“Any chance the kitchen’s still open?”
The bartender looked over at the old, animated beer sign on the wall. It would be “vintage,” except Lilli was pretty sure it had been hanging exactly there since it had been brand new. There was a clock embedded in it. “Fifteen more minutes. What can I get ya?”
“Just a cheeseburger and fries. And a bottle of Bud. Thanks.” The busty bartender offered an approving nod, popped the top on a Bud, and handed it to her before she went back to push the swinging door to the kitchen open and yell in her order.
Lilli took a long swallow of the cold, soothing brew. Bud might not be the smoothest or the fanciest beer around, but it was the King of Beers, after all. She felt a tingle up her back and turned quickly to find the Biker Man coming up on her. Despite his general mien of menace, he wasn’t casting an especially aggressive vibe, so she leaned back on the bar and watched him come. He stopped directly in front of her and took a pull of his beer. He was wearing black leather cuffs on his wrists and three big silver rings on each large hand: thumb, middle finger, ring finger.
He was tall—really tall, at least six-five, maybe more. Broad shoulders, with the firm swell that indicated real definition under his kutte—a kutte with several patches on the front, one of which, on his right side, read “President.” Top of the food chain, then.
His beard was dark and full; his hair, in that thick braid halfway down his back, was also dark and full. Vivid green eyes. Long scar running up and across the left side of his face, from just under his nose to his temple.
He had her attention, definitely.
“You set?” His voice was deep and rumbly. Of course it was.
Lilli lifted her bottle and waved it a bit. “Yep. But thanks.”
He winked. “I’ll get the next one, then.” He took another swallow, killing his beer. Leaning in on her to set his empty on the bar, his head near her ear, he said, “I’m Isaac.” Lilli could smell the leather of his kutte.
When he stepped back, she smiled at him. “Hi, Isaac.” Without saying more, she drank some beer.
Isaac grinned. It was lopsided, lifting the right side of his face. Lilli liked a lopsided smile. “You know, when someone introduces himself, it’s customary to return the favor.” Still smiling, she raised her eyebrows, but said nothing.
“That how you’re playin’ it, huh? I guess I could call you Sport. That was you today, in that Camaro SS, right?”
“It was.” It would be silly to prevaricate here; the town wasn’t big enough to try to stay under the radar. But she wasn’t about to do more than answer his questions as minimally as possible until she had gotten a good read on him.
“Nice ride. Lotta car for a girl. You were at Mac’s. You movin’ to town?”
Lilli now understood that this was more than small talk going on here. He wasn’t just trying to get into her jeans—though she was sure he’d do that, too, if he could. He was feeling her out. His town. New resident. He was trying to understand why she was here, where she’d fit. Whether she was a threat.
“I am.”
“Not many people move to Signal Bend. If you’re looking for work, won’t find it.”
“I’m not.”
“Damn, girl. You got a two-word limit on your sentences or something?” Just then, her burger and fries came out. The bartender brought the food out in two red plastic baskets lined with red-and-white checked paper. She set ketchup, salt and pepper on the bar as well.
“Get ya anything else?”
“Get her another Bud, Rose. And me. And put it all on my tab, hon.”
Rose—the busty bartender with the big rose inked on her chest—gave Isaac a knowing grin. “You bet, Ike.”
Ike, huh? Lilli turned back to him. “Thanks, Ike.”
“It’s Isaac. Some around here call me Ike. Never liked it, but it stuck young. You call me Isaac.” Rose brought them fresh Buds as Isaac sat down on the stool next to hers and shook salt, pepper, and ketchup onto her fries. When she shot him an incredulous look, he grinned. “Hey—I paid for ‘em. You’re sharin’.”
Lilli conceded with a nod and proceeded to share her dinner with the tall, dark, and menacing biker who’d bought it for her.
“This your version of a Welcome Wagon? You share fries with all the new people in town?” She took a bite of her burger. Oh—it was really good. Just rare enough in the middle, nice and juicy. The bun was soft and fresh.
He grinned around a mouthful of fries. “Oh-ho! She speaks in complete sentences!” He finished chewing. “No, Sport. This is special, just for you.”
“And I warrant special treatment because . . .?”
“I like the look of . . . your ride.” With a shrug, he took the burger out of her hand and had a bite.
She looked down the bar at his MC brothers, all of whom were watching the show. Apparently their President sharing a nosh with the new girl in town was some kind of noteworthy. She’d known staying off the radar would be impossible, but she had hoped to keep a lower profile than this.
Looked like she was going to have to play things another way.
CHAPTER TWO
Isaac was interested.
The woman sitting next to him sharing her burger and fries was a knockout, but he didn’t think that’s really what had his interest. Sure, he’d looked her over good, and she was in his sweet spot—tall, shiny, dark brown hair pulled off her face and hanging down her back; lively light eyes, the color of which he couldn’t figure out. Great tits, just the hint of a swell of cleavage showing over the curved neckline of her shirt. She was simply dressed, too, in jeans, low-heeled black boots, a white t-shirt and a black leather jacket. The only jewelry he could see was a big silver ring on each middle finger and a pair of thin silver hoops just big enough to lie on her neck when she tilted her head. He bet that neck smelled nice.
Nothing on the left ring finger; he’d checked that out first thing.
He liked his women without a lot of frills. This one was gorgeous but didn’t look like it took her two hours to get that way. The kind of woman from whom he’d never hear the boner-killing plea, Watch my hair! Fuck, he hated women like that. He liked his fucks to get messy. So, yeah, he could sit back and look at her all day. But that’s not what had caught him.
He’d noticed her cage before he’d noticed her, when he, Len, and Showdown were on their way out of town earlier in the afternoon. That 68 Camaro was cherry. It was worth a lot of money, and it wasn’t so usual to see expensive cars around Signal Bend. Even the out-of-towners who came out on weekends to the shops on Main weren’t the ritzy “antiquing” types. The “Main Street Marketplace,” so-dubbed by the sad, little men of the sad, little Chamber of Commerce, was really junk shops. Permanent garage sales.
So a hot chick with money was at the one and only realtor in Signal Bend. That was worth a look. He’d decided he wanted to know more while they were still riding past her; he intended to put Bart on it in the morning. But now she was here at the bar, so maybe he could get what he needed straight from the hottie’s mouth.
She kept that pretty, rosy mouth closed, though. He didn’t even have her name yet. She was smiling, her eyes keen and sparkling, and she was sitting here sharing her eats with him—her reticence wasn’t hostile at all. In fact, he was picking up that she might well be good for a tumble tonight.
So why so cool? He wasn’t a big talker, but she’d said one word for ten of his. There was something going on behind those—blue?—eyes. Woman was smart, and she was paying careful attention. That had his antennae up.
Her name and address he’d have five minutes after he put Bart on it. Probably less. But there was something else, something deeper and much more interesting, to know about her.
Taking a pull from her bottle of Bud, she looked past him down the bar and rolled her eyes. Isaac turned and saw his guys all goggling at them like the assholes they were. Dan raised his glass of whiskey, and the other four followed suit, toasting him as if they’d never s
een him work a chick before. Assholes. He lifted his beer to them and turned away.
“Don’t mind them. I don’t let ‘em out much.” He watched her tip the bottle up and swallow down the last of it. The way her throat moved as she swallowed, the muscles flexing rhythmically, gave him an urge to run his fingers across that smooth, sleek skin. He barely caught it back; his fingers actually stretched a little toward her, which surprised him.
She set the empty bottle on the bar. He drained his and did the same. “’Nother?”
She smiled at him—that smile said that she was on to him, and she wanted to make sure he knew it. “One more. Gotta drive home in unfamiliar territory, so I’ll need my wits.”
“I’ll see to it you get home, don’t you worry.”
“I’ll bet. One more. And thank you.” She pulled a fry heavy with ketchup and ate it, end first. It left behind a small, tomato-y drop, and he reached out to catch it with his thumb, but, with a sly glance at his reaching digit, she slid her tongue out and ran it over her lower lip. His balls clenched hard at the sight, and his cock filled out uncomfortably. He signaled to Rose to bring two more Buds.
As Rose was nodding, Isaac heard a crash behind him and instinctively looked at the mirror behind the bar. Jimmy Sullivan and Don Keyes were going at it and, in customary fashion, pulling in the rest of the crowd, men and women alike. His brothers were fairly leaping into the fray. Okay, then. He turned to his new, nameless friend. Way too pretty to get caught up in the melee.
“You should get behind the bar with Rose, Sport. Show’s startin’.”
Signal Bend, Missouri was named for a particular feature: a complicated bend in the railroad which bisected the town. When, after three massive derailments, the rail line acknowledged that the bend was more than a locomotive could take at speed, they installed a signal house at the location. As hard times hit the country at the end of the 19th century, and the huge farms around the railroad got sold off in parcels, bringing in a spate of residents to farm neighboring plots, a town had grown up around the little hut in which the signalman had lived and worked.
Eventually, Signal Bend got its own station, and it thrived as a community through the middle part of the 20th century. Never having developed any other kind of industry but farming and the railroad, and the commerce to support it, Signal Bend began to starve slowly as interstates and corporate farms became the way. By the 1990s, the railroad had been abandoned and suburbs of St. Louis finally had started to bump up against the farmland surrounding the town. A Walmart went up less than 30 miles away, drawing dollars from the locally-owned shops. Things in Signal Bend were getting dire. The most recent recession dealt the death blow, though the dying was slow. The only people who stayed around now were the ones whose families had been here for generations and knew nothing else. Not even many of them were left.
About half the family farms were still operational and still hanging on. The rest of the farmland was lying fallow or was being run by corporations, and many of the people working them commuted to work from other towns. These days, the most lucrative “commerce” in Signal Bend was crystal meth. As the Night Horde well knew.
A town like this, in the straits it was in, there wasn’t much to do at night. Everything but No Place was closed by 9pm. No movie theater or video store anymore; nearest ones were 25 miles away, in the same strip center as the Walmart. No cable TV or internet, unless you ran a dish, which not many could afford. Three things: drink, fight, fuck. All three happened just about nightly, and usually in that order, at No Place. On Saturdays, when Tuck, owner of the bar and Rose’s old man, brought in live music, you could add dancing to the list.
It wasn’t Saturday tonight, though. The drinking had been going on for a few hours. Now it was time for the fighting.
Usually these fights were little more than good natured scrapes, a lively but friendly disagreement turning physical. People cleared the furniture out of the way and tried to do minimal lasting damage to body or property. This one had a sharper vibe, though, Isaac noticed right away, when a flying bottle nearly missed his head. Jimmy and Don were really fighting, and that had changed the attitude of the whole bar. Isaac spared a quick second to wonder what the fuck was up and then busted Ed Foss’s nose for throwing a goddamn bottle at his goddamn head.
His brothers had noticed the difference in the scene as well, and most of them were going in hot. Isaac saw Dan, though, pulling two women out of the midst and sending them behind the bar. Leave it to Dan to remember his chivalry. As Isaac watched, amused, he took a punch to the lower back and turned to find Meg Sullivan glaring up at him, arm cocked for another go. He backhanded her and put her on the floor.
His chivalry wasn’t dead, but if a bitch was throwing sucker punches, she got what she got.
Aside from ducking flying bottles and putting thug bitches in their place, Isaac’s primary interest here was in minimizing the damage to the bar. Tuck paid the Horde to keep some semblance of order, so they were on the hook for damage done in these regular melees. Usually that wasn’t a problem. Tonight it was. So he stayed out of the fray as best he could and surveyed, looking for the flashpoint—which was not, surprisingly, Jimmy and Don, who weren’t fighting each other anymore. Showdown had Don on the floor, but Jimmy was engaged with Will Keller, and they were going at it with murder on their minds.
What the fuck was going on?
Then Jimmy got over on Will and put him against the wall, and Isaac caught a glint of metal in Jimmy’s right hand. Goddamn son of a bitch fuck. Nothing worse than a twitchy asshole with a blade. No. Not gonna happen. There were at least three brawling bodies between Isaac and Jimmy, but Isaac plowed through them and grabbed hold of Jimmy’s plaid shirt, yanking him back.
Not before his knife had found a home, though. Will went down quietly, sliding to sit on the floor against the wall, holding his side. Jimmy flailed with the switchblade still in his hand, now going for Isaac, but Isaac grabbed his wrist and broke it with one hard snap, and the blade fell from Jimmy’s suddenly useless fingers to the floor, embedding in the rough wood.
Isaac was proud to be a man who kept his cool in a brawl, but now he was filled with a heady fury. He put Jimmy on the floor, his knee on the wrist he’d just broken, and laid in with abandon, pulping the murderous asshole’s face.
A shot rang out, and the room went quiet. His knee still on Jimmy’s wrist, and one hand around his throat, the other cocked back, Isaac turned toward the sound. Meg was behind the bar, with the new girl, whom Isaac was beginning to think of automatically as “Sport,” in a chokehold, a little snub-nosed .22 at her temple. Sport’s hands were on Meg’s forearm.
“Back off him, Ike, or your new little friend gets a piercing.” Meg grinned like she was proud of her turn of phrase.
The force of the chill he felt surprised him. Without breaking eye contact with Meg, Isaac released Jimmy’s throat and started to back off, lifting up from his knees. He’d come up maybe two inches, when Meg was sailing over Sport’s shoulder and landing on her back on the bar. Isaac watched as Sport came in from the side with a hard punch to Meg’s throat, leaving a visible gash where her big ring connected. Meg immediately began to choke desperately. And then Sport had the gun and was emptying the cylinder. She looked over at him and waved the now empty gun, in a carry on gesture.
Grinning, Isaac came to his feet, bringing Jimmy with him. “You and me, Jimmy—and your lovely missus—we’ll be havin’ a talk.” He looked over at Show, who already had his burner open. Dan had taken Meg over from Isaac’s very interesting new friend. Len, and now Rose, were tending to Will, who didn’t look too bad off, thankfully. “Havoc’ll be around with the van any minute. Comin’ armed into Tuck’s place—very bad idea, my man. Regrettable.”
Jimmy was too messed up to speak. Isaac righted a chair, sat him down on it, and nodded for Dan to bring Meg over, too. Once Dan had charge of errant husband and wife, Isaac went to the bar. The rest of his brothers and the other patrons were sett
ing the bar to rights. There was heavy damage this time, though. Dammit. The Horde coffers weren’t empty, but they weren’t so full they wouldn’t feel the hit.
Tuck was leaning on the bar, considering the scene. Isaac leaned over and put his hand on Tuck’s shoulder. “Sorry, man. We’ll get it straight by tomorrow afternoon.”
The old guy nodded. “I know. Thanks, Ike. Will okay?”
Isaac looked over and saw Will standing, his shirt open and a gauze bandage on his side. Rose had gotten her share of first aid practice over the years. “Seems to be.” He turned back to Tuck. “You know what Jimmy and Will are beefin’ about? That was no friendly disagreement.”
Tuck shook his head slowly. “They came in together, looked normal to me.”
Isaac considered that. Jimmy and his old lady had come in armed. That was a massive transgression, and they knew it. Something was up. He was looking forward to sitting down with the Sullivans tonight. Havoc had come in, and he and Dan were leading them out.
Now, though, the girl known as Sport was walking up to him, a wry smirk on her face and two beers in her hand. She held one out to him. “This is how you make your fun around here, huh?”
He took the beer and drank half down all at once. “Well, that was more fun than usual, but you know. Find it where you can.” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “You handled yourself, though. Got a self-defense class in your back pocket?”
She was drinking as he talked, and he watched her throat move again, entranced. When she pulled the bottle away, she was wearing that wry, enigmatic smirk. “Something like that.” She finished the beer and set the bottle on the bar. “Welp, I’m out. Interesting place you got here. Thanks for the Welcome Wagon.” She turned and walked out.
Move the Sun (Signal Bend Series) Page 2
