by Freya Barker
“What can I do for you, darlin’?” I purposely use my drawl and do a bit of poking myself. I know damn well she hates to be addressed like that, which is why I like doing it. The chip on this woman’s shoulder is visible from outer space. She does all she can to be seen as one of the guys, and everything to hide the fact she’s a woman. A mighty attractive one at that.
I watch as she presses her lips together and takes a deep inhale before she leans forward to address me.
“Do you own a nine millimeter Smith & Wesson?”
“More than one.” I shrug, lean back in my chair, and plop my boots on the desk. “Most of them are up at the shooting range in the gun locker.”
“Can you tell me your whereabouts for the past two weeks?”
That sense of unease suddenly turns cold in my veins. She’s fishing for something and I’m at the fucking receiving end. I pretend to look at the calendar on my desk, just to get my bearings while my mind spins at warp speed.
“We were in Morrison for a rally. We left the Tuesday before, to do the Million Dollar Highway ride like we do every year with a couple of other clubs. Got to Morrison Friday the seventeenth—you can check with the local PD because I filed a report that night for stolen property. Left Monday for the second leg of our ride, staying in Pueblo for a night, stopped in Crested Butte the next day, and spent that night in Montrose. Wednesday Ouray, and Thursday we got back to town”
“What stolen property?” Of course she would zoom in on that.
“Smith & Wesson. From my saddlebags. Fuckers slit the locked buckle.”
“Really?” I’m not liking the smug smirk on the sprite’s face. “How coincidental.”
“Mind tellin’ me what this is about, darlin’?”
Before she has a chance to respond, the other agent, Barnes or whatever, clarifies. “Series of armed robberies, Glenwood Springs, Avon, two in Denver, Pueblo, and Silverton, all dispensaries, all in the past two weeks. Your gun was found on the scene in Silverton.”
That has me drop my boots to the floor and sit up straight. “No shit.” Seeing the expression on both their faces, I can tell they’re dead serious. Motherfucker. “I’m gonna need a smoke,” I announce, walking past them out of the office, ignoring everyone in the common room.
“Chief?” Momma calls from the kitchen doorway. “Got a minute?”
“Not now, Momma. Can it wait?”
“Depends,” she says. “Cody here has a knife at Nosh’s throat, I’m suggesting you hold off on whatever you’re running out to do to deal with this situation first.”
Jesus fucking Christ. If it rains it pours.
“Hey, kiddo,” I say, walking into the kitchen where Nosh is calmly sitting at the table, with a freaked-out kid behind him, holding Momma’s favorite chef’s knife against his throat. I know the kid can’t hear me, but I also know he reads lips, and his panicked eyes are plastered to mine.
Without breaking stride, I walk up to the table, pull out the chair across from Nosh, and give the old man a nod.
Care to tell me what happened? The question is intended for Nosh, but I know Cody is watching too.
Kid got up without cleaning up his plate. I grabbed his arm. He doesn’t seem to like that.
I snort, trust Nosh to be absolutely unmoved by the precarious situation he finds himself in. The man is cool as a cucumber, even with a trickle of blood running into the hollow of his throat. Kid must’ve nicked him.
I snap my fingers to get the boy’s attention. We have rules here. Momma does the cooking, but we all clean up after ourselves. That’s what the old man was trying to tell you. He didn’t know you don’t like being touched. Nosh didn’t mean anything by it. Put down the knife.
The only response I get is a sharp shake of the head before his eyes flit over my shoulder. I assume others have entered the kitchen, but I keep my eyes on the boy. I hear hushed talking and rustling behind me; seeing panic grow on the boy’s face, I quickly start signing, drawing his attention.
The man I told you about this morning, the one who took me in when I was living on the streets? I get a hesitant nod. Same man you’re holding a knife to. Nosh won’t hurt you. I know that because I was you many years ago, and he never hurt me either. Put down the knife, Cody.
His eyes dart behind me again, and from the corner of my eye I see the FBI sprite move closer, her hands furiously signing. No one is angry with you. You can put down the knife and I promise nothing will happen to you. I sent everyone else away. If you want, you can hold onto the knife, but let Nosh go. He’s a good man, I promise.
Suddenly the kid moves the knife away from Nosh’s throat and scurries into the corner by the fridge, holding the weapon out in front of him defensively. The damn fool woman moves to put herself between the knife and Nosh, who calmly drains his coffee, gets up, and sets his cup in the sink before sauntering out of the kitchen as if having a knife to his throat is an everyday occurrence. When he passes by me, he touches my shoulder and tilts his head to the door.
No fucking way, I sign, not about to leave her in the kitchen alone with the freaked-out kid.
She’s got this.
I’m not sure where the hell the old man gets that insight from, but I’m not budging.
“You can go,” she says without turning around. Just fucking great, we’ve got two mind readers now. “I’ll be fine. I know what I’m doing.”
Damn Nosh almost yanks me out of my chair by the back of my shirt. “Fine. But I’m staying right outside the door.”
“Do what you have to, just give the kid some space, will ya?”
For some reason that last remark reminds me what it’s like to be in the kid’s shoes. On the streets you learn fast that every action has consequences, and there is no one around to shield you from those. The boy freaked out, took action, and is simply waiting for those consequences to hit. It’s what he’s learned to expect. He may have trusted me earlier, but I’m still a fucking threat. Reluctantly I get up and follow Nosh out the door.
LUNA
Not sure what the kid is doing here, in the kitchen of an MC compound, but what I am sure of is he’s scared out of his mind. The less people in here, the better it is.
When I hear both men exit the room, I turn my full focus back on the boy.
“My name is Luna. Do you want to come sit down at the table? You can keep the knife if you like.” I’m actually talking out loud as I’m signing, for the benefit of whoever is outside the door listening in. I turn my back, my Spidey-sense on full alert in case he makes a move, and sit down at the table. I wait, maybe a few minutes, but finally I hear the shuffle of his feet on the linoleum as he rounds the table, sits down opposite me, and lays the knife down in front of him.
Who are you?
It’s the first thing I’ve seen him sign. I clued in pretty much immediately the kid’s deaf when I walked in and saw Ouray signing to him.
“FBI,” I spell out, noting the jerk of surprise. “I needed Ouray’s help on a case.”
A girl agent?
“Sure, why not a girl agent?” I try not to grin.
You’re small.
“True, I’m a little short,” I confirm, “but I can kick the ass of a man twice my size.”
He looks like he’s not buying into it.
“Don’t believe me? Ask Ouray, he’s seen me fight.” I’m hoping the man in question is listening, because this would be his cue to return, very calm like.
With him?
This time I don’t hide the grin. No, one of his guys, but I could kick his butt too.
“I wouldn’t count on it.” Ouray appears to ignore the boy, whose hand shoots out and grabs the knife from the table, but he doesn’t get up when Ouray pulls out a chair and sits down himself.
With one hand tied behind my back, I tell the kid with a smile, and I finally get a shadow of one back. I may not be big, but I’m fast and I’m twice as smart.
Can you teach me? he asks with innocent eagerness.
Christ. The boy kills me. Still not sure where Ouray picked this stray up, but the scars of a hard life shadow the light in the young kid’s eyes.
Absolutely, I can, I promise, mentally scrambling to figure out how and where I might be able to do that with my unpredictable schedule, but one look at his face and I vow to make the time.
By the time I walk out of the kitchen, Cody and Nosh are communicating again, Momma is overseeing things from behind the stove, and Ouray took off a few minutes before me, claiming to need a ‘goddamn smoke.’ I find him at the front of the building, standing with a virtually drooling Dylan beside the parked bikes.
“Can we get back on track?” Both guys turn around at the sharp tone of my voice.
“All yours, darlin’.”
I grind my teeth at Ouray’s prod and try hard not to react. It’s what he’s looking for with what I’m sure he considers his charming side, and I’m determined not to give it to him.
“We were discussing the involvement of your gun in a string of robberies that coincidentally all occurred along a route you apparently traveled around the same time,” I remind him with a saccharine smile.
I watch with some satisfaction as he closes his eyes, grinds the butt of his cigarette under the heel of his boot, and takes a deep breath in, trying to collect himself. Then he walks over to the bike at the end, flips open a saddlebag and pulls out a folded piece of paper.
“Here,” he growls, shoving it in my hand. It’s a copy of a police report from the Morrison Police Department, dated August seventeenth, eleven forty-five at night.
“Those the saddlebags you say were cut?” He doesn’t answer, just invites me to see for myself with a tilt of his chin.
I take a good look at the one on the opposite side with the cut edges and missing buckle. It’s easy to see it’s a relatively fresh cut, the saddlebags are old and beaten up, but the ends of the strap are clean. To be honest, my gut tells me Mark Strongbow, aka Ouray, would never leave a weapon behind at the scene of a crime. The man is too sharp for that. I’m not sure why, but I don’t even really get the vibe he has anything to do with it.
“Talk to me about the circumstances. How did you discover the gun missing?”
He leans his ass on the closest bike and folds his bulky arms over his chest. “A bunch of clubs stay at the same motel every year. We catch up, usually hanging around the parking lot or the pool, drinking, partying. I headed for bed around eleven. Did a check of my bike, and saw it was fuckin’ tampered with. Called the cops.”
“Do you usually check your bike before you go to bed?” I realize I sound incredulous, but it seems a little strange to me. It’s clear I embarrass him with the question, which is not something I would’ve associated with Ouray.
“Every fucking night.” This comes from one of the bikers as he passes by. “Can’t sleep if he don’t.”
“No one fucking asked you, Yuma.”
“Always happy to help law enforcement, Chief, you know that.” With a big shit-eating grin on his face, the vaguely familiar looking man walks off.
“Do I know him?” I ask, looking after the guy.
“He’s Nosh and Momma’s son.”
I manage to get a timeline from him for the Friday night, dragged out a few names of some of the other clubs, but he wasn’t playing when I asked if he had any idea who might’ve stolen his gun.
He shrugs. “Coulda been anyone. Parties are loud, everyone’s got their doors open, people going in and out of rooms. No way to tell.”
Dylan’s phone rings and he takes the call, walking off toward the Expedition, leaving me alone with Ouray.
“Look, I’ve got no idea who’s behind this, but it ain’t me or my brothers.”
He looks at me with what appears to be a sincere look on his face. Intense blue eyes, looking straight into my own. Damn. It would’ve been nice and tidy to have him be involved, but I’m not really feeling it.
Might’ve cured the unhealthy preoccupation I have with this guy.
CHAPTER 4
LUNA
“How many clubs join for this annual ride?”
James Aiken, the FBI bigwig in Denver, is on speakerphone in the small boardroom.
“Five altogether,” I answer. “Mesa Riders, Shiprock, and Amontinados all meet up at the Arrow’s Edge compound. The Moab Reds join them in Ridgeway. The route is basically the same every year, just as I’ve described in my report. The same clubs will be back here this coming weekend for the Four Corners Rally.”
“And all those groups are in Durango now?”
This time it’s Damian who takes the question. “According to Strongbow, just the Amontinados and Moab Reds are. The other two outfits are supposed to rejoin them on Friday.”
“How sure are you Arrow’s Edge, or at least this Mark Strongbow, is not involved?”
“I can’t vouch for every individual,” Damian offers. “But in the last decade they seem to have kept their noses clean, they’ve established several legal businesses in town. I’m solid on Strongbow, he’s a straight shooter. Luna checked with the Morrison PD yesterday and they confirm the theft report. The officer she spoke to also mentioned that in all the years they’ve had maybe three other encounters with his club. Two fights and one DUI. He couldn’t say the same for some of the other clubs.”
“I assume you’ve done criminal backgrounds on the other outfits?”
Damian nods at Jasper, who starts outlining the laundry list of crimes accredited to some of these clubs, up to and including murder. Two of them are currently under investigation in open cases.
Aiken is quiet for a moment, seeming to process the information when his voice comes back on. “I’m thinking chances are good Durango is next. I suggest putting a bug in the ear of local dispensaries. Tell them to increase security.”
“Already done,” Damian responds. “We’ve been in close contact with Durango PD. They’ve called in all the manpower for the upcoming weekend. Not just to monitor the rally, but for extra patrols out there.”
“Good. Tough when there are so many goddamn suspects.”
“Close-lipped bunch too,” Jasper agrees.
“Except maybe that Strongbow guy. Say...how willing do you figure he’d be to help us out?”
“What are you thinking?” Damian wants to know.
“Well, I don’t know about you, but it’s giving me hives sitting on my ass waiting for something to happen. What if we could get behind the eight ball on this?”
“How do you figure?” This from me. I don’t know why my senses are suddenly on sharp. Call it intuition.
“Would Strongbow agree if we had one of our guys cover as a club member? You’ve got Barnes there, right? Scuff him up a bit and stick him on a bike. He could pass.”
Dylan sits up straight, a fat grin on his face. Every boy’s dream.
“Possibly.” Damian looks around the table. “Only problem is, we’ve got days left. Inserting a guy into a club and having everyone buy into it takes a fuck of a lot longer than that. They’re generally not the most trusting bunch.” His eyes land on me and a small smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth. “However, no one would question a new pretty face on the back of one of the bikes.”
“ARE YOU NUTS?”
I stomp after Damian into his office the moment the conference call ends.
“It’s perfect,” he says, sitting down behind his desk, raising an arrogant eyebrow. “We’ll talk to Ouray, get you hooked up with one of his guys, and—”
“Have you looked at me? How the hell am I supposed to pull off a biker babe?”
Seriously, I’m as bland as they come, and from what I’ve seen of those women hanging off the back of a bike, they’re anything but bland.
“Selling yourself short, Roosberg. I bet with a bit of makeup and the right clothes, you’d make a knockout biker babe.” Disgruntled, I’m about to launch into a long list of arguments again, when Damian adds, “Besides, we’d need someone with your intuition and skills, and those
aren’t easy to find.”
Trust him to take the wind out of my sails with professional flattery. As a woman in what still is predominantly a man’s world—a fairly diminutive woman at that—being seen as valuable is an ongoing struggle. Not so much by my team, these guys treat me as equal, but there are many—also in the ranks of the Bureau—who continue to believe women have no place in this line of work.
Damian is playing me. He knows it, and I know it. I would never refuse an order, especially one that’s dressed up as a challenge.
“Fine,” is my less than gracious answer.
“Let’s see if Mr. Strongbow is willing to meet with us here. Best for us to keep a low professional profile at the compound from here on in if we want this to be believable.”
OURAY
That’s a first.
I have to admit it’s mostly out of curiosity that I agreed to meet with Gomez at the FBI office. Can’t say I’ve ever been invited before, nor have I been interested to be, but discovering my gun looks to have been used in a chain of violent robberies has left me with a bad taste in my mouth. The whole sequence of events leaves me irked. Not like guns are too hard to find, but it seems fucking suspicious that my weapon gets swiped and immediately is used in a string of crimes which seems to have followed my club on a path through Colorado. Gets my blood pressure up.
And I’m not going to deny the prospect of going toe to toe with that blonde fireball has the same damn effect.
I know where the field office is, I’ve just never actually been up here. Perched on the edge of a cliff, the solitary building at the end of Rock Point Drive has views of a large chunk of Durango. I park my bike and walk to the edge of the parking lot, overlooking downtown. Fuck, this would’ve been a nice place for the Arrow’s Edge clubhouse, like some impenetrable fortress, although a bit too visible for my tastes.
I’m not sure what’s on the main level, but the sign on the wall indicates the offices are upstairs, so that’s where I go. The wall on one side of the second floor landing has floor to ceiling lockers, and the door is directly opposite. Expecting some kind of reception area, I push the door open and walk straight into what appears to be a large shared office space. The first person I see is Luna, her blue eyes startle when they shoot up.
