HAMMER: Wolves MC (Riding With Wolves Book 1)

by Faith Winslow

  Since Terry turned himself in for killing Jake Keller, I’d been asking questions and trying to discover the truth, but I was getting nowhere. I wasn’t getting answers, and sometimes, I wasn’t even getting responses. People didn’t want to talk to me about the things I wanted to talk about. They didn’t want to help me, and the only leads I’d gotten were from people who lied, repeated rehearsed scripts, or… well, I don’t have to reiterate what happened with Pigpen.

  The reason I wasn’t getting any answers, responses, honesty, or help was because my approach was faulty. I treated the people I tried to talk to as if we weren’t equal, and when I reached out to them, I didn’t reach out to them on their level.

  To paraphrase Sam, I went to the Wolves looking like a lamb, and I went into the Seraph territory acting prim and proper; I assumed I was better than all of them, and I expected them to recognize and respect that. I’m not stupid. I’m not an idiot. But I was a fool to think that an approach like that would actually work.

  If I wanted to get anywhere with these people—if I wanted to make any progress in my search for answers about what really happened with Terry and Jake Keller—I had to pay more attention to my attitude, appearance, and behavior—and I’d have to change all three of them.

  And of the three of them, I don’t have to tell you which one was the easiest to start with.

  Chapter 17

  ~ Rachel ~

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Something hip, cool—entirely different than what I have right now… but not too different.”

  The hair stylist looked down at me with a perplexed look on her face. “Do you want a cut, color, or both?” she asked, glossing over the details of my earlier answer. She’d asked me what I wanted her to do with my hair, and what I said was the best I could come up with for her.

  I didn’t know what I wanted exactly, but I knew I had to really mix things up if I wanted to look the look and get to the truth about Terry.

  “Both,” I said firmly.

  Getting a hair appointment was as easy as getting a parking ticket in L.A. these days. There were salons on just about every block in the commercial districts, and if one place couldn’t squeeze you in, there were a few others within walking distance that you could hit up.

  I ended up with a last-minute appointment in the first spot I stopped at. It was either luck, fate, or the fact that I showed up there at eight thirty in the morning.

  I’d decided to get my haircut—the first step in my “makeover”—early in the morning, because I had a lot of other stuff I wanted to accomplish that day and wanted to get this big stuff out of the way first. Plus, if Sam was following me, I figured he wouldn’t be following me this early in the morning. He probably wasn’t even awake yet, and if he was, he probably didn’t think that I could get into much trouble at this hour.

  “Your hair’s kinda curly,” the stylist commented as she examined my mop. “But they’re loose curls, mostly at the bottom… If I take a little off, it’ll still be curly, but if I take it this high, it’ll actually come out looking straight.”

  I’d had curly hair for twenty-eight years—and during that time, no one ever told me, and I never realized, that my hair could actually look straight if I got it cut at a certain spot.

  “Cut it that high then,” I said. It was a pretty drastic move. The spot she’d indicated was right above my neckline, near the bottom of my ears—and the cut explained would trim it up about six or seven inches.

  “What about the color?” the stylist asked next, running her fingers through my hair.

  “Something natural looking,” I want said. “I don’t want anything too loud. Maybe some highlights?” I wanted to change my appearance, but I didn’t want to go overboard.

  “Hmm,” the stylist hummed. “How about taking it in the other direction? How about a rich chestnut color? It’d contrast nicely with your eyes.”

  I’d had dirty-blonde hair for twenty-eight years—and during that time, I never even considered how it would look if it were darker, or how it’d look in contrast to my blue-gray eyes.

  “Sounds good,” I said with a smile.

  “Okay then,” the stylist replied. “Let’s get to it.”

  About an hour and a half later, the stylist spun my chair around one last time, and I had to do a double take to make sure I was, in fact, looking into a mirror. The woman I saw in front of me was nothing like the woman I’d seen before me in the mirror countless times over the past twenty-eight years.

  She had short, dark hair that framed her face in gentle wisps and cut out from her forehead and crown in straight lines and angles. She looked hip and cool, and if I do say so, rather sexy, and even though a lot of hair was gone, there was something else there that hadn’t been there before. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but whatever it was, it made me look—and feel—different. It was exactly the change I needed at exactly the right moment, both in terms of my mission regarding Terry and my general station in life. Twenty-eight years is a long time to live thinking you’re bound to the same length, style, and color.

  “It looks amazing,” I told my stylist. (She’d officially been promoted from “the stylist” to “my stylist” at this point.) “Thank you so much.”

  “No problem,” she said, removing the black cape from around me. “I’m glad you like it.”

  “I love it,” I said, rising from the chair and looking at my new self from a new angle. I loved my hair, but it didn’t really go with my outfit—but fortunately, that, too, would soon change.

  I went to the cashier, paid the one-hundred-eighty-five-dollar bill, and left my stylist a forty-dollar tip. I wasn’t being ostentatious or carelessly spending money. I was just paying what was due and deserved for quality work in a much-needed makeover project.

  The Wolves had given me more than enough money to reimburse me for the cost of Terry’s funeral, and I’d told the minister from the funeral that I’d put the surplus to a good cause. Yes, I intended that good cause to be T.J., but that didn’t mean that I couldn’t spend a little of it on myself, too. There’d still be plenty to put away for him, and it’d have a lot of time to accumulate interest. And more importantly, since the impetus for this impromptu makeover was to do what was necessary to vindicate Terry, T.J. would also benefit from that greatly.

  From the salon, I did some shopping. Don’t worry—or don’t get your hopes up—I didn’t go to Rodeo Drive or anything like that. I just went to the same old department store I usually went to, only I didn’t shop in my usual section. I shopped in the sections with bold, cutting edge, catchy garments that were designed for young people who wanted to live life rather than just make their way through it.

  I picked out a few sexy tops, a pair of jegging jeans, two skirts, and a long, multicolored sheer scarf I simply had to have. The items were just enough “new blood” to rejuvenate the body of clothing I already had at home. And after I paid for my them, I did something I never did before, though I’ve heard it isn’t something that’s all that uncommon. I went to the department store ladies room, hopped into a stall, and took off what I was wearing, then put on a new outfit, carefully removing the tags as I did.

  When I walked back out of the stall, I was wearing a knee-length, black skirt and a tight medium-gray full-backed tank top with a band of darker gray fabric lining its deep-cut, boobalicious V-neck neckline. I threw my new long, multicolored sheer scarf around my neck and let it drape down over me, ran my fingers through my hair to give it more muss and volume, and smiled at the woman I saw in the mirror.

  And not one—but two—faces smiled back at me.

  There was another girl in the ladies room, standing at the sink counter, fussing with her makeup. She looked to be a few years younger than I was and a few lightyears ahead of me when it came to style and fashion. (Even when it came to the new me’s style and fashion.)

  “Looking good,” she said before puckering her lips into an “O” shape as she ran a mascara wand over her eyel
ashes.

  “Thanks,” I replied.

  “But you could use a little of this,” she added, waving her wand in the air. “They give out free samples at the makeup counters, you know… I come here a couple times a month to stock up.”

  “Cool,” I said. “I didn’t know that.” I was testing out my new “attitude” on her, along with my outfit.

  “Yeah, totally. I got a bunch this morning—and I have extra if you want some. I got a ton of tiny eyeliner pencils and tubes of mascara, and a lipstick sample I know I won’t ever wear. Here.”

  The younger girl started looking through her bag and pulled out the items she’d described. She handed them to me and smiled. “I was planning on getting more on my way out anyway,” she said, as she laughed.

  I laughed along with her and took the samples from her, then turned to the mirror to apply them. The other girl was still fussing with her expert eyes a bit, and I watched, out of the corner of my un-made-up eye as she did, gleaning tips from her routine while readying to start my own.

  I didn’t do anything as extravagant with my eyes as she’d done with hers, but I managed to get them fully lined and dramatically emphasized, which was something I wasn’t at all used to. I dreaded what it would be like to clean all of the gunk off of my face later, but I liked the way it’d look in the meantime. They say that eyes are the windows to the soul, and mine looked more open and inviting than they’d ever looked before.

  As I was swiping the small tube of muted plum lipstick across my lips, the other girl concluded her routine, put her makeup away, and glanced over at me.

  “Nice meeting you,” she said.

  “You too,” I chimed back cheerfully.

  As soon as she left, I looked at myself in the mirror again and took the time to really look at myself… and I tell you, I really didn’t look like the same Rachel anymore. It’s amazing what a new hairstyle, new wardrobe, and stash of free makeup can do for a person. I was refreshed, anew, from head to…

  Utoh. I’m sure you know why I was unable to complete that sentence.

  I had the new hair.

  I had the new face.

  I had the new clothes.

  But I wasn’t refreshed, anew from head to toe—because I had the same old, scuffed-up black flats on my feet.

  So it was off to the shoe department!

  I had a good number of shoes at home, and I was sure I could make most of them work with my new look, but I had something particular in mind.

  When I got to the shoe department, I didn’t even need to look around and headed straight for the women’s boots section. I picked out a pair of suede calf-high, flat-heeled boots with zippers up the back. They fit my legs like a glove, and after I tried them on, I didn’t take them off. I just grabbed the box, tossed my old shoes into them, and went to the register.

  I showed the cashier that I was wearing the boots from the box and told her that I wanted to wear them out of the store, then I paid for them and asked her to throw the boot box and my old shoes in the garbage. Apparently, this, too, isn’t all that uncommon, because the sales girl readily accommodated me without pause or question.

  Now I really was made over from head to toe, and I was ready to take my new me public.

  Time had flown by very quickly, and it was already after one in the afternoon by the time I left the department store, which meant that it was late enough in the day for Sam to actually be awake and following me. But now that I was the new me, following me would be a lot more difficult for him than it was before, at least for a little while since he didn’t know what the new me looked like yet.

  The fact that it was after one also meant that it was late enough in the day for me to get into some type of trouble—and the new me knew exactly where to go, and what to do to find it.

  Chapter 18

  ~ Rachel ~

  “I heard there’s a good batch of Orange Cush going around,” I said, leaning sideways against the counter. “You wouldn’t happen to know where I could find some, would you?”

  “Who needs Orange Cush, baby?” the man sitting next to me asked, wrapping his hand around his recently opened beer bottle. “I got some White Widow back at my place that’ll really knock your socks off.”

  Okay. So I had no idea what Orange Cush was—or White Widow. The only reason I’d mentioned Orange Cush was because Pigpen had referenced it the day before. I planned on using the term both as a way of showing I was hip to the modern gang member’s lingo, and as my way of finding out where I could find Tony Ink, who was the only potential lead I had at this point. According to what Pigpen admitted to Sam, this Tony Ink guy sold drugs to both the Wolves and the Seraphs, and he was familiar with my brother’s name enough to talk to two guys extensively about him. Maybe he had some other information that I might find useful.

  “I want Orange Cush, not White Widow,” I said after thinking a moment. “I’m not a junkie.” I figured that maybe the “white” in “White Widow” referred to the color of the substance we were talking about—and if it was white, there was a fifty-fifty chance that it was heroin (heroin is white, right?). So I said what I said to let the long-haired, bearded man on the bar stool beside me know that I wasn’t looking for heroin, but rather, Orange Cush (whatever that was), which I knew for a fact that Tony Ink was dealing.

  But, when I said what I said, the long-haired, bearded man on the bar stool beside me just looked at me like I was crazy. “Okay,” he said, standing up from his stool and taking a huge chug of his beer before abandoning it—and me. “Good luck with that,” he added, then he shook his head, and left the bar.

  The bar I was in was called “The Castle,” and it was a few blocks away from Pinky’s, where most of the Wolves hung out on a daily basis. I didn’t want to go there, even as the new me, because someone might have recognized me, and then, no one would’ve talked to me. I figured The Castle was a good bar to hit instead. It was still close enough to Pinky’s to get some of the gangs’ overflow and attract people who had crucial fringe involvement with bikers and the biker lifestyle.

  “White Widow is a high-end, middle-grade strain of marijuana,” a man said, standing up and walking toward me from the stool he was sitting in several feet down the bar. He was very pale, around my age, and had long, thick dreadlocks.

  “Orange Cush,” he went on, sitting down on the now-vacant stool beside me, “or any ‘cush’ in general, is a low-end, high-grade strain of marijuana—or what the kids used to call ‘kind bud’ back in the day. There are lots of different variations of cush, which are typically named after fruits—Orange, Lemon, Mango, and so on… But of course, you would’ve already known all of this—or at least some of it—if you were really looking for pot, which obviously, you are not.

  “So, tell me then, what are you looking for?” The dreadlocked man leaned in toward me and nudged me with his shoulder.

  I’d only been the new me, from head to toe, for less than two hours, and I still hadn’t honed my people skills or become an expert judge of character, but this dreadlocked man definitely seemed a lot less shady than Pigpen. And I didn’t know whether he was genuinely a nice guy, or if he was pretending to be one so that he could get his hands under my brand new skirt, but he actually seemed pretty decent—and potentially, very helpful. Hell, he’d already taught me more about marijuana than I could have learned through hours of my own research—and the information he’d given me would probably come in use later (and it definitely would have been a couple minutes earlier).

  “I’m looking for Orange Cush,” I said.

  “Just because you said it twice, that doesn’t make it any truer,” the pot professor said, leaning away from me and spinning his stool in the opposite direction. “Why don’t you wanna tell me the truth, pretty lady?” There was something childlike and jovial about this guy—something playful. I figured he probably knew so much about pot because he regularly used it and must have currently been high on it.

  “Do you know anybody who sel
ls Orange Cush?” I asked.

  “Ah,” the jovial, dreadlocked pot professor sighed. “Now we get to the real question. You’re not looking for Orange Cush. You’re looking for someone who sells it. You obviously aren’t a narc or DEA agent… So what are you? And why are you trying to find Tony Ink?”

  “Who’s Tony Ink?” I asked, trying to play it cool.

  “You know who Tony Ink is, pretty lady,” he said, spinning back and forth in each direction. “He’s why you’re here… And if you wanna know where to find him, I can take you and show ya.”

  “No. thanks,” I said. The guy was jovial, seemed decent, and was a lot less shady than Pigpen, but I kept in mind what Sam had said the day before and wasn’t gonna blindly trust him. “I don’t go to unfamiliar places with people I don’t know.”

  “Smart girl,” he replied, taking another half-spin.

  “I’ll make a deal with you,” he went on. “If you tell me why you want to see Tony Ink, I’ll tell you where to find him.”

  I looked the guy over. He was jovial, dreadlocked, and fairly decent; he was only kind of shady and obviously high; and he was offering to help me.

  “There are a lot of people who think my brother did something I know he didn’t do,” I said. “So I’m trying to clear his name. I heard that all kinds of information pass by Tony Ink’s ears, and I’m hoping he might be able to tell me something that’ll help me.”

  “You are a smart girl,” my bar-side companion replied with a fancy three-quarter spin on his stool. “You know when to lie.” He stood up and leaned into me again. “And… you know when to tell the truth,” he added, speaking in a beatbox rhythm. “I believe what you’ve said,” he continued. “I believe that you wanna see Tony Ink to try and clear your brother’s name. But I can’t believe that you think a guy like Tony Ink is actually gonna help you. He’s not a Bob-Marley-lovin’, Hackensack-playin’ hippie pot dealer whom you can go shoot the shit with. He’s a hardcore, marijuana kingpin, and he’s one mean motherfucker—and a pimp to boot.