Thunderstruck

by MariaLisa deMora

  “We goin’ soon?” He strolled through the open office door to find Twisted and Po’Boy in what looked like a stare-off. “What the fuck’s up, brothers?”

  Twisted sighed, not breaking the stare. “We’re in disagreement on that.”

  “We go now, we roll heavy, and we come home in an hour, brother.” Po’Boy shook his head.

  “You know where they are?” Wildman’s head lifted and he considered the two men. “Why are we still sittin’ here? We wanted to make a clean sweep, but we had some stragglers who slipped the noose last night. You know where they’re hiding, we roll. Now. Let’s go get ’em.”

  “Bitch in your bed, you know who she is?” Twisted transferred his stare to Wildman, who shook his head back and forth. “You sure?”

  “Yeah, I don’t know her from Adam. Don’t even know her goddamned name.” He shrugged and made a jacking motion. “She brought her own ass to my bed, wasn’t something I asked for. Still, wasn’t going to turn it down, brother. Wet and willing beats Rosie Palm.”

  “True that,” Po’boy said through laughter. “But you might wanna ask the lady her name before you dip your wick again.”

  “Clearly you know, and it’s tied up with the business we have to finish, so just get it out there and tell me.” He was frustrated with the back and forth, and didn’t find it inside him to share with them anything that had happened between him and the brunette, no matter how they rode him about it.

  “That, my good man, is Justine LaPorte.”

  Wildman shrugged. Justine. Weighty and yet poetic, he thought the name fit her well.

  “She’s tied to a number of interesting parties.” Twisted picked up a piece of paper from the table in front of him. “Uncle Sam bein’ one of them.”

  Fuck.

  “She’s a fed?” Twisted nodded. Double fuck. “How do you know?”

  “Well,” Wrench drawled, turning his chair to face Wildman, “because her brother recognized her picture last night when we floated it past a number of folks, just like we did the rest of the women.” He laughed. “Seems she’s been missing for a few days, so he had people lookin’ for her. Just hadn’t found her yet.”

  “Who’s her brother?” He pulled in a breath and blew it out noisily. “Fuck, man. Don’t tell me. I don’t care. Don’t matter anyhow. Let’s get back to business.”

  “Well, seein’ as she’s in the middle of the business at hand, that woman is kinda the business right now.” Twisted flicked his wrist and sailed the paper Wildman’s direction. “Look at it.”

  He stared at the paper for a long time, the words detailing Justine’s pedigree burning into his brain. She might have been perfect, but she wasn’t for him. It explained so much about her behavior, the sacrifices she’d been willing to make to protect innocents. Her composure during the short vehicle ride, when the rest of the women had been weeping and fearful. “Don’t matter. Let’s go. You got a place, got a direction, got a line on anything, then let’s go.”

  “Man, we cannot keep a federal agent under lockdown at our goddamned clubhouse.” Twisted pushed to his feet and pointed a finger at Wildman. “You did this, with your fucked-up plan.”

  “Naw, brother.” Po’Boy reclined far back in his chair, legs straight in front of him. “We all took that on, and it’s club, man. Don’t matter what patch I wear, it’s always club, not any one member who decides the direction of anything. Don’t lay that at his feet just because you’re jacked up about what we’re sheltering right now.”

  “Where are the cartel members?” Wildman tried to bring things back on track. “Give me a location and I’ll go take care of it myself. Then there’s nothing for the club to lay claim to.”

  “They’re holed up in a place in Goodwoods back in Red Stick.” Wildman nodded. It was a neighborhood in Baton Rouge he was well acquainted with. He noted the address as it was rattled off.

  “I want a show of force. We’ll roll in fives and tens,” Twisted said, beginning to lay out the strategy. In another ten minutes, they had a plan and Wildman sat astride his bike in the lot, waiting his group’s turn to head out the gate. A shrill whistle gained his attention, and he looked up to see Po’Boy waving him up to a different line of bikes that included his and Twisted’s. As they moved through the gate three wide, he positioned himself to the back of the officers, protecting them with his actions. With my life if need be.

  It was noon when they pulled into the parking lot chosen as the staging point for the attack. A brilliant yellow sun hovered overhead, and he marveled at the dichotomy. Within minutes the rest of the men had arrived, and they took off again in a mass, bikes roaring up the street to the abandoned row of housing where the cartel was known to squat.

  People on porches along the way vacated, wisely disappearing inside where it was far safer, because if this turned into a rolling shootout, bullets could and would go wild. They had to go in fast and hard, before any one of these helpful citizens called the cops. Reports of gunfire weren’t uncommon in this area, but gunfire and a herd of bikes would surely stand out.

  Toe punching the shifter down a gear, he heeled the kickstand down and was off the bike fast, thumb hitting the kill switch. Side by side with Po’Boy, he raced to the front door of their assigned building, noting the window was already shattered. Inside, he moved to the left, going around the furniture clustered in the middle of the room and through the kitchen to meet Po’Boy coming from the other side. A loud crash from upstairs had them both looking up, and without a word he followed Po’Boy back to the stairs.

  “On three,” Po’Boy whispered loudly, and Wildman had to stifle his laughter. Long legs taking him up three stairs at a time, Po’Boy quietly made his way to the top. “One,” he called out, hand around his mouth to redirect the sound. On his call, Wildman hit the closed door with his shoulder, rolling with the impact and coming up gun in hand trained on the three men in the room. “Two,” he said, pulling the trigger, noting the spray on the walls behind as his bullet found its mark. Po’Boy took down the last man, and in the silence that followed said, “Three.”

  Five

  Justine

  She jerked awake when a hand covered her face, brain already groggy before she had a chance to fight or even catalog the bitter scent that filled her mouth and nose, and then she was gone.

  Six

  Wildman

  The smile he wore while rolling into the lot surrounding the clubhouse didn’t last long. One glance at the men milling around the door had his instincts screaming, and he looked over to see an alert, attentive expression on Twisted’s face. Something had happened in their house, and it wasn’t going to be pretty.

  The stench of smoke and burning plastic met them at the door, and Wildman pushed inside to see several prospects setting up fans in the windows to push the tainted air out.

  The women from the trailer were clustered to one side of the main room, farthest from the kitchen, avoiding where the smoke seemed to be the worst. He scanned them once, then again a second time when he didn’t see Justine right away. Wildman’s heart thudded a rough beat, and he grabbed a passing prospect’s arm and pointed at the women, asking, “Where is she?”

  The man shook his head and pulled away. He knew who Wildman was talking about, knew who he’d looked for. “She ain’t there, man. That’s everyone in the building right now, and we’re down one body. We don’t know where she went.”

  He froze in place, brain working overtime, thinking furiously. The easy answer was somehow LaPorte had set a fire to enable an escape, but he didn’t think she’d leave the other women behind. Not with how protective she’d seemed of them last night. Something wasn’t adding up.

  One of the women was staring at him, eyes wide, fingers pressed to her trembling lips. She knows something. “Bring her to the office,” he told the prospect with a nod towards the woman, who gasped in fear. Yeah, his instincts were right. This woman had some knowledge of what had happened while the rest of the club was out taking care of bl
oody business, and maybe where Justine was.

  He tilted his head towards Po’Boy, who responded with a nod. Twisted watched them from where he stood near the half-melted trash can that had been brought out from the kitchen. He used a bat to poke through the detritus and shook his head. “Just trash. It was meant to make a mess and stink. It’s a distraction, brother.”

  The woman hadn’t waited for an escort, preceding the two men into the office. She turned and stared at them, then asked, “You aren’t like those other men, are you?”

  “You mean the ones who kept you locked in a trailer? No, we’re not a lick like them. Different as night and day.” He waited, and she held her peace only a moment before telling him everything he needed to know.

  “The man who took her, he said you were bad. She was over his shoulder like a sack of feed, and he looked at me and said he was saving her.” She swallowed, her body hitching in the middle so hard he thought she might break in half. “You’re Po’Boy, right?” She had it wrong, but close enough, so he nodded. “He said to tell Po’Boy that she’d be cooking up where the sun doesn’t shine, under the long blade of the clergyman.” She paused a minute, then said, “That’s all. That’s what he said. Can I go home now? I want to go home.”

  “Was she alive?” Wildman stalled Po’Boy’s reach for the door and stood stoically, knees locked as he waited for a blow. “Did he take her breathin’?”

  “I don’t know. She didn’t…she didn’t move.” The woman ducked as if she’d been hit by the blow he’d expected. “Can I go home?”

  “Soon, honey,” Po’Boy soothed her as he opened the door and quickly ushered her out. Wildman heard him giving orders about the women, and the creaking of the wooden stairs said he’d sent them back upstairs. None of them would be leaving in the near future, not until the IMC and CoBos sorted this out. A federal agent had been held in what amounted to forced confinement—in other words, kidnapping—and then had been removed from the IMC clubhouse either unconscious or dead.

  Wildman’s brain shied away from that four-letter word, holding tight to the woman’s protesting that she just didn’t know. LaPorte hadn’t vacated the clubhouse under her own power, and that was about all of which he could be certain. All they’d been left with were three clues, deliberately obscure to keep him from finding her in time to prevent whatever had been planned.

  “They didn’t count on one thing.” Po’Boy spoke from behind him as Twisted strode into view. Wildman turned to stare at him, puzzled at the smug smile on Po’Boy’s face. “I gots me a long-ass memory, which means those boys done fucked up.”

  Seven

  Justine

  She retched as she became aware, her head pounding so hard until getting away from the pain was all she could think about. Vomiting didn’t help, but lying still did, so she relaxed as best she could, holding in place as she paid close attention to everything around her. Fear was a distant emotion, muffled by whatever had been used to incapacity her, and she was glad for that small favor. Listening intently, there were some sounds she could place, and some she couldn’t. Close by came the soft plink of a dripping faucet, offset by the hum of some gas-powered yard implement in the far distance. The shuffling of boot leather on a wooden floor marked the approach of someone, and Justine made sure her face was relaxed, every breath she took was controlled, even, and slow. Playing possum seemed to have worked, because only a moment later the footsteps retreated.

  Silence for a moment, then a man’s voice. “No, she’s still out. You see anything yet?” A pause where she could hear the buzz of someone speaking on the other end of the call. “Let me know soon as, man. I gotta gear up for this shit.” Silence, then the rattle as the phone was laid on a wooden surface, likely a table from the hollow sound.

  The last thing she remembered was the hand over her mouth, waking her from a sound sleep in Wildman’s bed. Fortunately she remembered everything from the night before, or the soreness between her legs would give her pause.

  The conversation she’d just overheard gave her an idea of what had happened. She’d been working as an unauthorized undercover agent, posing as a victim of the Mexican drug cartel’s flesh-trafficking scheme, and been inadvertently rescued by a local motorcycle club. Their patches had identified them as Incoherent and the Caddo Hobos MCs, both a one-percent groups who were deemed helpful by local federal authorities. They didn’t stay on the right side of the line, but the illegal activities they conducted wasn’t enough to override the beneficial effect they had on the communities where they held clubhouses. She’d studied all the known criminal elements in the area before going dark and IMC, the club Wildman was part of, was one that had caught her attention.

  So, first she’d been rescued by a member of the dominant MC in the area, in a clear strike against the encroachment of the cartel, and then taken in turn by someone else. Jesus, what a fuck-up. Not part of the cartel, because there was no trace of accent in this man’s voice, and the cadence of the voice on the other end hadn’t carried it, either. The man who was her captor now likely had been the one to hold the chloroform rag over her mouth, and his counterpart, whoever he was, had positioned himself far enough away that they expected him to see something before it could be known from this location. And he was an amateur, because not only wasn’t he standing watch over her, by placing himself in the other room like that, he’d cut himself off from line of sight. The jerk also hadn’t secured her at all, her wrists and ankles not restrained. Not that I’m complaining.

  She just needed to get her pounding head under control and deal with him, then make her way back to the IMC clubhouse to verify the other women were okay.

  Justine fluttered her lids as she slowly opened her eyes, blinking to adjust to the shooting daggers of pain that blasted through her head. As things came into focus, she saw a duffel bag on the floor near a window. Inside was a plastic bottle lying on its side, and a dirty rag. No way. She tried to roll her eyes, wincing and biting back a groan when that earned her a headful of pain.

  He came to check on her twice more in the time she took to beat back the nausea and headache. She was revving herself up to take action when the wooden floor under her cheek began to vibrate, rattling through her skull and setting up another wave of pain. Lifting her head to escape the vibration, she crept over to look through the doorway into the other room. Facing a window, her captor was larger than he’d sounded, tall with a hank of greasy hair falling across his face.

  Focused on whatever was happening outside—she could only imagine and hope what that was—he didn’t turn when she scooped up the bottle. Holding it away from her body, she opened it and splashed the pungent-smelling liquid on the rag, forcing back a gag as she made her way to stand behind him. Through the window she saw a dozen bikes pulled up in a row, every face covered with a bandana of varying colors.

  Even with the bottom half of his face hidden behind the fabric, Justine still picked out Wildman with ease. He lifted his hand and pointed at the window where she stood behind the man, and she stared at the pistol aimed directly at her. Jesus. No time to hesitate, she lunged upwards and clapped her hand over the man’s mouth and nose, working hard to hold the rag in place as he tore at her fingers with urgent strength. That ebbed, though, faster than she’d expected, his dexterity waning, and she felt him waver on his feet.

  Outside, Wildman’s gun was now aimed up at the dark sky, and she locked gazes with him. Her pulse raced at the expression of pride she read in his eyes, and she swallowed hard to keep back the tears. He’d come for her, with nothing more than one night between them. He came for me. The body in front of her started to topple and she deflected him away from the window, letting him fall with a crash to the floor. Justine went down with him and held the rag in place for another few seconds for good measure.

  The door burst open and Wildman was the first in, coming directly to where she crouched while other men flanked him, spreading out through the house, shouts coming back every few seconds promisin
g safety as they only found empty rooms.

  He stooped until his eyes were level with hers, a question in them that he answered himself, the lines in his face easing. Then his hands were on her arms, thumbs brushing over her skin as he stood, lifting her with him. An instant later his arms were around her and she leaned into him, letting the fear wash over her finally, fingers clutching his shirt, face buried in his chest between the front flaps of his vest as he smoothed her hair, holding her close.

  “You wearin’ my shirt, woman?” His voice rumbled under her ear, the pounding of his heart putting the lie to the ease in his voice. “Damn, we ain’t even a thing yet and you’re already stealin’ my favorite tees?”

  She sniffed and rocked her forehead against him, trying to keep the quaver from her voice when she retorted, “Seemed the thing to do at the time.” When he’d left this morning as part of a huge pack—God, was that only this morning?—the roaring of the bikes had woken the whole clubhouse. After staring out the window until she couldn’t see any of the bikes anymore, she’d taken a minute to tug on her panties and his discarded shirt. That had seemed a precipitous decision she was glad of now, since that was all the clothing she wore.

  He took a slow, deep, even breath, then gave her a name that said he knew exactly who she was. Knew who she was and came after her anyway. “Mason says hello.”

  Davis Mason was her brother, and the founder of a notorious one-percent club based out of the northern half of the states. That blood paired with her job? It meant no matter how it had felt like coming home to be underneath Wildman last night, this wasn’t something he’d continue. Justine allowed herself a single final sniff, then shook her head and prepared to pull away. His arms tightened around her and she froze.

  His voice was quiet, pitched for her ears only when he said, “See, here’s the thing. I don’t give a fuck who you’re kin to, or whatever you’ve done. Your job, that’s gonna be a sticker, but if you want it, we figure out a way to get over that, too. You just gotta want it.”