Wild Montana

by Danica Winters

  The president looked down the bar to another of his comrades and motioned for him to come closer. The man answered in a second, stepping so close to her left that she could smell the oil on his vest and his day-old sweat. The patch on his chest read “Sergeant at Arms.”

  “This lady here says she’s looking for Razor. You seen him?”

  She tried to get a read on the president’s wind-burned face, but she couldn’t tell if he meant the question in earnest or if it was his attempt at getting the man’s guard up about her. Either way it made her palms dampen with nerves, and she took another swig of her beer.

  “I ain’t seen Razor in a while. He’s been up north so far as I’ve heard. Then again, I ain’t his babysitter. You want me to look into him for you?”

  The president looked to her. “The fine lady was looking for him. How did you say you met?”

  “I didn’t,” she said, as the drink made her start to believe she had inner strength enough to go toe-to-toe with the bikers beside her.

  The president started to laugh, the sound as raspy and hard as him. “I see why he liked you. He was always going after women who liked to throw their weight around.” He leaned in close. “You know, he ain’t around, and if you’re interested in throwing your weight somewhere, my way’s always available.”

  She glanced down at his wedding band. “Your wife know you talk like that?”

  “What my old lady don’t know won’t hurt her.” He laughed again.

  A man who had been sitting at a table near them stood up and walked over. He leaned in and whispered in the president’s ear as he pointed to something on his phone. Luckily, he spoke just loud enough so that she could make out his words.

  “Our runners want to rendezvous tomorrow. Nine o’clock at the normal location. What do you want me to tell them?” the man asked.

  The president turned away from her for a minute. “This about the Blue?”

  The man nodded.

  “Tell them we got their money, and this time they’d better not let us down.”

  The man walked back to his chair, texting as he moved.

  She glanced over her shoulder, wishing Casper had been there to hear the men’s exchange. They had to be talking about the Canadian Blue, which meant they must have been planning some kind of buy. These could be the men Casper was looking for, the men who had a role in smuggling the drugs over the border.

  Then again, if these bikers were the smugglers, then why would they be buying and not selling?

  She moved to stand up, but the president grabbed her by the arm and forced her to sit back down.

  “Don’t you be going nowhere. I’m sorry about that interruption, little lady. Sometimes business comes before pleasure, but both come in their own time.” He gave her a nasty wink.

  Pleasure from her wouldn’t be coming his way, ever.

  “I don’t want to be interfering with any of your business,” she said, motioning toward the man on his phone.

  “Oh, don’t worry about him. That was nothing. Already taken care of.” He shrugged her off. “Now, about you and Razor... I know you ain’t his old lady.”

  “Oh yeah, how’s that?” she retorted, trying to sound cute enough to cover her genuine interest.

  “Well, he’s already got one of those. So do you belong to his chapter or are you general club property?”

  She wasn’t anyone’s property, nor would she ever become something people could own.

  “I ain’t nobody’s nothing. I’ve just been seeing Razor around. He told me to stop by this week. Said he’d be in town. If you ain’t seen him, I should be goin’.” She tried to pull her arm out of his vise-like grip, but instead he only held on harder.

  “If Razor told you to come here and you listened, then you might just be the kind of girl this club is looking for.” He stared at her with his cold, dark eyes. “We ain’t desperate for women,” he said, nodding toward the billiards area where a swarm of girls stood around with a few men as they played pool. Each of the women had Daisy Duke shorts and tank tops that rested so low a sharp breeze could have caused a nip-slip. A few of them wore the leather vests like the men of the club, but they simply said “Property of the Keepers,” and a couple had specific men’s names. She stared at them, looking for a woman who matched the description the shopkeeper had given her and Casper at The Prince and the Pea, but in the poor light of the bar, it could have been any one of the brunettes.

  “We’re good to our girls,” the president continued. “If you’re interested, I’m sure that we could bring you in. Make you club property.”

  “Why would I want to do that?” she asked, trying not to sound completely affronted even though she inwardly blanched at the thought of what he offered.

  “Our girls want for nothing. You could travel the world on the back of anybody’s bike you wanted. Money ain’t ever an issue. Protection ain’t a problem. If you’re runnin’ from something, or someone, we can be just the men you’re looking for.”

  She was running from a lot of things, but most of them rested in her past—terrifying memories of her days in foster care, and nights spent hiding in the closet out of fear of being beaten once again. Right now the only place she wanted to go was out the door.

  “What makes you think I’m running from something?” she asked, twisting the pint in her hands.

  He chuckled. “If you are coming in here, looking for a man like Razor, you have to be either looking for trouble or wanting protection. If it ain’t protection that you wanted, then that only leaves trouble—and that, that’s something I can give you plenty of.” He leaned back and appraised her from behind. “I can probably give you more than you can handle.”

  That was it. She couldn’t take it anymore. “Look, Pres,” she said, standing up even though his fingers dug into her arm, “I don’t want any of what you’re selling. When Razor finds out what you are trying to do, he’s going to come down on you like a ton of bricks.”

  The man threw his head back with a wicked, drunken laugh. “Lucky for you, I ain’t worried about Razor finding out nothin’—it’s awful hard to get mad when you’re as cold as he is.”

  She pulled her arm from his grip and ran out the door. There was the sound of scraping bar stools behind her. Casper was in the car on his phone, waiting for her.

  “Start the car!” she yelled, making the motion of a key turning.

  He looked at her and frowned but started the car. His mouth opened as his gaze moved past her. She turned around just in time to see the president walk out the door.

  She hurried into the car.

  The president stood on the steps of the bar and stared at her, and then at Casper and his badge on the dashboard. The man pointed to her and then drew his fingers across his neck like a blade slicing through thin flesh.

  Chapter Eleven

  “What in the hell did you just do?” Casper seethed as he tore out of the parking lot and onto the highway.

  “I didn’t do anything. That was the problem.” Lex looked back over her shoulder in the direction of the bar.

  There was a group of men standing outside, watching them as they retreated.

  “I thought you were just going in there to see if you could find anything out about Razor. How did you manage to get an entire group of bikers to chase you out of the bar?”

  She turned back around and clicked on her seat belt. “Look, they didn’t chase me out. I ran out. Entirely different thing.”

  “Okay, why did you have to run out, then?” He checked the rearview mirror one more time to make sure that there weren’t any bikers following them. A thought struck him. “You think one of those guys is the one who followed us last night—right before the accident?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know, but they were talking about Canadian Blue. They were ma
king some plan to have a buy...or whatever you call it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was sitting with the president, and another guy came up to him. They are having a rendezvous tomorrow where they are planning on buying the Canadian Blue. At least I think so...”

  “Do you know where?” The car lurched around the corner, the tires sliding on the wet pavement.

  “You don’t need to drive like a bat out of hell. They’re not following us.”

  “Just like they weren’t last time?” He readjusted the mirror. “I can’t let you get hurt again.”

  “I’m not some fragile thing that you have to treat with gloved hands. I’ve lived this long on my own. I don’t need you to protect me,” she said, suddenly angry that once again they were having this argument.

  “Look, I know you’re strong. Have you ever stopped to think that maybe I’m the one who’s not?”

  She stopped. The thought hadn’t crossed her mind. “What do you mean, Casper?”

  “I told you about the baby, my girlfriend, my past. I can’t go through losing someone else that I care about.” He glanced back again. “I shouldn’t have let you go in there alone.”

  She fumbled for words.

  He cared about her. He’d said it aloud. This changed everything. They were moving out of the safety of their friends-ish zone...well, friends-that-kissed zone. The thought of a relationship terrified her, but as she looked at his gold-flecked eyes and the concern for her that was strewn across his face, a sense of calm filled her. He wasn’t one of the men from her past. He wasn’t the type who was going to try and keep her in the dark. It would be a struggle for him to open up to her, but he was trying. He’d told her things that she doubted he had talked about in a long time.

  She didn’t know how to make him stop worrying, but one thing came to mind. He had opened up. Now maybe it was her turn.

  “You know, before...you weren’t wrong about me avoiding talking about things that really matter.”

  He glanced over at her as though he was wondering where this new line of conversation came from.

  “I...I never lost a baby. I can’t even begin to imagine how hard that must have been for you.” She nibbled at her lip as she second-guessed herself. Maybe she should wait until things were more real between them, but if she avoided the truth any longer, it would only be that much harder to talk about when things got more serious—she didn’t want to hide anything from him. He needed to know who she really was.

  “It was hard... It didn’t even matter whose baby it was. In my heart, it was mine. When she called me...” His grip tightened on the wheel. “There’s no going back to the way things were before. You can’t change the past.”

  “I know.” She sighed. “I’ve tried.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When I was six years old, my birth parents were arrested. They’d been strung out for days. Neither of them had jobs. Most days I didn’t eat and at night...nights were the worst.” Memories of her mother and father screaming at one another filtered into her mind. “One night my mother tried to shoot my father. I ran to my neighbors and told them what happened.”

  Casper’s mouth twitched with rage as he pulled his face into a tight scowl.

  “I was taken by CPS and put into foster care. For seven years, I bounced around from one house to the next. Finally I landed on the Finches’ doorstep and they were gracious enough to bring me in. For the first time in my life I had enough food, clothes and love. They changed my life.”

  He reached over and took her fingers in his and lifted their entwined hands to his mouth. Ever so gently, he kissed each of her fingers.

  “For a long time, I fought back against their love. I didn’t feel like I deserved it and I couldn’t trust it. I couldn’t accept that they wanted to just bring me joy and security—I’d learned early on that everything in life comes at a price.”

  “Do you still think that?” he asked, his hot breath caressing her fingers.

  “I hate to say it, but I do.” She twisted her mouth as she waited for him to chastise her for being so pessimistic.

  Instead of disagreeing with her, he nodded. “Life makes us hard. Doesn’t it?”

  The truth was that she didn’t want to be that way. She would give anything to be the kind of woman who could see the joy in other people just like she could see the true beauty of nature.

  “Some prices are higher than others,” she said. “And with some choices you have to continue paying for them for the rest of your life—even when the choice wasn’t yours.” As she said the words, it felt almost as if she was saying goodbye—as if no matter what happened between them, the vast plains of their pasts would be too immense for them to come together.

  As they drove up to Lex’s cabin, Ranger Grant was standing beside his truck, waiting for them. She was surprised to see the man, especially so late at night. Yet there he stood, leaning against the grille, arms folded over his khaki shirt that was pulled taut over his paunch belly. His hair was slicked down with too much gel in order to try and cover his balding top, but the attempt only made him look older.

  In a way, she was relieved to see Grant—it meant that Casper couldn’t just leave, he would have to stay and talk and he would be hers for at least a few more minutes.

  She tried not to get her hopes up as she thought about her feelings of goodbye.

  Grant walked up to the driver-side door and extended his hand to Casper as he got out. “Agent Lawrence?”

  Casper looked confused and she realized that it was likely because he’d never actually met the man before. She rushed around to their side. “Casper, this is Ranger Grant. You spoke with him on the phone.”

  “It’s great to meet you, Grant. Did you get a chance to look into the missing pills?”

  Grant pushed his pudgy finger under the second button of his stretched shirt. “Actually, that’s why I came here. I was hoping to catch you.”

  “How did you know I was going to be here?” Casper asked, an air of suspicion in his voice.

  “Oh, I just took a guess.” Grant gave him a knowing smile. “But about the pills. I got in touch with a detective friend of mine in Kalispell. It sounds like they have started to make their way around the county.”

  “How does he know that these are the same pills and not from another shipment?” Casper asked.

  “Truth be told, we don’t,” Grant said with a shrug. “But from what the detective said, they had been going through a little bit of a dry spell. Not much was on their radar, but then within twenty-four hours of your heist, the pills started showing up on the streets. It has to be more than a coincidence.”

  “Could they have been coming in from anywhere else?” she asked.

  Grant shook his head. “This isn’t like meth. It can’t be found everywhere. This is a localized epidemic, with a local—or somewhat local—source. The farthest these pills reach, on average, is Eastern Washington, in and around Spokane, and they had moved east into North Dakota, mostly in the dying roughneck towns.”

  “So you think that this smuggling operation is how the drugs are entering the country?” Casper asked, making Lex think back to the conversation they’d had with Steel.

  “Without a doubt. If you drew a circle around where the drugs have been found, this would be the epicenter.”

  He’d been right.

  Casper pulled down the brim of his hat, setting it tight on his head as he stood quietly. He looked at her with a questioning glance.

  She nibbled nervously at her bottom lip. Until tonight, when they were in the middle of an investigation that was starting to pull them deeper and deeper into the shadows of society, Grant had never given her a reason not to trust him. But there was something about him, the fact that he knew where they were and when they’d be home, that made h
er nervous.

  Chapter Twelve

  Even though it was late summer, when they walked into her cabin the place was cold, and Lex was forced to start a fire. Normally this late in the season the weather was warm enough to keep the cabin heated, but a storm had settled into the mountain valley and had started to release its rain. Once again the place had started to take on the edge of cold that marked the onset of fall.

  Time would slip by and she’d lose herself to the needs of the park. She looked out the window and watched as Casper stacked wood on his arm to help with the fire.

  She sucked in a breath as he bent over to grab another log from the stack.

  Casper stood up and, noticing her watching, gave her his provocative grin, the one that seemed to be only for her. His hat dripped as the light smatter of rain hit the surface and rolled off in small streams.

  She’d never dated a man who wore a cowboy hat before, but watching him made her realize how sexy they were. They were the mark of a real man—a far cry from the bun-wearing men she often saw hiking through the park, or scattered across her social media feed.

  Wait, were they dating?

  No. She chastised herself. This was, in all probability, the last time they’d really spend together. She’d be handing her investigation off to Travis tomorrow and from there she and Casper would have no professional contact. She lived an hour and a half away from his post near Waterton—long-distance relationships never worked. Sure, they could see each other once or twice a week, maybe more in the beginning, but real life would take over, they would spend less and less time together, and soon there would be nothing between them but heartache and faded memories.

  If they got together it would be doomed to fail from the very beginning.

  She held open the door for him as he carried in the wood. He was breathing hard under the struggle of carrying all that weight.

  “Thanks,” she said, suddenly more aware than ever of the unwelcome feelings of desire that bubbled up within her. “It’s nice to have an extra set of hands.”