Tastes Like Candy (Lean Dogs Legacy Book 2) (20 page)

              He couldn’t believe this was happening.

              Well, he could, but he’d never thought he’d be caught up in it. He’d always seen himself as Candy’s right hand man, his champion, his backup. He’d never thought he might end up on the other side, somehow.

              It had started a few weeks ago. Out on a run solo, stopping in at Starbucks for an iced coffee – double sugar, no cream – to get him through the midafternoon slump. Fielding interested glances from the tattooed barista girl who probably thought he was some sort of tamable bad boy looking for the right girl to pin him down.

              Someone had cleared his throat behind him, and he’d turned, expecting some hipster he’d supposedly cut in front of, and instead found Agent Elijah Riley, ATF, looking as clean and douchey as ever.

              “Mr. Sawyer,” Riley had greeted. “Afternoon. I wondered if I might have a word.”

              And by “word,” he hadn’t meant what Jinx immediately thought, which was somewhere in the neighborhood of “go fuck yourself.”

              Jinx shrugged and faced the register. Took his change, dropped all of it in the tip jar, which earned him a grin from barista girl.

              Riley followed him out into the parking lot. Caught up with him at the flatbed. “Jinx,” he said, and hearing his club name come from the man’s mouth had sent a hard chill skittering down Jinx’s back.

              “What?” he snapped, rounding on him, glaring at him through the dark lenses of his shades.

              Riley put his hands up, the picture of innocence. “Like I said, I wanted a word.”

              “So say it.”

              “There’s a mole in your club.”

              It was so ludicrous, he actually laughed. “Nice try, asshole.”

              “I’m serious.” Riley put a hand on the truck’s door to keep it shut. “Listen, it surprised me, too, but there’s someone delivering intel on your club to us, leaving it anonymously, but it’s got to be someone on the inside, who knows y’all’s comings and goings. Meetings.
Certain types
of meeting,” he stressed.

              “You’re lying.”

              “I’ll hook myself up to a polygraph right now.”

              Shit.

              “If that’s true, and there is a mole, then why would you tell me?” But he knew why: to stir shit up.

              “Let’s just say,” Riley said, a creepy light coming into his eyes, “that anyone who helped me with important information would be viewed leniently by the judge.”

              “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

              “I’m hitting the club with RICO charges. But if someone were to cooperate with me…”

              He had to say it now. “Go fuck yourself,” Jinx said and climbed into the truck.

              The window was open, and through it, Riley said, “This is a recent turn of events. Whoever’s ratting, he hasn’t been around long. If it even is a ‘he.’” His brows twitched in a meaningful way, and then Jinx threw the truck in gear and almost ran over his toes.

              He’d cussed the agent for a good two miles, pissed as hell.

              But then his words slowly started to sink in.

              Someone recent. Someone who didn’t have to be a “he.”

              By the time he got back to the clubhouse, his stomach had been in knots.

              Feds lied; that was their game. They got you spooked, paranoid, turning on one another, and doing their job for them. Most of the time, there never was a rat, just a boogeyman of their own imagining. Worry could tear a club apart. Outlaws only stayed whole if they managed to keep themselves, not ironically, outside the law, and anything it might try to do to them.

              But the feds were here, a team of them, which meant they had some assignment handed down from a superior. Which meant they had a lead. Some flashing silver thread that gave them some hope of unravelling the Dogs.

              Someone new?

              No one was new. Save Colin, who…yeah, no one could think that big lug was a rat. Not when he had his own shit to deal with.

              But…Michelle. The quiet, serious, strange girl who’d wriggled her way right into Candy’s bed…

              And into his head. Interfering with his judgement. Sitting at his desk. Looking at their financials and files.

              Fuck. Just fuck.

              Candy had never loved a woman, and probably that was the problem. Getting older, getting tired, withdrawing into himself, he had become vulnerable. He had a wound in him, barely scabbed over after losing his parents, festering with the guilt he held about leaving Jen on her own when Jud Riley was turning into a monster. A point of entrance, somewhere where a pretty kid who was a little sweet to him might slip inside, and then begin to corrupt him.

              Why her, Jinx wanted to know? Why, after all this time, was it Michelle? Just the timing? Or perhaps that was part of her danger, the ability to influence a man.

              He didn’t know. He only knew that he had never expected a threat in the form of Phillip Calloway’s daughter.

              And that was the biggest threat of all: not expecting.

              Weary, heartsick, Jinx popped the door and climbed out into the baking-hot parking lot. Inside, he told the desk sergeant: “Jay Sawyer. Here to see Agent Riley.”

Eighteen

Candy

“Come on. We’re bugging out early,” he told Michelle, and swallowed her hand up with his, tugged her up from the place where she knelt on the floor, going over tentative interior sketches.

              She had her pencil in her other hand, and her eyes stayed with the sketches. “Oh, but…”

              “Oh but you can do it later,” he insisted, and kept tugging.

              “Candy,” she protested, but it was weak, and there was a smile in her voice.

              “No. It’s fun time. I’m helping you learn how to have fun, remember?”

              “You never let me forget.”

              He towed her to the door, calling to his boys as he went, leaving them with instructions. “Don’t throw out the glasses after all,” he told Cletus. “We might need them.” Michelle had told him they didn’t have the resources to go throwing glasses away.

              “Hold down the fort,” he told Gringo, and received a sharp mock-salute in return. “Dumbass,” he muttered, earned a laugh, and dragged Michelle out into the blinding afternoon sunlight.

              He slowed down when they were clear of the door, matching his pace to hers. She walked quickly, but her legs were considerably shorter than his. He still held her hand. It felt nice there.

              “Where are you taking me, presidential man?” she asked, voice teasing.

              “Vice presidential,” he corrected. “And home.”

              “Hmm. That sounds ominous.”

              He squeezed her hand. “Oh, it is.”

~*~

Candy had never been one for passengers. The extra weight behind him, dragging on the bike, frightened arms squeezing his diaphragm. He’d always equated it with carrying an unwieldy backpack, and that always put him in mind of his brief school career…and, well, that was never good.

              But Michelle didn’t fall into the backpack category. Mostly because she’d grown up on the back of bikes and knew how to hold on without getting in the way.

              Also because any chance to get her pressed up against him was a good one.

              They hit traffic as they were leaving downtown, intersections jammed up with the early homebound crowd. Candy was forced to follow a puttering taco truck –
Best In The County
it said across the back – before finally getting an opening to go around it. The bike leapt and his stomach dropped in a good way. Michelle’s hands flexed against his shirt and he thought maybe she liked the speed too.

              Finally they were out of the congestion, and then away from all humanity, about two miles from home, the sun and the wind burning their faces, little point of Michelle’s chin dug into his shoulder blade.

              It was idyllic.

              Until it wasn’t.

~*~

Michelle

She remembered the garish green lettering on the side of the truck. Tito’s Tacos.
Best in the county. Buy two, get the third free.
The smiling cartoon taco. They’d passed it back in downtown, where it had trundled along slow as a bus, just another obstacle Candy had swooped around.

              It came roaring up on their left, flying, its diesel engine roaring.

              She twisted her head around, and then she saw the truck behind them, a pickup with one of those ugly camper shells over the bed. Through the windshield, she saw the sun strike metal in the front seat: a gun.

              She turned around again, hooked her chin over Candy’s shoulder, opened her mouth to warm him, and the words were snatched by the wind. It didn’t matter, though, because there was a third vehicle in front of them now, pulling from the shoulder into their lane, effectively boxing them in.

              A trap.

              She knotted her hands in the front of his shirt; her pulse scattered, and her breath caught in her throat, and she was back in the street with Tommy again, choking on smoke, awaiting the appearance of spectral black figures wielding knives.

              To her horror, Candy slowed, and then pulled off the road. But what else could he do? When the bike came to a halt, he covered her hands with one of his, his large rough palm warm and damp from the handlebars; she felt his pulse beating through his fingers, the way it galloped just like hers.

              The taco truck had pulled off too, alongside them still, and the truck pulled in behind. The car ahead – a low, dark Ford thing – U-turned and came back to park in front. Doors opened, and men stepped out into the brilliant sun.

              Candy took his helmet off and brushed her hands away, stood, swung off the bike. “Stay behind me,” he said, low, rough, urgent. “And when I tell you to run,
run
.”

              Run? She didn’t think she could stand, the way her knees trembled.

              And like hell was she leaving him.

              There were eight of them: Hispanic, dressed in dark clothes, their dark hair and sunglasses giving them a uniform look. Panic blurred the edges of her vision, and made it hard to pick out distinct traits…but she forced herself.

              A tattoo peeking from a shirt collar. A scar on a forearm. A mole on a cheek. The almost feminine fullness of one’s lips. All of them carried handguns.

              Outnumbered.

              Stranded.

              They didn’t have a prayer.

              But Candy stood tall, taller than all of them, shoulders thrown back, heavy arms hanging in a way that looked loose, ready, and threatening. How strong and invincible he looked. But Michelle wasn’t naïve. There was a very good chance they were both about to die right here on a deserted stretch of highway.

              One man stepped forward, slender, young, handsome. “Candyman?” he asked in perfect, unaccented English.

              Somehow, Candy got even taller. “Yeah? Who wants to know?”

              “The Chupacabras,” the young man said. “You’ve been dealing with my father, Hector.”

              Energy rippled through Candy, a subtle reaction Michelle only noticed because his shoulders twitched. “You’re little Ruiz, then.”

              The man’s smile was cutting. “Jorge.”

              “That’s original.”

              “At least it isn’t ‘Candyman.’”

              Several of the other men chuckled.

              Michelle pressed her clammy palms to the Harley’s fuel tank and tried, desperately, to think of something to do about this.

              Jorge grew serious. “The ATF confiscated all the guns you sold us. And Armando’s in jail.”

              “I’m not talking about any of this in front of my girl,” Candy said. “You wanna have a sitdown? Fine, we’ll set something up. But we’re not doing it here.”

              “Do you think you’re in a position to negotiate terms right now?”

              “It’s not my fault Armando got picked up. And considering we’re about a mile from my house, then, yeah, I do think I’m in a position. You’re in Dogs territory, boys.”

              Jorge took a step forward. “You sold guns to us without telling us you were being watched by the ATF. That’s a breach of contract.”

              “I didn’t know.”

              “Bullshit.”

              “Look, this is the Wild West, kid. If you want warranties and contracts, maybe you shouldn’t be selling illegal guns, yeah?”

              One of the others rushed them, suddenly, from the side.

              “Candy,” Michelle hissed, and he spun.

              Jorge shouted something in Spanish, but it was too late. Candy caught the man in the nose with one massive fist.

              An audible crunch. A spurt of blood.

              The man howled and staggered backward, dropping his gun to the ground.

              More Spanish shouting.

              Candy’s fist came away crimson, and dripping. And he pivoted, turning to face the man now coming from his other side.

              Chaos.

              They swarmed toward him. Michelle heard a gunshot – it was a sharp crack at close range, hot and painful in her ears – and she dove from the bike, flinging herself down to the sand…and toward the abandoned gun.

              Shuffling, grunting, sounds of combat above her. She couldn’t look at Candy, not until she had that gun. The terror would overtake her if she didn’t –

              She had the grip of the pistol in her fingers when a black cowboy boot stomped on the back of her hand. She felt the fine bones snap, like twigs breaking.

              The air left her lungs on a scream. And then the boot pressed down harder, and the heel ground into her skin, and her eyes flooded with tears.

              A hand snatched her by the hair and drew her backward, her poor hand getting mauled again as it was dragged from under the boot. It hurt so badly she couldn’t breathe.

              Her head was forced back, and the sun stung her eyes.

              “Little bitch,” her captor said.

              “Don’t touch her!” Candy roared, and she closed her eyes as the tears intensified.
Darling
, she thought, fleetingly. How had this happened so quickly?

              Someone barked a sharp, guttural command in Spanish, and then it was quiet. The hand was still twisted in her hair, but she managed to roll her eyes to the side and see what was happening, blinking furiously at the tears.

              They had Candy on his knees, arms extended out to the sides, a boot against the back of his neck. He’d been shot; blood was pouring down his chest, staining his white shirt. He was breathing heavily, every muscle standing out in stark relief, the veins in his arms like cords. It took four men to hold him. Five, if you counted the one with his foot propped up on his neck. Most of his captors had bloodied faces. One was fast developing a black eye.

              Jorge Ruiz stood in front of him, composed, hands linked. “I don’t think you understand who you’re dealing with now. Which is why my boys are going to explain it to you. You and your little toy.”

              Candy snarled like some sort of wildcat. “You touch a Lean Dog’s old lady, and it’s a death sentence.”

              Jorge smirked. “That’s cute.” Then he turned and walked back to the car. Climbed in, started it. Backed away, and then turned out onto the road.

              Leaving them for the goons to finish off.

              Her captor leaned over her, his dark face filling her vision, blocking the sun. He grinned at her and said something in Spanish.

              She spit right in his eyes.

              He exclaimed and slammed her down face-first into the dirt.

              “Let go of me!” she shouted. Tried to. Her throat was clogged with tears, her face pressed into the sand. She twisted, and tried to kick, tried to gain some sort of leverage, but it was no use. He had her fast by the hair, and her hand hurt dreadfully, and her vision was starting to go black around the edges from stress alone.

              What were they doing to Candy? She couldn’t help him. She tried, and she wanted to, needed to, but it was no use, and –

              Gunshots again. Quick, staccato cracks.

              And suddenly the hand in her hair turned loose. She heard a shout, a gasp. More gunshots.

              She pushed herself up with her good hand and looked wildly around, vision shaking like a hand-held camera in a bad horror movie.

              She didn’t believe it at first. There was Jinx, and Pup, guns raised, sweeping onto the scene with perfect theatrical timing. Behind them one of the flatbeds, slanted off the road at a haphazard angle, engine running. They’d come from the clubhouse. Yes. Thank Christ. They’d been coming into town and seen the trucks, and…thank Christ.

              Ruiz’s men were on the retreat, limping to their trucks; one was slung over another’s shoulder, dead or unconscious.

              Michelle didn’t waste time to wonder about any of it. She went to Candy.

              He lay on his back, fallen, dumped maybe. His lashes – too long and dark and pretty for any man – fluttered as he fought for consciousness. His massive chest lifted at irregular intervals.

              They’d beaten him, face already swollen and dark with bruises. His lip and cheek were split, the solid impression of a weapon left behind in his skin.

              Her fingers ghosted over it.

              “Tire iron, I think,” he said, voice a croak. “Baby, don’t…”

              “Hush,” she said, more firmly than she thought she could manage. “Where’s the bullet wound?” She patted across his chest with her good hand until she found it, off to the right, not lethal, but oozing warm blood. He would bleed out if she didn’t get it stopped. She pressed her hand to the wound and watched blood seep up between the cracks in her fingers. Not enough pressure, not enough stopping power. “Darling…”