ROUGHNECK: A DARK MOTORCYCLE CLUB ROMANCE (3 page)

I
should call
his probation officer.

The thought had been rattling around in my head for the past few days. Jared hadn’t come back to the apartment since that night in the bar. If only he realized what would happen if he didn’t have me to fall back on…

I let out a little sigh and rolled over in bed, the bright red numbers on the clock letting me know it was three in the morning. Another night up worrying…

And I needed to worry! The only thing keeping his ass out of jail right now is the fact that I have bigger problems. It was the first time in my life I didn’t have him at the top of my list of priorities.

Seven more days to come up with the rent money. No matter how I did the math, I wasn’t coming anywhere close to the amount I needed. Even if I worked every shift through the end of the week, I wouldn’t make it.

Damn him for not being here to help me.

No matter how much I told myself I would call him in, I just couldn’t do it. What would happen to him in jail? He’d come out worse than when he went in. He needed a different kind of discipline. And if he went to jail he’d end up a career criminal. He’d end up some kind of big dangerous outlaw like…

Not again….
I thought to myself, a shiver rolling up my spine and back down between my thighs. Ever since I’d left that bar I couldn’t stop thinking about him. Hale Murphy… Murph…
Roughneck…

Butterflies were beating their wings in my stomach as my heart started to race.

Jared’s nonsense and my impending homelessness weren’t the only things messing with my head. I don’t know why I couldn’t stop myself from drifting back to him. Big talking, Alpha-types didn’t usually bother me. Most of the time you come across a guy like that it’s because he’s insecure. But this one had more depth. That first look I saw in his eyes… I knew he was for real. I thought maybe I could get it out of my system with a few minutes of private time and my shower massager… But I was wrong.

Roughneck won’t stop me.
I thought to myself, my hand tracing a line down under the sheets. I was trying to keep my brother from becoming a criminal, and I’m not about to go inviting another problem into my life.

My fingertip dipped low, ignoring the small shouts of protest rolling around in my head.

“This is wrong…” I whispered to the darkness, but only the sounds of my own pleasure echoed back.

T
his is a bad idea
.

Roughneck knows something’s up. I could feel it when he sat me down outside the clubhouse. I almost told him right there. But what was the big deal? Sly was the club’s treasurer. He’d been around longer than most. There was no way he would do anything to risk the MC any trouble. And if I could trust Sly, I could trust Dirty. These guys were the real deal.

“You fall asleep back there, shithead?” Dirty wore his hair in a pile of short curls on the top of his head. A long scar ran from just below his ear to the corner of his mouth. His eyes reminded me of a rattlesnake’s.

“No…why?”

“Because it’s the first time you’ve shut the fuck up for more than fifteen seconds. It feels like I’ve been on a damned talk show from the time you got in.”

We were on our way back from the club-owned warehouse in the industrial park. It was the safest place to keep the cocaine. Sly said that I was supposed to go with Dirty and Gopher to pick it up before the deal.

Gopher was a prospect like me. He hadn’t been hanging around as long, but Dirty vouched for him with the leadership. He was the one who rented the van.

“Just thinking, that’s all,” I said.

“You ain’t here to think,” said Dirty. “You’re here to hold a gun and look mean. Make sure those foreign bastards don’t get the drop on us.”

“Damn right,” said Gopher. “Can’t have them thinkin’ you’re soft.”

“Yeah. Right.” I said. “But this is supposed to be a quick thing, right? In and out, no big deal. That’s what Sly said.”

“Easiest money we’ll ever make. You can count on that. So, now that we’ve taken care of all your concerns, can you be cool and do your fuckin’ job?”

Dirty gave Gopher an annoyed glance.

“No problem. It’s all good,” I said, hesitantly.

The van bounced along the poorly maintained road that paralleled the highway. I was beginning to wish I’d gone to Roughneck with this. Somehow I always ended up in these situations. Addy was right. I’m a fuckup…

“Cop car comin’ up on the left,” warned Gopher.

He was the one who rented the van for the job. We were on our way back to the clubhouse, where Dirty and I would get our bikes. From there, the plan was for Gopher to take over driving the van and follow me and Dirty to the spot. The coke would stay with him until Dirty signaled him in. I was, like he said, supposed to stand by and keep an eye on things.

“I see him. I see him,” said Dirty. “Fuckin’ pig doesn’t bother me.”

The police car overtook us in a matter of seconds. Dirty had the cruise control set at a couple of miles per hour below the speed limit. Even he wasn’t reckless enough to drive outside the rules when there was ten thousand dollars’ worth of cocaine crammed into a duffle bag in the back seat.

“See, there he goes. Nothin’ to worry about. He’s probably on his way to the donut shop. Doesn’t have time for us.”

Gopher chuckled at the over-played joke.

A chubbier guy of about thirty, Gopher was the type to fall in line and stay put. I wasn’t sure he had more than a couple of brain cells to rub together, and in my mind that made him almost as dangerous as Dirty. Guys like that were blindly loyal and didn’t do a lot of thinking before they acted. It’s probably the same thing my sister thinks about me.

There was no more conversation during the rest of the ride. Some ultra-conservative talk show host blathered on and on about the war on drugs in America. The other guys didn’t catch the irony.

I sat on the cloth bench seat playing with the nylon strap of the bag. Ten thousand dollars was a hell of a lot of money, and to hear Sly tell it, this was just the down payment on biggest deals for the future… When they pulled me in for some help on this job, I thought they were talking about a few hundred bucks worth of weed. Hell, I’d done that much on my own. Once the van showed up, I knew we were going to be dealing with something a little bigger.

And that scared me more than it should have…

“Alright. Let’s go,” barked Dirty.

I hadn’t even realized we were back at the clubhouse.

“No time to fuck around. The meeting goes down at six or it doesn’t go down at all. I want to get there before they do, so they can’t get the drop on us.”

Dirty bailed out of the driver’s side door as Gopher slid his considerable girth across to the adjacent captain’s chair. He peered back at me with a ridiculously eager smile.

“Let’s do this, Ace.”

“Yeah. Ok.”

Dirty had already fired up his Harley before I was all the way out of the van.

“Let’s go dammit. The clock is running.”

I jogged to my bike, hopped on, and kicked some life into her. The low rumble from the pipe helped me relax a little.

I put her in gear and got on the throttle. A cloud of dust kicked up behind Dirty’s back wheel. I turned a wide arc out to the pavement to avoid it, then fell in line behind him on the highway.

This is what it was all about for me. The ride. I could hammer the throttle and let the wind whip against my face. No worries about disappointing Addy, no hang-ups about the past. Just the road.

It was a long haul out to Sheffield. Sly told us he didn’t want us making the drop anywhere around town where we might be recognized. He said if we kept our business outside the city nobody back here was gonna find out about it.

Dirty had bitched on and on about how he didn’t think we needed to drive almost an hour to make the transaction, but I didn’t care. If it was up to me, we’d just keep on ridin’ forever.

We left Gopher in our wake somewhere on the edge of North Herndon. It was all for the best. He knew where to meet us and for any reason if he got pulled over, it wouldn’t do any good to have a couple of riders wearing the most well-known patch in a thousand miles on the periphery.

A few more miles under my tires and I finally came up on the truck stop Sly had mentioned. That’s where we were supposed to stop and get our shit together before meeting our buyers at the other address.

I followed Dirty around to the rear of the sprawling building. Semi-trucks littered the front of the lot, but back here it was pretty quiet. For the most part it was long haul drivers taking their late afternoon snooze in the cab. There were a few family vehicles, too. Probably people on road trips to who knows where. Nothing to worry about though.

I pulled up next to him and shut off the engine.

“Where is that fat bastard?”

He was getting agitated.

“Probably a few minutes back,” I said. “We were haulin’ ass. He had to stick to the speed limit, remember?”

“Yeah I remember. No shit.”

I couldn’t wait for this to be over. They were giving each of us a small cut of the take. It wouldn’t be enough to settle our rent situation, but it might be enough to get Addy to talk to me again. I was more than a little ashamed I hadn’t been back to the apartment since Roughneck told her how things were.

Dirty fiddled with the loose strings on his side satchel.

“You ready for this?” he asked. “We better not get in there and find out you can’t keep your cool.”

“You don’t have to worry about me.”

“When my old man said to bring you along for this thing I thought he was losing his damn mind. You ain’t been around long enough to get in on this. I told him from the start it wasn’t a good idea. Just don’t prove me right.”

“I told you… I’m cool. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“Yeah,” he said, looking away.

Just then Gopher pulled up in the van. He gave the horn a quick beep and waved.

Smart. Draw as much attention as you can to the rough-looking bikers and their suspicious white van full of cocaine.

Dirty muttered something under his breath. I think it was “dummy.”

Gopher joined us at the front of the bikes.

“One more time boys. Let’s go over this,” said Dirty, nervously.

“Gopher, I want you to park down the street from the spot. Make sure you don’t creep forward too much. If they got anyone watching, I want to make sure they don’t know where we have the shit hidden.”

“What is the place, anyway?”

“It’s a little diner. Good location because it’s on a corner. Not much else out there, either.”

“Won’t there be people?” I asked.

“Yeah, but that’s no problem. We want a few civilians walking around. It’s a good way to keep things calm. It’ll make everyone wanna do the deed, then get out of there quick.”

“And you,” he said, pointing to me. “You keep your ass in lock step with me. Eyes open. If anybody tries anything, you show ‘em that pistol. That’ll make ‘em think twice.”

Gopher raised his hand.

“What? This isn’t second grade. If you’ve got something to say, then say it.”

“Yeah. I was just thinkin’ that maybe Ace should take the van, and
I’ll
carry the gun. I was in the army.”

“No! We’re not changing anything up. Ace carries the piece; you drive the van. That’s it. That’s the plan.”

“Yeah,” I chimed in. “If you think I’m letting your big ass ride my bike, you’re crazy.”

Gopher looked away, defeated.

“Shut up. Both of you. Now let’s roll.”

Dirty led the way. The diner was a relic to the past. It looked like something straight out of the seventies. The lot was big and dusty. Highway stretched out on either side of it. Parked by itself, on the far side, was a blue pickup with tinted windows.

The other crew stuck out like a sore thumb. Parked away from any other vehicles, four adult males, all wearing sunglasses sitting in the hot ass sun? Yeah, if I was a cop I would know something was up.

Dirty was going to be pissed. Not only did they beat us here, but they had no sense of caution whatsoever.

I looked behind me, half-expecting Gopher to have forgotten the instructions. I was pleasantly surprised to find that wasn’t the case. He had stopped where he was told to.

Dirty took in the scene, then shot me a look of disgust. We pulled up in tandem to the front grill of the truck.

When Dirty jumped off his bike, I was right next to him. My hands started to shake.

“Fuck it,” he whispered. “These guys want to park right here for the whole world to see? Fine by me.”

Two guys got out of the front while the other two remained tucked away in the extended portion of the cab.

“You the man?” yelled the bigger one with the missing front tooth.

“You fellas don’t really know the meaning of the word ‘tact,’ do you?” Dirty grumbled.

They looked at each other, confused.

“Yeah, I’m your guy,” Dirty sighed.

“Good. Show us the stuff.”

“Naw, naw, naw,” said Dirty. “That’s not how it works. Money first.”

The big guy waved his partner back toward the truck. When he returned, he had a thick, white envelope in his hand.

“Give it to my boy, so he can count it.”

“It’s all there. Don’t trip,” said the little one.

“Well, if it’s all the same to you, I
will
trip. Never done business with you boys. Got to make sure everything is on the up and up.”

After getting the nod of approval, the smaller guy shoved the envelope into my hand. I pulled it open to see a neatly manicured stack of one hundred dollar bills. I did a quick flip through it. It looked like ten grand to me, although I was too nervous to actually count it.

“Hurry the fuck up, man,” said the guy with one tooth.

“Shut up.” Dirty’s patience was wearing thin. “He’s gonna take as long as he needs.”

“This is bullshit, man. We’re here, you got your money, now give us our coke.”

I looked over at Dirty. “It’s all here.”

“You see that. It’s all there. Now give it up.”

When Dirty reached for his phone I saw the smaller man tense up and put his hand to his hip. He relaxed a bit when he saw the phone.

“What the fuck is that? Where’s my coke?”

“I’m gettin’ it,” growled Dirty.

“What do you mean you’re getting it? Our money’s here. There wasn’t supposed to be no other steps involved. We give you money, you give us drugs. Simple as that.”

The two guys still in the truck started to get restless, as if sensing their leader’s agitation. Then, one of them tossed the door open.

“Yo!” yelled Dirty. “What’s up with that?”

He pointed at the truck.

“Ace, take care of that shit!”

I saw the sunlight reflect off of something in the guy’s hand as he stepped out of the vehicle. Without thinking, I drew the pistol Sly had given me and aimed it at his head.

“What the fuck, man?!”

Things were devolving in a hurry. Everyone was screaming. It was becoming full-blown chaos.

I could hear Dirty’s voice strain above the others.

“Shoot him, god dammit!”

My finger rested over the trigger.
How did things go so bad, so fast?

He ducked behind the door. It was a relief that I no longer had a clear shot. Everyone scattered. The bigger of the first two who came out made a lunge for the cash in my hand. I yanked it back out of his reach. Truth be told, I would have given it to him, but I reacted on instinct.

He made another grab for it, this time stumbling forward and catching me around the midsection when he missed the envelope. All of the air went out of me when we hit the ground. The combination of his size and the hard, rocky surface gave me a serious jolt.

The cash flew out of my hand. I was vaguely aware of the other buyers scrambling to get back in their truck, but my main focus was on the guy on top of me. He was going for the gun.

We struggled against each other. I had the stronger grip on the gun, but he outweighed me by at least seventy-five pounds. That’s when I remembered what Roughneck told me about going for the nose. He’d said that if you get the chance, smash their nose. It takes all the fights out of a guy. Hell, I’d seen
him
do it more times than I could count.

With his focus squarely on the gun, I arched my back and then snapped forward with as much force as I could muster. The crown of my head connected dead-center with the bridge of his nose. I heard it crunch under the force.

He let out a wail and grabbed at his leaking face. With him distracted, I was able to move his weight off of me. I pushed hard with both knees, rolling the big bastard to his side.