Troubled Son: Savage Sons MC Romance (2 page)

Even though I'd spent most of my life in DC, I'd still looked forward to New York. I'd grown tired of St. Louis, and I missed being close to the East Coast. Denver had been quite a surprise. I'd been handpicked -- another unusual thing. When the St. Louis SAC -- that's the Special Agent in Charge -- had called me into his office, I'd been expecting an update on a case -- certainly nothing that would change the course of my life.

I never expected that working for that scumbag Louie Greenberg would actually do me some good. When I was in law school at Georgetown, I'd tried to get a job working for one of the DAs in or around the District. I knew that criminal law interested me, and I sure didn't want to spend my life trying to keep the bad guys out of jail. In DC, even the panhandlers have law degrees, though, and since I either had to get a job or move back in with my parents, I found a job.

Louie was marginally less slimy than the pieces of shit he represented. He was like a caricature of every stereotypical Jewish lawyer rolled into one -- from the mother whose calls I screened nearly every day to the wife who wanted to be a social climber, poor Louie was henpecked, a little sloppy, and absolutely ruthless. Prosecutors who looked at the little man with yesterday's lunch stains on his tie and thought that he would be a pushover did so at their peril.

What got the DEA interested in me wasn't the fact that I'd learned to handle Jewish mother guilt, though. Louie handled a lot of cases for clients with drug charges. The District had long been overrun with crack and heroin, and those things weren't going away any time soon. What was more troubling, though -- and of more interest to the DEA -- was the influx of crank -- crystal meth -- to the District. Louie saw more and more charges for possession and intent to distribute meth, and I'd taken countless statements and sat in on a number of depositions for these clients. I'd learned a lot about the burgeoning meth trade in DC, and I'd picked up the lingo and studied up on some of the channels of distribution for the drug.

The man with whom I had a meeting in fifteen minutes had been working meth rings in Colorado, Wyoming, and surrounding areas for nearly twenty years. I was looking forward to meeting him and finding out about the mysterious undercover case he had in mind for me.

Chapter 2

Moses

April 1, 2013

I
heard my phone ring while I was working out. I was pissed that I hadn't turned the fucking thing off, but I made myself focus and keep going. I finished the bench press strong and took my time with the rest of the circuit before I went to see who'd been bugging me. I picked up both of my prepaid phones before I realized that it was my shop phone. It was a hassle juggling all of the cell phones, but in the long run, it made things much simpler.

The voicemail was short and thorough: "Moses, Jeff Tombley calling from Denver. I'd like to schedule an appointment with you. Please call me back."

I knew Tombley didn't want a tattoo, so the message had to mean that something was about to happen. "About fucking time," I said as I headed for the shower.

I got cleaned up and dressed for the day. It was a Monday, so I didn't expect to be busy at the shop, and I needed the time to get some paperwork done. The promise of warmer weather always made people think about taking off their clothes and showing some skin...tattooed skin...and I expected that the appointment book would start getting full any day. Before I left, I poured myself some coffee and sat down to call Jeff back.

"Moses here," I said when he answered.

"Thanks for calling back so quickly."

I rolled my eyes. Tombley always acted so polite, but I knew that he thought I was a piece of shit. I could see him in his office, fancy-ass suit, shiny shoes, thinking that he was so much better than everyone else. The fact of the matter was that he needed me, and I decided to remind him of that.

"You called me. What's up?"

"I have a meeting in a few minutes with the agent you'll be working with. She arrived last week, and it'll take me a week or so to get her up and running before she's ready to meet you. That's assuming that she's still going to want the case after I fill her in."

"She good?"

"Everyone I've talked to tells me that she's the perfect person for this job. She's smart, tough, and not scared of spending a little time with you and your friends."

"That's what she says now."

"Well, I'm going to spend some time with her. Make sure she knows what she's in for and make sure she's up for the challenge."

"Okay."

"Anyway, I just wanted to let you know so that you can free up a few days in Denver to get to know her in about a week."

"Got it."

I hung up the phone. I didn't know if Tombley had anything else to say, and I didn't really care. It wasn't that I didn't care about the new agent he had coming in. I did care. My life was gonna depend on whether or not she could do her job and play her part. I just didn't feel like I needed to talk about it for hours. She'd either make the cut or she wouldn't. I figured it would take me about ten minutes to figure it out once I met her. Ten minutes and she'd either walk away or have a real clear idea of what the next few months of her life would be like.

I rinsed my coffee mug and put it in the dishwasher, knowing that I'd probably never get the thing full enough to warrant running it and that I'd probably end up washing the mug by hand as usual. I actually didn't mind cooking, but there never seemed to be enough time. It was hard to justify taking the time to shop, cook, and clean up when I could always just grab something at the clubhouse. We paid a couple of the girls to keep food around, and we could even talk 'em into cooking a little something every now and then. They had to do something to earn their keep. Fucking bitches would sit around cranked up and do nothing all day if they could.

I headed outside and thought about how much I wanted something different for myself. The only thing I was really happy about was my shop. The rest of my life was completely fucked. The people who were supposed to be my brothers were nothing but burnout losers and pieces of shit. Don't get me wrong. I'd done my share of bad shit. The only difference between me and my brothers was that I didn't want to do it anymore.

I walked out the door that opened from my kitchen to my garage, stowed two of my three cell phones in my saddlebag, and I pulled on my cut over my long-sleeved denim shirt. I hit the button to open the garage door and walked my bike outside to check the temperature.

It was sunny -- like nearly everyday -- and colder than I'd expected. I went back inside to get my jacket. While I was inside, I called Joker from my pre-paid.

"Hey. I'm headed up to the shop now. Need me to swing by the clubhouse?"

Joker sounded like I'd just woken him up and he wasn't all there yet. "Nah. Fuckin' Sable got pissed and left me here last night. I'll square up with the girls and handle shit today."

"You alright, man?"

"Yeah." Deep, hacking coughs stopped him from speaking for half a minute, and I heard him light a cigarette before he continued. "Fine and fuckin' dandy, man. Livin' the dream."

I knew better than to try to have a heart-to-heart with the man over the phone, so I said goodbye and told him I'd swing by the clubhouse after work. I hit the garage door button and waited a second before I ran out to beat the closing door. I laughed at myself and how silly it would have looked for a grown ass man to be running to beat the door, and I was glad -- for about the millionth time -- that there wasn't anyone for miles who could possibly have seen me.

By the time I got to Castle Rock and headed north on 25 toward Denver, I felt like I was stuck inside my own head. Things had been pretty simple for a long time, and now...well..they were anything but simple, and about to get a whole lot more complicated.

My bike roared as I opened it up on the roads that wound up through the pass and down toward the sprawl of the city on the horizon. I thought about the mess I was in for the thousandth time, and I still couldn't figure out exactly where everything had gone wrong, or what had changed. I'd grown up -- literally -- in the Savage Sons MC, and I'd been balls deep in every nasty piece of business we'd done. I knew it was crazy to even hope that I could somehow get out of the club alive, but I knew that I was sure as shit gonna try. The girl they were gonna send me better be good.

***

Rolling into the parking lot of the strip mall where my shop is, I scanned the scene as a matter of habit. Nothing looked out of the ordinary, so I pulled into my spot directly in front of the door that read "Red Sea Tattoo." When I'd first leased the place, I hadn't planned on taking the best parking space from my customers, but I'd quickly learned that even though my location -- in Centennial, on Denver's south side -- was pretty good, my proximity to the highway would have made it far too easy for someone to fuck with my bike and be back on the road before I even knew what had happened. As it turned out, parking my matte black Harley Night Rod in front of the shop was the best advertising I could have imagined.

Sure, I got some lookie-lous who wanted to come in and talk about bikes, you know, the folks who thought they were experts 'cause they'd seen every episode of
Sons of Anarchy
. Their jaws always dropped when I walked out wearing my cut, and it was like I could hear their thoughts. The men were wondering if I had killed federal agents, and the women wanted to fuck me. Sometimes I even let 'em.

Chapter 3

Max

I
headed for my desk as soon as I was inside the building so that I could drop off my briefcase, hoping all the while that no one would realize that the case held little other than my cell phone, a handful of pens, and a blank notebook. I greeted folks on my way to get a cup of coffee, and I was just about to head into the meeting room that I'd reserved when I saw my ASAC waving at me from her office.

I stuck my head inside her door. "Morning, Celeste."

"Good morning. I need a minute with you if you have time before your meeting."

"Sure thing." I stepped inside.

"You haven't met Jeff Tombley yet, have you?"

"No, ma'am. We've emailed and spoken by phone a few times, but only briefly." I was wondering if I was about to see one of the legendary interagency pissing matches I'd heard so much about.

"Well, I'm sure you've heard lots of nightmares about dealing with DEA guys, and I just want to let you know that Tombley's one of the finest I've ever worked with. He's by the book, and his cases are always in order. He doesn't take chances with lousy evidence, and he doesn't tolerate sloppy work."

I wasn't sure what Celeste was looking for in my response, so I decided to play it safe. "I'm looking forward to working with him, then. I'm sure I'll have a lot to learn."

She nodded. "He's the guy to teach you. These guys you're going to be dealing with are not nice folks. I won't downplay the difficulties you'll face, but Jeff's going to get you through it."

"Thanks." I checked my phone. "I need to get in there."

"Good luck. We're happy to have you here, Maxwell."

I made sure the ringer on my phone was turned off and slipped it into the pocket of my suit jacket while I walked into the meeting room. Tombley hadn't arrived yet, so I took a seat at the table and studied the maps on the wall that faced me.

"You must be Maxwell Fisher."

The man who walked into the room looked a little younger than I'd expected. He was also drop dead gorgeous. He put his stack of manila folders on the table, set down his cup of coffee, and extended his hand to me. "I'm Jeff Tombley, and I'm thrilled to meet you. We have a lot to cover. You ready?"

"Sure am. Call me Max. And it's nice to meet you too. I've heard good things about the work you're doing, and I look forward to soaking up everything you're willing to teach me."

Jeff slid half a dozen folders across the table toward me. "Here's your homework. These folders contain all of the information we have about the key players in this case. It'll give you some background and probably scare the shit out of you, but you need to know what kind of people you're going to be dealing with. By the time this case is over, you'll know more about these guys than anyone else, but we have reasons for needing to get you up to speed quick."