Hard Rider

I closed out of the program and everything was silent. This couldn’t be happening. Almost immediately, I got a text message from him.

Meet me for dinner tonight at the Skyroom. We’ll talk about it.

Troy

That knife had been on my mind for the last couple of days. Whoever put it there wanted to send a strong message. Logic told me it was a warning from Ortiz, but that didn’t feel right. I hoisted a long rectangular box on my shoulder and carried it off the back of the truck. I didn’t know what was in these things, but they felt as heavy as led.

My session at the gym had been garbage, too. Sleep hadn’t come easy the last couple of nights. When I wasn’t trying to figure out who the guy was from the ID, I was waiting there in the dark in hopes that they’d come back.

The whole thing took its toll on my preparation. I had a hard time focusing on the drills. My hands were slow. More than one of the guys commented on it.

My phone sounded off from the depths of my pocket. Usually, I turned it off when I worked, but with Riley in the fold, I wanted to be available.

I dumped the box I was carrying on the ground and dug it out. “Hello?”

“Troy? Oh, my God, I have to talk to you right now.”

“What’s going on? Is everything okay?”

“No! He has pictures of us and he wants me to meet him for dinner. I think he’s going to try to blackmail me into doing something.”

“Whoa, slow down. What are you talking about?”

I jumped off the back of the truck and headed toward the parking lot. The stress in her voice told me this was a problem that couldn’t wait until later. I didn’t care if I lost my job.

“Kyle,” she said. I could tell she was crying. “His name’s Kyle and he works at the office with me.”

“Okay…”

“He’s the asshole that’s always hitting on me at work. I told you about him.”

The blood surged in my veins. If he did anything to hurt her I might kill him. “Tell me what happened one more time.” I got to my truck and started the engine.

“Pictures,” she sobbed. “He has pictures of us. I don’t know how he got them, but they’re from when we were together at your gym. Somebody obviously took them through the one of the windows.”

What the fuck?

I scoured my brain. There weren’t any windows that-. And then I remembered. There was one at the top of the wall on the far end of the building. It was probably ten feet off the ground, but if you had a way to get up there and a good camera, you could probably get a picture of whatever you wanted on the inside.

“Troy, you can tell it’s me in the pictures. If those get out-”

“They won’t get out.”

I could almost feel the heat radiating off my forehead. I’d heard of being steaming mad before, but now I was experiencing it.

“How do you know? What if he puts them online?”

“He won’t.”

“But, Troy, how-”

“You said something about dinner. What was that part, again?”

Riley took a deep breath. The crying had taken a lot out of her. It broke a little piece of my heart. “He’s making me meet him at The Skyroom at eight o’clock tonight. I think he’s going to threaten to put the pictures out there if I don’t go home with him.”

“Okay,” I sighed. “Okay, I can fix this. I’m sorry Riley. This shouldn’t have happened. It’s my fault.”

“No, it’s not,” she said, regaining a bit of her composure. “It’s that sick pervert’s fault. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Let me ask you something else,” I said. “How long has this guy known about us?”

“I… I don’t know, why?”

“Is it recent?”

“I guess. He said he was on vacation so the only thing I’ve been able to come up with is that he had a private eye following me. I’ve been sick about it all day. Why?”

“Because something happened at my place last night and I’m starting to think this might have something do with it.”

She gasped. “What happened?”

“It’s not important.”

“Troy!”

She wasn’t going to let it go. I knew it wasn’t fair to keep it from her, anyway.

“Someone came by my place and tried to intimidate me last night. Or, actually, it was early this morning. It wasn’t a big deal, but I thought you should know.”

“Did they try to do something to you?”

“No, like I said, they were just trying to scare me but I couldn’t figure out who it was.”

“And you think it has something to do with Kyle?”

“That would make sense, but like I said, we’re going to take care of it.”

“How?”

“You’re going to that dinner tonight.”

“I am?”

“Yeah, just like he planned. But what he doesn’t know yet, is that I’ll be there too.”

Riley

It was five minutes before the hour when he rolled up in his BMW. He’d insisted that I let him pick me up, but somehow, I managed to talk him into meeting me here.

The valet hustled around to the driver’s side and opened the door for him. “Don’t park it next to any other vehicles,” he barked. “And if it has one scratch on it when I get it back I’ll make sure you and your whole family doesn’t have jobs tomorrow.”

The poor kid meekly took the keys and gingerly slid into the seat.

“Early,” he said when he noticed me standing there. “I like that.”

The plan was for me to get as much information as I could out of him before signaling for Troy. That part was my idea. Troy just wanted to grab him as soon as he got to the restaurant so he could “rough him up” but I knew we’d learn more if we played things a little closer to the vest.

It was a struggle to get him to agree, but finally he relented. The only stipulation was that I had to have a text prewritten on my phone and I was to send it if Kyle even thought about getting aggressive. I was glad that my strategy had won in the end because I could only imaging what would happen in Troy went berserk.

“Ugh,” Kyle said as he met me at the curb. “I thought you would have put on something a little sexier than that. I guess you didn’t get the message when I showed you that picture.”

“No, I got it,” I said. “But I like this dress. It’s my favorite.” That was a lie, but I had to say something that sounded somewhat cordial.

“Whatever, let’s go sit down.”

The Maître D’ led us to the back. Kyle made a big show out of having a reserved table. “Two vodka martinis,” he snapped at the waiter.

I hated martinis. I hated even more when someone tried to order for me. It was a fitting development. “So, we’re here,” I said.

“It’s been a long time coming. I thought you’d never come to your senses.”

What a douchebag.

“I didn’t really have a choice now, did I?”

“Oh yeah, that. We can forget about that nasty business for now.”

Oh great. He was going to try to romance me.

“If you don’t mind, we need to talk about those pictures, Kyle. No matter how much you want to pretend that were here under different pretenses, we’re not.”

“If that’s the way you want it, then it’s fine with me. I was going to buy you a nice dinner, but if you’re that eager to get back to my place, then I can make that happen.”

I tasted vomit in the back of my throat.

“Why do you have those pictures?”

Kyle sighed. “Do you really want to get into all that?”

“Have you shown them to anybody else?”

“If you insist on talking about it, we will,” he said, “but it won’t change anything.”

“Why?” I said through gritted teeth.

“Because you needed to be taught a lesson. You can’t just go around sleeping with every bum that comes through the program, especially aft

er you’ve turned me down several times. For Christ’s sake Riley, he’s a felon.”

“And the pictures?”

“They’re all contained on my phone’s SD card. It’s not like I’m going to put them on the internet or anything. I’m not a bad person.”

I could hardly comprehend it, but he seemed to believe what he was saying. “So, you haven’t showed them to anyone?”

“Of course, not. And I won’t, unless you decide to change your mind about tonight. If that’s the case, then you can count on seeing blown up versions of them plastered all over the break room on Monday morning.”