Tap'd Out

by Harley Stone

  Since I was in no shape to work out and I was certain Tap’s laptop was locked down like Fort Knox, the room offered a whole lot of absolutely nothing to do. I sat on the sofa and waited, literally twiddling my thumbs as I wondered what was going on with Breaker. Was he pissed that I’d taken off? Had he gone to my house to look for me? What was going on with the girls? It had been a week since I’d seen Alicia. Was she still in the Serpent’s basement?

  I was wasting time down here while I should be out there doing something. There was still time to redeem this situation with Breaker. Lies and excuses danced through my mind as I dissected each before settling on one. I’d tell him that hit to the head did me in. I blacked out, and when I woke up, I was in a park using my purse as a pillow. My cell phone was dead, and I had no clue where I was. As soon as Tap released me, I’d google the parks around Breaker’s house and solidify my story. Breaker would be suspicious, but he’d take me back. He had to.

  Desperate to get out of there, I hobbled over to the door and tried the handle. As I’d expected, it was locked. I was trapped in a basement with no way to get out and no way of reaching anyone. I tried a couple of combinations on the keypad, but nothing worked. Afraid of setting off some sort of alarm and making a nuisance out of myself, I gave up hobbled back to the sofa.

  I made it half way before the door opened. Light flooded the doorway, revealing a sexier version of the stripper from last night. He saw me and flipped on the light before sauntering into the room. He wore a pair of dark gray sweats and a green Seattle Sounders T-shirt. I tried not to gawk at him, but he was so damn fine I couldn’t help myself. His movements were familiar, very fluid and borderline provocative, but his face was not.

  “Tap?” I asked, unable to believe my eyes.

  “Mornin’.”

  Same voice I remembered. “You look so different.”

  “Washed off my disguise.”

  Must have been one hell of a disguise. Now I understood why Havoc and Julia had made such a fuss about it. He looked like a completely different person. His jaw, nose, and forehead were wider, more masculine, and his eyes and lips were bigger. The scar on his cheek was gone, replaced by one on his temple. The real Tap was gorgeous. A solid ten before, now he was so far off the charts it wasn’t even fair to the rest of mankind. His feet were bare, his dark curls looked wet, and he was wearing glasses, adding a layer of comfortable intelligence to his appeal. He headed for the sofa, stopping to offer me his arm along the way.

  I was hurting, and still in shock, so I accepted his help. “I like this version of you better.” My cheeks heated when I realized I’d said that out loud. Trying to redeem myself, I added, “I mean, it fits you better. Obviously, since this is the face you were born with. This is really you, and not another disguise, right?” I had no idea what the hell was wrong with me. I talked to people all day, every day, and I never tripped up like this. He had me rambling like a buffoon. I snapped my mouth closed to shut myself up.

  “This is the real me. Glasses and all. How are you feelin’?” he asked. He smelled clean yet masculine, wonderful, and I had to resist the urge to sniff him.

  Rambling and sniffing, I was a freaking mess.

  “Better. I can walk now.”

  He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Good. Now, what do you need?”

  “Need?” I asked.

  “As in supplies. I know women need shit. Clothes, hair stuff, tampons, what? I’ll order it and have it delivered.”

  I stared at him. As hot as it was for a guy to care about my needs, I couldn’t help but wonder if we were on the same page about our situation. “Um… How long are you planning on keeping me down here?”

  He shrugged. “That depends on what the guys figure out.”

  That cleared up nothing. Not a damn thing. This new version of Tap was as confusing as he was sexy. “What guys?”

  “The Dead Presidents. I told Havoc your story, and he passed it along to Link. They want to help and are working on a plan to get the girls out.”

  “They can’t help, they’re civilians. Hell, I shouldn’t even be doing this.”

  “No, you shouldn’t. But a motorcycle club full of former servicemen… I think they could figure some shit out. Link and Havoc were Special Forces. They were specifically trained to tackle situations like this. Eagle was a sniper in the Marines, and he’ll have their back. Wasp was… well, he’s an excellent mechanic. Give Morse a Raspberry Pi and an internet connection and that motherfucker can take down an empire. Frog was a Frogman for the Navy. We’re not civilians, Sasha. Every one of us has more combat training than you do. The club is dedicated to helping this country, and we can’t stand aside and let these girls be trafficked any more than you can.”

  “What you’re talking about is vigilantism. It’s dangerous and illegal, and without knowing which cops are on the Serpents’ payroll they’re taking a huge gamble. Your club brothers could go to jail for this.”

  He gave me another shot. “They won’t.”

  “You sound awfully sure of yourself.”

  “The club president is married to Emily Stafford… well, Emily Lincoln, now, but I think she still practices law under Stafford.”

  Cops were familiar with defense attorneys. Especially the ones who were good enough at their job to be a pain in our ass. Nobody in my department liked Emily Stafford. I’d heard she got married, but didn’t realize it was to a biker. “Black hair, blue eyes, known to feed the prosecution their spleen through the tiny straw she reduces their evidence to? That Emily Stafford?”

  Grinning, he nodded.

  “Wow. She’s good.”

  “Sure is.”

  “But she can’t keep them from getting shot.”

  “They’ve survived worse than the Serpents. Far worse.”

  Chewing on that bit of information, I studied him. “What did you do in the service?” I asked.

  “Intelligence Officer.” He frowned and his eyebrows drew together like he was surprised he told me.

  “Is that a secret?” I asked.

  “I don’t usually discuss it.” But he leaned back on the sofa and made himself comfortable.

  “Do you want to? Discuss it, I mean.”

  “Not particularly. It’s not a nice story.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I told you all about my mom, the heroin-addicted prostitute. I think I can handle it.”

  “You didn’t tell me she was a prostitute.”

  “I just did.”

  I wanted to say more, but I knew better. I needed to give him the time and opportunity to talk. So, I sat in silence and waited. It was peaceful in Tap’s basement. Listening to the faint sound of our combined breaths and the hum of his computer server, it would be easy to forget about the outside world and just exist down here. Of course, I’d go out of my mind with boredom, but it was nice for a minute or two.

  Just as I was beginning to give up hope that he’d tell me anything, Tap took a deep breath and surprised me. “It wasn’t what I thought it would be,” he admitted.

  I quirked a smile at him. “Job expectations got you like what the fuck?” I joked, raising my octave at the end for emphasis. “I know that struggle.”

  “Yeah, I suppose you do.”

  “What did you expect it to be like?”

  He rubbed a hand over the stubble on his jaw. “I thought I’d be going after bad guys.”

  Seemed like a reasonable expectation to me. “And you weren’t?”

  “Oh, I was. These guys were horrible. The worst. But it was… complicated.”

  I nudged him with my elbow. “Break it down for me.”

  He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “You hear about these men doing all this fucked up shit, and you expect monsters. You don’t expect to see their human side… to understand that they’re not the monsters your conscience needs them to be. They’re just men. Husbands. Dads. Sons. I’d be listening in on plans to blow up a city center and potentially kill millions
that was interrupted so the head terrorist could tuck in his children and say the Tahajjud, the nighttime prayers. They could be so callous and calculated one minute, and so compassionate and loving the next. Sometimes meetings were postponed to give a terrorist time to walk an elderly parent home.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  “Yeah. Some of them were monsters, but the majority were just like you and me, only radicalized. They believed that what they were doing was for the greater good. They saw themselves as the heroes in the story. It’s so fuckin’ hard to get information from someone who truly believes they’re the good guy, but that was my job and lives depended on it.” He was staring at the wall, but he was somewhere else entirely. Some-when else.

  My heart hurt for him. “I can see why that would get complicated.”

  “I expected everything to be black and white. Good versus evil. That kind of shit. But it wasn’t. We were killing them to keep them from killing us, and they were killing us to keep us from killing them. It’s like this big, fucked-up loop that nobody can find a way out of. In the end, there’s nothing but death, destruction, and orphaned little kids who grow up and do the same damn thing.”

  I stared at Tap, really seeing him for the first time. I couldn’t imagine the things he’d gone through, the things he’d seen and heard, the kill orders he’d been involved in. No wonder the man was so private. It was a wonder his humanity was still intact.

  “I get it.”

  Coming out of his daze, he looked at me, as if he just remembered I was there. “Get what?”

  “Breaker’s a monster and I know I have to stop him, but it would destroy me to watch him be sweet and kind to his son or daughter before I pulled the trigger. Especially knowing that one day that son or daughter would come for me or my future child.”

  He met my gaze and his dark eyes churned with torment and pain. “Yeah, I guess you do get it.”

  I didn’t know what else to do, so I hugged him. Blinking back tears as I pressed my cheek against his chest, and said, “Thank you. I know it had to be difficult, but this country is safer because you took down those monsters. Even the dads and sons.”

  ***

  Tap

  Sasha was crying. She was trying like hell to hide it, but I could feel the dampness of her tears through my thin T-shirt.

  She cried for me.

  Had anyone ever cried for me before?

  Mama cried when I signed my life away to the service. She cried again the first time I was deployed, all the while threatening that if I didn’t bring my ass home safe and sound, she was going H.A.M. (hard as a motherfucker) on the entire Middle East.

  Elaine had cried a few times, but it was never for me. Her tears were another tool of manipulation, another card she could pull to get me to do her bidding. There’d been no feeling, no compassion behind her waterworks.

  I couldn’t believe I opened up to Sasha like that. I still wasn’t sure why I’d done it. Maybe because she’d shared so much last night that I wanted to give her something in return? Maybe because I’d tossed and turned all night and my defenses were down? Maybe because I couldn’t understand her motive for wanting to know? Regardless, I’d never talked about my days in the service to anyone. Sage, our club’s psychiatrist, had tried to rip out the details numerous times, but I never told him shit.

  A part of me had always believed talking about those memories would be like reliving them, and living through that shit had been hard enough the first time. I refused to go back.

  But it wasn’t like that at all.

  Talking to Sasha about my past had been surprisingly therapeutic. It felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Even more, I felt… understood.

  She got me.

  She knew what I’d gone through—the shit I’d done—and she wasn’t appalled or disgusted. No, she thanked me for my sacrifice and cried for my pain. For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel alone. This crazy, gorgeous cop with a superhero complex and a death wish empathized. She truly got me.

  And strangely enough, I got her, too.

  By the time she released me, her eyes were bright but dry. She beamed me a bolstering smile and sucked in a breath, wincing slightly at the pain in her ribs.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  She made a sour face. “Might be time for some more ibuprofen.”

  I nodded. “Good call. What about breakfast? I can cook the hell out of some Pop-Tarts.”

  She raised an eyebrow at me. “Please tell me you’re talking about strawberry and not some weird flavor like s’mores?”

  After such a heavy conversation, I expected a certain level of discomfort or tension, but Sasha was having none of it. She was throwing me the lifeline to lighten the mood, and I snatched up that motherfucker and held on tight.

  “Do I look like an animal? Of course, I mean strawberry.”

  “Thank the Lord. I can get down on some strawberry Pop-Tarts. Do you need any help?”

  But I still wasn’t comfortable enough to let her come upstairs. “Nah. You’re still healing. You stay down here and make yourself comfortable. How are you at first-person shooters?”

  She cocked her head to the side. “I’m a cop. Shooting people is basically my job.” Her cheeks turned bright red and her eyes bugged out. “And I totally didn’t mean that the way it sounded. Wow. That’s really fucked up.”

  I was too busy laughing to let her off the hook.

  “How about… target practice is a big part of my job.”

  “It’s your story, babe, tell it how you want.”

  She tossed the pillow at me. I caught it mid-air and tossed it back.

  “I’ll go whip us up breakfast and bring down a television and my gaming console. I hope you’re not a sore loser.”

  “I’d have to lose to be sore. I plan on handing you your ass for that comment.”

  “Challenge accepted.”

  We spent the rest of the day playing video games, eating junk food, and talking smack. It was the most fun I’d ever had.

  Tap

  SUNDAY MORNING, LIFE threw me another curve ball. It came in the form of a phone call from Mama as I was walking into the kitchen to evaluate our cereal options before I went downstairs to check on Sasha. Figuring Mama was just calling to check in, I answered.

  “Hey, Alex, we’ll be home in about five minutes.”

  I stared at the clock on the stove, realizing it was already almost eleven. Yesterday had flown by in the best way possible, and Sasha and I had stayed up way too late enjoying it. “What? Why?”

  “Hailey’s got a little flu bug. I’m sure it’s nothing major, but she’s feverish and achy and complaining that her stomach hurts. She was up most of the night and needs to be home and in her own bed. Besides, it’s Sunday. We were coming home today anyway.”

  I glanced at the door leading down to the basement. “Right. I was actually going to call you and see if you wanted to stay another day or two.”

  She took a deep breath. “I see. Will we be in danger if we come home now?”

  Despite everything that was going on, my home was still a safe place. Sasha was in the basement, but she wasn’t a threat to Hailey. Hell, if anything went down, I had no doubt the suspended cop would do whatever it took to protect my kid. As long as I could keep her fine ass from doing something stupid, Sasha was an asset, not a threat. The Serpents didn’t know where I lived, but Morse did. He’d given Havoc that message partially to fuck with me, and partially to reassure me that he had my back. If anything went down, there’d be a club full of bikers showing up to help. I’d seen Morse in action like that before when Julia’s bookstore was breached by her bat-shit crazy ex.

  “No. It’s still safe here, but I’m in the middle of something I was hoping to handle before you came home.”

  “Hailey’s asking for you, Alex. She’s sick and she wants her daddy, her bed, and her toys. Whatever you have going on, you can work around us like you always do, but I’m bringing her home.” />
  Arguing was futile, so I didn’t object. Besides, if Hailey was asking for me, there was no way I could deny her. “Alright. See you guys in five.”

  I crept down to the basement, but Sasha was still asleep. Hoping she’d stay that way for at least another day or two so I could figure out what to do, I slipped back into the living room and waited to greet my family.

  ***

  Sasha

  I awoke to the sound of the door opening. Expecting Tap, I was surprised to see a dark-skinned woman wearing a thigh-length flowery dress. She stepped inside like she had a purpose but stopped short when her gaze landed on me. Her eyes widened as she looked me over.

  “Hi,” I said, giving her my friendliest smile as I tried not to gawk. She was gorgeous, and her face held the kind of timeless beauty that made it impossible to guess her age. “I’m Sasha. Are you… related to Tap?”

  I was hoping against hope that she was his sister and not his wife. After everything we’d shared yesterday, if I found out Tap was married, I’d have to swear off men forever. After I killed him. No married man should ever flirt the way he was flirting with me.

  Then again, maybe he was just being nice, and I’d misread all his signs.

  “Tap?” Confusion furrowed her brow for a moment before a smile tugged at her lips. “He gave you his biker name.”

  She made it sound like a big deal, but I was far more concerned with whether or not I was lusting after a married man. “Yes.” I shrugged. “I guess?”

  “I’m Doris. How do you know my son?”

  Not his wife or his sister, she was his mother. I could live with that. Hell, I could dance over the moon at that. Trying not to appear too relieved, I focused on her question. “I… uh…” He hadn’t told her about me. I was a quick learner, and rarely made the same mistake twice. My big mouth had already gotten me into trouble once when I blabbed to Havoc about Tap being a stripper, and I wasn’t going down that road again. “You should probably ask him.”