Biker Justice: A Skull Kings MC Novella (8 page)

“True North,” I whispered.

“And this goes without saying, but don’t tell anyone we had this conversation or I’ll have to kill you.”

I burst out laughing. It was from the tension. It was from the uneasiness I’d felt from the moment we walked into that house. Or maybe, I laughed hoping Logan would join me, assuring me that he was just kidding around about the killing part.

But he kissed me instead. And it was miles away from every single kiss he’d given me before. His lips groped, his tongue probed desperately. He communicated through that kiss what neither of us could put into words. He was seeking comfort from me, the way I did from him.

I peeled off my shirt and bra. Logan licked my nipples as I stretched out on my back on the futon. We were both drunk from the heat, unable to tell whether our sweat was from the balmy house or each other. He undressed the rest of me, and I pushed down his jeans.

“Baby,” he whispered.

I grasped his hard cock and guided it into me. I scratched his back, and he pulled at my hair. We weren’t just fucking; we were crashing into each other.

“Carmen! Give it to me,” Logan said, his voice low against my ear.

I rocked my hips, holding our bodies together. His mouth, my skin, my heat, everything was damp from our sex. My eyes fluttered as I let myself go, falling into the waves of pleasure.

Logan pushed his arms straight, his spine curling up toward the ceiling. His hips plunged into me one last time before he jerked himself out. The skin of his tight, muscular chest and hard abs flushed with color as he came, laying his thick, sticky ropes across my belly.

“I’m sorry,” he said, still breathless as he rummaged through his piles of clothes. He wiped off the mess with the inside of his boxer briefs.

I laughed, and my belly trembled under his hands. “You’re just spreading it around.”

Logan caught my eyes and smiled.
Well, I tried,
he seemed to say. And somehow, it was the perfect ending to a very unusual day.

Luckily, I had some baby wipes stashed in my purse. After cleaning each other up, we got dressed, locked up the house, and climbed on the Harley. There was a tinge of pink on the horizon as the last of the sunset drained away. Only a couple of hours had passed, yet it seemed like a lifetime. Armed with new knowledge, I was going back into town as a different girl.

I tried to sort through Logan’s wild story as we cut a dusty path through the desert. Part of me still couldn’t believe it, but seeing his old pictures and badge had helped somewhat. At least I didn’t doubt him anymore. Now, it was a question of whether or not I’d decide to help him.

I was afraid to admit it, but I already knew that I would.

––––––––

A
nthemhead was a town about halfway between Canyon City and Phoenix. It also had the closest pharmacy that carried the morning after pill.

The whole trip should’ve taken me two hours, tops. I’d made sure to buy a box of condoms while paying at the register. The paper bag of my purchases sat in my passenger seat as I drove back toward the interstate. My eyes skimmed over the signs by the road, every one of them typical advertisements of a smallish desert town. But one of them made me take a second look.

True North Healing Clinic.

I frowned behind my aviator sunglasses. “True North,” I recited to myself. A string of recognition vibrated in my mind. Wasn’t that what Lisbeth’s gang called themselves?

I flicked on my turn signal and made a U-turn.

The sign pointed toward an old adobe building that looked as benign as a doctor’s office. I parked in the mostly empty lot and slid out to walk toward the shade of the building. There was a bulletin board by the double-door entrance pinned with fliers for church organizations, methadone clinics, and drug rehab centers.

Find God’s plan for you at True North Healing Clinic,
read the largest flier of all. Below the title was a list of dates and times, apparently for support group meetings. The next one was in fifteen minutes.

I took a step back to study the entire building once more, shading my eyes. Then, I heard the crunch of tires rolling through the crumbled asphalt. I turned around just in time to watch a twenty-year-old Buick slide to a stop right beside my car.

A man wearing a chef’s coat got out of the driver’s side. Half of my mind urged me to run while the other half fought to keep me there to investigate further. So naturally, I just froze in place, unsure of what to do.

The man slammed his door shut. “Are you here for the meeting?”

“I—I don’t know.”

“You must be new.” His face suddenly broke out into a wide smile. “It’s normal to be nervous on your first time.”

I breathed an inward sigh of relief as the man made his way toward me. With his soft, gray hair and wrinkly smile, he had a sort of grandfatherly look about him. I accepted his handshake and introduced myself.

“I’m Father Alan,” he said.

“Father Alan?” I said, confused.

He glanced down at himself and chuckled sheepishly. “Oh, of course. I still have to change. My organization is short on funding, so I’ve picked up all sorts of odd jobs to make ends meet.”

I smiled guiltily, unable to come up with the right thing to say. Suddenly, my life’s problems seemed petty compared to the stuff Father Alan must’ve had to deal with.

“Why don’t you come inside? You can help me set up the refreshments.”

“Ah—well—” I stared helplessly after him as he began making his way toward the building. “Okay.”

I watched as he unlocked the doors and ushered me inside. The interior was very generic looking with a beige tile floor, fluorescent lighting, and vertical blinds on the windows. Tables were folded and propped against the cinderblock walls. The only other furnishing was a circle of chairs in the middle of the room.

“Why don’t you tell me about yourself?” Father Alan began.

I followed him into a small, adjacent office. “Um...well...I’m not really into sharing details about myself,” I said pathetically.

“That’s fine. I understand. You’ll find that a lot of women here have trust issues. Everybody is free to open up on their own time,” he said. He began undoing the white buttons of his coat. “Have a seat. I just need a minute.”

I lowered myself into a padded chair, trying to think of a graceful way to leave. Several excuses floated around in my mind, each one of them embarrassingly ridiculous. Father Alan circled around a cluttered desk, removing his chef’s coat as he went.

I directed my eyes to a motivational poster, blushing fiercely. He wore a plain white tee shirt under the coat, but it still felt wrong to sit idly in a room while a man of God undressed himself.

“So, what do you do here?” I asked.

“I mediate the support group, mostly.”

I dared to probe further. “Is the support group for just a certain type of person?”

Father Alan opened a squeaky cabinet. “In theory, yes. Female heroin addicts. But we have a wide variety of women. Mothers, widows, doctors, postal workers. Even prostitutes.”

My mind instantly drew up an image of Lisbeth. I recognized pieces of her in this place, in Father Alan, like a bloodhound picking up scent notes scattered throughout the environment.
True North. Heroin. Prostitutes.
But I struggled to piece them all together. I peeked back at Father Alan just in time to see him holding a black shirt by its collar.

I gasped.

Father Alan looked at me in surprise. “Pardon?”

I stood up. “I should go,” I said quickly.

“But the meeting—”

I rushed out of the office. At least I didn’t have to worry about finding an excuse to leave. I discovered that a handful of women had already arrived as I passed through the meeting room. They watched me curiously as I whipped toward the exit.

I pushed at the door and heard a cry of alarm as it hit someone on the other side.

“Oh, god, I’m sorry!” I said quickly. I stepped out to get a good look at the person I’d hit. “Lisbeth?”

“Carmen?”

Her expression told me that she was equally as surprised to see me as I was, only her surprise was also mixed with the sheer terror of being caught. So much blood drained from her face that even her lips turned white.

“What are you doing here?”

“I—well—I mean—”

I narrowed my eyes. “I
know
this place is connected to the gang you’re running from, Lisbeth.”

Lisbeth took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. This is a support group.”

I snatched her arm. “Then, why does the mediator have this same exact tattoo?”

Her long sleeves covered the compass on her arm, but at this point I knew exactly what it looked like. I stared pointedly at the spot where her tattoo should have been and could easily recall the image of its twin on Father Alan.

Lisbeth’s head jerked back. “You...you met Father Alan?”

Several car doors slammed in succession in the parking lot. My eyes snapped away from Lisbeth’s face just long enough to watch a few more women making their way toward the meeting.

I dropped my voice to a whisper. “I was with him in his office when he changed into his clergy shirt. I saw it on his arm.”

Lisbeth’s eyes widened, flicking back and forth between mine. I knew she was trying to come up with an explanation, and I knew she was failing miserably.

“He’s not really a minister, is he? What is this place, Lisbeth? Is there really a support group happening here?”

“Yes, there really is!” Lisbeth said. Her eyes shone with desperation. She flashed a quick smile at the three women who edged past us to get inside, but it disappeared just as quickly once the door shut behind them. “Okay, you caught me. I didn’t tell you the full truth, but you
cannot
stay.”

“Why can’t I?”

“Because it’s dangerous for you here!”

“Then, it’s dangerous for you, too.”

Lisbeth shook her head. “You don’t know anything, Carmen.” She said it firmly, defiantly. All of her guilt over being caught was gone. “You have to go.”

My hand finally fell away from her arm. I tried to soften myself. “How can I leave you here, Lisbeth?”

Lisbeth’s glare flickered. “I’ll tell you everything once I get back to town, okay? But you have to go now.”

My gaze passed over her shoulder to the bulletin board. How many of those church organizations were real?

“Fine,” I finally said. “But be careful.”

“I will,” Lisbeth said. She crossed her arms, standing her ground as she waited for me to leave.

I was halfway across the lot before she called out her next words.

“Oh, and don’t tell Logan anything this time.”

I winced at her accusatory tone.

* * *

I
cracked open the door to Xander’s room for about the fiftieth time that night.

“Don’t worry, Mom, I’m still here,” he said. He didn’t even bother to look up at me from his book.

I laughed nervously. “I’m sorry, buddy. I guess I’m a little on edge.”

I closed the door and padded softly to the kitchen. Lisbeth had texted me hours ago, claiming she’d be on her way soon. I’d watched the sky darken from blue to pink to starry-black since then. Where was she?

I spent ten minutes scrubbing grime off the stove when I finally heard it: the wheeze and sigh of a car sliding into my driveway. Headlights shone through the window and moved across my living room wall. A car door slammed, and Lisbeth’s silhouette appeared through the frosted glass of my front door.

“Come on in,” I said as I opened the door.

She shouldered past me into the kitchen and sat down at the table. “Before I tell you everything, you have to tell me what you were doing in Anthemhead.”

I blushed. “I had to go to the pharmacy there,” was all I said.

Lisbeth gave me an incredulous look. “Then, tell me what you were doing at the healing clinic.”

I felt my defenses go up immediately. Logan had warned me that this might happen. Lisbeth wanted to find out how much I knew so she could build up a lie that made sense. I needed to derail her somehow.

“Healing clinic?” I said. “Do you think I’m still going to believe that after what I saw?”

“It
is
a healing clinic,” she said.

“Here’s what I think,” I began. “Maybe the healing clinic is real, but you and Father Alan are not. I think he’s some sort of higher up in the gang, and he’s recruiting broken, vulnerable women from the support group.”

Lisbeth’s mouth twisted into a frown. “Sounds like you’ve had a conversation with Logan,” she spat.

“The question is,” I continued on, “why are you helping him?”

Lisbeth avoided my gaze and stared at my toaster instead. I dragged out the chair next to hers and sat down.

“You told me you did something bad,” I said. “You said they were looking for you. I kept your secret from Liam because I thought it’d keep you safe, but what’s the use if none of that is true?”

Lisbeth looked at me in surprise. “You
can’t
tell Liam.”

“What else am I supposed to do? I have no idea what kind of danger you’re in.”

“Can’t you just trust me to look out for myself?”

“I can’t trust you at all, Lisbeth.”

She sat back and gaped. Apparently, I’d struck a nerve.

“If I tell you the truth, will you promise not to tell Liam?” she said in a small voice.

“It has to be the whole truth.”

Lisbeth nodded. A knocking sound came out of another room, and her eyes narrowed. “What was that?”

“My kid. He’s in his room. Don’t worry, he can’t hear us.”

She eased back down and listened as the next few seconds ticked by in silence. Seemingly satisfied, she placed her hands on the table and played with the sleeves of her shirt. “I don’t know where to start.”

“How about you start by telling me what part of your story is true?” I said.

Lisbeth rolled her eyes. “
Fine.
When I ran away from home two years ago, I got into drugs. That part was true. But then, I got hooked, and it wasn’t so great anymore. That’s when a friend of a friend told me about True North Healing Clinic.”