Biker romance book bundl.., p.344
Biker Romance Book Bundle: 17 Full Length Novels, page 344
To slap him into awareness, I began my Del Mar Heights acting debut. I stood, took a step, and pretended to catch my heel on something. With my knees buckled, I plummeted toward his lap.
He steadied me before I landed, which was exactly what I’d hoped for. The shoes I was wearing—a pair of Louboutin red-bottoms—had been altered to appear ‘broken’. I used them for such occasions.
I brushed the wrinkles from my dress and peered down at him like he’d saved my life. “Oh my gosh,” I gasped. “Thank you.”
He glanced at my feet. “New shoes?”
You’re a piece of shit, you unfaithful prick. Your wife outrun you in a pair of these. Guaranteed.
“Oh, these things?” I said dismissively. “I’ve got a dozen pairs. I must have caught the heel on the tile.”
He looked me up and down, taking an ample amount of time to make sure my cleavage wasn’t damaged in the mishap.
While his eyes were glued to my tits, I continued my act.
“When you caught me, I couldn’t help but notice your hands. They’re so soft,” I gushed. “I can’t get over it. I love soft hands. There’s nothing worse than having a man with hands so rough that he can’t, well, you know, touch a woman in all the right places.”
“The Mexicans do the yardwork, and a maid cleans my home,” he said in a pompous tone. “These hands don’t do much but spend money.”
You’ll be spending some on a new watch here pretty quick.
“Can I touch them?” I reached toward him and then paused. “Do you mind?”
Beaming with hope, he turned his palms up. “Be my guest.”
I bent at the waist, giving him a full view of my cleavage. I cupped his wrist—and watch—with my left hand. I rubbed his palm with my right.
“Wow,” I murmured. “They’re incredible.
With a quick slip of my right hand, I unclasped the watch. Retracting my hand along the surface of his palm allowed me to remove the watch with my left hand without him noticing.
Still bent over in front of him, I dropped his watch into my bag. “I can only imagine if they were touching…” I fanned my face with my hand and stood. “I need to get something to cool to drink.”
I took a step back and stumbled. A quick “inspection” revealed a missing rubber pad on the heel of my right shoe.
“Well, here’s the culprit,” I said. “One of the little pads came off.”
He leaned forward and stared at the shoe. “You’d expect they’d stay glued on as much as those things cost. I’ve bought a few pairs of them. Damned things aren’t cheap.”
“I’ve got a pair of flats in the car.” I reached for my bag. “Let me go get them. I’ll be right back.”
“I’ll be right here,” he said with a smile. “Waiting impatiently.”
I batted my eyelashes and turned toward the door. After hobbling out of sight, I got in my car and drove away ten thousand dollars richer.
I knew Kenny B. wouldn’t care. It was just money. He could make it up, and then some, on Monday.
124
Goose
Dressed in Khaki pants and a crisp powder blue button-down shirt, the physically fit man standing on my front porch was either a cop, an insurance salesman, or a spokesperson for a health and wellness company. Hoping to put my foot against an insurance salesman’s ass, I opened the front door a few inches and prepared to send him on his way.
A quick scan of his person revealed a Sig Sauer .40 caliber pistol holstered to his hip. I swallowed against the taste of regret as it rose in my throat. “Evening, officer.”
“Detective,” he snapped back. “Detective Barnes.”
“I didn’t know there was a difference.” My mouth twisted into a half-assed smirk. “What can I do for you, detective?”
He nodded beyond me, toward the living room. “Mind if I come in?”
“As a matter of fact,” I said dryly. “I do.”
I peered toward his unmarked car, which was parked at the curb. The additional antennas, downgraded wheels, and muted bronze color glistening in the evening sun forewarned any savvy would-be criminals that a cop was in their midst. He—and his car—were as inconspicuous as a cock on a wedding cake.
“Do you need directions, or something?” I asked. “You get off the freeway and get twisted around? It’s easy with all the cul-de-sacs around here huh?”
He leaned back and looked at my house number. “Six forty-eight. I’m at the right place.” He gave me a quick look over. “You’re Gordon Pearce, right? Bank robber? Thief? Self-proclaimed weapons expert? Murderer?”
My asshole puckered tight. My face flashed hot. I struggled to maintain my nonchalant stance.
“Think you’ve got the wrong Gordon Pearce,” I said, the words nearly getting tangled in my throat. “I’m an amateur chef. I like planting flowers. I manage carwashes. I murdered a mosquito once. It was in Louisiana, though. I’m guessing that’s out of your jurisdiction.”
He looked me over. “You ought to do stand-up comedy.”
“You ought to go find a real criminal to fuck with, officer. Like I said, you’ve got the wrong Gordon Pearce.”
“I’m a detective,” he huffed. “And, I’ve got the right man, asshole. I need to ask you a few questions about an investigator that’s gone missing. He started nosing around you and your cohorts and just up and fucking vanished. Sound familiar?” He grinned a smug little grin. “We can either do it here, or at the station. I’ll let you pick.”
To convey innocence, I needed to maintain my jovial attitude and appearance. I started to give a smart-assed response. Before I got out my first word, he continued.
“If you choose to go to the station, you’re going in cuffs.” He smirked. “Just thought I’d clarify that.”
I wasn’t going anywhere in cuffs. The .22 caliber silenced Walther tucked into the small of my back at my waistband would make sure of that. I opened the door enough to lead him to believe I was going to offer him inside. Then, I offered him a smile and my departing remarks, instead.
“I’m sorry, detective,” I said in a mock apologetic tone. “This is where I exercise my right to have an attorney present before answering any questions.”
His eyebrows raised. “Are you sure that’s the position you want to take?”
“Are you sure you want to continue to pry and prod after I told you I didn’t want to talk to you?” I pointed toward the infrared camera centered in the door’s frame. “You’re being recorded, officer.”
He glanced at the camera. “When I come back, it’ll be with a warrant.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less,” I said with a smile. “Call in advance, and I’ll have some fresh donuts ready. I make my own dough. They’re dripping with grease and fattening as hell. I double dip ‘em in sugar, too. You’ll love ‘em. All my cop friends do.”
“Fuck you, Pearce,” he said through his teeth. “I will be back.”
“Don’t forget that warrant,” I said, closing the door as I spoke. “Without it, I might mistake you for an intruder. We know how that ends, now don’t we?”
“Are you threatening me?” he asked.
I closed the door and turned the deadbolt.
I didn’t make threats. If he showed up without a warrant, he’d be the first to find out.
* * *
Seated across from Baker at a hole in the wall Mexican joint in Chula Vista, I sawed at my enchilada with a plastic fork. The bottom tine snapped off. I tossed the useless utensil toward a trashcan in the distance.
“I hate these little chicken-shit places,” I muttered.
He glanced at the Spanish-speaking patrons. “What are we doing here?”
“I’ve got some things to ask you about,” I said flatly.
“I’m guessing if our cell phones are in the city and we’re in this shit-hole that it must be serious.”
Any time a cop knocked on my door it was a noteworthy occasion. When a cop referred to me as a murderer, it went from noteworthy to a fucking nuisance. I pushed my plate aside. “Remember that listening device we found at your place a while back?”
“I sure do.”
“Anything ever come of that?”
He shook his head. “Nope.”
Baker wasn’t opposed to keeping secrets, especially if he thought it was in the club’s best interest.
I cleared my throat. “Anything you’re not telling me?”
His eyes narrowed. “Like what?”
“Like, is there anything you’re not telling me?”
He looked away and stroked his beard. After a few strokes, he shifted his eyes to meet mime. “Not that I can think of. Why?”
“Had a detective stop by my house a few hours ago,” I explained. “He was talking about a dead investigator. I guess he might not be dead, the detective said he’d ‘gone missing’. Cocksucker referred to me as a bank robber, a thief, a weapons expert, and a murderer. In that order.”
His tanned face went stark white. His gaze fell to the table. “Fuck.”
“Fuck’s right, Brother. He said he’d be back with a warrant. Last thing I need is a cop digging through my house with a fucking warrant.”
He looked up. “Anything in there to get you hemmed up?”
“Not that I know of,” I responded. “You know as good as I do that the Republic of California doesn’t look too kindly on men who own two hundred weapons whether they’re illegal or not.”
His eyes went wide. “Two hundred?”
“Don’t try to twist this around, you prick. Yeah. I’ve got two hundred fucking guns. Who gives a fuck? Tell me about this dead investigator. Or whatever it is that made you go pale when I mentioned it.”
He looked away. The muscles in his forearm tensed. His leg bounced. He met my stern glare with eyes weighted down with regret. “Cash and I were selling the gold from the job we did in Rainbow. Got about a block from the house and I realized I’d forgotten something. When we went back to the house, the door was unlocked. When we opened it, there was a guy standing in there with a gun to Andy’s head. Cash shot him right between the running lights. Fucker had a government issue Sig Sauer and a badge. My guess is he’s the one your guy is talking about.”
“Jesus fucking Christ, Baker,” I said through my teeth. “You kept that from us?”
“From who?”
“The fucking club,” I snapped back. “We are a group, right? A brotherhood? It’s not you and us, is it? It’s a group, right? An MC?”
He stared.
I coughed out disgust. “Last I checked, I had a tattoo on my back that matched the one on your back. We’re equal, motherfucker.”
“I decided not to say anything, because there wasn’t much to say,” he explained. “Tito wiped his phone clean, I got rid of his car, and Cash got rid of the body. That was it, and I left it at that. Didn’t see much sense in getting everyone upset if I didn’t need to.”
“I’m supposed to feel warm and fuzzy that everything’s going to be everything after you tell me Cash got rid of the body? That dumb fuck probably tossed it on the side of the highway. Where’s the pistol Cash shot him with?”
“Right now?” he asked. “Probably stuck in the waistband of his jeans, why?”
“Where’s the fucking body?”
“He said he cut it into pieces and disposed of it.”
“Fucking amateurs,” I muttered.
His face contorted. “Excuse me?”
“If Cash shot him in the head, the bullet’s rattling around in the dead man’s skull. I doubt Cash split the man’s head open and dug it out. So, wherever he tossed the head is where the cops can find the bullet. When they find the bullet, they’ll be able to tie the death to Cash through ballistics. If he’s carrying that piece, they’ve got a murder weapon and an easy conviction. Like I said earlier, we’re a club. A group. The tattoos we have on our backs make it tough to claim in court that we’re nothing but old drinking buddies. The RICO act means that if Cash shot him, I’m just as guilty as Cash. So are you. So’s everyone else. You said, ‘Cash said he cut him into pieces and disposed of it.’ That means you weren’t there. If you weren’t there, that means Cash did things the way Cash does things. It’s no big secret that Brother Cash is one of the laziest sons-of-bitches on this planet. Lastly, people who are stupid as fuck cut bodies into pieces to dispose of them. That’s the kind of shit the cops have them write into TV scripts in hope of convincing some dip-shit criminal it’s what they ought to do the next time they kill somebody. I can’t fucking believe you were part of this clusterfuck, Bake.”
“Tell me what’s wrong with cutting the guy up into—”
“Ever heard of DNA?” I asked.
He glared.
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’,” I said. “Well, if you have a body in one place, you have one chance they’ll find the DNA. If you have a hand in Encinitas, a foot in LA, a head in El Cajon, another foot in Oceanside, another hand in San Pedro, and a torso in Compton, you’ve got six chances of them finding the DNA. Might as well have killed six motherfuckers and tried to hide the bodies. There’s a reason they catch every serial killer that’s ever existed, and that’s because there’s just too fucking much evidence out there not to.”
“I’ll talk to Cash—”
“We’ll talk to Cash,” I demanded. “We will also tell Reno about this, because he’s part of this Brotherhood. He has a right to know.”
“Alright,” he agreed. “We’ll talk to Cash.”
“And Reno.”
“And Reno,” he agreed.
“Let’s get out of this motherfucker,” I said. “I need to go get something to eat in a joint that has silverware that’s made of metal.”
I also needed to calm my nerves.
I knew one place to go where I could possibly do both.
125
Ally
“Everything alright?” George asked in passing.
I shot him a false grin. “Just great.”
He promptly turned around. After studying me for an instant, he sat down in the seat across from me. “What’s on your mind?”
“Nothing,” I responded. “Why?”
“You normally eat one of those long before the cheese hardens.” Wearing a look of disgust, he gestured to the burger I held. “That thing looks like they pulled it out from under a heat lamp at the Golden Arches. Something’s on your mind.”
I took a bite of the cold burger and shrugged. “Just in slow motion today, I guess.”
His brows lifted. “Waiting on someone?”
I may have been holding the sandwich for an hour for all I knew. I felt lethargic. Something was wrong, but I had no idea what it was.
“No.” I gave the burger a look. I wasn’t in the mood to continue eating. “Just killing time.”
“Did Lawson tell you that your biker buddy was in here last night?”
“Really,” I squealed, my voice three octaves higher than normal.
He grinned. “So, are you two…”
“No.” I put my burger down. “We just went for a ride on his motorcycle. I really like him, though.”
“I gathered that,” he said with a laugh. “Has he expressed any interest in you?”
There was no value in sharing that we’d explored each other’s genitalia in front of a beachside restaurant. It was obviously a fluke. The fact that Goose hadn’t taken a sexual step in my direction since let me know that one incident was out of character for him. Or that he wasn’t interested.
“A little bit,” I said, saddened by the fact things hadn’t progressed any further. “He’s hard to read.”
“How so?”
“Well. We went for a ride and then we went out to eat. I had a good time. But he hasn’t really done anything to indicate he’s got any interest in me. I can’t tell what he’s thinking.”
“He came in here last night looking for you.” He cocked an eyebrow. “For a girl who doesn’t have a phone, I’d say that’s a pretty good indication he’s got interest.”
I sighed. “He might have just been hungry.”
“He lives in La Mesa,” he argued. “It doesn’t matter if he takes the 8 to the 15 or dips down on 94, getting to this place is about as convenient as going to Mars. He didn’t come in here because he was hungry. Not for food, anyway.”
I swelled with hope. “Do you really think he came in here to see me?”
“He sure as hell didn’t come in here to see me,” he replied. “Maybe I ought to put up one of those dry erase boards over there by the kitchen. You two can write messages on it for each other.”
“Ha. Ha,” I said jokingly.
He picked the lint from his apron. After he had it clean of any foreign matter, he looked up. His face was expressionless.
“I liked the thought of being a matchmaker with Porter and Abby. He bought her an engagement ring. He was getting ready to give it to her when she died. I felt like there was unfinished business there. Like I failed.” He looked away. After canvassing the entire restaurant, his attention returned to me. “If you like this guy, I think you should explore all your options with him. I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I just don’t want…”
Porter and Abby’s death troubled him deeply. I wished there was something I could do to comfort him.
But there wasn’t. So, I just listened.
“If he ends up coming around, and if he’s not a jerk, maybe something will work out,” I said.
He held my gaze. “If a man’s character could be measured, Porter’s was as high it gets. If this guy was Porter’s best friend, and it’s pretty obvious he was, I think that’s all the endorsement I need. I’m going to say he’s not a jerk.”
“Hopefully I’ll get to find out.”
He straightened up the condiment caddy, and then brushed the crumbs from the table. About the time I expected him to get up and leave, he spoke. “When are you going to tell me what dragged you from Connecticut to California?”
I wouldn’t make a good character in a book, nor was my life’s subject matter interesting enough to make a movie. I wish I had a cool story to tell. How I escaped a violent ex, or that my parents retired and relocated to the Bahamas, leaving me searching for a new place to call home. There wasn’t a reason behind my leaving, other than I felt I needed a man in my life. A man and a little excitement.
