Midnight Desire: A Midnight Riders Motorcycle Club Romance Part 1

My name is Fiona Christensen. I’m 27 years old and a former private investigator.

I say ‘former’ because I left my job the day the Richards, California police department filed my cousin’s murder away as a cold case.

Ali was my best friend growing up. She was the wild child, the black sheep of the family. She was into drugs, wild living, and dangerous men – but I loved her no matter what. Even when she was strung out, I sent her money, mostly because I didn’t want her selling herself on the street. I worried for years that I was enabling her, that maybe I would be the cause of her death.

Instead, she died from a gunshot wound in a back alley at the age of 26.

The last thing she’d told me before she died was she had a new boyfriend. A member of a local motorcycle club called the Midnight Riders. She wouldn’t reveal his name, though – perhaps out of fear, perhaps because she knew they were into some pretty rough stuff.

I told the Richards Police Department. I begged them to follow it up, and then I ripped them a new asshole when they stonewalled me.

Turns out that the Midnight Riders basically own the town of Richards. The Police Department was either on their payroll or didn’t have the balls to take them down.

So I turned in my notice, got in my Mustang, and drove north.

I was going to avenge my cousin’s murder all on my own.

What I didn’t expect was to fall in love with a man who might have known the killer… or maybe even been the killer himself.

I’d gone to Los Angeles at 24 to be an actress, but
surprisingly
(note the sarcasm) I didn’t get my big break in the first six months. After my savings ran out, I started looking around for ways to pay the rent.

All my new actor friends were waiting tables or tending bar. I wanted something a little less mind-numbing, a little less cliché, a little more exciting.

I got it from an ad in the back of the LA Weekly, the local indie paper.

No, not
that
kind of an ad.

It was for a private detective agency.

I started working for a cranky old-timer named Sid. He looked like a cue ball with coke-bottle thick glasses, and tended to make Yogi Berra-type pronouncements.

“I’d like to give ya a raise, kid, but raises are like raisins – they don’t grow on trees.”

“I’d do somethin’ if I could do somethin’, but I can’t do nothin’, so you go an’ do it and quit botherin’ me about it.”

I mostly did surveillance on celebrity cheaters, providing photographs and videos for multimillion dollar divorces. I even got to use my acting chops a couple of times on the job, though those occasions were few and far between.

The work was usually boring. Lots of stakeouts, which might sound cool to the uninitiated, but it basically equated to hanging outside apartments in my car for twelve hours at a time, eating lots of junk food, and almost bursting from not being able to pee.

But I learned mental discipline. And I learned even more from Sid. All of that would stand me in good stead when I went to search for my cousin’s murderer.

Ali died a month after I turned 26. A year later, the detective on the case finally admitted they were filing it away.

I told Sid my plans that afternoon. He was supportive – though in a typically Sid-like fashion.

“Kid, yer dumb as rocks, but yer one up on ‘em, cuz most of them guys are dumb as shit. But they’re mean as junkyard dogs, so just make sure ya don’t get killed. If ya get yer man, come back to see me, ya always got a job here.”

For Sid, that was actually really touching.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Call me if you need anything. Anything at all.” He paused, then added, “‘Cept for money. A penny saved is a penny I ain’t gonna loan ya.”

I grinned. Pure Sid.

“Gotcha.”

“And take yer .38.
Always
keep it on ya so you always got it on ya.”

“Already ahead of you, Sid,” I said, yanking up my shirt to show it tucked in the back of my jeans.

That was the last thing I said as I left the shop.

Richards, California. Town of roughly 100,000, a couple hours north of LA.

I rolled into town around 6PM. First I stashed my stuff in a no-tell motel for the night and got a bite to eat at a chain restaurant. Then I started driving around the wrong side of the tracks, looking for motorcycles.

I found them, all right – although I didn’t hit the mother lode until after midnight.

The main attraction seemed to be a strip club called the Seven Veils. Boxy brick building all by itself on a corner in an industrial section of the city.
Lots
of motorcycles out front, and a good number of dudes with leather kuttes. For those of you who don’t know, a kutte is basically a ‘cut-off’ – a leather or denim jacket with the sleeves cut off.

Not all of them sported the Midnight Riders insignia – a skull with two pistols behind it, with a Bowie knife piercing the top of its head – but enough did for me to take notice.

I watched for hours until the place shut down at two in the morning. Then I followed at a safe distance as a dozen Midnight Riders made their way to a dive bar called the Roadhouse, out on a deserted stretch of highway. Two AM was supposed to be last call – but apparently this one wasn’t ‘technically’ in business after 2. Either that or they just didn’t give a shit, because the bikers whooped it up inside for a good couple of hours. They were still going hard when I finally decided to turn in. After all, I had to apply for a job the next day.

After sleeping until 10AM, I backtracked to the Seven Veils and waited out front for a sign of life. The first employee didn’t roll in until 11. He was a big, ugly, bald bruiser in a wife beater and jeans.

“Hey,” I said as I walked up.

He eyed me like I was a puddle of vomit in the street. “What do you want?”

“A job.”

Now he looked me up and down like he was inspecting a slab of meat. “You get paid on tips only. $10 to the DJ, $10 per bouncer, $40 house fees – per shift.”

It took me a second to register what he was talking about. “No – not as a dancer. A serving job.”

He laughed, a sound utterly without humor. “Strip or fuck off, bitch.”

I wanted to plant my foot in his crotch at about 60 miles per hour, but I needed an insider’s vantage point of the motorcycle club.

“You don’t have any serving jobs?”

“Strip or fuck OFF,
bitch,” he repeated.

Now I wanted to smash his teeth in with the barrel of my .38 – but I kept cool and just walked away.

I don’t judge any woman who wants to earn a living taking her clothes off, but it wasn’t for me.

Especially not with a fucktard like that for a boss.

I wondered if my refusal to be a stripper meant I was less than 100% committed to finding Ali’s killer… but I told myself that it was the first place I’d looked. And that there was no guarantee it was a good recon spot, anyway.

Plus, I still had options.

The options quickly ran out. When I went by the Roadhouse, an even uglier dude with a foot-long beard and a bandana around his head told me that there weren’t any jobs – but he’d be happy to fuck me in the bathroom.

I left even faster than I did at the strip club.

I reassessed my game plan.

I could try to get a bartending job. Not to brag, but I’m not hard on the eyes, especially in a low-cut t-shirt. But then my nights would be tied up, and I needed to be free to do recon.

Office job? No go. I could type about ten words per minute, if that. And a private investigator job was out of the question. Not if I wanted to infiltrate a gang.

I had about five grand saved, but it wouldn’t last forever – and I would look
reaallly
suspicious if I were just hanging around with nothing to do all day except shadow bikers. So I settled for the standby of every young woman who comes to a new town with stars in her eyes, then abruptly falls hard onto reality, the most unforgiving surface of all.

I got a waitressing job.

“Charlie’s” was a greasy-spoon diner on the wrong side of the tracks. I figured they probably saw every disreputable type come in there, so why not? What better way to find out about the seedy underbelly of a town than to serve them breakfast and lunch?

Turns out I was more right than I knew.

I started the day after I applied. My coworkers were older women, sassy types who flirted with the regulars. The customers cut a broad swath: truckers, lots of blue collar workers, and a handful of seedier types who looked like they might be working off some sort of chemical bender.

I mostly kept to myself. I didn’t give a damn about tips; I was there to earn a few bucks and keep my eyes open.

They were open wide when
he
walked in.

It was Wednesday morning, 7 AM, and I was half-dead from staking out the Seven Veils the night before.

Suddenly in walked two of the most incredibly attractive men I’d ever seen in my life.

One was young, probably mid-twenties. Long, blond hair to his shoulders, clean-cut face with incredible cheekbones, six foot one, body like a college football running back. He had dead eyes and a humorless face.

He was hot enough, though his cold exterior made him off-putting. But the second guy…

…daaaaaaaamn.

He was older, probably early thirties. Short haircut, neatly trimmed beard in a Hollywoodian style. (Not Hollywood; Hollywoodian. It’s a thing, go look it up. And look at George Clooney or Ryan Gosling instead of the other dudes on Google Images.)

Full sleeves of tats down his arms, done in basic black – some menacing, all surprisingly artistic. Six foot two or three. He had piercing blue eyes, dark brown hair, suntanned skin, broad shoulders, a muscular frame, and a face that could have been selling Armani suits in a GQ spread. He looked like Gerard Butler in the movie
300
– Leonidas, king of the Spartans.

And just like Leonidas in that movie, he walked with authority. He
exuded
power – but quietly. The barest hint of swagger, but nothing ostentatious. The way a man would walk into a room if he knew he owned it, and everyone in it, but didn’t need to prove it to anybody.

Which was odd, because this wasn’t much of a royal court, and they weren’t dressed particularly well. The blond 20-something wore blue mechanic’s coveralls that were obviously from the beginning of the shift, because they didn’t have a trace of oil or grime on them – yet. The 30-something dude was dressed in navy pants and a navy shirt, like he was management at the same place. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, showing off his tats and his muscular forearms. Both of their uniforms sported patches that said, “Pollari’s Body Shop.”

He caught my eye as he strolled past, and there was a twinkle there. His eyes crinkled in a friendly manner as he smiled, and he even swiveled his head a little as he walked past me to take me in.