Looking thoroughly confused, Carp scratched the sides of his head. “Is it like those little spotted fuckers you’ve already got?”
“Yep.”
Carp’s eyes went wide. “You paid a grand for it?”
“Which one?” Brisco asked.
“The ones that wander around your house.”
“Paid five for each of them.”
“Hundred?” Carp asked.
Brisco shook his head. “Thousand.”
“Hoe-lee-shit.” Carp whistled through his teeth. “Five grand for those crazy little bastards? Each?”
“They’re not crazy,” Brisco argued. “They’re energetic. With good genetics comes long-lasting energy.”
“If you paid five grand apiece for the crazy ones, why’s the other one just a grand?”
“It’s not,” Brisco explained. “It’s a grand to reserve the spot to have pick of the litter. Sixty-five hundred is due when I pick it up.”
My hands shot in the air. “Stop with the fucking cat talk!” I insisted. “Who’s the girl?”
After a long glare, Brisco cleared his throat. He crossed his arms over his broad chest. “She’s Pig Pen’s daughter.”
Pig Pen Forester was the Hells Angels’ most notorious enforcer. Considering the men he’d allegedly killed, the countless he’d crippled, and the thousands he’d beaten senseless, it would stand to reason that he’d be doing life in federal prison. Instead, he rode with the red and white holding his head high, proud of the thirty-plus years he’d devoted to the MC.
The History Channel did a documentary on him, hoping their exposure of his alleged criminal acts would prompt an investigation by the feds. Mysteriously, the producer of the show—and the two pixelated bikers who gave on-air testimony—died in what was later claimed to be unrelated accidents. The lack of an investigation following the television show—and the subsequent deaths—did nothing but confirm Pig Pen’s untouchable status.
There was only one Pig Pen that I knew of. Hoping there might be two men who shared the name—one of which I knew nothing of—I asked. “Pig Pen Forester?”
Brisco nodded. “Yep.”
To describe me as shocked would have been a gross understatement. If there was one club the Hard Eights didn’t want to be at war with, it was the Hells Angels. Our rivalry wasn’t outwardly admitted by either MC. It dated back to the ‘Eights inception. Our claim of Southern Arizona as our turf was the problem, and I was far too stubborn to relinquish it.
I looked Brisco over, wondering if he was misinformed. “You sure about this?”
He gave a sharp nod. “Yep.”
If Brisco had his epiphany while digging up his money box, I had my doubts his information was one hundred percent accurate. In the end, I hoped his information was as ridiculous as his shorts.
I arched an eyebrow, “You figured this out while you were digging up your back yard in your little shorts?”
“More or less.”
I gave him a side-eyed look. “What does that mean?”
“Well, I been thinking ever since last night. That chick was as cool as a fan, but she had a weird name. I got to wondering if it was her real name or if she just called herself that. So, I Googled the address of her bar, to see who the listed owner was.”
“While you were digging up your money?”
“Yeah,” he said, cocking his almost bare hip. “Those of us that carry smart phones can do that. Basically, it’s a computer and a phone, all in one.”
My suspicion that his information was inaccurate dissipated slightly. I clung to a sliver of hope. “So, when you Googled her, your smart phone just popped up and said she was Pig Pen’s daughter?”
“Listen, asshole.” His gaze narrowed. “That weird name of hers had been eating on me since last night. After I got the box unearthed, I was sittin’ there beside the hole, countin’ out the cash. It got me to thinking about last night, when Lackey was countin’ out money on the bar. Then, after I got the money set aside, I stood up. When I did, my phone fell out of the back pocket of these little fuckers. I went to pick it up, and it dawned on me that I could just Google her bar at the county’s website and find out the listed owner’s name. To make a long story short, her name was Gray Forester. ‘Well, I’ll be damned’, I said. ‘There’s another weird name, Forester.’ I thought that girl was way too comfortable with us, and I wondered if she could possibly be related to Pig Pen. It’d sure explain her comfort. So, I did a little digging on ol’ Pig Pen. Wanna guess what his real name is?”
My heart fell into the pit of my stomach. I didn’t want to remind Pig Pen Forester of my existence. I wanted to turn back the clock and never allow Gray’s perfect tits, suggestive smirk, and smart mouth lure me into fucking her.
“I give up,” I snapped, frustrated with myself. “Just tell me.”
“Red,” he said. “Red Forrester. Named his daughter Gray. Kinda cool, if you ask me.”
There was nothing cool about it Pig Pen’s name, his daughter’s name, or the fact that they were linked by blood.
Nothing at all.
I saw one way out of the situation, and only one. Upon realizing the outcome was unavoidable, I kicked the foot-long section of Carps’ fuel line across the garage floor.
“Motherfucker,” I said through my teeth. “Mother-goddamned-fucker.”
I turned toward the open garage door. Without offering any justification, I sauntered through the parking lot and across the street. I’d made the unexplained trip to the donut shop enough times that the men knew where I was going, and why. I had a decision to make.
One or the other of the Foresters had to die.
I clenched the door handle in my fist and paused. I peered through the glass at the paltry selection of pastries that remained.
Apparently, my decision regarding donuts was already made.
Regarding the Foresters, it wasn’t going to be so easy.
5
Gray
I stepped away from the mirror and glanced over my shoulder. My reflection was that of a tasteless 1950’s housewife who was on her way to Easter dinner.
“I don’t like how they fit.” I tried a few different angles, but it made no difference. The shorts were awful regardless of which way I twisted or turned. “The color makes me want to grind my teeth. It’s seafoam, or something weird.” I looked at the sales associate. “Isn’t it?”
The adorable Barbie look-alike wore a form-fitting black dress that left nothing to the imagination. I wondered if she ever ate. If she did, she didn’t have my metabolism. Her legs were thin, her stomach non-existent, and her gravity-defying boobs were a thing of beauty.
She gave the shorts a quick look while twisting a stray lock of blonde hair around her index finger. A dozen golden bracelets were clustered around her right forearm. On her other wrist she wore at least six more, and a chunky oversized watch. Her left thumb and right ring finger bore rings that glistened when she waved her hands, and she waved them a lot.
With a hand on one hip, she looked me over. “They look cute,” she said in an unconvincing tone.
I glanced down. A built-in belt that doubled as a bow dangled awkwardly over the zipper of the hideous shorts. My torso and upper thighs looked like an aquamarine birthday gift.
“If I wear this to work it’s going to be an invitation for rude comments and suggestions about unwrapping me,” I said. “I can’t do this.”
“High-waisted paper bag shorts are the big thing right now,” she assured me. “You might be surprised by how much people like them.”
High-waisted paper bag shorts may have been “in”, but they’d be “out” before I ever accepted them as part of my attire. Much like California, Arizona received the latest trends long before the rest of the nation. Often, the styles and patterns pushed by the clothing companies would never make it to the Midwest. If we didn’t accept them as being fashionable, they’d simply fade away.
I couldn’t play a part in clothing the nation in s
omething so ghastly. I laughed at the thought. “Not where I work.”
“Where do you work?”
“I own a bar,” I replied. “A biker bar.”
“Oh.” She seemed surprised. In a good way. “Really?” Her eyes lit up. “Bikers are hot.”
She didn’t seem the type. I smiled, nevertheless. “No argument from me on that.”
Her focus shifted to her many bracelets. “Have you ever dated one?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve dated several.”
She looked up. “Do you ever have any problems with them?”
I’d been fortunate. I really hadn’t had any problems to speak of. The relationships just ended for one reason or another. Generally, it was because the men simply moved on to someone else. By the time it happened, I was generally ready for a change, anyway.
“Not really,” I responded. “Why?”
“Just wondering.”
Necessity smothered her like a coat of thick paint. She wasn’t just wondering. It was apparent she was speaking from experience. I raised my brows in wonder. “Have you had problems with them?”
The hair twisting thing started again. “With bikers?”
For starting the conversation, she wasn’t extremely talkative. I didn’t give up easily and bikers were kind of my thing, so I pushed on. “Yes.” I gave her a mental scowl. “With bikers. Have you had some problems in the past?”
“Well…” Her brown eyes fell to the floor. “I’ve been going out with one. He’s okay. I guess he has been until now.” She looked up. “He’s ghosting me.” She fidgeted with her bracelets. “I met him about a month ago. I thought we hit it off. I guess not.”
I wondered if he was some douchebag on a motorcycle or an actual biker. There was a vast difference between the two. “What kind of motorcycle did he ride?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “It was really loud. The neighbors hated it.”
She may have been gorgeous, but a wealth of information she was not. I guessed she was good at one thing and paying attention to details wasn’t it. I flattened the repugnant blue material against my stomach and let out an apologetic breath. “I’m sorry for all the questions, but there are bikers and there are guys who ride motorcycles. There’s a big difference between them. I was wondering which he might be. It doesn’t matter.”
“He was the real deal,” she replied, seeming to get upset the more she spoke about it. “He rode in a club, and everything.”
“Were you guys actually, like, seeing each other?”
“Yeah. I thought it was going pretty good between us. We saw each other almost every night for a month.”
I hated to be the bearer of bad news, but a “real deal” biker not responding to a text message wasn’t a catastrophe. There were times when I didn’t see or hear from my man for a week or more. With bikers, it seemed women were more of a convenience and much less of a necessity. Sadly, the club always came first. It was highly unlikely that her picturesque figure, blonde balayage, and golden accessories were cut out for dating bikers, anyway.
“I’ve dated a bunch of bikers,” I said. “If he’s a hard-core biker, having him not respond to a text isn’t that big of a deal.” Hoping to lighten up the mood, I chuckled. “You might want to get used to it.”
“I’m not used to being stood up.” Her face contorted. “We had a date last night, and he didn’t show up. It sucks.”
“How long has he been ghosting you?”
She gave me a confused look. “Huh?”
“When did he start ghosting you?”
“We were supposed to go out last night,” she said. “He just didn’t show up. I called. He didn’t answer. He didn’t respond to my texts or anything.” She smiled a crumpled grin. “I’m McKenzie, by the way.”
I hated telling people my name, so I played dumb. “Oh wow. I like that name. I had a friend named McKenzie in school, and I always envied her.” It sucked to admit, but her man not responding to texts didn’t seem like a huge deal. Bikers were a different breed. Because of her long face, I played along. “Him not responding to your texts, that’s not normal?”
She shook her head adamantly. “Not for us. I saw him every night, pretty much. Then, after Wednesday evening, everything stopped.”
A little light bulb illuminated.
Wednesday was the day Price threatened the Rebels. I had an overactive imagination, but the chance of her man being a Rebel—and of Price doing something sinister—was real. My stomach knotted at the thought of her “real deal” biker being chopped into pieces and spread out over the vast Sonoran Desert.
“I uhhm. I know a lot of the guys in the local motorcycle clubs,” I said. “Which one did he ride with?”
“I don’t know.” She looked away, but only for an instant. “He wore a leather vest with all the stuff on the back, though.”
She may have been pretty, but she was as dumb as a cactus. It was obvious I was going to have to jog her memory. “Was it a skull wearing a crumpled hat?” I asked, probably a little more excitedly than I should have. “With crossed swords under it? The Rebels?”
“I don’t know.” She gave me a dumb look. “Maybe.”
“A bucking horse with a rattlesnake at its feet?” I blurted. “The Desert Stallions?”
The dumb look morphed to a blank stare. It was apparent she had no idea.
“A pair of dice, both showing the number four?” I asked. “The Hard Eights?”
“I don’t know.” She did another bracelet inspection. “It’s probably for the better,” she said, paying much more attention to her accessories than me. “He was kind of rough, anyway.”
My level of curiosity had gone from zero to through the roof. I was dead set on assembling the pieces of the puzzle and finding out what happened to her man, but the rough comment caught me off guard.
I needed details.
“What do you mean, rough?” I asked in a curious tone.
She glanced over each shoulder. “In bed,” she whispered, meeting my gaze. “It was fun, but probably not good for a long-term relationship. At least that’s what I’m telling myself now.”
I wanted to tell her about Price, but I wouldn’t dare. Being smashed against the bar and fucked silly by the president of a motorcycle club while the remaining members of his MC drank dollar drafts and watched out of the corners of their eyes was exciting to think about. Admitting it, however, would make things seem much worse than they were.
I looked her over. She was innocent to the point of being gullible. She might not have offered much to a conversation, but I bet she was fun in bed. No biker in his right mind would stop fucking her until she became a threat to him or the club. If I was a biker, I’d sure fuck her. I’d probably respond to her texts, too.
“Speaking from experience, rough isn’t all that bad,” I said dismissively. “In a relationship, that is. So, how long were you two together?”
“About a month.”
I couldn’t believe she was in a relationship with a biker for a month and had no idea of what the club’s name was. The fact that she didn’t know supported my previous theory. In time, she would have likely become a club whore. It was probably for the best that he was gone. Regardless, I wanted to find out what happened.
“So, it was good one day, and just stopped without him saying anything?” I asked.
“Yeah. I talked to him Wednesday evening. Everything was fine. I mean, he came over, we had sex, everything was cool. Then, nothing. No text when he got home. Nothing Thursday. And, he didn’t show up Friday. Now, he doesn’t answer texts, or my calls, or anything.”
“Do you know where his clubhouse is?”
She seemed embarrassed. “No.”
“His house?”
“No.”
I knew where Price lived long before he stepped into my bar, but so did most people in town. Her not knowing anything about her man was frustrating. Hopefully, she knew his name. There were only six Rebels, and I knew all their road
names.
“Well, I can ask around,” I said. “What was his name?”
“Randall,” she said. “Randall Holderman.”
What an awful name. It was no wonder bikers used road names instead of their real ones. “Do you know what his road name was?”
“His what?”
Oh. My. God.
I let out an exhaustive mental sigh. “The handle he used in the club,” I said in more of a plead for help than an explanation. “His road name. It would have been on a patch that was sewn on the front of his kutte.”
“His what?”
“Vest,” I snapped. “His leather vest. It would have had a weird name sewn on it. Like Rowdy, Tiny, Rooster, or Ding-Dong. Something.”
“Sorry.” She shrugged. “I really didn’t pay much attention to that kind of stuff.”
I wanted to scream. A requirement of any MC was that their members wore their vests when they rode their motorcycles, regardless of whether they were riding with the club, or alone. In Arizona, bikers rode their motorcycles twelve months of the year. I suspected she saw his kutte no less than thirty times. Her inattentive nature made me itch.
It was surprising he lasted thirty days. I would probably stop fucking her long before that. Even so, the mystery of her missing biker was one I wanted to solve.
“Well,” I said. “I’ll nose around about a guy named Randall Holderman. If I find anything out, I’ll let you know.”
“Okay. Thanks.” She smiled and then gestured toward the retail area with her eyes. “Do you want to look at some other stuff?”
As intrigued as I was about her missing biker, I couldn’t stand one more second of her. Each minute in her presence was aging me measurably. I didn’t need new shorts, anyway. Leaving a lasting impression with Price wasn’t going to come from something I wore.
“No, thank you,” I replied. “I need to get to the bar and start digging up information on your missing biker.”
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