by Eve R. Hart
“Um, thanks,” I said as I tried to take a step back and escape her crazy hand.
How the fuck was I supposed to respond to that? I didn’t want her to touch me but I also wasn’t such an asshole that I wanted to tell her off and make her feel bad about herself. It wasn’t her, but I knew she’d never believe me if I said that. It was me. Or rather my Bridge and the fact that the woman had my fucking heart so wrapped up that no one would be able to get to it anytime soon.
I had to be smart about this.
A wide, crazy smile spread across my lips as I spotted Sketch across the bar. With a sly head nod, I beckoned him over since Mouse was no help to me at the moment.
“Ah, what’s up hottie?” he asked noticing Carla right away.
And as her head turned in his direction and a somewhat sexy smile slowly slid across her face, I knew I’d gotten myself out of this one.
“Carla, this is my brother, Sketch.” I made the introduction with a wide smile.
I was quickly dismissed as the two of them made eyes at one another.
I held back a laugh as I walked off, leaving Sketch and Carla swimming in sexual tension and Mouse and Amber having a conversation like two normal people trying to get to know one another. Which, hey, I’m glad that turned around for him.
I should have stuck around to see how all that shit worked out but I was just ready to flop down in my bed and go to sleep.
As I made my way to my room, I tried like hell not to pull out my phone and call Bridget.
Sometimes it was hard but the last thing I wanted to do was make her feel like I was smothering her.
Bridget.
My almost girlfriend.
The only woman that I could actually picture a future with.
It didn’t matter that she had told me a few times that I could call her whenever I felt like it. Or that I knew that she’d probably be awake at this late hour. Or that I was really desperate to hear her voice. I held myself back for reasons I couldn’t grasp right now.
I tossed and turned in my bed for another hour. Even though I couldn’t smell her on my sheets anymore because— despite not wanting to— they had been washed multiple times, I could still feel her there. I felt her soul beside me, sleeping right there just inches from me. Maybe it was a little strange or obsessive-crazy, but it was true, nonetheless.
I fell asleep with my phone clutched tightly in my hand.
And woke to the beginning of chaos.
The kind of chaos that made me grateful that Bridge was so far away from me. The kind that reminded me that my life wasn’t the safest and put those doubts in the forefront of my mind.
You know, the kind that made me wonder if I could ever keep her safe.
I snapped awake as my phone vibrated with a sling of messages in my hand. Prying my lids apart, I read through them all.
Detective Mullins was here and Iron had him in the kitchen area.
And a few minutes later after I rushed to throw some clothes on and get down there, I found him sitting at one of the tables casually drinking a cup of coffee surrounded by the rest of us officers, save for Ky. I knew Ky wouldn’t be able to make it here so quickly being that he lived with Chris on the beach which was a good twenty minutes away on a good day.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I didn’t trust him. But then again, how could I when he’d made it clear that his life’s mission was to take us down.
Only there was something off in his posture. It wasn’t puffed up like a man that had the information he needed to cripple us completely. It was of a man here to make some kind of peace. But I still didn’t trust it one fucking bit.
“Why the fuck are you here?” Iron asked with a bite in his tone.
Mullins sighed, long and heavy.
“Someone, not that long ago, told me it might be easier to win the war with collected enemies on my side.”
My brain went haywire trying to figure out who that might be. And what the hell that really meant.
“I have a problem that is bigger than guns and drugs or whatever you’re into right now. Homeless girls are getting snatched off the streets. No one is reporting them because…” He didn’t need to say the part that no one cared out loud. It was true, people didn’t give a shit about some runaway, troubled young girls. “There is a cancer in this city that is more toxic than you, and I… need your help taking it down.”
What the fuck?!
Yeah, I would have never seen this day coming. Not in a million damn years.
He was asking for our help, blatantly, might I add. In a way that said he wanted us to take this motherfucker down in our own way and he would turn a blind eye as we did so.
And that was how it all began.
The information he’d gathered wasn’t very helpful because there wasn’t much there. He couldn’t track down people to talk to because he didn’t really know where to look. This wasn’t a typical case, that was for sure.
We couldn’t turn our backs on this. Innocent women getting snatched up and possibly even sold. It wasn’t something we would stand for. Ever.
The thing that sucked was he didn’t have a direction to go in. So neither did we. No clue who was terrorizing the city. No idea why this was happening. There were a number of reasons it could have been. A serial killer, for one. Or it could have been for human trafficking. Those were the main two that I could think of. There hadn’t been any bodies recovered but I knew well enough that didn’t always mean anything.
I mean come on, we’d left our share of bodies around and we had someone who knew how to clean them up. And the club never had any problems with them resurfacing.
“Something is up,” Iron said after we took our seats. A few days had gone by and we were still basically chasing our tails. “And we already have enough on our shoulders right now. I’m not sure I trust Mullins, not even a little bit. But there was something that made me think he was desperate for our help.”
I agreed with that, he seemed desperate but I was worried that the detective would somehow use this to take us down. That said, there were women being snatched up. I wouldn’t let it go and I knew Iron felt the same, consequences be damned.
“I’m going to pull Sketch in on this one.” There was a look that passed over Iron’s face that said he hated to do it. “He knows the streets well. Maybe he can talk to some people, get some more information.”
I didn’t know too much about Sketch’s life before he came to the club. I only knew that he’d been a street kid but I wasn’t sure how that came to be or when. I got the sense that he’d been that way for a long time. He had skills that you just didn’t learn living a normal life.
“Lake,” Iron said, catching my attention. “Want you to go with him, keep an eye out.”
I nodded but wasn’t sure what exactly he meant by that. There was a hint of something that made me think he was talking about Sketch more than anything else. You never really could outrun your demons and all that shit. Right?
“We still haven’t gotten anywhere on the guy that Steve was working for. And though there hasn’t been any word, Keften is still out there somewhere.”
“What if this is him?” I asked without even thinking.
Because it very well could have been.
After all, trafficking women had been his business before he lost his men and burned up his building trying to quickly cover his tracks. And we’d thought more than a few times that a city like this one would be a good place to start over.
If it was him, then that wouldn’t be good. He’d managed to stay a ghost this entire time and I had a feeling that he wouldn’t be popping up out of the shadows anytime soon.
A sick feeling hit my gut as I wondered if this had been going on longer than the detective thought. It seemed that only recently he’d caught wind of this and it made me wonder how many homeless girls had piled up for it to reach the surface.
Fuck.
“Thought about that,” Iron said with a nod.
> Then we tried to put the pieces together even though we had jack shit on what the picture looked like.
In the end, we decided to see what Sketch and I could find out and go from there.
That was the moment when I paused and took a look at my life from the outside. When I was alone, drifting in and out of each day with only myself and my club to worry about things like this weren’t all that terrifying. Yes, it hurt the whole club what had happened to Bocca and I felt that. And yeah, the level of danger always had us watching our backs. But we all were in it together and we knew what could happen. And we knew how to deal with it too.
But Bridget, she was too good for this kind of life. I had no guarantees that I could keep her safe even if that was all I wanted to do. It was wrong and selfish of me to even dream of her in my life.
Maybe that had been in the back of my mind when I told her to stay until her lease was up. That instead of thinking she needed to take that time to sort things out and get her head on straight, I was really subconsciously telling her to stay away. I was trying to keep her as far from the shit that surrounded the club as possible and maybe even hoped she’d wise up and forget my ass.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Lake
Sketch and I headed out later that night. We rode to a section of town that I’d only passed through a couple of times.
“You good, man?” I asked after we dismounted and I noticed his face was a little harder than normal.
Sketch was fun. Playful. A flirt in the worst kind of way. Some might have called him a dog and a manwhore but he was never dishonest or misleading about his intentions.
He looked at me, his eyes flaming with a crazy intensity.
“I’m gonna say this once and I mean no disrespect. I lead the way. I ask the questions. And I ain’t talking about shit so don’t even fucking think of asking. Got me?”
I studied him long and hard. Somehow the light and fun Sketch was gone, long tucked away as his past came nipping at his heels.
I hated this.
I suddenly didn’t want to ask him to go this far.
But it had to be done.
“I got you,” I said softly with a nod.
“Okay. Let’s get it done.”
He said it like this was something that would be over quickly. I knew it wouldn’t and I had a feeling it wouldn’t be something we’d be able to finish tonight.
My fingers slipped under my shirt, feeling for the smooth metal of my gun tucked into the waistband in the back of my jeans. Only it didn’t bring me any kind of comfort as we walked down a nearly pitch black alleyway.
Grunts and scuffling filled the air the deeper we went.
My gut twisted and I tried my hardest not to wonder about the things that I was sure Sketch didn’t want me to.
But they were there, the questions that I pretty much promised I wouldn’t ask.
It was behind a dumpster that Sketch and I found a disgustingly obese man, his slacks pushed down to his knees and it was clear by the way his hips were moving what was going on.
“What the fuck?” the man barked, startled that we’d come upon him.
“Take a fuckin’ hike, asshole,” Sketch growled.
“Hey,” a softer voice said. It sounded young, I would have said a boy in his mid to late teens. “You can’t just come in here and do that. Fucking dick. Mister wait.”
I couldn’t believe he was calling after the fat man as he ran away like his dick was on fire.
“You fuckin’ owe me money!” the kid roared and he started to chase after the man.
“Kid,” Sketch said, snatching him by the arm to keep him from getting away.
“Let me the fuck go, now. I’ll gut you, asshole.”
The kid struggled but was no match for Sketch.
“Here,” Sketch said pulling out a twenty dollar bill from his front pocket like he’d had it ready for this moment. He held it out as he released the kid.
The kid’s eyes were desperate but distrusting. He didn’t take the money right away even though I could tell his body was ready to snatch it and run away.
I wanted to know how old he was.
How long he’d been out here on the streets.
What his name was.
But I remembered that I was supposed to keep my mouth shut.
“What do you want me to do for that?” the kid asked, his chin jutted out like he was trying to be a man.
“I just need some information.”
“I ain’t no rat.”
“I need to know about the girls that have disappeared.”
“Why? You ain’t one of us. You don’t fuckin’ care about us. No one does. So, some girls got snatched, it could happen to any of us. Take the wrong person down here and I could end up with a slit neck. It’s just the way that it is.”
“I know,” Sketch said softly and it threw me for a moment.
It was strange seeing a side of him that he tried hard to hide most of the time. I started to understand it now but not in the way that I would even begin to say I got what he went through.
“I don’t know anything.” There was a hint of disappointment in his tone like he hated that he couldn’t help.
“Here, take it,” Sketch said as he moved the folded up bill closer to him.
With quick fingers, the kid snatched it with a look of surprise like he thought he wouldn’t get it because he didn’t have any information for us.
“Talk to Monty. You can find him—”
“I know where to find him,” Sketch said with a tight smile.
“Yeah. Okay.”
It was obvious the kid didn’t trust us but I couldn’t really blame him.
Without another word, Sketch turned and made his way back out of the alley. I followed behind him silently. This was his gig, I was just along for… something.
Maybe Iron hadn’t been too off in wanting someone with Sketch. Not only to watch his back but to lend some sort of silent comfort. Wasn’t sure if Sketch would see it that way though.
With each step towards the end of the block, his shoulders became more tense. And every time we passed under a working streetlight, I could see his jaw ticking as he clenched it.
Down another dark alleyway and I tried not to cringe. Only this one was empty, thank fuck.
Around the back of the building, Sketch pounded his fist on a door.
“The fuck you want?” a guy asked as he pushed open the door and took us in.
His hair was long and stringy. And while his eyes looked dark and tired, it didn’t appear like it was because he was strung out.
“Need to talk to Monty.” Sketch’s voice was hard and unpleasant.
“Yeah, and I need my balls licked by a porn star. Looks like neither one of us are getting what the fuck we need.”
“Tell him it’s Sketch.”
That made the guy pause and do a double take.
There was something that flickered in his eyes. Not like he knew Sketch but knew of him.
“He’s in the room at the top,” he said like we should know where to go.
None of the rooms had doors. It was hard not to turn my head and peer in as we passed each one. Trash and debris littered the floor. The air was bone-chilling and it was strange that it almost felt colder in here than it had been outside.
There were so many people I lost count. A few of them tracked our movements curiously until we were out of sight.
“Monty,” Sketch gritted out as we reached a room on the third floor.
The man, Monty, was on his back on an old mattress in the corner of the room, but he wasn’t sleeping. A girl, or woman, it was hard to tell, was curled up into his side, her brown hair covering her face.
“Well, I never thought I’d see the day,” Monty said as he knifed up, throwing the woman off of him in the process.
She sat up as well and rubbed her eyes.
“Sketch? Is that you?” she asked and her voice was soft and light.
There was something that
came crashing down on her and it was swirling in her eyes. A coldness. A bitterness. Something that washed away the sweetness she’d held when she said his name.
“Why the hell are you here?” she spat out.
“Vess, really?” Sketch let out a sad sigh.
His eyes cut to mine and it was almost as though he’d forgotten about me for a moment.
“I’m not here to revisit the past. I just need to know about the girls gettin’ snatched up.” He was blunt, all business, even if it was clear there was a history there.
Both of their faces paled.
Monty brought his knees up and wrapped his arms around them, the cocky, little shit attitude long gone.
“It’s bad, man,” he started, shaking his head. “Got three of my own before I even knew what was going on. Has us all scared shitless. Ain’t no one want to work or even go outside. You know what the fuck that means. It’s fuckin’ cold, man, and now we’re starving. Everyone’s too afraid to even walk over to the shelter.”
“Fuck,” Sketch said then blew out a long breath. “Why didn’t you come to me?”
Monty looked at Sketch like he’d grown two heads.
“Claire tried to find you a while ago. Drove herself fuckin’ crazy lookin’ all over for you. Knew she wouldn’t last long at that house and when she came back, you were already gone. You figured your shit out and did what all of us only dream of doing. Good for you.”
He didn’t sound like he meant that, not even a little.
“You always said if she needed you, you’d be there. But you weren’t. I tried to tell her, but that didn’t stop her. Night after night she’d go out. She checked the church, the rooftop, under the bridge. She even checked the old container yard once but she got run off. Seems like the place has been taken over… well, lookie there, by your kind. Didn’t know you was a biker. Could have fooled me. I seem to remember you crashin’ that one that we stol—”
“Not here to talk about that shit,” Sketch reminded him. “All you had to do was ask around, you would have found me. But you didn’t.”
“Whatever. She’s gone again, so I guess it don’t matter now,” Monty grumbled. “Look, from what I hear, it’s a group of men. Big, like bodybuilder types. They drive fancy cars, all black. Take the girls before they even see it coming.”
