Taking Beauty (Taking Beauty Trilogy Book 1)

by Wild, Nikki

  After our last adventure together, I was familiar with the fact that Hunter had, as he put it himself, friends in wicked places. It seemed that every time he needed a little help, he knew a few people on the wrong side of the law to make things happen.

  Hunter had been instrumental in bringing this little alliance together – criminals, rival biker clubs, and vigilantes were no longer restricted by in-fighting and disputes. I knew damn well if the feds ever got wind of this there would be a RICO case big enough for the front page of the New York Times…

  Hunter grinned. “The Couriers run the kind of packages people don’t want to put a stamp on. They’re expensive, but they always deliver.”

  “Why would they deliver a letter from your sister?”

  “Because all of her letters come my way thanks to the Couriers... If they had known the code, I’d be packing my shit and heading out the door right now.”

  “Alone?” I asked.

  “You would be safe,” he said instantly. “Safe with the club. Nobody knows my old spot, and that’s another secret you’re better off not asking about. I’d only be gone a few days…”

  I wasn’t convinced. Regardless, he turned to the letter on the tabletop. “…Whoever this is,” Hunter said, “they know what they’re doing…”

  “Why don’t you just ask the Couriers who sent it?”

  “The Couriers wouldn’t be in business if they kept those kinds of records. They run the perfect double blind straight down the chain. Dead drops and no questions asked. No paperwork, no names, no faces. I’m not getting shit out of them, and trust me, the Couriers are the last people on this fucking planet you want to piss off. They know where you live.”

  Hunter turned quickly to Ricochet. “Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Go get some rest.”

  “You got it.”

  Hunter locked the door behind him. The faint sound of a revving motorcycle could be heard moments later. I quietly watched through the kitchen window as Ricochet roared off in a trail of dust.

  “So… Do you think they have your sister?” I asked with a hint of fear in my voice.

  “If they had her, they wouldn’t be sending a letter… They’d be sending a finger,” Hunter replied, sending a shiver straight up my spine. What the hell kind of life was I trying to get myself into?

  “I think it’s about time you tell me everything you know about this case of yours,” Hunter replied as he strolled back towards the living room. “Whatever’s going on, I’ve got a feeling this letter has something to do with it”

  Pouring us a fresh pair of coffees, I sat down with him on the couch, wondering how much caffeine is safe to drink when pregnant and refusing to even touch the cup.

  Dammit, now I’m thinking about the kid again…

  “The case,” Hunter called me back to reality. He took a swig of the black coffee without skipping a beat.

  “Right… the case,” I mumbled.

  Under his vaguely scrutinizing eye, I organized my thoughts. Everything I’d worked so hard for in the last few weeks had been building up to this moment…

  “A valuable shipping container has gone missing from the Port of Los Angeles,” I replied. “My client asked me to use my connections to discover the whereabouts of this particular box… And they want me to find out if the Devil’s Dragons were involved in its disappearance.”

  “Your connections?” Hunter asked, raising his eyebrows meaningfully.

  “The Devil’s Dragons control the port. I… might have sold myself as having a direct line to your people,” I answered sheepishly. “I needed the job… And I wanted to see you…”

  “Well, I might not have good news for you there,” Hunter replied, clearly weighing something in his head. “The Devil’s Dragons run the port down there, they aren’t my Dragons.”

  “I wondered what they were doing all the way out there,” I mused. “So, what? They’re a splinter group? An independent chapter of the club or something? You’ve gotta have sway over them, right?” I slipped in a little coy barb: “I mean, you are their club president, right?”

  Hunter chuckled, shaking his head. “Those guys are the first to carry the name… They’re the west coast originals, and they don’t fall under my jurisdiction whatsoever.”

  Hunter continued, sensing my need for answers. “When I joined the club, a man by the name of Eduardo was in control. That night you came to see me at the club when we were kids… He was gunned down as part of the police raid.”

  I remembered Eduardo. I only met the man once, in passing at that, but he struck me as a wicked and dangerous man.

  “He was one of the original Devil’s Dragons… The only Devil’s Dragons original who thought the club needed to expand. He took a group of volunteers east from California and set up a new chapter in the desert. He chose Phoenix, Arizona, and that’s how he came into our lives. Eduardo focused primarily on establishing his dominion and building up the drug-running trade in our backyard…”

  “Until the raid…” I said quietly.

  “With most of the senior members behind bars or slain, it was easy to direct the others away from the drug-running roots… But I don’t have any control over the guys out in California, and they’re still dipping toes into some dangerous shit. I had a sit down with the president of the California Devils Dragons a few weeks after the raid, and if you thought Eduardo was a vicious guy, you didn’t even want to hear about Talon…”

  “Hunter…” I asked, trying to keep the tension out of my voice. “How bad is this guy?”

  “He’s pushing sixty, and he shows every goddamned year on his face. Talon is a foul, dangerous scrap of a human being,” Hunter told me as he took a large swig of his coffee. “Not as vicious as the cartels, but that ain’t for lack of trying. Talon has dabbled in all kinds of crimes… the really fun ones, too,” he clarified with a scoff.

  “Do I want to know?”

  He glanced my way. “The bastard’s robbed banks, supplied hard drugs, gotten involved in a few kidnappings, shifted contraband internationally, even attacked a fucking hospital once…”

  THIS was the guy I needed to interrogate?

  “Jesus,” I groaned, shaking my head. “Wait… you said he came here to see you?”

  Hunter nodded. “No idea how he found us so quickly. He must have left Los Angeles the second he’d heard about Eduardo taking a bullet. Talon tracked what was left of the club across state lines.”

  “What happened then?”

  “He wanted answers… Wanted to know if anyone on the inside was looking for a change of leadership.”

  “He thought somebody set up the club from the inside?”

  Hunter grimaced. “Talon grew up with Eduardo and knew that fucker wouldn’t go down without a knife in his back.”

  “Well he was right about that,” I observed, thinking to the dramatic standoff in the desert in front of the Outlaws. There had been a traitor, but it wasn’t one of the Dragons…

  “If I’d have known then what I know now, maybe the bastard wouldn’t have decided to set an example for the rest of the boys…”

  He instinctively touched the scar on his face.

  “He used a switchblade. I never saw it coming. He must have kept the blade laced with something, because that hurt like a goddamn bitch and bled for a week.”

  I reached up to place my palm over his hand, pressing instinctively against the scar. All doubts and fears were pushed aside by an urge to soothe the pain written across his face.

  “Does it still bother you?” I asked.

  He swept my hand away, putting a bit of distance between us.

  “I’m done walking down memory lane Sarah. You don’t want anything to do with the docks, Talon, or any of the Dragons out in California. Whatever is in that container you’re supposed to be looking for is probably better left alone, and you sure as fuck don’t want to be asking Talon whether or not he was involved in stealing it.”

  I hadn’t told Hunter, but I’d
invested every resource I had and there was no going back. Getting kicked off the force didn’t exactly give me the best resume for starting up a private investigations company. This was my first client, and failure wasn’t an option. ‘Better left alone’ didn’t pay the rent, and I wasn’t about to go back to living with my daddy… I wasn’t sure I could face him every day, after what happened to him during that fateful raid on the Dragon’s clubhouse all those years ago.

  He paused, studying my eyes and reading me like an open book. I wasn’t going to leave this alone, and he knew it.

  “Who’s your client? Who wants to find this container Sarah?”

  And there it was… The question I didn’t want to answer. The question I’d been avoiding myself.

  “I don’t know…”

  Now Hunter seemed even more interested. “How in the hell do you not know who your client is?”

  “I was approached by a detective with a lot of cash. Her name is Paula Prescott,” I answered.

  “I thought you said you didn’t know your client.”

  “How many detectives go around paying off private investigators in briefcases full of cash, Hunter? She’s a puppet. Somebody with a lot of money is pulling the strings, but I need this… It’s enough money to take care of this baby for years, and there’s more coming if I can tell them what they want to know.”

  “So, a shipping container goes missing, and some mysterious rich asshole is trying to find it… And you’re going to keep looking for it, aren’t you?”

  “You know me too well, Hunter…”

  “Maybe I do.”

  “So… You’ll help me?”

  Hunter

  My immediate impulse was to lose my shit right then and there. This wasn’t just about money or her fucking private investigations company, she was carrying our child! She couldn’t just walk her pregnant ass into the Devil’s west coast headquarters asking questions about the dock and expect to walk back out of there in one piece.

  Lucky for her sake, I was too tired to deal with that little slice of bullshit right now, so I laughed and wandered back to bed. I must have fallen asleep the second my face smashed against the pillow, because the next thing I knew, daylight was pouring in.

  Groggily, I rolled over. Sarah wasn’t in bed, and I was wondering if I’d just dreamed that she had come back into my life until I saw some of her clothes were still laying discarded along the floor nearby.

  I sat up, folding my fingers behind my head and losing myself in thought.

  Talon… She wants to talk to motherfucking Talon.

  I shuddered. Few men struck any kind of fear into my heart. Hell, even the slimy sex trade motherfuckers down south didn’t scare me… they just pissed me right off.

  Talon was a different beast altogether…

  I knew Sarah would come back sooner or later… But this wasn’t exactly how I imagined it happening. She tells me I’m going to be a father, then hangs that shit over my head and asks me to go on a suicide mission?

  Well… it looks like this is happening with or without me, I thought to myself as I climbed out of bed. I threw on a shirt and strolled out to find my woman, wherever she was.

  The couch.

  She comes here, tells me I’m going to be a daddy, fucks me senseless, begs me for help, and then she sleeps on the couch?

  There was no point in getting the day off on the wrong foot, so I walked into the kitchen, turned on the stovetop, and started cracking eggs. I slapped some bacon and sausages into a pan of hot grease and whipped up French toast. While I cooked, my mind started drifting towards my unborn son.

  From the moment Sarah told me that she was pregnant, I knew she was giving me an heir to my empire. If I could hold the Outlaws together, my son would inherit the mantle. He could be born the Prince of the Outlaws.

  I really liked the sound of that.

  Prince of the Outlaws. I ran that over in my mind again, imagining my child at eight, maybe nine years old. No fiddling around with iPhones or zonked out in front of Call of Duty.

  My heir was going to challenge his old man in the badass department. I was learning rifles and hunting at twelve. When I inherited the bike at sixteen, I took to it fast.

  I expected to offer my son all of these opportunities and more. I’d teach him to think critically, make the difficult choices, respect life and the club, and most of all… to always protect the things that he held precious.

  I would give the kid the shirt off of my fucking back and then some.

  Willingly.

  With these convictions in mind, I prodded Sarah on the shoulder with her plate at the ready.

  “Mmm?” She lifted her face, eyes half-lidded. Even if she was dancing on my nerve, it was hard to not fall hopelessly in love with that sleepy face all over again.

  “Breakfast, beautiful,” I enlightened her. As she sat up, I handed her the plate with my thumb over the cutlery, a glass of O.J. at the ready.

  “You didn’t have to do all this,” she replied sheepishly as she took a few bites.

  “Wanted to,” I replied, strolling back to prepare my own plate. “It’s gonna be a long day… better get our strength now, before the shit starts to hit the fan.”

  Sarah let my assessment slide, eating her food in silence. The last thing I wanted was this kind of tension between us, but I could sense that pushing the issue now was a bad idea.

  Life was simpler when we were dumb, love-struck teens. Sarah and Hunter against the world... Luckily, the world was pretty small back then…

  I caught Sarah’s eye, and something seemed to pass between us. An understanding, perhaps – the tension in the room slowly softened, and we started to cast each other small smiles as we ate.

  It was certainly a start.

  When we were done, I took her plate with mine and slipped them into the sink. I rinsed off the juices and let them soak for a while as I strolled back into the living room.

  “I’m glad you came back...”

  Sarah had already stepped into the other room, changing into some fresh clothes. She’d brought a small suitcase from Phoenix when she arrived, locked away in the trunk of her conspicuous Crown Vic outside.

  I really needed to convince her to spring for something that screamed something a little subtler than “law enforcement.”

  It was a few minutes before she stepped back out, looking quite the professional. The desert was too hot for a trenchcoat, so she dressed in a slimming blouse, slender black leggings, and a pair of casual but fashionable boots.

  “How do I look?”

  I let a grin cross my face. “In all honesty, like someone I’d rip out of those clothes and fuck hard on the kitchen table.”

  Sarah stepped forward, slipping a finger beneath my chin seductively. “We’ll have plenty of time for that… but we’ve gotta get ready to meet our new friend.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I feigned dejection, grabbing my leather jacket from the hook near the door. “We both slept in, and it’s already lunchtime… better tell the boys what’s going down.”

  “Does that mean we’re going to California?”

  I grabbed my keys from the countertop and flashed her a confident grin. “It means we’re going to find a shipping container.”

  Hunter

  When I walked in, most of my Dragons were sitting around and sipping beers, playing darts, shooting the shit, or playing pool.

  Mostly, it was a combination.

  Sarah walked up to the countertop and ordered a diet coke from my spunky redheaded bartender, Elmira. This time, there wasn’t some smart-ass retort. I thought maybe the two of them were going to start getting along, until I spotted Elmira giving Sarah dagger-eyes the second she turned her back.

  I gave her a quick shake of my head and she finished pouring the glass of soda, quickly pushing it across the bar.

  “Status report, boys,” I spoke up as I noticed Sarah pull out her phone and start to make a call. “Where are we?”

  “Same as us
ual, boss,” Victor answered. “Everything’s caught up and good to go. Weapons are cleaned, bulletproof vests are wiped down. We’re ready to ride...”

  “Good,” I replied. “That’s what I like to hear.”

  My men were a solid bunch, loyal as anyone could ever be. They were also some of the roughest bikers I could ever ask for, and the combination meant that they fiercely followed me into battle, no matter where I went.

  They made me proud.

  “I’m calling a meeting…” I glanced around, scanning for the face of my second-in-command. “Where’s Grizz?”

  Another one of my men, Skid, called out from the pool tables. “He’s gone to go get his cast off. Said he was tired of not being able to ride a fuckin’ bike.”

  I couldn’t help but smile, although thinking of my tactical sharpshooter taking a bullet during our last big assault still bothered me. A few inches to the right and I’d have been burying the best friend I ever had...

  “You let me know the second he waltzes back through that door,” I pointed for the front of the bar. “Soon as he does, I want each and every one of you in the war room.”

  While it was rare before to find more than a handful of bikers on the premises at time, things had changed. These days you’d find most of the men partying it up here at the clubhouse day and night.

  It was an… unfortunate turn of events.

  Our armed protection contracts out here in El Paso had been running dry. After the shit went down in Juarez, the whole area had went quiet. Big and small, fear of a deadly club of vigilante bikers had sent the criminals scattering to the winds. That was great news for the people in El Paso, but it wasn’t so great for our livelihoods.

  You can’t sell protection to people who don’t need it…

  Contracts were fewer and farther between and that meant it was getting about time to pull up roots and follow the money. That’s how we’d survived ever since leaving Phoenix. A new city every year or two, padding our pockets along the way.

  I needed to give my Dragons more than that. They deserved something more permanent. We couldn’t wander the desert forever… I’d already started deliberating with Grizz on some possible locations for a permanent base of operations, and knowing I had a kid on the way was only making the gears in my mind turn faster.