Wild Rider (Bad Boy Bikers Book 2) (8 page)

Now was a time for stealth. Who knew if the cranked-up Copperheads were patrolling every street in the city, trying to track down any bikes they could find?

They were all paranoid and trying to sort out a plan, sitting in a room. Tank was by the door, looking out the window every so often, silent and enormous, a wall unto himself. Locke sat on the ground under the television, cleaning and re-cleaning his gun. Ace eyed his technique critically from the bed. He held a deck of cards in one hand, shuffling silently. 

Helen was on the other bed, laying down, trying to be unseen and unheard. The less she participated, the better. All she wanted was to be forgotten about. Beretta, of course, sat near her. For appearance’s sake—she supposed—he had placed a hand on her leg, stroking her.

She remembered he had busy hands. Probably he was jonesing for some piece of candy to soothe his nerves; instead, she was the sweetest thing around that he had.

As little as she liked to admit it, the motion was calming. His hands were warm and she was cold, dressed still in nothing but her scrubs from the day before. She very much wanted to use the motel bathroom and shower, but getting naked around these four men felt like an invitation to something she couldn't back out of.

“You think Ivan sold us out?” asked Beretta.

Locke shook his head. “You never trusted him.”

“No, I don’t. And none of you should either. Who else knows as much as he does about our operation? He’s out for his own, not for us.”

“That’s why I don’t think it was him,” said Ace. “He’s got nothing to gain by selling us out and everything to lose. As long as we’re in the game, we can hit as hard as anybody against the Copperheads. If he pushed us out, the Furnace loses. It doesn’t play with me. It was someone else. Someone we didn't see. A tail, a spy, something like that.”

“It doesn’t matter how it happened,” said Locke. He had finished cleaning his gun and started sliding the pieces back together with heavy clicks. “All that matters is how we make that money so we can stay the fuck alive. I mean...” he shook his head. “We've done somewhere between jack and shit in this town. If we run back to Marlowe and Howitzer, they'll laugh us straight out of the gang...and then we'll
still
get killed by the Cartel. We can't prove to Marlowe that it was the Copperheads killed Gallows, so they can't go to war for us.”

He finished assembling his gun and snatched the chamber back, a satisfying click filling the room.

“Probably,” said Tank, “they'll be just as happy to hear Gallows is dead. Man was a fugitive, after all. One less loose end for all of them.” He raised an eyebrow and then added, “And us.”

“Fuck it,” said Locke. “Let's just kill as many of them as we can until we can't anymore. Copperheads, the Cartel, everybody. We owe that much to Gallows. I didn't like him, but he was a brother, and blood needs blood.”

“That's suicide,” said Tank.

“It's all suicide at this point, isn't it?”

Beretta laughed. “He's got a point.”

Already, she had overheard them discussing their available pool of cash between the four of them—just about a thousand dollars. Each had more in stashes around the state, but none were willing to leave to pick it up without a plan to put it in use. They would stay and protect each other.

Even as much as they clearly disliked one another, betraying the Wrecking Crew to save themselves was out of the question. It was admirable, in a way.

She didn't think the same principle applied to her, so the admiration only went so far. Helen took the news of the Cartel's plan with little surprise, a kind of clinical appreciation. Someone else who was promising to kill her? Old hat at this point. Get in line.

“Maybe if we hole up somewhere,” said Tank, “draw them in. We can just pick them off as they come at us?”

“I don't know of any place they can't just burn down,” said Beretta. “But you're right that we need to do something. Be on the offensive, though. We need to...I don't know.” He squeezed Helen's leg. “Hit them where it hurts. Buy us some time.”

“They have money,” said Helen. “Can’t you just take some of theirs?”

She was looking at the door, not any of them. Tank was in her field of vision, though, and that was all she needed to see. He was surprised to hear her talk, near the first time all day she’d spoken. Beretta’s hand tensed on her leg.

There was an audible intake of breath—Ace, no doubt beginning a rampage of swearing. Helen wasn't supposed to speak around these men. Beretta and Ace had made that plenty clear. Already she was regretting opening her mouth.

And it wasn't only because they were going to be mad at her. It was more the other part—the debates now. Debates that
she
would be responsible for. Helen steeled herself. Here it comes—the waffling, the constant indecision, the comical attempts at trying to foist off the decisions onto some mythical third party who would swoop in on a Griffin of Knowledge and deliver fair judgments swinging away with the Sword of Truth.

But then Beretta said, “Yeah. Steal their fucking money? Yes. That's exactly what we could do. We could make it happen in...” he thought for a moment, “ I don't know, two, three days?”

Oh, god.
God
.

Her heart pounded as quick and as sure as if he had kissed her for an hour. Just
deciding
that—just like that! No debate. No hours of back-and-forth. Just a decision and it was done. On to the next task.

Once, her family had spent a year mulling over the purchase of a new kitchen table. Then, when it arrived and the color wasn’t right, they spent another six months mulling over whether it actually clashed with the decor enough to send it back to the manufacturer for a fix.

She wasn’t
used
to decisions like this in her public life. As a nurse, she had to make decisions all the time; it was part of what drew her to the job. She couldn’t hesitate—but then, there also weren’t a lot of judgment calls for a nurse like her. She followed the orders of doctors and acted according to protocols. Sometimes she had stress attacks about being a doctor—deciding which organ to cut into, what diagnosis to give.

Her job was occasionally
suggesting
these things, informing doctors and other nurses about her thoughts and intuitions, but never did she ever have to decide the fate of someone else’s life for them without a mountain of medical evidence and standard procedure to back up her decision.

Tank nodded. “They've got a point, boss. Ain’t nobody carries change in this town around like the Copperheads.”

“The amount of traffic they do? I bet they’ve got four, maybe five stashes in the city,” said Locke. “I can go searching around, suss up some leads.”

“Suss up some whores, you mean,” said Tank.

Locke smiled. “Leads are leads.”

Ace paced from end of the room to the other, knocking his hand against the television and the dresser and the wall in arrhythmic time.

“Could hit a shipment, yeah...” He half-muttered, tossing his head this way and that. “...have to bring a lot of guns, though...”

“Ivan might help us out,” said Locke. “If you really trust him.”

“I don’t trust him enough to tell him everything,” said Ace. “Nothing about the Cartel. But if we pay him, he’ll be on the spot for us.”

“But how are we gonna find the stashes?” said Tank. “Not that I don’t trust pretty boy, there, but that’s a gamble.”

“Just pick a man up,” said Beretta. He pointed at Helen. “She can make him talk.”

Already, she had retreated out of the conversation, content that she had said her piece—ill-advised though it was—and rather amazed that the four of them, especially Beretta, had seemed to glom onto it as some good idea. It had appeared to her that anything out of a woman’s mouth was automatically discounted with men like these. Maybe not.

But now Beretta was volunteering her for...

“I can do the what now?”

––––––––

B
eretta turned his bike off, taking an uneasy look around the dark parking lot. There were lights on, but they only shined down directly beneath themselves. The dark pushed in on the light, keeping it from the shadowy places in the corners of the buildings and the grass. Anyone could be hidden out there.

“I’m just telling you, we’re taking a risk here.”

Helen squared her jaw. “Do you want to buy me clothes?”

He shook his head. “We need all the money we can get right now for the job.”

“Then I’m going to need to pick some of mine up. Unless you want an old lady who wears nothing but scrubs.”

They were at her apartment complex, a small gated community called Stockland Springs. There weren't springs in Stockland anymore than there was a rain forest, but that didn't seem to bother the marketers of such a place. Beretta had circled the lot four times now, searching for any sign of other bikes. There were none, but that didn’t mean the Copperheads couldn’t have traveled in something else.

He didn't know how or why the Copperheads would be there—but he wasn't taking anything for granted. His hackles were up and he'd stayed alive this long by trusting his instincts.

It was a short jog up to her apartment on the third floor. That didn’t sit well with him either. First floor would have been ideal. Bad for being attacked, maybe, but better for leaving. Third floor—there wasn’t much place to go if someone started shooting at you, unless you wanted a broken leg by jumping out the window.

“In and out,” he said at the door. “Grab your clothes and let’s go.”

She nodded and he opened the door, still in possession of her keys.

The inside of her apartment was spacious, largely because it was sparsely furnished. In the living room, there was a couch and a television, but no coffee table, no night stands. There were no other surfaces except for the counters in the kitchen. He followed her in, shutting the door and remaining close to it, gun out just in case he needed it.

He remembered her saying how she had only moved in something like four months ago. Not that long, but certainly long enough to pick up some budget furniture at least. He wondered why she didn't bother to make herself a home. There were envelopes gathered on her kitchen counter—bills coming due. Some were second notices.

You need a better plan, Helen
.

In her bedroom, Helen tossed a suitcase down and began filling it with clothes. She didn’t know how long she was staying.

Scared, she must be. Handling it well though. There was a toughness in her that drew him to everything that made her up.

His hands ticked against his thigh; a combination of impatience and desire filled him, something he usually solved with a quick grab at a piece of chocolate. Beretta was careful not to overdo it—he had
some
vanity, and didn't much enjoy the idea of being some overweight slob.

But he was, much as he tried to deny it, a slave to his impulses. It was just too bad his whole stash of snacks had burned up with the warehouse. Now all he had to feast on was the sight of Helen—and god, what a sight she was.

He wanted to hold her gorgeous body, to kiss her, to tell her it would be fine. He wanted to press himself onto her body, push her into the wall and let her feel the hardness she had inspired pushing down his thigh.

But of course he couldn’t do that—that would be stupid. More trouble than he wanted. She wouldn't want him to, anyway.

Smart girl, to want him out of her life. He'd make her wish come true as soon as he could.

He didn't blame her for leaving him. As much as he could, he understood it. His life was one long chain of violence, hell, and conflict. Why throw yourself into that?

What kind of man would he be to want her to share that with him? What kind of man would he be to want her to ignore all that, no matter the cost to her?

But he
had
wanted her to do just that—to ignore the consequences and ride with him. He
had
wanted her to buy in with him, to know he could protect her.

He tapped the wall hard with his fingers, trying to push those thoughts away. They weren't the real thoughts, not the ones that counted.

Better for her to get out. Beretta couldn't protect anyone. He had proven that well enough.

She began to change clothes—taking off her scrubs and then her underwear underneath. He wasn’t going out of his way to look, but she wasn’t going out of her way to hide either. She passed in front of the door way, no clothes on, and his eyes glued onto her curves.

Her body, naked, was beautiful. He saw her from behind—the muscles in her back, the tone of her sides and behind. Hardness took a hold of his cock and spurred him forward. He had to put a hand on the wall to keep him in place. He could see the naked cheeks of her ass, the busty swell of her breasts from one side. Her hair swept down, covering some of her, but that only drove him more wild.

He forgot entirely about guarding the door. Instead, he watched, transfixed, as she pulled up a fresh pair of panties over her crotch, slipped on a new bra. Then she turned and saw him staring at her. Her cleavage presented forward in that tight bra, like a gift for him.

It wasn’t lingerie. It probably wasn’t even her nice underwear. It didn’t matter. The sight of this beautiful woman presented like that had broken down his resistance.

In three quick steps, Beretta rushed forward across the apartment and into her bedroom. He pushed her back against the drawer.

“What are you doing?” She gulped, breathing hard. But she didn’t try to stop him. She didn’t push him away.

That was all the opening he needed.

He leaned in, kissing her deep, running a hand down her side and squeezing her tight against his body.

Goddamn, but it felt so good to kiss her again. His cock, hard and ready, stiffened against her body as their lips melded once again.

Her leg wrapped around his and she
moaned
as she slipped her fingers up under his shirt.

This was happening, her and him. It was happening
right now
. His cock was as urgent as a heart attack, and he needed to feel her pussy wrapped around it, tighter and tighter, coaxing him to come inside that beautiful body of hers.