Sentinel - Devil Riders MC Book 1 (MC Romance Novel with FREE Bonus Novel!) (11 page)

CHAPTER EIGHT

RAFE

The woman came in around midnight. “Miss Evans?” he said.

“Mandy,” she replied, slipping into a seat at his table. Mandy Evans was an elegant blonde, with her hair up, wearing a very slinky dress. Not at all what he’d expected. He glanced over to where Chrissy was tending bar, wondering what she’d think of this. Well, she’d have to trust him. He couldn’t tell her anything. Not now. Probably never.

“So, I understand you are interested in doing some work for my firm.”

“I said I might be. The Devil is in the details.”

She laughed. “I’d think that the Devil Riders wouldn’t baulk at dealing with a demon or two.”

“That’s because we have a great ad agency that makes people see us that way. It gives us an edge. Our next campaign will convince people that we’re bulletproof, and we hope they believe it, but we don’t fall for all our own hype.”

“That would never do. So, in the interests of preserving a flimsy covert cover, how about buying a girl a drink?”

“What’s your pleasure?”

She smiled. “Do you have a decent bourbon?”

Rafe stood. “I think we can dust off an old bottle.”

He walked over the bar. “I need a beer and a bourbon.”

Chrissy nodded toward the woman. “The bourbon goes in a clean glass?”

“That would be nice.” As Chrissy got the drinks, he watched her. “Her name is Mandy Evans, and she came in to talk business.”

“Does she own a bar too?”

“Sarcasm doesn’t do well in this place.”

Chrissy sat the drinks on the bar. “She doesn’t exactly fit in either. What sort of business?”

Rafe took the drinks. “Private, Chrissy.”

Then he turned and walked to the table.

* * * *

CHRISSY

Chrissy wanted to bite her tongue right off. She must’ve sounded like a queen bitch talking to Rafe that way. If he was screwing around on her already, he wouldn’t bring the woman into the bar. Or, if he wanted to rub her face in the fact that he wasn’t going to be only hers, he wouldn’t bother making up a story. No, that wasn’t Rafe.

But why did this woman have to be so fucking sexy?

She clearly was teasing Rafe, playing him. Even if he wanted it to be entirely business, she seemed to be inclined to mix a bit of pleasure into the stew. And Rafe was only a man. A biker, a big, bad macho bad boy, and all the easier to play for that. This woman looked like she knew what buttons to push.

But she and Rafe had made no promises to each other. They’d had two nights and one day together and it had been wonderful. He’d been passionate, caring, everything she dreamed of. But he’d never said he was hers, or asked her to be his. He’d only talked about her coming to his room after work that night, speaking in seductive tones that told her he wanted her.

Seeing him with this woman, she wondered if that was going to be enough.

She was smart enough to know that she couldn’t make a man like Rafe into the man she wanted. She could only wait and see if he was that man. You didn’t change Rafe. You might, somehow break him, but he didn’t bend easily, never conformed. That was what made him exciting. That was what made loving him dangerous.

A group of bikers came in about then and she got busy taking their orders and making small talk. It had begun to look like the night would be busier than she expected, so she went into the back room and dragged out some more beer, and loading them in the cooler. As she took the empty crates in back, the back door buzzer sounded. She went to door and saw it was Johnny. He’d backed his truck up to the loading dock and was stacking cases of beer.

“Evening,” she said as she opened the door.

He turned and she saw his smiled fade. “I was expecting Trish.”

“It’s her night off.” She took the clipboard and signed for the beer. “It’s new schedule.”

“Oh.” She could hear his disappointment. She looked at him and saw a nice looking guy with a friendly, if disappointed manner. So
this
was Trish’s lover.

“I think she’s around. Want me to tell her you’re here?”

“No. That’s okay.”

He spoke hurriedly and Chrissy smiled.

“I don’t mind.”

“No. Don’t bother her. I was just surprised.”

And now you are wondering why she didn’t warn you. You came ready to get laid.

Trish had a bit of a mean streak in her. Probably wanted him to not get too sure of himself.

* * * *

The bikers and a couple of biker chicks had been busy in her absence and she was immediately caught up bringing drinks to the tables. She laughed and joked with the regulars. One of the guys was on the couch with a tattooed woman in his lap. She wore a blouse that only had one button that struggled to hold it over ample breasts, and when she handed them their beers, the biker held the bottle between the girl’s breasts. She giggled and shook her shoulders., then pulled her blouse open so the guy could have a good view. He laughed and rubbed it over her nipple. It wasn’t the sort of entertainment you got in a truck-stop diner and it made Chrissy feel good.

Rafe signaled for a refill and she got another beer and a bourbon and took them over to his table.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

She put her hands on the table so she could speak at a reasonable volume and still be heard over “96 Tears” blaring from the jukebox. “The beer delivery came so we’re able to slake the thirst of this crowd.”

“Slake!” Mandy laughed. She put her well-manicured fingers on Chrissy’s hand. “Aren’t you the poetic barmaid? Where did you find her, Rafe?”

“Bryn Mawr has an employment office to find jobs for their grad students,” Rafe said. “We got lucky.”

The woman nodded. “Well, you and I need to continue this discussion someplace where I can actually hear what you are saying. And you are going to want to know what I have to say. Is there someplace quiet and private?”

No. Not upstairs.

But Rafe didn’t hear her desperate thoughts, or he ignored them. “I have an apartment upstairs.”

The woman grabbed her drink and stood. “Now isn’t that convenient?”

Chrissy felt a shiver as she watched Rafe escort the blonde in the inappropriate dress up to his room. She hated the fact that this scene was bringing out feelings of jealousy. She’d wanted Rafe to make love to her and he had.

Be happy girl.

Somehow thinking it was a hell of a lot easier than feeling it.

* * * *

RAFE

Sometimes Rafe wondered if he really had a death wish. Trish thought he did. Of course, she’d decided that the first time he volunteered for combat. And the second. And… well, he had to acknowledge the chance she was right. That wasn’t how it seemed to him. He didn’t shrink from the dangerous in life, and maybe he did seek it out. All he knew was that he was looking for something that he wasn’t finding. When he was young he’d thought it would be proving himself in combat—man against man. That hadn’t even come close to being what he wanted, even if it had been an incredible, addictive rush. No, he wanted something more. He couldn’t make sense of his malaise. He wanted to fit in, right? Everyone wanted to fit in. But doing what was expected drove him crazy.

Rafe didn’t think he was a genius any more than he thought he was an idiot. He’d been a kid dumb enough to drop out of college and go to war. Not just go to war, but to train for the dirty jobs. He’d studied mayhem the way his parents had tried to get him to study school subjects. He’d trained until he was black and blue and it paid off. He’d become a killing machine.

Now he had trouble remembering why he’d thought that important. All he had were vague memories of some kind of patriotic fervor mixed in with the idea that girls liked guys in uniform, an idea reinforced rather quickly the day he enlisted, Polly, his girlfriend at the time had finally agreed to go down on him in her father’s Buick. There, at least, was a memory that made him feel good.

Polly married a banker while he was in boot camp and had three kids, while Rafe was an ex-military biker. When they didn’t need him anymore, and he’d spent too many hours at a desk, he got out. He’d invested his savings in this bar, and it broke even, covered the expenses, and could have done better if he’d given it attention. His heart wasn’t in it, and he had buddies who needed something more as much as he did. So they looked for these jobs… work that let them use the one thing they knew.

Rafe sighed and ran his hand down his face, his stubble scratching against his hand. What he'd told Chrissy had been the truth as far as it went. Mandy Evans had come to talk business.

“I expect complete discretion,” she told him. “We have the follow-on job to take care of, and if anyone suspects you work for me… well, it won’t go the way I want.” She licked her lips. “I prefer things to go the way I want, Rafe.”

“If you are willing to pay for it, you got it,” Rafe told him. “We do what we say, and we only say what we do to the client.”

She scowled. “What if the State cops get a piece of this? Or someone like the CIA?”

“They find out that a bunch of dope-addled bikers don’t know shit.” He sat back and sipped his beer. “I can’t keep anyone out, Mandy. I can make the buy for you. I can be the biker who is playing middleman for terrorists so you can screw the sellers and find out who the other buyers are, but we can’t do much more than that.”

“It has to be those guns. That particular shipment.”

“You said they aren’t even on the market yet.”

“No. That’s what makes them so valuable. These are intended for military testing under a procurement contract. The government wants new weapons for soldiers that are lighter and have more firepower. The usual thing. These looked like the best candidates, so the Army ordered one hundred of them for testing. They think they’ll kick ass. But some evil soul hijacked the guns and now they are available to a sufficiently unscrupulous buyer—you.”

“Because you don’t want them to know you or your employers are buying them.”

“That wouldn’t be a good thing at all, would it now?” She took a sheet of paper from her purse, and handed it to him. “Here are the specs. These are the weapons I need you to buy.”

“What if they won’t sell them all to me?”

“Don’t fuck up the deal because they want to hang onto a few for themselves. I need those guns and I’ll take as many as I can get.”

Rafe looked at the list and let out a low breath. “You couldn’t have let them rip off a boatload of twenty twos or something instead? These are serious shit. I haven’t seen anything like this since…”

“Afghanistan. About two years ago. Yeah. One reason I want you on this is you’ve used the precursor. Those were early prototypes. These are much better.”

Rafe wondered what the upper limit to these would be. The ones he’d used had been amazing. High rate of speed, high impact velocity and accurate. “Half in advance.”

She held out her hand. “A biker wouldn’t have that list, Rafe.”

He handed it back to her. “I’ll give you one quarter now. You’ll get another quarter when you’ve made a deal and the rest on delivery.”

“Delivery. Now there might be another issue, given who all the players are.”

She tipped her head. “It’s a tricky business. That’s why we offer all that lovely money.”

The woman seemed to like her work. She had a reputation for being ruthless. Just the fact that she’d come here alone, strolled into a biker bar to set up an arms deal told him she had ice water in her veins. Ironically, that was the kind of person he could work with. She wouldn’t come unglued when things went wrong, and things always went wrong.

Rafe smiled and held out his hand. “Done.”

* * * *

Long after Mandy Evans left, Rafe found himself thinking about her. With the business done, she’d let him know she was interested in hanging around to play. She was hot, but things were different than a short time ago. Not that long ago he would have been the one to suggest a roll in the hay as a perfect way to seal a deal.

Now he was thinking of Chrissy. A round of hot sex with Mandy would be fun, he was sure of that. But that’s all it would be and the thought made him feel somehow empty. Having met Chrissy had added to his sense that he wanted more than that; life had more to offer. He had only begun to figure out exactly how much.

After a time he went downstairs and sat at the bar. Chrissy opened a beer and put it in front of him, then dashed off when bikers at the bar called out to her. He sensed that Chrissy was avoiding looking at him. It was the woman—Mandy. She was serious trouble in more ways than one. Her job was dangerous, not just because pulling it off could get people hurt, but the consequences of being involved were pretty sure to be serious too. He needed to think things through, balance what he
could
say to Chrissy with what he
wanted
to say.