She didn’t have long to wait.
“Hey, hot stuff,” Jesse said.
“Hey, yourself,” she said, sticking her tongue out at him.
“You free for a walk?” he asked.
“I guess,” she said, with a careful air of indifference. “I can always come back here tomorrow.”
His smile warmed her heart as she headed away from her drawing spot. His long legs could keep up with her easily even when she walked quickly.
Her new shirt rode up a little when she stopped and picked up an old beer bottle, tossing it into a nearby trashcan.
“What are you looking at?” she asked him.
“Cute tat,” he said. “I didn’t know you were inked.”
She laughed out loud.
“Inked? It was my job. I have more tattoos than that,” she said.
“Wait, you do? You did? Is that one of your designs? Can I see it again?” he asked, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk and staring at her, his voice rising with excitement.
Allie shrugged. She didn’t see the harm, so she lifted her shirt an inch or so, letting him see the floral tattoo on her hipbone.
“I did that one myself,” she said. “Drew it and inked it. It was one of my first.”
“Damn,” he said. “If that’s one of your first, you must be amazing.”
“I’m good,” she said. “No one’s been unhappy with my work. They’ve been unhappy with their choices, but that’s not my fucking fault.”
“Shit, no, that’s on them,” he agreed.
“You like ink?” she asked. “Why didn’t you say so?”
“I dunno,” he said, with a shrug. “I guess it just never came up. We’ve been too busy talking about dogs and shit.”
“I guess we should do a better job at getting to know each other,” he said.
He stuck out his hand to her, pompous and puffed-up.
“I’m Jesse McGill,” he said. “I’ve lived here my whole life. My momma’s a waitress and my daddy’s a shithead. I run with the Black’s Raiders and my Harley is my life.”
She shook his offered hand, too heartily.
“I’m Allison Murray,” she said. “I’ve been here for, like, three weeks. My mom’s dead and my dad’s a shithead. I don’t run with anybody and my art is my life.”
“Good, good,” he said. “Now that we’ve gotten that straightened out, let’s get some fucking lunch.”
----------------------------------------------------------
JESSE
Allie was a tattoo artist.
Completely fucking perfect, he thought with a grin behind his helmet as he roared down the street on his Harley.
She’d been surprised to find out that he wasn’t really a hotel clerk, he just took over a friend’s shift as a favor.
He’d been afraid then that she would run screaming to find out that he was in a biker gang, but she’d just shrugged and accepted it. She’d still let him come walk her back to the hotel from downtown.
He couldn’t believe he hadn’t realized she was inked.
As soon as he got to the bar, he scanned the room and headed straight for a table in the back.
“Merle,” he said. “Allie does good ink. Her own designs, too. She let me have this.”
Jesse thrust a torn page from a sketchbook in front of his leader, showing him the intricate skulls and daggers that covered the paper.
“We can hire her,” he said. “Then, those assholes wouldn’t dare touch her.”
“You must be completely smitten with this beautiful belle, if it did not occur to you that perhaps we were already in the middle of a private conversation,” another man drawled.
“Come on, Alex,” Jesse groaned. “I’m sorry I was an asshole, stop throwing the dictionary at me.”
“You do sound like you swallowed a dictionary,” the last man in the booth said.
All three men were older than Jesse, all in their twenties.
Merle was lean and dark, with an air of command and danger like a cloak. Alex was shorter and oozed charm, and the third man had a blond ponytail and bright eyes.
The dark-haired man took the sheet of paper from Jesse without a word and studied it as the other men in the booth bickered.
“It’s good,” he said, finally. “You sure she needs protection?”
“My momma said that she was having dinner with that asshole Daniel at three o’clock in the morning, and he tried to show her a nice, safe motel,” Jesse said, his eyes hard.
Merle slid further into the booth and patted the space he’d made.
“Okay,” he said. “We can offer her a job, but if she wants to go run with a pimp, I’m not going to stop her.”
“She doesn’t!” Jesse exclaimed. “She’s sweet.”
“Some sweet girls still want the money,” the blond said, his voice hard to hear over the hubub of the bar.
Jesse glared at him.
“She’s not that kind of girl,” he insisted.
“We believe you,” Merle said. “Calm down and have a drink.”
----------------------------------------------------------
ALLIE
“No shit?” she said, almost dropping her pencil in excitement.
“Yeah!” Jesse said.
He’d scared her to death, knocking on her door in the twilight. She’d forgotten that he checked her into the hotel, obviously he knew which room she was in. She’d thought that no one knew. She’d thought, for one heart-stopping moment, that Daniel had found her.
Then her common sense asserted itself.
Daniel wouldn’t have knocked.
She’d heard about him from Jesse and her mother, and was confident that if Daniel wanted to take her, he’d find her in an alley, or follow her somewhere - he wouldn’t just knock on her door as bold as anything.
Her neighbor pounded on the wall in irritation when Jesse had yelled “Come on, open up, lemme in!”
She didn’t think he’d be offering her a job.
“You’ll get your own spot in the place, one just opened up. They said that if they buy your supplies, they split sixty-forty their favor, if you buy your own stuff they split sixty-forty your favor,” he said.
“Slow down,” she said, laughing.
She patted the bed next to her.
“I didn’t say I wanted the job,” she pointed out.
“Oh, come on, you’ve gotta want the job, you’re so good,” he said.
Allie laughed as she relented. She thought about the rainy days there had been lately, the times she’d needed to dig into her stash.
“I’d fucking love it,” she said. “If they’ll take me.”
“Come on,” he said, standing up. Allie grinned at how much he reminded her of a jack-in-the-box.
“Where are we going?” she asked as he took her hand and pulled her to her feet.
“To interview, obviously,” he said. “Marcos is waiting, I told him you’d want the job. Bring your sketchbook.”
She rolled her eyes and grabbed two different sketchbooks - the new one she’d bought with her caricature money and the very oldest, the one she’d kept deep under her mattress and filled every inch of.
With her wallet and her shoes, that was all she needed.
----------------------------------------------------------
Marcos was a slim Hispanic guy in his early thirties, his cinnamon skin covered in intricate tattoos that he’d proudly told Allie he designed himself.
He’d told Allie flat-out that he was only interviewing her because Merle and Jesse wanted him to.
She’d said nothing, only passed him her sketchbooks.
He treated them carefully, turning them by the very edges of the page so he didn’t smear any of the work that had been done in pencil.
Three times, Jesse had tried to say something, tried to ask what he’d thought, and three times, Allie had stepped on her friend’s foot.
Finally, Marcos spoke up.
“Damn,” the ma
n said, his voice tinged with approval. “Okay, you’ve got the art, but not everyone who can draw can ink.”
Allie was ready for that, and lifted her shirt and inch and pulled her jeans down with her thumb in the waistband.
“I did that on myself two years ago,” she said.
“Not old enough for a legal tat?” he asked her with a grin.
“Yep,” she said.
He leaned close enough that she could feel his breath on her skin for a moment.
“Damn fine line work, especially for a kid. Got any better since then?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Haven’t done much more on myself, though,” she said. “Didn’t wanna use up all the good spots before I hit twenty.”
Marcos bobbed his head in a cheerful nod.
“Cool, cool. Okay, those assholes aren’t as crazy as I thought. There’s a chair open and it’s all yours if you want it. I pay cash, and if anyone asks, you’re doing an unpaid apprenticeship.”
She grinned at him.
“Suits me fine,” she said. “Jesse said that you take sixty percent if you buy the shit I need?”
“Yeah, but if you ever wanna start buying your own shit, fine by me. Less hassle. You wanna start with house tools?”
“Sure thing,” she said.
“Good,” Jesse said. Apparently that was as long as he could shut up for. “Good, this is really good. You’re in the shop now and you’ll be safe from assholes and tourists, and you’ll make more money, and you can get a real apartment. Maybe in a better part of town. I have a spare bedroom you could stay in, but I guess you probably wanna be by yourself - “
“Jesse.” Marcos said. “Shut the fuck up.”
----------------------------------------------------------
DANIEL
The blond man struck the wall with his fist and growled in pain and fury.
Those cuntrags took my girl. I’ll have them fucking killed. I’ll have their mothers raped.
He’d finally found the girl, found her name - Allie, so pretty - but she had been stolen away from him. She took up with Black’s Raiders and thought she was out of his reach. Thought she was too good for him.
He ground his teeth as he thought about when he’d seen her again, smiled at her, and she’d glared, and turned away.
Turned away. From him.
No one fucking turned away from Daniel.
He needed the girl, needed the fresh blood to help his business. He was pulling in okay money from his street girls, but he needed a house girl, someone pretty enough that men would come in and line up to fuck her.
Someone worth filming, someone who could help him break into the real money.
She would be goddamn perfect, and he needed her.
All he needed was a plan.
----------------------------------------------------------
ALLIE
It took Allie almost no time at all to get a following.
She had every quality a good tattoo artist needed - she was friendly, she was patient, and she was an amazing goddamn artist.
She was surprised to find that, even though it was the sort of place where she was paid in cold, hard cash, and she knew the biker gang had something to do with it, she was mostly inking… soccer moms.
Okay, not only soccer moms, but there were a lot of women in minivans.
“Hey, you ready to close up?” Marcos asked.
“Yeah,” Allie said. “I don’t think we’ll get anybody else walking in tonight, not with that rain.”
“I want a beer, and a joint, and to get the fuck out of here,” Marcos said, stretching the kinks out of his back and getting off his tall stool. “You got any appointments tomorrow, chica?”
“Two, one wants some flashed gussied up, that’s in the morning, and China is coming in for a custom leg piece at two, dunno how long that will take.”
“Make sure she pays in advance,” Marcos advised. “Don’t waste your time or my ink.”
Allie nodded.
“Speaking of your ink,” she asked, casually. “How much do I need to pay you if I tattoo someone for free? For your supplies?”
He eyed her.
“If it’s Jesse, or anyone else in the gang, don’t worry about it. You wanna waste your time doing free work, I’m not gonna stop you. Anyone else? Talk to me and we’ll figure it out.”
She nodded.
“Text him to pick you up, it’s pissing down out there,” he said.
“No phone,” Allie reminded him.
“Shit, girl, a phone is like ten fucking dollars. Just buy a goddamn cell phone like a normal person.”
“I guess,” she said. “Never had one before, you know?”
“Never, ever? A modern teenager without a cell phone? Perish the thought,” Marcos said.
“Well, I had one, once. For, like, three hours. My father broke it. Why waste the money getting him more shit to break?”
“Asshole,” Marcos said. “Come on, chica, I’ll give you a ride out to the bar if you wanna find Jesse.”
“That would be great, thanks,” Allie said, hopping off her own chair and quickly throwing her stuff together.
As he drove her to the biker bar in his old station wagon - “What? It holds all my shit.” - Marcos told her about everything they passed by. Every road seemed to lead somewhere he dicked around in high school, every house seemed to have, at one time, held someone he knew.
It was a pleasant ride, and she relaxed in the seat.
This was good.
This was so unlike her home in every way. Maybe… maybe this could be her home.
That thought warmed her all the way to the bar, where she slid into the booth where Jesse was sitting and pulled out her sketchbook.
“Okay, you wanted a dagger,” she said. “Which one of these do you like better? Let’s start from there.”
“Start from there?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “Can’t let you have flash, can I? Not when you got me the job. You’ll have a totally fresh tattoo, one of a kind.”
“That’s awesome!” he crowed. “I love both of them. Maybe you could take this one and add some blood?”
Allie laughed.
“Sure, blood, I can do that,” she said. “Nice and gory. Tough guy.”
“That’s me,” he said with a grin.
The redheaded girl socked his arm lightly.
“Speaking of being tough,” he said. “I’ve been chickening out of something for weeks.”
“Oh yeah?” she asked.
He opened his mouth, shut it again, and stared at her.
Finally, he took a deep breath.
“Allie, will you-” he started, but something over her shoulder caught his eye and his voice faded away.
She turned.
A man was walking up to the booth, alone. There was something about him that made Allie shiver.
This man was dangerous.
He smiled at her and Jesse, and she relaxed a little, but she was put in mind of nothing so much as a tiger dozing in the sun, deliberately sheathing its claws to put her at ease.
“Jesse, is this the Allie I’ve heard so much about?” he asked.
He had a trace of a Southern accent, but he was more nuanced, more educated-sounding than she expected.
“I’m Allie,” she said.
He stuck out his hand.
“Merle. Nice t’meet you,” he said. “Listen,” he added, as she shook his hand, “Can I sit with you for a minute?”
When they both nodded, he slid into the booth beside Allie.
“Daniel Rathkis is up to something,” he said, bluntly. “I think he’s looking for Allie. His assholes have been prowling around, asking questions about Carlos’s new artist.”
“Shit,” she muttered.
“Pretty much,” Merle said, with a sidelong smile at her.
He was a truly handsome man, and a tiny part of her fluttered at his smile… but he wasn’t her type. Besides, he didn’t se
em actually interested.
Justice: Night Horses MC Page 3
