by Brook Wilder
“You give me until midnight, and then I’m up.”
“Yes sir.”
“I mean it.”
“You got it.”
Predictably, she let him sleep until sunrise and he hated himself for falling for it and for actually staying asleep that long. It didn’t seem to magically make his sluggish mind speed up, but Hanna rattled off all sorts of scientific facts about losing sleep and how long it took to recover and not being able to regain it and yada, yada.
She made a habit of showing up at his apartment at night, there to make sure he got sleep and to watch for any signs that a break had come in the case. On the third night, he woke up in the middle of the night and, through cracked eyes, found her watching him.
He pretended to still be asleep, careful not to let his breathing give him away as he shut the slit of his eyes and continued to feel her watching him. While he liked the idea of her watching him throughout the day, this was practically ready to get him hard. Her gaze, for the brief moment he saw it, had been intense and unbroken. She wasn’t zoning out or idly giving her eyes a direction to point. She was studying him with that same intelligence that got him to cross the street weeks ago. He loved the way she wore her mind on those blue eyes. He gave her the smallest show by twitching, just slightly, in his sleep, as if in a dream. The effect was a tightening of his biceps, exposed by his cut off shirt.
She placed a blanket over him and he felt his insides soften just a bit as he fell back into a real sleep and woke up ignoring the feelings that still lingered.
He had to get very good at hiding his morning wood with her constantly there. But he also knew there was no way she didn’t notice, at least a few times. In a way it made him even harder. He had several good showers in the morning to relieve himself of all that pent up tension. In a way, that was actually the most enjoyable part about all this. He got to see her body, watch her watch him and then he had the chance to do something about it every morning before going out.
It improved his mood a great deal. Maybe it was what actually had him sleeping better at night.
“Nothing, boss,” Rick said, coming back from a ride with the loaned riders from the Vampires.
“You and your lady should probably call it an early night, no need to exhaust yourselves,” one of the riders said.
“She’s not my girl,” he said evenly.
“Could have fooled me.”
“Watch your mouth,” Rick said sharply.
The rider shrugged and bid them farewell for the night. It was like in high school when the guy who wanted to ask the girl out to prom got told by everyone how much she secretly liked him. Except here it was more about getting her out of those tight fitting clothes she seemed to like so much, as soon as possible. He ignored it, however. She was all business, very serious. She was making up for some nasty comments that came flying out of her mouth during a stressful time, and that was that.
He’d find some stripper or girl at a bar to take his mind off of her. Though he hated the idea of spending a night off from trying to find his sister to get laid or give himself something to thinking about while he masturbated.
“Everyone deserves a night off,” Rick said as they sat in the dim, flashing lights of the strip club.
“I should be spending it smoking a bowl on my couch and watching crappy television, waiting for the phone to ring,” he said grimly, taking a sip of beer.
“We both know that’s not you, and Isabelle knows it too,” he said.
What really made him feel guilty was the way he compared every body he saw to the one he was sure was hiding under Hanna’s clothes. He was here to take his mind off another woman, that added a whole new layer to the equation. Somehow the blur of the club wasn’t doing the job he hoped in getting him to stop thinking about her.
“I’m calling it a night,” he said and walked out, not waiting for Rick to come back at him with a snippy comment about how he was letting a girl get in the way of his own fun.
Rick was smart. He knew exactly what Roarke was doing. They’d been friends since they were kids, he’d seen him go through every possible form of coping mechanism you could imagine. This one was no different. But he was thankful Rick let him walk out without too many comments.
***
At night, when Roarke was asleep, that was the one time Hanna would let herself indulge in watching him, studying his muscles, the way the rifts and cuts across the expanse of his exposed skin created beautiful shadows, showing off almost no body fat. She’d watch his stomach fall and rise as he breathed evenly into the night, occasionally moving around in his sleep or reacting to a dream.
It was probably creepy. Well, it was definitely creepy. And if her uncle knew she was using her cover to ogle a member of the gang, he’d not only fire her, but find a way to ground her, despite her age. That made it all the more tempting, though. Thinking about all the reasons she shouldn’t be doing this and how wrong it was made it desirable. She liked it. And she liked the possibility that, at any minute, he might wake up and catch her staring.
So she kept doing it. It served the purpose of her letting out whatever strange tension she was carrying and she got to make sure he was sleeping through the night. It was functional and rewarding.
However, not everyone was so cagey with their thoughts.
“Have you two been fucking?” Amber asked as she dried a glass behind the bar.
“What?” Hanna said, nearly dropping her drink.
“I know my brother. If you two aren’t fucking, he’s certainly thinking about it every time he’s in the shower or home alone long enough to yank one off,” she said bluntly and Hanna tried not to choke on the handful of peanuts she was eating.
“No,” she said evenly and quickly.
“So it’s the shower thing then.”
Hanna wanted to retort, defend herself in some way, but the longer they talked about it, the worse it would get. It was best to just leave it be and move on. But being silent about it didn’t mean it left her brain at all. For the rest of the night she thought about what Amber said and, that night, when she was alone in the guest room of Roarke’s house, trying to actually sleep herself, she couldn’t keep herself from imagining what he did, imagining her. She ended up relieving quite a bit of tension of her own before finally drifting off to sleep.
It was the best she slept in a long time, though.
Chapter 8
“We’ve got a name,” Rick said, practically jumping off his bike when they came back one night from a ride. “We finally cornered one of the kids who works at the grocer. Got the guy’s name, contact info, the works.”
“Finally,” Roarke growled, moving to his own bike quickly.
Hanna made a move to follow but he turned around quickly.
“I don’t see you with a bike,” he said.
“Good thing yours is big enough for two.”
No woman had ever ridden passenger on his bike. He’d fucked plenty, some for extended periods, but none of them got to ride on the hog. He stared at her and she stared right back, her arms crossed over her chest. He could feel the eyes of all the other riders around him, watching and waiting.
While anyone else might look at this as a moment to assert dominance, to tell her off or to show off for his riders, Roarke was incredibly turned on by it all. Her power stance, the flex of her arms, the quirk of her eyebrow, the demands she was making with her body as well as her words. All of it was incredibly sexy and, for the first time in his life, he wanted to submit to it. If there weren’t several pairs of eyes watching him he might have lunged forward and jumped her bones right then.
“Hold on tight,” was all he said as he walked over and swung his leg over the bike.
She followed behind him, taking her time to drape her leg over the bike. He felt her hips settling in at his back and her legs hug his as they set on the stirrups. Her arms snaked around his middle and hugged just enough that he could feel her breasts pushing into his back, even through th
e leather of his jacket. He refused to shudder, not in front of everyone. He may have loved her power-play, but he didn’t need her smirking in her dominance with everyone there to watch.
“Ready when you are,” she whispered in his ear.
He couldn’t even be angry at himself for the things her voice seemed to do to him. He was in the middle of breaking the case and all he could think about for the past thirty seconds was preventing a hard on for everyone to see. As soon as the motorcycle revved up, he forced it all away and focused on the task at hand.
They rode off down the road in a swarm of bikes. They’d come at this slippery delivery man like a horde ready to pummel him into the ground until he started talking. The town learned to fear a gang of Pharaohs headed down the road, especially at this time of night.
As they rode, he wondered why he’d never thought to actually have a woman ride with him. It was invigorating but his pride had prevented him from it for a long time. The way she held him and hugged at him. He could smell her perfume, even with the smell of gas and exhaust all around them. He felt the power of the bike between his legs, the speed they were going as the wind whipped around them, a woman at his back. He’d never felt anything like it and he let himself relish in it, just a few seconds longer, before pulling his attention back in as they neared the entrance of the apartment building the tip had given them.
It was a rundown place, easy to get into since they had no buzzer code, it was covered in tags from other gangs but Roarke ignored them. He had no time for respect of turf right now, and if someone wanted to claim he was overstepping his bounds by going after a guy who belonged to Coyote territory, then he’d gladly step in to prove his point.
“Locked,” Rick said, testing the front door. “Mouse, you’re up.”
Mouse stepped forward with his pocket knife already out. He stuck it in the lock and began working it. He’d taken up his family business as a locksmith when he dropped out of high school at sixteen. It proved to be an invaluable skill when it turned out he could make a lot more money breaking into places than installing ways to keep people out. He set to work, turning the lock and listening to the sounds like a heart surgeon. Everyone sat quietly because, small as he was, he had a tendency to have a temper when anyone disrupted his concentration.
“Open says me,” he said with a smirk as they heard a click and the front door opened with ease. “They have some shitty lock work.”
“Give them an estimate later, let’s go,” Roarke said, yanking him up to his feet and pushing him inside.
The others followed behind as Rick called out 3C as the apartment number. They took the steps two at a time, Roarke wasn’t going to risk this guy being tipped or getting skittish. He’d avoided them for almost a week and he finally had him in a corner. He walked up to the door when they reached the floor and banged on it, loudly.
“I could just do my thing again,” Mouse said.
“If this gets to the cops I want them to know he let us in,” Roarke said. “Besides, I’m no snake. This guy is going to look me in the eyes willingly.”
There was no answer. He banged again, three more sturdy, hard knocks. Finally, there was shuffling from the other side of the door. He banged again, two more times. The door opened just as much as the chain lock on the inside would allow and a sliver of the face of a man looked through.
“Who the fuck are you?” he asked, not sounding nearly as fearless as he likely wanted to come off.
“Isaac Gilbert?” Roarke said.
“That’s me. I asked who you are,” he said, his voice even shakier than before.
“You delivered to my bar the night my sister disappeared, I want to talk,” he said.
“Open the door or we give it a gentle nudge and pay to replace that chain,” Roarke said evenly.
Even with only a portion of the man visible, he could see the bounce in his neck as the muscles worked to swallow. Perhaps some beads of sweat were going down his neck as they spoke, maybe every part of him hiding behind the door was shaking. All it would take was a few more nudges and the man would break.
“I’ll call the cops--”
“Wrong.”
Roarke pushed on the door, giving it just enough pressure for the chain to snap open and the door to swing wide. The man fell back, surprised. He stumbled, nearly landing on his own kitchen floor as Roarke moved in, Rick beside him. The others followed in and Hanna stepped forward, in that same power stance from before that won her a spot on his bike.
The man was scrawny and young, barely out of high school. He was days past the last time he should have shaved and there were visible sweat stains on the armpits of his white tank top. His boxers were the most stereotypical design of hearts on a plain of white and Roarke wondered if he could get the boy to piss himself.
He and Rick stepped forward and hauled the boy to his feet by his chicken wire arms and held on tight, enough to bruise where they gripped. They felt the boy wince but he didn’t dare say a word as he stood there, helpless.
“Did you, or did you not, deliver shit to my bar on September 23rd?” Roarke asked. “I’m only going to ask one more time before I start breaking things.”
“I did. You obviously know that already,” the boy said in one last show of bravery that earned him a slap across the face from Rick.
“You want to tell me more about that?”
The boy didn’t answer. He stared like a deer in headlights, visibly shaking now. He was young and it was unfortunate, but Roarke wasn’t about to let that stop him. He didn’t care about this kid who probably spent his days high as a kite and binging junk food when not forced to make the rounds to various restaurants to haul beer for minimum wage. Maybe this would be a wakeup call for him to get his life together.
“Well, more than one way to do things, yeah?”
He and Rick dragged the boy out, who was now protesting, claiming he didn’t know anything. Roarke wasn’t having any of it, everyone had something to say when there were nails pressing under their fingernails. He kept a grip so tight on the boy’s arm he thought he might crack the bone underneath. Maybe this would be a sign to him to start working out too.
“Roarke,” said Hanna from behind him.
He could hear her hesitation. He refused to turn around and see it. She was part of the Caracals, or so she claimed, she knew this how things worked. Maybe she never laid hands on anyone herself but she couldn’t play squeamish now. He let her ride on his bike, but he wouldn’t give her this. This was his sister’s life he was balancing and part of his job, part of his livelihood and lifestyle.
They dragged him outside, by then he was a yelling mess, perhaps waking up half the building but they kept on, dragging him off to the side. Rick was already lighting up a cigarette, taking a drag to test it, ready to press it against the soft flesh on the boy’s arm, ready to watch it melt underneath. The boy was crying and pleading, claiming he didn’t know anything, that he could prove it.
They never got the chance.
A shot rang out and, on instinct, they dropped to the ground, hands over their heads, releasing in the boy. Roarke heard him hit the ground between them and was ready to compliment him for his instincts to at least do that when he noticed the dark, gaping hole in the side of the boy’s mousy blonde hair. Blood poured out like a waterfall and God knew what else from inside his head. He had been dead before he even hit the ground.
He turned. The shooter was already on the run.
“Let’s go!” Hanna shouted, already vaulting herself onto Roarke’s bike.
He didn’t need to be told twice.
***
The shooter took off on his own bike and it became a chase within seconds. Nobody could match Roarke for his driving, he knew that much. He knew these streets better than anyone, could handle the turns and the potholes and the cracks in the road. There was nowhere this guy could go that he couldn’t follow. On any other day he might have reveled in showing off to Hanna, today he wanted nothing more than to
crush the skull of the man who held that gun and pulled the trigger.
“Get up as close to him as you can,” Hanna shouted in his ear.
His thoughts exactly. He did so and she reached out with one foot. He watched her wind up and then, with all of her might, deliver a strong kick to the stomach of the man. He buckled. His bike began to swerve. He struggled to regain control. He slowed. Roarke moved in and bumped him again. He drove off, veering, and crashed right into a pile of garbage set out for the trash truck in the morning, his bike skidding across the asphalt in a sight of sparks. That bike would never ride again, and neither would the driver if Roarke had any say.
He put out the kickstand and cut the engine quickly. Hanna leapt off the bike and he followed. The man, disoriented, tried to scramble away but Hanna tackled him, putting him in an expert chokehold. Maybe he’d underestimated her. He walked around to face him. It was a face he didn’t know, but he was willing to bet all the money in the till of his bar that he was hired by the Caracals
