BREAKING THE RULES: Forsaken 99 MC

by Evelyn Glass

The killer cocked his gun. The library door swung open with a bang and I jumped in my seat, snapped back to reality. My heart hammered in my throat and I swallowed hard, trying to steady myself. I was in a library, not a morgue. I was a librarian, not a mystery solver. God, I'd nearly died of fright.

  He didn't look like he belonged in a library at all. He wore a sleeveless jean jacket that showed off a spectacular display of inked skin and pants that looked a lot like leather. He had metal studs on shit-kicker boots and a look on his face that said 'don't fuck with me.’ He glanced at me before walking past and disappearing between the shelves.

  I wondered if I had to keep an eye on him – if he would try to torch the place or something. Libraries don’t have security cameras all over the place. Maybe it wasn't a bad idea to invest in something like that. I listened for a moment but didn't hear anything suspicious - like the sound of wood splintering or the horrific crackle of burning paper - so I carried on with my writing.

  Kylee's fingers had, by some miracle, curled around the scalpel. It was thinner than she'd thought, smaller, but it would have to do. There wasn't time to think, to breathe. She sliced the scalpel through the air, catching the shooter's neck. Blood spurted out in a fountain of despair and he clutched his neck with one hand.

  The scalpel was way too small to have done any real damage but it had bought Kylee time and she ran, taking the first turn she could find, getting lost in a subsection of drawers, all filled with corpses. The gun fired and a bullet whizzed past her head, ricocheting off the metal doors and flying in the opposite direction she dove.

  "Excuse me."

  His voice made me jump. He stood in front of the counter with a book. His eyes were dark and dreamy and his hair was messy. It was a dark brown matching the turmoil-black of his eyes. I let my eyes slide down to his arms. Under all those tattoos there was a hell of a lot of muscle, and it wasn't show-muscle, either. He looked like he could bench press a car. Or save a heroine in distress when she was lying, panting on the floor of a morgue, narrowly escaping death...

  He really was good to look at. I realized I was staring and glued my eyes to his face. His mouth was curled up in a half-smile, his eyes knowing. Shit. He knew what I was thinking. And he looked like he liked it. Or maybe like he was used to it. I was willing to bet he got that kind of attention all the time.

  "I want to check this book out, please."

  He put the book down on the counter. I picked it up. It was a Motorcycle Repair book from a section that was so outdated it was ridiculous.

  "Are you sure this is what you want?" I asked.

  He leaned on the counter, the muscles in his shoulders rippling under the skin. "Do you think there's something else I'd like more?"

  His eyes flashed and his tone suggested he wasn't talking about a book at all. I fought a blush and turned my head to the computer so my hair would cover my face.

  "This isn't exactly our latest stuff. Maybe you'd like to check in with a magazine subscription for something more up to date.

  He grinned.

  "This is fine, thanks."

  I shrugged.

  "Do you have your library card?"

  He shook his head and looked at me expectantly like I was supposed to make that little error go away.

  "In the future, you need to bring it with you. We can't let books go when we don't scan the code."

  "But you'll make an exception for me, right?"

  He asked it like he knew I would say yes. It made me want to say no, just to prove him wrong, but I'd already suggested I would let it slide.

  "Name?"

  "Logan Frost."

  I glanced at him. "That's backward."

  He shrugged. "Tell my mom that."

  It sounded like he should rather be called Frost Logan. Although the 'hunter' part seemed fitting. I typed it in and his profile came up.

  "Well, what do you know? You exist."

  He chuckled. "A lot of girls would be very unhappy if it turned out I didn't."

  I flipped my hair over my shoulder. "You know, guys who love themselves too much aren't attractive."

  He shrugged like he didn't care. I was willing to bet there were enough women out there who were willing to love a man like him in a heartbeat. There was something magnetic about him. Thank God I had a brain or I would fall for his ridiculous charm, too.

  I scanned the book and a box popped up. I frowned and shook my head.

  "I'm sorry, you've got outstanding fines. I can't let you take that out of here until you pay them."

  He took out his wallet and opened it. "I don't have cash on me."

  I shrugged. "I'm sorry. You'll have to come back when you do. Bring your library card while you're at it."

  He narrowed his eyes. "Are you always such a pain in the ass?"

  Something inside me hardened. "Only when customers are assholes."

  He flashed another one of those half-cocked grins at me that made me feel unbalanced.

  "If you'd like me to keep it for you until tomorrow I can do that." See, who said I couldn't be nice?

  The door to Alicia's office opened and she stepped out. She had her phone in her hand.

  "Are you okay to lock up, Selena?" she asked without locking up. She took two steps toward us before she looked up. Her eyes fell on Logan and her phone was forgotten. She looked him up and down, making no effort to hide her ogling, and smiled in a way I'd never seen her smile before. "Well, it's nice to see that other members of our community are joining the library."

  "He's already a member," I said, irritated. She was smiling like a teenager. If her hair weren’t so short she would have flipped or sucked on it like those girls do in front of the middle school.

  "Knowledge is power," Logan said and flashed the same grin he'd used on me a minute ago at Alicia. I swear she melted right through her panties.

  "I'm sure there are other things that are just as powerful." She actually fluttered - fluttered - her eyelashes. Seriously? Was that flirting? A line that didn't make sense and googly eyes?

  Logan glanced at me and smirked. He turned his attention back to Alicia. "Unfortunately, it's not happening for me tonight." He did the best rendition of a pout I'd ever seen on a biker.

  "Why is that?" Alicia frowned at me.

  "He has outstanding fines."

  Alicia rolled her eyes. "Come on, Selena. This isn't necessary." She smiled at Logan again. "We can waive them for you."

  Logan smiled broadly. "That's so kind of you. A compassionate woman is so sexy."

  Alicia blushed and looked at me.

  "It was five DVDs, all two weeks late." It was a hell of a fine for a library.

  "No one will know. Mister..."

  "Frost."

  She smiled. "Mr. Frost won't tell if we drop the fines. Come now, Selena, don't be such a prude."

  She just called me a prude in front of Annoyingly-Handsome. I stifled a groan, fought the urge to roll my eyes and clicked the button that said the fines were paid. Of course, the computer would have no way of knowing it wasn't paid. It wasn't a cash register.

  "Thank you so much," Logan said to Alicia in a syrupy tone. Syrupy. On a biker. It sounded terrible but he made it look good. I had to remember that - maybe I could work it into my book somehow.

  "It's nothing," Alicia said. She was gushing all over him. It made me sick. I liked to think I was down to earth. I knew where I belonged in life, I was under no illusion about my looks and I wasn't about to indulge anyone else in a fantasy about theirs. I was also not hard-up for a lay.

  Alicia, on the other hand, was guilty of all of the above, especially the latter if her reaction was anything to go by.

  "Will that be all?" I asked, scanning the book.

  He nodded. "I'll be sure to have it back on time."

  "Oh, don't worry," I said, mocking Alicia's flippant tone. "We'll just waive the fines again for you when you're late."

  Alicia glared at me before smiling at Logan again. He nodded at me and smiled. I
looked away. I wasn't interested. Especially not now that I'd seen manipulation at its best. I had no time for people who used their looks to get somewhere in life.

  "I have to get to a meeting. Will you escort me out?" Alicia made her eyes big and batted her eyelashes again. Logan hesitated for a moment, that smile frozen in place as if he really wanted to say no. Of course, with all his charm he'd poured out a moment earlier, it wasn't like he could say no now. Karma was such a bitch. He nodded. Alicia smiled and turned toward the door. He looked at me.

  I deliberately looked away. Logan turned and followed Alicia to the door, his swagger just a little less energetic than before. Good. I hoped Alicia made his life miserable for as long as he spent time in her company.

  I turned back to my manuscript and paged back through it until I found the scene with the love interest that Kylee would end up with once she was divorced from her murderer husband. Right now Francis was a lawyer, the scatter-brained type with the scruffy suit and the skew tie and the ability to come up with genius resolutions in the face of adversity. I edited his sections, changing his character a little. He was still a lawyer, but instead of being scatterbrained he was witty and quick, charming, clothed in leather and driving all over the show on a Harley.

  He was attractive but he didn't seem to think so, he liked Kylee because she was so down to earth, not because of her mind, and he had ways of getting answers and saving the day that didn't fit in an ordinary novel.

  I read over it again. Francis was a lot more interesting now, except his name didn't fit, either. Now he seemed more like a Butch or a Duke or a Jack.

  I looked at the door where Logan and Alicia had disappeared.

  Or an Asshole.

  I couldn't see them through the partial glass of the doors with the lights on inside and the darkness outside. Just as well - I wasn't in the mood to see my boss sucking face with the idiot biker who thought he had everything coming to him because he knew how to smile in a way that made woman rethink the purpose of their existence.

  Chapter 2

  Logan

  I escorted the manager outside. She kept trying to flirt with me, fluttering her eyelashes and twirling her hair and swinging her hips this way and that and nothing about her was attractive. She was practically throwing herself at me and I wasn't going for it. No guy went for the woman who was that easy to get. We like to work for it and if we don’t have to we wonder who else had gotten in there.

  "Thank you again for getting me out of those fines," I said to her when we reached her car.

  "Oh, it's nothing. I'm the boss around here so I call the shots." She said it with a voice that was supposed to be seductive, but it was just annoying. I opened the car door for her, hoping it would make her get in. She slid into the driver seat and looked at me, an invitation to come with her.

  Not happening. I smiled and closed the door. She looked disappointed through the window but that wasn't my problem. Life was full of disappointments and I wasn't about to walk down the road where I was the one who ended up disappointed. She started the car and drove away, finally.

  I pulled out my box of cigarettes, pinched one between my lips and lit up. I sucked in the smoke, ignoring the vile taste that never went away and turned to look at the library.

  I'll admit it, biker boys and books don't go together. The fact that I'd set foot in a library at all was something people thought was strange, but I'd stopped caring what people thought ages ago. I wasn't the first biker in my gang to go to a library. We had our reasons.

  When my smoke was done I threw the butt on the ground and stubbed it out with my toe. I started my bike and it growled into the quiet night. It was almost closing time for the library and I contemplated waiting until the blonde came out but I decided against it. I had things to do with my time.

  The girl behind the counter had been cute. Cute but a pain in the ass. She didn't fall for my charm even though I knew she noticed and she treated me like any other customer. Women didn't usually react to me that way. Which meant she was hot as hell in my books. There is nothing more attractive than a woman who is hard to get. And this was a bonus after her looks.

  That boss of hers...meh. She was okay. She could be sexy, and I didn't doubt she would be eager to perform in the sack, but who wanted a woman who threw herself at you? We could take whatever we wanted. We wanted someone who made that impossible for us.

  Like Selena.

  Just the name gave me shivers. It was an exotic name, something that would fit into the mysteries I loved. Like figuring what a woman was all about when she really wasn't interested in me, finding ways I could make her interested.

  I would have to wait for that, if it was going to happen at all. Selena was a tough one to get to. I could tell, already. She thought I was attractive, sure, but she wasn't going to just fall for my looks. A woman with even half a brain was attractive. Sex was great but a good conversation trumped that every time.

  I had been to the library a couple of times to check out books for the kids and I'd never seen her there. Strange. She didn't seem like she was new. Maybe it had always been bad timing. I was going to see if I could change that, if for no other reason than to get on her nerves. She was hot when she was irritated. What could I say? I was full of shit. She was even someone who might fit into the gang if she ever decided to dip her toe into my kind of waters.

  I was the leader of the motorbike gang and I worked hard to stay there. I was a badass son of a bitch who would do whatever it took to stay in power and my men not only respected me but they feared me. It was a good combination to have and a very big responsibility to have.

  There were almost fifty of us, a very big group, and all those lives were in my hands.

  Just because we were badass bikers with bad histories and worse pasts didn't mean we couldn’t be good people. We did everything we could to fix what we'd fucked up a long time ago and we were doing well. There were gangs that laughed at us, rivals that thought we'd become pussies, but we didn't really care about that. It took one bout in jail to realize your life was going down the gutter and you had to do something to fix it.

  Every single one of us has had a really bad wake up call in some way or another.

  Yes, it was a paradox. Yes, we were strange. Yes, we wanted to break a bottle over someone's head when they laughed at us and asked us how long we'd been searching for our manhood. But I liked being a biker who looked for shit and stirred up trouble. I liked being the boss everyone looked up to. I liked my leather and my tattoos and my bike that was the pride of my life.

  I also liked books and silence and doing the right thing, too. If being a bleeding heart made me a loser then maybe I was the biggest one out there. I cared for the right things and, for the rest of it, I was still a biker.

  Being able to get women to eat from the palm of my hand was the most thrilling. My gang looked up to me but they had their free will and they did it because they wanted to. They followed me because I did things that earned their respect and their fear. It was a give and take situation. With women, it was all about getting them to respond without offering anything in return. It was power at my fingertips.

  In this case, I had lost. I'd gotten those fines canceled, which had been great. It wasn't like I didn't have the money to pay them, but getting out of something was a small victory and it was addictive. Still, I hadn't gotten what I really wanted. Which was a) the damn repair book that that little librarian was now keeping for me, and b) that little librarian eating out of the palm of my hand.

  Which brought me back to the fact that she was the one that ran circles through my mind now. Not the easy-to-get manager who would fall into bed with me in a heartbeat, but the lady behind the counter who looked like she had all types of standards and maybe I didn't exactly fit the bill.

  That was what got me. Having to fight for something. Having to look for ways to make it work and having a chance of failing. That was what intrigued me about mysteries and that was what got me about her.
Selena.

  I was going to see her again. Thursday night seemed to be one of her shifts. Mental note. I would swing by this time more often then.

  She'd been so angry that I'd been able to get her boss to reverse the fines. Maybe it was the principle of the thing. I didn't think at all that it was because she might be jealous. She didn't look like the jealous type, especially not if the guy wanted the attention he was getting. She seemed like she was better than that.

  My phone vibrated in my pocket and I pulled it out at a red traffic light. It was a number that linked to a messaging system.

  Logan Frost, your wallet has been found at Branciforte Library, 230 Gault Street. Please arrange for it to be picked up.