Justice: Night Horses MC (2 page)

Fuck.

He hadn’t hit her like that in years, and she almost couldn’t believe that he did it now. She was so fucking sick of him and his bullshit.

Although… Last time he hit her that hard, she’d been totally broke, and still in high school.

She was eighteen, she had a job, she had five hundred bucks in her pocket. Sleeping on couches for a while couldn’t be worse than that.

A light touch to her face confirmed that she’d have a nasty black eye.

She was done.

She was done, and she was getting the hell out of there.

It didn’t take long to get all of her stuff together. Three sketchbooks, some clothing, and an old shoebox full of mementos - the only things she thought were worth taking after eighteen years.

She walked back into the empty tattoo parlor ten minutes later.

“I’m leaving,” she announced.

“You’d better,” said Jan.

She stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“Getting out of town is the best idea you’ve ever had,” he said.

“I… I was gonna ask if I could crash here for a few days until I found a place,” she said.

He shook his head.

“No way,” he said. “Snake found out that you charmed the boss, and he is fucking pissed. Why do you think everyone cleared out? He’ll have your head.”

“I didn’t mean to,” she whispered.

“Doesn’t matter to Snake. He’ll beat you worse than your daddy ever did, and if you stick around after, he’ll probably kill you,” he said.

“You can’t help?” she asked.

She’d trusted Jan. She thought he was her friend.

“Wish I could, princess, but the only way I’ve survived in this town for twenty years is by staying the hell out of anything involving our biker friends,” he said. “If I take sides now… I’m cooked too, and you’re still fucked.”

Allie just kept staring at him. What the hell was she going to do?

“Get on a bus,” Jan said, patiently. “It doesn’t really matter where. Just… go.”

He opened the cash drawer and pulled out a wad of twenties, flipping through them quickly to count.

When he looked back up at her, his eyes were softer, and she saw the regret shining through.

“Here’s your pay, princess. I’m… I’m sorry it’s gotta be this way,” he said.

Allie took the money and glanced at it. It was more than he owed her, but not by much. Maybe forty bucks.

“Thanks,” she whispered.

She cleared out the locker she’d used to keep certain things away from her father, and Jan handed her a canvas bag.

They didn’t say a word to each other as she left.

Allie got on a bus.

She’d decided that she’d try to go someplace warmer, if she had to leave Ohio. There was a bus leaving in half an hour for somewhere in the South, and that seemed like as good a place to head as any.

The thirty minutes she spent waiting on the platform, clutching her bag and thinking every person she saw was Snake coming to get his revenge were some of the longest of her life.

The bus ride, in comparison, was mercifully boring.

She’d never been further than fifty miles from the city, but the first few hundred miles were pretty much the same as the countryside she’d already seen.

Her hands stayed busy, sketching little scenes that flashed by, over and over, as she focused on improving her speed, until the adrenaline wore off and she fell asleep.

When she woke up, she was in the South.

Her seatmate was shaking her shoulder.

“Hey, girl, didn’t you say you were almost there last stop?” she asked. “You gotta get your ass off the bus or you’ll miss it.”

“Yeah… yeah!” Allie said, waking up in a bit of a daze.

Before she knew it, she was alone in a strange city, watching the bus leave the station.

The flickering lights weren’t exactly comforting. She saw a few dark figures moving around, and she knew she had to get out of there.

She walked up to the terminal, but it was closed. Nothing but a few vending machines and a graffiti’d-over map of the city.

Well, she couldn’t stay here, that was for sure. She walked to the edge of the street and looked both ways. She saw more lights in one direction than the other, so that was where she headed.

Surely she could find a motel, and, for once, she actually had some money.

She clutched her bag even more tightly against herself as she crossed in front of dark alleys. It was almost two o’clock in the morning, and she was alone.

This was bad.

By now, she’d figured she’d walked over half a mile. She had been counting on finding an all-night diner or something by now, somewhere lit up and safe, or at least safer.

“Hey, bitch, how much?” she heard a man’s voice slur.

“No,” she said immediately. “I’m not a whore.”

“What the fuck else are you doing out here, then?” he asked. He was young and drunk and strong, she saw, when he stepped into the light.

She was in so much trouble.

Before she could scream, he was on her, pinning her painfully to a brick wall and covering her mouth with his own. His questing hand found her breast under her shirt and squeezed hard as she struggled.

She wrenched her face away and took in a lungful of air to yell for someone, anyone to help her, but before she could, the asshole grabbed her by the hair and yanked her around the corner of the building into an alley in one motion, throwing her onto the ground and knocking the breath out of her.

Her head hit the concrete and her eyes crossed with pain.

She tried to cross her legs too hard to be undone, but the man was as strong as he looked, and he easily pulled them apart.

He was struggling to pull her jeans down as she screamed when someone kicked him off of her.

Tears ran down Allie’s face as she zipped her jeans back up and stood, putting her back against the brick wall and staring.

The man who had, maybe, rescued her was sturdy and blond, with hard eyes and an easy smile.

“Get the fuck out of here,” he said to the man who’d try to rape Allie, and the other guy seemed to vanish.

“Sweetheart, you shouldn’t be out here by yourself,” the blond said. “Lemme buy you some dinner.”

She stared at him.

No way was she going to just disappear with him.

He grinned at her.

“Hey, I’ll head to the diner, you follow me as far as you feel safe. You don’t gotta be right up on my ass, you can get a good head start,” he said.

Allie cautiously followed the blond, who, true to his word, stuck to well-lit streets and never even looked back to see if she was following.

A surge of hope rose in her chest when she saw the diner.

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DANIEL

The man strolled along under the flickering streetlights, smiling to himself. He always kept an eye on the bus station, but a girl this pretty and fresh hadn’t showed up in a long time.

He made a mental note to give Jeremy an extra few bucks, he played his part like a champion.

This was the tricky part.

The girl was following him, so he was still in the game, but this was where he could lose her.

With that face and those legs, she’d make him a lot of money if he could just convince her that he was the savior she had dreamed of all her life.

By the time she figured out Jeremy worked for him, well, she’d be in too deep.

He thought about her perky little ass and his cock twitched. He needed to try her out as soon as possible. He usually kept his hands off the merchandise, but every man had a type, and he fucking loved redheads.

He’d carefully steered her to a diner in the right part of town. If she’d kept walking straight, she’d have found a decent hotel in just a few blocks, and he’d have lost her.

When he reached the diner, he held the door open for her.

Gotta be a gentleman
, he reminded himself lazily.
Gotta be good to her. For now.

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ALLIE

Stepping through the door the stranger held for her into the bright diner made every muscle in Allie’s body relax.

There was an old man at one table, a guy about her age behind the counter, a few waitresses… witnesses. People.

She took a table right up front, and the stranger sat across from her.

“My name’s Daniel,” he said. “Nice to meet you, sweetheart.”

Allie was starving, her bruise from her father was throbbing, new bruises from the attack Daniel had saved her from were forming. She was achy and exhausted and near tears.

The food put down in front of her was hot and fresh and pretty much as good as anything she’d ever eaten.

Daniel had been really interested in her, asking her about where she was from, exclaiming over her drawings.

“Maybe you’ll have to give me a nice little tat,” he said, grinning at her again, and she found herself smiling back and agreeing.

She was fed, and relaxed.

Warm, drowsy, content.

Half of her was really charmed by this man, and she realized she wanted him to like her, to trust her and think she was special.

Half of her was wary as hell.

He’d shown up so perfectly.

“What were you doing out so late?” she asked without preamble.

He blinked at her, and shrugged.

“I couldn’t sleep. I live nearby, was out for a walk to clear my head. I’m a night owl, you know?” he asked.

She nodded.

It made sense, it did… but there was a flash of something in his eyes. A flash that reminded her of Snake, of her father, of men she’d met who didn’t like to be challenged.

She was sick to death of men like that.

“Well, thanks,” she said. “I guess I’ve gotta go pretty soon.”

With a small smile, she tapped her empty plate.

“Want to come back, stay with me?” he asked. His smile seemed genuine now, but she couldn’t quite trust it. She couldn’t quite trust him.

“No, man,” she said. “I really appreciate it, but I’ve gotta stand on my own two feet. I’ll see you around.”

She stood up and went to pay the waitress for her share of the meal.

“Nah, don’t worry about it,” Daniel said. “I told you I’d take you out, and I always keep my word.”

He tossed a few bills onto the table.

“It’s not safe here,” he said. “Lemme walk you to a motel.”

Allie couldn’t figure out any way to refuse him without spending hours waiting for dawn huddled in a booth.

She looked torn.

When the waitress stopped by, a woman in her forties, Allie caught her eye.

“Uh, ma’am?” she asked. “What motel would you recommend nearby? Cheap?”

The woman looked from Daniel to Allie and back again.

“I’m due for a break,” she said. “There’s a place five minutes away that’s pretty good. I’ll drive you there. You look done in.”

Before Allie could thank the woman, Daniel moved to protest. He gave the woman a hard stare.

“The girl’s exhausted, I’ll take her to the Motel 6,” the waitress said. “Just give her your number, you’ll see her again.”

The man seemed to decide that he needed to bow out gracefully.

Allie wound up at a local motel, not the chain the woman had mentioned, with a lecture about staying away from men like Daniel.

The woman followed her in to get her room and told the clerk to knock a little off the rate.

“Yes, Momma,” the guy behind the desk said.

“And put her somewhere up close to here, with the streetlight,” the waitress snapped. “I’ve gotta get back to work.”

“Yes, Momma,” the guy repeated.

He grinned at Allie.

“Fifty bucks a night, cash,” he said. She handed over a hundred bucks, and he handed her a room key.

Safely in the room, with the door locked and deadbolted, the dresser and the heavy TV holding it shut, Allie tried to calm down and rest.

After pacing for half an hour, she finally fell into an exhausted sleep in the locked bathroom, curled up on the floor with a towel for a pillow.

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