Harder (Stark Ink Book 1)

by Dahlia West

  He shrugged. “Nothing. Just forgot to do it.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “Felt like I did.” He paused for a moment then took another step back.

  She grinned. “Are you coming in?”

  Adam felt the pull of the question but shook it off. “Already did, babe.” He thought it was a joke but her smile fell, and he hated to see that. “But I plan to again,” he amended. “Maybe tomorrow. Maybe the day after that… and probably the day after that. We’ve got time, Calla, plenty of time. I don’t want to reach my fill of you just yet. Though maybe I never can.”

  It wasn’t just a line. He really and truly meant it. He couldn’t imagine getting bored with her. Her smile brightened again and Adam knew for certain that few things on Earth were better than seeing that. True to his word, he wouldn’t mind seeing that smile every day for a good, long while.

  “I can’t stay,” he told her and stepped off her front porch.

  Her smile fell and almost had him changing his mind. “Are you sure you don’t want to?”

  “I’m sure I do and I’m sure I shouldn’t. Get some rest,” he told her. “You’re going to need it.”

  He watched her shiver a little and he was pleased that she was as excited about the next time as he was. He turned and headed back to his Harley. He cruised back home in the dark. Spring was bleeding into summer. The warm night wind on his face was the reason he’d never given up the bike. Soon enough, he’d take Calla for a ride, through the hills maybe, or to the lake. They could swim all afternoon, or into the night and watch the stars after the sun went down. By then they’d be all alone, in the cool, dark water underneath the light of the moon. It’d shine off her—

  He shook himself a bit and refocused on the road ahead of him. Picturing Calla naked in the lake was making him rethink his decision to sleep alone tonight. He had too much to take care of, though. There was time enough for skinny-dipping later. They had all summer, fortunately. He parked around back of the shop, next to the Charger, and headed through the back door of the building. He locked it behind him and had one foot on the stairs when he heard a scrape. It came from the direction of the shop proper. None of the lights were on and Adam could only peer into the darkness that lay at the end of the short hallway. He heard nothing and saw nothing, but he still wasn’t convinced he was alone. He moved away from the stairs and closer to the lobby.

  “Hello?” he called out. His nerves crackled as he inched toward the light switch just a few feet in front of him. Before he could reach it, a large, dark figure turned the corner and loomed ahead of him.

  “Hello, sunshine.” Adam didn’t recognize the voice. A fist shot out and connected squarely with Adam’s jaw.

  He stumbled back and hit the wall but braced himself against it. He put his boot on the wall behind him and launched himself at the hulking figure. Adam caught him around the waist and they tumbled into the lobby proper. Once on the floor, Adam reared back and delivered a haymaker of his own. Instead of catching the man in the jaw, he cracked the asshole in the temple. Taking advantage of his momentary dizziness, Adam rained blows on the now-hapless intruder. What Adam lacked in size compared to his opponent, he more than made up for in strategy. Another blow hit him in the temple again and then Adam went for the solar plexus, jamming his fist into the man’s torso. The guy gasped for air. In less than 45 seconds, his attacker had been neutralized.

  Adam was about to get up and go for the phone when he heard a shuffle of feet behind him.

  “Hey!” someone called out.

  Adam turned to look, too late. The butt of a gun arced toward him and slammed into the side of his head.

  Chapter Nineteen

  As Adam lay prone and not-quite-unconscious, a pair of black boots came into his blurry vision.

  “Hey,” said a voice that was surprisingly jovial under the circumstances. “What’s black and white and red all over?”

  Another voice chimed in with laughter. Adam spat another dribble of blood onto the tiled floor and gazed up. The lights were blazing overhead now but he didn’t recognize the two men towering over him, not as such, but their black leather jackets were a sight he knew well. He may not know their names, but he knew their club: The Badlands Buzzards. Adam couldn’t quite figure out what the hell they were doing here, though. He was about to ask when he heard a crash from his workroom across the lobby. The light in the room was on, but Adam couldn’t see inside it.

  “What do you want?” he demanded of the two men that he could see.

  They didn’t answer but the heavy thud of yet another pair of boots edged closer. Silhouetted against the light of the workroom, a third man appeared.

  Adam couldn’t tell if he knew this one or not, but he didn’t think so.

  “Just looking around,” said the third man. “Not much worth taking.”

  Adam could have told them that.

  True to the guy’s words, his hands were empty. There was nothing in the shop worth stealing. Even the deposits were made every day after closing and ink wasn’t worth anything without an artist to apply it.

  “What the fuck?” Adam spat. “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking to get paid,” replied the third man as he moved out of the doorway and into the lobby. “You owe. We’re here to collect.”

  If Adam could have dropped his throbbing jaw, he would have, but the haymaker the first guy had hit him with told Adam he was damn lucky it wasn’t broken. He shook his head despite the raging pain it caused. “I’m straight!” he insisted. “We’ve got no beef. I don’t owe you.”

  The third man reached behind himself and Adam stiffened. If the guy was going for his gun, this was it. Adam cursed himself for everything he’d ever done wrong, or not right enough. Jeannie would probably find him in the morning. She didn’t deserve that. Adam pushed himself up as far as he could and glared at the man. Instead of a gun, he produced a tiny black notebook. Adam blinked at it in the dim light. He’d seen it before. Once.

  Some men had a little black book to record all their sexual conquests. Preacher Prior, President of the Buzzards MC, could get any snatch he set his gaze on, so he aimed a little higher with his own black book.

  “I paid you!” Adam argued.

  The sound of the pages being turned filled the large room. “Not what it says here.”

  Adam stared at the man. This was Preacher’s book, but this wasn’t Preacher. Obviously there’d been some kind of misunderstanding. Adam met the large man’s gaze. “Talk to Jack,” Adam declared. “Jack will tell you. I paid, months ago.”

  The man grinned down at Adam. “Jack ain’t around no more. Name’s Hook,” he said by way of introduction. “And you owe.”

  “I fucking don’t!” Adam didn’t care who this Hook was or why he thought Adam still had payments to make. It had been months since he heard from the Buzzards, not since his last payment.

  Over a year ago, Adam had been unable to secure a loan. No haircut, tie, or firm handshake could disguise the fact that he had barely any startup capital and no collateral other than a used Harley. He’d been turned down by every bank in Rapid City and had finally turned to Preacher Prior for a loan. Jack had been surprisingly fair about interest, but Adam had paid him back quickly just the same. Eating ramen had seemed like a better plan than owing a one-percenter gang money. He was about to relate all this to the man standing in front of him when one of the other men crossed in front of him. He didn’t have a little black book in his hands. He had a Louisville Slugger.

  Adam was as brave as a man dumb enough to get involved with a biker gang could be, but he panicked anyway. He shuffled backward as fast as he could, unable to make it to the door off to the left. Instead his back slammed against the lobby wall. The man continued to advance. Adam closed his eyes as the man lifted the bat. Instead of hitting him, glass shattered above him. It sprinkled over him like sharp, shiny snowflakes. Above him, one of the artwork frames now hung askew.

  “Cash,” s
aid Hook. “Now. If you got any money lying around, I suggest you start digging.”

  Adam shook his head, flinging tiny glass chips all around him. “I don’t owe you,” he insisted, but he didn’t yell this time. The man next to him raised the bat again.

  “Haze,” said Hook, calling the slugger off. Haze paused mid-swing. Hook approached slowly, holding the book out in front of him. He shoved it into Adam’s face. Unbelievably, there was an entry in the ledger dated just two months ago. Stark. 20 grand.

  Adam refused to believe it. “That’s… that’s not me. Stark,” he agreed, “but fifty grand, from over a year ago. And I paid it.”

  Hook flipped through the book to its earlier entries. A full minute passed before he found the original entry.

  “Yes!” Adam cried as a glimmer of hope rose inside him. “That’s me! That’s my marker! The first one is mine, not the second.”

  Hook stepped to the side. Adam sighed in relief. Right before the bat came down. Pain exploded as it cracked him to the side of his right knee. Adam didn’t want to but he screamed anyway.

  “Twenty grand,” Hook said casually.

  “I don’t have twenty grand!”

  “Then you’ll get twenty grand, won’t you?”

  Adam gripped his knee with one hand. His other hand spread out across the floor to keep himself from collapsing. Glass shards dug into his palm. “I..” Fuck, he thought as everything swirled around him. “I…” He saw Haze poised to swing again. Adam thought of Jeannie, and Ava, and even Calla. He licked the blood from his lips. It didn’t matter how long he argued and if he kept it up, he might not be walking out of here. “I can get it,” he said hoarsely.

  From above them, the unmistakable sound of boots on the wooden staircase floated into the lobby. A fourth man appeared and shook his head at Hook. “Nothing,” he declared. Adam figured that one had been tossing the apartment the entire time.

  Hook nodded to his man, then turned to Adam. “Three days,” he said in a lighthearted tone. “Deliver it to us at the clubhouse. If we have to come looking again…”

  Haze stepped away from Adam, wound up, and slammed the bat into another frame on the wall. Glass exploded.

  The four bikers exited the front door they’d apparently pried open and disappeared into the night. Adam struggled to get to his feet. He could scrape together twenty grand, though he was less certain about walking (limping) into the Buzzards clubhouse to deliver it. That, he wouldn’t do, at least not alone. He’d need backup if he was going there.

  Thankfully, he knew just who to ask.

  Chapter Twenty

  Adam awoke early the next morning and hobbled to the shower. The hot water managed to knead out of most of the soreness. He left the shop with only a slight limp and locked up tight; well, the back door anyway, which remained unbroken. As for the front door, he’d resorted to nailing it into the wooden frame so that it couldn’t be opened despite the fist-sized hole in the glass. He still hadn’t bothered to clean the place up. It seemed to be the least of his worries at this point.

  He slid onto his Harley as slowly as possible. He had to try twice to start it. His knee was not having it. He finally sparked the engine and aimed it across town. He’d taken this ride a few times before and knew the way from memory. After sailing past Maria’s Bar and the Rainbow Motel, he caught sight of the dark gray, low-rise building on the left. The sign hung above the large bay doors read “Burnout” but Adam had always thought of it as simply “Shooter’s Place.” The garage was as familiar to Adam as Maria’s Bar, even though technically it hadn’t been here nearly that long.

  Like Adam, Chris “Shooter” Sullivan had built his own business from the ground up. Shooter’s business was custom cars, trucks, and bikes, or at least it was these days. Before he’d opened the garage, he’d been in the Army, and not just a grunt. Sullivan had done three tours as a Ranger, Army special forces. The story was that Sullivan would have stayed on forever, he was that damn good at whatever it was he’d done. But an IED had cut his career short.

  Sullivan himself didn’t look any worse for the wear in Adam’s opinion, which he supposed was lucky. The man’s former unit member, Jimmy “Easy” Turnbull was missing a leg, though the blonde Cajun stood in front of Adam now like an immovable stone. In fact, all four men who worked at Burnout had been in Sullivan’s unit. Rumor had it they (and ex-cop Doc Barnes who had his own job) were all that was left of the entire team.

  It must have been one hell of an explosion, Adam thought, to kill so many men. Adam didn’t know anything about serving, but he could imagine that if some of the men had escaped without scars on the outside they probably still carried a few around with them.

  It stood to reason that anyone who’d survived something like that would be no one you wanted to fuck with. And Adam had been in Maria’s Bar on plenty of nights to see Shooter and his friends “helping” a few unruly drunks out to the parking lot. The men of Burnout rivaled any MC, in Adam’s opinion, despite their relatively low numbers. He was counting on the Buzzards thinking twice about their shakedown when Adam showed up with Sullivan and his friends in tow, if he could get them to agree.

  Not a rumor, in fact a part of Rapid City’s colorful history, Shooter Sullivan’s father had himself been a Badlands Buzzard. Not just any Buzzard, either. The Buzzard. The club’s president.

  Who knew exactly why Shooter had traded a Buzzard patch for one that read “U.S. Army.” Adam thought it might have something to do with Shooter’s old man getting shivved in prison. Maybe Shooter, due to his old ties with the local MC, wouldn’t want to get involved. Adam was a loyal Burnout customer, having had his Harley worked on there several times. He and Shooter, being the same age, had gone to school together, as well, though they’d hung out in different crowds. They were friendly, but not exactly friends. Adam was prepared to be turned down, even though Shooter was his only option for coming out of the meeting unscathed, so he at least had to ask.

  He approached the garage and nodded at Easy, Daisy’s man. Easy nodded back but didn’t say anything. Adam’s eyes skipped past him to the largest of the men, the one who Adam knew as Hawk. The large, dark-haired man glared at Adam from across the garage bay. Adam didn’t retreat but avoided his piercing gaze just the same. Adam had tattooed Hawk’s woman a while back and though the ink was a testament of her love for the large Sioux warrior, Hawk had not gotten over the fact that someone had seen his woman with her pants down. In truth, Tildy’s tat was less intimate than Calla’s, and especially modest compared to the ink that Adam had emblazoned on Tex’s woman. Tex didn’t seem to hold a grudge over it, though. He grinned at Adam as he ducked under the bay door and into the garage proper. Tex had always been friendly with Adam. Tildy’s tat had been an actual hawk. Adam figured when your woman went that extra mile and put your name right on her ass, you weren’t too worried about having to prove whom she belonged to.

  Adam pointedly ignored Hawk and turned to Shooter.

  “You look like you’ve seen better days,” Shooter commented as he eyed Adam’s injuries.

  Part of Adam, a small part, but still, wondered if his ‘better days’ would now be a thing of the past. Not wanting to give voice to a dark thought like that, he simply nodded. Shooter seemed to understand that Adam didn’t want to discuss it. The slightly older man nodded across the parking lot, instead.

  “Something wrong with your ride?” Shooter asked.

  Adam shook his head. “I need to sell it,” he said, getting right to the point.

  Shooter frowned. “You’re not getting seduced by a younger model, are you? Because there’s nothing wrong with the ride you’ve got.”

  Adam took a deep breath. “I need the money. I’m in a bind. I need a full ten grand for it.”

  Shooter looked surprised. “Sorry to hear that. Seemed like the shop was a go. I know a lot of people who’ve gotten ink there.”

  Adam couldn’t be sure, but Hawk might actually have growled at that point.
/>   “Some kind of mix up,” Adam explained. “A misunderstanding.”

  Shooter’s brow furrowed. “Misunderstanding?”

  Adam couldn’t hide the truth from these men. It would all come out when he asked them for help anyway. “The Buzzards say I owe them more money.”

  The other men gathered a bit closer at the mention of the biker gang. Shooter carefully set down the tool he was holding. “More money? How’d you come to owe them anything at all?”

  Adam didn’t miss the disapproving tone in the man’s voice. It’d been a risky decision going to Prior for the loan, but there had been no other way. He still didn’t know how things had gotten so fucked up, but he couldn’t change what he’d already done. “Loan,” he told Shooter. “I needed some cash to open the shop.”

  There were grumblings from some of the men listening, Shooter not the least among them. “Not smart, Adam.”

  “Prior treated me okay,” Adam insisted and hoped it didn’t sound like he was making excuses. “We never had a problem. Of course I paid on time.”

  Shooter shook his head. “Prior’s anything but nice. If he made it easy, he had plans for you.”

  “What plans?” Adam couldn’t think of any business he’d have with Prior other than the short-term loan.

  Shooter leveled his gaze at Adam. “Cash business,” he mused. “Money laundering, I’d guess.”

  Adam’s chest constricted and he nearly stumbled back. “No. No fucking way. I’d never agree to that shit. That shop is my life.”

  Shooter seemed unimpressed. “Seems Prior has his mind up. And he can usually get what he wants.”

  The youngest man in the group, Easy, spoke up before anyone else could. “I don’t want Daisy associating with you if Prior’s around. I’m sorry, Adam, but there’s just no way.”

  “That’s the thing,” Adam told them. “Prior’s not around. It was some guy named Hook who showed up at the shop. He says Prior’s out.”