by Tia Lewis
The meeting broke up not long after that. I pulled Ace aside to thank him for all the work he did in hacking the police network—and in almost no time. He looked exhausted, so I knew without him telling me that he’d been up all night to get it done. I felt better, knowing the police weren’t stupid enough to think it was us without giving it a little more investigation. I could only hope that streak of clear thinking would carry us through until we found Detective Bluth’s killer.
I got a bottle of water out of the cooler behind the bar, taking a long drink. Something about being with Bree made me feel seriously dehydrated. I smiled to myself.
“Hey, where’s Bree?” I asked Tamara as she came in from the kitchen with a rack of glasses.
“She went to her aunt’s. She told me to tell you. She said Richie was gonna take her.”
I nodded. “That was, what, an hour ago? Or later?”
“Yeah, it was almost right after you went into the meeting, so maybe an hour.”
“Oh. Okay. Thanks.” I didn’t like the sound of it, but I knew she would do what she wanted. I pulled out my cell phone to call Richie and see what the hell was taking so long. No answer.
“You said about an hour ago, Tamara?”
“Yeah, why?”
I figured he was riding his motorcycle and couldn’t pick up. I wouldn’t feel secure until Bree was back with me, where I could keep an eye on her. I knew she would roll her eyes if she heard me say it, but it was the truth. I would feel better when she was with me.
When another twenty minutes passed, I looked around for her again. “Where the fuck is she?”
“Calm down. Maybe they stopped off somewhere. You know Richie would do anything she asked him to.” Creed chuckled.
“Yeah. That’s what I’m afraid of.” I was starting to seriously worry, even if nobody else understood why. Something felt off about the whole situation. Like why didn’t Richie check in with me before they left? I would have a talk with him about that later.
“What did Richie say when he came in?” I asked Tamara. She looked up at whatever she was doing behind the bar and shrugged.
“I don’t remember him coming in,” she said. I could tell from the look on her face she knew she was saying something I wouldn’t like hearing.
“What? You never saw him?” That was all I needed to hear. Leave it to Bree to do something crazy. I called Richie again. When I listened to the other line pick up, I breathed a sigh of relief.
Then, a heartbeat later, I heard the sound of crying. “Drake?”
I closed my eyes, leaning against the bar for a second. “Bree? Where are you?”
“At—at my aunt’s house. You remember how to get here, right?”
“What happened? What’s going on? Who’s with you?” I didn’t notice I was shouting. The rest of the clubhouse went silent, guys coming in from all over the place. I looked up, and my eyes met Jack’s.
“Please, just hurry,” she whimpered.
“Are you okay? Bree! Bree!”
I heard a muffled noise. Then, “Stop asking so many fucking questions.” My heart stopped for a second when it all came together.
“I swear to God I’ll fucking kill you! You hear me? I’ll fucking kill you!” I heard Tamara and Darcy sobbing together when I finished screaming. They knew something was wrong. Everybody did.
“You have to get here, first. And if you think I’m playing around, let this convince you.” A moment later, I heard a gunshot. Bree’s screaming. Richie, Richie! The phone went dead.
“I’ll kill you!” I roared, foaming at the mouth and veins popping out the sides of my neck. I dropped the phone on the floor.
“That’s my woman! If he lay a hand on her—”
“Drake! Calm down! What did he say! Tell us!” Creed interrupted.
“Fuck!” I rumbled. “He killed Richie! I think he killed Richie!”
Voices started overlapping each other. What? Who? Where? What’s going on? Where’s Bree?
That was the question that got to me the most. “It’s Hawk. He’s got her. He killed Richie!” I said, pacing back and forth as I sweated profusely.
“Shit!” I thought Jack might collapse, but he stayed strong. “We’ve gotta go, Drake. We’ve got to go now!”
“No! Hawk just wants me.”
“What?” Again with the overlapping voices.
“You can’t go alone!” Creed insisted. “What if he’s waiting for you and he kills you as soon as you get there? What if his whole crew is there, man? This whole thing could be a setup. A trap.”
Think, think. I had to think. I had to be clear-headed for Bree. “I don’t think so, man. Her neighbors would notice. It’s the middle of the morning, but there are still people around. All those bikes in Murray Hill, in front of one house? I don’t think so.”
“Drake. Listen. We have to go with you.” Creed stared at me. “We have to.”
“He’s right,” Jack said. “And what I say, goes!”
“You didn’t hear her, or him! He’s got her, man! He’s going to kill her if I show up with you guys. Listen to me! Let me take care of this myself!”
“Hey!” Jacked shouted. “No, you listen to me!”
The Club fell quiet.
“We’ll make it so he doesn’t know we’re with you, alright? What’s the address?” Jack went into his office, opening his dusty laptop.
“Shit, I don’t remember. Twenty-eighth? Near Bowne Park.” Jack plugged in the info, pulling up Google Earth images. We went through two blocks of pictures, looking on both sides of the street before I spotted the house. “There! That’s the one.”
“Okay.” Jack took the numbers off the mailbox and plugged the full address into Google to pull up a map of the area. He pointed to the most direct route. “Meanwhile, Creed, Ace, and Phil can circle around this way.” He drew an invisible line around the block. “They can cut through the alleyway from the next street over, into the backyard. This needs to be real smooth, fellas. We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.”
“Man, I hate this idea,” I said, still pacing.
“I know, but it’s the only one that makes sense. I’ll ride with Diesel and a couple of the others. We’ll take the next block over, this way. I’ll have two at one end of the block, two on the other. It doesn’t look like a long block. We’ll walk up without our vests if we have to. Just to be sure if there’s any of his crew around, they don’t notice us so fast. What do you think?”
I only half heard him, looking at the rest of the Google results from his search. “Click this link,” I said, pointing to the one that caught my eye. Deed information. The owner of the house.
“Here?” Jack asked.
“Yeah. What does that say?” I questioned.
“Robert Bluth,” Jack said. “Bluth?”
“Detective Bluth?” We looked at each other and paused. “No. No way.”
“Wait. Isn’t that her uncle?” Creed asked. “Shit. Is that why Bree came here?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No way. There must be a mistake.”
Jack wasn’t so convinced. He typed “Bree Bluth Queens NY” in Google search.
“Do you mean ‘Nicole Bluth Queens NY’?” Jack muttered, reading off the screen. I wasn’t paying attention to the words. There was a picture of a girl in a cap and gown who looked a hell of a lot like Bree, standing next to a man who looked a hell of a lot like Detective Bluth. Jack read the caption on the picture.
“He was—her father.” His voice sounded flat. My entire world shifted.
“No. No.” I shook my head in disbelief, arms folded. She’d lied to me.
“What are you gonna do?” Jack asked. I didn’t look at him right away. She’d lied to me. The entire time, she pretended to be somebody she wasn’t. Why? To trick me? To get me to confess ...
“… to killing her dad,” I whispered. “That’s why she came here.” I felt ill.
“Come on, Drake! What are we gonna do? Are we going or what?
” Creed’s voice was a muffled sound in my ears like he was talking into a pillow. Everything sounded weird over the beat of my frantic heartbeat. I remembered being in bed with her. Talking with her, laughing with her.
But she lied to me.
But I loved her.
“We’re going,” I commanded.
“Drake, wait!” Jack shouted.
“Now! Hawk must die!”
19
Nicole
I held Richie’s bloody head in my hands, looking into his blank eyes. I kept saying his name, kept telling him I was sorry. Because I was sorry. I was sorry for everything.
“He can’t hear you anymore,” Hawk sneered. I tried to ignore him. I wished I could give my life for Richie’s. I wished, I wished hard.
The moment played over again in my head, as I knew it would for the rest of my life. Hawk raising the gun as he spoke to Drake. Aiming at Richie’s neck. Pulling the trigger. Richie jerking to the side still held up by the rope that tied him to the chair. Blood spattering over the kitchen wall. Me, screaming. Screaming in shock and horror. I’d screamed until my voice broke.
“Oh, calm the fuck down,” Hawk spat when I started crying again. “He was nothing. Nobody. He wasn’t even a patched member of the Club. Nobody gives a fuck about a Prospect.”
“Fuck you! He was a good person!” I glared at Hawk, allowing myself to look at him though I’d been avoiding it to that point. “He didn’t deserve this!”
“Is that right? Funny, because weren’t you the one who used the kid to get into the Club.”
I gasped. “How do you know this?”
“Ha! You don’t think I have people around? Please. The guy behind the deli counter is one of mine. I put him there to keep tabs on the Club. The minute you pulled your little act on the kid, I knew there was something about you. Something I needed to know. Drake wasn’t the only person who followed you here yesterday, but I was in a car. I wasn’t gonna be all obvious about it, the way he was. He’s like a bull in a china shop, fucking idiot.”
“So you already knew who I was when you saw me at the supermarket?”
“Of course. Didn’t you feel it? I know all about you.” He crouched down beside me, where I knelt beside the chair. Beside Richie’s dead body. “I know where you went to college. I know what you studied. Criminal justice, how fitting. Wanted to follow in Daddy’s footsteps, huh?”
“Fuck you! Don’t you dare talk about my father!”
“Don’t tell me what to do, little girl.” He ran the back of his fingers over my cheek. I recoiled in horror. “You’re a real piece of work. You know that?”
“Don’t you fucking touch me!” I growled, teeth clenched against the bile that threatened to flow if I didn’t hold it back. “This is my house!”
“No, no, sweet thing. It’s your father’s house. And that’s how I put it all together. The internet is a beautiful thing, isn’t it? It’s no surprise none of those asshole Blood Riders thought to do a little research on you. They let you waltz right in and do whatever you wanted. I have to admit, kid, you’ve got some balls.”
“Fuck you.” I spat. “What a compliment, especially coming from somebody without any, you fucking pussy!”
“Watch it, bitch.” His voice was like a whip. “I was planning on keeping you alive until your little boyfriend gets here, but I can change my plans at any moment. All it takes is my finger on the trigger. Understood?”
“Fuck you,” I muttered. “I hope he kills you too. I can’t wait to see your dead body—”
“You’ll be dead by then, Nicole,” he sharply interrupted. “Don’t you see how this all plays out yet?”
“I don’t care how you think this is going to play out. It’s not going to happen the way you planned.”
“No?” He chuckled as he leaned closer, his mouth against my ear. “Tell that to your father.”
I froze in place, my mouth falling open, and my eyes wide. I couldn’t move. His words had wiped out all conscious thought, all ability to move or reason. All I could see in my head was my father’s face. It took what felt like forever for me to get my breath back.
“My father?” I stared at Hawk, trying to understand. “My father?”
“You heard me.” He grinned.
“You killed him?”
“I didn’t wanna have to, but it was too perfect.” He shrugged as though trying to explain why he’d finished the last of the milk in the fridge without telling anybody. Like it was nothing.
“It was you!” I screamed, lunging at him. “I’ll kill you!”
He held me off easily. I spun, reaching into the knife block for a butcher knife. I swung down on him, just barely missing him when he leapt out of the way. He jumped back as I lunged again, this time pointing the gun in my face.
“One. More. Move. I’ll fucking blow your head off. Try me, kid.” I watched him, and his hand was completely still. His breathing was slow, calm and smooth. He wasn’t panicked at all. One would never guess I’d just tried to attack him with a knife.
I backed away, still holding the knife but no longer threatening him. “Drop it,” he said. “On the floor. Now!”
I didn’t feel like I had a choice, so I did as I was told. The sound of the metal on the linoleum echoed through the kitchen. “Why did you do it?” I whispered. I had to know. If he was going to kill me, I couldn’t die without knowing.
“I thought you were supposed to be smart. What, too much time with those idiots already wore your brain down? The whole thing is about the Blood Riders. It had nothing to do with your old man.” Hawk finally lowered the gun from where it had been trained between my eyes, sitting on the kitchen table. Not five feet from Richie’s lifeless body. “When one of my guys took the gun from one of their guys—one of the ones they killed—I thought, perfect. It was like an opportunity fell into my lap. You understand?”
“No, I don’t. What opportunity?”
He scowled, upset at having to spell it out. “The opportunity to frame one of them for murder. There had to be at least one of the gun’s bullets somewhere in the warehouse where the showdown took place. I thought forensics will have that bullet. They’ll know the gun it came from, and they’ll be able to match the markings on the bullets in the person I shot with the bullet from the warehouse. Easy.”
“Yeah, easy.” He made it sound like nothing. Like he didn’t take an innocent life just so he could get revenge on a rival club.
“And it didn’t take long to figure out who it needed to be. The one man who wouldn’t stop until he put an end to the Blood Riders. You know, the funny thing is, we had a lot in common. We both hated the Club. We both wanted to end them, bury them forever. Only he was never quite successful, was he? Sometimes I wondered if the two of us should’ve teamed up.” Hawk chuckled. “Can you imagine? Me, working with a cop?”
“Yeah, hilarious,” I said. I felt cold inside, numb. The man who’d murdered my father, standing right in front of me.
“So, long story short.” Hawk sighed. “I waited until I could get him alone. I followed him around for a while, and the one night, he stopped off to get something to eat. So I got his attention and told him I had info on the Blood Riders. He was so fucking gullible. Ha!”
“Don’t talk about him that way,” I warned.
“You know? I’ve always been attracted to feisty women.” He grinned, licking his lips.
“I swear to fucking God, I don’t care whether you kill me. But I promise I’ll find a way to take you with me.”
“Their fire. Their intensity. Their ‘take no shit’ attitudes.” He bit his bottom lip, inching his way closer to me. “Makes my dick hard just thinking about them.”
“Back off!”
“Now I see why Drake likes you.”
“I’m warning you. Stay where you are!”
“And I bet you got a nice tight pussy along with that temper, huh?” He looked me up and down. “I can tell.”
“I mean every word of it. I’ll kill y
ou myself!” I trembled.
“Well, maybe you wanna wait a minute before you do that. There’s one more thing you ought to know. A sort of bow on the whole thing.” He smiled, his teeth are yellow and almost rotting. I grimaced.
“What?”
He held up the gun in his hand, analyzing it with a smirk on his face. “It was this gun. You wanna die by the same gun that killed your old man? Be my guest. I’m more than happy to do it for you.”
I stared at the gun, then at him noticing the bulge in his pants. “You fucking piece of shit! Fuck you!”
Before I could bend down and reach for the knife on the kitchen floor, he lunged at me and wrapped his arm around my neck, crushing my windpipe.
"No, bitch, you're the one who's going to get fucked." He breathed on my neck, with his overbearing body pressed behind me.
“Help!” I muffled, tears flowing down my face.
“I told you how I like my women,” he growled, his arm squeezing my neck tighter.
Gasping for air, I fought and clawed his arm to free myself, bending down to reach for the knife again. I began to feel dizzy and fell to my hands and knees as his grip never loosened for a second. He landed on his feet behind me, like a cat. Immediately he was upon me. He took hold of my long brown hair, wrapped it around his right hand and pulled me roughly to my feet, my hair straining at the roots.
"Let—me go!" I gasped. “I can’t breathe!”
He smacked me hard in the face with his free hand, bringing more tears to my eyes. "Shut the fuck up, you stupid bitch."
With my cheek stinging, I was pulled across the kitchen floor as I cried for help and unsuccessfully tried to pry his hands out of my hair; he slapped them out of the way. He brought my face close to his with his pitch black eyes glaring deep into my soul.
"Don't fuck with me, bitch. Understand?"
“Okay, okay.” I nodded catching my breath as more tears started to roll down my cheeks.
He now stood over me, smiling. His eyes never leaving me as he unzipped his jeans. An impossibly long, thick cock fell out, standing hard and rigid, and he stroked it, all the time smiling that wicked smile.
