by Vivian Gray
“Nice to meet you,” I said, smiling politely.
“I knew Jack in the Marines. We were stationed together for a year,” Noah explained with some excitement in his voice.
I think he was happy to see someone from his past that didn’t trigger a dark memory.
“Oh.” I still tried to place him. Something was too familiar.
“Yeah, that’s how I lost these babies.” Jack held up his hand and showed me the missing fingers. He probably had noticed me looking.
Wait. Missing fingers…
My eyes went wide, and my heart sped up. I looked from him to Joker, to Noah.
Oh. Fuck.
Jack was the shark.
Chapter Sixteen
Noah
Shannon acted strangely for most of the night. After we ran into Jack, he came over to our table for a drink. I introduced him to Jude and Tracy. We slipped into the same routine as we always had. Easy banter. Superficial conversation. There were times when you’re deployed that you don’t want to have any deep, meaningful discussions. Jack understood that.
Shannon didn’t say much. She sipped her water or her lemonade – the only two drinks I let her have – and watched our exchange but didn’t participate. Even Tracy kept glancing over at her, and I saw her mouth the words “What’s wrong?” several times.
Figuring she was just tired and wanted to rest, I invited Jack back to the house. He and I could have a few beers, and she could go to bed. I shouldn’t have kept her out so late. The morning sickness had finally faded away, but she still got tired really quick.
I gave Jack directions to the house, then I helped Shannon into the truck. After I pulled out of the lot and was on the street, I asked her what was wrong.
“Nothing. It’s just… Jack doesn’t seem familiar to you?” She pushed the belt beneath her belly and shifted in her seat.
“Well, yeah. I know him.” I looked at her with a furrowed brow. What was she trying to get at? There was obviously something on her mind, but she was reluctant to tell me what it was.
“Yeah. I forgot.” She scratched her forehead and turned to look out the window.
It wasn’t like her to keep her mouth closed. Her outspokenness was one of the things I liked about her.
“What is it?”
“I could be wrong. I could be really wrong.” She rubbed her forehead again.
Whatever it was, it was weighing on her pretty heavy.
“Okay, so if you’re wrong, no big deal. What is it? What’s bothering you so much?” I looked in my rearview mirror and saw Jack right behind us on his bike.
He wasn’t wearing a helmet. It was odd because the Jack that I spent a year with in Afghanistan had been by the book. We’d often joked how he was the mother hen of our Marines’ group – always making sure everyone had everything they needed, and stayed as safe as they could, given we were in a war zone.
Shannon took a long inhale of breath and took time blowing it back out. “Okay. Do you remember when that guy tried to run us off the road? When I was on the bike with you a few months ago?”
I gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. “Yeah?”
“Well, he caught up with us. He got real close. And I noticed something about him… He was missing two fingers, Noah. His ring finger and pinky on his right hand.”
I look back in my rearview mirror at Jack still riding behind us. It couldn’t be. Why the hell would Jack be involved with someone like Joker for work? They were family friends. That’s all.
“I could be wrong.” She put a hand on my thigh and retracted it. “I could be really wrong. It could just be a coincidence.”
Coincidental that the shark was missing the exact same fingers as Jack? And Jack knew Joker? And Joker didn’t want us fighting back? Joker who’d become very liberal and sending us on runs alone without as much protection as we would need if we were attacked? It didn’t seem right.
I looked back in the mirror, then over at Shannon and nodded. “Okay. Don’t worry about it. We’ll figure it out.”
“It might not be him, Noah. I could be totally wrong. What are you going to do?” She sounded scared, like I was going to lose my temper and run him off the road.
I rolled my shoulders back, moving my head from one side to the other, trying to get the tension out of my neck. I had to come at this with a clear head. If I accused him and were wrong, I would make an ass of myself, but he’d probably just laugh it off. If Shannon was right, and he was the shark, inviting him into my home could be dangerous. For Shannon. My job right now was to take care of her. Keep her and the baby safe.
I realized then, at that moment, that she had become more than the woman I knocked up. She wasn’t just a nurse I had fucked. She wasn’t just an innocent I was trying to corrupt. She was my entire world. If something happened to her because of me, I would never forgive myself. I’d done a lot of shit in my life, while deployed and since being back home, but doing anything that would cause her harm would be the worst.
“It’s going to be fine.” I wasn’t really sure if I was trying to convince her or myself.
I pulled the truck into our driveway, and Jack pulled in beside us, parking his bike.
I turned to Shannon and grabbed her hands. “When we get inside, I want you to say goodnight and go to bed.”
Her eyes narrowed, and she shook her head. “No way. I’m not to go hide in the bedroom.”
I gripped her hands harder, willing her to just obey me one freaking time without needing to be pushed. “I really need you to be in the bedroom. Because if things go down bad, I can’t worry about you. I need you tucked away in the back of the house. And have your phone ready. If things go sour, I want you to call Jude first. You call Jude, not Joker, and not the police. Only Jude.”
She tried to pull her hands from mine, but then she must have realized I meant business because she stopped struggling.
After a moment of silence, she conceded with a nod. “Okay,” she said softly. “I’ll stay in the bedroom.”
I knew there was a ‘but’ in there somewhere. But for right now, her promise to get herself somewhere safe while I dealt with this, would be enough.
I hopped out of the truck and went around to open her door, helping her down.
The three of us walked into the house.
Shannon dropped her purse on an end table in the living room and yawned. She wasn’t faking it; that woman was tired. I really needed her to consider not working for the rest of the pregnancy, but every time I brought it up, she would cite how many women work right up to the delivery date. What she didn’t seem to understand was that those women weren’t mine. And my woman didn’t need to beat herself up at work.
But we would be addressing that soon enough.
“I’m beat,” Shannon said, rubbing her eyes. “If you don’t mind, I think I’m gonna hit the sack.”
“Sure thing,” Jack said. “I understand. It was nice meeting you.” He didn’t make a move to shake her hand or hug her; he just stood near the door with his hands in his back pockets, like he was a little anxious and not sure if he should walk all the way in or stay close enough to the exit.
Shannon looked at him cautiously, then at me. “Okay. Yes, it was nice meeting you too, Jack.”
She gave me a kiss on the cheek and then headed down the hall to the bedroom.
I watched her walk away, the short hem of her dress swaying across her ass as she did. Even with the tension in the room, the irritation in my chest, and the fear I had about her potentially being harmed, I still took the moment to appreciate the sway of that woman’s ass.
“You have it pretty bad for her,” Jack said with some levity. Maybe he felt the tension too and was trying to break the ice.
“Yeah, I do.” I moved to the other side of the room, leaving my jacket on and resting my hands on my hips. My gun was nestled in my waistband and easy enough to draw if needed.
“It’s kind of funny. Shannon was telling me in the car on the way hom
e that she thinks she’s seen you before. About a month ago, we almost had an accident with another biker. Not enough room on the road or something like that.”
I was doing my best to sound casual, but Jack knew me; he knew when I was lying and knew bullshit when he heard it.
His jaw tensed as I spoke, like he remembered the incident I was talking about.
“Oh yeah?” he said with a steely gaze.
“Yeah. Your hand. The other driver had the same missing fingers.” I did a small step toward him, keeping my legs spread, ready for a fight. “He wore a helmet. Big shark on it. Obnoxious looking.”
It really was the ugliest helmet I’d ever seen.
“You trying to say something?” His tongue ran along the bottom line of his teeth, behind his lip. He was as ready as I was for whatever was coming next.
“I’m just wondering why someone as straight-laced as you were, in Afghanistan, would be associated with someone like Joker? And I think it’s really coincidental that this guy, who tried run me off the road, for a second time, has the same missing fingers as you. I just think it’s kind of funny.”
“If you want to say something, straight out say it. You think I’m the guy who ran you off the road?”
I narrowed my gaze; any doubt I had was gone. “I didn’t say he ran me off the road.”
“At the club, you had your jacket off. You have a scar on your left arm. I just assumed it was from a fall. It looked recent.” His voice was a little shaky, like he realized he’d messed up. He might as well just confess to it.
“I’m not gonna talk around this, Jack. Are you working for Joker? Are you the asshole stealing shit from my club members? Getting in the way of their work?”
He took a step toward me, weaving his head a little bit like he was trying to think, but then he drew. The gun was resting against his right hip and pointed right at me.
I followed suit, the two of us at an impasse.
“It does not have to go down like this,” he said in a firm tone. “I am working with Joker. But not the way you think.”
“Okay. Help me out here, man. What the fuck’s going on then?” I released the safety on the gun and kept it trained on him. He wouldn’t get an inch near the bedroom without me putting a bullet in him.
“I can’t tell you.”
“Can’t tell me? It’s classified?”
What was he up to?
“It’s not what you think, that’s all I can say.”
“So far, you put me in the hospital and have stolen more powder in the last few months then Joker should be able to get away with losing. But he is not getting a crackdown. Why?”
Joker and the VP were the only two people who knew the direct contacts with whatever cartel we were getting the drugs from. It was information I didn’t want anyway. The less I knew, the better. All I did was drive the shit from point A to point B, collected my paycheck, and did what I wanted in between.
“Joker is small potatoes,” Jack said.
“You better give me more than that.”
“How about we put these guns down and talk?” Jack took a small step toward me.
I lifted up my gun again, re-aiming, so it was trained on the center of his head. “You gotta give me something.”
He glanced down the hall and then back at me. We’d kept our voices relatively low, so I doubted Shannon had been spooked. Yet.
Indecision warred on his expression, but in the end, he cursed and lowered his gun. He kept it in his right hand while he dug into his jacket with his left. When he flashed me a DEA badge, I just about passed out.
I lowered my gun and stared at him. “What the fuck?”
“We’ve been investigating Joker for some time. But it’s not him we want; we want his suppliers. But while looking into that, we found something else. He’s trying to double dip. He hired me to intercept the product being delivered and then return it back to him. Well, at first, it was returned back to him. I figured he was taking it from the club and then selling it somewhere else and keeping the full profit for himself. But then he had me start delivering it. Instead of it going back to him, he was sending me across state lines to drop it off at other places.”
“What the hell are you talking about? These weren’t even big runs. Why would he risk his neck for small packages? The people he was selling the stuff to, that didn’t get it, wouldn’t they be onto him?”
“Yeah. That’s what I thought too. Those people you are making small runs to, though, weren’t ordering product. He was sending you out to deliver to normal customers because you would drop off points for each individual person. You rotated them. I know you rotated them, but they were similar, right?”
“Yeah. We rotated – moved maybe a mile or two each time – but was relatively for the same buyer.”
“They weren’t putting in product orders anymore. I know that because at least two have been taken down in the last six months. Joker’s been sending you on bogus runs. And while you’re on that run, he has me intercept the packages.”
I lowered my arm and stashed my gun back in my pants. “If Joker was doing that, the VP had to know. No way the VP didn’t know about this.”
“I don’t know about Tommy. As far as we are concerned, we’re only looking at Joker. Because his runs shoot across state lines. And his connections run to some pretty dirty cartels down south.”
“So, what the fuck do we do now?” I said, wishing I had a big bottle of whiskey in my hand.
“Nothing.” Jack put his gun away and repotted his badge. “I don’t care what you and the rest the club does. I really don’t. But I want Joker.”
“Why would you want just Joker? The entire club is dirty.”
“Because Joker can lead us to the cartel. And that’s the big fish. Like I said, he’s small potatoes. The club? Not even the side salad.”
We sat in the living room, eyeing each other, not really sure what to do next. I was loyal to the club, which meant I was loyal to my president. And as much as I hated Joker, that loyalty dictated I not let him get picked up by the feds. But he had been outselling us for months. He’d put us all in unnecessary danger and was double dipping, stealing from the club.
I remembered how disgruntled Tommy had looked at the last few meetings. He knew something was going on, but he probably didn’t know exactly what. Joker had become so intense and so private – even if Tommy had demanded to know, Joker would’ve probably just blown him off. He’d become more of a dictator than a president, scaring most of the past members away from even asking questions.
But I needed to ask questions now. I had to know what was going on. And, to be honest, seeing Joker taken off to prison didn’t seem like such a bad idea. The more I thought about Shannon, the more I thought about the baby coming, My line of work didn’t seem like such a great choice anymore.
I motioned for Jack to follow me to the kitchen, where I pulled out two glasses and searched out my bottle of whiskey under the sink. After pulling it out, I poured three fingers in each class and shoved one toward him. He picked it up, and we both downed the burning liquid in one gulp.
“How much longer you gotta do this before you actually pick him up?” I poured a few more fingers in my glass.
“That’s not really my call. I just keep going until I’m told to stop. But he hasn’t given us his suppliers yet. And even if I grabbed him, he wouldn’t talk.”
“So, you’re just gonna keep being the shark. Oh and, seriously man, you need a better helmet.”
“I know.” Jack laughed. “That one came standard issue from the department. I couldn’t talk them out of the decal.”
“You realize that if the club finds out what he’s been up to, they’ll take care of him.” I refilled his glass.
“I know, but I need to give this more time.”
“And you don’t go after anyone in the club.” I meant that. Even if the idea of leaving the club became more appealing to me every day, I did not want my brothers going down for Joker’s
bullshit.
He nodded. “Like I said, I don’t care about the club. That’s local trouble, not mine.”
“Okay, you do what you need to do. But you stay away from the other members. No one else gets hurt.”
“I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. You getting hurt like you did, that was an accident. I didn’t even know it was you until tonight.” Jack downed the last of his liquor and put the glass in the sink. “Your woman’s probably back there scared out of her mind. So, I’m going to head out.” He snagged an unopened letter from the counter and scribbled a number on it.” Here’s my number. You give me a call any time. But you don’t tell Joker we’re after him.” He pointed the pen at me.
