fucking idea what Trucker is up to.” Bain put his elbows on the table and crossed his large forearms, an image of a King Slayer on each arm. He had a point. I didn’t know. But I listened to my gut, and my gut told me Trucker wasn’t that stupid.
“Give me forty-eight hours. If I find nothing, then you do what you have to.” I stood. “You’ve got three times the men, which means you have more people to die than we do. Back down and give me the forty-eight.”
“You talk to that son-of-a-bitch about pussy running in my territory.” Bain leaned back in his chair. “You got the forty-eight. But if the other doesn’t stop, I’ll start taking out the pussy.”
“I’ll be in touch.”
I walked back through the King Slayer members until I got to the exit where a large man stood, blocking my way. I glanced back at Bain.
“It’s the only way out,” Bain said.
As I turned back to the monster at the door, he caught me square on the chin with a right fist. I flailed back into a row of members, and they stood me up to take my next punch. The monster threw another right, but I managed to deflect the blow. Catching the man off balance, I threw my right, hitting him in the temple. He flopped to the floor, unconscious.
“Thanks for the hospitality.”
“Forty-eight, Zane. The clock is ticking.”
I rode back to S.O.M. under the cover of darkness, racking my brain. What sadistic son-of-a-bitch would rape and kill women? And what dumbass would kill club members’ ol’ ladies?
My phone rang, and I pulled into a convenience store parking lot. A cop stood at the pumps filling his tank.
“Zane,” I said. “What do you need, Trucker?”
“How’d it go?”
“Forty-eight hours to find who’s doing this.”
“He thinks we did it because they killed Amanda?”
“That’s bullshit, Trucker. You’re looking in the wrong place.”
The cop finished pumping his gas and grabbed the small radio attached to his shoulder. From where I sat, I could hear every word said. Then I heard the address. The cop jumped back into his car, lit up his lights and siren, and peeled out of the parking lot.
“You in trouble?” Trucker asked.
“Fucking get someone over to the cave. Now!”
I ended the call and followed the cop.
The cave is what we called the basement of one of the club’s rental properties on the edge of town. It’s where some of the members used to take pussy and do weird shit.
I pulled along the curb across the street from the house. Two cops stood at the front door. An ambulance and coroner’s van sat along the curb in front of the house.
“Found a woman dead.”
I turned to the man sitting on his porch. “You see something?” I got off my bike and joined the man on his porch.
“Dark-colored Honda Civic. A rental. Had a barcode on the window.”
“You see who was driving?”
He shook his head. “Some scrounge-looking mother-fucker.”
“Biker, maybe?”
“In a Honda Civic rental?”
“You tell the police.”
The man chuckled. “No fucking way. You talk to the po-po in this hood, and you wake up with a bullet in your temple.”
Trucker and several club members pulled behind me. “Stringer’s on his way. He got held up at his place.”
“Rocky, wait!” I yelled as Rocky crossed the street.
“Damn it, Rocky,” Trucker said, and we all started after him.
“How the fuck does he know it’s his ol' lady?” I asked.
“The license plate came over the police scanner.” Trucker tackled Rocky in the front yard. Rocky’s scream woke up every dog in the neighborhood.
“Take him home, Trucker,” Sheriff Lucas McCabe said. “We’ll let the club know what we found shortly. His wife will be transported down to the coroner’s office. We’ll let you know when.” McCabe was the local high school hero who most of us went to school with. He blew out his knee during his final high school game. Colleges backed off, and he quit playing altogether. He
’d been in a bad mood ever since. “What’re you doing here?” he asked me. “Thought you were done with the club?”
The other issue with McCabe was that he was in love with Amanda, who dropped him a few months before she started dating me.
“I’m back in.”
Trucker looked back at me and loosened his grip on Rocky. Rocky broke loose, and McCabe sent him reeling back to the ground. Trucker moved in front of McCabe, neither man liking the other. At least for the moment, I was nobody’s concern.
Trucker said nothing because nothing needed to be told when two men hated each other as much as they did.
“The fuck is going on?” Stringer said as he crossed the yard. “What’s wrong with Rocky?”
“His ol' lady’s in there, dead,” Trucker said. He motioned for the Prospects to take Rocky back to the bikes. “We’ll be waiting for the word,” he told McCabe.
We rode back to the club, me bringing up the rear, my mind reeling. Nothing on Bain’s face told me he was planning a hit on a Hell’s Justice family member.
We pulled through the open gates, and I pulled Trucker aside while everyone else went inside. Carrie sat outside with Sadie, who had a cigarette between her fingers. Each of them held a beer in their hands. I hoped Carrie didn’t start.
“You gotta keep your fucking head,” I said to Trucker. “We have no idea if the Slayer’s are involved.”
Trucker looked at Sadie and then turned his back to her. He poked me in the chest. “You need to reach down into those tight pants of yours and make sure you still have a dick, because you seem to be acting too much like you got a pussy down there.” He started to walk away.
“You need to let fucking that shit go, Trucker. Don’t you fucking think I would have stopped what happened to her if I could have?”
Trucker turned and stormed back at me, sticking his finger in my face. “She was my fucking sister, asshole. She wanted out of this shit. And this shit is what got her killed. The club got her killed!”
“And she was my wife, Trucker,” I said calmly, fully prepared to break the club code and fuck him up in front of everyone who’d come outside. “I lost the love of my life. I lost the woman who saved my ass on too many occasions to count. So don’t give me your sob story. I lost something, too.”
Trucker glanced at his watch, “You got forty-six hours now, Zane. Then I’m getting me some hell’s justice.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Carrie
“Nobody is telling me shit, Zane. What’s going on?”
He watched Trucker leave, and I thought for sure he was going to go after him. The rage on Zane’s face made me step back, and second, guess my decision to stay. But Sadie had warned me repeatedly that the club life was not for everyone, and there were challenges around every corner. Give it thirty days both she and Zane had said. Okay, I was going to do that. Probably, I would give it longer since there was nothing ahead or behind for me.
Zane looked down at me, the rage thankfully draining from his eyes. “There’s been another murder. The club’s secretary's wife was killed. That’s all we know right now. The Sheriff is telling us nothing.” He walked to his bike, and I followed like a good ol' lady.
“Zane, you can’t go,” Sadie said and put her hand gently on his arm. I noticed she didn’t grab him. “You’re safer here. Let Trucker cool off and then go in there and talk to him the way you guys used to talk. You two need the old normal.”
“That’s bullshit, Sadie, and you know it.” Zane pulled on his gloves and straddled the bike. Even pissed off at the world, the man was hot as hell. I wanted to fuck him right then.
In my mind, I took a step back, I was becoming a dog in heat, and my language wasn’t much better. Three days into knowing Zane and I was changing. For the better? Maybe. What I had learned in three days was more than I learned in three years with Mike. Don’t let people fuck with you.
“I’ve already got a room ready for the two of you,” Sadie said. “Just come back in and let the steam blow off, Zane. You can’t be rolling out of here pissed off. You’ll do something stupid.”
“I’ll check back in tomorrow morning. I told Bain to give me forty-eight hours to find who’s fucking doing this, and I have about forty-five hours left and not a fucking clue as to who is doing it.” He looked at me. “Get on.”
I climbed on behind Zane and shrugged at Sadie. Sadie stepped back. “Make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid,” she said to me. She pointed at Zane. “She’s your responsibility. Keep her safe.”
Luckily, we pulled away from the club at a safe speed until we hit the highway. That’s when Zane when all out.
“Where are we going?” I yelled, but I knew the roar of the bike drowned out anything I tried to say. I learned then that it was best to let him be mad and do what he was going to do. Stay out of club business, Sadie had told me.
We slowed about ten minutes after leaving the club and turned into a dark parking lot, a single light over the warehouse door, the only light. Zane pulled close to the door and parked.
“Come on.”
I stayed on the bike. Zane unlocked the door, and the alarm sounded. He disappeared for a moment, and the alarm stopped. He filled the doorway again. “Can you come in, please?”
I really hadn’t expected him to say please. I stayed on the bike, trying to understand the situation. Was there anything I could do to help him or the club. The club obviously hated me, though I was pretty sure Zane was falling in love with me. We just had to move past this whole serial killer thing. Yeah, easy peasy.
I got off the bike, joined him inside, and rubbed my arms from the chill in the room. Zane removed his jacket and placed it around my shoulders. Unlike the other club members, Zane didn’t where the club cuts. I didn’t ask. I didn’t think he was ready to dive in deep with the club just yet. I believe everyone was just trying to get used to the idea.
“Your place?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said and tossed his keys on the desk close to the door. He then flipped a switch on the wall, and the lights in the warehouse came to life. “This is where Amanda was murdered?”
“How’d you know?” he asked.
“Sadie was filling me in while you were gone.”
“I don’t know if this life is really for you, Carrie.”
I pulled the jacket around me, smelling both leather and Zane. Bothe were intoxicating. “I thought we decided I would decide if I wanted to stay or not. Don’t you think I understand what could happen? But you know what, I could be walking down the street and be hit by a car. Or maybe kidnapped by someone breaking into my apartment. There are so many possibilities. Being part of the club and your life is just one of a thousand different ways to die. I’m not going to worry about things I can’t control.” I took a deep breath.
“Whoever is doing this knows the club scene. He knew the warehouse. He knew about the backroom I added.” We walked toward the back of the warehouse. “I think Rocky’s wife was lured to the house where she was murdered. It belonged to the club and hadn’t been used in years. He knew what was there and that nobody would just drop by.”
“The guy was tracking her,” I said, trying to be useful.
Zane stopped. “How do you figure?”
“Well, Rocky had already talked to her, letting her know she needed to come back to the club. The guy had to know the house was on the way back to the club, which meant he knew where she was before she got there. It was a murder of convenience.” I smiled, whether it was an appropriate time to do so or not.
“You watch too much TV.” Zane continued to the room at the back of the warehouse. “But I think you’re right.” He switched on the light in the office, and then we entered the next room. “A tracking device.”
I nodded. “Saw that on TV as well.” I sensed maybe because there was a bed in the room where Zane and Amanda often came there to do more than just work. Truth be told, I wanted to climb his bones right then and fuck him on that very bed. I knew it to be
a bad idea. Maybe another time.
“So, if the asshole is placing tracking devices on cars and or maybe bikes, he has access to all of us.”
“The club has surveillance video?” I asked. “Yeah, but I'm not sure how long they keep the footage. It may be set to erase each day.”
“Okay, so maybe we look at the footage from whenever the last record is and then have the club not set the video to erase until further notice.”
Zane sat in the chair at the desk in the room and patted his lap. I hesitated, and he looked at me questioningly. “Something wrong?”
“I wasn’t sure if you wanted me too close in here.”
Zane cleared his throat. “I know that I need to move on eventually. I’m trying.” He held up a hand before I could reply. “I get where you’re coming from. You feel like you are living in her shadow. I get it. But you’re not here to replace her.”
“Then, why am I here?” I asked. “Why bring me to this place?” He patted his lap again, and this time, I joined him.
“Because I enjoy your company. You have some spunk in you. I think you understand I need to get back into the club, and you’re willing to take that journey with me.” Zane placed his hand on my leg. “Things are going to change very quickly if I do this.”
“I know, you keep warning me. I get it. I’m on board.” I kissed him, and his hand tightened around my leg. I pulled away, and he placed his hand against my face. I could feel his pulse beating in his palm. “Can I ask you something about this club life you keep talking about?”
“I have nothing to hide from you.”
“Those two men you killed on the highway. It seemed like no big deal, and you just walked away from it and went on about your business.” He slid his hand up my bare leg, and I immediately became wet. I wondered how long this man could go on making me wet and horny and ready to fuck by just speaking to me or touching me.
“Like everything else, it’s part of the club life. Most of the time, it’s kill or be killed. It was them or me.”