by Jadyn Chase
I pulled to a halt outside the diner door and rounded on him. “You won’t find a man in this crew more ready for the worst than I am, son. I’ve had my eye open for those assholes to pull a fast one on us since long before The Boss brokered this deal. Shit, man, I don’t think we should be doing business with our enemies at all, but that’s someone else’s call. I’m not in charge of this crew and I don’t want to be. I’m just a foot soldier with a job to do like all the rest of you. Are we all clear on that?”
I scanned the three steely faces gazing back at me. They all nodded in agreement. They all sensed the danger of purchasing guns from an enemy motorcycle club. I would have to be really stupid not to sense it. It seeped into our food. It floated on the air. It pervaded everything and tainted everything with its poison.
I spun away and pushed my way into the diner. I didn’t like this and I didn’t want to talk about it. I wanted to do this deal and beat it back to LA where I could forget the little transport hub town of Barstow ever existed.
A hush fell over the diner the minute we walked in. The patrons all turned around to stare at us, and I realized the four of us were still wearing our colors. None of the wait staff came anywhere near us.
I should have expected this, but I wasn’t planning to enter any civilian establishment on a night like tonight. I didn’t anticipate dealing with anyone but The Furies, and we had to look our butch best for that.
The silence lengthened into a tense standoff between us and the locals. Holy fuck, what was I thinking bringing three patched bikers into a place like this? Including myself, that made four.
Just forget the whole thing. I would rather stand out in the rain fuming in suppressed rage than face these people. I almost turned and walked out when a petite young thing burst out of the back and strode right up to me. She barely came up to my chin.
Curly chestnut hair bounced around her face and sprang off her shoulders. Piercing green eyes shot daggers at me. She squared her slender shoulders and drew herself up to confront me. “Table for four?”
I blinked and swallowed hard. “Ruby? Ruby Lewis?”
She shook her bangs out of her eyes. “How are you doing, Eli? Long time, no see. Still up to no good, I see.”
She cast a withering glance down at my jacket. That expression made me even more acutely aware of my colors and my patches—my whole uniform. All four of us wore black leather jackets with the distinctive logo on the chest flap and emblazoned across our backs.
A tribal dragon design with the words scrolled across the top saying Los Diablos—the Devils. No one could miss it. Under our clothes, we carried that symbol tattooed on our forearms so we could never take it off.
Ruby knew exactly what that symbol meant. She grew up in Barstow the same way I did. In fact, we grew up together and went to high school together.
She pulled four menus from behind the counter and led the way into the diner. I pushed away thoughts of the past watching her perfect heart-shaped ass swish in front of me. That ass certainly hadn’t changed in the seven years since I saw her last. The trim, shapely legs, the hour-glass waist, the rounded chest—I had to stop thinking of her like that.
She waved us toward a booth and distributed the menus. She treated us like ordinary customers, but she kept her face absolutely impassive. She showed not the slightest hint that seeing me again meant a God damned thing to her.
“I’ll be right back to take your orders.” She might as well be talking to the wall.
She walked away, and I was swept into the same vortex admiring her body and the sinuous way it moved through space. It brought back all kinds of memories from the time when we….
She plunked down a glass of water in front of me and startled me out of my reverie. I looked up and caught her eye, but only for a second. She averted her gaze and delivered glasses of water, napkins, and cutlery to all four place settings. Then she whipped out a notepad. “What will you have?”
I drifted into a daze while the others rattled off their orders. I dated Ruby Lewis for three years in high school, but at the end of it when I wanted her to move to LA with me, she went cold and left without any explanation why.
I won’t lie. She broke my heart, but I got over it. I mooned over her for a few months, but by then, I was knee-deep in Los Diablos. That kept me busy and pulled me out of my funk. I stopped thinking about her and turned my attention to other things.
Now here she was in my world again. Seeing her and hearing her voice and smelling her perfume sent me catapulting back to those days. Christ, she felt good in my arms, and she could kiss like nobody’s business. She was a firecracker in the sack, and she always, always responded. She never turned me down. She was always ready to rock and roll, no matter what she was doing or how she was feeling.
“Eli?” She shattered my brain while staring down at me and saying my name like that, just like she used to do.
I jerked back, and my eyes snapped open. “Huh?”
She waited. “Do you want to order anything?”
“Oh!” I seized the menu, but I was too flustered to look at it. “I’ll take a cheeseburger and an order of fries—oh, and a cup of coffee.”
She wrote down my order, gathered up the menus, and left without looking at me again. Rico elbowed Logan in the ribs and chortled under his breath. “She’s a hot one, isn’t she? She smiled at you when you got your order wrong. Why didn’t you follow up? You could have asked for her phone number.”
Logan blushed. “I don’t need to ask random waitresses for their numbers. I’ve got a girl back home.”
“Come on, man,” Rico urged. “Just talk to her. I think she likes you.”
My blood cooled listening to this. “She doesn’t like any of us. Didn’t you see the way she looked at our patches?”
The others fall silent. After a moment, Kane and Rico start talking about the trade. I tuned out the rest of their conversation and fell into my own thoughts. Ruby Lewis. I never had it so good as when I was with her. I probably would have married her if I had my way.
When I told her I planned to move to LA, she turned ice cold on me. She just cut me off without a word. She wouldn’t answer my texts or my calls. She wouldn’t go out with me. She wouldn’t even let me touch her.
I tried for nearly three months to get through to her, to get her to at least tell me what went wrong. She was always so warm and loving before that. One day, out of the clear blue, a granite wall slammed down between us. I couldn’t understand it. I couldn’t understand it now, but I didn’t kid myself that I could get her to explain it by nagging her again.
She delivered our food in a professional, robotic way. She asked in a dead monotone, “Is there anything else I can get you fellas tonight?” Then she left.
I bent over my food still lost in my memories. On the night I graduated from high school, me and my buddies were heading down to LA to tie one on after the commencement ceremonies. I spotted her leaving the auditorium in her cap and gown. I knew then and there I would probably never see her again, so I made one last-ditch effort to talk to her.
She answered me with that business-like distance she used when she delivered our food. She gave nothing away, and she didn’t explain anything. She just said she didn’t want to see me anymore. She said she hoped I did well for myself in all my future endeavors—or some such claptrap. It meant nothing. It was like talking to a computer recording.
After that, I heard she moved to San Diego. That was when I knew for sure she was truly gone. I would never get her back. I put her out of my mind for good, and I never thought about her again.
That was why I didn’t expect to see her when The Boss assigned me to Barstow duty. I thought a girl as smart and talented and resourceful as Ruby Lewis would never come back to the ass-end of nowhere—not ever.
Now here she was. What could I do about that? If The Boss ever sent me back to Barstow, I could expect to see her again. In fact, I already knew The Boss would send me back to Barstow. This deal with
The Furies involved at least seven more deliveries of weapons bound for LA. The Boss would be stupid to employ any other lieutenant to head the operation, primarily since I handled the first five truckloads.
If the last four gave any indication of The Furies future performance in this deal, I could anticipate more delays. That meant I would be spending more rainy nights in this diner looking at Ruby Lewis’s ass.
I had to be mentally prepared for that, and that meant I had to get right with myself right now about how I felt about her. It was all very well to live in LA thinking I would never see her again. Seeing her on a semi-regular basis and even talking to her—that was a whole other ballgame. Could I handle that without falling back into hoping we would get back together?
My phone woke me from these ruminations. I looked at the screen. Coming into Barstow now.
“Those fucking cocksuckers,” I snarled to myself.
“I’m telling you they’re jerking our chain on purpose,” Logan told me. “No way could anyone be that incompetent.”
“Maybe.” I tossed my napkin on my plate. “Either way, we gotta go see, and we sure as fuck ain’t leaving this dump of a town without our merchandise. Let’s go.”
The four of us scooted out of the booth. The other three migrated toward the door while I got out my wallet. I thumbed through some bills when a strident voice caught my ear from across the diner.
I looked up to see Ruby standing by another table. A tall, grey-haired guy yelled at her while she tried to reason with him. “I told you a thousand times if I told you once, you stupid whore!” he bellowed. “I said medium rare—medium rare! Do you speak English, or are you another illegal from across the border? Medium rare! Do you hear me? Medium rare!”
He pronounced the words extra slowly and extra loudly so everyone in the diner heard. Ruby held out her hands and tried to explain something to him, but she kept her voice low so I couldn’t make out the words.
He shoved his plate toward her and it skidded off the table. It flipped in mid-air and landed splat on its face across her shoes. “Oh, now look what the hell you did!” the guy shouted. “I want this whole meal comped. Do you hear me? I’m not paying for any of this. Where’s the manager? I said where’s the manager, you stupid fucking slut!”
I stiffened. Ruby started to bend down to clean up the mess. Then she changed her mind and straightened up to address the guy. “I’m…. I mean, the manager is at home. It’s just me and….”
She made another abortive attempt to crouch down to deal with the disaster while the asshole continued to berate and curse at her. Now everyone in the whole diner stared at the scene in horrified disbelief—all except me.
My hackles raised in her defense. No one talked to—well, she might not be my woman anymore, but I would be damned if I stood aside and let some fuckwit from who knows where talk to her like that.
I took a firm grip on my wallet when the bartender came whipping around the bar and stormed to Ruby’s side. “I’m the manager on duty, Sir. If you have a problem with your meal, you can talk to me. Now, I clearly heard you when you ordered that steak. You said rare. No, don’t try to interrupt and yell over me because it won’t work. I heard you clear as day, so you have a simple choice. If you want a meal in here tonight, you’ll pay for that plate you just threw at her and whatever else you want to eat. If you don’t want to pay, you can get the fuck out of here and make sure you don’t ever cross that doorway again. If you do, you’ll be guilty of trespassing, and I’ll call the Police to remove you.”
Fuck yeah! I wanted to hug the guy. He was my kind of man. The irate customer bolted upright so fast he cracked his knees against the table. It bounced before he managed to extricate himself from the seat. Then he threw his napkin on the table and wheeled for the door. “I don’t have to put up with this, and I’m certainly not going to pay for it.”
He barged through the diner, tore the door open, and stormed out in a bluster of rain and wind. In seconds, the diner went dead quiet.
The bartender and Ruby both squatted down. He proceeded to help her scoop the spilled food back onto the dirty plate. “Are you okay, Ruby?” he murmured.
“I’m all right. Thanks, Stan.” She passed her wrist across her forehead. “It’s the same old shit, you know. This job seems to attract assholes like flies.”
So that was how it was. She had to deal with creeps like that all the time in this job. That must really wear on a person. I glanced down at my wallet. I planned to leave an extra tip for her just for being Ruby Lewis, but now I changed my mind.
I leafed two fifties out of the billfold and stuck them under the plate. I hoped to slip out unseen, but when I looked up and headed for the door, I came face to face with her coming out of the kitchen.
She pulled up short and stiffened when she met me. I saw the whole chain of reaction unfold in her. She defended herself against me. She considered me a threat, an enemy. Why?
She gave me a curt nod. “Was everything all right?”
“It was perfect. Thank you.” I saw her start to turn away and stopped her. “Hey, Ruby. It’s really good to see you again.”
She retreated behind that waxen face. “You, too. Take care, Eli.”
“Hey, Ruby,” I persisted. “Could I see you again sometime? We could catch up on what we’ve been doing since I saw you last. What do you say? Can I give you my number? You can call me anytime.”
Her eyes made a deliberate, noticeable journey down my face to my jacket. Her gaze lingered for a fraction of a second on my colors before she looked back up to lock her fierce glare on me. “I don’t think so. See you around, Eli.”
She darted around me and walked off.
2
Eli
I marched back to the yard in a tumult of conflicting emotions. So that was it. My colors. That was why Ruby cut me off. Why? She never mentioned anything back in the day about me getting involved with the club. She never said anything.
I didn’t have time to think about that right now. Logan, Kane, and the others waited for me inside a shipping container that served as an office. It wasn’t much, but at least it kept out the rain.
Logan picked up a shotgun, racked the slide, and checked the magazine. Kane pointed up toward the ten-foot, razor-wire fence surrounding the yard. “Rico, you get up there with Tony. Make sure you have a clear shot at the yard and the surrounding streets. For all we know, those morons delayed so they could put their own guys in place to shoot you down.”
Logan bumped the shotgun into my shoulder. “Here, man. Take this.”
“I don’t need it,” I told him. “If this thing goes down the crapper in a big hurry, none of us will need guns at all. You know that. Just be ready to let ‘er rip and throw down with the big boys.”
“Yes, Sir.” Logan turned away, but he didn’t put the gun back. He propped it against his shoulder.
I swiveled around and peered through the rain, and just in time. A huge truck with oversized trailers thundered down the street and angled its headlights through the gate. It rumbled into the yard and braked.
I took a deep breath and strode out into the downpour. The deluge streamed into my hair and down my neck into my shirt, but it did nothing to cool my fire. The closer we got to the moment of confrontation, the more my instincts warned me this wouldn’t go well.
I walked up to the truck. Logan flanked me on one side with Kane on the other. Now that the shit was really going down, I thanked the stars I didn’t have a gun. That would only show weakness. My two lieutenants both carried shotguns, but the man in charge didn’t need one.
The driver glanced through the window and diddled with something on his other side. He made it look like he was dicking with his paperwork, but I knew better. He might be loading a gun of his own, but more likely, this was just his jackass way of causing another delay. He and his whole moron crew were trying to put us off our game. Idiots.
Everything about this operation screamed idiots from start to finish. Busi
ness partners didn’t treat each other like this. Only sworn enemies deliberately jacked each other around. If The Furies wanted to be my enemies, bring it on. I could take it.
The punk finally opened his door and got out. He crouched with his head pulled between his shoulders like the rain would make him melt or something. He squinted and waved his arms around. “Howdy! Sorry I’m late. I got here as soon as I could. The fucking Immigration was hell.”
I dipped my chin once. “Well, you’re here now. Did you get the whole shipment across all right?”
He burst into a silly grin. “Yep, all five thousand units of it. Do you want to take a look?”
I nodded again. “Sure.”
He hurried down the trailers releasing the clamps holding the side curtains in place. He unlatched all of them and called to me over my shoulder. “They’re prime units—top quality. We got them from a different supplier this time. I think you’ll be pleased with the result.”
He talked a lot louder than he needed to and he acted supremely excited over something that should have been routine. Something clicked in my head. This was it. Here we go.
He made sure to clear all the straps and clamps so the side curtains hung loose. They flapped ever so slightly in the wind. The driver returned to the end of the first trailer and took hold of the curtain. “Here you go!”
With a massive jerk, he flung the curtain aside. It skated down its track and out of the way. At the same instant, gunfire sprayed from inside the truck to rain holy terror on us. The driver crouched under the trailer out of the way and sheltered under his raised arms.
If I wasn’t holding myself prepared for something exactly like this, the bullets would have ripped me in half. Instead, the sound of rattling guns and zinging bullets triggered a battle reaction in me. I exploded out of my skin and the bullets bounced off my scales before I fully transformed.
