Hard Rider

I wasn’t convinced. Regardless, he turned to the letter on the tabletop. “…Whoever this is,” Hunter said, “they know what they’re doing…”

“Why don’t you just ask the Couriers who sent it?”

“The Couriers wouldn’t be in business if they kept those kinds of records. They run the perfect double blind straight down the chain. Dead drops and no questions asked. No paperwork, no names, no faces. I’m not getting shit out of them, and trust me, the Couriers are the last people on this fucking planet you want to piss off. They know where you live.”

Hunter turned quickly to Ricochet. “Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Go get some rest.”

“You got it.”

Hunter locked the door behind him. The faint sound of a revving motorcycle could be heard moments later. I quietly watched through the kitchen window as Ricochet roared off in a trail of dust.

“So… Do you think they have your sister?” I asked with a hint of fear in my voice.

“If they had her, they wouldn’t be sending a letter… They’d be sending a finger,” Hunter replied, sending a shiver straight up my spine. What the hell kind of life was I trying to get myself into?

“I think it’s about time you tell me everything you know about this case of yours,” Hunter replied as he strolled back towards the living room. “Whatever’s going on, I’ve got a feeling this letter has something to do with it”

Pouring us a fresh pair of coffees, I sat down with him on the couch, wondering how much caffeine is safe to drink when pregnant and refusing to even touch the cup.

Dammit, now I’m thinking about the kid again…

“The case,” Hunter called me back to reality. He took a swig of the black coffee without skipping a beat.

“Right… the case,” I mumbled.

Under his vaguely scrutinizing eye, I organized my thoughts. Everything I’d worked so hard for in the last few weeks had been building up to this moment…

“A valuable shipping container has gone missing from the Port of Los Angeles,” I replied. “My client asked me to use my connections to discover the whereabouts of this particular box… And they want me to find out if the Devil’s Dragons were involved in its disappearance.”

“Your connections?” Hunter asked, raising his eyebrows meaningfully.

“The Devil’s Dragons control the port. I… might have sold myself as having a direct line to your people,” I answered sheepishly. “I needed the job… And I wanted to see you…”

“Well, I might not have good news for you there,” Hunter replied, clearly weighing something in his head. “The Devil’s Dragons run the port down there, they aren’t my Dragons.”

“I wondered what they were doing all the way out there,” I mused. “So, what? They’re a splinter group? An independent chapter of the club or something? You’ve gotta have sway over them, right?” I slipped in a little coy barb: “I mean, you are their club president, right?”

Hunter chuckled, shaking his head. “Those guys are the first to carry the name… They’re the west coast originals, and they don’t fall under my jurisdiction whatsoever.”

Hunter continued, sensing my need for answers. “When I joined the club, a man by the name of Eduardo was in control. That night you came to see me at the club when we were kids… He was gunned down as part of the police raid.”

I remembered Eduardo. I only met the man once, in passing at that, but he struck me as a wicked and dangerous man.

“He was one of the original Devil’s Dragons… The only Devil’s Dragons original who thought the club needed to expand. He took a group of volunteers east from California and set up a new chapter in the desert. He chose Phoenix, Arizona, and that’s how he came into our lives. Eduardo focused primarily on establishing his dominion and building up the drug-running trade in our backyard…”

“Until the raid…” I said quietly.

“With most of the senior members behind bars or slain, it was easy to direct the others away from the drug-running roots… But I don’t have any control over the guys out in California, and they’re still dipping toes into some dangerous shit. I had a sit down with the president of the California Devils Dragons a few weeks after the raid, and if you thought Eduardo was a vicious guy, you didn’t even want to hear about Talon…”

“Hunter…” I asked, trying to keep the tension out of my voice. “How bad is this guy?”

“He’s pushing sixty, and he shows every goddamned year on his face. Talon is a foul, dangerous scrap of a human being,” Hunter told me as he took a large swig of his coffee. “Not as vicious as the cartels, but that ain’t for lack of trying. Talon has dabbled in all kinds of crimes… the really fun ones, too,” he clarified with a scoff.

“Do I want to know?”

He glanced my way. “The bastard’s robbed banks, supplied hard drugs, gotten involved in a few kidnappings, shifted contraband internationally, even attacked a fucking hospital once…”

THIS was the guy I needed to interrogate?

“Jesus,” I groaned, shaking my head. “Wait… you said he came here to see you?”

Hunter nodded. “No idea how he found us so quickly. He must have left Los Angeles the second he’d heard about Eduardo taking a bullet. Talon tracked what was left of the club across state lines.”

“What happened then?”

“He wanted answers… Wanted to know if anyone on the inside was looking for a change of leadership.”

“He thought somebody set up the club from the inside?”

Hunter grimaced. “Talon grew up with Eduardo and knew that fucker wouldn’t go down without a knife in his back.”

“Well he was right about that,” I observed, thinking to the dramatic standoff in the desert in front of the Outlaws. There had been a traitor, but it wasn’t one of the Dragons…

“If I’d have known then what I know now, maybe the bastard wouldn’t have decided to set an example for the rest of the boys…”

He instinctively touched the scar on his face.

“He used a switchblade. I never saw it coming. He must have kept the blade laced with something, because that hurt like a goddamn bitch and bled for a week.”

I reached up to place my palm over his hand, pressing instinctively against the scar. All doubts and fears were pushed aside by an urge to soothe the pain written across his face.

“Does it still bother you?” I asked.

He swept my hand away, putting a bit of distance between us.

“I’m done walking down memory lane Sarah. You don’t want anything to do with the docks, Talon, or any of the Dragons out in California. Whatever is in that container you’re supposed to be looking for is probably better left alone, and you sure as fuck don’t want to be asking Talon whether or not he was involved in stealing it.”

I hadn’t told Hunter, but I’d invested every resource I had and there was no going back. Getting kicked off the force didn’t exactly give me the best resume for starting up a private investigations company. This was my first client, and failure wasn’t an option. ‘Better left alone’ didn’t pay the rent, and I wasn’t about to go back to living with my daddy… I wasn’t sure I could face him every day, after what happened to him during that fateful raid on the Dragon’s clubhouse all those years ago.

He paused, studying my eyes and reading me like an open book. I wasn’t going to leave this alone, and he knew it.

“Who’s your client? Who wants to find this container Sarah?”

And there it was… The question I didn’t want to answer. The question I’d been avoiding myself.

“I don’t know…”

Now Hunter seemed even more interested. “How in the hell do you not kn

ow who your client is?”

“I was approached by a detective with a lot of cash. Her name is Paula Prescott,” I answered.

“I thought you said you didn’t know your client.”

“How many detectives go around paying off private investigators in briefcases full of cash, Hunter? She’s a puppet. Somebody with a lot of money is pulling the strings, but I need this… It’s enough money to take care of this baby for years, and there’s more coming if I can tell them what they want to know.”

“So, a shipping container goes missing, and some mysterious rich asshole is trying to find it… And you’re going to keep looking for it, aren’t you?”

“You know me too well, Hunter…”

“Maybe I do.”

“So… You’ll help me?”

Hunter

My immediate impulse was to lose my shit right then and there. This wasn’t just about money or her fucking private investigations company, she was carrying our child! She couldn’t just walk her pregnant ass into the Devil’s west coast headquarters asking questions about the dock and expect to walk back out of there in one piece.

Lucky for her sake, I was too tired to deal with that little slice of bullshit right now, so I laughed and wandered back to bed. I must have fallen asleep the second my face smashed against the pillow, because the next thing I knew, daylight was pouring in.

Groggily, I rolled over. Sarah wasn’t in bed, and I was wondering if I’d just dreamed that she had come back into my life until I saw some of her clothes were still laying discarded along the floor nearby.

I sat up, folding my fingers behind my head and losing myself in thought.

Talon… She wants to talk to motherfucking Talon.

I shuddered. Few men struck any kind of fear into my heart. Hell, even the slimy sex trade motherfuckers down south didn’t scare me… they just pissed me right off.

Talon was a different beast altogether…

I knew Sarah would come back sooner or later… But this wasn’t exactly how I imagined it happening. She tells me I’m going to be a father, then hangs that shit over my head and asks me to go on a suicide mission?