by Bella Drake
Outlaw’s Second Chance
An MC Romance
Bella Drake
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Copyright © 2018 by Bella Drake
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Chapter 1
Matt
I remember thinking if I died in this moment I would be okay with it. Falling off my Harley at one-hundred plus miles per hour would definitely do me in. My mind was at the point where fear turns into focus and the adrenaline takes over. Even though you know you might die, you twist the throttle a little more. That kind of focus pushes out any thought of your family or friends, it just all goes away. We were riding hard and pushing the limits.
I was the prospect, the lackey, the one that rides in the back and does what he’s told. I was three months into my one-year prospect period with the Backwoods Bombers MC. The Bombers were an outlaw motorcycle club located in a small mountain town of Jacksonville, Oregon. For the next year instead of being called Matt, I would be called Prospect.
I had become good friends with a couple Bombers members at my friend Ron’s motorcycle shop in Jacksonville. After they invited me to a few club events, I started to enjoy the camaraderie and even though I wasn’t a joiner, I found myself wanting that MC patch on my jacket more than anything. One night after a few months of hanging out with the Backwoods Bombers, the President and Vice President pulled me aside. They were so huge that they towered over my five foot eleven frame. They asked if I wanted to become a prospect and I immediately said yes. They told me that the club would vote on it and they would let me know. I was excited and my two friends who were already members actually broke the rules and told me they had voted yes. The next meeting, or “church” as they call it, I was given a bottom rocker and a “PROSPECT” patch to sew on my jacket. It felt amazing to be asked and I couldn’t wait to sew on the patches and start my probation period that would consist of a one-year trial of obedience, strength and patience. I knew it wouldn’t be easy but I’d seen other prospects and they didn’t seem to have it that bad. I never knew how wrong I was until this night, this very night, as I twisted the throttle following two other senior members to God knows where.
I was approached by Razor, the VP, and Brian, Sergeant at Arms, from the Klamath Falls chapter. I wasn’t told much except “Prospect! Come with us!” I was usually excited to do club stuff but tonight was a little different. I was riding with the only two guys in the entire club that I did not like. I know you can't like everyone, but these guys were really bad dudes. I was warned by my two friends that got me into the club to steer clear of these guys and, for that matter, the entire Klamath Falls chapter.
The chapter was known for their crystal meth problem and sketchy dealing with drugs and guns. Razor was really small and had a shaved head. He was covered in tattoos from top to bottom. He even had some on his face and neck. I had heard his name a few times before I ever met him from people telling stories about their crazy friend Razor. He seemed either feared or respected depending on who you asked.
Brian was a giant and a total fucking asshole. He seemed to live just to give prospects a hard time. So much so that after he got in my face, threatening to beat me to death for giving him a warm beer, the president from my chapter took him aside and told him to mellow out reminding him that he couldn’t threaten the prospects' lives. Between the two I feared both, but there was something eerie about Razor. His eyes were dead like he had no soul. The first time I met him I was visiting the president of my club at his house. Razor was there and at one point, he decided to snort some crystal meth in front of me. He looked at me and said if I snitched he would slit my throat. I was terrified but at the same time I thought, Dude everyone knows you’re a tweaker, so I didn’t worry about his threat. Here I was with the only two guys on the planet I didn’t want to be with speeding down the highway to God knows where for God knows what. “Just make it through tonight,” I would tell myself. “It's just one night.”
After an hour of twists and turns through the mountain roads, we came to a stop at a turnout. We switched our bikes off. My heart raced. Not from fear, but from the hard and sketchy ride. These guys knew how to ride and they rode fast. The mountain roads were not for the faint of heart, especially at the speeds we were going.
Razor looked back at me and gave me a nod, telling me I did a good job keeping up. I think both of them thought they would drop me on the turns but little did they know I was crazier than I was smart. They were talking but I was too far away to hear what they were saying. Brian made a motion pointing back at me. They seemed to be arguing about something. “What was that about?” I thought.
“Prospect!” Brian yelled.
I felt that yell down to my soul as I jumped off my bike and hurried over to them. “What’s up?” I asked.
“Give me a smoke.”
“I don’t smoke.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Here have one of mine,” Razor handed Brian a cigarette and gestured to me with his thumb to get back to my bike.
When you are a prospect, no matter what it seems like left becomes right and right becomes left. No matter what you say it is was wrong. We waited there in the dark for what seemed like an hour. I could see Brian and Razor pass something back and forth, both bringing it to their noses and sniffing. They were doing meth. Razor looked back at me when he sniffed. I thought he was going to offer me some but he was just giving me that I’ll slit your throat look. I was glad that they never offered me any as I hated that shit and didn’t want any part of it.
I heard a familiar roar in the distance. Brian and Razor's heads perked up, extra alert from the meth. Soon we saw the headlight of a single motorcycle approaching in the distance. Brian switched his headlamp on then off again. The rider slowed down, turning off the road and stopping just in front of Brian and Razor who were still sitting on their bikes. They both got off their bikes and walked towards the guy, who did the same. I got off my bike but instead of walking over, I knew to wait. I could hear them talking but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. After a few words were exchanged, the man returned to his bike and retrieved something from one of his saddlebags. He brought a package back over and handed it to Brian and Razor who then examined it. Brian turned and headed towards his bike looking at me as he walked. He leaned over and opened his saddlebag, reached in and pulled out a gun. He looked back at me smiling in a creepy way then turned and walked back over to Razor and the other guy. Without hesitation, Brian raised his gun and shot the guy three times in the chest. I jumped behind my bike onto the ground in fear. My ears were still ringing from the shots as I did an army crawl around my bike and peered forward.
“Prospect!” Brian yelled
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” I thought. My heart was beating out of my chest as I got to my knees. My legs were shaking as I stood. I didn’t think I could walk.
“Prospect!” Brian yelled
again. His shout snapped me back and I ran up to them. I looked down and saw the guy lying dead. I looked up at Brian with my eyes bulging with fear.
Brian held out the gun for me. “Take this prospect.”
I froze in fear. Why does he want me to take the gun? I wondered.
“Take it,” he handed me the gun.
“Why?” I asked.
Saying no to a full member meant you were instantly kicked out of the club. I didn’t want to be any part of this and I was not going to hold the gun that was just used in a murder. Brian just stood there holding the gun out for me. Razor walked past Brian and came to me. He got really close, so close I could hear him breathing hard. “If you don’t take the gun how can we trust you?”
I understood what they wanted. If I held the gun my prints were on it and they could rest assured that I wouldn’t rat on them.
“You really don’t have a choice here,” Razor said calmly.
I looked down at the dead biker on the ground and realized I was moments away from ending up just like him. This time the adrenaline did not take away the thoughts of family and friends. Razor was right, I didn’t have a choice. I looked up at Brian, grabbed the gun and held it but then I started to hand it back.
Brian shook his head. “Nope.”
“What?” I said. “My prints are on it.”
“Nope.” He pointed over to the guy on the ground. They wanted me to shoot the guy.
“Come on, just get it over with,” Razor said. “He’s already dead.”
“Why?” I asked.
“We need to know you can do it, even if the guy's already dead.”
I looked at Brian and his eyes were black as the night. He would just as soon kill me right there. I looked over at the guy and walked over slowly. He’s already dead, he’s already dead, I repeated over and over again in my head, trying to make it okay.
I could see he was Mexican. He had a vest on but didn’t have any club patches whatsoever. Who was this guy and why did they kill him? I thought. Well, I knew by the exchange of the package it was most likely drugs and instead of paying him they shot him. Yeah, just like the movies. For some reason, I looked at the guy's hand and saw a gold wedding band. Fuck! This guy is someone’s husband and probably a father and now a sheriff would be telling his loved ones he was found dead in the mountains.
“We don’t have all night!” Razor shouted.
My hand shook as I pointed the gun towards the lifeless body. I tried to steady it but there was no use. I turned my head away hoping I would miss and squeezed the trigger. The shot rang out and echoed through the hills. Tears ran down my face as I stood there frozen. I looked down at the man and I could see I didn’t miss as there was now a fourth hole in his chest with a trail of smoke coming from it.
“I didn’t think he would do it,” Brian said.
Razor hurried over to me and using a handkerchief, he grabbed the gun being careful not to touch it himself so that only I would be incriminated in the guy's murder. “Good job,” he said, patting me on the back. Brian walked over and grabbed the arms of the guy and started dragging him toward the edge of the road, over towards the drop-off. “Prospect! Give me a hand,” he demanded.
I hurried over and struggled with the guy's legs, doing my best to pull along with Brian. He was heavy and we could hardly move him. I looked at Brian's face and there was no emotion. He looked as if we were trying to move a heavy log or something that wasn’t a dead body. We managed to drag him to the edge of what looked like a twenty-foot steep cliff.
“Roll him,” Brian said.
We both flipped the guy over until his own momentum and gravity took over. He flipped and rolled and fell off the cliff and landed with a thud.
“Get his bike,” Brian said.
I went over to the guy's bike and pushed it towards the cliff.
“Wait!” Brian yelled. I stopped. Brian walked over and with his T-shirt, wiped my fingerprints off the grips of the bike. “Thanks,” I said, but I knew he was not looking out for me. Brian knew that if they found a fingerprint on that bike it could lead back to the club and most importantly, to him and Razor. I wasn't sure why I thanked him. After all, he had a gun with my fingerprints on it as collateral. Brian rolled the bike over the cliff and it landed with a crash of steel-crushing sounds.
“Let's go,” Razor said.
Brian and Razor took off their club jackets and stowed them away on their bikes. I followed suit and rolled mine up, tying it to my seat.
Not wanting to attract any attention, we rode back within the speed limit. My mind raced. I was in a complete panic about what to do. Each time we passed a road forking I thought about running but I knew they would catch up with me. I couldn’t tell anyone and I couldn’t quit the club. I had nowhere to go. I just shot some poor guy and I held a deadly secret involving two guys that I wish I’d never met. All these thoughts ran through my head as we rode back to the clubhouse in Jacksonville.
We pulled into the front parking lot of the club. Loud music poured out of the building and I knew there was a party going on. I was somewhat relieved to see my two good friends' bikes out front. We parked and put our cuts back on. Razor came over to me and put his hand on my shoulder. He looked into my eyes and could tell I was terrified.
“Sometimes life hits you in the face. Don’t take it too hard, you’ll be alright. That is, just as long as you keep your fucking mouth shut, but I think you will.” He patted my shoulder. “Now let’s go get a beer.”
It was as if my coach was telling me to cheer up and give me some inspiring life lesson talk after a big game. Razor wasn’t my coach and he wasn’t wise. They were murderers and I was connected to them at the hip.
We walked inside and the party was going hard. The clubhouse was a converted gas station on the edge of town. It had been out of business for many years before the club purchased it. It had a makeshift bar and pool tables. There were photos of fallen club members on the wall along with miscellaneous memorabilia and random motorcycle junk.
I looked over and saw two naked girls arguing about which one of them had the best tits and a few guys were judging. Normally such a display of nudity would spark my interest, but not tonight.
I saw my friends Jay and Danny, the two guys that introduced me to the club, drinking at the bar. I looked at Razor and he nodded as if to tell me I could go, so I went over to them.
“Hey,” I said, trying to sound somewhat happy.
“Hey, Prospect!” Danny joked.
“Yeah, get me a beer prospect!” Jay laughed.
Even though I was a prospect and they could make me do whatever, they were my friends and they never asked me to do anything. Mostly, they tried to tie up my time so other members couldn’t take advantage of me. I was thankful for that. Danny and Jay were older than my thirty-five years. They were about fifty-five I think. They’d been in the club for many years and were both respected and feared by many. They were both big guys and prided themselves on keeping strong and fit. They went to the gym a lot and liked to fight guys younger than them to prove they were still top dogs. I had looked up to them and was inspired to be like them when I was older.
Danny was our chapter’s “Road Captain” and Jay was the “Sergeant at Arms.” The Road Captain made sure everyone got to where we were going when we went on runs. The Sergeant at Arms was the muscle and decided when a brawl was called for.
“We heard you were dragged out with the dogs,” Danny said, referring to Brian and Razor. Jay and Danny didn’t like Brian or Razor. They hated that they were in the same club.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Well, where’d you go?” Jay asked.
“Uh, we uh, we just went riding.”
“Riding!” Danny said. “Sounds like a story.”
“No, we just went to some bar then rode really fast through the hills and came back here.”
“Sounds like they were playing a game of keep up,” Danny said. “So, did you?”
; “Did I what?”
“Keep up.”
“Oh yeah, barely.”
“Well good for you,” Jay said, patting me on the back hard.
They had known me long enough that they could tell something was off. “What’s wrong with you, man?” Danny asked.
“Nothing, why?”
“You seem all upset about something. You sure everything’s okay?”
“Yeah, I just don’t feel so good. I think I had a bad taco.”
“Bad taco? Sounds like Jay last week in Mexico, except it was a bad pink taco!” Danny laughed.
Jay punched Danny in the arm. “Fuck off!”
“Did you get some antibiotics for the drip?” Danny smirked.
“You know where this is going if you don’t shut up,” Jay warned.
Danny was only joking, but he knew Jay would go there at a moment’s notice and Danny did not want to scrap with Jay. They were friends, but they were outlaws just the same. They played rough and demanded respect.
I never set out to be an outlaw biker. I was a regular guy that happened to grow up loving motorcycles. I fell into this whole biker club thing by chance. Meeting Danny and Jay at my friend’s motorcycle shop was great. We would BBQ, drink beer and talk about women. It was the total man cave and I loved it. Now I was wishing I never found that shop and never met these two. I knew I couldn’t go back in time, but I would give anything to do so. I didn’t belong here. I wasn’t a killer.
“Look, do you guys mind if I go home? I really don’t feel good.” I said.
“Yeah, we don’t want you puking everywhere. Go on,” Danny responded.
“I'll catch up with you guys later.”
I hurried out, making sure Razor and Brian didn’t see me leave. I made it to my bike and was about to start it when I had an epiphany. I looked over at Razor's bike. That gun is in his saddlebag, I thought.
I looked over at the clubhouse and no one was outside. I looked back at the bike and then back to the clubhouse. I jumped off my bike and ran over to Razor's bike. I unbuckled the leather strap of his saddlebag and opened the flap looking inside. Nothing! I jumped over to the other side, my heart raced. This was a death sentence if I was caught.
