by Marla Monroe
As she watched, the two men walked the woman along the walls until they got to the exit, then took her outside. She didn’t like what she was seeing one bit.
“Vernon. A blonde-haired woman was just escorted outside between two men wearing a green plaid shirt and a green T-shirt. She wasn’t walking under her own steam, and I think this is the second one they’ve taken outside. Check it out.” Delta looked at Butch. “We’re going to the bathroom to make sure what I think is going on isn’t.”
Walker frowned. “You stay here, and I’ll take care of it.”
Delta was already up though and wasn’t about to let them screw this up if she was right. They’d just move to another bar. She wasn’t looking to kick them out of her bar. She was looking to stop them altogether.
“I’m going to the bathroom. You can escort me, or you can wait here. Your choice. This is serious, and I’m not letting it continue.” She started to walk off, but Butch took her hand.
“I’ll take you. Walker will follow behind and observe to see if he needs to intervene.” Butch nodded at Walker.
Walker wasn’t the least bit happy with it from the look on his face, but Delta didn’t really care. Spooking them before they had the proof would be wrong.
When she approached the hall that led to the men’s and women’s bathrooms, the man who’d been leaning against the wall stepped in front of the doorway.
“Sorry, the bathrooms are being cleaned. Give it thirty minutes or so and you can come back,” he said.
She elbowed Butch when he started to speak. She needed to handle this.
“Oh. Do you work here?” she asked.
He grinned. “Yeah. I’m in charge of the joint. Don’t want someone to fall and hurt themselves while the floors are wet. You understand how expensive insurance can be for a place like this.”
“I sure do, since I run this bar and you don’t. Butch, I think he needs locking up somewhere for impersonation and probably being an accomplice to what is going on back there.” She quickly sidestepped the wide-eyed man as Walker strong-armed him toward the bar.
“Delta, wait!” Butch snarled as she skipped the women’s bathroom and barged into the men’s.
“Butch!” she screamed as the three men raping a woman while she struggled against them looked up at her cursing.
“Get the hell away from her right the fuck now!” Delta yelled.
As she took a step toward the woman, one of the men grabbed at her, but she’d had many years of practice avoiding drunk bikers and would-be attackers. Delta stepped into him and used all of her momentum to rack him in the balls with her knee, then turned and kicked another man in his kneecap with her boots. She didn’t bother waiting to see if it put him down or not. She had faith that Butch would have her back.
The third man backed into one of the stalls with his hands up. Delta growled at him, then ignored him as she pulled the crying nearly unconscious woman into her arms and held her. At some point, someone handed her the woman’s top. Delta helped her into it, but it took her and another woman who turned out to be Kaila, their waitress, to get the poor woman dressed again.
Delta and Butch watched as the paramedics finished securing the now unconscious woman onto the gurney and rolled her down the hall toward the outside door and waiting ambulance. It broke Delta’s heart that at least two but probably more like ten or so women in the last month had more than likely been gang raped then dumped somewhere to sleep it off and wake up not knowing where they were or what happened to them.
“Are you okay, Delta?” Butch asked with worry etched on his face.
They’d moved her to the office as soon as the paramedics left and the Sheriff’s Department took over the crime scene.
“I’m fine. Did Vernon find the other woman?” she asked.
“Yeah. The ambulance out front will carry both of them to the hospital. The sheriff’s office is interviewing everyone still here,” he said.
“What about the ones we caught?” she asked, praying they hadn’t walked away.
“You don’t have to worry about those assholes. Walker and Vernon took care of them until the law arrived.”
“There were three of them in here, the guy at the end of the hall, and at least two others with the first woman,” she reminded him.
“They have them all. You did some damage to two of them, and you had the third one so scared that he zipped his dick up in his pants and had to go in the back of a sheriff’s office car to the emergency room,” Butch said with a chuckle. “They were giving him hell and planned to hit every pothole they could find on the way.”
“Sorry bastards. I bet they drugged the women’s drinks, helped them to the bathroom, then when they got down the hall, steered them into the men’s room and ganged up on them. There were more than those six guys involved. I hope the ones we did catch rat out the others,” she said.
Butch chuckled. “Don’t worry. I can almost promise the guy with his penis in need of penance will sing like a soprano.”
“That was pathetic,” Delta said with a smile, the first one she’d managed since she’d first noticed what was going on.
“Were there only two women?” Butch asked, snapping her back to reality.
“I think so, but there might have been one more that I missed. The man guarding the hall hadn’t been there very long, or I would have already noticed him.”
“Um, here’s some soda water to clean your blouse before you wash it,” Kaila said, interrupting them when she hurried into the room holding out a clean towel and a glass.
“Thank you, Kaila. Have you ever seen those men here before?” she asked the young woman.
“Yeah, I have, but I didn’t know what was going on. I promise I didn’t,” she said, shaking her hands. “I would have told someone, but we stay so busy running drinks that I never noticed what was happening.”
“It’s okay, Kaila. I’m not saying you knew anything. I was just wondering how long they’ve been operating around here. Where do you and the other waitresses spend your breaks? Out back or is there a little break area?” Delta asked.
“Um, we don’t really get breaks. If we’re slow enough to take a break, they usually send one of us home early,” she said. “I’ve got to go now. We’re cleaning up since they shut us down early.”
“Thanks for helping me with that woman, Kaila. That was really nice of you to do.”
The waitress just nodded and hurried out.
“Ready to talk to the law now?” Butch asked.
“Have they already talked to Walker and Vernon?” she asked.
“Yeah. You’re up next. Ever talked much with law?” he asked.
“Yeah, more often than I want to think about.” She sighed and let him lead her back out front where a sort of controlled chaos swirled around her.
Walker hurried over and kissed her cheek before smiling at her. “I’m so damn proud of you I just might buy everyone a cigar when we get home.”
Delta was sure her mouth dropped all the way to her knees before she snapped it closed again. She hadn’t expected for him to say anything much less compliment her. If she were honest about it, she would have expected him to fuss at her for getting involved instead of letting them handle it all.
Obviously she wasn’t reading them right. They didn’t act like any of the MC clubs she’d grown up around, and yet they operated almost identically if you didn’t count the ménage lifestyle they all seemed to embrace. While the men were obviously in charge, their women still held some power over them, and the men actually seemed to value them to some degree.
Delta had only been there a day, yet in that short period of time, she’d come to realize just how easy it would be to get absorbed into their way of life and probably even be happy there.
That probably worried her more than anything did, maybe even the situation she’d run from in the first place. She had plans and goals for herself. She wanted a normal life with a thoughtful husband, two kids, a house, and maybe a cat. She lo
ved cats. Yet already she was seeing a different possibility among the type of people she’d run from most of her life. Yeah, maybe worried wasn’t the right word. Maybe it was more like scared. Delta was afraid that she might get caught up in life here in Reo with Butch and Walker. She realized it was a very real possibility.
Chapter Six
Walker paced as they waited for Reece to arrive the next morning. The rest of them were waiting on the vice president to start Church. Dom had sent him somewhere to make some inquires earlier, and he hadn’t returned yet.
“Sit down, man. You’re making me dizzy,” Turk said with a grin.
He just scowled at the other man, but instead of continuing he leaned against the wall to wait. He just couldn’t be still. They hadn’t made it back to the clubhouse until nearly three in the morning. Delta had showered and made out her bed on the floor. When they both had finished in the bathroom, Butch had picked up a soundly sleeping Delta and settled her in the bed between them. Walker had thoroughly enjoyed sleeping next to her and had been content to wake up with her draped over his chest.
Neither he nor Butch had wanted to get up to attend the meeting Reece had texted them about before they’d made it back. At least he’d made it for a halfway decent hour instead of the crack of dawn.
Leaving her in the bed had been tough. He’d wanted to be there when she woke up, but that wasn’t happening. He had no doubt she would be pissed at them when she did wake up. He was prepared for all kinds of fireworks when they got out of Church. In fact, he was kind of looking forward to them.
“Reece is on his way through the gates now,” Dom told them, looking down at his cell phone.
Five minutes later, the vice president strode in after dropping his weapons in the basket out front where Rhodes stood guard. The serious expression on his face told them all he’d found out what they’d needed to know. Reece closed and locked the door before taking his place next to Dominic.
“Church is in session.” Dom banged his fist on the table. Everyone followed suit. “First of all, good work last night, guys. Not only did we end up with excellent intelligence, but a boil on our asses was removed.”
“Have to give the majority of the credit to Delta. She called our attention to all of it. She’s got an eye for detail and the little things,” Walker told them.
Dom nodded. “Good to know. Let’s go over what we know from last night, and then we’ll move on to what we’ve found out since then.”
Vernon reviewed what he’d found out about the gangbangers scoping out the place and the Spiders running through. Then Butch talked through the episode with the women with Walker following up on the drug trade going on at the bar.
“Okay, Turk, what did you find out?” Dom asked.
“First, I’m almost positive the bangers are from San Antonio off of the main group in Dallas. They’re known as Lobos del Diablo, devil wolves. They’ve got a foothold in drug trafficking and have recently started dabbling in human trafficking mostly with young boys right now.” Turk’s face contorted into a look of disgust.
“Have there been attempts by them to contact any of the MCs in the area?” Dom asked.
“Not that I can find, but I’m still waiting on some of my contacts to get back to me. If there are, I’ll make sure you know right away,” Turk said.
“Anything else?” Dominic looked over at the other man.
“Not yet. There’s been no talk on the streets yet of them looking to branch out.”
“Reece, what did you learn?” Dom asked next.
“You were right. The drug they’re using is new and hasn’t been on the market as far as I could find. I think they’ve been experimenting with it at the bar to get it right. Two of them guys from the bar rolled, but neither of them really new much more than the other men involved in the testing. They didn’t know anything about who was funding the experiments or supplying it to the assholes trying it out for them,” Reece said.
“Son of a bitch!” Walker said. “They were using our bar to perfect a drug in order to rape women.”
Reece shook his head. “It’s worse than that. From what they can tell so far, and based on the women’s memory of what happened, it causes amnesia, and if they were cleaned up after it was all over, they would never have known they’d even been raped. This drug would work equally well on a man as a woman. It isn’t designed for rape alone. It’s simply designed to make the person follow whoever is leading them, then wipe their memory when they wake up hours later.”
“Why would they want a drug like that if not for rape?” Butch asked. “They’ve already got Rohypnol, their date rape drug for that.”
“I’m not sure, unless it’s still in the testing phases and not perfected yet. Supposedly the men using it were supposed to observe the victims and report on everything that happened. They were supposed to perform three tests, then they could do whatever they wanted after that as long as their victims were watched to see how they reacted when they came around,” Reece told them.
“I’m almost scared to ask what those three things were,” Vernon said.
“Tell them to do something that normally they wouldn’t consider doing. Either make a small cut on their body somewhere or stick a pin in them somewhere to see how they reacted to pain. Ask them who they were and where they were. This tells us that they are trying to make these people puppets for them without being able to identify who gave them their instructions,” Reece said.
“Imagine telling some teenager to rob a store or a person, then bring everything back to them. If they got caught, they wouldn’t be able to tell them anything. If the police were smart, they’d just let them go and see where they went, but who knows if that would work once they got caught,” Dom pointed out.
“We need to find out who’s cooking this stuff up and who their backers are to get them out of our territory,” Reece told them.
“The sheriff’s office knows we aren’t part of it and wants it stopped. Not everyone will see it that way,” Dom said.
“So what do you want us to do other than keep our eyes and ears open?” Irish asked.
“There isn’t really anything we can do other than that,” Dom told them. “Until we get more information, we’re all on alert. We don’t want this going on in our bar or in our territory. With no idea who is actually behind it, we’re running blind. If you hear anything, no matter how weird, we all talk about it. This is massive and can blow up in our faces if we’re not careful.” Dom looked around the table at each of them.
Walker didn’t like the sound of that one bit. It was already bothering him that Delta would be running the bar where it had been going on. He would talk with Butch to see what sort of security they would need around the place when she was there. Hell, Walker wished they would call the entire thing off with her, but he knew Dom wouldn’t do that. They needed that bar making money for the club.
He understood the need for it to be a moneymaker, but with someone he was fast becoming attached to, Walker worried that something would happen to her. They were in a particularly precarious situation. As much as he would like to put a dozen men around her to keep her safe that would be overkill and using club resources for themselves. They had to remember that there were others to think about including their president and vice pres’s old lady, Raven.
She’d been in danger when she’d first arrived, as well, with a deranged ex-fiancé hunting her down. They couldn’t provide Delta with any more protection than they’d provided her. Besides, he thought, Delta would chafe at anything they did do to keep her safe. She was a prickly little thing with a sharp tongue and intelligence to boot.
“What about the bar? Is Delta still going to run it? When do you plan for her to step into the role?” Butch asked.
Walker focused on his best friend again. He was anxious to hear what Dom would say. Hopefully he’d call it all off and decide it was too dangerous, but Walker was sure that wasn’t going to happen.
“The bar is a crucial piece
to both tracking this new drug and our profitability in an attempt to go mainstream and avoid ending up in jail. While I don’t like the idea of Delta being in any more danger, we need this and from what Knuckles said, she’s damn good at managing. If that means extra security, then that’s what we’ll do. I’m leaving that up to you and Walker. Just remember that we have other areas to protect, too.” Dom gave them both a serious look.
“Who’s going to do the run to pick up the runner from Austin? Are we going to let that one go?” Butch asked.
Walker winced. He’d forgotten all about the bail jumper they’d agreed to track before Delta had arrived the day before. It felt like a week had passed since then.
“No, we agreed, so we’re going to do it. Besides, he’s headed this way according to Andy. Has family out here,” Dominic said.
Reece spoke up next. “We’re going to Clay and Tiger to grab him. They’ve been on enough runs with us to manage on their own. They aren’t actually newbies, anyway. Our main concern with them is that they keep their noses clean.”
“Yeah, a lot of the others don’t exactly trust them yet,” Butch agreed. “It’s not easy to trust another club that’s been running illegals all over the northwest. I know they helped us out, but accepting them into The Ghost Riders has stirred up some shit.”
“We know,” Dom said. “Reece and I knew it would, but we need more riders to maintain our territory. They wanted to make the move down here and have proven themselves twice now. I won’t be completely convinced of their loyalty until time has passed with no trouble, but trouble within the club is natural. It gets out of control, and I’ll put a stop to it.”
Walker nodded, as did everyone else around the table. Most of the ones who were complaining were new themselves though they hadn’t come from other clubs. Dom’s move to bring them in was a bold move that didn’t happen often in a club. One reason was that unless your club disbanded for some reason, you were in a club for life. It just wasn’t normal to change clubs. Sure, affiliated clubs sometimes moved members around to help each other, but that was the extent to which that happened. Only time would tell if Dom and Reece had made the right decision.
