by Bella Knight
“Good. Then we’re agreed,” he nodded to her, “one favor.”
She nodded, “One favor.”
“Correct.”
She stopped, looked at them, “Why only one favor? This is… a lot of product.”
“We have our own... product,” said Ace, “why would we want yours?”
Leticia nodded as if this made sense, her braids clacking, “You those Nighthawk guys? The ones that go to the shooting range on Charleston all the time?”
“Yes,” said Ace.
“And if I got me a sister, needs some time off, you know? A place?”
“Send her over,” said Ace, “but what is ours, we keep. And we keep what is ours safe.”
Leticia nodded, “Be telling her that. Yeah,” she nodded at them, “it’s been real.”
Ace nodded at her, and the men went over and got on their Harleys. They were back at the club before they could talk.
“What’s all that shit about drugs and guns?” asked Adam, “all we got is legal.”
“Adam,” said Ace, stowing his helmet, “even gangbangers watch TV. Ever watched a little show called Sons of Anarchy?”
Adam snorted. They headed to the club for pancakes.
“Business calls and wins, every time.”
5
Love Among the Bikers
Lily’s First Trip
“An open road with open dreams.”
The next few days went quickly. Lily got used to getting almost no sleep and trained herself to fall asleep when she turned off the light. She learned to drink Jolt Cola all day long and ride her Harley in heavy Las Vegas traffic.
On Monday after work, the bar was closed, and she slept like the dead. On Tuesday, she came into work early, and she left early to go on a ride to Red Rock with Ace. He let her set the pace and pulled off near a trailhead. They hiked around a cliff face in a tiny canyon and came out with a view of the desert and a wide, flat rock. Ace jumped up first, muscles flexing. Lily handed up the picnic box, and he put it down before pulling her up. They looked out across the desert and ate grapes, apples, wedges of cheese and yummy hunks of baguette.
Lily went still, and Ace looked over her shoulder to see why. A tiny brown chipmunk was darting towards them; tan with little dots running down its sides. Ace wordlessly handed her a chunk of baguette and laughed to himself when she threw it in a long arc towards the chipmunk. It stood there, vibrating with excitement, then, in jerky moves, went over and popped the bread into its mouth. Ace popped a grape in his mouth, and one in Lily’s mouth, and handed her another baguette piece. She laughed, a liquid trill that went down his spine when the chipmunk changed its stance from wariness to obvious begging. She threw the second piece.
Ace constructed a bread and cheese tower and gave her one part and himself another, “Sneaky little beggar, isn’t he?” he said, handing her another piece of bread.
Lily threw the bread chunk and laughed when the chipmunk stuffed the bread into its cheek. Ace gave Lily another piece. The chipmunk filled up its other cheek and zipped away, in short, jerky movements.
Lily ate another grape, then drank from her canteen, “This is the oldest meal in the world, you know,” she said, “bread, grapes, cheese.”
Ace swallowed and drank from his own canteen, “People have been sitting on rocks in this place eating things for thousands of years,” he said, “probably Henry and Numa’s people, actually.”
Lily sighed, “It will take me a thousand years to pay off the bike and Devlin’s rehab.”
“Not at the rate you’re raking in tips,” joked Ace, taking another swig of Mountain Dew.
Lily put a hand on his arm. And Ace forced himself not to startle. The touch was light, but it had weight somehow, “Ace…”
He smiled at her, “I know you work at a financial services company. How much do you know about obtaining financial information… not legally?”
“Hacking, you mean?”
“Yes,” he said, “I think something is very wrong with my father’s company.”
“I’ll do it,” said Lily, “tell me more.”
Ace stared at her, “You do know hacking?”
“Duh,” said Lily.
“So, why aren’t you working for some technical company?”
Lily shook her head, “Coding bores me to tears.”
“And financial services, doesn’t?”
Lily shrugged, “I understand numbers.”
Ace nodded, “For every search you do, I’ll take money off, the bike first, then rehab.”
Lily nodded, “What’s the job?”
“My dad is a raging asshole. He’s in construction. He had trouble with a pipe fitting in a custom house, and my mom created a program and 3D printed it. She got lots of money for the program, and he drove that money into the company. Even though construction is really competitive here in Vegas. But they’ve done well because of the 3D fixtures she prints, mostly for model and custom homes.”
Lily continued to listen.
He stopped, sighed, and ran a hand through his hair, “She’s a stone bitch. She wasn’t until she invented the 3D thing that we moved into Casa Dolan, a big motherfucking house in Green Valley. She decorated it, in this ugly-green, silk crap. They bought expensive furniture they never use. They went and lost their damn minds.”
“You think something is wrong with the company?”
“Absolutely. From what I’ve been able to pick up, there is money moving around that shouldn’t, jobs that should have raked in the dough that didn’t. Quality went down. People that have worked for them for years and got moved around from job to job, got edged out.”
“Embezzlement,” said Lily, “now that I can crack.”
They ate some more grapes and cheese and threw more bread to the returning chipmunk.
“Sex, too,” said Ace.
“There usually is,” said Lily, “are your parents not sleeping with each other?”
“They’re not swingers. The hate each other, so they screw around. I haven’t been back to the house since I was sixteen. Most of this I’m getting from old friends and my brother. Keiran is sixteen. Bitch Daniela, my mom, sent him to a boarding school in Arizona. He likes it; it’s kind of a summer camp vibe for rich kids. And, he’s out of the line of fire there.”
“Thank goodness,” said Lily.
He looked out into the desert, watching shadows, “I take rides there whenever I can.”
Lily covered his hand with hers, “I’m sorry. You must miss him.”
Ace nodded. Lily took a breath and looked him in the eyes, “You’ve got to understand, that this can land one or both of your parents in jail.”
Ace looked into those blue-green eyes, shading into purple in darkened light, “Outstanding,” he said.
“You ex-military?” she asked.
“Nope,” he said, “but a lot of our brothers and sisters in the Nighthawks are.”
Lily nodded, “Outstanding!” she said.
The finished. Lily climbed down like a monkey and helped Ace down. He laughed. He gave her hands a squeeze. She squeezed back. He leaned down and kissed her cheek. She smiled up at him, then laughed, as the chipmunk made out to follow them into the canyon leading to the trailhead.
Ace stowed the picnic box in his saddlebags. They put on their helmets and gloves and took to the road. Lily exalted in the flow of the Harley on asphalt, the wind in her face, the lean on the curves. Traffic still terrified her, but she liked opening up on the road.
Although she was exhausted, when she got back she invited him up to her apartment, “It will be boring for you, and my tablet sucks, but…”
He stared at her in wide-eyed shock, “Get back on the bike, woman!”
He took her to Jannie’s shop. Jannie was in a tiny strip mall that only bothered to have three shops —a legal marijuana place called Smokin’, a laundromat, and a tiny computer repair shop. There wasn’t even a name in the window, just a purple, neon icon in the window of someone in a sur
gical mask operating on a computer.
Ace opened the door for Lily. There was a tiny frontal entryway and a counter with a digital cash register. There were industrial metal shelves with rows of desktops in the middle; parts in bins on the top and bottom. There were huge tables behind the industrial shelves, covered with computers in various stages of assembly or disassembly. A woman was leaning over a motherboard, looking at it under a lighted magnifier. She was in a white lab coat and actually wore a mask and gloves. She was in a wheelchair that looked like something out of Star Trek, it was so tricked out.
Jannie looked up, and her eyes crinkled. She took off her mask, revealing a round, flat face and snapping brown eyes.
“Dax, I take it you want something in an i7. Nothing else is worth it for you.”
He coughed, “Lily here needs a laptop.”
“No, you don’t,” said Jannie, “no ability to upgrade. Got an Alienware I repaired. Jackoff didn’t use a surge protector and then didn’t pay me. I’ll take eight hundred. You can separate the parts out among your saddlebags.”
“Right,” said Ace.
She pointed to the back of a shelf, “Lighted keyboard there, mouse there, smaller screen there, and the Alienware is the blue, light-up on the bottom. Bubble wrap is over there,” she said, pointing to a huge cardboard box in the corner, “wrap it up right or I’ll refuse to repair it.” She went back to her work.
Ace ran his own card through the card reader. Then, he went to the bottom shelf and handed the keyboard and mouse to Lily. She went out to put them in her saddlebags. When she came back, he had wrapped up the screen.
“This should fit in the right saddlebag if you put the picnic box in yours.” She nodded and took the screen from him.
He had the tower wrapped by the time she returned. He brought it out, and used several bungee cords to secure the Alienware to the back of the bike, as an extra ‘passenger.’
They got to Lily’s apartment and had everything set up on her minuscule breakfast bar with lightning speed. Lily called up some bleeding-eyeball rock synth and started digging into Donal Construction and its subsidiary, Donal 3D Specialists.
It didn’t take long for Lily to get past the firewalls on the construction company, “I’ll build a back door,” she said.
He went to her refrigerator and brought back a lime water for her. “Work awaits,” he said, “catch you later.”
He kissed her on the cheek. Lily didn’t notice him close the door. She slid in and started checking accounts. She stopped and set an alarm for four hours —she needed an early bedtime.
She worked on Wednesday to Friday at both jobs. She got caught up at work at the insurance company and slid in some financial checks for Donal Construction, Braden Donal, Daniela Donal, and a few of their major officers among her other checks over several days. She put in some worms and some searches and waited for them to bear fruit.
It was Saturday just after noon, after a breakfast of strawberry oatmeal and Jolt Cola, that she hit the motherload. There were purchase orders that looked altered. She’d have to ask Ace what was reasonable and what wasn’t.
Suppliers might be switched, but not to save money. The prices stayed the same. She looked up some brand names, and found some of lower quality and lower cost, for the same price as the previous orders. Someone was padding accounts. Next, she checked for phantom jobs, or jobs started that mysteriously stopped. She found two, with bids supposedly accepted that, on Google Earth, looked like empty land.
Lily texted Ace to come over when he woke up. He had apparently been staring at his phone because she heard his chopper roar into her lot, what seemed like only twenty minutes later.
Ace came bearing gifts —tiny, lemon, poppy seed muffins, and a Jolt cola for her, and a Mountain Dew for him. She laid it all out for him, waving her hands as she talked, occasionally tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
Ace was fascinated. First, she’d gotten much farther than he had. Phantom jobs? What kind of shit was his father pulling? Or was this one of his top people doing this? He loved her enthusiasm and the way her eyes lit up when she was talking about her investigation. And the way she bopped around in her chair while listening to the weird, no-lyrics music she typed to.
He realized he was lost in thought when she touched his wrist, “Ace, are you okay? I can’t prove it, not yet, but someone is doing something hinky at your father’s company.”
“Hinky?” he said, “haven’t heard that word since Law and Order quit making new shows.”
She punched him in his leather-clad shoulder, “Go-to-jail hinky, dumbass. This adds up!”
“To what?” he asked.
“Over two million dollars,” she said.
“Fuck me!” he said, shocked.
“Not right now,” said Lily with a wink, “we’ve got work to do.”
Ace smiled and ate another lemon, poppy seed muffin. This was getting good.
Visit with Uncle Brian
On Monday, at the break of dawn, Ace headed north to Reno. He hadn’t been sleeping well. Lily had hired a hacker friend with “juice,” as she put it, from her university.
The friend Lily was called Daisy Chain and got into the text messages of both his father and his mother, as they both used the same carrier. Ace offered to buy Daisy Chain whatever she wanted, which turned out to be a Diamondbacks season ticket. He hadn’t expected the hacker to like Arizona baseball, but he got a single season ticket delivered to a PO box in Phoenix. The ticket released a storm of data. Lily and Daisy Chain were going through it, and said they would get back to him soon.
Ace thought he was probably doing the wrong thing, investigating the company. Brian held his unbreakable trust; his parents tried to break it when they kicked him out at sixteen —and became, therefore, an officer of the court. Ace had finished out the school year in Vegas, sleeping on friends’ couches, then finished out high school in Reno.
Brian Pierce was his mother’s cousin, so not his real uncle, but Daniela had been raised with Brian when her own parents were killed in a car crash. Her father had been drinking; Daniela had been studying with a friend at the time. It was tough for a nine-year-old. She’d never been the same after that. Brian said it made her hard, with armor no one could pierce.
Ace and his uncle Brian met for lunch at a picnic area in a quiet park, where people walked golden retrievers and terriers and threw bread to birds. Ace smiled, remembering how Lily fed the chipmunk. Brian was tall, heavyset, with dark, wavy hair and green eyes peering out from under a Stetson. They had a back-slapping man hug, then they gorged on barbecue, ribs, fries and pickles. They talked about inconsequential things; about how Keiran was doing in school, and how Ace met Lily.
“I swear, Brian, she’s like this Memphis rub. Spicy and smoky,” said Ace.
“You kissed her yet?”
Ace shook his head, “A peck on the cheek. I don’t want to scare her away.”
“You know anything about her family?”
“She’s got a brother high on something. That’s why the big draw on the savings account.”
Ace rarely drew from his trust; the payouts accumulated in half savings and half in an investment account.
“I paid to put him in rehab for thirty days. He tried to steal crystal from some people you just don’t do that to. I got some of the drugs back and gave it to the people hunting for him to protect Lily, but most of it probably went up his nose. I also kind of insinuated he was dead so that no one would come after him.”
“Lovely,” said Brian, “parents or sisters?”
“None that I can see. No pictures. Lily doesn’t talk about anyone. That’s why I’m taking it slow. If the brother is that whacked out and no parents, trusting men is probably not high on her to-do list.”
“She’s probably a foster kid,” said Brian, “it would explain her putting up with that piece-of-shit brother if he’s her only family.”
“Shit,” said Ace, “Lily couldn’t catch a break.”
“I could check,” said Brian, “don’t know what I could come up with.”
“No fucking way, but thanks,” said Ace, “I don’t want her to find out and get mad at me. She’s got a temper. Some guy grabbed her ass and she had his fingers bent back before Ivy or Adam could get there. I swear, I thought about breaking his head, not just his fingers, but he said he was sorry and left. Even left a tip.”
Brian snorted, “There’s a side benefit to working in a bar owned by bikers. Word gets around, and you tend to get respect.”
They chatted about the club’s finances. Brian thought the homeschool was a great idea.
“Most of you Nighthawks are ex-military. Could be something there, some program. You could start something for your vets, some training program or something.”
“Could,” said Ace, “this country treats its vets like shit.”
“I did notice that,” said Brian.
They finished the meal, packing up the rib bones for Brian’s dog, a huge black mutt named Shadow, then alternated hitting the public bathrooms to wash up. They sat back down and sucked on their sodas.
“Now, you didn’t come all the way down here to talk about this piddly shit. What’s eating you?”
“Hold on, Brian. You’re an officer of the court. I can’t have you act on this until we know more.”
Brian thought a moment, “Give me a hypothetical instead.”
Ace sighed, “I know someone has been siphoning off a total of over two million from… a large construction company. We’ve got emails, memos. Can’t trace it back quite yet. We’ve also got our hands on some text messages.”
Brian held up a hand, “Whoa, pardner. Didn’t hear that one.” He put his fingers in his ears and made a “la la la” sound.
Ace laughed, “Anyway, we’ve got some info, but nothing that leads to a particular person. We want to build something ironclad.”
“Did any of this cross the state lines?”
“One project crossed into Arizona. I hit it on the way here. Doesn’t exist.”
