Biker Justice: A Skull Kings MC Novella

by Sage L. Morgan

  Logan’s wallet chain and keys rattled as he crossed the room to a metal filing cabinet. He inserted a key into the lock and opened one of the drawers. He came back to me holding several small items. The first thing he handed to me was a photograph.

  “That was me five years ago,” he explained as he sat down. “My first day working for the FBI.” His cheeks darkened. “My, uh, mom took that before I left for work.”

  I stared at the picture in my hands. The young man in the photograph was unfamiliar. He was thin and fresh-faced, wearing a starched shirt and tie while posing stiffly in front of a door. His hair was shorn and parted to one side. He looked like somebody who drove a Prius, who wore sandals on his pasty-white feet on the weekends and wouldn’t have been caught dead inside of a tattoo parlor. He was a stranger to me, but his smile was recognizable. I felt the shock all over my body.

  “You look so...”

  “Preppy?” Logan offered immediately.

  “Well...yeah. How old are you in this picture?”

  A beat passed. “Twenty-eight.”

  Twenty-eight. Five years ago.

  “I’m older than you thought, aren’t I?” Logan said with a high, nervous laugh.

  I felt my mouth fall open. I looked from the photo to the flesh and blood Logan sitting at my left. This whole time, I’d thought he was my age, or younger. He certainly acted that way. But with this new revelation and in the light of the single light bulb and the scarlet sunset coming through the window, I began to notice the minute signs of aging that I’d never noticed before. He had fine lines around his eyes and mouth and a few threads of silver in his sandy-blonde hair.

  This isn’t the real me. His words echoed once again in my ears. I’d had no idea how true those words were until now.

  Logan cleared his throat loudly, obviously unsettled by my silence. “Uh, well, anyway. Here’s my I.D. from back then.”

  He passed me a generic clip-on badge. He looked surprised in his headshot, wide-eyed and unsmiling, but now I knew that he was just very young in the picture. Beneath it were the words, Assistant Research Specialist, Investigative Analysis.

  He tapped the first line of words and read them aloud. “I was basically the office bitch,” he explained. “You wouldn’t know it from T.V. or movies or anything, but most jobs in the FBI involve reams of paperwork, and that’s what I did for about two years. Did you know that Canyon City is a major hub in the underground drug network?”

  I looked up from the I.D. badge in surprise, jarred by the sudden question. “Uh...no?”

  “Well, that’s what the department was investigating. They had a pretty small file on the town, so nobody was interested. But then, they got a tip that somebody was dealing out of Amazon, and that’s when the Skull Kings got on their radar.”

  “Oh, my god. The MC is dealing drugs?”

  “No, not at all!” Logan said quickly. “It was actually the Scorpions, but the Skull Kings were just more visible. I only realized that the Kings were clean after I got inducted, so it was a huge mess. I had to figure out how to gather intel on the Scorpions while keeping my cover. I did a pretty shitty job, though, because the Kings thought I was double-crossing them. That time when I said I got jumped by Scorpions, that was actually the Kings—” he paused to wave away my cry of alarm “—but that’s not important. Basically, the FBI found themselves in need of a special agent who fit a certain criteria. I got the job. That’s how I ended up here.”

  Logan passed me something else: his badge. I flipped open the leather cover. It was just like in the movies, with the official-looking seal and everything. Logan looked older in this picture, with slightly longer hair and a thinned out face. But that wasn’t what caught my attention.

  I held the badge up to the light, hoping that the poor lighting was playing tricks on my eyes. But the words were still there, clear as day. I read them aloud.

  “Special Agent Michael Holder?”

  I didn’t even know his real name. He’d done things to my body to make me breathlessly cry out his name, and it wasn’t even real. Suddenly, it was all becoming too much, too soon.

  “Logan” ripped the badge out of my hands. He grabbed my shoulders, roughly maneuvering me to face him head-on. There was an imploring look in his eyes.

  Blood pounded angrily in my head. “How about the Skull Kings? Do they know?”

  Logan gulped. “Yes.”

  My voice wavered as I struggled to speak. “And Aspen?”

  “Aspen knows, too.”

  I made a strangled sound with my throat, my outrage too great for words.

  “Carmen, please understand. I came here to do a job, but then I got involved with the MC, and I started getting to know you better, and...” He searched my eyes as he struggled to find the right words to say. “Logan is my middle name. And everything that I’ve told you about my feelings, about how much I wanted you, that’s all true.”

  I shrugged his hands off of me and inched away. “I don’t know,” was all I could say. I repeated it softly to myself as I stared at the Spartan interior of his living room, the badge lying at our feet, and the gleaming Harley parked outside, framed in the window of his secret lair. I looked back to Logan.

  “Why? Why are you telling me all this? Why now?”

  Logan exhaled slowly, but his gaze never broke from mine. I felt a rush of adrenaline as I steeled myself. The seconds mounted, one on top of the other.

  I wondered if I was ready to hear what he had to say.

  “I couldn’t lie to you anymore. And—” he drew in a shaky breath “—I need your help.”

  Chapter 8

  Help?

  “How exactly can I help you, Special Agent Michael Holder?”

  “Come on, I’m serious.”

  I crossed my arms. “Well? What do you want from me?”

  Logan rested his elbows on his knees and laced his fingers together. He chewed on his bottom lip. “It’s about Lisbeth.”

  A flare of irritation broiled up inside of my chest, but I calmed it back with a few deep breaths. “Okay. It’s about that tattoo, isn’t it?”

  “It goes deeper than that,” Logan said, sounding exhausted. He sighed and began rubbing his eyes. “I recognized the compass from my days as a research assistant. It didn’t mean anything to me at the time, but when Lisbeth came back into town with that image on her arm, something clicked. You see, the Scorpions were the dealers, but we never found the supplier. That’s part of the reason why I’m still here.”

  “And what do Lisbeth and a bunch of prostitutes have to do with it?”

  “Remember I told you the rose was a symbol for the prostitutes? It’s just a small fraction of what the compass gang does. They have their hands stuck in a lot of cookie jars: money laundering, gun trafficking, prostitution, drugs. I know it’s kind of a long shot, but I got a hunch that Lisbeth showing up in town was not a coincidence.”

  “And?”

  “And obviously, I can’t out her to her brother or the rest of the MC because we have no idea how deep this goes. But until I find out, she might be in danger.”

  My mind worked quickly, piecing the odds and ends together. “So, you want me to convince Lisbeth to tell you what she knows.”

  “You’re the only one who can get the truth out of her. There’s got to be more to her story than what she told you, don’t you agree?”

  I wasn’t exactly sure, or maybe I just didn’t want to know. Thinking about what Lisbeth had to do to get inked with the rose was horrible enough. But if there was something worse coming, then Lisbeth really was in danger.

  “I don’t know if I can, Logan.”

  Logan nodded. Suddenly, he looked tired. He looked old. “I understand. We’ll talk about it some other time. But think about it, okay? And keep an ear out. The compass affiliates have a sort of code that they use to recognize each other in the streets. They call themselves ‘True North.’”

  “True North,” I whispered.

  “And this
goes without saying, but don’t tell anyone we had this conversation or I’ll have to kill you.”

  I burst out laughing. It was from the tension. It was from the uneasiness I’d felt from the moment we walked into that house. Or maybe, I laughed hoping Logan would join me, assuring me that he was just kidding around about the killing part.

  But he kissed me instead. And it was miles away from every single kiss he’d given me before. His lips groped, his tongue probed desperately. He communicated through that kiss what neither of us could put into words. He was seeking comfort from me, the way I did from him.

  I peeled off my shirt and bra. Logan licked my nipples as I stretched out on my back on the futon. We were both drunk from the heat, unable to tell whether our sweat was from the balmy house or each other. He undressed the rest of me, and I pushed down his jeans.

  “Baby,” he whispered.

  I grasped his hard cock and guided it into me. I scratched his back, and he pulled at my hair. We weren’t just fucking; we were crashing into each other.

  “Carmen! Give it to me,” Logan said, his voice low against my ear.

  I rocked my hips, holding our bodies together. His mouth, my skin, my heat, everything was damp from our sex. My eyes fluttered as I let myself go, falling into the waves of pleasure.

  Logan pushed his arms straight, his spine curling up toward the ceiling. His hips plunged into me one last time before he jerked himself out. The skin of his tight, muscular chest and hard abs flushed with color as he came, laying his thick, sticky ropes across my belly.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, still breathless as he rummaged through his piles of clothes. He wiped off the mess with the inside of his boxer briefs.

  I laughed, and my belly trembled under his hands. “You’re just spreading it around.”

  Logan caught my eyes and smiled. Well, I tried, he seemed to say. And somehow, it was the perfect ending to a very unusual day.

  Luckily, I had some baby wipes stashed in my purse. After cleaning each other up, we got dressed, locked up the house, and climbed on the Harley. There was a tinge of pink on the horizon as the last of the sunset drained away. Only a couple of hours had passed, yet it seemed like a lifetime. Armed with new knowledge, I was going back into town as a different girl.

  I tried to sort through Logan’s wild story as we cut a dusty path through the desert. Part of me still couldn’t believe it, but seeing his old pictures and badge had helped somewhat. At least I didn’t doubt him anymore. Now, it was a question of whether or not I’d decide to help him.

  I was afraid to admit it, but I already knew that I would.

  Chapter 9

  Anthemhead was a town about halfway between Canyon City and Phoenix. It also had the closest pharmacy that carried the morning after pill.

  The whole trip should’ve taken me two hours, tops. I’d made sure to buy a box of condoms while paying at the register. The paper bag of my purchases sat in my passenger seat as I drove back toward the interstate. My eyes skimmed over the signs by the road, every one of them typical advertisements of a smallish desert town. But one of them made me take a second look.

  True North Healing Clinic.

  I frowned behind my aviator sunglasses. “True North,” I recited to myself. A string of recognition vibrated in my mind. Wasn’t that what Lisbeth’s gang called themselves?

  I flicked on my turn signal and made a U-turn.

  The sign pointed toward an old adobe building that looked as benign as a doctor’s office. I parked in the mostly empty lot and slid out to walk toward the shade of the building. There was a bulletin board by the double-door entrance pinned with fliers for church organizations, methadone clinics, and drug rehab centers.

  Find God’s plan for you at True North Healing Clinic, read the largest flier of all. Below the title was a list of dates and times, apparently for support group meetings. The next one was in fifteen minutes.

  I took a step back to study the entire building once more, shading my eyes. Then, I heard the crunch of tires rolling through the crumbled asphalt. I turned around just in time to watch a twenty-year-old Buick slide to a stop right beside my car.

  A man wearing a chef’s coat got out of the driver’s side. Half of my mind urged me to run while the other half fought to keep me there to investigate further. So naturally, I just froze in place, unsure of what to do.

  The man slammed his door shut. “Are you here for the meeting?”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “You must be new.” His face suddenly broke out into a wide smile. “It’s normal to be nervous on your first time.”

  I breathed an inward sigh of relief as the man made his way toward me. With his soft, gray hair and wrinkly smile, he had a sort of grandfatherly look about him. I accepted his handshake and introduced myself.

  “I’m Father Alan,” he said.

  “Father Alan?” I said, confused.

  He glanced down at himself and chuckled sheepishly. “Oh, of course. I still have to change. My organization is short on funding, so I’ve picked up all sorts of odd jobs to make ends meet.”

  I smiled guiltily, unable to come up with the right thing to say. Suddenly, my life’s problems seemed petty compared to the stuff Father Alan must’ve had to deal with.

  “Why don’t you come inside? You can help me set up the refreshments.”

  “Ah—well—” I stared helplessly after him as he began making his way toward the building. “Okay.”

  I watched as he unlocked the doors and ushered me inside. The interior was very generic looking with a beige tile floor, fluorescent lighting, and vertical blinds on the windows. Tables were folded and propped against the cinderblock walls. The only other furnishing was a circle of chairs in the middle of the room.

  “Why don’t you tell me about yourself?” Father Alan began.

  I followed him into a small, adjacent office. “Um...well...I’m not really into sharing details about myself,” I said pathetically.

  “That’s fine. I understand. You’ll find that a lot of women here have trust issues. Everybody is free to open up on their own time,” he said. He began undoing the white buttons of his coat. “Have a seat. I just need a minute.”

  I lowered myself into a padded chair, trying to think of a graceful way to leave. Several excuses floated around in my mind, each one of them embarrassingly ridiculous. Father Alan circled around a cluttered desk, removing his chef’s coat as he went.

  I directed my eyes to a motivational poster, blushing fiercely. He wore a plain white tee shirt under the coat, but it still felt wrong to sit idly in a room while a man of God undressed himself.

  “So, what do you do here?” I asked.

  “I mediate the support group, mostly.”

  I dared to probe further. “Is the support group for just a certain type of person?”

  Father Alan opened a squeaky cabinet. “In theory, yes. Female heroin addicts. But we have a wide variety of women. Mothers, widows, doctors, postal workers. Even prostitutes.”

  My mind instantly drew up an image of Lisbeth. I recognized pieces of her in this place, in Father Alan, like a bloodhound picking up scent notes scattered throughout the environment. True North. Heroin. Prostitutes. But I struggled to piece them all together. I peeked back at Father Alan just in time to see him holding a black shirt by its collar.

  I gasped.

  Father Alan looked at me in surprise. “Pardon?”

  I stood up. “I should go,” I said quickly.

  “But the meeting—”

  I rushed out of the office. At least I didn’t have to worry about finding an excuse to leave. I discovered that a handful of women had already arrived as I passed through the meeting room. They watched me curiously as I whipped toward the exit.

  I pushed at the door and heard a cry of alarm as it hit someone on the other side.

  “Oh, god, I’m sorry!” I said quickly. I stepped out to get a good look at the person I’d hit. “Lisbeth?”

&nb
sp; “Carmen?”

  Her expression told me that she was equally as surprised to see me as I was, only her surprise was also mixed with the sheer terror of being caught. So much blood drained from her face that even her lips turned white.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I—well—I mean—”

  I narrowed my eyes. “I know this place is connected to the gang you’re running from, Lisbeth.”

  Lisbeth took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. This is a support group.”

  I snatched her arm. “Then, why does the mediator have this same exact tattoo?”

  Her long sleeves covered the compass on her arm, but at this point I knew exactly what it looked like. I stared pointedly at the spot where her tattoo should have been and could easily recall the image of its twin on Father Alan.

  Lisbeth’s head jerked back. “You...you met Father Alan?”

  Several car doors slammed in succession in the parking lot. My eyes snapped away from Lisbeth’s face just long enough to watch a few more women making their way toward the meeting.

  I dropped my voice to a whisper. “I was with him in his office when he changed into his clergy shirt. I saw it on his arm.”

  Lisbeth’s eyes widened, flicking back and forth between mine. I knew she was trying to come up with an explanation, and I knew she was failing miserably.

  “He’s not really a minister, is he? What is this place, Lisbeth? Is there really a support group happening here?”

  “Yes, there really is!” Lisbeth said. Her eyes shone with desperation. She flashed a quick smile at the three women who edged past us to get inside, but it disappeared just as quickly once the door shut behind them. “Okay, you caught me. I didn’t tell you the full truth, but you cannot stay.”

  “Why can’t I?”

  “Because it’s dangerous for you here!”

  “Then, it’s dangerous for you, too.”

  Lisbeth shook her head. “You don’t know anything, Carmen.” She said it firmly, defiantly. All of her guilt over being caught was gone. “You have to go.”