Hard Rider

Chapter 38

It was thirty minutes after I stopped hearing movement from Daddy’s bedroom that I pocketed my phone, whipped off the covers, and crept back out of bed.

Project: Wayward Teen was a go.

This wasn’t my first rodeo in sneaking out of the house. I’d already picked the right clothes, favoring black jeans, a dark shirt, and an all-black pair of Converse sneakers.

Quietly, I slipped into the clothes in the darkness of my bedroom. I didn’t need anything but my little wallet, my phone, and my keys – and the keys were dangling downstairs anyway.

Thinking ahead, I’d already packed the wallet in the jeans. The phone had helped keep my boredom down while I’d waited for Daddy’s fatigue to set in. He’d had a busy evening on shift, and I knew he’d be sleeping hard tonight.

Which made tonight perfect for this.

With nimble reflexes, I slipped down the hallway, avoiding the creaky floorboards right outside the bathroom door. Further down, I slipped past the end table and the vase on top, unwilling to let a brief bump of the hip, or shattering clay, announce my little rendezvous beneath the stars.

My footsteps took me down the staircase, hooking around towards the front door. There were a few tricky floorboards here too, and the acoustics were painfully good in the open floor plan of the downstairs.

As silently as possible, I snagged my keyring from the hook by the door, listening for any evidence of Daddy near the top of the stairs.

Nothing. The coast was clear.

I carefully turned the lock, slipping outside and locking the door behind me. I hesitated near the door, listening against the panel for any movement from inside.

When nothing happened, I exhaled a thick breath of relief.

Turning and strolling down the driveway, I found myself wondering what Mom would have thought if she’d still been around to see me now.

I had been really young when she passed, too young to particularly remember her. Outside of her smiling face, gazing down upon me from portraits in the house, I had very little in the way of memories when it came to Mom.

Naturally, that made Daddy cling to me harder, since I was now all that he had left. He was a stern but strong father, but very, very strict.

Of course, as I glanced over at the weather-beaten Crown Victoria car in the front driveway, I knew that this wasn’t the only reason why he was so careful about keeping me on a tight leash.

My father was the local sheriff, working his way up through the force for the last twenty years.

And there was no way he was going to be okay with his little girl sneaking out in the middle of the night… Especially if he knew where I was going.

You might say that I have a problem… and his name is Hunter.

My particular problem comes roughly six feet tall and built with powerful muscles. He had the short and thick wavy hair I loved, a seductive little chuckle, and handsome blue eyes.

The kind that could never lie to you…

Slipping into my little beaten-up Hyundai coupe, I pressed my keys into the ignition and turned. The engine cranked to life, and I quickly pulled back through the driveway and onto the streets of our neat, suburban subdivision.

I always loved how our community looked at night. Passing under the streetlights, I glanced over clay-colored landscaping with its bits of desert shrubbery.

This place was pretty nice, all things considered. We lived in a good part of Phoenix, although it certainly helped to keep the local neighborhood safe when you had the local precinct’s Sheriff living across the street.

I wasn’t sticking to the nice parts of town. Not tonight… My little moonlight excursion was taking me about thirty minutes away. I was heading towards the seedy center of the city, the kind of place no self respecting good girl would find herself so late at night.

My phone remained quiet the entire time I drove, which was a pretty good sign to me.

The last thing I needed was Daddy waking up in the middle of the night and realizing I’d gone…

I saw the sign for the strip club perched a couple of blocks over. Despite all the work the city had done to improve its downtown image, the club had survived, neon pink sign and all. The parking lot was usually full of motorcycles which intimidated the locals and kept them out… People were probably waiting for the day the whole building would be knocked flat and replaced with yet another Starbucks.

But I knew that was never going to happen.

For public appearances, an investor who spent most of his time out of town owned and technically operated the strip club. He kept a couple of managers on the premises, and the girls were well taken care of for their efforts. He was keeping the whole thing afloat with an old inheritance.

The truth was a little different.

There was no investor. No mysterious and wealthy benefactor. Look beyond the parking lot and the big pink sign and you’d see the huge roll-up garage that butted up to the back of the building.

The strip club nothing more than a front for the local biker gang, a dangerous group of criminals known as the Devil’s Dragons MC. They were the guys who ruled the local roost, and most of the city’s illegal activities gave a quick nod to them.

It helped that their leader, a ruthless criminal known only as Eduardo, had made plenty of his rivals disappear. The lowlifes that remained gave the Devil’s Dragons the respect they demanded.

Just the thought of Hunter involving himself in that world made me grimace. He hadn’t told me much of why he’d done it…

I knew it had something to do with his sister. She disappeared a few months back and the police had done nothing but file a report and tell him they were very sorry. Hunter turned to the biker club for help and, and whatever terms he’d offered in return, they agreed.

His sister was brought home four days later. She looked like she’d been put through hell…

She probably was, if the rumors about where she was taken were true.

I feared that he’d joined them in payment.

Maybe I can talk some sense into him, I thought to myself. Surely, Hunter will see things my way.

Daddy opposed the Devil’s Dragons for all of the obvious reasons. He wasn’t exactly a big fan of Hunter either, and the second he caught wind that he was joining the ranks of those infamous criminals…

Yeah, lets just say a swift ban on Sarah-Hunter contact was very quickly enacted. I had to promise daddy that I’d never, ever see Hunter again.

But true love doesn’t have to resort to such stupid promises, does it? I was going to go see my man and save him from whatever trouble he was squeezing himself into.

And that was the end of that.

I pulled into the parking lot, ominously passing an entire fleet of motorcycles. The entire goddamn club must be here, I thought to myself.

Parking my car, I crept out and walked past the line of bikes. My first impression had been wrong. There were way too many motorcycles here… I stopped counting around thirty.

Half of them looked out of place. They were dressed different from the others with blacked out engines instead of the chrome I’d come to recognize.

Are there two clubs inside?

I might not have been a cop myself, but I knew trouble when I saw it. I’d grown up around enough law enforcement to know something big was going down tonight.

That didn’t matter. I was past the point of no return. Hunter was inside, and I needed to see him.

I swallowed my apprehension and continued onward, passing around the side of the building and to the very front. I paused and allowed myself to be repulsed by the exterior décor for a moment.

Bright pink neon signs flashed in my face, offering all sorts of lewd decadence and fun times inside.

Yeah, okay, I mumbled to myself.

Glancing around quickly, I spotted a few people ambling around on the pavement. It didn’t look like any of them were paying any heed to me, although I knew that I could never be too sure.

&

nbsp; I was ripped from my thoughts. I’m spending too much time loitering around outside, I realized. What if somebody sees me out here and tells Daddy?

Steeling myself, I reached for the doorknob and pushed myself inside, totally prepared for the rest of the night ahead.

Spoiler alert: I was really fucking unprepared.

Chapter 39

As I pressed into the building, my eyes immediate drew to the surprised hostess. I recognized her as one of the previous year’s graduates; I think her name might have been Chastity. Tall and lithe, she played up her excessive perkiness in the workplace with accent ponytails. She stepped out to try to head me off as I came in.

“Sarah! We weren’t expecting you tonight–”

“Where’s Hunter?” I asked immediately, cutting her off. I didn’t mean to be rude. I needed to see him, and I just didn’t have the time for this.

“They’re in the back,” she answered involuntarily, then scoffed at herself for the slip. “Now’s not a good time, though. I can send word for you if you’d like. Can I get you a drink of water or something – wait! – You can’t just…”

It was too late.

The moment that I processed her answer, my beaten-up Converse sneakers were taking me around the edge of the club and towards the private rooms.

I crossed down a hallway, glancing into open rooms and throwing a couple of doors open. I interrupted a couple of private sessions by mistake, choosing to apologize and close the doors again as I continued onward.

Chastity had just about caught up to me in her heels when I threw open another door, slamming into a tall, broad chest… not Hunter’s chest, but that of an older, gristlier stranger.