Smolder: Trojans MC

by Kara Parker

  “So, you’ve come to arrest me?” David asked.

  “No, I’ve come to prove that I didn’t call in the hit against the Reapers,” Olivia said. David’s brow creased, as he put his gun back in its holster. Olivia reached into her pocket and pulled out her cellphone, tossing it to David. He could see a recording app was open.

  “Press play,” she said. David looked at the phone and then back at Olivia. Was this a trick of some kind? But why would she trick him this way, what would she get out of it? David pulled the phone up and pushed play, putting the device against his ear. He heard the robotic voice, and it listed the God’s Reapers warehouse location and the location of the warehouse on Marigold Street. It detailed how they hid their drugs, how they operated.

  “It was an inside job,” she whispered. “It had to have been. I don’t know any of that stuff, David. It wasn’t me; it was one of you.”

  “Who?” David said, his voice hoarse.

  “No one knows. It was just a call that came in. But the details checked out, and they planned a raid.”

  It can’t be, David thought. Ratted out by one of their own? Who would have done it? Who would have betrayed their brothers and sent them to jail? “David,” Olivia continued. “It has to be someone who’s still free. No one rats and then waits for the cops to show up. Someone in God’s Reapers is destroying it from the inside.”

  Who was still out? David asked himself. There was him, Mike, and Rick, but there was no way it was any of them. Mike and Rick’s lives revolved around the club, their livelihoods depended on it. There were about a dozen members who hadn’t been present for the raid and hadn’t been arrested. It had to be one of them, but which one?

  “You can’t tell anyone I let you hear that,” Olivia said. “They’d put me in jail, too.”

  David nodded and handed the phone back to her. He had been wrong; it hadn’t been Olivia who had ratted on them. It had been one of his own brothers; someone who knew all of his secrets and the secrets of everyone else in the club. There was a snake in their midst and David needed to find out who it was and cut the bastard's head off.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and he finally looked at her eyes. David could feel tears in his. He would never let them fall, but they were there. Tears for everything he had ever loved and held dear that had just crashed around him. “I’m sorry about coming to your apartment and attacking you. I can make all these excuses for what I did, but I won’t do that. I was wrong and I did the wrong thing and I’m sorry.”

  “I looked for you at the raid,” Olivia said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I was frantic looking for you. I was terrified I was going to find you in handcuffs. I was so relieved when your name wasn’t on the list of people arrested. I don’t want you to go to jail. You don’t belong there.”

  “Where do I belong?” he asked, walking towards her and destroying the space that had grown between them. “My only home was this club, and now it’s in pieces.” He was in front of her again. Again, there was only inches between them. David brought his hand up and caressed her cheek, letting his rough hands touch her soft skin. She closed her eyes and leaned into his touch. His hand moved to her chin, and he held it lightly, moving her towards him. The kiss was like none they had before. It was soft and gentle and slow. He pressed his bruised and cut lips against her perfect ones. Gently, they kissed under the moonlight.

  There was nothing David wanted more than to kiss her longer, but he winced as his cuts and bruises cried out against any touch. Olivia pulled away, just a little and looked at his face. Her fingers gently grazing and testing the cuts and bruises.

  “What did they do to you?” she whispered.

  “They gave me what I deserved,” he answered.

  “You don’t deserve this,” she said.

  “No, maybe I didn’t,” David said. “But someone does and I’m gonna find out who and they’ll suffer ten times what I did.”

  “David, you can’t. This is dangerous. You're outnumbered and outgunned, and there’s someone on the inside working against you.”

  “So what, I should do nothing?” he said.

  “No, I’m just saying you shouldn’t do it alone. I can help you.”

  “Why would you help me?”

  “I don’t know. It’s dumb and stupid, but something is going on here. Something about this raid has been bothering me. I need more information, and I’m not getting anywhere on my own. Plus, I don’t want you to do this alone. I don’t know what I would do if you were arrested or killed. So let me help you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  Olivia left David standing alone, battered and bruised, on the street corner. She wished he had come with her. She wanted him to get into her car and the two of them could have just taken off. Driven as far and fast as they wanted, they could have found a new city far away, something on the coast maybe. They could create new identities for themselves and become different people. But she knew there was no chance of that. Neither for her nor for him, they would both die before they walked away from this.

  She drove home, the windows in her car down. She let the warm air pour into her car, ruffling her hair and her clothes. Nights in the desert are like nothing else. It’s dark and quiet and the land extends in every direction as far as you could see while overhead millions of stars blink down. It was two in the morning by the time she got home. She let herself into her apartment and undressed, falling into bed and into a deep sleep almost instantly.

  She slept in the next day, her day off. She luxuriated in her bed while rays of sun crept around her room. She lasted as long as she could in bed, because she knew the second she got up that things would get very dangerous, potentially life-ruining. Something was going on in God’s Reapers. A brother was getting all the members sent to jail, but why? She and David were the only people who could figure it out. But no one could know they were working together. If it was discovered that she was sneaking around at night with a member of God’s Reapers, it would be career suicide.

  But David was determined to investigate, and she wouldn’t let him go alone. They were going to meet tonight on the north side of town and start their investigation. They needed to figure out who had betrayed the Reapers and why, without anyone knowing what they were doing. She knew it had to be one of Reapers who was still out. The problem was there were about a dozen members still out, and David and Olivia couldn’t follow all of them and following the wrong person would waste precious time they didn’t have.

  At nine o’clock Olivia arrived at the meeting location, an old and long-abandoned gas station. The ripped apart sign still showed gas for ninety-nine cents a gallon, a relic from a simpler time. But now the station was empty. There was a bundle of clothes in one corner next to some empty liquor bottles, but whoever had been sleeping there was long gone. The place was empty and cold.

  David arrived a few minutes after she did. He hopped off his bike and removed his helmet, and Olivia couldn’t help but wince when she saw him. The bruises on his face had swollen over the day and the cuts had closed leaving painful looking scabs on his face. She wanted him to rest and get better, but she knew he would never do that. He walked his bike over to the building and produced a key from his pocket, opening the door to the gas station.

  “Where did you get a key from?” Olivia asked.

  “A member used to own it. I guess the state or the county owns it now, but a couple of us still have keys.” His voice was rough sounding, and she wondered if he’d had any sleep at all in the last few days.

  The gas station was dark inside. The shelves and the counter still stood, but they were all empty. There were only cobwebs and the occasional mouse skittering over the empty shelves and running for cover when Olivia or David made any noise. David put his bike in the corner and the two of them faced each other in the darkness of the garage. Olivia couldn’t help herself, she walked over to him and kissed him as gently as she could. She wanted to put her hands on his face, but she couldn’t. She knew
it would only hurt him. She had thought about kissing him all day, the feel of his lips, the taste of him. He kissed her back but had to pull away too soon, wincing and putting a hand on his ripped up lip.

  “Are you taking anything for that?” Olivia asked, looking at his bruised face.

  “I’ll be fine; it looks worse than it is,” David said.

  “So, what’s our play? Are any of the members acting suspicious?”

  “You mean other than the guy meeting with a cop in an abandoned garage alone at night?” he asked, a rare smile appearing on his face. The smile couldn’t stay long; it hurt him too much, and after a moment, his face returned to its sad expression.

  “Yeah,” Olivia said, smiling at him. “Other than that guy. We’re not worried about him.”

  “No. Everyone is still around and accounted for. But I did find something else.”

  “What?”

  “One of our usual buyers, this guy Sal, was bugging us last week for a hit. He was desperate. Then, I saw him today and he’s fine. I asked him where he got it from, and he said that there’s a building on the west side of town where he got it. Said they had just started and were looking for some street level dealers.”

  “So a week after the Reaper’s get raided, someone else starts up an operation in town. You think the two are connected?”

  “It’s the only lead I have.”

  “Then let’s go. We should take my car; it’ll be quieter.”

  In Olivia’s car they headed west, driving down the streets. The city had not yet gone to sleep. They passed bars and restaurants filled with people laughing and enjoying themselves, no wiser to the dangerous world all around them. Olivia for a moment thought how nice it would be to just sit in a restaurant and not worry about violence or death. But then, she would need to be a different person for that to happen.

  They parked a block down the street from the location and walked towards it, trying to look like a normal couple out for a stroll. David put a baseball cap on to try and hide his mangled face. As they approached, they could see that it was a general store, but not a good one. The dirty windows in the front showed religious candles, cheap glass tubes with images of sad looking saints on the front, and some soda and candy, but the whole place had a rundown-looking feel. It was the kind of place you glanced at, but always passed, never bothering to go inside.

  The place was dark at this hour; there were no lights or noises coming from inside. They tried to peer through the glass, but it was too dirty to make out anything. To the left, there was a back alley, but a tall, locked wooden gate blocked it.

  “Trash cans,” Olivia said, grabbing a nearby bin and standing on top of it. From there she was able to jump over the gate and land silently on her feet on the other side. David followed, but she heard him give a grunt of pain when he landed, his hands holding his ribs.

  “Are you ok?” Olivia whispered.

  “I’m fine,” David replied, standing up straight. “Just a little sore.” They took a few steps and then froze when they heard voices. They both ducked down and hunched their way over to a window where the voices were coming from.

  “You want to live, then you say nothing,” the voice said. It was a man’s voice, deep, but rough, hardened from years of smoking. “The boss can get to you in prison; don’t forget that,” the voice continued. Olivia realized that he must have been on the phone; the pauses were when whomever he was on the line with spoke. “Well, I told you not to involve your brother. And you did, and then he got loud, and you went and shot him. None of this is the boss’s problem. Just stick with self-defense. Your brother has a record. It won’t be a hard case to make. Look. Just man up and stop calling me in tears; you knew what the job was when you took it. Now just sit tight and cry self-defense.” The man gave an annoyed grunt and then silence fell.

  The brothers, Olivia realized, it was the domestic dispute call she hadn’t answered the other day. They must have something to do with this. Was that what they were arguing over, drugs?

  They heard the sound of the phone being dialed, and they waited with bated breath to see who would answer. “You want to make an omelet, you need to break some eggs, right,” the man said into the phone. “We might need to do away with him. He’s getting real antsy in there.... I know there are still Reapers out there, but killing them is your job, not mine.”

  Olivia glanced over at David, his face hidden in the moonlight. He was in more trouble than they had thought. This wasn’t just a territorial fight. It was a fight for control and whoever was waging war wasn’t going to stop until every last Reaper was caught and killed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  David felt fire enter his stomach. Someone in there was talking about killing him and his brothers. They were nothing more than eggs for his omelet. Taking his cap off, David put his fingers on the edge of the windowsill and slowly peered over it. The man was no one David knew. He was fat and bald, but otherwise unremarkable. David lowered himself back down and looked around the back alley. There was one door that led to the room with the man, but he knew it would be suicide to go in there while that man was behind the desk.

  “Just got the call about the shipment. It should be here in five.” David looked at Olivia and saw her bright, wide eyes staring back at him. He looked around the back alley and saw a pair of dumpsters. He jerked his head towards them and together, while crouched low, the two made their way over to them. Olivia went first squeezing between the dumpster and the wall. David went to follow, but while he wasn’t fat, he was bigger than Olivia and when he followed her, the dumpster moved, letting out a high pitched squeal as the metal moved over the cement.

  They both froze at the noise; Olivia’s eyes went wide and she grabbed David by the arm, pulling him behind the dumpster with her. She was pressed up against him, and his face was buried in her hair. He could feel her heart pounding in her chest. They both held their breath and waited. The back door of the office slammed open, and they could hear footsteps. The fat bald man had come out to investigate. David closed his eyes and prayed that the man would be lazy and not look too hard.

  After a few panicked moments, they heard the door swing closed. David peeked out from behind the dumpster and the coast was clear.

  “That was close,” Olivia said with a breathless giggle. David shook his head and smiled. He opened his mouth to say something, but closed it immediately. Someone had opened the back wooden gate.

  “Put the boxes on the cart and bring them around. When they’re all in, you’ll get paid,” a gruff voice said, and there were the sounds of feet and wheels crunching over the pavement. Once more, David peeked around the dumpster and saw two men wheeling a hand-truck full of boxes into the store. The last man walked through and David lunged for the door, managing to catch it before it closed.

  For a moment, he winced and waited for someone to come out and kick him in the face, but no one did. Olivia came out from behind the dumpster and pulled the door open. They peered inside the office, but the place was empty. David looked at Olivia, searching her eyes to see if she was ready for what he wanted to do. She nodded, and together they slipped into the office.

  From the office, there were two doors. One was open and led to the darkened storefront. The other was closed and on the left side of the office. Carefully, David opened that door, revealing a set of metal stairs. Olivia propped open the door with a small rock, and together they silently made their way inside.

  They tiptoed down the darkened stairs, hearing the voices and noises from people below them until they found themselves on a landing that overlooked a surprisingly huge basement. It was brightly lit and filled with long tables, and David could see workers opening the boxes marked, “cat treats” and pulling out bags and bags of white powder. From there, they opened the bags and began measuring and parceling out what was in there.

  “I need to get a closer look; I need to see if I recognize anyone down there,” David whispered.

  “No,” Olivia hissed bac
k. “You’ll be seen and we’ll be caught. We need to call this in. This is bad, David.”

  “We can’t call it in; we need to find out who’s moving it. Whoever it is, is smart enough to stay off the cops’ radar. They know what they’re doing; we need to find out who it is.” He moved to the left, intending to go down the stairs, but Olivia grabbed his arm and held him where he was with her surprisingly strong grip.

  “The person in charge of this is that fat bald guy, do you know him?” Olivia asked.

  “No,” David had to admit.

  “He was talking to his boss on the phone, which means the boss is not here. We need to go.”

  David looked down at the floor. Someone had taken over their operations, and they had been planning to do so for a while. This wasn’t some last minute drug den someone had put together. The lighting and security and front spoke of a plan, of a lot of planning. David looked for the bald man; he wanted to find him and beat him until he told David everything he knew.