Smolder: Trojans MC (41 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

Olivia watched as the clock in her apartment went from eight fifty-nine to nine o’clock. It had officially been twenty-four hours since she had last seen David. Her bed still smelled like him. She had called him six times in the night and had received no answer. She told herself that she would give him until the morning to get in contact with her. The morning was here, and she was still alone.

Olivia thought of the last time she had seen David. She had been sitting in her bed, still warm and half asleep, struggling to wake up. She remembered David rolling out of bed and moving away from her, putting on his clothes and his shoes. There had been one final goodbye over his shoulder as he left. She never should have let him go. She should have kept him there with her; they should have confronted Mike together—except they couldn’t have. Olivia had still been a cop, was still a cop. If David had brought a cop to a God’s Reapers safe house, there was a chance neither of them would have been allowed to leave.

She kept following the path farther and farther back. There had been a moment where they had gone off-course. They had made a fatal error somewhere, and if she could only find it, she could fix everything. Maybe it had been their first meeting in Sweetie’s disgusting trailer when they had stood so close to each other. Maybe it was that night when he had followed her to The Gray Lamp and she had brought him home. But no matter how far back she reached, there was only one answer. They never should have met.

However, she couldn’t believe that. She couldn’t believe that her life would have been better without David in it. The more she searched their history together the more Olivia realized that things might have actually been worse had they never met. The Reapers still would have been raided and Rick would still be building his drug empire—only no one would know about it. Olivia would still have been in danger—only it would have been a danger she didn’t see coming.

She had often heard, in the poems and books they had made her read in school, of lovers throwing everything away for only each other. Couples that met and set fire to the rest of the world, claiming they only needed each other. Olivia had always thought that such a foolish notion to throw everything away for some person you had just met, but she understood it now. Those lovers hadn’t set fire to the rest of the world, the rest of the world had always been burning and the two lovers had decided that they would rather cling to each other than face the blaze alone. The world was a dark and dangerous place; it was better to have someone beside you when it came time to walk through it.

For the first time in a long time, Olivia had nothing to do. For the last week, she had been running double duty—cop by day, and doing her own unofficial investigations by night. She had been run ragged and exhausted only yesterday. But now here she was, well rested and ready to go with no destination in sight.

How would she ever get hold of David? It seemed insane that all she had on him was a cell phone. But it was David’s own doing. He had strived to live off the grid, owning no property, using a burner phone. He was a man who didn’t want to be found, which made searching for him hard. Without her police resources, it made searching for him impossible. She had spent the last night living off of hope. Hope that he would call with some good reason…his phone had died, he had lost it, the Reaper’s had confiscated it, but now they had given it back. Those hopes had kept her alive, but it had been over a day, and hope was no longer enough.

There was also the simple and embarrassing fact that she had no idea where he lived. He mentioned a house somewhere north, but he had been quick to change the subject. She had the feeling that he didn’t want to talk about it, like maybe he was embarrassed about the state of his house, or where it was located. She always figured she would see it sometime, and she preferred her apartment to anyone else’s. However, now it was too late. She hadn’t asked where he lived and now he was missing and she didn’t even know where to start looking.

Anything could have happened to him. He could have angered Mike and been killed. He could have angered Mike and been taken away by the rest of God’s Reapers. He could have tried to confront Rick himself and been captured. He could have tried to confront Rick and been killed. Olivia wiped away a tear and shook her head. Sitting on her couch and imagining all of the terrible things that might have happened to David wasn’t going to save him. It was only going to drive her mad.

Think, think, Olivia,
she thought, standing up and pacing the apartment, hoping moving around would help her.
You don’t know where David is
, she thought,
so the next step is to find out where he was last.
He was last with Mike, but Olivia didn’t know where Mike was being held. The God’s Reapers headquarters, the garage that had been raided had been re-opened, but she couldn’t go there. The bikers still hated Olivia; they still thought that she was responsible for what had happened. She scoffed as she thought about how the members would have been thrilled to learn about her suspension.

She thought of every time she had ever seen David. There was Hillary Sweetie; she had led Olivia to David once before, but Olivia didn't think she could handle another day of sitting in her car and waiting. She needed to be proactive and she needed to find an actual person with actual information who could actually help her.

Then, she remembered; there had been one other time she had met people who had claimed to be friends with David but weren’t members of God’s Reapers. What were their names? There had been two kids. One who had been beaten up pretty good by a junkie, and his friend. Olivia wracked her brain, the names were right on the tip of her tongue, and then she remembered: Tommy and Joey. They had given Lance an address, and the information would still be in the notebook she had taken with her.

Olivia raced to her kitchen table and began to root through the box of stuff she had taken with her from her suspension, and there was the notebook. She flipped through it and then saw in Lance’s handwriting Joey’s name and his address on the north side of town.

Olivia drove as fast as she could to the address that had been listed for the barely nineteen-year-old Joey. She drove north, past the industrial area and into the poor residential part of town. The same neck of the woods Hillary Sweetie called home. Olivia drove to the address and parked her car on the corner, sitting for a moment, watching and waiting. Joey lived in a small trailer, just like Hillary. The yard was mostly dust, and there was nothing to give any shade. She could see window units in the trailer working hard to chug cool air into the hot little trailer.

Finally, feeling like she could wait no longer, Olivia got out of her car and walked towards the trailer. The sun was high above her, and the street was quiet. The crunching of Olivia’s boots over the sand sounded unnaturally loud to her ears. She walked up to the trailer and hit the door with three confident knocks.

She could hear a TV on inside, and it only took a moment, for a much better looking Joey to answer the door. He paused at the screen door, looking Olivia up and down before finally opening the door a crack and sticking his head through it.

“Yeah?” he asked, and Olivia realized that he didn’t recognize her as the cop that had found him bleeding in the streets all those weeks ago.

“Um hey,” Olivia said, allowing her voice to go unnaturally high. “You’re like Joey, right?”

“Who’s asking?”

“Well, I am. I’m um...friends with David Creely. Well, friends might not be the best word to describe it. He and I have kind of a thing, that when I’m in town I give him a call, you know how it is right?” she asked, batting her eyelashes and hoping she wasn’t laying it on too thick.

“Oh yeah,” Joey said, coming out of the trailer, standing in the sun and puffing out his chest. “I got a couple of girls like that myself,” he said. It took all of Olivia’s strength to not call him out on this obvious lie.

“Right, of course. Well, here’s the thing. He somehow left with my phone. And obviously, I need my phone, you know? So he said you might have a spare key to get into his house and that you could give me directions? We’re usually at a hotel; I haven’t been to his place in so long I forgot where it is. But I have a flight leaving in an hour and I need my phone. Please tell me you can help me out and be my hero?” The spare key had been a wild guess. She didn’t think Joey actually had one, but she didn’t want a key, she just wanted to know where he was.

“You look like a sweet kid,” the nineteen-year-old who still lived with his mother said. “I’ll get the key and give you directions and we’ll have you on that flight in no time. And say, maybe next time you come to town you bring a friend and we go on a nice double-date.”

“That sounds great to me,” Olivia said. Joey slipped into the trailer but came out a few seconds later holding a house key.

“So, you’re gonna head down Cherry until you hit the gas station, then make a left. Make a right onto Ridge Street and David lives in an apartment in the fifth house on the left side. 1942 Ridge Street.”

“Thank you so much,” Olivia said, and she meant it.

“No problem, babe. Good luck with your flight.”

Olivia jogged to her Jeep and pressed her foot on the gas, blowing through stop signs and racing down the street until she finally saw it. It wasn’t a nice looking place, but it wasn’t too bad either. It was simple two-unit house with a decorative rock front yard. But there was no bike parked in the yard, and Olivia’s heart fell.

She parked her car on the street and walked over the rocks until she got to the porch. There was clearly a front door for the main part of the house and then a separate set of outdoor steps that led to the second floor. Olivia walked along the porch until she came to the front door. She listened for a moment, but heard nothing. She tried to peer through the windows, but long white curtains blocked them. Olivia pulled a pair of gloves out of her pocket and checking once to make sure no one was watching or sneaking up on her, she put the key in the lock and pushed open the door.

The house was silent. Olivia took a step inside and was in the living room, and she could see the kitchen beyond it. The house could best be described as a bachelor pad. It wasn’t messy, but it also didn’t really look like anyone had lived there for very long. There was a dark brown couch and chair, a large TV, and a coffee table with old copies of Popular Mechanics stacked on one side. But there were no pictures on the walls, no rugs on the floor. It looked like the home of a man who spent most of his time not at home.

Olivia turned right down a small hallway where there was a small bathroom and behind that what must have been David’s bedroom. She opened the door slowly, feeling like a voyeur as she stepped into his room. Like the living room, there were only the basic furnishings necessary—a bed, a dresser, a laundry basket. There was a handful of change and a comb on the dresser and not much else.  

Olivia couldn’t resist, she sat down on his bed. It was firm but soft, and as she sank into it, she tried to fight the tears that were coming. She stood quickly, stopping her tears, determined to be useful. The kitchen would give the best idea of the last time someone had been in the house. Food left out or dishes were often the best clues in a case like this.

The kitchen was empty. There was only an old cup of coffee in the sink. And then, right there in the middle of the table was David’s cell phone. She picked it up and could see that there were several missed calls, but the screen was locked. She knew most of those calls were from her anyway.

David’s bike was gone, his wallet was gone, and his phone was still sitting on the kitchen table. He hadn’t left. She knew that for a fact. She knew that there was no way that David had left her or the Reapers. He was more determined than she was to catch the betrayer, but someone had gone a long way to make it look like he had run.

Olivia couldn’t hold the tears back anymore. A loud sob echoed across the lonely and empty house as she finally broke down. All those long days and long nights and betrayals had caught up with her, and she collapsed into a kitchen chair as she sobbed uncontrollably. David was missing. David who had come to be her only friend in the world was gone. But he was more than a friend; he was her lover, her confident, and her partner in crime fighting, far more than her actual partner had ever been. She was beginning to think she might love him—but how would she ever find him?

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

Olivia drove her Jeep down the dusty roads of Marina’s Crest, occasionally reaching up to angrily wipe the tears from her eyes. It was dangerous; sometimes her vision would get so blurry that the world was reduced to nothing more than splashes of wavy colors, the blue of a car, the orange of the desert. Everything was fuzzy and meaningless, and she didn’t care.  She felt like she could barely breathe, and so she was constantly taking in heavy, deep breaths as she tried not to sob. She was out of control of her body, sometimes her limbs felt weak, and other times they shook. Olivia Waters was a mess.

She didn’t know where David was. He was supposed to call her, and he hadn’t; he hadn’t been at home either. She suddenly felt so small and alone in the world; David could be anywhere, and she had no idea how to find him. She wanted to put an APB out on David, declare him missing and have the entire police force search for him until he was brought back to her. However, she wasn’t a cop anymore; she was just a disgrace.

Someone had taken David. They had gone to a lot of work to make it look like he had just left. His motorcycle was gone, and his burner phone was left behind; it had all the markings of a man who had finally decided to say fuck it all and take off. However, Olivia knew better. David wouldn’t have left the club—and he wouldn’t have left her. He was too invested in what was going on and too worried about his brothers to leave now.

Without even realizing it, Olivia was driving towards Hillary Sweetie’s house. She acted like each turn was a subconscious decision, but that was a lie. She knew exactly where she was going. She knew that she shouldn’t go that woman’s house. There would be no fooling Hillary like she had fooled Joey. Hillary knew Olivia, and she knew Olivia was a cop. There was also a very good chance that Hillary hated Olivia and blamed her for putting the Reapers behind bars. There was the chance that Olivia could show up at Hillary’s and she would call the remaining bikers—and Olivia would find herself in a shallow grave next to David.

Olivia pulled her Jeep into Hillary’s dusty driveway, and after she stopped, she looked at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were puffy and red, and there were bags under them. Her hair was a mess and her skin pale. Olivia scoffed at her reflection. How many times had Olivia looked disdainfully on Hillary’s bleached hair and her cheap nails, who was she to judge? Now, it would be Hillary’s turn.

Olivia heard the sound of a door slamming open, and Hillary was standing there, shading her eyes in the sun and staring out at the strange car in her driveway. Without giving herself time to change her mind, Olivia hopped out of the Jeep and stuck her hands in her pockets. She gave Hillary a shrug, as tears began to slide down her cheeks all over again.

“Officer Waters?” Hillary called out. “You alright?” Olivia shook her head, sending the tears down to sizzle on the hot desert sands. “Poor dear,” Hillary said, walking over to Olivia. The woman, who Olivia realized was only a few years older than herself, took Olivia’s face in her hands and looked down at her sadly. With her thumb, she wiped away a tear and said, “Why don’t you come on inside and have a sit in the cool air?”

Olivia nodded and allowed herself to be led into Hillary’s trailer. A TV in the corner was on mute with
Keeping Up with the Kardashians
creating an odd backdrop to Hillary’s poor trailer. Hillary sat Olivia down at her scratched-up table and put a glass of lemonade in front of her and one for herself. She then reached up and pulled out a box of fiber cereal. With a wink, she reached inside and pulled out a bottle of vodka. She topped off the two lemonades and sat down across from Olivia.

Olivia wiped her eyes and looked away, embarrassed, before taking a sip of her drink, feeling the sharp sting of the vodka as it cooled her dry and raw throat.

“I’m sorry to come here like this,” Olivia finally said. “I know the Reapers think I’m this big enemy—”

“Oh, I know that’s not true,” Hillary interrupted with a wave of her hand. “I done told Rick and Mike that a thousand times. I said that Olivia Waters is a good girl. Sure, she’s a cop, and no one likes them, but it ain’t fair to lump her in with all them other pigs.”

“Thanks,” Olivia said, and she meant it.

“Them bikers,” Hillary said with a shake of her head. “They drive you crazy, girl. I could have told you that.” Olivia laughed, only it came out half a sob, but she nodded and smiled at Hillary who continued with a knowing look. “Oh, I seen you and David Creely. I seen the way the two of you were talking to each other. You spoke like enemies, but you acted more like lovers.”

“I think I might love him,” Olivia whispered, her eyes were looking outside, and she was focused on two birds resting on an old stump, far back from Hillary’s trailer. She couldn’t bear to look Hillary in the eyes as she spoke. She hadn’t told David that she loved him; she hadn’t really said it to herself yet. However, it was the truth, and she knew it as soon as she said it. She finally looked at Hillary who gave her a sympathetic smile, and then she reached across the table and took Olivia’s hand in her own.

“I know, girl. I can see it in your eyes. I loved a biker once too, you know. No, not Rick or Mike. His name was Tommy. Oh, he was so handsome and so brave and so confident. There’s something about bikers, you know? You date these men who complain about their bosses and poke at their flat tires and then take the car to the shop. There’s something lacking in them, you know? But bikers are real men. They’re tough and fearless; they do what they want when they want. They say, ‘Fuck the Man’—and they mean it. There’s something primal about them. It’s like the whole world could crumble to dust and all them accountants and lawyers would be crying and scrambling around and these bikers would just shrug their shoulders and say, ‘Bring it on.’ There’s something in them that a woman just responds to.”

“What happened to Tommy?” Olivia asked.

“He died young in an accident. Most of them die young; it’s a dangerous world they live in, and there’s nothing we can do to protect them.”

“I don’t know where David is. I think someone is trying to make it look like he ran away, but I know that he didn’t. I know that he wouldn’t leave me like that. And I know how that sounds, I know that women say that all the time, but I mean it. I know it in my bones.”

“I believe you,” Hillary said. “I’ve seen David up and leave this town a hundred times, but he’s a different man now. He’s older and wiser; he’s more invested. I think he might be in love, too.”

“I got suspended,” Olivia said, and she forced her tears back. She couldn’t cry anymore; it wasn’t solving anything. “And now I can’t find him and I can’t use any police resources to find him. I feel so useless. What if he’s trapped somewhere and waiting for me to come and rescue him, and I’m just driving around and crying like some idiot who’s not worth a damn?”

“David’s a smart guy, maybe a little too smart. However, he has value still, and as long as he has value, no one’s going to try and kill him. Both Rick and Mike value him; that means everything in our world.”

“Do you think they would know where he is?”

“I think they would.”

“But would they kill me if I showed up? I’m a cop; my kind just arrested their kind. We’ve always been at war with each other; we’ve always been enemies. I don’t know how to prove to them how much I love David, how I just want to know that he’s safe.”

Hillary finished her drink and wiped her mouth, looking at Olivia and appraising her. She stared into Olivia’s eyes, and Olivia could see the other woman’s brain working something out. She was doing some form of mental calculus, measuring Olivia’s worth against the bikers’ values.

“There’s no way to know what might happen,” Hillary said, shaking her head. “Bikers are an unpredictable bunch. However, they value respect and honesty. If you go to them and you’re straight with them, they’ll be straight with you. That’s the only advice I can give to you.”

Olivia nodded. “Thank you,” she said. She wondered who Hillary had been before she had met Tommy and been caught up in this life. She wondered if Hillary ever regretted meeting her dashing young biker. Olivia didn’t want to end up like Hillary, but she knew that she didn’t have to. She could find David and get her job and her life back on track. Olivia wasn’t quite sure how she was going to do all of that, but she knew that there was a way. She just needed to figure it out.

Olivia wasn’t a quitter; she could figure out how to do all of those things. She loved David, but she wasn’t going to throw her life away for him. She was going to get David and her badge back. Hillary was right; there was a way to navigate the world of God’s Reapers and still keep her head. She needed to have honesty and respect, both for the Reapers and for herself. For once, she was determined to get everything she wanted.

“You are welcome and you’re always welcome here. Us girls, we gotta stick together. Plus, only someone who’s been with a biker knows what it’s like,” Hillary said with a shake of her head. Olivia looked at Hillary and smiled sadly. She wondered how much sadness this woman had seen, how many tragedies.

Olivia knew that Hillary was addicted to drugs, and she knew that it was her proximity to God’s Reapers that had brought her to the drugs. Hillary was a friend, but she was also a warning. The men of God’s Reapers weren’t playing at anything. Their lives were deadly, serious, and dangerous, and there were consequences in getting mixed up with them. However, Olivia didn’t care about the Reapers. She only cared about David, and she no longer cared about the consequences. She needed to find him.