by Naomi West
But if Cassidy wants a taste of the outlaw life, she better be prepared for a mouthful… in more ways than one.
I don’t do things halfway.
I won’t be content to kiss her and send her back home to Daddy’s house.
Not in the slightest.
If she’s going to step into my world, she has to dive in headfirst.
She’ll spill blood.
She’ll face fear.
And she’ll submit to my commands – every. Last. One.
Chapter One
Cassidy
There was a particular look that my dad got on his face when he was suspicious of me. It seemed to have been on his face permanently since I turned sixteen.
"What are you doing here?" he said. Which is how every daughter wants to be greeted by her father when she turns up unannounced.
"That's a nice way to say hello, " I replied, instantly on the defensive.
"Well," my dad seemed to regret his rudeness and back-pedaled a bit. "It's not that I'm not pleased to see you Cassidy—of course I am, and your sister will be too. It's just that ... it's a bit unexpected, that's all."
"I thought I'd surprise you," I said. "I didn't expect the third-degree just for coming home for a bit."
"You're right. I'm sorry. It was just ..."
"I know. Unexpected."
"And, in the past, when you have come home unexpectedly ..." Dad left the sentence dangling, but I wasn't in the mood to let him off the hook.
"What?"
He sighed and rolled his eyes. "It's always been because you want something. Because you'd gotten yourself into trouble and needed me to bail you out. Literally on one occasion. You know how embarrassing that is for a sheriff? To have to go and get his daughter out of jail? Can you imagine?"
"Yes. Because you've told me how embarrassing it was once a week ever since. If I ever get married, I imagine that story will be part of your toast at my wedding."
"Well..."
"Why do you always have to expect the worst of me?" I decided to go on the offensive.
"Well ..."
"Why do you have to take everything I do and make it into something bad? I'm not a complete screw up, you know. I had a couple of free days, and I thought it would be nice to visit my dad and my sister, and before I even get in the door you're accusing me of stuff I didn't do."
My dad hung his head in shame, and I savored the moment. Of course, that moment wasn't going to last because dad was absolutely right. I had come home because my dumb-ass ex-boyfriend skipped town with my rent money, and I lost the apartment where we were living— which would teach me to date someone who called himself 'Logan,’ just because he'd seen X-Men too many times. Eventually, obviously, I would have to tell my dad the truth—just as soon as I'd worked out what truth I was going to tell him, because the actual one didn't appeal—but, until then, a little guilt would do him good. Just because he happened to be right this time (and I guess most other times) didn't give him the right to be forever thinking the worst of me. It wasn't fair, and it was no way for a father to treat his daughter. I was twenty-three years old, and I could look after myself, despite all evidence to the contrary.
"I'm sorry," Dad mumbled, half to himself. It was killing him to have to say it.
Maybe it was a little bit mean-spirited to keep him thinking that had he misjudged me, but given the number of times he'd managed to make me feel bad about letting him down, I decided that he had it coming. You would think that he would have been pleased that, for once, his youngest daughter hadn't done something stupid, but no. The truth was that he liked to think of me as a child in need of guidance and discipline, rather than the adult that I had become without him noticing.
I found myself wondering how long I could keep this little deception going and hoped that it would be long enough to come up with a really good excuse for losing the apartment—one that put me in a good light and avoided the necessity of mentioning assholes called Logan (whose real name was Gregory).
Just as I was thinking this, my big sister, Riley, stuck her head into the room, holding the phone with one hand over the receiver.
"Hey, Cass, your landlord wants to know where you want your stuff sent."
The look of triumph on my dad's face as he turned back to me was far worse to endure than losing the apartment. Afraid of being caught enjoying the situation, he quickly switched back to disappointed, another expression I'd seen way too much of over the years. He shook his head despondently. "What is it this time? Another dodgy boyfriend, or are you running a meth lab?"
Dad always loved to exaggerate where I was concerned. It was never enough that my boyfriends were ill-chosen (and I would have been the first to admit that I'd made mistakes), the way he told it they were criminals, conmen, gangsters and hoodlums. The fact that I had never gotten into drugs didn't matter, 'meth lab' was still the first place his mind went. I sometimes wondered if he would have been happier if I'd gone full crack-whore just to prove him right.
"Ask him to send it here," I said to Riley, who was now wearing an expression of extreme apology as she realized what she had inadvertently done. "Temporarily," I added, for Dad's benefit. "I won't be staying long."
"And where will you be going?"
"I just need some time to earn a bit, so I can find another place to rent."
Dad shook his head once again. "Maybe you'd be better off stopping here on a longer-term basis."
"No!" No way was I moving back home.
But Dad went on. "Just until you've matured a bit."
"I'm twenty-three!"
"Only in years," my dad said unhelpfully. "In behavior, you're still about sixteen."
"Dad!"
"How many apartments have you been through now? And it always ends the same way."
The first I had lost because I just ran out of money. I think it happens to a lot of people having to pay rent and bills on their own for the first time—you just lose track. The second one I lost when I held a party and a stray cigarette fell down the back of the bed.We put the fire out before it had done any real damage, but the landlord still threw me out. The third time, I moved in with a boyfriend and, a week later, found him in bed with someone else. Actually, that happened the fifth time as well. The fourth wasn't really my fault; the work dried up. It was hard to make a living as an artist, especially out in the country. That was why I kept trying to move to the city, but, of course, then the rents were more expensive and there were more of what my father referred to as 'temptations.’ Which basically meant boys and booze, which was what the sixth and seventh apartments were lost to, respectively. The eighth, as you already know, was down to a jackass called Logan.
"I have bad luck," I said.
My dad nodded. "Yes, you do. You have the bad luck to take after your mother."
Anger flashed through me. It was hard to say what actually made me angrier, the fact that he was taking cheap shots at my mom, or the fact that he was comparing me to the irresponsible adulteress who abandoned me along with the rest of her family. There were always complex feelings to deal with when the subject of my mother came up.
"I am nothing like Mom!" I yelled back at my Dad.
"Then stop acting like her. And stop shouting. While you're living under my roof, you will treat me with a bit of respect."
"I'm twenty-three!"
"That's a reason to be more respectful, not less. Behave like a grown up, damn you!"
"This is why Mom left!" I snapped at him. I knew that this was the weapon that always struck home. We all knew that Mom had been a loose cannon, that she had cheated on Dad, and been pretty disinterested in her two daughters. Yet there was always a fear in Dad, packaged away somewhere towards the back of his mind, that he had somehow driven her to it. And I wasn't afraid to use it against him. "You wouldn't let her live the way she wanted, and it broke her spirit."
I saw my dad's face flush and knew that I had hurt him. I had also angered him. "How dare you?" His voice was low a
nd thick, as it always was when he was really furious. "How dare you defend her and take her side? I'm the one who raised you."
"And what a brilliant job you've made of it! You must be so proud!"
Dad drew himself up. "You may think that you're too big to be put across my knee, Cassidy, but I'll prove that wrong if I have to."
Before I had a chance to answer, Riley stepped back into the room, judiciously putting herself between us.
"I don't want to interrupt but, you know, it's Cassidy's first day back, and you want to save something for tomorrow. I mean, she hasn't even got out of the doorway yet."
I glanced down at where my bags lay by the door, where Dad had put them when I came in. We'd gone from arrival to arguing in less than five minutes, picking up pretty much exactly where we'd left off when I moved into apartment number eight a month ago. I hadn't yet even had the chance to unpack the bags, which contained the majority of my worldly possessions (except my underwear which, slightly worryingly, Logan had taken with him).
Inasmuch as I took after Mom—I certainly looked like her—Riley took after Dad. I wasn't all Mom—or at least, I certainly hoped that I wasn't. Likewise, Riley wasn't all Dad. She was sweet and funny (which Dad could be in his day), and she was a natural peacemaker (which Dad was too, when dealing with anyone other than his own family).Unlike Dad, though, she tried to see the good in everyone and every situation. That was perhaps why she always went to bat for me, which otherwise would have been a little outside her nature, because where Riley took after Dad the most was in her adherence to, and belief in, The Rules.
You could actually hear the capitals when Dad talked about The Rules, just like when he talked about The Law, and Riley was the same. Mom was, by nature, a rule-breaker and a rebel. I guess it was a measure of how much she and Dad loved each other that two such different people were able to make things work for long enough to have two kids. I took after Mom in that respect—as soon as someone told me what I wasn’t allowed to do, or what I wasn’t allowed to have, then that was the thing I wanted to do or to have. Words like ‘don't' or 'prohibited' made my palms itch and gave me a hot little tingle inside, and don't even get me started on 'forbidden'. Perhaps it was childish, but that was how I was wired.
A lifetime of enforcing the law had made Sheriff Ben Dupont (aka Dad) a stickler for The Rules, ably assisted by his own dad (dear old Pops), a properly hard bastard who drummed respect and obedience into his son with his belt. Dad was never like that, and I sometimes wondered if he regretted going too easy on us because of his own upbringing. But then, Riley and I were raised the same way, with the same rules and the same discipline, and look how that turned out.
I used to think that Riley was lucky. Unlike Dad, she didn't have obedience of The Rules instilled into her by force, nor did she believe in it as an article of faith the way he did. She was born obedient. It made her happy to follow the straight and narrow and do as she was told. Like I said: lucky. What made Riley happy made me infuriated, and what thrilled me scared the pants off Riley. We couldn't have been more different in that respect, one of those cruel tricks that genetics from time to time played. All Riley had to do to please Dad was to be herself, while, conversely, nothing made him angrier than me being myself.
Despite all this, Riley was my best friend in the world. She stuck up for me in everything and encouraged me to be myself and follow my own path. The fact that following my own path was in direct contravention to everything she believed never bothered her. She just wanted me to be happy. The world would be a better place if everyone could be a bit more like Riley. Come to think of it, our house would be a better place if I could be a bit more like her.
"You know what I think?" said Riley, bright as ever. "I think Cass could use some cheering up."
"Cheering up?" Dad looked as if Riley had just suggested robbing a bank.
"She's lost a boyfriend and a home all in one day."
Dad rolled his eyes. "Well she's had plenty of practice at it. How down can she be?"
"Let's have a girls' night out!" Riley said, ignoring my dad.
A smile burst instantly across my face. She couldn't have said anything better. Just the idea of going out for a drink and a dance with my big sis made the whole day seem better.
"No."
But, of course, there was always Sheriff Ben Dupont to put a stop to any suggestion.
"Why not?" I snapped.
"Is there a problem, Dad?" Riley asked, more democratically.
"Battle Pride's back in town," Dad said darkly.
"Oh," Riley said. "I guess ... maybe another night."
"What? Why?" I asked. "What's Battle Pride?"
"A biker gang," Riley explained. "Bad guys. And they hang around all the bars and clubs. We couldn't be sure of not running into them."
"They sell bootleg hooch," Dad went on.
"Isn't Prohibition over?" I said, trying not to sound too sarcastic.
"Illegal booze, then." I saw the irritation in Dad's face, but he was more conciliatory for Riley's sake. "Dangerously strong stuff. Even if you don't run into them, there's a chance you may run into their product. I've got a list of places they've been selling to, but there's no knowing if it's complete. While they're around, I don't want you two going out on the town."
Riley nodded. "It sounds like it's for the best. Let's make it a girls' night in!"
"Good idea," I said. But in the back of my mind I was already picturing a burly biker with tattoos all over him, plying me with drink and then ... Well, what happened then would be pretty much up to him.
# # #
It was about ten o'clock when my eyelids started to droop.
"Are you all right?" asked Riley, solicitously.
"I guess I'm a bit tired," I admitted. "It's been a long day, and we've had a bit to drink." No matter how much of a rebel I liked to think myself, I'd never been too rebellious to drink peach schnapps with my sister while watching Pretty in Pink.
"You want to call it a night?" suggested Riley.
"I think so."
Riley eyed me cautiously. "You sure you're okay?"
For a moment, I thought she had spotted that I was faking it. But, no; she was genuinely worried about me. That made me feel a little guilty, to know that I was deceiving my sister so I could sneak out. It wasn't even that I particularly wanted more to drink or to meet bikers. It was just that Dad had said it wasn't allowed, so out I had to go.
# # #
After Riley had headed back to her room, I waited a further half hour, then got dressed (fortunately I still had some underwear here which I had never got around to picking up). I slid the window open as quietly as I could. The tree outside had been my ticket to freedom so many times that I was surprised my dad had never cut it down. He probably thought he was cleverer than me—big mistake.
I shimmied down the tree and hurried to my car. With a grin plastered across my face, I turned the key in the ignition. Nothing. I tried again. Still nothing.
As quietly as I could, I got out and lifted the hood—you didn't grow up as a daughter of a single father without learning a thing or two about engines. One of the first things you learned was that a car need a battery to start.
Once again, Dad had just assumed the worst of me! How dare he!
Thinking fast, I hurried back to the house and slipped in the back door. There, on a hook in the kitchen, the keys for my Dad's truck ... did not hang. He had thought of everything. Which only made me angrier. Why the hell didn't he trust me?! Other parents didn't do this sort of thing! He didn't take these precautions for Riley! It was so unfair.
I headed back out. If I tried to get back to my room by going up the stairs, then Dad was sure to hear me, so my only option was back up the tree and to bed. If Riley was still awake, maybe I could tell her that I hadn't been able to sleep, and we could watch Dirty Dancing.
But, as I climbed into the tree, my night took a very different turn.
Chapter Two
Arc
her
The Dupont house was out in the country, and although I steered clear of the roads, there was little to no cover. So I was forced to ride with the lights off. In other circumstances, cross country biking by night would be a blast, the sort of thing Battle Pride might do to blow off steam some evening. But this wasn't about fun. It was all business, and I knew that if I made any noise, if I gave any sign that I was approaching—like crashing a bike into a Joshua tree—then it wouldn't just be my neck on the line.
Once I was within reasonable walking distance of the house I came to a halt, dismounted, and watched for a bit. Not a single light, and no sign of movement—though it was hard to see in the dark. It was now or never. Keeping low to the ground, I hurried forward—at first feeling like a soldier on a mission, and then feeling like a jackass imitating a soldier on a mission. According to the best information I had been able to gather, Sheriff Dupont's office was on the ground floor, left-hand side of the house. That was the place to start. If the book was anywhere, then surely that was where he would keep it. Unless the son of a bitch was sleeping with it under his pillow. That was a possibility. Dupont had been trying to put Battle Pride behind bars for so long that he was unlikely to take any chances. But, with few other options open to me, the office was the smart place to start.
