by Zahra Girard
She’s mine. She just doesn’t know it yet.
* * * * *
I tail Red’s sexy, stubborn ass to the outskirts of Redwood City.
It isn’t hard, she’s still half-drunk from the night out and she’s careless. She might’ve done this before — I certainly believe that with how she was able to pack up her things and just walk out on her place without so much as a blink — but that doesn’t mean she’s actually good at it.
Besides, a swerving, erratic, rusted, VW van that looks like it’s straight out of the 1970’s isn’t exactly fucking camouflaged. Unless you’re down in Baja or at a fucking hippie commune.
She stops at some hotel, gets out, and checks herself in for the night. I wait outside for a while, keeping my eyes on the road to make sure no one else has followed her. When I’m sure it’s safe, I park my bike and I pull out my phone and call Creole while I walk towards an all-night diner across the street from her hotel.
“Riot, any news about our witness? Did she show up?”
“You could say that.”
I settle into an empty booth and wave for the bored-looking waitress to bring me a cup of coffee.
“What happened? You sound a bit rattled, brother.”
“Not rattled, just a bit sore. I was staking her place out and she showed up around an hour ago. Then someone else came in, hot on her tail, and tried to off her.”
“Is she dead?”
“No, I got to the bastard in time.”
“Did you get a good look at who was trying to kill her? It’s probably the same guys who killed our men at the port.”
My palm audibly connects with my forehead. Shit.
“Honestly, I got a bit distracted.”
“Distracted? Riot, did you fuck her? You know that wasn’t part of the job,” Creole sounds a bit upset. Though it’s hard to tell with him. He always plays things so close to the chest.
“No, I didn’t fuck her,” I reply.
Though I wanted to. Still do. My blood is throbbing hot through my veins from being so close to Red and from remembering the sight of her stuffing that clutch of panties into her duffel bag. Imaging those lacy things on her, barely covering her plump ass, has me wanting to charge into that hotel and bust down her hotel room door.
“I don’t blame you, brother. She’s an attractive piece, you know? But that’s not what we’re here to do. We’re on a clean-up job. We have to interrogate her and then deal out a bit of justice to whoever it is that has it in for us. Getting your dick wet isn’t part of the question.”
“I’m still on board with the plan, Creole.”
“You sure? Cause even over the phone, I am pretty sure I can hear that you’re hard.”
“It’s not possible for you to hear my erection over the phone,” I say, louder than I should. The waitress gives me a very confused look. “That’s not to say I even have an erection.”
I put my hand on the receiver and give the waitress a reassuring nod.
“It’s okay, ma’am. I’m just talking to a friend and he’s giving me a tough time about a job I’m supposed to do. I promise you, I’m not hard right now. Well, no harder than normal.”
“Sir, if you keep talking about your erection, I’m going to ask you to leave,” she says.
“Last time, I promise,” I reply, then I put my phone back to my ear. “She left before I could get to her. I followed her to this hotel, the Redwood Rest Inn, I’m going to stay on her.”
“Do that. But keep your distance for now, until we can actually find a time pick up this woman and find out what she knows. You with me, Riot?”
“One hundred percent.”
I hang up, put a couple bills on the table for the coffee, and head towards the hotel across the street. The woman at the front desk, who looks so tired she could sleep for a week straight, barely glances up at me as I approach. There’s a telenovela playing on her computer screen.
“Can I help you?” she says, still not looking up from the screen.
“You know that redhead that came in here earlier and booked a room?”
“Uh-huh.”
I put a handful of cash on the desk in front of her. It’s more than triple the room rate.
“Give me the room right next to hers.”
Chapter Seven
Emma
I think I sleep a few hours that night. Which is about a decade short of how much I really need. I wake up with the worst hangover I’ve ever had in my life, my eyeballs and my joints feel like they’re wrapped in sandpaper and just the act of getting out of bed hurts. There are plenty of times in my life that I’ve drunk more than I did last night, but there are few events in my life that can match up to the sheer fuckery of what happened to me the night before.
Aside from my ex, who I’m sure is still out there, somewhere, wishing me dead, just how many people are trying to kill me?
I turn on the shower and step under the water and start to put the pieces together and hope that the lukewarm rusty water spraying from the shower head is enough to wash away some of last night’s pain.
You know you’re at a bad point in your life when most of your morning hangover shower is spent figuring out your enemies list.
At least I still have my job, I remind myself.
And I’m still alive.
And I still have my laptop and my van, so if worse comes to worst, I can pack up and go back on the road again. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve done that to get away from a violent asshole.
Or many violent assholes, in this case.
“Seriously, Emma, this was supposed to be the start of the good chapter in your life,” I say to myself as I throw on some of the clothes I took with me and make myself a pot of hotel coffee, coffee that I’m sure is going to taste like watered-down dirt. “You have an actual, real job. You got away from Dillon. You have your own apartment. You even made a couple of friends from your support group. And then you have to go witness a murder. What the fuck happened?”
I get dressed and take my first drink of the coffee.
It tastes like broken dreams and desperation.
I finish the first cup and pour myself another. It’s all I’ve got, unfortunately.
Maybe the coffee will be better at the hotel breakfast.
I grab my laptop bag — I don’t need it for work, but there’s no way I’m leaving it unattended in this fleabag hotel room — and head down to breakfast.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
The words leave my mouth the moment I enter the dirty breakfast room.
The same guy from last night is there. The one with the name that’s actually a verb. Riot.
He sets the newspaper he’s reading — a yellowed edition of the Wall Street Journal — to the side and smiles at me. “Good morning, Red.”
“No, don’t you ‘good morning’ me. What the fuck are you doing here?”
I march past the stale bagels, microwaved pancakes, and soft, squiggly bacon that comprises the breakfast buffet and angrily sit down across from him.
“I’m eating breakfast, that’s what I’m doing,” he says, taking a bite out of a bagel. “You know, they’ve got a pretty nice setup here.”
“Nice? Riot, this place is a shithole. The food sucks, my room smells like an old woman’s closet, and they charge by the hour.”
“By the hour isn’t so bad. What if you get in late somewhere and only need to crash for a short time? Sounds like a convenience to me.”
He’s so honest in trying to make me feel better about the shitty situation I’m living in that it hurts my brain reconciling the man sitting across from me with the man who beat the everliving shit out of that intruder last night. He’s the most fearsome teddy bear I’ve ever met.
“That still doesn’t explain why you’re here.”
“You’re in danger. I told you I’d let you go, but I didn’t say I wouldn’t follow you.”
“Your literalism is too much for my brain right now,” I say, standin
g up and walking towards the coffee dispenser. I pour myself a cup — the coffee is much better down here — and try to force my brain to think through the hangover. I’m flattered that Riot actually cares about my safety — and it doesn’t hurt that he’s easy on the eyes — but this is all too much.
It was just weeks ago that I landed my first real job in a long time, after spending months on the road moving from place to place, doing whatever freelance work I could scrounge up on my laptop. I’m just now starting to put a life of my own together after escaping my controlling and abusive ex, and now it’s all falling to pieces again.
I finish my cup of coffee, pour myself another, grab a bagel, and sit down next to Riot.
“Riot, I’m going to be honest with you because I’ve learned that, when the world is going to shit around you, the best thing to do is be honest with yourself and with others about what you want,” I say. “I don’t want anything to do with any of this. I want my independence. I want a calm, peaceful life of my own. And here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to go talk to the cops later today. I’m going to tell them what I saw. And I’m going to do whatever I have to do to move on.”
He nods thoughtfully and runs a hand through his messy blond hair and looks at me with blue eyes that just melt me with their intensity. “Red, I wish I could tell you that you’re going to get what you want. But you’re in way over your head. You need me.”
“I need you?”
“Unless you have a death wish. I’m trying to be polite here, giving you a choice, but you’re testing my patience. If you need to know more, then here’s what I can tell you: I’m not going to just sit back and let you get yourself hurt. I’m not wired that way; I saw you were in trouble and I couldn’t help myself: I had to get involved.”
I hate that part of me recognizes the truth in what he’s saying. It would be so much easier to have a man like him in my corner, and I don’t think there’s a thing on earth that would make me afraid if I were wrapped comfortably in his arms.
But I’ve learned I can’t let myself think that way. The last time I fell for a man like him, it ended in bruises and fear.
I can’t let myself go down that road.
At least he says it in a way that tells me he knows it’s not what I want to hear.
For a brawny, tattooed biker, he’s being a lot gentler than I’d expect.
“No. I’m going to do this on my own.”
He raises an eyebrow and surprise wrinkles his tanned, ruggedly handsome face. “There’s nothing wrong with having friends and family at your back. Especially in a time like this.”
“And that’s you? What makes you think that? Because I’m some woman in danger? You don’t know what I’ve dealt with. I know my friends and family. I know the kind of good people I want beside me. The thugs in your MC aren’t a part of that.”
He shrugs and doesn’t even look the smallest bit discouraged.
It pisses me off even more.
I finish my bagel, leave my empty coffee cup on the table next to me, and head out the door. I’ve got to get to work. I need something steady and boring to focus on.
Halfway on my drive to work, I begin to sense that something’s wrong. It starts with a feral, chugging roar — a gasoline-fueled monster of a bike that tails along behind me during my commute.
I try to ignore it at first. I don’t recognize the man on the bike or his patch, he’s not a Rebel Rider, so maybe he’s not involved. Maybe I’m just hyper-sensitive right now and he’s just a regular biker going about his day. Maybe he’s not actually following me.
But I can only lie to myself so long.
And my illusion evaporates the second he flashes a gun at me and motions for me to pull over.
Chapter Eight
Emma
Brutal.
Sinister.
Terrifying.
A monster clothed in the skin of a man.
The first things that flash through my mind as I pull my old van off the road and into an empty industrial parking lot.
That, and that I wish Riot were here.
If only I’d have been able to make it another couple miles, I’d be safe at work.
Instead, I’m alone with this man.
He pulls his bike up next to my van and waves for me to get out.
I know when to argue and I know when to shut the fuck up and obey. This is one of those times. In one look, he lets me know he won’t hesitate to kill me if I get on his bad side.
“You Emma Harper?” He says, grunting as he maneuvers his bulk off the bike. He’s got to be in his late forties or early fifties, heavily muscled, but with a bit of a gut that only adds to his massively muscular look. There’s grey in his goatee, and, when he takes his helmet off, I can see his head is shaved bald.
“Yes.”
“My name is David Langston. You got a second to talk? It’s important.”
I blink. One second, he looks like the grim reaper on a motorcycle, which would match up with the patch on his cut, and now he’s asking permission to talk to me. What the hell is going on?
“You flashed a gun at me.”
“Had to get your attention somehow, sweetheart. You looked a bit distracted.”
“Well, you have it. Now, what do you want? I have to get to work.”
“I know you’re going to be talking to the cops later today. About the murder you saw at the port offices.”
“How do you know that?”
He pauses and absentmindedly cracks his knuckles. “Word gets around. I run a bar called The Devil’s Garage on the other side of the bay. Lot of bikers pass through there, and a lot of bikers talk after they’ve had a few too many. I tend to listen.”
“Okay, Mr. Langston, thanks for telling me that there’s a whole bunch of creepy guys out there talking about me,” I say. “How does this concern you?”
“I wanted to give you a warning. The men who were murdered last Friday night worked for the Rebel Riders MC. And now I hear they’ve been sniffing around you, too,” He says as he pulls a business card out from his wallet and hands it to me. His voice is shaking with barely suppressed rage. “That MC murdered a friend of mine, a man I rode nomad with for fifteen years before he settled down in Crescent Falls.”
“I’m sorry for your friend,” I say, not knowing what else to say. “I’m really not trying to get involved in any of this.”
“Just be careful what you talk about to the cops. You don’t want to end up getting yourself involved in MC business like this, because I’m sure you can figure out what they do to people they think are rats,” he says, and my eyes get wide at the implied threat and the incongruity of this man — who looks like the walking, talking embodiment of a death threat — telling me to be careful. “If you ever need help, just call me. Any time, day or night. My number’s on the card. I mean it. Look, I’m not trying to put you in a tough spot here. I just think you could use someone in your corner when the time gets tough.”
I look down at it, glancing over the name and number. Just as stunning as his sincerity in telling me to keep safe is the fact that this biker has an honest-to-God business card.
“Thank you, Mr. Langston.”
“You can call me ‘Fury’,” he says.
“I’d rather not. I’d better get to work now. But thank you for the advice,” I say, wanting to get the hell out of here as quick as possible.
He waves to me as I get back in my car and finish the rest of my drive in to work completely bewildered.
Work goes by in a blur. Everyone seems to be going through the motions, the entire office feels like it’s under a cloud, with the murders that took place not thirty steps from the front door. I make a call to Hannah’s cousin as soon as I get in, and then to a lawyer she refers me to. Within the first hour. I’ve got representation and a time set up to go talk to the cops. By noon I’m able to tell Gaby in HR that I’m leaving to go give my statement to the police. She’s more than understanding.
Office
r Brodeur is the first to greet me when I get to the police station. He hands me a cup of coffee and a donut as soon as I say hello.
“I figured you might need a pick-me-up,” he says. “I doubt this was a restful weekend.”
“It wasn’t. Several times, I felt like I was going to die. So, how is this going to work?”
“We’re going to sit you down in one of the conference rooms. You’ll provide your recollection of events from that night. Answer any questions we might have pertaining to circumstances around your co-worker’s death, and then you’ll sign off on your statement. It’s pretty straightforward. Do you have representation?”
I nod. “My lawyer should be here any minute.”
As if on cue, he comes through the sliding glass doors of the police station. He looks about forty, with thinning dark hair combed back, and he’s wearing a well-tailored suit, carrying a leather briefcase. He gives the appearance of being a lot more expensive than the rate that Hannah’s cousin quoted me, and it makes me think that Hannah is probably pulling strings on the back end to get me a discount.
“Ms. Harper?” He says, holding his hand out to me in greeting. “I’m Greg Everton, we spoke over the phone.”
I shake it back. “Nice to meet you. Is there anything we need to clear up before we sit down with the police?”
“Is everything you told me over the phone about the event you witnessed correct?”
“It is.”
“Then I think we’re ready.”
Officer Brodeur leads the two of us to a small room where Officer Fischer is already waiting for us, with a notepad, pen, and a tape recorder on the table in front of him.
“Take a seat, Ms. Harper,” he says, his goatee moving into a frown. He looks especially assholish today. “Let’s get this started.”
I sit down opposite Officer Brodeur and sip on my coffee while I work through the basics of my statement. With the tape recorder running, I go over my memories of the events in the lead-up to my boss’s murder — working on the reports, how I stayed late to finish marketing materials, how eventually it was just the two of us in the office. Officer Fischer takes down my statement by hand and Brodeur sits across from me, providing prompting questions along the way.
