Sentinel - Devil Riders MC Book 1 (MC Romance Novel with FREE Bonus Novel!) (15 page)

She winked. “Got it. And we know thirsty bikers are an evil lot.”

“You’re gonna do good, girl.”

She didn’t care for Tony all that much. He seemed a little slippery, sleazy. But he let you know where you stood. She could work for a guy like that.

* * * *

RAFE

Three men waited for him in a room that was set up like a small restaurant. It had four tables and the men sat at the closest one. One wore an expensive suit, the other two were muscle—bikers trying to look tougher than they were, which was tough enough.

Rafe looked them over and sensed that if anything happened, he needed to take out the little one first. The bigger man would hesitate, but the littler man had a glint in his eyes that told Rafe he had a mean streak. He hit people for fun.

“Welcome,” the suit said.

“I see you brought your board of directors along. I thought this was a simple negotiation, not a major business decision.”

The muscle looked confused and uncomfortable, but the man laughed. “When dealing with new customers, the company likes to ensure that we are well represented. Our security department has a vital role in our operations. I hope you don’t mind?”

Rafe smiled. “Not at all. I want you to be at ease, not nervous about the transaction.”

“I appreciate your courtesy. Have a seat.”

Rafe sat. “I hope we can take care of our business quickly. My guys and I are rather anxious to take care of some business.”

“So our agent said. I assume another ‘club’ is proving annoying?”

“Not exactly. That would be a hideous waste of what I understand are rather amazing weapons.”

“It would. Then you are not, perhaps, the end user.”

Rafe held his hands open. “Is that an issue? I was under the impression that a buyer had the right to employ his purchase as he sees fit.”

“No. Excuse the curiosity.”

“And the rush is perhaps more to be able to kick back knowing the transaction was successfully completed to the benefit of all concerned.”

“Unfortunately, rushing these things can be dangerous for all concerned.”

“Yeah. But so can stalling. You have 100 of them?”

“That’s right.”

“I’d take more if could get them.”

He laughed. “I’m sure you would. I’m afraid we have no more. Had you heard otherwise?”

“No, just saying that in case the information I’d heard was incorrect. How would I know what you have?”

“How, indeed?”

“And I understand that the price is $1000 each.”

“Correct. In cash.”

“I’m good with that if I can get ‘em tomorrow.”

“I see your money is burning a hole in your pocket. You shouldn’t be so anxious, my friend.”

“Yeah, well, pressing business and all. After tomorrow, who knows? The money might be used for other things, or the opportunity could slip away.”

“But tomorrow is good enough?”

Rafe sat back. “Yeah. I need to see one beforehand though. Make sure the description of the merchandise I was given is accurate.”

“And you are qualified to decide?”

Rafe laughed. “I know damn well you didn’t come to this meeting without checking into who I am and what my qualifications might be.”

“And you have quite the record, my friend. I discovered you have a collection of both awards from a grateful government and punishments from the judicial system.”

“Yeah, you’d think they could make up their little minds about me. I figure there ought to be a way I can turn in one of my purple hearts as a get-out-jail free card. Wouldn’t you think that was fair? Instead the damn judges act like I should know better.”

“The merchandise then.” The suit nodded and the big man got up and went to a closet, returning with a fully automatic assault rifle. As he handed it to Rafe, suit smiled. “The latest and greatest. Even the Army doesn’t have them yet. Of course, they
were
expecting these…”

He watched as Rafe field stripped the weapon, breaking it down, dropping the pieces on the table, then reassembling it. He operated the bolt. “Nice action.”

“Less kick, more power. And for $1ooo extra, I’ll throw in a case of armor-piercing shells, just in case your ‘business’ is interrupted by people in Kevlar.”

Rafe looked at him, letting appreciation show on his face. “You know how to close a sale. So give me the particulars.”

“I am very particular. Tomorrow noon you show up with the money. I count it, then I call my boys and have them deliver the goods.” He smiled. “We only keep the demo on hand. Just in case. When they’ve gone, you call your boys to pick them up—under supervision. When they get loaded, they leave.”

Rafe smiled. “That’s it?”

“If you had one, I’d ask for your first born son, but this will do. I like keeping things simple.”

The look in the man’s eyes sent a warning. The muscle wasn’t a problem, but this man was dangerous—deadly dangerous. The most likely scenario was that his idea of simple meant the other parties being dead. Repeat business wasn’t a big deal in his world.

They stood. “Say, would you mind a great deal if I checked out the loading dock, just got the lay of the land?”

“Not at all.” He turned to the little man. “Craig, show this man our loading dock.”

“I don’t want to bother you, so I’ll just leave from there. I don’t need to traipse back through here again.”

The man smiled. “That is wise. You never know who might be watching. You see, Craig. The man doesn’t want to retrace his steps.”

The little man scowled then headed for the back door. “Fuck.”

That summed things up pretty well, Rafe thought.

He hated the call he was going to have to make to Mandy. She didn’t like complications under the best of circumstances and now he had to renegotiate the terms of their deal.

CHAPTER TWELVE

RAFE

It was odd to be carrying so much money. It was so odd to be around so much money at all. As he hefted the briefcase Rafe realized how tempting it was to be a courier. You were alone with more money than you’d ever seen at once. It was easy to convince yourself that, if you just turned right at the next corner and kept going, it could all be yours. Just like it was easy to think that money would solve your problems, turn your life around.

But money had nothing to do with his problem. Sure more money was better, but taking this money, even if he was sure he could get away with it, would complicate his life even more—right when he was doing everything he could, taking a huge gamble, to simplify it. He had a plan—a dangerous, very iffy plan. It was his only real chance to survive, not just this job, but to get to the place he needed to be. All he had to do was keep putting one foot in front of the other. That and buy a shipment of stolen guns, get them to Mandy’s people and get the hell out of town. He also had to get Chrissy out of there, without even a chance to explain to her what was going on.

She’d think he had followed her there and explaining why he was
really
there, that it was all a coincidence, was going to take time.

And he had to do it without getting killed.

Rafe didn’t really believe in coincidence. Luck, sure, but coincidences bothered him. But then he had never been a big believer in true love, either. Then Chrissy came on the scene. She’d tackled his doubt about love and now she seemed to be doing her best to make him see that maybe coincidence was just a name for the fact that things that were meant to happen would happen no matter what you did—that when someone was right for you, and you for them, you were going to be thrown together until you both accepted it.

She’d done her best to get away from him. Far away.

Yet here they were. It had to mean something.

His hands were sweaty and his heart pounded. It wasn’t all just about Chrissy. He had to make sure his guys didn’t get caught out either and he didn’t know enough about what was going down, if the sellers intended to play straight or double cross them. So they had to play it casual and stay alert—be optimistic but cautious.

Trigger and Chopper knew their roles, and the danger. They’d keep their guard up and their heads down. They knew the score and they were trained. Chrissy was the wild card. She didn’t know what was going on and had no training. If things went wrong… well, he had to hope to hell she’d just hit the floor and stay out of the line of fire. She was a smart girl, but seeing him would confuse her. Confusion was deadly in a firefight.

As he approached the front door he saw that this time they had more guards and were keeping them obvious, to remind him to behave. Two bikers flanked the front door, eyeing him as he went in, and then scanning the street to see if he had backup. Let them look—there was nothing to see.

Inside, two more waited for him. No sign of Chrissy and he felt a certain tension ease out of him. Just a cry of recognition from her would send the deal down the tubes.

“Arms out,” one biker said, and when he complied, holding the briefcase with all that money out from his body, they frisked him.

“Gotcha,” one man, obviously pleased with himself, cried out as he pulled a knife from Rafe’s boot. He stood and stuck it in his belt, sticking out his chest and smiling as if he’d won the lottery.

Rafe shrugged. He’d put a cheap knife in his boot, expecting they’d search him. He would have been disappointed in them if they hadn’t, but he saw no reason to let them have his good one. They’d expect him to have a weapon and would relax more once they’d found it. It inflated their confidence, their sense that they controlled things.

Well, they did, but not as much as they thought.

“They’re waiting,” the biker who’d taken his knife said. He jerked a thumb in the direction of the room with the tables, and Rafe ducked through.

Inside, sitting at the table, he saw the same three men from the day before. The suit had a thin smile. “I assume you have the money?”

“No point in showing up without it.” Rafe put the briefcase on the table. “Now you have it.”

He held his breath as the suit opened the briefcase and glanced at the money, arranged neatly in bundles. He looked at Rafe. “Very neat.”

“Neatness makes it easier to do business. There are one hundred bundles of one thousand dollars each.” He reached in his back pocket and brought out one last bundle. “And one grand for the ammo you mentioned.”

The suit smiled, then rummaged through the cash, taking out random bundles and flipping through them. He nodded to the smallish biker. “Get Pete.”

The man went to the door and opened it. A tiny, weasel-like man came in, went straight to the open briefcase and looked at the money. He took out a bundle and tugged several bills and laid them out on the table, nodding. “Used, nonsequential bills.” He seemed to be talking to himself as he took out a jeweler’s loop and used it to examine the bills. “No powder trace.” He took a small flashlight from his pocket and switched it on. It was a black light. “Traces of what is probably cocaine, which you’d expect, but nothing else.”

The suit nodded. As Pete put the bills back carefully into the briefcase, the suit picked up a cell phone and speed dialed a number. “Delivery time,” he said.

Rafe realized he’d been holding his breath. It looked now like he was going to get what he paid for. Perhaps they were happy to just conclude the deal without any games. He glanced at the small biker’s face. The man had his eyes on the money and a twisted smile on his face—a smile of anticipation.

So much for the easy does it idea.

Pete closed the briefcase, picked it up and left the room. As the door opened he saw the two bikers leave their posts, going with Pete toward the front door. Beyond them, he saw Chrissy, staring at him. Seeing him.

She said nothing.

Thank you.

“Contrary to normal business practices, we don’t feel good about repeat business, so consider this sale a one off.”

He realized the suit was talking to him and yanked his attention away. “Right.”

“Your stuff will be on the loading dock in five minutes. Go ahead and call your crew and tell them they can come in and get them once they see my truck leave the loading dock.”

Rafe took out his phone and called Trigger, giving him the message, and saying, “got it?” when he finished. They’d agreed that if he was in trouble or smelled a setup, he’d say, “just do it.”

When he hung up, Rafe had done most of what he could do. Now he had to get out of there. Alive, if at all possible.

“Okay,” the suit said. “Give me your phone.”

When Rafe handed it to him, he smiled and dropped it on the ground, then stepped on it. “Now, unless you want to buy a drink in the bar, you can get the fuck out of here. I recommend you go.”

Rafe looked at him with surprise and moved toward the door. If they were setting a trap for the guys, he couldn’t call them to warn them and he had no idea how many people they might have on the loading dock.

As he went into the bar, Chrissy looked at him again and he smiled, but said nothing. Whatever he did, or said, might only complicate things, so he turned and walked out the door, heading for his bike. As he got on, he saw that the two men who’d been guarding the door were heading toward their own bikes. They both had guns.

* * * *

CHRISSY

It was Rafe. Of course it was Rafe, but here? Why would Rafe be here? It wasn’t possible.

Chrissy’s heart pounded as she looked at him. He pretended he didn’t see her. No, she corrected herself, he pretended he didn’t know her. Bells went off in her head. Rafe was all sorts of things, but not a coward. If he’d followed her here, tracked her down, he’d be in her face, wanting to know why she’d left like she did. He wouldn’t know the story, and she could understand him doing that.

This was something else. He knew damn well she’d seen him and that meant he was pretending he didn’t know her. He didn’t want anyone from this bar to know he knew her. He didn’t want the men he’d been talking with to know.

When she’d come to work the two bikers standing outside, looking self-conscious, clued her in that something was up. Then she came inside and saw the two more bikers stationed at the inner door. The way they tried to look military alerted her, told her something bigger than the normal gatherings that went on in there was happening today.

Although part of her considered going back to her room, she knew that was exactly the wrong thing to do. And Tony was watching her, seeing how she reacted. So she did exactly what Tony had told her to do—she ignored it completely. She said hello to the bikers and smiled as if they were customers, then she started her routine. She opened the back room up and dragged out cases of beer and loaded the coolers at the bar, got the cash register from the office, gave the tables a lukewarm swipe with a dirty rag, and then announced that the bar was open.

“Ain’t nobody coming in to drink for a while,” one of the bikers told her. “It’s just us.”

“And you ain’t drinking?”

He smiled. “Later.”

She shrugged. “Boring.”

“Business.” He gave her a self-important smile as if he knew what was going on, which she thought was unlikely.

“Well, getting customers in this dump ain’t my job. I just open the place and serve the ones that come in.”

The guy nodded as if she’d said something profound.

She was in back seeing if the only cleaning rag Tony owned would come clean with enough soap and water when she heard someone come in. She didn’t pay much attention. If she had a customer he’d shout for her. They always shouted for her when they came in thirsty and she was in back.

So it wasn’t until later, when she’d gone behind the bar to sit on a stool, nurse a beer and wait for business, that she saw Rafe. The door opened and a little man came out. Looking up was a reflex. She was trying to pay no attention, but she heard the sound and glanced over. As the little man came out, carrying a briefcase, the bikers by the door moved to either side of him. The one who’d talked to her earlier winked at her. “See you in a bit for that beer, darling.”

As they moved out of the doorway she saw Rafe. That’s when her heart skipped a beat or six. It took that long for her to decide she wasn’t hallucinating, that she was witnessing the sudden appearance of the one person she thought she’d never see again, the one person whose absence made her soul feel like it was bleeding. He was in the very next room doing whatever kind of business they did in there. She wondered if Mandy was in there too. It was Mandy he’d been talking business with that night back in the Devil’s Hideout.

As she watched, the man in the suit said something and Rafe handed him his phone. She’d seen that man around a lot, but he never introduced himself, always went straight into that secret room. Bikers came and went from there, sometimes getting a Scotch from the bar, or wine and carrying it in. Chrissy stayed in the bar and served beer to everyone else.

Now the man in the suit dropped Rafe’s phone on the ground and stepped on it. Rafe didn’t seem to mind in the least. Out of the corner of her eye she watched them talk amiably, then Rafe walked into the bar headed for the front door. He paused, briefly, to look right at her, make sure she knew he saw her. He tipped his head toward the back of the bar, then went out the door.

Something important was happening. She wondered if he wanted her to go in the back room, or if he was warning her that something bad was about to happen there. Whichever it was, it seemed important to know. As Rafe walked out the door, she saw two bikers follow him. All she could do was hope he was aware of them.

She went to the back and looked out through the grimy window at the loading dock. Men were loading crates from a van onto the platform, stacking them. They were long crates, not the kind that they packed liquor in. It was unlikely these had anything to do with the legitimate business of the bar. Seeing two men at each end of the loading dock armed with what looked like machine pistols, Chrissy wondered if it was gold or silver in the crates.

When they’d emptied the van, the men got in and drove away. Immediately another van rolled down the alley toward the loading from the opposite direction. It stopped right where the first van had been and two men got out. They wore balaclavas, jeans and black tee shirts. It took her a moment, but then she gasped, recognizing Trigger and Chopper. Their builds, the way they moved told her, without a doubt, it was them.

First Rafe in the deal making room, now the guys after some crates… some kind of scheme was going on? Was this the mysterious business Rafe was conducting? Was her bad boy also a bad man?

She couldn’t imagine what Rafe was up to, so she stopped trying. Her pulse raced as Trigger opened the back of the van. The men with the guns seemed to be expecting them. That they were masked didn’t arouse any alarm. The gunmen were watchful but relaxed as her friends started loading the crates into their van.