“Vanessa—” she begins as if she can see that I am lying through my teeth.
“I know, I know. I’ll send you a text when I’m finishing up.” I place the backpack over my shoulders again and walk quickly towards the door. My mom follows behind me as if she has something she wants to say. I instead keep talking, making it impossible for her to question me, “Listen, I can’t help it that this is what I have to do to get my degree. It’s part of the job. Don’t worry about me. I’ll grab lunch at school, and we’re ordering pizza tonight. I’ll be fine.”
I kiss her on the cheek and pull open the door. Above me, black rain clouds are beginning to gather. I pull up the hood on my jacket and run in a sprint towards my beat up Chevy parked to the side of the driveway. While it’s mine to use, my dad had forbid me driving it to any place but school and the occasional errand he sent me on for the club. Today, it was my getaway car.
“Vanessa! Wait!” My mother cries out before I can pull on the handle. She runs back inside and reappears seconds later. Despite being still dressed in pajamas and her robe, she heads outside towards me, her hand outstretched. “The keys. You’re going to need them.”
She places the one car key in my hand, closing my palm around it. We both linger there, looking down at my ticket to freedom as if we are both on the same page. The sound of my father walking towards the door brings us back. Her eyes remain on the key as she whispers, “Vanessa, please be safe, okay?”
“I will, Mom. I will.”
CHAPTER 14 I should have left it alone. I should have pushed her away. I should have stayed away.
Should have. Could have. Would have.
Fuck it.
The morning after being rejected by Vanessa Barber seems to drag on forever. I don’t initially go home after climbing down from her tree. Instead, I walk around her back yard, I drive past the elementary school she most likely went to, and I circle around her home. I just can’t force myself to give it up just yet.
The hours pass and my phone’s daily alarm finally dings that it’s time to get up. I’ve been essentially following Vanessa for nearly ten hours now, and now it’s time to go back to my own life. Still, I’m miles away from my apartment complex with little time to shower, dress, and get ready for the day. The only option I have is to huff it back to the headquarters and get the day of work started.
When I arrive, I’m startled to see that I am not the only motorcycle in the back lot. Normally, there’s not a soul here before nine in the morning. The graveyard night shift ends at seven, which means that the headquarters is abandoned for a few hours before the next runners clock in. And while I usually head out in the afternoons, I know that MC men aren’t typically the guys to arrive early for anything.
Still, I recognize two of the motorcycles in the pack of five. One belongs to my man Thad, who most likely arrived early to start his shift as the new club accountant in one of the few upstairs offices. The other bike surprised me, given that it belonged to Jonah Barber himself. The club president rarely ever went to the headquarters these days…unless it was for official business. Most of his work was done separately for his own protection, or at least that’s what he told us.
As I pull my bike around to the front, I hesitate. I may be walking into another trap given Vanessa’s warnings about her own life being threatened and yesterday’s beat down by Martin. But with the boss’s son is nowhere in sight, I wasn’t sure if I was just being a paranoid mess over this.
I walk into the building slowly, taking my time to shut the large metal door so that the bells don’t chime or the alarm doesn’t sound. As I walk, my feet raise like a ballerina’s floating across the stage. While I’m not afraid to walk in my own domain, I certainly don’t want to give myself away, especially to Barber.
I head directly upstairs towards the offices. At the foot of the stairs, a few voices make me pause in my place. “You understand what I’m telling you to do, son?”
Thad wavers as he answers, “I do. I just don’t know if I’m okay with it exactly. I mean, what you’re asking me to do is a pretty big deal, and I’m just not comfortable being the one to do it.”
“I’m not asking you to do anything, boy. I’m telling you. This is your job now. You’re taking over for someone who did it before you. And when you’re gone, either by my hand or God’s, someone else will take over as well. You’re replaceable, and don’t forget that. Ever.”
“I get you, sir. Is there anything else I should know, or am I okay to get started?”
Knowing Barber will be heading back my way towards the stairs at any second, I make a beeline straight for one of the other empty offices, pushing past an unlocked door and hiding myself deep in a closet space. Barber passes me by seconds later, followed by several of the enforcers I always see guarding him when he’s out on business. I hold my breath as I listen to the sound of their footsteps tread heavy on the stairs and down through the doors.
When they’re gone, I spring out of my hiding spot and back out to the accountant’s office where Thad is sitting with his head slumped in his hands in front of the keyboard. He doesn’t even register my presence until I give a little cough. He stammers back to life, practically falling out of the small rolling desk chair.
“These your new fancy digs now you’ve gone corporate?” I walk around the room slowly, unsure of how I am going to ask my burning questions. Picking up a few knickknacks from the last accountant, I examine an old snow globe almost dried up from sitting in the sun. “Don’t look like they really give you much up here. I’d rather go road crazy than be stuck in a dump like this.”
“Don’t remind me, Gavin. I’d kill to be back out on the road instead of doing the Barbers’ bidding.”
“Yeah? I mean, it can’t be too bad. You’re just doing club stuff right. You’re just signing checks and going through the books. That sounds like a pretty plushy job to have landed into. Plus, don’t the guys always love the man with the money?”
The accountants in the Bloody Pagans have always been revered. While no one wants to go ‘corporate,’ the man who gets trusted with the money was someone everyone had to respect. Thad taking on this job was kind of perfect for me to get an insider view. And now that I overheard Barber egging on Thad to do something he wasn’t kosher with, I had even more reason to pry.
Thad types into an old desktop computer as he mutters, “We’ll see how long I last. I wouldn’t be surprised if I don’t live to see many Fridays.”
“What the fuck do you mean by that?” I ask as I pull up a swivel chair next to him, planting myself feet from his desk.
“I mean that the Bloody Pagans ain’t all that they seem, and now that I’ve got the key to the vault, I’d rather turn it in than do their dirty deeds.” As soon as he finishes, a look of complete terror washes over his pale face. A small bead of sweat forms at the top of his forehead, and his eyes begin blinking rapidly. Having worked with druggies and dealers almost every day of my life, I can tell that Thad knows he said too much.
I reply passionately, “Thad, if there’s something going down with the Pagans, you know you can tell me. I’m no friend of the Barbers, and if they are hurting my brothers, I want to know about it. You know you can trust me.”
“I trust you, Gavin. I do. I’d ride into that sunset with you. But I also know the Barbers, and they don’t make idle threats. They are serious, man. This whole operation they got going on is some goddamn serious shit. And I’m not about to be the one dumb fuck that cracks this wide open and starts the war that’s brewing.”
“The war?” I ask, hanging on to his every word for clues I know he must be throwing out.
“Yeah, the war. The one that’s been itching to start, and our ride last week to the Senators’ stash isn’t going to help anyone but the Barber family.”
“I don’t understand,” I say honestly, in hopes he’ll slow down and clue me in. What did the Midnight Kings, the Bloody Pagan Motorcycle Club’s mortal enemy, have to do with the Barbers. I
’m done playing games now. I walk back over to the office door and close it tightly, locking it first and then planting my chair underneath the handle. Neither one of us is getting out, and no one is getting in, until the truth comes out to me.
I reach in my back pocket and pull out a gun, slamming it down on the desk before Thad. He stammers backwards seeing it come suddenly flying out on display. I know he’s unarmed. He was never one to carry heat with him when he wasn’t on the road, and I doubt he would take a loaded gun to the office. And by the way he cowers in his own chair, I know I’m right.
“Listen,” I say carefully, “I don’t want to do this, Thad. You’re my boy, my best friend. But Jonah Barber and that fucking piece of shit son of his are destroying the Pagans. And you know it. Something’s going down with that family, and I am determined to find out.”
“Why?” Thad asks nervously, his eyes fixed to the gun still placed near me on the desk. “Why do you care so much? I mean, I know you’re pissed about not getting the top road captain job, but this ain’t like you. You fell in line and didn’t ask questions. What happened?”
The words fly out my mouth before I can even stop myself, “A girl. A Barber girl. I met her at that party, and we’ve been having this back and forth thing ever since. Last night, she told me that he was going to kill her over us being together, and that just doesn’t sound right. So I need to know just why the Barber boys are guarding her so tight, and what they are so afraid of. And you seem to have answers.”
Thad scratches his head, as a slow smile appears across his face. “So this is about some pussy,” he says, clearly delighted.
“No!” I yell offended, “This isn’t about ‘some pussy.’ This is about protecting this club and that girl from whatever the fuck they are doing. Now I overheard that bastard talk to you about forcing you to do something. What is he making you do? You tell me, and I can protect you. You don’t tell me, and I’ll have to pry it out of you.” My hand shoots over to the gun. Without picking it up, my fingers trace around the trigger and handle teasingly.
Thad lifts his hands up in defense as he whispers, “Fine. Fine. Just sit down, man. I’ll tell you, but you gotta sit down and put that damn thing away.”
I grab the chair out from under the door and slide it back to where I previously sat. He begins to type on the yellowed computer keyboard as the screen changes. A password prompt comes across the screen, and he quickly types in the entry. It flashes away, revealing a calendar along with a few spreadsheets full of numbers in shades of red, blue, green, and black.
Thad points his finger at the screen, as he says, “You see this entry on the calendar?” I peer at it, noting that it’s a schedule for some of the runners I’ve worked with. “This is Martin’s work schedule for the runners. The boys in green here like you have the regular times and shifts. But there are some in red here for guys I’ve never heard of. There’s Rocket, Nemo, Fritz, and Carlos, and they’re linked to a route I’ve never seen. It goes all the way down to Grand Canal.”
“Grand Canal? That’s the Senators’ territory. That’s where they get their drugs. What the hell are they trying to do?”
“Okay. Remember that.” Thad flashes the screen over to another calendar. “And here’s Jonah Barber’s schedule. See this meeting also highlighted in red? It’s in Grand Canal and it’s with a guy with the initials J.L. Does that mean anything to you?”
“J.L.?” The initials scan through my memory bank, looking for answers until only one comes up. “Jackie LaVoix?”
“Bingo. Jackie LaVoix, the second in command at the Senators. He’s in charge of the drug export down in Grand Canal. No stash gets through the Canal without LaVoix’s approval.”
“So why in the hell would Jonah be scheduled to meet with him?”
“That’s where the money comes in.” He pulls up a spreadsheet full of numbers. His mouse highlights a long row of empty columns. And as the columns go from white to a blue highlight, numbers appear where there were no numbers before. “You see these? These are amounts deposited in an account named J.L. The old accountant would get a stash in from those runners we never heard of every Tuesday after they did a run to the Grand Canal. The money would be put into the J.L. account. It must be over half a million dollars in the last year alone.”
“But where does that money go?” I ask totally baffled by what was being put out to me.
“It’s split between two paychecks: Martin and Jonah. Only that cash we brought in last week from our King theft went anywhere else but to them. It went back to Jackie LaVoix. Barber told me today it was like a pull over. The Senators’ president thinks we made a hit on him, and Jackie stays out of the line of fire so that Jackie and Jonah can continue to do business together without anyone, including us Pagans, being any wiser or richer.”
I’m totally speechless. The only words I can muster come after a long, panicked pause where I stammer, “Those fucking double crossing bastards…” Stealing from the club was a massive offense. In my lifetime, I’ve been witness to three trials of men who didn’t give back their haul money to the club. One man was never heard from again. The other two lost fingers along with their club status. An eye for an eye was our motto.
But for upper management to be doing it was a whole other sin entirely. Money in the club is always split up—mostly by position and title. Sure, the big man at the top always brings in bigger dough, but the rest trickles down like any other business. Getting gypped out of half a million was a slap in the face and one I was not about to ignore.
My breathing takes up, as I try to piece everything together. Thad watches me, completely helpless. “I just found out today, man. I wouldn’t have even noticed it if that dumb asshole hadn’t straight out explained it to me.” He waits for my reply before asking, “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to take Jonah and Martin Barber down if it’s the last thing I’m going to do.”
With my final words, I storm out of the office and out through the main hall. The shift is already gathering with my new partner Brock waiting for me by the clock in area. As I pass him by, he grabs me by the arm and asks gruffly, “What are you doing, boy?”
“My bike is out of the shop. I’m not working this shift. You do it.” I don’t bother to wait for him to respond. I just keep walking past the men grinning at me and offering me their arms. I walk past their bikes in the parking lot waiting to be ridden. I walk past the building where I spent nearly fifteen years of my life under the service of the Barbers. And instead, I head out on my own ride, out in the drizzling rain towards home.
I never expected to be released from my shift. Calling off was only done in extreme emergencies, and my lame excuse of picking up a bike wasn’t going to fly when I had my other in good condition. So I sit on my bed, and wait and wait and wait. I’m anticipating the call so much that when I hear the knock on my door just minutes after I settle in, I groan and cry out, “Whomever it is, I’m not working today. Go the fuck away!”
The knock continues, pounding even harder and more urgently. A voice unlike the boys I’m familiar with cries over the sound of the rain hitting the metal balcony. I rush over to the door and fling it open. Outside, soaked to the bone with makeup stains streaming down her face is none other than Vanessa Barber.
CHAPTER 15 You could call me a goody-two-shoes. At least, my friends did. I wasn’t like the other biker daughters, on the rare occasions when I actually got to meet and interact with them. All of them were rough around the edges and completely immersed into club life. But my mother had raised me different. Instead of tank tops and cowboy boots, she put me in silky dresses with ribbons and bows along with white, Mary Jane shoes with the bows on the toe. The other girls hated me.
I really didn’t mind though. I knew that I was better than they were. I was going to go places and be something. I wasn’t going to be the ladies I occasionally saw my dad talking in corners to when I was allowed to go to club events. I was going to be so much more.
Those dreams required planning. I filled notebooks with ideas and timelines. I was going to be a college graduate at twenty-one, married at twenty-three, house and kids at twenty-five, a graduate degree at twenty-nine, and an awesome career woman at thirty. And when that didn’t add up, I would plan alternative routes and paths for me to take. One by one, those notebooks filled with schedules, reminders, and inspirational quotes I had found.
But what those notebooks didn’t prepare me for was the day I ran away from it all. I mean, how could I anticipate that my dad would go psycho caretaker on me, or that the abuse I saw almost daily would finally crack me wide open? How could I know that Martin would be just as bad of a human being, bent out to destroy any bit of happiness I could find?
All I knew was that today I had to get away, and I had to do it as quickly as possible. My original thought was to go to Alice’s place until I had the guts to get out of town, but when I realized that I only had about ten hours to do so, I knew Alice’s place wasn’t safe. It would be the first stop they’d go on the hunt for me.
WIFE FOR A PRICE: A Hitman Fake Marriage Romance Page 49
