by Debra Kayn
"We know she was here. The dogs can't track through the water. The diving team would do more." Thad stepped closer.
Wayne shook his head. "No, we're going in the wrong direction."
"How do you know?"
"My gut." Wayne took out his phone. "I’m calling the others. We're riding out."
"When?"
Wayne put the cell to his ear. "Five minutes ago."
Leaving the cops to do their job, Wayne headed to his motorcycle. It'd take a fucking miracle for his hunch to pay off. There were things law enforcement couldn’t do without a search warrant, and they'd need probable cause. Wearing the Notus MC patch, and not taking no for an answer, opened doors. If being a biker failed to intimidate, they'd kick the door in.
Two and a half hours later —
The sand migrated into Wayne's boots. He ignored the irritating distraction and walked up the stairs off the Astoria beach onto the pier. The shipping docks a half mile away, he chose to approach on foot as if four Notus MC members were checking out the sights before hitting the road again.
Up ahead, there were three ships lined up at the dock. One from Alaska, carrying crab. Another ship hauling tuna. It was the third vessel that caught his interest. A cargo ship stacked three high with storage containers.
"What's the plan?" Glen removed his skullcap from his pocket and slipped it over his hair.
The wind whipped Glen's voice behind them. Wayne glanced over his shoulder. They were the only ones on the walkway.
"We wait until the pier is clear of anyone else and go aboard." Wayne slipped on his gloves. "We'll see if the dock workers get their balls in a twist having us around and tell me my gut is right and Annie is somewhere hidden on the ship."
"No telling where they'd have her hidden." Chuck removed the chain from his vest, opening up access to the pistol he had in a shoulder holster.
Each one of them came armed. He wasn't alone in pushing forward, even if it meant getting killed. If a confrontation saved a young girl's life, nothing would stop him.
Without missing a step, Wayne turned and walked down the pier onto the dock. He pointed to the fishing vessel. If someone was watching, he wanted them to believe he was curious. Just a visitor to the area, checking out the sights.
"Chuck, you look for any type of security, and we'll pretend to be interested in buying some fucking seafood." Wayne half turned and pretended to cast out an invisible fishing pole.
Glen whistled softly, a tune that set the mood. Thad laughed. To anyone looking, they appeared to be having a good time touring the port. Just four guys egging each other on, making up shit, being no threat to anyone.
"There's activity. I can count four men moving around. Closer to the back of the ship than by the ramp." Chuck stopped, bent to his knee, and fiddled with the laces of his boot.
Wayne turned, and while Chuck provided cover, he looked at what they were dealing with. "We're not all going to be able to get on deck. Thad, you can go with me. Chuck and Glen, you distract the men onboard."
Chuck straightened. "We'll stay on the dock."
"No." Wayne turned his back to the ships. "You'll want to get on the ship carrying halibut. Do whatever you have to...ask for a tour, fight your way on, do whatever you need to do to get on deck. You'll want to get as close as you can up on top to make sure the men on the other ship can see you. I can guarantee, they're more interested in what is happening within view than a couple guys standing on a dock. Go fast. We'll give you a couple minute's head-start."
"Use your phone if you need help," said Glen.
Alone with Thad, Wayne went over the plan to get on board the ship without anyone noticing. He slipped his hand under his vest and unsnapped the holster holding a nine-millimeter pistol.
"Ready?" Wayne let his hands drop to his sides, watched Chuck and Glen board the vessel.
"Let's go." Thad walked toward the cargo ship.
Wayne strode beside him, evening out the rocking of the dock with his weight. At the foot of the ramp, his phone vibrated. Without missing a step, he pulled the cell out of his pocket and glanced at the screen.
AirChinook.
"Hold on," he said to Thad and answered the phone. "Yeah?"
"Annie Morgan was found, Wayne," said Frank. "The police are notifying her family now."
He blinked hard. "Where?"
"The vacant field off Lombard Street that runs along the railroad track."
Wayne looked at Thad and shook his head, and then watched him turn away at the news. "Do me a favor and fax the details to my house."
"We're waiting on more information ourselves, and will send it on through," said Frank. "If you need more, let me know."
"Thanks, Frank." He disconnected the call and walked off the ramp and joined Thad on the dock while texting Chuck and Glen to get off the ship.
"Was she in the water?" asked Thad, his voice low.
Wayne shook his head. "The field between Lombard and the railroad track."
"No..." Thad shook his head and frowned. "All four of us searched that property twice. She wasn't there."
"She wasn't there on the third day or the sixth day. There are four days afterward that she could've shown up." Wayne's chest tightened. "Which means there's a killer out there that could do it again."
They both walked farther up the dock. Realistically, it'd been too long to hope for a successful recovery. Their last-ditch effort brought them to Astoria, hoping against the odds that the child was exploited and still alive.
Chuck and Glen jogged down the ramp and joined them on the dock. "What's up?" asked Glen.
"Case is closed." Wayne lifted his chin for them to walk, and filled them in on the little info he'd received.
Nobody responded, lost in their own thoughts. Wayne led them down the road now that there was no reason to stick to the beach.
"I've got a bad fucking feeling about how things ended." Thad cut across the parking lot of a kite store.
"We'll find out more when we get the details." Wayne took the key to his motorcycle out of his pocket.
All he wanted to do was get on the road and go over where they'd gone wrong. They couldn't afford to make mistakes. Could they have saved the girl if they'd found her sooner? Had she been dead the whole time? Who took her? Was the killer planning on taking another life?
He started the engine and led the Notus Motorcycle Club to the highway. Annie's parents couldn't heal when there were still questions. They needed answers, and he was no closer to telling them what happened today than he was last week.
Chapter 5
Clara cleared the booth, straightened the newspaper the customer left behind, and paused. The headline caught her attention.
Seven-year-old, Annie Morgan, found dead.
She looked at the picture and pressed a hand to her chest. A beautiful little girl smiled into the camera. The picture, an ordinary one like those taken at every school, showed the innocence of a child missing her front teeth and the crooked bangs her mother probably cut the night before having forgotten about Picture Day.
"There's a tip on booth four for you," said Gracie.
"Yeah, okay." Clara read the article. She recognized the street they found the child as the main thoroughfare through St. Johns that ran past the bar.
She'd expected crime in St. Johns, being close to Portland—a major metropolis area. There were also more low-income housing and Section 8 apartments clustered everywhere she looked that tended to bring desperate people looking to steal, do drugs, and prostitute. But, murdering a child?
When would harming a child stop? That was one crime through the years that continued. With all the high-tech surveillance, stranger danger warnings, securities at school, and fewer latch-key kids being raised by themselves. A child deserved to live in a protective community where other people watched over them, stranger or not.
"Hey, what's wrong?" Gracie stopped beside her, grabbing the edge of the paper and peering closer. "What...? A child?"
&n
bsp; Clara shivered and set the paper back down on the table, unable to look at the little girl's face. "Wayne was looking for her. He must be devastated."
"I can't imagine." Gracie hummed, looking at the paper. "He not only looks for adults but children, too."
"Yeah, he verified the club searches for missing persons when they're not working. There's no way I could've misconstrued what he said. He was very clear about it all." Clara turned and stuck out her lower lip. "It's just that with the news of the child missing and found dead it hits close to home, you know?"
"The fact that he helped in the search..." Gracie raised her brows. "That's...decent of him."
"Don't be rude," muttered Clara walking away.
Gracie followed her. "We hoped that our information was right, and it was. That's all I’m saying. Reading about Notus Motorcycle Club being active searchers in St. John's on paper and from law enforcement is different than seeing them face to face. The bikers don't look like the type who'd spend their time doing something more serious than riding their motorcycles and scratching their bellies while surrounding a television."
Clara gasped. "This isn't even worth talking about if you're going to stereotype them. A child was killed. Doesn't that worry you?"
"Of course, it does." Gracie lowered her voice. "We both know that bad things happen every day."
She nodded, knowing her sister was right. That didn't mean she wanted to accept those bad things or lose her empathy. Sometimes her sister was too strong, and the barrier she put up to protect her from any hurts made her come across as uncaring.
She knew the opposite was true. It was the way Gracie survived from all the hurt they'd struggled through the last two years.
Wanting to get caught up on cleaning the bar before the evening crowd showed up ready to eat and drink, she carried the bin full of dirty glasses left over from the customers who stopped in for lunch into the kitchen.
The article in the paper never mentioned who found the child. That would be something they needed to find out. She sighed and hoped it wasn't Wayne and yet she needed it to be Notus to give her faith that she and Gracie were doing the right thing.
Regardless, she couldn't even imagine what he was going through. He seemed like a man who wouldn't take failure easily.
Being Friday night, she wondered if he'd come into the bar. He'd shown up the last two Friday's. Not that she could make him feel better about what she'd read in the newspaper, but she was concerned for him, as she was for the parents and everyone hurt by the travesty. She had no idea if he had someone in his life, besides his biker friends, to lean on during a trying time.
Gracie stopped beside her again. "Why do the bikers do it?"
"Do what?"
"Try to find missing persons." Gracie tore an order off her tablet. "That's not something that someone wakes up one day and decides to do. They could do so many other things like run drugs, deal with illegal guns...oh, oh, are they a club where all the members have to be port workers? They have a name for that. I know firemen have a motorcycle club, and Veteran's do, too."
Clara turned toward her sister. "You know about motorcycle clubs now?"
Gracie snorted. "Only what everyone knows. That's why I'm curious to know where Notus MC lands on the map of clubs."
Clara shrugged. "I don't know."
"Find out."
Clara laughed. "I'm a little busy working at a bar at the moment. Besides, the reason why isn't important. The fact that Wayne does search for missing persons is."
"Are you sure? Because it looks like you have a chance to find out while you work. How about that?" Gracie leaned closer. "Don't freak, but the bikers just walked into the bar and Wayne is staring holes in the back of your shorts."
Clara reached down and smoothed the material of her shorts over her ass. "Now?"
"Right. Now." Gracie stepped away, holding up her tablet. "I'll let you cover their booth. You'll get further with him than I will."
Clara's body warmed, not knowing if her sister was joking about the bikers arriving and yet excited if it was true and Wayne was looking at her.
He was a sexy man with a roughness in his mannerisms and speech that fascinated her. She typically went for clean-cut men who only wore jeans on the weekends and turned the decision on where to go out to dinner into a debate.
Wayne appeared to live in his jeans. Worn in all the right spots and long ago formed to his hard body. She'd originally stereotyped him from all the horror stories she'd read about bikers. The riots, wars, and heavily laden crime records of bikers was legendary. Instead, he'd presented her with a hardworking man, loyal to his friends, and paid close attention to her. The conflict of what he was compared to the stereotype she'd formed flustered her.
Her and Gracie needed Wayne to lean toward the illegal side of life rather than being an upstanding citizen. As soon as she thought that, she felt guilty.
She glanced over her shoulder and found Gracie had been right. Wayne was here, and he was still looking at her. She slowly turned her body without taking her gaze off him, picked up her tablet, and approached the booth.
Believing the bikers needed normalcy in their life after finding out terrible news, she smiled. "What can I get you tonight?"
"I'll take a bacon burger, baked potato—everything on it, and a beer." Wayne continued looking at her as the others put in their order.
"I'll get your drinks while your food gets cooked," she said, spotting the newspaper she'd left on the table.
She leaned over, grabbed the paper, and stuffed the news under her arm. "I'll be right back."
Hurrying away, she hid today's newspaper under the counter. Wayne and the other members of Notus didn't need to be reminded of the tragedy. They came to enjoy dinner and beer, and that's what she'd get for them.
She dropped off the order in the kitchen and filled four mugs from the tap. Other customers came in, and while she wanted to have more of a conversation with Wayne, she needed to keep everyone moving in the direction of food and drinks.
Gracie came out of the kitchen and took her half of the booths. Clara serviced the people at the bar.
"We only have one more table free." Gracie grabbed a tray. "I'm going to bring out more stools. Can you hear the music?"
Clara slid a Rum Ball down the counter. "Barely. I'll go turn it up."
She hurried down to the office and turned up the volume. Eventually, both she and Gracie hoped to have enough customers that there would be dancing. It's why they'd taken out the tables and had the booths installed, opening up the floor to have more room. So far, the customers that returned seemed more into sitting, drinking, and conversation. If the atmosphere remained more relaxed than energetic, they'd need to bring back a few tables and take up the empty space in the middle of the room.
That was the future. Today, she would worry about serving customers with a smile and keeping the Notus members happy.
Returning to the kitchen, she found three of the four plates for booth three waiting for her. She found Paxton taking the last hamburger off the grill. Since opening up the kitchen, they'd received no complaints about the cooking. Paxton worked without guidance and kept an organized workspace.
"You're doing awesome, Paxton." She carried a tray over to the warming light. "The customers are raving about the food."
"That's good to hear, Ms. Clara." Paxton cut up a head of lettuce, putting two leaves on the bun. "I've missed being back in a kitchen."
On his resume, Paxton had previously worked for a restaurant in downtown Portland, and because of a turnover in owners, he'd lost his job. At fifty-two years old, Paxton wanted fewer hours and to work closer to his home. Vavoom's fit the bill, and the quality of his menu made everyone happy.
"We're lucky to have you here." She smiled and took the last plate from him.
Returning to the floor, she carried the food to the bikers' booth and passed out the plates. Her heart fluttered every time she came close to touching Wayne's shoulder. Though Wayne ne
ver touched her. He looked, making her shiver as if he'd reached out and ran his rough hand up the back of her bare thigh.
"If you need anything else, let me know, or if you want a drink after you're done eating, I'll be happy to bring them to you." She stepped back when one of them spoke her name and then Gracie's name, stopping her exit.
She raised her brows and moved closer. "I'm Clara."
"When we're done, Clara, we'll take four Cokes and a whiskey." Glen picked up his burger.
"Four coke and whiskeys. Got it," she said.
"No." Glen paused with the burger halfway to his mouth. "Four Cokes and a bottle of whiskey. We'll mix the drinks ourselves."
"Oh. Okay. I can get that for you." She walked away, surprised at the request.
Nobody had ordered a whole bottle at a table before. But, if they wanted to do the mixing, more power to them.
Gracie stood at the register, handling a couple paying for their drinks. Clara gathered a wet rag, a tub, and went to the vacant table and cleaned the area. The door swung open, and a crowd of people walked in. With only one booth vacant, she'd need to find somewhere for them to sit. There were two unassembled tables in the back room by the office that were kept out of storage for just this kind of thing happening.
She put the dirty dishes in the rolling rack by the kitchen door and turned to go talk with the arriving customers and found them standing in front of the booth the bikers were at, shaking hands with them.
Two of the men in the group wore a police uniform. She stopped a few feet from them, listening intently to catch their conversation through the music playing. Her anxiety quickly eased knowing nobody was in trouble or going to get arrested.
She touched the arm of the man closest to her to get his attention. "I'm going to gather a couple of tables from the back and set them up out here, and you can join your friends. Your first beer is free if you don't mind the wait."
The man turned fully toward her. "Can't pass up that kind of offer."
