Allegiance: Nomad Biker Romance

by Chiah Wilder

  Cougar laughed. “My brother and I will take a box, but you’re not getting a discount on what you owe us.”

  They’re brothers. I’m sure their mother is real proud. “I didn’t expect one.”

  “You learn fast.” Cougar patted her behind. “Good girl.”

  Lena gritted her teeth and hurried away. I can’t wait to see you in handcuffs.

  “You got chocolate chip?”

  Nodding, she slipped open the case. I can’t believe how long it’s taking for the deputies to get here. She bent over and snatched six cookies with a piece of parchment paper. Standing back up, she was startled when she bumped into someone.

  “Oh!” she gasped, glancing behind her.

  Cougar gripped her waist and yanked her back against him. “I bet you taste as sweet as those cookies.”

  The thug by the case stood silent, his intense stare fixed on her.

  “Please,” she whispered.

  “Please what? Please fuck me?” Cougar chuckled.

  The other biker licked his lips.

  Lena’s heart pounded in her chest. She swallowed back the bile in her throat and tried to quell the mounting panic threatening to suffocate her. Think. This can’t happen. Blinking rapidly, she said in a soft voice, “I have a meeting with a wedding party to go over their reception details. That’s the reason I was still in the restaurant. They’ll be here soon.”

  Cougar squeezed her butt and shoved her away. Slamming into the case, Lena lost her balance, and the cookies dropped to the floor. The steel corner of the display hit her hip. Pain shot through her, but she didn’t cry out. She wasn’t about to give the bastards the satisfaction.

  “Give us the fuckin’ money,” Cougar demanded.

  “It’s in the office.”

  “One of us will go with you.”

  “I’ll go with her.”

  Cougar looked at his accomplice.

  “What? You think you get to have all the fun?”

  “Just get the money and that’s it. We got shit to do,” Cougar growled.

  The thug nodded and shoved Lena. “Get your ass movin’, sweet piece. Show me what’s in the back, give us our cash, and we’ll be gone until the next time.”

  Without saying a word, she pushed past Cougar and walked down the hallway with the other goon close on her heels.

  In the office, she opened a cabinet and bent down in front of the safe. Lena turned the old-fashioned dial a couple of times until the lock clicked into place. Not wanting to spend another second with the bastards, she pulled out the white envelope and slapped into the jerk’s waiting palm.

  “It’s all there. You can leave now.” The words constricted in her throat.

  After counting the bills, a big grin spread across his face.

  He stood aside. “Let’s go.”

  Lena scurried past him and pushed through the swinging doors.

  “Next time we come, make sure to have the chocolate chip cookies ready,” the goon said.

  Cougar strolled over and stopped in front of her, his dark eyes glaring. Before she could react, he raised his right hand and slapped her hard across the face. Tears stung her eyes and her cheek throbbed. Grabbing her wrist, he jerked her body forward and pivoted, wrenching her arm behind her back before slamming her against the wall. All the air whooshed out of her lungs in a tight hiss of pain. Agony shot up from her elbow to her shoulder as the asshole jerked her arm upward even harder.

  “Fuck! Stop,” she cried.

  Cougar laughed low. “That’s for bullshitting about why you didn’t answer the door. You’re lucky I don’t break your fuckin’ arm,” he said against her ear. Letting go of her, she quickly shifted away from him. “Don’t ever pull that fuckin’ stunt again. Next time we come, you fuckin’ better break your sweet ass to open the door. You won’t like the consequences if you don’t.”

  Cougar lifted his chin at the other biker, and the two of them walked out of the restaurant, the chains hanging down from their back pockets jangling with each step.

  The door shut with a bang that nearly made her jump out of her skin. She ran over and fumbled with the locks until they finally clicked into place. She stumbled back, her body shaking.

  “Fuck! What am I going to do?” she whispered out loud as she sank to the floor then curled her knees to her chest. Tears streamed down her face. She reached up to wipe them away and grimaced at the pain in her cheek.

  Where the fuck are the cops? There was no way she could go through this nightmare every two weeks. She would have to close down everything, move again, start over—

  The idea alone made her stomach clench in anger. After all the hard work, energy, effort, and time put into making a go of her business, she was going to throw it all away because a bunch of greedy, lazy fucking bullies were threatening her. Lena swallowed past the fear hollowing out the pit of her stomach and wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

  “There’s no damn way I’m going to let them run me off. This isn’t how this is supposed to go down. I’m not rolling over and letting those bastards take what’s mine without a fight,” she muttered.

  Lena dug her cell out of her pocket and called the sheriff’s office.

  “Hello, Santa Teresita Sheriff’s Department. This is Deputy Westmore.”

  “Where the hell are you guys? I called 911 almost a half hour ago, and no one ever showed up. I need to speak with Sheriff Windsor.”

  “What was your emergency?”

  “For starters, two guys came in and robbed me. Then one of them mauled and physically assaulted me. Why didn’t anyone show up?”

  “There must have been a mix-up.”

  “I gave my address to the dispatcher and told her what was going down. This town has less than twenty thousand residents and hardly any crime. We’re not talking about L.A. or San Francisco. How the hell could there be a mix-up?”

  “I understand you’re upset, ma’am. If you could please tell me the details, we can start an investigation.”

  “A fucking investigation has already been started by Sheriff Windsor. This happened to me the first time about ten days ago.”

  “If you can just tell me what happened tonight, I’ll make sure to include it with the ongoing investigation.”

  “This is so fucked up,” she muttered under her breath.

  “I see. Can you relay the details to me, ma’am?”

  Lena spent the next fifteen minutes going over the details with the deputy as he made vague, disinterested noises. At one point, she heard him slurping on something through the line.

  “You know, I called Sheriff Windsor on his personal line. He gave me his card. I want to continue this conversation with him, please.”

  Though her tone was polite, she was barely holding it together. The deputy had her going in circles, walking her through the encounter repeatedly.

  “You’re sure you don’t want me to send a bus there to have you checked out? Nothing’s too sore or feels dislocated?”

  “No, I’m okay, If I could just talk to the—”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, he’s busy tonight. You’ll have to stick with me.”

  Lena blew out a breath of frustration.

  “I’ll send someone over to check the place out. Hold tight, and we should have someone over there in twenty, okay?”

  Before she could agree or disagree, the deputy hung up, leaving her with a ton of dead air.

  Her fingers clenched tightly around the phone in her hand, and she quelled the urge to throw it at the wall. At this point, all Lena wanted to do was lie back in a nice, soothing bubble bath, with some soft music and a large glass of wine.

  I need to get away, go somewhere exotic. Maybe a vacation was in order. The only snag to that idea was the sobering fact that she couldn’t afford one. She wouldn’t be able to afford anything ever again unless those criminals were dealt with. Lena made her way back to the office and plopped down in her comfy leather desk chair. Closing her eyes, she tried to focus on her brea
thing as she waited for someone to show up and take her statement, look around the store, take fingerprints, and do what the police were supposed to do.

  When a knock sounded from the front door, she nearly jumped under the desk. She took a moment to compose herself. Wiping her slick palms on her pants, she walked into the main area of the restaurant.

  A deputy was standing in front of the glass door with a gentle smile on his face. He stepped back as she undid the locks and opened the door wide.

  “I’m Deputy Eisenhart. Sheriff Windsor sent me to pick you up. He wants to see you.”

  “I thought he was unavailable?”

  The deputy shrugged. “I don’t know about that, Miss. I was told to bring you to the station. If you have your car here, you can follow me.”

  “All right. But is anyone going to take fingerprints or go over the crime scene?”

  The young deputy smiled. “We’ll do a thorough investigation.”

  Lena slung the strap of her purse over her shoulder and looked at the man. “Okay, I’m ready. Let’s go.”

  Lena

  “There has to be something we can do to keep this from happening to me again. I can’t be the only one. Haven’t you heard anything from anyone else?” Lena made her case, sipping on a cup of coffee.

  “We’ve heard no complaints from anyone else in the area, and I highly doubt it would be a good thing if I started knocking on doors, calling our townspeople cowards and liars for not reporting any mischief to our offices when we’re not even sure that other shops are getting hit yet. The worst thing we could do here is go off half-cocked, ma’am.”

  Lena pressed her lips together and prayed for patience.

  “There isn’t much else I can do, aside from taking down your story and keeping an eye on the situation. You don’t have any cameras installed in the place yet—”

  “I bought them. I just haven’t had the time to put them in.”

  The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on Lena. She had been so busy with managing the restaurant and her catering business during the busy season, she hadn’t even had time to safeguard her own holdings by installing the new security system she had bought the day following the first visit from those bastards in her shop. At that moment, her procrastination was biting her in the ass.

  “I’m going to tell you again. Without any concrete evidence, there isn’t much we can do. There aren’t any other cases like this out there, and no witnesses. So, until someone else comes forward, or we catch them red-handed in the act itself, all we can go off of is your word, and your word alone.”

  Lena threw her hands up in frustration. “That doesn’t make any sense. Do you seriously think I’m making this up?”

  The sheriff stared at her, pushing up his hat as he maintained eye contact. “No, I don’t. But we don’t have enough to prove anything concrete. There are no markers on the money we might find to indicate it was yours and taken from this establishment. And we can’t go hunting down every biker in town. You must understand that.”

  She nodded mutely and swallowed past the thickness in her throat, fighting back tears.

  “I’m sorry about all this,” he said in a low voice.

  “One of the men hurt me. He almost broke my damn arm and slapped me across the face. That’s assault, isn’t it? You can do something about that. I want to file a complaint.”

  Sheriff Windsor took out a notepad. “We can take your statement. You can give us a description of the perpetrator. Maybe one of us will recognize him.”

  “His name is Cougar. He had it stitched on his leather vest. The other guy was his brother. They’re in a motorcycle gang.”

  The sheriff looked startled. “How do you know that?”

  “They were both wearing leather vests with patches on them. The first time they came in to

  shake me down, I noticed the name on the back of the vests when they left. I had no idea what MC meant. Last night when I went to the grocery store, I saw some guys wearing the same type of vests, and I was going to write down the name, but they kept staring at me, and it spooked me.”

  “Why didn’t you mention any of this the first time?”

  “I was so shocked and upset about the whole incident, I didn’t remember the name. Like I told you, I didn’t even know what the initials stood for until last night.”

  “What’s the name of the club?”

  Rubbing the back of her neck, she tried to remember the name, but her mind was a blank. Pursing her lips together, she shook her head. “I don’t remember. I keep wracking my brain, but nothing’s coming up.”

  “You didn’t see the name tonight?”

  “They weren’t wearing their vests this time, but there can’t be too many motorcycle clubs in town. I’m sure their club is one of the bad ones.”

  “You’d be surprised. A lot of people are in biker clubs.”

  “These guys, and the ones at the grocery store last night, looked like thugs, not the kind of people who’d go out riding on the weekend.”

  Windsor smiled. “There are quite a few guys in different motorcycle clubs who look like they belong in prison, but they’re decent people. Anyway, why don’t we start with a description of these two characters.” He glanced down at his notebook. “Start from the beginning.”

  After she was done regurgitating for the fourth time what had happened in her shop earlier that night and what the men looked like, exhaustion washed over her. She had to grip the arms of the chair to keep from keeling over.

  The sheriff slipped his pen into his front pocket and closed the notebook before catching her gaze. “I can imagine this must be hard for you. I want you to know that I’ll do everything in my power to make it easier on you, but right now, my main focus continues to be showing up within the next two weeks to catch them in the act. Once that’s established, we’ll have enough evidence to turn it over to the DA’s office, and we can start getting the money they took back to you. Does that sound good?”

  Lena nodded, thanked the sheriff, and pushed up from the chair. There was nothing left for her to do but wait until the lowlifes came back in two weeks. One thing was for certain: the next time they came back, the security system would be up and running. She just hoped the sheriff, or one of his deputies, would be able to catch them in the act.

  She ran her fingers through her hair. What a fucking mess. Never in her wildest dreams did she think something like this was possible in a town as quaint and beautiful as Santa Teresita. Her head was in a million different places at once. She knew she didn’t want to go back to the restaurant to finish up the rest of her paperwork, but she wasn’t sure if she wanted to go home yet, either. The idea of sitting in her empty condo, replaying the night’s events, jumping every time she heard a noise, didn’t appeal to her at all.

  She quickly checked the time on her phone. Close to midnight.

  Lena keyed up her contacts and pressed a button without thinking too hard about it.

  Felicia picked up the video call on the second ring.

  “Why do you look like you got run over by a bus?”

  Never one to mince words, Lena laughed, allowing the pleasant feeling to sink deep into her toes for the first time all night. It was nice to feel something other than bone deep fear and brain crippling anger.

  “I had another long night.”

  Without pausing, Lena launched into the story, and her best friend let her talk and get it all out.

  “Do you want me to come down? I can check for the earliest flight out.” Felisha twisted a lock of shocking pink hair around her finger as she took a sip from her Starbucks to-go cup. “I’ve got enough caffeine in this cup to keep me going on a plane ride around the world, so you just say the word, and I’ll be there.”

  Lena chuckled. “No, stay there. It’s fine. It’s not necessary for you to push up your trip for me.” She met Fe’s kind eyes over the screen. “I just needed to talk to you, but there’s no need to come all the way here ahead of schedule. That’s crazy.�
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  “If you say so, but I can—”

  “I say so.” A small smile played across her lips. “Now tell me what’s been going on with you. That’ll get my mind off this mess.”

  “Oh, well. If that’s the case, I have something to tell you.” Felicia launched into a story about a speed dating event she had gone to that night, giving Lena something else to focus on other than her current nightmare of a life. “The majority of the men there seemed like they’d been handpicked from their mother’s basement or grandmother’s cozy knitting corner. Never again.”

  A half hour later, Lena was roaring with laughter as Fe told her about a man who’d had so many pictures of his dog in his wallet, they cascaded to the floor and past the table. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he’d insisted on showing Felicia every single one.

  “A pup with three surnames: his, his mother’s, and his grandmother’s. The dog is laden with more titles than a British Royal. Can you believe that?”

  “I would believe it if the dog had his own personal doggie bed in every room of the house at this point. Nothing seems too far-fetched.”

  Felicia laughed, covering her mouth and lying back on her sofa. “Nice pun.”

  Lena joined in. “I didn’t mean it like that. So, the speed dating was a bust. It doesn’t sound like there were any winners.”

  “Not even close. But it didn’t stop me from signing up for the next three events they’re having in the area.”

  “Care to explain that? You were miserable!”

  “The drinks are free all night, and the stories I get out of going are priceless. Even if I don’t get a date again anytime soon, I’ll have enough to keep a delightful conversation going for quite some time. Who knows? Maybe a real gem will be among the fakes.” Shrugging, Felicia took a long swig of her coffee. “Yuck, it’s cold. Are you getting tired? Your eyelids are looking a little droopy.”

  “A bit,” Lena admitted as she tried to focus on the screen. “Everything that happened tonight is finally hitting me hard, I guess. All the adrenaline is wearing off.”

  “Well, go home, and take care of yourself. We’ve been on the phone for over an hour, and you still have to get up tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn.”