ROUGHNECK: A DARK MOTORCYCLE CLUB ROMANCE (5 page)

“You might be wrong about that, too,” he said.

“Great. What else did he do? Kill somebody?”

“Maybe…”

It took me a minute to process the word. Did he really just say that? This couldn’t be real. Now, I didn’t have to worry about Jared doing a few months in county jail because he’d be spending the rest of his life in federal prison.

And…
oh my God
…he killed someone? It didn’t seem possible. He’d always been a mess, but he never did any harm to anyone other than himself. Jared couldn’t hurt a soul.

“Who… who did he kill?”

I couldn’t stop the tears any longer. They were flowing freely down my cheeks.

“Everybody has been pretty tight lipped about how things went down. Nobody is sayin’ who pulled the trigger. Or why.”

No
.

“And as far as who… take a look at the newspaper.”

The newspaper?

I scrambled for my phone so I could pull up the local news site. It was the top headline on the page.

“Father of Four in critical condition after being hit by Stray Bullet. Gang Violence Likely Culprit.”

I didn’t feel the scream coming until it was too late. My brother killed an innocent man.

“Whoa. Get a hold of yourself girl. The man’s not dead. He’s in bad shape but he might make it… And we don’t know if your brother pulled the trigger. You need to start thinking because crying and carrying on isn’t gonna get you anywhere.”

I was starting to hyperventilate.

“Listen. I told you, we don’t know exactly what the hell happened. And I know I haven’t spent nearly as much time around your brother as you have, but he doesn’t strike me as the type to just up and shoot a citizen for no good reason.”

“I… what do I do?”

“We have to find him.” He said. “If we find him before anyone else does, we have a chance to figure out what is going on.”

“
We?”

“Damn right, ‘we.’ He owes me almost as many answers as he owes you.”

“Where do we look? When?” This was all happening so fast.

“We start looking right now, and we don’t stop until we find him. As far as where… your guess is as good as mine. Let’s go.”

“Wha- huh?”

“C’mon. We’ll take my bike. We can cover ground a lot faster that way. Speed matters.”

“I’ve never ridden before.”

“You can hold on right? Because that’s all you have to worry about.”

Hale threw the door open and nimbly unpacked himself from the seat. The car lifted a few inches when it no longer had to support his weight. As the door slammed shut, he leaned back in through the open window.

“You just gonna sit there, or are you gonna get your sexy ass on my bike?”

W
e checked the hospitals
. We checked the jails. We checked every bar and strip club in town. Jared was a ghost.

As I held on for dear life, I couldn’t help but remember back to when we were kids. This was typical “Jared” behavior. When he messed up bad enough, he would run away. Usually he’d come wandering home with his tail between his legs when he got cold or hungry. But this time I didn’t expect him back on his own. We were going to have to track him down.

Hale leaned into a hard turn and accelerated through it. The first few minutes on the motorcycle, I saw my life flash before my eyes a hundred different times. But I was getting used to the feel of it now. I wouldn’t tell him, but I was starting to like it.

The smell of his leather jacket sent a shiver down my spine.

He stopped where the road came to a “T.”

“Where are we?” I yelled over his shoulder.

“There’s a place I wanna check out that’s a little bit west of here. It’s a restaurant owned by an old biker. A lot of the guys hang out at their bar.”

“Okay!”

He lingered for a minute longer at the stop. I think he knew the vibrations from the bike were working in tandem with the fact that I had a death grip on his stomach, to make me horny as hell.

The engine revved and sent us off like a rocket. He worked the motorcycle like a magician works his act. In and out of traffic we went, the smell of fresh rubber lingering behind us.

We pulled in to the parking lot of a newer red building. Just like Hale said, there were a couple of motorcycles that looked just like his parked near the entrance.

“This won’t take long,” he said.

“I’m going in this time.”

He cocked his head, but didn’t say anything.

“You keep leaving me out here. I want to go in and ask around too.”

“Fine. You can go in, but leave the talking to me. You’re not gonna get any answers in a place like this.”

“Deal.”

I followed him up the short set of stairs to the large double doors. He caught me off guard when he held one open for me to walk through.

“I’m a biker, doll. Not an ingrate with no manners,” he said, recognizing the surprise on my face.

The room was dark. It definitely had a different feeling from the place where I first crossed paths with Hale. On the back wall was a jukebox and it was playing an old Hank Williams tune. The walls were bare, save for a few cheap pieces of framed art work. If I had to guess, the place probably didn’t have too big of a dinner rush. Most likely it was some kind of a front for laundering money.

“Hell, if it isn’t old Dirtneck!”

It was a drunk at the last bar stool in the row. Occupying the two seats to his right were his keepers.

Hale ignored the jab and said something quietly to the man working behind the bar.

“What’s the matter, Dirtneck? Too good to say hello to an old
friend
?”

Something about the way he said friend made a shiver run down my spine.

The bartender handed Hale a slip of paper. He carefully read over it.

“I guess bein’ out on those oil rigs for so long fried your brain. You know you’re not supposed to be showing your face ‘round here.”

Without looking up, Hale issued a quiet warning to the man’s friends.

“It’s probably in all three of your best interests if he shuts up.”

The tone in his voice never wavered.

The two other men laughed, but they took to the task. When the drunk opened his mouth to speak again, one of them jabbed him in the ribs, cutting him off before he could say anymore damning words.

I kept an alert ear to their conversation as I focused my attention back on Hale. He finished reading whatever the paper said and stuffed it in his pocket. Then, he thanked the bar tender and waved for me to follow him toward the door. Although disappointed that we didn’t find Jared, I was happy to be leaving the dump.

“That’s right! Get out of here you fuckin’ pussy. And leave us the girl so we can show her what a real man looks like.”

I cringed as the three of them laughed. Hale stopped dead in his tracks. I walked right into the back of him. He looked down at me with a sigh.

“Give me a minute…”

As he made his way toward the men at the end of the bar, I saw what I could only explain as true fear cross their faces. Somehow, despite there being three of them and only one of him, they seemed vastly overmatched.

“C’mon Murph… This is our house,” one of the men said, his voice sounding less and less confident with every word. “You don’t come rolling in here without permission.”

Hale didn’t break stride. The one who tried to shut the drunk up by poking him in the ribs scrambled behind his buddies.

“Apologize to the lady,” Roughneck said, his voice low and threatening.

“Go fuck yourself.”

The drunk decided to go for broke. He took a wild swing. Hale dodged it like he saw it coming from a mile away. His powerful knee shot out in front of him, catching the drunk square in the gut. Everybody in the place heard the air forced out of his lungs as he doubled over. Then, Hale brought a big fist down on the back of his head, knocking him unconscious.

I thought it was over… But Roughneck wasn’t done.

One of the other men pulled a long knife from somewhere under his leather jacket. He swung it wildly between the two.

“I said, apologize to the lady.”

“Just get the fuck out of here. Don’t make me slice you up,” the biker responded, lunging forward.

Hale’s blood pressure didn’t raise a millimeter.

He stepped confidently forward and when the man swung for his face he deftly stepped in and caught his hand high above their heads. It took him about half a second more to take the knife away.

From there, it was quick work. Hale picked the guy up and ran him face first into the corner of the bar. The last of the three seemed to realize he wouldn’t be able to run so he tried to make a last ditch effort at a cheap shot. He ran full steam at Hale with a stool. Hale sidestepped the attack and nearly put him through the back wall of the building.

Not caring to give the carnage so much as a second glance, he spun on his heel and joined me back at the door.

“Sorry,” he said. “Just don’t like people talking shit to my girl…”

H
is
girl
? What in the hell did he mean by that? I wasn’t
his
girl, and I was
never
going to be
his
girl!

At least… That’s what I told myself as we walked up to my apartment. He insisted on checking the place out just in case Jared had come back, but that wasn’t much better than asking to come up for coffee. We both knew what was going to happen, no matter how much I wanted to deny it.

I fumbled with my keys as he stood behind me. He seemed to enjoy the effect his presence had on people.

The key found its home and the locked popped free. Hale pushed past me into the apartment.

“Hey!”

“Wait outside. I want to clear the place first.”

“Clear the place? There’s no way Jared is going to be here,” I protested.

“I’m not worried about Jared… I’m worried about the people who might be trying to find him.”

“This is crazy. Nobody is going to look for him here. You’re the only one who even knows he lives here.”

“Your brother runs his mouth like few people I’ve ever met. You have no idea who he’s told about you, or what he’s said for that matter.”

He stepped quietly inside. For a man of his size and build, he moved with fluidity.

I heard each door, and then each closet open and close again. Same with the bathroom. He even pulled the shower curtain back, as if there would be someone hiding in there like it was some kind of horror movie.

“We’re good,” he called from the kitchen.

“See. There are no monsters in the closets.”

“Yeah, well, just be glad I care enough to check.”

“So what happens next?” I asked. “We’re running out of places to look.”

“Nothing is gonna happen tonight. Wherever he is, is where he’s staying until the sun comes up. There’s no harm in picking up the search tomorrow. If he’s as smart as you say he is, he’ll continue to keep his head down.”

“I just don’t know where he would go. We don’t have any family or anything. He has an ex-girlfriend, but I don’t even think he’s crazy enough to go to her. He’d rather be in jail.”

“Let me ask around tomorrow. I bet I know a few guys who might be able to tell me something. Until then, stay put. I’ll come get you when I’m ready.”

The way he took control of the situation brought heat to my cheeks. I couldn’t write him off as just an asshole anymore. I mean, he was still an asshole, but he was showing that he did care about what happened to me and my brother. I didn’t buy for a second that he needed to talk to him first. He was helping us.

He found a pen on my kitchen counter and scribbled something on the back of my electric bill.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“If you hear from him before I do, call this phone number. There’s gonna be a lot of people who wanna bend his ear and things are gonna go a whole lot better if I see him first.”

“Okay.”

“Believe me, Adeline, there are some guys out there who would pay a pretty penny to get to him.”

Pretty penny… pretty penny… money. Shit! The money!

It hit me like a ton of bricks.

“Hale. The money… what do I do with it?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Keep it.”

“What? I can’t keep that. I may not be like you, but I’ve watched enough movies to know that whoever keeps the drug money gets killed in the end.”

“Keep it. I’m serious. It’s not like that. As far as anybody else is concerned, that money is gone.”

I needed a better explanation and he knew it.

“This was a small-time deal. It’s not enough money to worry about. Shit went wrong and the money disappeared. Cost of doing business. End of story.”

“And nobody is going to come looking for it?”

I was still skeptical.

“Not unless that dipshit brother of yours opens his mouth about it. The way I see it, if he had the heart to leave it here, he’ll have the forethought not to ever mention it again. And, if you’re hung up on the moral component to the situation, just know that money was never going to go to any good. It was just gonna line the pockets of a few snakes who were shitty enough to hide it from their friends.”

I thought about what ten thousand dollars could do for me. It would be like that first breath of fresh air when you were sure you were drowning.

“Besides,” he said, tapping the past due electric bill tucked between my fingers, “it looks like you could use it.”

I looked away, embarrassed that I was even considering keeping the money.

“Now give me a few minutes, I need to make a phone call…”

Hale stepped into the other room, but the paper-thin walls did nothing to muffle his words. I tried not to listen as he gave orders, sending men out across the city looking for my brother, but my ears perked up as the conversation shifted.

“So he’s awake? That’s one lucky son of a bitch,” Hale said, a sound of relief in his voice. There was a brief pause, then he continued… “I don’t care what it costs. I talked to the Prez and we’re paying the hospital bills. The man has kids. Pull the money out of my damn share if you need to.”

Awake?
The realization of what Hale was talking about rolled over me. The man Jared might have shot… The one in the hospital. He was alive.

But there was another realization that hit me almost as hard… Hale’s words were soft and caring. He was concerned about this man… About his family… He was trying to help. From the sounds of it, he was even willing to give up his own money to do it.

“What about the witnesses? We got any word on who pulled the trigger?”

By this point, I’d given up on trying not to listen in. I moved across the room, getting closer. There was a long pause as someone on the other end of the line spoke, but I couldn’t hear them. I wanted to burst into the room and grab the phone. I needed to know what was going on. Hale let out a sigh and I pressed my ear against the wall, desperate for any tiny slice of information… But I never had a chance.

The floorboard beneath my foot let out a loud creak.

I froze in place, my whole body wanting to run as I heard Hale’s hard footsteps moving toward the door. He threw it open as I pulled away from the wall, a look of guilt plastered across my face.

“I’ll call you back…” Hale said slowly, lowering the phone from his ear and dropping it into his pocket.

“I’m sorry. I just wanted to know…” I stuttered, stepping back from the muscular man who was turning my whole life upside down.

“Didn’t your daddy ever teach you it’s not polite to eavesdrop?”

He took another step forward, a little smile cracking on his face. “Why don’t you just
ask
me what you want to know?”

“The man who was shot?”

“He’s going to be okay,” Hale said, “Doctors say he’ll be in bed for another week or two.”

Every word brought him closer. I felt my shoulders bump into the wall behind me, cutting off any further escape.

“And Jared?” I asked, my voice barely over a whisper. “Did he….”

“There were half a dozen witnesses in the diner and all of them describe the same shooter… Unless
Ace
decided to grow three inches and dye his hair, your baby brother wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger. We’ll find him and set everything right.”

He was close enough now to feel the heat radiating off his body. I couldn’t tell if I were more intimidated or aroused by his huge frame. I wanted to attack him… to bite his neck. I wanted to have him throw me over the back of the couch and then let him try his hardest to break me.

I walked into the apartment thinking he was going to try to take advantage of me. But I was the one looking for a chance to pounce.

“So what do we do now?” I asked.

I placed a hand on his thick forearm. It covered the edge of the tattoo that wove a wicked path toward his bicep. He rolled his head from side to side and I snuck a peek down to his beltline when he turned his attention away. The outline of a steel erection showed through the denim.

I let out an almost imperceptible gasp, but Hale heard it loud and clear. It seemed like he was fighting himself. The muscles in his arms tensed and released. The energy coming off of him was primal and urgent.

“Now we do something I’ve been wanting to do all day…”

There was no hesitation. He leaned in and kissed me fiercely, giving my lip a faint bite as he pulled away. I was in temporary shock. I didn’t know how to respond and my body seemed to be refusing to talk with my brain. I wanted to smack him for making me feel so conflicted.

“I have some business back with the club,” he said, pulling away after what seemed like a small eternity. “I expect you to be here when I get back.”

“Why are you helping me?” I managed, the taste of his lips still fresh in my mind.

“Family is all that matters in this world,” he said finally. “Whether it’s by blood, or by colors, don’t ever forget that.”

I wanted desperately for him to stay, but I couldn’t force words from my mouth. Without another sound between us, Hale disappeared through the front door.