Threat: A Blood Riders MC Novel (Book 1)

by Tia Lewis

  “Mind your own business,” I smirked. I patted Jack’s hand—the most affection I could show—and poured him another glass of water before leaving him alone. He groaned a little as I closed the door, and it sounded like he might be heaving again. I felt sorry for him. It was hard, seeing a man like him get taken down like that. He was always bigger than life, loud and in charge. And all he could do was lie on the couch, shaking a little, throwing up while his body tried to fight off his cancer. It didn’t seem fair. But we didn’t live in a fair world. I already knew that.

  Creed and Ace sat around the bar, bullshitting. I could tell they both still felt like shit from the party, but they were going to need to get their heads out of their asses real fast.

  “I have something I need the two of you to look into for me.” I looked at Ace. “You’re still pretty good with computers, right?”

  “Yeah, you know I am. What do you need, V.P.?”

  “It’s not what I need. It’s what we need.”

  “What’s going on?” Creed asked.

  “Listen. We need to find out if a certain gun that was used to kill that detective two weeks ago was used anywhere else.” I gave them the rundown of what Jack had told me. I watched their faces go from relaxed to furious in a matter of thirty seconds.

  “Are you fucking serious? They’re tryin’ to pin that shit on us?” Ace asked.

  “No wonder they’ve been so fucking quiet lately,” Creed muttered. “Hawk thinks this is the slam dunk he needs, and we didn’t even know about it.”

  “Well, we do now,” I said grimly.

  “How would we find out about the gun?” Creed asked. I looked at Ace.

  “Oh, you’re not asking me to hack into the police network, are you?”

  I held a finger to my lips, telling him to quiet down. “And if I were?”

  “I would tell you you’re out of your fucking mind, man. That’s no joke, Drake.”

  “And I’m not joking. I’m dead fucking serious. We need to find out everything we can about this. As long as they can prove that gun was used by our guys in that warehouse, they can tie us to the murder. We didn’t have anything to do with it, but they’re never gonna let it go if we don’t prove something. Understood?”

  “So why am I looking into this gun again?” Ace asked.

  “I just wanna make sure it doesn’t match up to anything else. Has it been used since then? Where? What else do they know about it? Anything you can find. Hell, if there’s any info about the detective and what they think about the case, bring me that, too. I want to know everything. We have to find out what they have on us if we’re ever gonna get them off our backs. The heat’s hotter than ever.” I told them about when I got pulled over. The two of them winced.

  “Man, that sucks,” Creed said, shaking his head.

  “They’re gonna be on our asses way more than before, now. I can feel it. They think we killed one of theirs. You know how serious they take stuff like that. Killing a cop is deep shit—”

  “Keep your voice down.” I interrupted.

  “Yeah, about as serious as we take it,” Ace muttered. It wasn’t an accident that we’d taken out seven Cobras since they killed three of ours.

  “Exactly. Only they can find ways to put us away for a long time, or make it so we can’t do business. Fuck, this all makes so much sense!” I slammed my hands on the bar, mad at myself for not seeing it sooner.

  “He just told us to quiet down.” Ace chuckled.

  “Listen. This was his plan the whole time. Frame us for the murder, so the police cut us off. And Hawk thinks he can swoop in and take our business away.”

  “Isn’t that what hawks do?” Creed snorted at his lame joke. I glared at him.

  “Yeah, ha ha. Okay, so that’s what we’re doing. Ace, you’re breaking in. Okay?”

  “I don’t know for sure how you expect me to do this,” he said, but he slid off the barstool anyway. “Hacking into a police network is serious shit, Drake.”

  “I expect you to use all those skills the Army taught you about technology,” I said. “And I expect you tell me when you get in so I can go through it with you. Can you do that for me, Ace?”

  “You got it, boss.” He saluted with a smirk on his face. “I’ll go home and get my laptop and come back here.”

  “Perfect, thanks.” I watched him leave then turned to Creed.

  “Okay, Creed—”

  “Wait. So, what then? What happens when we find whatever it is you wanna find?” Creed didn’t look impressed with my half-baked plan, and the skepticism was plain in his voice.

  “We go to the Cobras if we have to. We end this shit, once and for all.”

  “You honestly think that’s the best idea?” Creed questioned.

  “Do you have a better one?”

  “Not really.” He shrugged pouring himself a shot of Jack Daniels.

  “The hair of the dog?” I asked, grinning.

  “Hair of several dogs. Goddamn, I don’t know what happened to me last night.”

  “The same thing that happened to everybody else. Too much fun which got everyone fucked up.”

  He looked at me with a sly smile, and I knew what was coming. Shit, I had led myself into it. “Some of us had more fun than others,” he joked.

  “See, here we go.”

  “What?” Creed joked, nudging my shoulder.

  “Have your laugh. I don’t care.” I leaned against the cooler, waving a hand toward myself. “Come on. Lay it on me. Say what you need to say.”

  “Is that what she said?” He laughed, and I had to laugh with him a little. Still a lame joke, but it was still kind of funny.

  “Yeah, yeah. Fine. Don’t be jealous.”

  “If I were jealous, could you blame me? Fuck.” He shook his fluffy head, looking sad. “She’s hot as shit, man. As good as she looks?”

  “Better,” I said, and he looked even sadder. “I don’t know what brought her into my life or why she’s still here, but I like her, man. There’s something about her that draws me in.”

  “Wait, wait, wait. You like the girl? She’s that good?” He hooted, pushing back from the bar in amazement.

  “Could you keep your voice down? We’re not in high school.”

  “No, but you? Liking a woman? I’ve known you for, what, ten years? More than that? And never once did you ever say you liked a girl. That you wanted to fuck her? Yeah. Every day, just about.” He laughed. “But not this. Sorry if I’m a little surprised, bro.”

  “Try to control it, okay?” I shook my head. He acted like I didn’t have it in me to feel more for a woman than just an itch in my pants. Like I was some kind of animal. He didn’t know me at all. Nobody did. If anything, Bree had come closer than any of the rest of them and I’d only known her for a day.

  I went to my bedroom then, and she was still sleeping. I got into bed next to her, kicking off my shoes and taking off my jeans before I did. I slid inside the bedspread, putting an arm around her waist. She sighed and moved closer to me, half-asleep. Her body fit perfectly next to mine.

  I wondered what she was dreaming of. I watched her, the way her face relaxed when she was out cold as she was at that moment. Her beautiful face—smooth, healthy, with those cheekbones and those thick lips, the perfect nose, the eyes closed under dark brows. The thick, almost black hair.

  I wanted to find out who killed that detective for her sake, not just for the Club. I didn’t know why I linked the two of them in my head—maybe because her dad died almost the same way the cop did. Somehow, solving one would help her feel better about the other. I told myself that, anyway, before I laid my head on the pillow and fell asleep.

  15

  Nicole

  “I can’t believe I slept like that.” I ran a hand over my face, yawning, trying to wake myself up, and laughed a little out of embarrassment.

  “You needed it,” Tamara snorted from behind the bar. “After the night you had? And the morning, I bet?” I shot her a warning loo
k, but she laughed it off. “Hey, I think it’s cute.”

  “Cute?” I smiled, rolling my eyes.

  One person who didn’t believe that it was so great was Violet, and I could feel the iciness coming from her as we helped Tamara restock the bar. The Club had gone through an almost shocking amount of liquor the night before. It was shameful, the way they drank. How they were all alive, I had no idea.

  “Let’s not talk about it,” I murmured when I reached Tamara’s side, and she nodded in understanding. She might have thought it was no big thing that Violet’s heart was aching, but I did. I felt terrible for her. But it wasn’t my fault that Drake happened to be the person who gravitated toward me the most.

  That’s not true. Richie did, first. But Richie wasn’t who I needed. He wouldn’t have gotten me any closer to finding out about my father. Of course, Drake claimed not to know anything. Could I believe him? I wanted to, still, even after sleeping on it. I’d dreamed about some pretty terrible things after falling asleep. The phone call from Tommy telling me the devastating news. My father’s funeral. The feeling of complete emptiness after it finally hit me that he was gone, that he was never coming back. I’d screamed and wailed in my dreams, and when I woke up, there were tears on my face. Drake had kissed them away.

  He had kissed them away. It was the sweetest, most tender thing I could imagine. He didn’t try to do anything else after that. He’d only stroked my hair and kissed away my tears. I couldn’t figure him out. The big, intimidating bad boy. The sweet, gentle man. It made no sense. Who was real and who was fake? Who did he pretend to be? I couldn’t see both versions existing in the same person.

  I touched Violet’s arm as I walked past her with an empty glass rack, hoping to get her to warm up to me a little. It didn’t work very well—she only brushed me off. I needed to stop being a people pleaser, but I couldn’t help it. I wanted her to like me. None of it was my fault.

  “Hey, we’d better get dinner on soon,” Darcy said, coming in with another rack of glasses from the dishwasher.

  “Dinner?”

  “Oh, yeah. On nights when there’s a lot of members around, we have a family dinner. Most of ‘em have been hanging around here all day, trying to get their heads screwed on straight. They need a big, filling meal to soak up any last bits of booze in their systems.” Darcy grinned. “And we’re the ones who make it.”

  “Do you cook, Bree?” Tam asked.

  I remembered all the hundreds of meals I’d cooked for my father and me. I’d gotten good at so many things—roasted chicken, turkey, pot roast, meatloaf, meatballs, even fish. My father had loved my cooking; told me I was better at it than my mom was. And in his eyes, she’d been pretty damned near perfect.

  “Yeah, a little,” I fibbed. “Not very much, but I can learn.”

  “Well, we need to go to the store, first. They're at least fifteen guys here today, so we need something we can cook a huge batch of because shit, these boys can eat.”

  “Hmm … What about spaghetti?” I suggested. “Bread. Lots of carbs to soak up the alcohol. If you have a pot big enough it wouldn’t be a problem to make enough for everybody.”

  “Good idea. Maybe a nice, greasy meat sauce, too. I wouldn’t usually cheer for grease, but I feel sorta like hell myself,” Darcy chuckled, getting her keys. “Come on. Let’s head out now, you and me.”

  “Oh, okay.” I took the hint, and it was a good one. I needed to get away from Violet before she clawed my eyes out. Hadn’t Drake warned me about that? And wasn’t he the one I accused of causing fights between women? I couldn’t have predicted it any better than it had turned out.

  When we climbed inside Darcy’s little pink Beetle—which I thought was adorable—she let out a long sigh. “Whoa. The tension, the tension.” She shook her head.

  “You mean Violet?”

  “Who else?” She pulled out of the parking lot, still shaking her head. “I mean, I knew she had a crush on Drake, but damn. I didn’t know she would be that upset about it. I told her to move on already.”

  “I think they just had sex yesterday. Oh, God, I hate myself for even saying that. Having sex with the man she did on the day they did it. Gross. What does that make me?”

  “It makes you human, girl. You’re just human. And nobody on Earth can resist Drake Collins. Trust me. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.” I wished I had Darcy’s happy-go-lucky attitude. She went with the flow, took things for what they were and made the best of them. I knew she’d gone to bed with Creed the night before, and she was the sort of person who could treat him like just another one of the guys the next day. Like it was no big deal. I could never do that.

  “Yeah, he’s sort of—addicting.” I giggled softly, remembering how it felt to be with him. How he’d kissed my tears away. I wondered if any of the other women he’d been with knew that side of him. I doubted it. I hoped I was the only one—it was a nice thought.

  “I’ll say. I’ve been there, honey. I mean that literally. He’s real good in bed, too.” She grinned.

  I forced a smile, realizing she meant she’d slept with him. Play it cool. You’re a woman of the Club, remember. Not some girl from Murray Hill who only had a few boyfriends by the age of twenty-one. You’ve been around the block, so act like it.

  “Yeah, he is.” We both laughed—mine was a little more forced than hers, though. I was never any good at girl talk.

  We walked around the local supermarket just a mile or two away from the Clubhouse, and I was grateful for a change of subject. We debated on how to make the sauce, but it was a friendly discussion.

  “I’m Italian, honey. I know what I’m talking about. We need ground pork sausage and ground beef, and plenty of it.” Darcy loaded up the cart with more meat than I’d ever seen in one purchase. “We’ll just use pre-made sauce with it—you know the canned stuff. We don’t need to make our lives harder than they need to be. Plus, you would need to leave a scratch sauce cooking for hours. We don’t have that kind of time.”

  “You’re a good cook, then?” I asked, pulling five pounds of pasta off the shelf. I raised an eyebrow when Darcy insisted we get that much, but she was adamant.

  “Oh, I love to cook. I used to wanna be one when I grew up.” She pulled three massive jars of sauce from the shelf and added them to the cart. “Now, bread.”

  “What stopped you? From being a chef, I mean.”

  “Do you have any clue how expensive culinary school is?” She whistled, rolling her eyes. “I don’t have that kinda money. Besides, this is fun. Cooking for the guys, I mean. And they’re patient when I try new recipes too.”

  “Them? Patient?” I laughed.

  “I know. It doesn’t seem like it would be true, but it is. I mean it; they’re a good bunch of guys. Some of them are just a little rough around the edges.” A little rough? From what I’d seen, they were much worse than that. Psychotic, in some cases.

  Darcy went from laughing to freezing in place in the blink of an eye, her hands around a loaf of bread. “What is it?” I asked, looking around the supermarket. Then, I saw. A man in a black leather vest like the ones the Blood Riders wore, only he didn’t wear their patch on the back. Instead, his patch was a giant cobra.

  “Oh, shit,” I whispered. Even I knew it was bad news. “Darcy, who is he?”

  “I’ve only seen him from the back, but it looks like Hawk.”

  “Are you serious? What’s he doing here? They’re from the Bronx, right?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know why he’d be here.”

  “Do you think he followed us?” I whispered. He was a tall man—not as tall as Jack, but big enough to be terrifying. He was pretending to look over a selection of rye bread. How I knew he was acting, I wasn’t sure. It felt like he was waiting for us to pass by him. And we couldn’t get to the cash register without going past him.

  “Come on, Bree. Just keep your head down.” Darcy grabbed a few loaves of fresh Italian bread and pushed the cart forward. I followed behind her, wishin
g to myself I had the same sort of courage she did. Balls of steel, that one. She paused at the specialty cheese counter to pick up a block of Parmigiana Reggiano, and then continued.

  Just as we were about to make a break for it, Hawk stepped in front of us. Not looking, of course, acting as though he was consumed with his shopping. He gave us a devilish grin that sent shivers down my body. His pockmarked face and greasy hair turned my stomach, but it was that smile that made me sick. There was something chilling and dangerous about him.

  “Hello, ladies. If it isn’t one of Big Jack’s girls.” He looked at Darcy, his eyes raking over her body. She stood firm, her chin held high.

  “And if it isn’t a snake in the grass. Shouldn’t you be hissing in your own territory?” I had to give her credit. She was great at facing up to him.

  He shrugged. “Eh, I like this supermarket better. A nicer bakery, for sure. An excellent selection of organic foods.” Then, he turned to me. Vomit rose in my throat. “And—who’s this?”

  “None of your business,” I spat. “Now will you get out of our way? We have things to do.”

  “Fiesty. I like that.” He smirked, licking his lips.

  “Excuse us.” My voice became louder.

  “Oh, a big family dinner, I see.” He looked in the cart, nodding his head. “This is going to be a hell of a meal you girls are cooking up. That’s where I like to see a woman. In the kitchen where she belongs.”

  “Because she sure as hell wouldn’t be caught dead in your bed,” Darcy retorted. Wow, she was quick. Hawk only smiled that sickening smile of his. He turned to me again, and the look in his eyes made me feel like he knew me. There was an intimacy on his face.

  “What’s your name?” he asked. “Are you new?”

  “She told you her name is none of her business. Now if you don’t mind, I’m gonna call security over here if you don’t let us move past you. We have to get back to the Clubhouse.”

  “Oh, yes. You should get back so you can feed all those hungry men of yours a nice, nutritious dinner.”