Merrick: Harlequins MC

by Olivia Stephens

  “Or what, huh?” McReed hissed. “What the fuck are you going to do about it, dirtbag? You want to go outside? You want to take a poke at me?”

  Damon smiled and shook his head. “You really think your tough guy act scares me? You really think you can recite a few lines from some cheesy cop movie and I'm going to piss my pants? When I was a Marine, I was in some of the nastiest firefights you can imagine. Shit that would have made you piss your pants, I guarantee it,” his eyes narrowed, his jaw clenched, and his voice was pitched low. “So if you think you can stand there and intimidate me, you are dead fucking wrong.”

  They stared at each other for a few more minutes, but it was McReed who backed down first. Of course, not without his usual bluster and bravado. He gave Damon his best tough guy smirk and stepped back. “Tear this place apart,” he yelled. “These dirt bags killed that guy and there is evidence of it here somewhere. Find it.”

  “Detective McReed,” one of the cops called from Carl's office.

  McReed left the room without another word and went storming down the hallway. Damon gave Breaker a nod.

  “Good work, kid,” he said before he turned and walked toward Carl's office.

  Damon stepped into the office and found McReed and a couple of uniforms huddled around the wall safe Carl had installed behind the club's flag. McReed turned and glared at Damon.

  “Open the safe,” he demanded.

  Damon turned and looked at Breaker who just shrugged. “It's not listed specifically, but the warrant allows them to search physical cabinets where evidence might reasonably be hidden.”

  “Open the safe,” McReed repeated. “Now. I want to see if you idiots stashed a murder weapon in there.”

  “A murder weapon?” Damon scoffed. “I thought this was a missing person's case.”

  “For now,” McReed said. “But when we find the body – and I know we're going to find a body – I'm going to want ballistics so I can nail you scumbags to the wall. Now open the fucking safe.”

  Damon stepped forward and felt the knots in his stomach tighten painfully. That was the safe where they kept a few weapons – though not the one he'd shot Andy with. That particular weapon was at the bottom of a swamp along with Andy. But in that safe was the club's cash and what was some pretty damning proof of some of their illegal activities. Though not as hardcore as some of the clubs out there, the Dragons were known to run drugs and even guns. It was a lucrative business and it kept the club afloat. Everybody profited from the business side of the Dragons. Opening that safe was going to be a prison sentence for all of them.

  “I said now,” McReed demanded. “Open the fucking safe. Or I get somebody down here to blow the thing open. It'll probably end up blowing out the whole wall and given the fact that this seems like a load-bearing wall, I have a feeling your precious clubhouse is going to come tumbling down with it.”

  Damon crossed the room and felt his heart pounding hard in his chest. His mind was swirling a million miles a minute and he didn't know what to do.

  “Tick tock, scumbag,” McReed said. “Open it by the time I count to five or I call in the bomb squad and this place goes boom. Five.”

  Damon reached out and touched the electronic keypad, wondering if he should take a swing at McReed. In the chaos that followed, maybe Breaker and Carl would have the time to clear the safe out.

  “Four.”

  Damon hesitated with his hand on the keypad. He balled his other hand into a fist, readying himself to launch his desperate plan.

  “Three.”

  “Open it, Damon,” Carl's voice came from the doorway.

  Damon turned and looked and the older man's face was grim, but he gave him a nod. Damon nodded in return, hoped Carl knew what he was doing, and punched in the code to unlock the safe.

  “Step back,” McReed demanded.

  Damon did as he was told and one of the cops opened the door to the safe.

  “Son of a bitch,” McReed muttered.

  Damon looked at the safe completely dumbfounded. It was empty. Completely empty.

  “Hey, remember all those years ago when Geraldo opened Al Capone's vault,” Breaker said. “And there was nothin' in it? I bet that's how McReed feels right now.”

  “What,” Carl chimed in, “like a total douchebag and a waste of space?”

  “Exactly,” Breaker said.

  Damon shook his head and laughed. He wasn't sure where the contents of the safe were and in that moment, he didn't care. He figured that when Breaker got the heads up about the raid, he'd alerted Carl ad they'd emptied the safe. Where everything was irrelevant and all that mattered was that McReed had nothing on them. The cop turned and looked at them, his jaw clenched and fury in his eyes.

  “Where is everything that was in here?” he demanded.

  Carl and Breaker shrugged in unison, continuing to chuckle at the cop's expense.

  “Wow,” Damon said. “It must really suck to be you and have to go back to your bosses with nothing but your dick in your hand for your efforts.”

  “I know you killed him,” McReed hissed.

  “Yeah?” Carl said, his tone icy. “Prove it, then, asshole. Otherwise, get the fuck out of our clubhouse.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  Damon sighed and collapsed onto Cassie's bed. His head was throbbing and his stomach was still in knots. But he was coming down from the adrenaline rush he'd been riding all day. McReed and his merry band of asshats had stayed at the club for most of the day, looking in every closet, cupboard, and discarded beer can they could get their hands on. And they'd found nothing. They'd been turned away empty handed. Which might make it more difficult for them to get a bullshit warrant next time.

  “I didn't know if you were coming back,” she said.

  “It's been a hell of a day.”

  Night pressed against the windows and there was a definite chill in the air. Damon got up and went to the window, opening it and sitting on the sill. He pulled a cigarette out of his pocket, lit it and inhaled deeply. He blew his smoke out of the window and watched the plume drift away on the night air.

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “Need a beer first,” he said, pointing to the bag he'd brought with him.

  Cassie grabbed a bottle out of the bag and handed it to him with a smile.

  “Thank you,” he said as he twisted off the cap and took a long swallow, draining more than half the bottle. He sighed and took another drag from his cigarette.

  “Wow,” she said as she opened a bottle for herself and took a small sip. “Must have been a rough one.”

  Damon nodded and filled her in on what had happened. He told her all about McReed's raid and the fact that he'd been desperate to find something, anything, he could take back to his bosses as evidence of a crime. “The best part was his face when he opened that safe and saw that it was completely empty,” Damon said.

  Something passed over Cassie's face – an inscrutable expression that he couldn't identify. As quickly as it had appeared, it was gone again.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I'm fine,” she said. He looked at her and she smiled at him. “I guess I'm just worried about you guys is all.”

  “Nothing to worry about,” he said. “It's all under control. McReed's got nothing except a whole lot of egg on his face. Breaker and Carl played him perfectly.”

  “And you don't think there's any way he is going to be able to find Andy's body, do you?”

  Damon shook his head. “No way. If it had been within the first day or so, I would have been worried that their K9 units might have picked up Andy's scent. But there's no way they'll be able to pick it up now that all this time has passed. And as for the asshole himself, he's weighted down with a lot of rocks and is at the bottom of this dark, thick swamp I found some years back.”

  “A swamp?”

  Damon nodded. “Yeah, the place is like really far off the beaten track. A couple of miles into the forest. This swamp, though, it's
almost like quicksand. You throw something heavy into it, and it sort of sucks it in, pulls it down. It's not like a pond. Eventually, that body is going to float. In this thing, though – I once saw a deer stuck in the middle of it. I did everything I could to save it, but the whole time I'm trying, it's just sinking lower and lower. It wasn't all that long before that deer got pulled down below this thick – goop. Once it's down below the surface, it's never coming back up again.”

  Cassie nodded. “Good. I'm glad.”

  He drained the last of his beer and watched her. Cassie looked nervous. It was almost as if she had something she wanted to say, but was too afraid to say it.

  “Did McReed come rattle your cage today?”

  She shook her head. “As far as I know, he doesn't even know I'm here.”

  Damon nodded and took another drag from his cigarette, blowing it out the window again. “You sure you're okay?”

  “Yeah, I'm kinda hungry, though.”

  “Let's go grab some food.”

  Damon dropped the butt of his cigarette into the bottle and set it on the sill, leaving the window open to let the room air out. Cassie gave him a smile as she pulled a sweatshirt over her head. He held the door open for her and closed it behind them. Damon breathed in the night air, enjoying the scent of the forest that surrounded Kingston.

  “We aren't gonna have a lot of choices,” he said.

  “There's a diner a couple of blocks away,” she offered.

  “Shall we ride?”

  Cassie shook her head and took his hand. “Nah, let's walk.”

  Damon nodded and gave her a smile. They walked down the street that was nearly vacant at that time of night. The shops had all been closed up for the day and foot traffic was light. The diner wasn't necessarily busy, but there about a dozen people enjoying a meal.

  “Sit anywhere you like,” the waitress behind the counter called.

  Cassie led Damon over to a booth in the corner and took a seat. He slid in next to her and she leaned against him. The waitress, a pretty blonde who looked like she was probably the cheer captain of the town's only school, came over and set glasses of water down in front of them. She flashed them a big smile, letting her eyes linger on Damon a moment longer than necessary.

  “Did you want to hear tonight's specials?” she chirped.

  “No thanks,” Damon said, giving her a smile. “We need just a few minutes, though.”

  “Sure thing,” she said. “Just call me when you're ready. My name is Ashley.”

  The girl gave Damon another lingering look before turning and prancing off. Cassie laughed and buried her face in his shoulder.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You do realize that's jailbait, right?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The girl – Ashley,” Cassie said. “She obviously has a thing for the bad boys. Did you see her throw a little extra hip at you as she walked off?”

  Damon shook his head and laughed. “I must've missed that.”

  “Then you are the blindest man on the planet.”

  He smiled at her. “Yeah, well, I'm sort of occupied right now anyway.”

  “Oh, good answer,” Cassie said as she leaned forward and gave him a kiss.

  “Of course, if things go sideways between us, I may need to start eating here a little more often.”

  She slapped his shoulder and laughed. “You're such a pig.”

  “It's part of my charm, babe.”

  They looked over the menus and when Ashley came back – and continued flirting heavily with Damon, making sure to throw in the fact that she was eighteen – they placed their dinner order.

  Cassie nudged him when Ashley left the table. “You sure you don't want to get her number? She's legal after all. Hell, she's a cutie. Maybe we can even have a threeway.”

  Damon smiled and shook his head, feeling the heat rising into his face. He wasn't a stranger to women flirting with him. He wasn't so dense to not know that he was a decently good-looking guy and women found him attractive. It was something he'd reveled in, actually. He'd had more than his fair share of one-night stands and casual hook ups. But something about being with Cassie changed him. He found he wasn't as inclined to continue on with that sort of lifestyle. It surprised him to no end that he found he wanted to be with Cassie – and only Cassie.

  “I'm pretty sure a threeway is out of the question,” he said. “She doesn't seem the type.”

  Cassie laughed – a sound he adored. “Oh, you know the type who's down for a threeway? You can what, smell it on them?”

  He smiled. “Yeah, something like that. Besides, I think having her daddy show up at the club with a shotgun in hand would be a bad look considering all the drama recently.”

  “At least it's drama most of the guys would give you a high five for.”

  Damon laughed. “Now who's the pig?”

  “Oink oink, baby.”

  They laughed and had a good time over dinner. Damon felt lighter than he had in a little while and the tension of the day seemed to bleed away into the night. Cassie had that effect on him. When he was wound up and stressed, she had a way of bringing him back down to earth. Relaxing and calming him. It was unlike anything he'd experienced before and he liked it.

  Ashley dropped off the check and gave him a long, lingering look. Damon looked at the check and saw another piece of paper underneath it. It had the girl's phone number written on it with a big heart.

  “Hope to see you again,” she said. “Real soon.”

  Cassie's mouth fell open and as the girl walked away – swaying her hips more than necessary – she began to laugh. “She did realize I was sitting right here with you, didn't she?”

  “I don't think she did, actually.”

  Damon left some money on the table – along with the girl's number – and they left the diner. Cassie was still laughing. Damon took her hand and pulled her close, giving her a kiss. She looked into his eyes and smiled.

  “You realize most guys would have been on that like white on rice, right?” she asked. “Most would have made sure to secretly pocket that little girl's number.”

  “Yeah, well, most guys aren't with you.”

  She kissed him again and linked her arm through his as they walked back to the hotel. Damon hadn't planned on staying the night, but after dinner, he thought he might. Stepping into the room, he opened the closet to hang his jacket up. On the floor of the closet was a large black bag. He cocked his head as he looked at it, not remembering Cassie having a bag like that.

  “What's this?” he asked.

  “It's Carl's,” she said. “He asked me to stash it for him when they got me settled in here.”

  Damon was overcome with a sinking feeling as he stared at the bag. “Did you open it?”

  Cassie shook her head. “No, he asked me not to.”

  The empty safe. The sudden appearance of a large bag – Damon had a feeling he knew what was in it. Squatting down, he pulled the bag out of the closet and unzipped it.

  “I don't think he wanted anybody looking through it,” she said. “He seemed pretty adamant about it.”

  Damon opened the bag despite her warning. And it was just as he'd thought. A lot of cash, a lot of weed, and some guns. “I can't believe he did this,” Damon said quietly.

  “Did what?”

  “Put you in the crosshairs.”

  Outside on the street, Damon heard a car come to a screeching stop. His intuition humming, he ran to the window and peered outside. Squad cars. And heading into the building among a phalanx of cops was McReed.

  “Shit,” he said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  “What?” Cassie said, the fear visible in her eyes. “What's going on?”

  “McReed is here.”

  Cassie's eyes locked onto the bag and its contents and then she looked into Damon's. “Oh God. What are we going to do?”

  Damon was trying to think of a solution but was coming up empty. He paced th
e room quickly, racking his brain, looking for a way out of this mess. If McReed found Cassie in this room with that much stuff, she was going to prison for as long as he was. He couldn't let that happen. She was an innocent in all of this. “Here's what we're going to do,” Damon said. “I'm going out there to stall McReed. You get out of here. Take the back staircase out. Hide. Do whatever you need to do to avoid being seen by the cops.”