Getaway (Restless Motorcycle Club Romance) (2 page)

The bottle, still glistening with the last few drops of beer, sailed through the air. It struck the wall and the glass splintered, shattering into hundreds of pieces that fell to the floor with a gentle tinkling sound, reminiscent of a light spring rain.

I watched it go, jaw clenched, furious and hoping that a little harmless destruction would alleviate my mood and allow me to think straight.

This is bad. Very bad.

Jackie had been invited into the motorcycle club’s headquarters, and we had enjoyed a truly glorious coupling in the warehouse office. I could still feel the way that she moved underneath me, writhing in pleasure as we took each other over the edge. The way that she had moaned my name, turning it into a sweet promise.

I had been a fool. Sentimental. Overconfident.

Now she had run off with perhaps the most sensitive document I kept in the building, and I couldn’t even be sure who she was working for. There were any number of people who would be intensely interested in the contents of those pages, and I didn’t want them to fall into the hands of any of those enemies.

My knuckles still ached from when I had punched a hole through the office wall when I’d discovered the theft. Blood, darkly red, welled up from the abraded skin, and some of it had already run down to drip onto the carpet.

I can’t afford to waste any time.

Of course I knew where Jackie lived – all of the applicants for the assistant position had been thoroughly checked and vetted before they were even considered for an interview. There were always rival gangs and law enforcement agencies that tried to sneak plants into our operations. Jackie had been so common, so average, that I had been certain she couldn’t possibly have a hidden connection in her past.

If this slip only stood to hurt myself, I wouldn’t have cared so much, but there were so many lives hanging in the balance, so many people whose existence depended on that document remaining hidden…

I pulled out my second phone. The secure one, that was untraceable in every way. It was the phone that the rest of the motorcycle club’s leaders didn’t know about. I rang the special number that went straight to voicemail. There was no message, no notification of who owned the number or why. Just a single beep.

“Marshall, I need you. Please come and see me at the office as soon as you get this.” I went to hang up the phone, but hesitated. “This is concerning the accident victims, we have been compromised.”

It was time to head to Jackie’s apartment. If I was lucky, there would be a confrontation and I would have the chance to recover the documents before it was too late. I would relish the opportunity to get inside of her head and find out why she had betrayed me, who she was working for. If I didn’t get there in time…

Well, some of the people who might have used her would have no qualms with disposing of her now that she’s completed her purpose. It would be cleaner for them that way.

Despite the fact that she had screwed me over, I hoped I would be in time. The taste of her was still faintly on my lips.

I wasn’t sure what I expected when I got to the address I’d been given. Maybe a discreet little meeting place in an alley, or another cafe where I’d be met by the handsome man in the tailored suit. The part of my mind that was still convinced this was some elaborate prank thought that maybe I would get there and have a bunch of people jump out and yell ‘surprise.’

That wasn’t what I found. I pulled up the message on my phone just to make sure that Google had taken me to the right place.

Holy crap.

It was a large building with a big lawn, made entirely of darkened and tinted glass. There was no signage anywhere that might indicate what went on behind those windows. It looked like a fortress, complete with a wall and a guardhouse presiding over a gate that blocked entry to the driveway and parking lot.

This has to be a joke.

I knew it couldn’t be. The sad truth was that I didn’t have anyone close enough who would put in so much effort for a prank. The whole situation had to be real.

Suddenly doubly as nervous and completely doubting myself, I considered just driving away. Shane seemed like a reasonable man, and there was probably a good explanation for everything that was going on. I could just shove it all onto him, quit, and let all of this craziness sweep on without me. It would be the sensible thing to do.

Of course, I had already snooped in the motorcycle club’s affairs and then run away from him. I remembered the passion in his voice and the command in his eyes. He wouldn’t like what I’d done, and I doubted that I’d be able to convince him that I wanted no part in him, because the truth was that I wasn’t sure about that at all.

There was no choice but to keep going.

The guard shack was manned by a steely-eyed man with a weapon holstered. My mouth dried up and I had no idea what to say. The guard looked at me and my car, before referencing the screen beside him.

“You are cleared to enter. Check in at the front desk.”

The cast iron gate rolled to the side, and I entered the parking lot. There were a handful of visitor parking spaces at the front, which struck me as odd. Such an imposing, mysterious structure and campus, and yet there was something as mundane as visitor parking.

Well, I guess I qualify. I just wish I knew what I was visiting. For a shady organization that goes around blackmailing people with vague threats about ruining their lives, this is a really nice building and facility.

The lobby of the building was typical of the few big business places I had been in – it reminded me of a bank downtown. There were a few people behind a reception desk, as well as more sober-looking security guards.

“Hello?” I asked at the desk. “I was told to come here?”

The woman was in her thirties, and she smiled at me, the first hint of a positive expression I saw. “You must be Miss Maguire. Please take a seat right over there, and Agent Thompson will be right with you.”

“Agent?” I asked. The only response was another smile.

That’s a little presumptuous. Talk about a secretive organization, they even call their people agents.
It was starting to feel like I was in a movie again.

My ass had barely hit leather when I heard my name again.

“Miss Maguire,” the familiar voice said. “Forgive me for all of the runaround, but we have to do things a certain way here. I am Agent Thompson, and welcome to the headquarters.”

It was nice to see a familiar face, even if it was of the man who had taken a giant dump on my week by blackmailing me for information on Shane Hamilton. “Headquarters? Agent? Okay, seriously, who the hell are you people?”

His face was impassive as he took my questions in stride, but I could have sworn that I saw a bit of a twinkle in his eye.

Prick.

“Let’s first go to my office, and then you can show me what you’ve brought with you,” he pointed at the files in my hand. “And then I will give you a bit more of an idea of what exactly is going on here.”

“It’s about time,” I said, but thought better of blowing up any further on him. Now that Shane was likely completely pissed at me and who knows what he’d do, I at least needed somebody in my corner.

A few minutes and several hallways later, Agent Thompson came to a door bearing his name and opened it.

“Please, have a seat,” he said. “Now, let’s take a look at those files.”

I hesitated. I had betrayed Shane’ trust, but it hadn’t gone all the way yet. I could still change my mind.
Assuming they would let me leave the building without seeing what I’ve brought.

“Fine,” I said. I tossed the pile of documents onto the desk in between us. “Take a look at those and let me know if that means what I think it means.”

Agent Thompson simply raised an eyebrow and picked up the stack, tapping the bottoms lightly on the surface of the desk to gather them all in one neat bundle and align the edges.

The expression on the agent’s face didn’t change as he flipped from the first page to the next. Then he continued on, and appeared to give the articles beneath a much more thorough look than I had.

Without anything else to do, I sat and waited for him to finish. I tried to gain some additional clues about the man and the organization by checking out the office, but the whole thing was barren, almost sterile in its cleanliness.

“So,” he said. “This is… quite interesting.”

“Is that good?” I pushed. “Have I gotten you what you were looking for? Are we done?”

He looked at me, his gray eyes narrowed. “Not quite done, Miss Maguire. It’s time to tell you a bit more about what exactly is going on. I’m afraid that your life won’t and can’t go back exactly the way it was before you met Shane Hamilton. He is a dangerous individual that we’ve been suspicious of for some time, and this just proves some of our suspicions.”

“Is he more dangerous than you?” I asked. “For fuck’s sake, you blackmailed me to snoop on this ‘dangerous’ man, without so much as a warning or any sort of explanation! Why the hell would I trust you?”

“Because,” Agent Thompson replied, “I work for the FBI, and you have been serving your country, whether you were aware of that fact or not, Miss Maguire.”

“What? The FBI? You have to be joking me.”

“I assure you, I am not. The Restless Motorcycle Club has had dealings with some of the most despicable criminal organizations in the world, and Shane Hamilton has been the main point of contact. At one point in time we thought he was playing for our side, but these documents prove that he is not.”

I felt like I was lost, swimming in a sea of confusion. Shane was a member of an outlaw motorcycle club, and heavily involved with criminal elements, but the FBI thought he was on their side? Was all this true about the man who I had been intimate with only a couple of hours earlier?

“What does all this mean? This doesn’t make any sense at all. What are you going to do about this?”

There was a muted beep, and Agent Thompson pulled out a phone to check a message. A rare smile graced his face.

“A team is out to bring in Mr. Hamilton now.”