Inflamed: A Shadow Riders MC

by Kiki Leach

  I threw a hand over my chest in an attempt to lower my heart rate and stared down at my daughter, who was so wrapped up in dolls and toys that she hadn't even realized I was standing right beside her, let alone that I was currently losing my entire mind in wondering how the hell she had even gotten there in the first place.

  "Avery!" I hollered out.

  Her head dropped back and her small, brown features crinkled as she stared up at me. "Hi," she said just before returning to her toys. It was as if nothing was out of place for her, everything was the same and the only thing that was different inside that house at the moment was me. "What are you wearing?" she asked me, her voice piquing. “And why are you so out of breath?”

  I looked down at myself and glowered. Great. "What I’m wearing is something I’ll never pass down to you. And I’m out of breath because you were calling out to me like your freaking hair was on fire. I’m lucky I didn’t break my neck trying to get in here.”

  “Mama--”

  “What are you doing here? Who brought you home? And where in God's name is all of our furniture?"

  "The big bikers took it."

  I flinched. "Say what?"

  "The big bikers took it," she said again. "They said we had to sell it. And they brought me home from school too."

  "In what?!"

  "One of those trucks with the big anchors on the back."

  "A tow truck. God." I grabbed my head as it started pounding again. "How were they able to get you out of school, Avery? The only people I have listed to come and pick you up in my absence are Gran and Pop-pop. Nobody else should be allowed to come in and snatch you out, which brings me to a question I shouldn't even have to ask you, but WHAT have I told you about getting into cars with strange people? Or anyone that you've never seen before?"

  "But I've seen them before."

  "What?"

  "I've seen them before, at least one of them, I think. And they weren't strange to me," she said, keeping her eyes on her doll and braiding its hair. "They told me they were your friends and that we were going to live with them now so that we could be safe."

  "My. God." I pressed my fingers as hard as I could against my temples without completely damaging them. "Where have you seen these men before, Avery?"

  "Just around," she told me.

  "Around where?"

  She shrugged. "I don't know."

  "Jeez." I took in a deep breath and let it out as slowly as I could to keep from screaming. "What exactly did these 'bikers' look like when they came to get you from school this afternoon?"

  "There were only two that came to the school," she said. "One of them was as big as a giant. He was bald with a check mark on the side of his head, like the Nike sign, and scars all over his hands, like he got into a fight with a knife."

  "A check mark and scars. Wonderful, and the other one?"

  "The other one had a long beard like Santa Claus, except the beard was black like pepper, just like his bushy eyebrows. And he had a patch over his eye. He let me look underneath it and told me somebody dug his eyeball out with a knife and tried to make him eat it."

  "My God -- GOD." I grit my teeth to keep from saying something in front of her that I knew I couldn't take back later. "And these are the men who brought you home?" I asked. She nodded again. "Were they also the ones who got rid of the furniture, or was it gone by the time you got home?"

  "No, they moved it out with some other bikers while I was here."

  I crossed my arms to keep from reaching out and shaking something. "And where are they right now? Do you know?"

  "They're all outside."

  "What?"

  "They said they were going to wait for you to wake up and if you didn't, they'd come back in and get you."

  "How long ago was that?"

  She shrugged again. "I don't know."

  "Damn it." I furiously stepped around her and moved over to the window leading to the front of the complex. When I split the blinds and peeked out, I saw a total of seven bikers sitting out in the front parking lot near their bikes, drinking beers, slapping each other on the back and head-butting each other as if they were on a football field and had just scored a final touchdown. "Good Lord," I muttered. I dropped my hand and turned back to Avery. "Why didn't you come and wake me up the minute you got home?"

  "I tried to but you wouldn't move."

  I momentarily shut my eyes. "Damn." Reasons like this are why I stopped drinking altogether in the first place.

  "And then the bikers told me to leave you alone so that you could rest, and so I did."

  "Them you listen to, but when it comes to doing what I ask it's like trying to pull teeth from a newborn." I sighed. "What made you decide to call me now?"

  "You were starting to stink and I thought you might be dead in there or something."

  And that's what I get for allowing her 24-hour access to the Discovery Channel.

  "Avery, what did these men say to you when they came to pick you up from school?"

  "I told you," she droned, "that they were your friends and that we were--"

  "Moving in with them, okay, but what did they tell your teacher, Mrs. Rhoades? I can't imagine that any sane person at that school would just let you walk out of there with a bunch of burly men covered in tattoos and piercings that they don't even know and have never seen before!"

  "I don't know what they told her," she said. "One of them whispered something into her ear. And then her eyes got really big when she looked at me, and she sat back down. And then the principal came in the room and the other biker said something to him. And then he got really scared and said it was okay for me to leave with them."

  I rolled my eyes back into my head and moaned. "Uhh, God."

  They had been threatened by these men, hence the reason I hadn't received a single phone call about her being snatched from class in the first place. I knew in that moment that I would more than likely never be able to show my face around another parent-teacher meeting again, because of course, neither I nor my child would be invited back within even a five mile radius of that school. Then again, if they were too scared to even contact me about any of it when it happened, her getting out when she did was probably for the best.

  I turned back to the window in search of a familiar face amongst that rowdy crowd of growls and leather, mainly the faces of Blue and River, the latter of which I immediately planned to chew up and spit out once I got him alone for even allowing all of this to go down in the way that it had. But each member wearing a cut (including the one wearing the eye patch), which upon closer inspection looked much thinner than the others as if it wasn't even real leather, had something written on a piece of white cloth sewn just above the pockets on the right side of the vest.

  I squint to get a better look at one of them, then furrowed my brows when I had. "Prospect. Shit." None of them had any real authority because not a single one was an official member of the club. "Shit, shit, shit."

  "Mama--" she scolded.

  "Sorry. When we get to our new place, I'll put a dollar in the swear jar."

  "So we're really going?" she asked, her brown eyes sparkling with delight as her voice elevated in surprise and eagerness. She looked and sounded a hell of a lot more excited than she should've about living inside a clubhouse belonging to an outlaw motorcycle club. Then again, she had no clue as to what the hell we were actually in for in being there, not in the same way that I did.

  I sighed. "Unfortunately baby girl, we don't have much of a choice." I spun back around and noticed her fiddling with another doll, ready to fix its hair next. I glanced back at the window and rattled my head. "I need to take care of something with these men out here. You stay inside and I'll be right back, okay?"

  "Okay, mama."

  "Get the phone and keep it nearby." She grabbed the phone from the couch and placed it in her lap. "I'll be right outside, but just in case, you know exactly who to call," I said. She nodded.

  After straightening my clothes an
d checking my breath (it was still awful, but I wasn't looking to impress a single man out there), I headed out of the apartment and cautiously made my way downstairs to the men, where they continued to drink, belch, fart and laugh with each other as if they were nothing more than a pile of pigs waiting around for left over slop to line their troths.

  I looked each one over as I moved closer and within seconds felt like I had stepped onto the set of a local biker film. Some of the men were tall, some were short. Others were bald while some had hair that rivaled the length of mine, which sat just below my shoulders. A few were as skinny as a rail, one was handsomely built as if he worked out on a daily basis by lifting anything weighing over two hundred pounds, and one was the size of the mac truck I imagined ramming back and forth over my head as I slept. Every single one of them had some form of facial hair, from mustaches and goatees to full on beards ranging between black, blond and red, and each one had a set of Chinese letters tattooed just below each knuckle, while other, more colorful tattoos aligned their arms and just about every side of their necks. They all looked around my age or older, but not a single one of them looked as old as Blue or River.

  I cleared my throat when I was close enough for them to hear me, but when they didn't turn around, I screamed out. "Excuse me!"

  One biker, who looked the youngest of them all, with his jet black hair and bright ocean blue eyes, turned back to me and whistled while eyeing me up and down. I felt as if I were a piece of chocolate cake being served up to him on a giant silver platter.

  He lifted his beer up high and titled his head. "OOOOOOOHH WEEEEEEEEE, babe, you sure do look like one of the tastiest fuckin' bitches I think I've ever seen in my whole goddamn life."

  Jeez.

  I bobbed my head and smiled despite that giant cloud of disgust forming over my head. "You must not get out too much," I shot back.

  "Oh, I get out plenty, darlin'," he said, a slime-covered grin pulling at the corners of his mouth. His blue eyes sparkled, but not with shine, more like with ire and a touch of venom. "But in all my time of being out, never have I seen a bitch as sweet looking as you. So tell me, sexy, what's that sweet fucking pussy of yours taste like, huh?" he asked. "Honey? Chocolate?" The other bikers around him chuckled.

  Before I could even think to answer him with my fist or a knee in his balls, another biker stepped forward, the one the size of a mac truck and missing an eye, with his slick black hair tied into a ponytail at his nape, and smacked him on the back of the head. The one with the mouth on him bumped his teeth on the rim of his beer bottle and made a face at the ‘mac truck’ as he stepped back and leaned against his bike, never saying another word.

  "Sorry about that asshole," the big one told me as he readjusted his cut. "Some of these week old motherfuckers don't know proper manners when it comes to a beautiful woman like yourself for shit. Must be why they're still some lonely, horny motherfuckers."

  I nodded. "Mm-hmm."

  He parted his lips into a genuine smile, though his teeth remained completely hidden behind the beard, and held out his hand. "You're Mia, right?" he asked. I nodded. "I'm Trucker." The irony. He lifted his hand higher, angling for me to take it. I did, if only because it felt awkward not to, and he gently pulled me in. "The motherfucker who just made an ass out of himself in front of you is Eightball. You'll have to excuse him more than any of the rest of us since he uses his shit personality to make up for the small size of his dick." He laughed and dropped his hand. "That asshole on the end there is Lex, the one next to him is Luther." He turned to his left. "This one here is Tick." He slapped his hand around his neck. "The one sitting on the bike back there is Slim--"

  "YO!" He looked up from his phone and threw out a peace sign.

  "And the one next to the tow truck, which is what you'll be riding in along with your baby girl back to Crescent Beach after we hitch up your car, is Styx."

  I turned my eyes to both the well-built man and the truck. Styx nodded at me, then quickly turned away. I was put off at first until I realized he had done me a favor in showing me the side of his head. Just above his right ear was a tattoo of that check mark Avery had mentioned. And his hands were indeed covered in old cuts and scars that looked as deep as the wound inside my thigh.

  When he realized I was staring, he turned back to me and frowned. I quickly refocused on the others and moved my eyes between each one while forcing a grin. "Nice to meet everybody more formally, I guess," I said.

  They all nodded their heads at me and grunted. Though 'Eightball's eyes seemed to linger a little longer on my body than the rest of them, specifically my breasts, while Styx's eyes never left my face.

  "As you can see," said Trucker, recapturing my attention, "we're all angling to be officially patched into the club, and part of the process of becoming official members means doing as the brothers ask, specifically the VP and Prez, whether we like doing the shit or not. And our task tonight is getting you and your kid back to the club in one piece, darlin'."

  "So I guess this whole thing would be on your 'not' list," I told him. He made a face to indicate that being forced to take me back to the clubhouse was in fact the last thing he or his 'boys' wanted to do for the night, but he didn't say an actual word to me in response about it. I crossed my arms and knit my brows. "Where’s River? Or, Blue?”

  “Church, darlin’.”

  I arched my brows. “Church? What the hell are they doing, praying for redemption?”

  He chuckled. “Not the kinda church with crosses and baptisms, babe. More like the kind with guns and gavels.”

  “Oh.”

  “They’re back at the clubhouse and ‘church’ is what they call meetings about club business. It’s usually every Sunday, but in this case they made an exception since it’s more or less about you and your kid moving in.”

  "Ohh, great." I felt myself dying a little inside when he said that.

  “Since prospects aren’t official members yet, we’re not needed or even allowed to attend. Not until membership is made official.”

  “Which is why you’re here,” I said. “So in the meantime, where exactly did you all take my furniture?"

  "It's on its way to Crescent Beach for an auction our VP’s setting up for you this weekend. He’s having it stored in a shed behind his house ‘til then. We removed everything we could from inside except for the shit in your bedroom," he said. "With you sleeping in there, we didn't wanna disturb you in moving all that shit around."

  "I guess letting me sleep through your breaking and entering can be considered generous. And while we're on the subject, who the hell authorized you to pick up my child from school this afternoon?"

  They all looked between each other for a few seconds with wide eyes and shrugs, until Trucker finally cleared his throat and turned back to me. "That was actually the VP's doing," he said.

  "River went to the school?"

  "No, no. When we got here, he had me and Styx go and pick your kid up while he went looking for your landlord lady. Said he thought it'd be easier just to get her out and bring her home to you instead of waiting for you to wake up to go and get her yourself."

  "And I guess if I didn't wake up, you would've just, done what? Dragged me out of bed?"

  "We had to weigh all of our options since we didn't know how the liquor would affect your, uh, 'cognitive abilities'," he said. “Just like I’m sure you had to weigh yours in deciding whether or not you actually wanted help from the club.”

  "Right,” I replied. He grinned. “How long did River actually stick around after you guys got here?" I asked him.

  "Maybe about fifteen to twenty minutes or so. He had to head back pretty quickly after calling that meeting."

  "Hm. Well, did he tell any of you about my parent's? And the fact that they have no clue about any of this, especially in regard to what the hell is actually going on where Ricky's concerned?"

  "He mentioned something about it, yeah. Told me to tell you to use this contact phone to get in to
uch with 'em before you left." He threw his hand into his back pocket and pulled out one of the smallest flip phones I think I had ever seen. It was cracked on every side, the faceplate was taped together, the antenna was hanging on by a literal wire, but all of the important buttons were still intact.

  "I guess bikers don't necessarily live in the twenty-first century when it comes to technology?"

  "Not in the case of phones we don't, darlin'. It’s a burner. Here." He placed the phone inside my palm. "When you call 'em up, just make it quick. Give only bits and pieces of what the fuck's goin' on and don't linger too much on shit that you shouldn't. You wanna keep 'em safe as far as this sick fuck goes, which means you don't give 'em much more to work with than what they need. Once we're back inside your place, Styx can coach you on what to say."

  I looked up at him and smiled as sincerely as I could. "I know that what you're saying to me makes sense to you and it probably should to me too given the circumstances and the fact that I pretty much set all of this in motion. But even if he helps me with what to say, how exactly am I supposed to make telling my parent's that they're no longer going to see their grandchild again 'quick'? The minute those words come flying out of my mouth, they're going to start asking more questions than 'why' and whatever explanation I give them over the phone won't fly."

  "Just do your damnedest to make that shit soar like a goddamn bird, darlin'," he said. "On VP's orders, I can't let you go any other place tonight except for the club."

  "What if they come to me instead? After I get settled in at the club, maybe--"

  "Sorry, darlin," he interjected. "But that's more fucking trouble than what we need right now. You too if you wanna make sure that your kid is safe from Ricky and his crew.”