by Brook Wilder
Then they started walking, the house coming into sight.
Roarke had to hand it to Isaiah, he was an obnoxious fuck when it came to his house. It was gaudy, to think about and to look at. Most bikers lived in shithole apartments, even when they could afford better. It was part of the lifestyle, hiding away in some crummy place, surrounded by alcohol and money that was kept in bags as cash and far away from any traceable bank account. But here was Isaiah Clark, showing off his wealth like he was asking for someone to rob him.
The house was big and white. It had fucking gardens in it. He actually paid a gardener to come in and trim his hedges like some kind of country club asshole. His lawn was trimmed and manicured and there was even a goddamn fountain in it. He’d do better as a mobster in the city where showing off pinkie rings and thousand dollar suits suited him. Here things were gritty and real and the only badges of honor you had were scars and dirt, not fancy clothes and expensive things.
He wouldn’t mind trashing the hell out of the place when all this was over, taking him down a peg the way he used to do as a kid, with toilet paper and spray paint.
“There’s two guys up there,” Hanna said, quietly, pointing.
He followed her gaze and saw to Caracals sitting in front of bikes. They would be impossible to get passed, even to get to the back or a side entrance.
“I can keep them occupied,” she said. He immediately opened his mouth to protest but she shot him a look, silencing him. “I fooled you for months didn’t I? I’ll pretend to be some lost tourist, you find a way in somewhere else.”
“I don’t like this,” he warned.
“Then you shouldn’t have brought me along. Just go with it and don’t fuck up,” she said.
She gave him a quick kiss in the corner of his mouth for luck and moved away. He watched, feeling his heart pound as she approached the men.
***
Despite what the last few months would suggest, Hanna was actually very skilled at undercover work. She’d done it on a small scale, busting drug deals when she walked up to a dealer on a street corner and pretended to be a customer or walked into a store, pretending to want to see the room in the back where the weed was kept.
This was no different. It was a bit of one-off undercover work. Besides, they looked like idiots. She was exceptionally good at profiling intelligence and there wasn’t much here to work with, she was sure. As she got closer she heard them exchange conversations about the best way to position a girl to make sure she came during sex and she rolled her eyes, thinking about how the girls they were talking about most certainly faked it based on what they were doing.
When she got close enough, she stumbled, making a loud noise to get their attention. If she took them off guard it would hurt her chances of convincing them. She remembered all her training, her cues for this.
“Excuse me, sorry to bother you guys--”
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
She feigned offense. “Excuse me. I’m a bit lost and my car is broken down.”
“Not our problem lady, fuck off.”
She couldn’t appeal to any better nature in them, there likely wasn’t. But there was always a perfect backup plan when you were a woman. Luckily she’d worn a low neckline shirt. She wanted to wear them as much as possible before her swelling stomach was going to make it impossible to fit in her tight shirts. She stepped closer to the men, subtly clasping her hands together, pressing her breasts in, creating a hard line of cleavage on her chest. She gave them a pout for good measure.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to trespass. I just really need help. I just broke up with my boyfriend and I’m a little bit emotional and didn’t notice my car was on empty,” she said, throwing in some glassy eyes.
She flit her gaze across the yard, watching Roarke keep an eye on them. His eyes were narrowed and he was glaring. She found his jealousy endearing most of the time but right now she needed him to hustle. She wasn’t about to fuck these two idiots. She turned her gaze back to them and she could see from the tight bounce of their Adam’s apples as they swallowed and the way they were shifting a little more in their seats that they suddenly had a renewed interest in her plight. She smiled.
“Alright lady, don’t cry,” the one said. “We can help you out.”
She shot Roarke a glance and he took it and ran, moving towards the back of the house.
Chapter 33
Roarke knew women had a particular skill when it came to tricking the opposite sex with their bodies and their voices. He’d fallen victim to it himself. He blamed men, more than anything else. As a gender they were dumb, easily swayed, and you’d think they’d learn after decades of women pulling one over on them by pretending to be innocent and ready to jump in bed. But seeing it now made his blood boil. He was a bit of a jealous man when it came to her. How could he not be? She got looks when they went to the store or out to bars that weren’t the Pharaohs’.
But this was another level. Those Caracal fucks were thinking about what she must look like naked, how she sounded when she came. They were thinking about touching her breasts, kissing her lips, sticking their tiny, shriveled dicks inside of her. He wanted to jump them right then and there, punch them both until they wouldn’t see through all the blood. But she looked at him in warning, knowing exactly what he was thinking. It was a show and they could solve it later when they were alone and together again and she’d reaffirm to him how much she was his and no one else’s.
Besides, if he fucked up this chance they’d both be screwed and she’d probably make him sleep on the couch for a month, if they made it out alive.
He moved towards the back of the house. A place this pretentious had to have a back patio and if those idiots were out front, he’d be willing to bet it wasn’t locked. He moved along the edge of the house, hearing their voices fade as he moved farther away. He wondered, briefly, if Clark set up a security system in the house. He wasn’t so skilled as to be able to crack the disarming code so he’d have to just rip the keypad off the wall until it shut up.
The backyard was as stupid as the front yard. It was perfectly manicured as well and a large in-ground pool with a water feature attached to it was waiting to be marveled at. What a toolbag. If they got out of this he was coming back to piss in that pool. He moved across the patio and tested the door. It gave way with a smooth, well-oiled slide. At least his pretentious fuckery gave him that much of a chance. He quietly shut the door behind him. He listened to see if anyone was in the house, listening for the sounds of movement, the sound of a TV sitting idly on.
What he got was the sound of a flush from the bathroom upstairs. He tiptoed across the house, careful not to let his boots click on the tile floor. He was thankful there were no waiting floorboards to creak and give him away. He got to the stairs and moved up carefully, keeping an eye out for a body moving across the hallway upstairs. This house was huge and it was going to make it hard to locate the room where this person was waiting. It could be the child, it could be Clark, it could be Isabelle. He needed to figure out who it was before he moved in. He needed that much of an advantage for this.
He spotted the bathroom, the toilet still running from the flush, moments ago. He stopped and listened. There was no sound of a television, no sound of video games. He listened hard and faintly heard the sound of muffled something. He followed it. It was muffled music, coming from headphones. That was helpful, it would mask his sound. He moved closer, peaking through the crack of a door open a sliver.
He saw him. A child. He was older than Roarke expected. Isabelle must have been hiding the boy for a while now, years even. When had she been pregnant? Was he really that oblivious to everything around him?
He watched the boy, a combination of the Pharaohs and the Caracals, a bridge between two very violent worlds. Did he know? Did anyone tell him how precarious his position was? Did anyone care to tell him? Did Isabelle know what danger she brought into the world by giving birth to him and hiding him?
He felt pity for the kid, but that wasn’t going to stop him. He needed to end this. He couldn’t help the world the child was born into and it was better if he got to know the dangers of it as soon as possible. He’d learn the dangers; he’d learn his place in the world. He moved forward to step into the room, bring the unsuspecting boy into a hold, place a hand over his mouth and tell him to be quiet, drag him out of the house and leverage his freedom for Isabelle’s surrender.
“...phone, if you have one. That’d be very helpful,” said Hanna’s voice downstairs. They were in the house too. He wasn’t sure if that wasn’t going to be helpful for make this all that much more difficult.
He paused.
And then the front door opened again and everything fell apart. He knew who was coming through that door, he could sense her with all the dread in his stomach. He had to decide what to do. Hanna was in danger, his child was in danger. But he was feet away from his goal in the room, the vengeance he needed to end all of this.
He snapped. He moved to the stairs, rushing downstairs just in time to see Hanna on her knees with a gun to her head.
Chapter 34
It was going incredibly well because the Caracals were massive idiots. Hanna didn’t even need to pretend to drop a lipstick or pen and take the slow bend to pick it up before coming up to look at them. They were already salivating just from standing outside with her, talking to her.
“I’m from New Mexico,” she said, pulling the story out of her brain just as quickly as she opened her mouth, hoping she could keep the consistency of it up as she went. “I was driving to visit my grandmother in Fort Lauderdale. I’ve never driven across the country by myself before. My boyfriend was supposed to be with me--ex-boyfriend. Sorry, I forget still.”
They were listening to her better than any man had listened to her before. Their wide eyes were bouncing between the skin exposed on her chest and her sad, big eyes as she told her sob story, thinking of every porno film she ever watched and recalling the clichés from them all. She pushed her arms together a little bit more, she rubbed her arm absently, she fidgeted her legs to draw their attention below as well. She needed their sleazy eyes all over her while Roarke moved in on the house.
“I’ve been trying to find help for a while now and I saw you guys with your bikes and I figured you must know a lot about cars and are strong enough to help me push it off the road in neutral,” she said, letting her own eyes rake over them.
In all honesty, they were not that impressive to look at. They had the definition of boys who were naturally skinny, body fat missing from their form not because they worked out but because their metabolisms were on their side. It was the exact type of guy who liked to flex in the mirror, take a picture, and put it up on the internet with whatever iPhone filter made the shadows of their miniscule muscles stand out more. They probably also believed every time a girl said they were the best she ever had or the biggest she’d ever seen. Men didn’t seem to realize women knew all the tricks and shared them with each other.
They were on her like the proverbial dog and the bone. Now she just had to figure out where best to lead them. Roarke was out of her sight and, with any luck, inside the house already. She needed to get them out of the front yard; they needed to get out of any sightlines from the street, that much was clear. She didn’t need someone walking by and seeing them, or a Caracal riding by and bringing more of his friends. They clearly expected at least a little bit of this move, otherwise they wouldn’t have sent out the majority of their gang to meet their own. She needed to get out of sight and bring the idiots with her. She had no way to know where Roarke was in the house, but she hoped he was smart enough to get somewhere he wouldn’t be seen.
“Before we do that though,” she said. “Is there any way I can get your help to make a call to my grandmother that I’m going to be late? I should also call around to see if there’s a motel that will let me stay for the night.”
Motels were a cesspool of disgusting, white trash sex. She’d said some magic words to them because their eyes lit up at the possibility of fucking some random, helpless, emotionally vulnerable woman in an anonymous hotel room and then riding off into the night to have a victory beer. Men were deplorable sometimes, but it worked in her favor to get them where she needed them.
“There’s a phone inside,” one said, jerking his thumb behind him to point at the house.
“You guys won’t mind me in your house? It’s so nice and big, I swear I’m not a thief or anything,” she said.
“Oh no, ma’am. We’d love to have you,” the other said.
She fought an eye roll. They were idiots. But she nodded, smiling gratefully, giving them the biggest doe eyes she could as she watched them clean the grease of their hands and fix their clothes before nodding back and leading her towards the front door. This, looking back, is where Hanna’s mistake was. She was too impressed with her own ability to pull their puppet strings, too focused on getting in the house that she didn’t notice the gate behind them opening to let a car in and they were too engrossed with the idea of fucking a girl in their boss’s expensive house to notice as well.
The door closed behind her.
“If I could just use a phone, if you have one. That’d be very helpful,” she said loudly, trying to give Roarke a warning if he was inside, if he could hear her.
“Right this way,” one said, walking her into the kitchen.
This is where things truly fell apart. The front door opened behind them and all three of them turned like deer in headlights to see Isabelle standing there. At first her hands were on her hips and she was giving them a look of confusion and annoyance before her eyes fell on Hanna and recognition replaced the irritation, her hands falling from her hips.
“What the hell is she doing here?” she asked, dangerously. It was the most unhinged that Hanna had ever seen Hanna. This was not the calm, controlled woman who moved the puzzle pieces around, this was a woman finally caught off guard, and scared because of it.
“Ma’am--”
“You two are fucking morons,” she said. “That’s Roarke’s newest bed bitch.”
It took the two men a few minutes to understand what she was saying. They were dumb even then, probably trying to work through it with all their blood rushing to their penises. Then suddenly, they seemed to realize, or at least understand that something was wrong. Hanna should have used the time they took to think through their situation to break free, to throw an elbow or kick someone between the legs, to make a break for it. But she paused too long and they moved in.
She was hit behind the knees and she covered her stomach with her hands on instinct, keeping them away from the baby they didn’t know was nestled there. She heard a metallic click behind her, she knew that sound, the safety coming off a gun. She felt the cold metal press against the back of her head and all she could think of was how sorry she was to her child who may never see the light of day.
***
Roarke stood on his perch from the stairs, trying to watch and felt his blood run cold at the sight of the gun against her head. His first reaction was to spring forward, try and help her. He wanted to rush down the stairs and tackle the men holding her to the ground, putting her in danger. He wanted to strangle Isabell who was watching, for once without a smirk. She still didn’t know he was there. She thought Hanna came alone. He had the advantage for once, he knew something Isabelle didn’t.
This was an advantage he couldn’t give up. He moved back, slowly, careful not to give himself away with a careless slip. He stepped back up towards the child’s room. He could do it. He could take the boy, put a gun to his head, and bargain for Hanna’s freedom, Isabelle’s fear showed him she cared about the child, she would yield for him. He was sure of it. He could take that boy and get his way, get his revenge, tell her everything he knew, everything he understood, how much he would be willing to do to bring her to justice.
But Hanna would be devastated. That boy was innocent, ex
cept for his own bloodlines that he could not control. He did not ask to be born, he didn’t ask to a part of something so much bigger than only one person. If Roarke took him, if he shoved a gun to his head, traumatized him for the rest of his life, he’d be creating another Isabelle. The boy would grow to resent the life he was in, his parents, his upbringing. He would lash out, he would turn against his family and his friends. He would become something unrecognizable.
Hanna would never un-see that in Roarke, and if he was willing to do that, how could he claim to be a father to his own child? This boy was his nephew, his own blood, he even looked a bit like Roarke’s mother. He couldn’t do it.
