by Blair Grey
But I knew better than to allow myself to have any sort of feelings, even lust, toward him. He was a target, nothing else. I needed to stay carefully neutral. I was an undercover cop, not some love-stricken college kid.
I watched as he got back in his car and pulled away from the business, leaving the other guy there watching the place. Grant’s windows were down, so I could clearly see his expression. To my surprise, he looked almost guilty leaving the other guy there. That wasn’t what I expected from him.
I knew that Ryan thought this kid was the weak link, that he was our ticket to finding out the inner workings of the MC. And I was pretty sure he was right, insofar as Grant just didn’t seem like a hardened criminal, but I couldn’t help wondering about him. Why even be part of the MC if you were so clearly not on board with all of its practices? I just didn’t understand that.
And there was something about Grant that just screamed that he would rather be doing something else.
Maybe some strife inside the MC, something that we didn’t know about? If that were the case, if I could figure out who was on which side, maybe we could drive a wedge between them. Make them rat out the other faction. Get them to turn on one another. I knew it wasn’t supposed to work like that in an MC like this. They were supposed to be like brothers. They were supposed to have one another’s backs no matter what. But I couldn’t help thinking that if Grant was such an outlier, there had to be more going on inside than what we knew.
And I needed to figure out what it was.
I followed him as he pulled away, watching as he stopped at a local diner. He had stopped there the previous day as well, and I was starting to wonder if this was some routine of his. He didn’t appear to be there on business. He wasn’t watching the place. He was just getting an early dinner. I filed that information away, too. I was sure this was the place I was going to be able to get close to him.
But for now, I headed home for the day. That information about possible recruits was enough for now, I was positive. I’d work on getting closer to Grant another day. Once I knew his routine a little better.
When I got home, my sister, Vera was in the kitchen making dinner for the two of us. “I hope fish tacos are okay,” she said when I walked in.
I laughed. “Vera, you know I never complain about your cooking,” I said, going to the fridge and grabbing a beer. “Especially not since you’ve been letting me live here rent-free for weeks now. I still can’t believe I managed to get on the police force here.”
It was so good to be living in the same town as her again. She was the only family that I had left and being apart while I was at the police academy had been difficult. I had been overjoyed to find myself with a job offer just up the road from where we’d grown up. I still needed to find a place of my own, but for now, it was good just to be here and get to spend time with her.
Vera laughed. “Hey, don’t worry about rent,” she said. “I’m just glad I’m not rattling around this big place all by myself. It’s felt so empty since Mom and Dad died.” She frowned as she diced onions. “Where have you been all day anyway?”
“Work.” I sighed, dropping down onto one of the barstools across the counter from her and turning the cutting board so that I could dice tomatoes on one end while she finished chopping the onions on the other end.
“Do I even want to know what they’ve got you doing?” Vera asked.
I shrugged. “It’s nothing too exciting,” I told her. “They’ve just got me staking out this guy.”
“A criminal, probably,” Vera said, rolling her eyes, but I could tell that she was concerned for me. She was my big sister, and she didn’t exactly approve of me being on the police force. She thought that it was too dangerous, and she thought that I should be doing something more, well, girlie. She worked as a hairdresser at a local salon, and she loved chatting with her clients. She was good at what she did, too.
But that just wasn’t the kind of life that I wanted for myself. As much as she tried to convince me that her job was just as important as mine, I still secretly felt like I was helping more people than she was. Maybe I wasn’t giving her enough credit, though.
“I am going to find a place soon. I have a couple leads,” I told Vera suddenly.
Vera gave me a startled look. “You know I’m not worried about that,” she said. “You can stay here for as long as you’d like.”
I laughed. “You want to live with your little sister for the rest of your life?” I asked, and Vera gave a playful grimace.
“I guess not,” she said. Her expression turned serious again. “But really, there’s no pressure. I don’t want you to feel like I’m kicking you out. You grew up here, too. And Mom and Dad left half of the house to you.”
“Yeah, but they did that thinking that we were going to sell it,” I reminded Vera. When we’d been teenagers, we'd both been raring to get out of Las Cruces. But ever since they died, or maybe just because now we’d both grown up and realized how much we loved our hometown, we were both back in Las Cruces. “Anyway, you bought out my half of the house, remember? That was how I could even afford to go to police academy.”
“Still,” Vera said, shrugging. “I like having you here.”
“And I like being here,” I said. “But I’m still going to be in Las Cruces, no matter what.” I grinned at her. “Moving out just means I don’t have to be here on the nights you decide to experiment with your cooking.”
Vera laughed. “What happened to never complaining about my cooking?” she joked. “If you’re not careful, I’m going to make you cook dinner one night.”
I snorted. “That’s going to backfire on you more than me,” I reminded her. “You’re the one who’s picky about food. That’s why you do all the cooking to begin with.”
Vera sighed, “I guess you’re right.”
“What you really need is for me to move out so that you can find a man to cook for you,” I teased.
Vera giggled. “Is that why you’re so worried about moving out?” she asked. “You have a man of your own that you’re trying to bring home without big sis seeing him?”
I rolled my eyes. “That’ll be the day,” I said, even though I couldn’t help thinking about Grant. Not that I was planning on falling in love with him or bringing him here to my family’s home. Vera’s home, I guess. But if I was going to convince him to share Red Eyes secrets with me, we were going to have to have some sort of relationship. Maybe I should warn Vera about that in case she heard about us through someone else in town?
But I didn’t really want to talk about work with her. If she knew that the guy that I was following was a core member of Red Eyes, she would worry even more than usual. So it was best that I just keep pretending that I had zero interest in guys. If it came up later, I’d just explain that Grant was a work thing and that was the only reason I was with him.
And I wouldn’t bring him back here. That would just be weird.
“Seriously,” Vera said, looking earnestly over at me, “I’m in no hurry to have you move out of here. This is all the family that we have. And it’s nice having you around. I know that you’ll still be in Las Cruces otherwise, but this place is definitely big enough for both of us, and I like that I’m not just cooking for myself every night.”
I smiled over at Vera, hearing all the things she wasn’t saying. Because I felt the same way: I didn’t want to leave any more than she wanted me to. I just didn’t want to overstay my welcome. Technically, it was her house. But we were best friends as well as sisters, and it was nice to come home to an entirely stress-free environment after work each day, knowing that Vera had probably already come home from work and started dinner. Maybe that was selfish of me; maybe I was taking advantage of her.
But as long as she didn’t seem to mind me being here, I’d hold off finding a place of my own. “Thanks,” I said again, and we both knew that I meant thanks for more than just letting me stay there.
5
Grant
I met Cameron at the diner on Friday afternoon for lunch so that we could talk about the recruits. I was pretty sure, by this point, that none of them were cops, but he still wanted to hear all about them. I found it kind of strange to have this meeting with Cameron when I hadn’t even talked to Ray about all of them yet, but when Cameron asked to meet me, I didn’t know what to say other than yes.
I had him meet me at the same diner I always went to. It wasn’t one of the Red Eyes businesses, and I appreciated that. Even though we were sort of conducting business by talking about recruits, I still felt weird just sitting around in businesses that were ones that we collected dues from. Like maybe the owners might not want us there. And I knew that it wasn’t really up to them whether we went in there or not.
It just seemed strange. I don’t know.
Cameron looked around the diner when he came in. “This place is pretty nice,” he said, sliding into the booth across from me. “Maybe I should tell Ray we should get them as one of our businesses. I’m sure they could pay their dues promptly.”
I immediately grimaced, realizing that I had been stupid in bringing Cameron here. But Cameron had other things that he was focused on, and he didn’t dwell on the idea of bringing this business into the fold.
“So how are the recruits doing anyway?” Cameron asked.
I shrugged. “Fine, I guess. I’m actually kind of surprised at the number of guys that are sticking around. We had a few leave the first day, guys who didn’t think they could cut it. Like, there was this one guy that I dropped off at one of the businesses. He didn’t even just walk off; he actually waited for me to come back. But then he told me all about how he just didn’t think he was cut out for this, that he thought that he’d be paired up with someone else and wouldn’t be going through this alone, that kind of thing. How do you even respond to that?”
Cameron shrugged. “I guess just some of them aren’t cut out for this.”
“But I get what they’re feeling,” I protested. “I felt the same way when I first got started with Red Eyes. I still do sometimes. I would hate to watch one of the businesses all on my own, just waiting for something to go wrong.”
It was a stupid thing to say. I knew that as soon as the words were out of my mouth. Cameron just grinned at me. I supposed if I was going to say that to anyone, he was the guy. He seemed like such an unlikely fit for Red Eyes to begin with: tall and thin, good with numbers but not so good with his fists. He made a perfect treasurer, but he didn’t really fit the mold as a biker. I always wondered what had kept him around the business for so long, but I never dared to ask him.
“I don’t think any of them are cops,” I said, to cover up the awkward moment. “No one has really asked me any questions whatsoever. The guys that are hanging around, they all kind of seem like the biker sort, even if they’re not all one hundred percent confident to go on missions yet.”
“Good,” Cameron said. He shrugged. “I wasn’t sure if there would be any plants. Obviously, they were all picked by Ray, and he knows what to watch out for. He’s been at this for long enough.”
“You have, too, haven’t you?” I asked.
Cameron laughed. “Yeah, I’ve been with Red Eyes for years now. You know that.”
“I know,” I said. I paused and then finally blurted out what was really on my mind. “One of the things that I just haven’t known how to explain to the new guys is that it’s very… Well, what you see is what you get. I guess I kind of thought that things would get easier once I was initiated. But I don’t feel like it has.”
It was as close as I’d get to talking of my insecurities about being part of Red Eyes. And the only person I was comfortable admitting that to was Cameron. He wasn’t overly violent either. I always wondered if maybe we had some similarities that I didn’t know about.
“You’re forgetting something important,” Cameron said, shaking his head. “Once you become part of Red Eyes, for real, you become part of the family.” He shrugged. “That’s something that I never had. And I don’t know your whole background, but I imagine that things are similar for you. Red Eyes will give those guys a place to belong, if that’s what they need. You know that.”
“I guess so,” I said slowly. “But what if it isn’t the kind of place that they feel like they should belong?”
“Then they’ll leave, I guess,” Cameron said, but I could tell from the speculative way that he was looking at me that he knew we weren’t just talking about the recruits anymore. “Look, Grant,” he finally said, “I know that you’re not on board with everything that Red Eyes does. And the MC doesn’t always do good things. Sometimes, we have to do bad things. But we never do bad things to good people.”
I thought back on everything that Red Eyes had done since I joined, and I had to admit that he was right. We had turned over all those Unknowns MC guys to the sheriff, thanks to Marcus, but they had been even more ruthless than Red Eyes. They hadn’t been willing to play by the rules. And even the missions that I personally had been involved in, we had never beaten up anyone who hadn’t deserved it.
But then I thought about some of the shopkeepers. There were some of those guys who told us that they really couldn’t afford to pay their dues. They always paid up when Braxton got rough with them, but I wondered if they really couldn’t pay their dues. I imagined their families going hungry or their kids going without toys or things. All because of us.
I knew I wasn’t supposed to think about that stuff. That was where Red Eyes started to feel a little too much like a group of greedy thugs. But I didn’t know how to stop thinking about the consequences of what we did.
Cameron didn’t seem to worry about any of that stuff, though. If he even thought of it at all, it seemed like he was fine with it. Yet again, I started to feel like there were fundamental differences in attitude between the rest of the guys in the MC and me. And I wasn’t sure what I was still doing there. Or how to help these recruits become these coldhearted, thoughtless individuals.
“Look, we protect the town. We make sure that other gangs can’t come in and wreck Las Cruces,” Cameron said, sounding impatient. “And it’s not like we don’t spend our money here. The money that we take from the local business owners goes directly back into the town. We make sure that we shop at our local businesses whenever we can.”
I was reminded again that I was bypassing that unspoken rule by frequenting this diner so regularly. It was like a slap on the wrist. A not-so-gentle reminder from Cameron to either act the part or get out of the game.
I ducked my head. Cameron stood up. “I’m going to check on Ray,” he said. “I still think there has to be something going on with his health, and I want to get to the bottom of it. You’re welcome to come with me.”
I blinked up at him. We hadn’t even ordered lunch yet. I shook my head slowly. “I think I’m going to hang out here a little longer,” I said, hoping that didn’t sound like a challenge. Like I didn’t care about the MC or about our businesses, even after the warning that he had just given me. But he had to understand that sometimes I just needed a little sanctuary, a place to get away from things to do with the MC.
Cameron inclined his head toward me. “See you around then,” he said, not giving any sign of what he was thinking.
As soon as he was gone, I dropped my head into my hands. But I didn’t have long to think about what the hell I was doing. “Excuse me?” a woman said nearby.
I lifted my head, and for a moment, I couldn’t stop staring. She had these incredible legs that just went all the way up to the short shorts that she was wearing. And the hair: long and blond and beachy, currently pulled into a loose braid that draped over her shoulder. She was looking at me with an almost grimace on her face, as though she was embarrassed. “Are you from around here?” she asked.
“Uh, yeah,” I said.
“Oh thank God,” she said, sounding desperately relieved. “I’m totally lost. I just moved here with my sister, and I don’t know the area very well ye
t.”
I fought the urge to smile at her. She just had this sweet innocence about her. Totally clueless. But not in a ditzy kind of way. She was too embarrassed to be that. Almost as though she knew exactly how silly she sounded and wished she didn’t have to ask for directions.
I nodded at the empty seat across from me that Cameron had vacated. “Here, why don’t you sit down,” I suggested. “Where are you trying to go? I’ll look it up on my phone.”
6
Holly
I sat down across from Grant, faking a nervous smile. “To be honest, I have no idea where I am,” I told him, even though that was a total lie. “I’m just trying to get to the local library? I don’t know if there’s more than one branch or what, but I thought there was something around here, and now, I just don’t know.”
God, it sounded so stupid coming out of my mouth. I couldn’t help picturing one of those stupid blond bimbos, the kind that you saw in movies. I had never wanted to come across even half as stupid as all of that, but I also had a feeling that would be the easiest way to get him interested in me. Ugh, men. What idiots, sometimes.
Sure enough, Grant smiled encouragingly at me. “To be honest, I don’t read all that much,” he admitted, “but I’m sure I can figure out where your nearest library is. Where’d you move from anyway?”
“Montana,” I said immediately, just hoping that he didn’t ask for a specific city. I honestly didn’t know the first thing about Montana. It was just the first place that came to mind.
“Oh wow,” Grant said. “You’re a long way from home. Did you move out here by yourself?”
I wondered if that was his way of asking if I was married or not. I shook my head, still smiling bashfully at him. “Oh no,” I said. “My sister moved out here with me.” Of course, it was all lies. I’d grown up out here, and so had Vera. We were living in our childhood home, for God’s sakes! But at the same time, it worked with my story. And I didn’t want him to know too much about me.