Stolen: Hell's Overlords MC (26 page)

“We don’t know who’s listening. He has people everywhere!” The panic in his voice is rising.

“Calm down,” I instruct him. “You’re fine. Tell me more. What else do you know about him?”

He’s even more jittery now. I can hear his foot tapping beneath the table. His eyes are spinning wildly in their sockets, never resting for a moment, just scanning, searching. His fingers keep twisting the ring on his left hand.

“If anyone hears me talking about him…” His voice falters halfway through the sentence.

Cesar’s head whips around back and forth, scanning the diner. He cranes his neck to glance at the entrance, right as it swings open and two burly, tanned men walk inside. Both are wearing wide-brimmed hats pulled down low over their faces.

Cesar looks back at me. Every line on his face is drawn taught with fear. He gnaws at his lips with yellowed, crooked teeth. “He’s planning something. Something big. He’s been feeding you false information. You think you’re ready, but you’re not. No one is. He’s coming, and he won’t stop until he has everything he wants.” He looks haunted. Pure terror is coursing through his veins.

It takes everything I have to keep my face still and unreactive. Inside, my blood is running cold. If what Cesar is saying proves true, then we’re fucked already.

“How do you know this?” I demand. The men in the hats stroll to a table next to us and sit down, sighing. They look like factory laborers, hands knotted and scarred. Cesar is eyeing them warily.

“I can’t say anything else. I need to go.” He lurches up from the table in a hurry, desperate to get away. This rat might be fast, but I’m faster. I pounce from my seat and grab him by the back of the collar. The men in the hats look at us oddly.

“You can’t go,” I say. “You need to tell me everything.”

“Not here. Too many eyes, too many ears.”

“Tell me when and where.”

“Tonight. Midnight. Meet me in the private booth at the strip club
El Gallinero
. We’ll be safe there.”

I growl, but I can tell just by looking at him that fear of being discovered by Diablos is overpowering any threat I pose to him. Violence won’t work anymore.

“Midnight,” I confirm. “You better be there.”

He scurries off without a word. I watch through the window as he crosses the street. Then he is gone.

I’m left standing alone in the diner to process the torrent of information that Cesar just unleashed on me. A vanished cartel rising from the dead, on the prowl for a place to take root, all under the reign of a new leader? Someone nobody has ever seen or heard of before? I’m troubled by all of it.

I need to know more. Any detail could be the difference maker for the Inked Angels’ survival. Cesar said that El Diablo Blanco has been feeding us false information. How is that possible? Mortar is too careful to be fooled.

The club needs to know what’s happening. I step outside and find a pay phone booth on the street. Shoving a few coins in the slot, I dial Mortar’s private line. It rings and rings, the connection sounding tinny and fragile. No one answers. I hang up, frustrated, torn on whether to hurry back to Galveston to tell them what I’ve learned, or to wait and meet Cesar in case he learns anything else valuable.

I’m hesitant to wait until tomorrow to leave, but I don’t see another choice. Cesar knows things that could stave off a flood of violence. He better fucking be there.

I shake my head sadly, consumed by conflicting thoughts that buzz around my head like flies. There is too much strangeness for me to understand. But it terrifies me nonetheless. I don’t think we’re ready for what’s coming.

We must get ready, though. Before it’s too late.

Rose

My whole body is flushed and tingling when I wake up. My breathing comes rapidly and shallowly. The dream is lingering on the backs of my eyelids, imprinted there by the force and passion I felt while I was asleep.

The biker. The desert. His fingers. His words. “You’re mine now, Rose.”

The images start to fade away, brushed aside by consciousness, but the feelings remain. It’s like there’s a sun burning in my lower abdomen, pulsing and radiating a heat that would be distracting if it didn’t feel so damn good.

This makes no sense. More to the point, it scares me. I don’t know who that man was and I don’t like his sudden appearance in my dreams. I’ve never been a big dreamer, even when I was a little kid. Usually, I fall into deep, undisturbed blackness when I go to bed. On the rare occasions when I do dream, it’s always of mundane nonsense. Dreams of cleaning my apartment, washing dishes at the club, and all the other tawdry things that occupy my waking hours. As if it’s not bad enough to be stuck in this miserable life when I’m conscious, my brain decides I should relive it when I go to sleep.

But never before have I had dreams like this. It was so vivid and continuous, one powerful flash of emotion. Fear mixed with craving mixed with coming so hard that even now my toes are cramping and sore. I shudder and force myself to clamber out of bed. I can’t be thinking like this. I certainly shouldn’t be dreaming like this. I need to clear my head.

I peel my panties down my legs and step out of them. Tiptoeing across the cold floor, I step into the shower and crank it to a full, icy blast. The water is like needles stabbing into my skin. I gasp as it knocks the breath from my lungs, but I need to stay still. The stream flows down between my breasts, hanging heavy and full. It follows the gentle decline of my stomach, gushes through the soft thicket of my short-clipped pubic hair.

The cold water helps to soothe the burning sensation left over from my dream. I close my eyes and imagine steam rising from between my legs as my mound reluctantly cools. The biker stands in my mind’s eye, taunting and bold. I reach out a hand and for a second, I almost swear I can touch him, to feel those rolling muscles knotted beneath my fingertips. “Who are you?” I whisper.

That’s how I know I’ve gone too far. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: never ask questions.

I wrench the handle to the closed position and stand naked, shivering, with my arms wrapped around myself and my teeth chattering.

Forget about him, Rose
, I think to myself.
It won’t lead anywhere good.

I know I need to listen to myself. But it’s hard to ignore the feeling. Even after that arctic shower, I can still feel a point of intense heat deep in my core. It’s dormant for the moment, but there’s no telling what might spark it and bring it roaring back to life. It might take me over, set me ablaze.

It might consume me. Or rather,
he
might.

* * *

I park my car under the streetlight. I wasn’t supposed to work tonight, but Tomas had called me half an hour earlier, asking if there was any way I could come in to help him out because one of the other cocktail girls had called in sick. I didn’t want to do it, but one look at my crumbling vehicle had convinced me that I needed the money too badly to say no. Thus, here I am. Story of my life.

I sit in the driver’s seat for a moment. The engine is crackling as it sighs into stillness. Rivets and gears groan down, tired from bouncing along the shitty, pothole-stricken roads of El Cruce. I thought I would be more upset by coming back to the parking lot after all the things that had happened the last time I was here. But I feel strangely calm. Letting bad things go, putting them in the past, pretending they never happened—that’s what I am best at. This is no different. I shove the memory into a locked drawer in my mind and leave it there.

Even when I see a smear of blood on the asphalt as I stride towards the building in front of me, I don’t get fazed.

The stars are bright overhead tonight. The fat, low-hanging moon shines skewed beams across the pavement. I walk through them, my huffing breath loud in my ears. The din of nighttime El Cruce burbles around me. I reach the side entrance, propped open with a brick, and slip through.

The music inside takes me over immediately, throbbing deep into my bones with its subsonic thump. Every bass note rattles my skeleton. I’m barely two steps in the door when Eduardo seizes my upper arm in his sweaty grasp. I can feel the cold metal of his dozen rings against my bare skin. “Rose,” he pants, “go check the girls in the back.”

“What for?”

He’s let me go and is already on his way down the hall to his office, waving a blithe hand in my direction. “Lucila hasn’t shown up for work tonight,” he says with a shrug. “Go find out what’s the deal.”

Then he’s gone. I’m standing in the hallway, rooted to the ground. I can’t move. How do muscles work again? I don’t remember. Where did all that calm go? It had been mine just a moment ago. Now, I’m a numb, shuddering hollow. My whole body feels like a screaming voice about to give out.

The bass is even louder now, pummeling into my ears like a jackhammer on the sidewalk, every bit as uncaring and relentless. I hear the DJ’s voice layering on top of the music. “Lucila, to the stage,” he croons. “Lucila, come on up.”

It feels like my legs are moving on their own. They carry me to the mouth of the hallway, just where it spills out into the main room. I see lights roving on the stage, highlighting the empty platform in garish purple and pink. The pole stands shining and bare. The DJ calls Lucila’s name a few more times. Nothing moves.

The crowd of men huddled on every side of the stage is beginning to grow restless. I hear curses in English and Spanish being bandied about.

“Get on stage, puta!”

“Where are you, girl?”

“Let’s have some other bitch get naked already! What’s the deal?”

The DJ transitions coolly. “Guess we’ll move onto our next lady of the evening. Please put your hands together for Chardonnay.” The men sigh back into their seats, temporarily sated as a tall, ebony-skinned girl in a red bikini sashays out from the curtain and begins her routine. The bass is the only thing I can hear, like the world’s loudest heartbeat, blasting into my eardrums over and over again.

Lucila never showed up for work tonight.

I glide wordlessly over to Tomas, who is hustling behind the bar, pouring drinks as fast as he can for the horde of ravenous customers. “Tomas,” I say in a muted voice, leaning over the bar so my words will reach him. He barely has time to glance up to see who is speaking to him.

“Hey, Rose, thanks for coming,” he rasps. He sounds sick.

“Tomas, where’s Lucila?”

He tosses his hands in the air. “No idea,” he says. “Haven’t seen her since last night.” He catches sight of my face and pauses for a moment. “Hey, are you alright? Your lip looks a little busted up. Did something happen?”

I raise a hand to hide my mouth from him. My mouth is still scabbed from the fighting the night before, but I can’t get into that with Tomas right now. I need to find Lucila. She has to be here. She has to be somewhere, at least. She can’t be dead. Oh, God, don’t let her be dead. I have no idea what those men were capable of, and I have no desire to find out. I just need to find her. As soon as I do, everything will be okay, and I can go back to living my life the way it was. Before I walked in on her and those men last night. Before the biker.

“I’m fine,” I tell him. “I, uh…slipped in the shower. No big deal. Anyway, I’m gonna go check the back for Lucila. I’ll be back to help out in a minute.”

“Hey, what’s the hold up, barman?” demands a fat, sweaty man with a loose tie knotted around his neck.

“Sorry, sir, one minute,” Tomas apologizes. He looks at me. “Gotta go.”

I nod and head towards the back, doing my best to avoid attracting attention from any of the patrons. It’s half past midnight already, so most of them are well on their way to black out drunk. I’m savvy enough to stay out of arms’ reach.

I swish through the beaded curtain, retracing my steps from last night. Less than twenty-four hours ago, I’d been here, investigating what seemed like a harmless noise. If only I’d known then what I would find when I turned the corner. I swallow hard and cross my fingers. “Please be there,” I pray. I step across the threshold of the changing room.

A few girls are in the room, primping their costumes or doing make-up. It’s a zoo of flesh in every color and shape. Tits bounce in the mirror as the dancers get themselves ready to face the jackals waiting for them outside in the main room. Feathers, ridiculously short dresses, and G-strings clutter every surface.

I go up to a girl I know, who is perched on a stool with her legs crossed as she counts rumpled bills on the marble countertop in front of her. “Hey, Clarissa, have you seen Lucila?”

Clarissa looks up at me. She’s got bleached blonde hair that reaches all the way down to the small of her back. Her eyes, thanks to a pair of colored contacts, are a glittery purple. Long, painted nails jut from each fingertip. The overall effect is stunning, if somewhat alien. “No, she never came today,” she lushes in a thick, indeterminate accent, a bizarre mix of Latin and Eastern European tones draped over every syllable. “She was supposed to be dancing right now, but she’s not here. Weird. She’s never been late before.”

“Have you heard from her? Has anyone?”

She flicks a tress of hair away from her forehead. “Not me.” Clarissa turns to the rest of the room. “Hey, girls, anyone hear from Lucila today?”

The few who look up murmur, “No,” or shake their heads. No one seems concerned. But they didn’t see what I had seen.

She resumes counting her money on the countertop. “Guess not,” she finishes.

I falter, not sure what to say. “Thanks,” I mumble. Clarissa hears the strangled emotion in my voice and looks up again.

“Is everything okay?”

I blink back a tear. “Yeah, I’m just worried about her,” I say. “She looked like she might have been talking to some pretty bad guys last night.”

Clarissa clucks. “I tell her all the time, be careful, but she don’t like to listen.” Her eyes narrow. “They take girls like her and they sell them, you know. If you’re not careful. Big auctions. Lots of men come to pay big money for pretty girls.”

I can hardly hear the words, let alone stomach the concept. Lucila, being paraded out like cattle, sold to the highest bidder…a wave of nausea tears through me. I turn away. “Thanks, Clarissa,” I whisper over my shoulder. She ignores me, lost in the stacks of money piling up higher in front of her.

How can they not care? What is it about this fucking town that makes everyone so callous and cold? Maybe it’s to stop themselves from feeling what I’m feeling right now: absolute terror in every cell.

I start to leave. On my way out, something catches my eye. Instead of walking back through the beaded curtain, I pace over to the set of cubbies where the girls stash their things while they work. Each cubbyhole is labeled with a girl’s name. Scanning down the columns, I read off each name until I see Lucila’s.

Her things are there. Purse, car keys, cell phone. I pick up the phone with a trembling hand and flick it open. A smiling infant beams back at me. His cheeks are a bright, fleshy tan. I see one snaggletooth fighting to emerge from his pink gums. This must be her son. At the top of the phone, I notice the little icon indicating a dozen missed calls.

Lucila would never leave her stuff like this. I set the phone down and back away slowly. I’m more scared now than ever. The nervous rumble in my stomach has become a full-fledged roar. Something happened to her. Those men took her. I don’t have proof, but deep down, I just know it to be true.

I don’t know how long I’ve been standing there before Eduardo pops his head through the curtain. “Rose!” he snaps. “What are you doing just standing there like a fool? Come, come!” He impatiently waves a fat hand in my direction. His bearded jowls flop as he retreats back into the main room.