by Ivy Black
In a lot of ways, it’s because of Brent that I got my life back on track. After my breakup with Milo, I kind of went off the rails for a bit. I was drinking a lot and doing a lot of things I’m not proud of, just trying to forget him. But nothing I did worked. Even still, I miss him. I still feel the pangs of heartbreak whenever I think of him. We were only together for a couple of years, but the mark he left on my heart is indelible. And I want to kick myself for not being able to erase it.
I head out to the parking lot and go run my errands, dropping off the Notices to Appear to a couple of deputies who were decidedly not pleased to get them. But, hey, maybe they should have been paying attention to the road and not on the group of scantily clad coeds bopping down the street. Maybe then, they wouldn’t have rear-ended the couple that’s now suing the department for a very tidy sum—the kind of sum that could put me through law school... several times over.
Though Brent’s primary focus is criminal defense, he will never pass up an opportunity to tweak Sheriff Singer, who is pretty much his archnemesis. And this is a case that’s going to tweak the good sheriff pretty hard. Brent lives for getting over on the sheriff. It’s like one of his greatest joys in life.
After that, I decided to use those twenty minutes I saved to run over to my favorite coffee house, Love & Grounds. I’ve been coming here for as long as I can remember. I refuse to patronize the Starbucks franchises the City Council, in their infinite wisdom, granted business licenses to. Now one sits at the northern end of Harrison Avenue—Blue Rock’s main drag—and one at the southern end. It’s annoying, and it’s suffocating the mom-and-pop shops like Love & Grounds.
I’m a firm believer in shopping local rather than throwing my money at the big corporate chains wherever possible. Sadly, with the way things are these days, the local shops are being driven to the point of extinction by things like coffee chains putting up to brick-and-mortar shops half a mile apart.
“Hadley, hey, girl.”
I smile as Joanie, the owner of the coffee house, greets me with a smile and a hug. She’s a middle-aged woman with a smooth, ageless face, blonde hair, green eyes, and golden sun-kissed skin. She’s a California beach bunny through and through. But she’s also smart as a whip and tougher than you’d think at first blush.
“Good to see you,” I say, even though I saw her just yesterday.
“The usual?” she asks.
“Wouldn’t be the usual if I ordered something different now would it?”
She laughs. “Touché.”
I lean against the counter and make small talk with Joanie as she gets started on my drink. The place is half full, but I remember a time when it was packed and it makes me a little bitter. But I’m glad to see that with the Starbucks takeover of Blue Rock Bay, Joanie still has enough loyal customers to keep her business afloat. Loyalty matters.
“So you seein’ anybody?” she asks.
A wry laugh passes my lips. “Am I ever seeing anybody?”
“Well, I keep hoping one of these days, you’ll find somebody worthy of you and your time,” she says. “You’re young, smart, beautiful, and—”
“And totally focused on starting my career,” I interrupt.
She laughs and waves me off. “You’re a smart girl. I’m sure you could multitask if you really wanted to.”
“Well, I suppose that means I guess I don’t want to then,” I reply with a big smile.
She gives me a sympathetic look. “I just hate seeing you alone.”
“I’m not alone. I’ve always got you, Joanie.”
“That you do, dear,” she says, looking over my shoulder. “Though, I still think you can do better. Not much, mind you. But slightly.”
Knowing there is a guy behind me that she’s looking at, I resist the urge to turn around. Instead, I look in the mirror behind the counter and see a man in a sharp, neatly tailored suit. He’s about five-ten or five-eleven with a lean, trim build. He’s got a strong, square jaw, high cheekbones, and an aquiline nose. His hair is dark and cut military short, and he has dark, narrow eyes.
He unbuttons his coat and I catch sight of what looks like a plastic ID card hanging from his belt that has his picture affixed to it. It looks very official, but I can’t see the name of his company or whatever the ID card is for. He’s a handsome man, no question about it. But there’s just something about him that sets the warning bells ringing in my mind.
Joanie hands me my drink with a smile and gives me a wink and as she turns to the man behind me, I feel my heart sink into my stomach.
“Hi, welcome to Love & Grounds. I’m Joanie, the proprietor of this fine establishment. And this is Hadley Larson, loyal customer, good friend, and a totally and completely single woman,” Joanie says, a smile beaming on her face.
My face instantly grows hot, my cheeks I’m sure turning an ungodly shade of red. I shoot her a dark look, my embarrassment causing me to fumble with my cup. I look at the man, who is smiling wide at me, then rush out of the coffee house. I’m halfway down the block before I stop and lean against the wall, trying to control my breathing and stop myself from shaking.
When I feel like I’m back under control again, I push away from the wall and start walking toward the parking lot. But when I hear his voice behind me, my blood freezes in my veins and I start trembling all over again.
“It’s nice to meet you, Hadley Larson,” he says, a thousand-watt smile stretching from ear to ear.
“Yeah, hi. Joanie lets her mouth get away from her sometimes and—”
“Let’s not be hasty here,” he cuts me off. “Let’s at least talk a bit, huh?”
“Yeah, so not interested, thanks.”
His smarmy and entitled attitude is really off-putting. To say the least. It’s like he thinks I owe it to him to talk to him or something. It’s a trait I’ve seen in a lot of frat-boy types. It’s so not charming in them and it’s even less charming in somebody this guy’s age. I turn to go when he takes hold of my shoulder unexpectedly. The uninvited and frankly, quite unwanted touching sends a jolt of fear-fueled adrenaline, as well as anger, shooting through me.
He turns me around to face him again, and I see that his smile has changed. It’s gone from friendly to something colder and more malevolent. I quickly slap his hand off me and take a step back, doing my best to quell the fight-or-flight response that’s welling up within me. Call me a bitch or conceited as hell, but I don’t like people I don’t know touching me.
I get the feeling this guy doesn’t take too kindly to a woman saying no to him. He quickly recovers though, and that warm, friendly smile is back on his face in the blink of an eye. He holds his hands out, his palms to me, I guess trying to show me he’s not a threat or something.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to invade your personal space,” he says.
“Listen, I’m sorry Joanie gave you the wrong impression, but I’m not really interested in dating right now.”
He grins. “Who said anything about dating? I’m new in town and I just thought it would be nice to have a cup of coffee and a conversation with somebody.”
“Great. I wish you luck with that.”
He chuckles. “I’m sorry. I think we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot here. What do you say we start over?”
“What do you say we don’t?” I snap. “Look, I’ve tried to be nice—”
“You have? Wow. I’d hate to see what it looks like when you’re not trying to be nice then,” he says with a smarmy chuckle that grates on my nerves.
“Yeah, we’re done here.”
“Oh, come on. I was just hoping for a little friendly hospitality, that’s all.”
“If you want friendly hospitality, try any restaurant or hotel in town. That’s kind of their thing.”
He frowns as he looks at me. “So no way I’m going to talk you into a cup of coffee?”
“Sorry.”
“Just one cup?”
“Enjoy your stay in Blue
Rock,” I say.
Without waiting for a reply, I turn around and walk to my car. Once behind the wheel with the door closed, I grip the wheel and give myself a moment to let the fear and adrenaline ebb and my heartbeat slow. What a strange encounter. And what an arrogant, cocky guy with a sense of entitlement as large as his ego.
I still can’t believe he thought coming on that strong would work. Even if I had been looking to date somebody, it wouldn’t be him. Guys like that, who think every woman on the planet owes them something, are the biggest turnoff imaginable. And yet, they strut around like they’re God’s gift.
As I get myself back under control and start my car to pull out of the parking lot, that guy is there, leaning against the wall, sipping his coffee. He smiles at me as I pass by, sending a shiver straight through me. I pull out quickly and take off down the street as fast as I can.
Chapter Three
Nitro
“What in the hell happened out there?” Prophet roars.
“We were ambushed,” Cosmo said.
“By who? Was it Zavala’s guys?”
Prophet paces the clubhouse floor, his face pinched, his body taut. His hands are clenched into fists at his sides, and the scowl on his face is fearsome. After the guys who’d ambushed us put Monk down and forced Cosmo and me to stop, they’d caught up to Blake and Grease. They put a bullet through Grease’s leg and roughed Blake up then left them on the side of the road and made off with both vans. All of the guns and the weed we’d just picked up were gone.
The first thing we did was take Monk to the hospital. He has a couple of broken bones in his hands but other than that, he’s very lucky. Other than a really bad case of road rash, he didn’t suffer any major injuries. He’s going to be laid up in the hospital for a little while, but he’s going to be okay. All of us breathed a sigh of relief when the doctor came out and gave us the good news.
As for Grease, we obviously couldn’t take him to a hospital with a gunshot wound, so Doc, our MC’s vice president, is patching him and Blake up in the newly built med center that sits behind the clubhouse. Doc’s reasoning was that if he was going to be patching people up, he needed a proper facility rather than laying patients out on the tables in here. So Prophet finally had a prefab building constructed that would serve as our own little hospital.
The hope was that with Zavala out of the picture, it wouldn’t need to be used much. But with this new threat staring us in the face, there’s no telling how often we were going to be needing it.
“How’d they get the drop on you guys?” Prophet asks.
Cosmo shakes his head and takes a long swallow of his beer. It’s just the three of us in the clubhouse right now, Prophet having sent everybody else out. The anger is crackling off of him and his jaw is clenched so hard, I wouldn’t be surprised if he could chew through stone at the moment.
“They came out of nowhere,” I say. “I happened to see them racing up from behind just before they hit us.”
“Were they watching you out at the pickup site?” Prophet asks.
“I don’t know, Prez,” Cosmo replies. “It’s possible.”
“They weren’t out there. I scouted the area and kept an eye on things. There was nobody out there but us and Cort’s crew,” I say.
“That you know of,” Cosmo replies. “They could’ve been keeping tabs on us from a distance. Long-distance scopes. Drones, maybe.”
I start to object but close my mouth again knowing it could be true. While I know what I’m doing when I scout an area and know what to look for, I’m willing to admit that I’m not perfect. I’ve missed things before, and I will miss them again. I’m human and as such, I’m not infallible.
But I’m almost positive that I didn’t miss anything out there. I scouted extra carefully precisely because I don’t trust Cort. I operate under the assumption that he’s going to screw us at some point, and I want to be prepared for it. I’m more than thorough in my scouting and prep work.
Having said all that though, I know it’s possible I missed something. And it’s possible that whoever hit us was keeping eyes on us with drones. I honestly never thought to keep my eyes peeled for them. It’s something I’m going to have to start doing from now on.
“Losing that shipment’s going to be costly,” Prophet mutters. “We’ve got buyers, and we’re going to need to replace the load we lost.”
“I’ll put a call into Cort,” Cosmo replies. “Hopefully, he’s got stock.”
“But that brings me back to my original question,” Prophet says. “Who hit us? Was it some of Zavala’s guys? They finally work up the nut to take a run at us?”
“Maybe you need to set up a meet with Tarantula. See if he’s heard anything about what’s left of Zavala’s army.”
Prophet nods. “Yeah, I’ll do that.”
Tarantula is the President of Montezuma’s Warriors, an MC that runs in the Central Valley. For a long while, the Warriors worked with the Zavala cartel. The former Warriors’ President was chummy with the cartel leader and enjoyed a good working relationship with him. But not all of the MC was on board with what they were doing. Most of them drew the line at human trafficking.
So Tarantula and his number two, a guy named Bala, came to us for help. Long story short, we took out the former President, allowing Tarantula to slide into the club’s big chair. And after that, they worked with us, feeding us important intel that allowed us to take Zavala out.
Over the last six months since we did that, our relationship with the Warriors has never been better. Our bond with them is tight. And if there is anything going on south of the border, if the remnants of Zavala’s empire are indeed pulling together to take a run at us, they’ll probably know it.
I find it hard to believe that it’s Zavala’s guys though. Last I heard, they were too busy fighting among themselves and fending off attacks from the outside to put up much of a fight against us. The death of Zavala left a power vacuum in old Mexico, and all of the would-be players are stepping up and fighting it out for their slice of the pie that Zavala’s death left behind.
I personally don’t think it’s Zavala’s men. Not only do they have a lot on their plate and probably can’t deal with us but the shooters in the SUVs were also white. Not Mexican.
“What’s goin’ through your head, man?”
Prophet’s voice cuts through my thoughts, and I turn to him, trying to focus and order my thoughts quickly.
“You think it was Zavala’s crew?” Prophet presses.
I shake my head. “No, I don’t.”
“Why not?”
“For one thing, the guys who ambushed us were white. They weren’t Mexicans.”
“Are you sure about that?” Prophet asks.
I nod. “I saw them.”
Prophet turns to Cosmo who merely shrugs. “Nitro’s eyesight is better than mine. And I was too busy trying to steer and shoot straight to notice something like the ethnicity of the guys trying to kill us.”
“Trust me. I got a good look at them,” I add. “They were definitely white.”
Cosmo shrugs. “Could be they were light-skinned Mexicans or it could be that they outsourced the hit. Maybe they hired a crew of white boys to throw us off the scent. Like you said before, they’ve got a lot on their plate. Maybe they didn’t want to tangle with us again and had somebody else take a run at us.”
“It’s possible,” I concede. “But that doesn’t feel right either. For these guys, it’s all about honor. There’s no honor in hiring assassins to take us out.”
“Not to mention the fact they’d want the satisfaction of killing us themselves,” Prophet chimes in. “They’d want to look us in the eyes before they put a bullet in our brains.”
I nod. “That sounds more like them.”
“So who were these punks then?” Cosmo asks.
I frown as I look at both of them. “I have to ask, could it have been Cort? Could he be double-dealing? I mea
n, when we go to pick up our replacement shipment, is he going to be selling us the same stuff he just took off us?”
They both look at me as one, their expressions aghast, looking like I just asked them something terribly personal about their mothers.
“No way,” Prophet says. “We’ve been dealing with Cort for a lot of years now. Guy’s always been a straight shooter with us.”
“I agree,” Cosmo adds. “No way Cort fucks us like that.”
“Come on. Surely you guys realize he’d stab you in the back if he gained from it. And he’d do it in a heartbeat.”
“That’s something different,” Prophet says. “Fucking us over for survival is one thing. We are fully aware and are prepared for that.”
“I know you don’t like the guy,” Cosmo adds. “But for all his faults, he’s a straight-up businessman. He knows his business makes him rich only because we can trust him... to a point. He’d never hit a client and take back what he just sold us. He’d consider it... rude.”
“Rude?”
“He’s a stickler for professional courtesies. And yes, that includes hijacking a shipment he just sold us,” Prophet says.
“Okay, so who then?” I ask.
“That’s the million-dollar question,” Cosmo muses.
“We’re going to have to start beating the bushes. See what flies out,” Prophet says.
“Agreed,” Cosmo responds. “And I suggest we start with Tarantula. See if he’s heard anything on the grapevine.”
“Good. Let’s start there.” Prophet nods. “After you get another shipment lined up with Cort.”
I take a long swallow of my beer, still totally unconvinced by anything. If I had to lay money on a suspect, it would be on Cort trying to double down. There definitely has to be somebody on the inside of things since there’s no way whoever it was would have known when and where to ambush us.
