Hunter (The Devil's Dragons Motorcycle Club)

by Nikki Wild

  “Drinks are on the house until told otherwise,” the bartender smiled, still obviously trying to eat me with his eyes. “Choose your poison. We have a wide assortment of liquors and drinks…”

  “Old Fashioned,” I gruffly replied.

  For some reason, I felt a compulsion to check on Kate, and make sure that she was safe… but I knew I couldn’t let that distract me. I could already tell that any of the employees around were keeping an eye on me. They’d never let me slip outside to make a phone call.

  Whether or not that mattered…

  I wanted to be seen as the professional that I was, especially in this pivotal moment. I kept my phone in my pocket and tried to ignore the growing pit in my stomach.

  It was about half an hour before the cocktail waitress stopped at my side again, a friendly grin on her face.

  “Boss wants to see you again.”

  “Good,” I replied, slapping a twenty down on the counter for the bartender. He’d kept the drinks coming, and they had at least steeled my nerves.

  The waitress led me back upstairs to the private conference room, and opened the door for me. She was gone as quickly as she’d appeared, the door shutting behind me.

  At Julian’s behest, I rejoined the table.

  “My apologies,” he respectfully told me while the others watched. “There was some lengthy discussion in your case.”

  I remained silent, my eyes shifting from partner to partner. Which of them voted against the Dragons?

  “But the judgment has been made.”

  My apprehension only grew.

  “And the verdict?”

  Julian leaned forward, his face cracking into a wide grin. “There’s room for armed protection in New Orleans and we feel the Devil’s Dragons could provide a valuable service to us all. Shall we get down to business?”

  Twenty-Two

  Grizz

  It was a little over two hours later I left the negotiations, confident in the slice that I’d carved out for the Devil’s Dragons.

  We were going to be allowed relatively free reign, so long as we didn’t interfere with existing operations in the New Orleans underworld. Our reputation would keep some of the riff-raff away from the city, and we’d be expected to take care of any threats that might move in despite our presence here. For our trouble, we’d be given a nice monthly nest egg to keep the boys paid, and the black market would make sure we didn’t run short on bullets and gear.

  I’d even managed to talk the police commissioner into give Hunter’s fiancé, Sarah – the renegade private investigator – the fuel to grow her career. Having an inside line to local enforcement would help us all do our job…

  The little council of criminals made it clear there might still be some resistance from the locals. There were a few existing motorcycle clubs were around New Orleans, but I doubted they’d keep us from gaining our foothold. Most of them were in the swamps and smaller towns around the city, well out of our way.

  Diplomatically negotiating a strong hand upfront meant that we would be one of the dominant players in town once we arrived – sharing the turf with Old Maggie’s crew, the Redneck Renegades MC, who’d been having trouble keeping the peace. I got the feeling we’d find some real friends among their ranks.

  On my way to the bike, I finally flipped out my phone and checked for messages. I had a small string of missed phone calls from Kate, which sent me on red alert.

  She didn’t pick up when I called her back.

  Fuck.

  I knew I should have checked my phone, regardless of what it meant to Julian and his partnership. Bitterly, I tried the number again, hoping in vain that she’d pick up.

  She didn’t.

  I’d wanted to swing by a store and pick some flowers up for her on the way back, but I turned my headlights towards home and burned rubber.

  If anything’s happened to her…

  I tried to push that possibility out of my head. We’d been through so much, and stayed so quiet under the radar. I couldn’t imagine what would have made her try to reach me so impatiently.

  Maybe she was just trying to ask me to pick up milk or some shit.

  Yeah.

  Maybe that was it. Or maybe shit just hit the fucking fan.

  My underworld business meeting had been in the heart of the city. That meant weaving between traffic and trying to get off the gridlocked roads as soon as I could.

  Being a Friday night meant it was worse than usual, and I was getting close to hopping off my bike and shattering windows to get around the assholes blocking me off.

  Finally, I made it to the interstate.

  Hold on, Kate… I’m coming for you babe.

  I dropped the hammer, rolling the bike up as close to top speed as I could manage on the weather beaten road. I blew past two speed traps on my way, but neither of them made any move to follow me. If I had to guess, that was the police commissioner’s doing. They probably mistook me for a Redneck Renegade.

  I cooled my jets when I got off at Metairie, if only because the road was in need of new pavement. It was about another fifteen minutes before I pulled into the driveway of our rental place, and I killed the engine.

  Living room TV is on, I thought to myself, my eyes gazing over at the windows. Well, that’s a good sign…

  I walked confidently up to the front door. After fiddling with my keys a moment, I popped the door open…

  The air left my lungs.

  Oh god no.

  From the light of the television, I could see that our place was a complete fucking mess. The furniture had been ripped apart and reduced to chunks and splinters against the carpet. The telltale signs of axe marks had ripped chunks from the walls, which were covered in spray paint jeers and slurs.

  “Kate?” I shouted, flicking the lights on and immediately pushing across the debris. “Kate, are you in here?!”

  But I knew the truth.

  My lover had been taken.

  Even after realizing that horrible fact, the note that was left in the kitchen confirmed it all.

  Kept pinned to the cabinet door with a fucking knife through both, I tugged the sheet of paper free and read it once, twice, a third time again:

  Dear Devil’s Dragon Asshole,

  Thanks for kidnapping my woman, dragging her across Louisiana, and filling her head with a load of bullshit. Did me a real solid with all that.

  If you ever wanna see this prime piece of ass again, meet us at the abandoned railway station here in Metairie. Tomorrow night, 10 o’clock.

  Come alone.

  – Mudflap and the Bayou Boys

  The burning rage built up inside, threatening to eclipse every last scrap of reason that I had left.

  They took Kate.

  I repeated that in my head, feeling the anger burn hotter, brighter every time that I felt those syllables with my thoughts.

  They took Kate.

  Those piece-of-shit backwater bikers had somehow found us, kidnapped her, and dragged her off to be used as bait in some stupid fucking trap, and for what?

  Just so her spineless ex-boyfriend can have his stupid little power trip and try to get his dick wet?

  They came into my territory.

  They wrecked our goddamn home.

  And they fucking took Kate.

  If it had been another hour, I could have hit the road with my woman at my back, leaving for El Paso. I could at least have gotten us halfway before needing a few hours’ rest. It would have been a hard ride for her, but Kate’s a tough woman. She would have been able to handle it.

  But now…

  Now, my life lay around me.

  Shattered. Broken. Corrupted.

  I had been reunited with a ghost from my past and I let myself feel just a little bit of fucking happiness.

  And these redneck motherfuckers had come and taken that from me.

  Quickly taking stock of my resources, I grabbed the bowl from the other room and poured it onto the kitchen countertop. After that,
I emptied my pockets on the heap.

  Hmm. Not a whole lot here…

  My worn fingers trailed over the burner phone that slipped into the pile. For a moment, they calmly lingered.

  I could call for backup.

  The Devil’s Dragons were a sixteen hour ride away. If I called now, my brothers would answer the call, mount the offense, and ride into town for a rest before they got ready to fucking clean house. Hunter would lead the men straight down here and lay waste until the Bayou Boys were smeared straight off of the goddamn map.

  The uncaged beast inside roared in fury, demanding vengeance and bloodlust. The chaos of shattered debris only pushed me onward…

  Almost as if making their mind up for me, my fingers quickly snapped back from the burner phone. Trying to soothe the beast and calm myself down, I took a few slow, deep breaths.

  No, I thought to myself.

  Come alone…

  If they get wind the Dragons are coming, they’ll kill her just to make a fucking point. Sure, we’d wipe them off the goddamned planet, but they’d deal me a killing blow first. I’d lose Kate forever…

  That’s not how my story is going to fucking end.

  I was going to save Kate myself… even if it meant laying my life down on line to bring her to goddamn safety.

  And if it really came to that, I was going to make sure that I dragged every last one of those rednecks down to Hell with me.

  I carefully, angrily lifted the phone and began to dial in a number I hadn’t needed to call in many, many years. It was a few rings before the tired voice answered.

  “H-hello?”

  “John,” I replied. “It’s me.”

  “Holy shit, Grizz?” He laughed down the line. “How’s civilian life treating you? Better than me, I hope…”

  “Right this moment John, not too well.” My voice flattened out into a hot simmer as I gazed across the scattered debris. “I need a favor. Are you still a law-abiding supporter of the Second Amendment?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Because I need guns… Big fucking guns.”

  Twenty-Three

  Kate

  You know, I’ve had to live in my fair share of shitty rooms, but the disgusting workshop they locked me in definitely takes the cake.

  The air smelled like a lovely mix of ancient oil, dusty soot, and filthy ash. I could feel it filling my lungs, one patch of stagnant, stale dust in the air at a time.

  At least the floor was comfortable.

  I mean, why pack the room with something cold and unforgiving like lush, feathery carpeting when you could just leave the soothing and relaxing surface of freezing, oily concrete?

  Unfortunately, all the tools and sharp edges had been plucked from the room that served as my jail cell. There was nothing with which to defend myself if anyone came.

  What I was trapped in was essentially a metal box when it came to the ceiling and walls. A single dingy bulb cast the bare minimum amount of light, exposing the toilet in the corner and the pile of musty cloths that was to be my bed.

  The Hilton, it was not.

  A sharp knocking on the door jarred me from my thoughts. Lifting myself up from the ragged blankets, I stumbled over to the single exit, where a flap against the bottom opened.

  “Eat,” Mark blurted out, pushing a small plate of greasy food through the door.

  “Why are you doing this?” I demanded to know. “Why am I being kept in this stupid goddamn room?”

  “Quiet,” he insisted. “Just ride this out with us, babe, and we’ll bring you back home all safe and sound.”

  “Ride what out?” I demanded.

  I heard a chuckle through the door. “Oh, it’ll all be over soon… don’t you worry about that. And then we can put you where you rightfully belong.”

  “And where is that?”

  Mark’s voice sneered.

  “With me, of course. Back on my bike… and back on my cock, too. I really missed you...”

  I bit my tongue.

  As much as I wanted to rip through that door and absolutely tear him a new one for putting me through this… I figured that it probably wasn’t smart.

  Plus, minor detail:

  I hadn’t figured out how to burst out through locked metal doors yet.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” he chuckled. The lust was blatant on every goddamn syllable. “Think about that, Buttercup… think about that all night long. I know I will.”

  With that, the moron shut the flap, basically ending our little chat. I heard his footsteps wander off, and I groaned with frustration.

  Half an hour later while eating the slop he brought me, I could barely make out the sounds of a muffled argument coming from a small vent grate at the top of the wall. Things sounded like they were starting to get heated, and I felt driven to find out what was going on.

  There wasn’t anything nearby to stand on, so I stepped onto my tiptoes and pressed my ear as close as I could get.

  Mark’s voice trailed through the vent, barely loud enough for me to hear. “…What do you mean I can’t fuck her?”

  An older man responded gruffly. “Exactly what I said, boy… the woman’s a liability. We keep her under lock and key until this is over.”

  “But we had a deal!”

  There was a second of scuffle. It sounded like someone punched or smacked the other upside the head.

  “We still have a deal. All we have to do is wait until tomorrow night, and see where things fall…”

  “She’s locked up like an animal!”

  “And she’ll stay that way,” the older voice commanded. “When you’ve lived up to your half and the piece of shit spills blood on the fucking pavement, then you can have your piece of ass.”

  “He’ll come,” Mark replied. “And I’ll kill him.”

  The older voice let the silence dangle in the air for a moment.

  “Yes,” the voice finally spoke. “And when his little club comes riding out to see his grave, they’ll pass right through our turf. We’ll gun them all down on the fucking highway. I’ll be the one who toppled the Devil’s Dragons once and for all.”

  My toes started to give out, and I suddenly, reluctantly slipped down onto the soles of my feet.

  Holy shit. They’re gonna kill Grizz.

  And they weren’t stopping there…

  There had to be a way to warn him… something that I could do to get the message out. I patted the small pockets of my jeans, but my phone and little wallet where nowhere to be found.

  Great.

  I’ve been assaulted, imprisoned, and robbed. All by some psycho ex-boyfriend who thinks he’s entitled to me, and the stupid motorcycle club he’s joined…

  Thinking about this, I paused.

  If Grizz knew where to find me, then that meant that he probably knew that he’d be walking into a trap.

  I could only hope that he’d be smart enough to just let me go, or to keep from springing it.

  But… did I want him to let me go?

  Slipping down into the musty, raggedy blankets, I decided that I did. Just leave me here, I tried to send to him with my mind. I’d rather you alive and okay than dying on some suicide mission to save me.

  Besides, I’d figured my way out of bullshit before. Maybe not, you know, being kidnapped and trapped in some metal box wherever they’d taken me…

  But these were pretty small details.

  Kinda.

  But either way, things weren’t looking too good from where I was sitting…

  Twenty-Four

  Grizz

  Pure adrenaline got me to Panama City the next morning. I’d barely slept a fucking wink that night, but five hours one way on a motorcycle was rough on an all-nighter.

  And I still had another five hours riding straight back.

  Turning to Julian’s partner in the New Orleans Black Market would have been faster, easier, and more efficient.

  But I knew that it wasn’t an option. I’d have to pay my dues before I go
t access to the kind of weapons and ammo I’d need to take down a motorcycle club, and I couldn’t be sure that someone involved wouldn’t tip the Bayou Boys off in the process.

  Luckily, I still had some friends out here.

  John greeted me at the door with a big smile on his face. He gave me a bear hug while his daughter, a little two-year-old thing, ran all over the place babbling happily.

  “Wife’s visiting her mother,” my old Marine friend told me. “So it’s just me and my kid right now.”

  “Good,” I replied. “Less questions.”

  John picked his daughter up and gave her the fireman’s carry on his good shoulder as he led me out onto the back patio. He bounced her lovingly as he walked, and she let her voice spring with laughter.

  The prosthetic limbs didn’t slow John down one bit. John was part of my squad, but he was hit with an IED and ended up sent home a few months before I was captured. I tied the tourniquet on his leg myself. Probably saved his life in more ways than one, seeing what happened to the rest of the squad… John lost an arm and a leg, but years of practice with the mechanical limbs had put him just like the rest of us.

  “Alright then, you,” he carefully dropped her down his flesh-and-blood leg to the ground. “Off you go. Why don’t you play here?”

  “Okay!” She took a few scrambling steps before softly falling onto her butt and tugging at the grass.

  This life that he had – the nice home, the happy marriage, and the energetic kid – it seemed nice. I thought about the time I’d spent shacking up with Kate over the last month, and it set the rage boiling inside me once again.

  “What’s her name? I asked him.

  “Arietta,” John smiled.

  “Cute name.”

  “It was Ashley’s idea,” my old friend told me. Both of us were watching his daughter play in the grass. “Fell in the love with the name, just like I fell in love with that kid.”

  “Not hard to see why,” I nodded.

  He looked at me knowingly. “Buddy, you don’t know the half of it. This kid is gonna ruin me someday.”