Hard Core: Biker MC Motorcycle Club Menage Steamy 3 Story Bundle Set (Hot Tales From a Hard Road Book 1) (7 page)

Talking about her daddy muddied her feelings even more. She gently pulled away to look in his face. He said, “I can’t tell you what it is, but I’m sure that he’s going to do it.”

“He’s not a man you tell what to do.”

“I don’t doubt that. But he’ll do it to get you back.”

Maybe he will
, she thought,
after that he’ll hunt you like a dog.
She knew Daddy was certain to be hunting him already.

He gave her shoulders another squeeze. “It’ll be all right. You have to believe that.”

Chapter 9

Jack Berringer pulled into the almost empty parking lot in front of the small diner. There was one other car, a beat-up Honda, two police cruisers, and a black van with black windows, probably FBI. Four uniformed officers stood by the door with two other men in lumpy suits and dark shades.

Jack recognized one of the men, Detective Frank Gracey, by the steps and lifted his hand in a breezy wave as he approached, squinting into the sun.

“Hey, Frank.”

“Good morning, Judge Berringer.” Frank was head of a major task force dealing with gang-related crime. He had appeared as a witness and as an arresting officer in Jack’s court on many occasions.

Jack asked him, “Can a man get his breakfast here?”

“Oh, sure, Judge. We’re keeping a watch on someone inside, is all.”

“Is he dangerous?”

“Shouldn’t be. I wouldn’t poke him or call him names, though.”

“I shall keep it in mind. But there’s no reason I shouldn’t go in for some eggs?”

“None at all.”

“Only, there don’t seem to be any other customers.”

“Yeah, turns out the cruisers don’t work as a great advertisement for the waffles.”

“Should I be worried?”

“There are two armed marshals inside, but watch out if he makes a sudden move for the cutlery.” Jack looked at Frank to see if he was joking. All he saw was his own reflection in Frank’s shades.

Inside one man sat at the center of the bright little diner. There were no other customers, only a bored waitress, a cook behind the order window, and two marshals holding shotguns. Jack said “
Good morning”
to the marshals and asked the waitress for ham and eggs, sunny side up and a coffee.

He walked to the table where the man sat. He was broad and heavy-set, with long, straggly salt and pepper hair, extravagant sideburns and whiskers, and most of his skin decorated. Some of the ink was elaborate and very professional. Some was likely prison art. He hulked greedily over a stack of pancakes with bacon, and he looked to the judge like an old, worn bullet covered in graffiti.

He was heavy and clearly strong, but his skin wasn’t tight. He was not at the peak of condition. Still, he seemed to be a man you’d think twice about picking a fight with. Whatever he might lack in tone and agility, he could certainly make up for in ready aggression.

“Mind if I sit here?”

The man had a voice like a rusty saw. “Free country, ain’t it?” He didn’t look up.

Closer up, some of his markings looked like the symbols used by a biker gang, though Jack didn’t know which one. He glanced up from his eggs and he looked Jack hard in the eye. Whoever he was, Jack was sure that the man had not expected his visit.

“Good pancakes?” Jack asked.

“You like pancakes?”

“Sure.”

“Then you’d probably like ’em.”

Conversation with him seemed to be almost a contact sport. “You seem to have quite the rock star entourage.”

“You got a badge you want to show me?”

“No, just passing the time.”

“You got a microphone I should be speaking into?”

“Okay, I can tell that you’re under police guard.”

“Got a phone? The Nobel Prize committee should hear about you.”

“I’m just here for some breakfast. If you want, I’ll leave you to eat in peace.”

The man ate his pancakes noisily but he didn’t speak again. When the waitress brought the judge’s coffee, the man told her to bring him a refill. She said, “I’d never have thought of that.”

“You won’t be wanting no tip, then.”

“Don’t matter, you won’t be paying it either way.”

There was a brighter gleam in the man’s eye as he turned to Jack. “Diner waitresses. What do we need an army for when we got middle-aged women can bite your head off from across the room?”

“I think she likes you.”

“I knew she would.”

At a loss for any other way to get the man to talk, Jack said, “All that ink must be quite important to you.”

The man glowered back at him for some time. Jack was glad to have gotten his interest and attention if nothing else.

His hard eyes narrowed, and at last, he began to growl a response. “Every one of these marks carries a meaning. They each represent an event or a person of great significance to me.”

After that, there was no stopping him. He pointed to a tattoo and described at length the symbolism and the meaning that it held for him, then another. Nothing that he said directly identified any particular person or place. They all were tales of violent struggle and brutal conflict, or of deep family bonds and betrayals.

Several involved sudden death, sometimes more than one. To Jack they sounded like Greek tragedies.

Jack ate his breakfast, drank his coffee and came away having learned precisely nothing specific at all. The man gave away almost no details about himself or anyone associated with him, and he told all of his stories through a smoke of almost biblical-sounding myth. Jack hardly knew any more about him than he had before they met.

What he did know was that he had a lethally bad attitude, but the NOAA probably knew that. They might have known who he was, too, since they likely tracked him as a weather system, but Jack still had no idea. He didn’t ask Frank on the way out, either, and Frank didn’t offer to tell him.

Jack had done what the kidnappers had told him to do but, as his Mercedes swept out across the empty lot and out onto the freeway, the whole thing made no sense at all to him. All that mattered right now was to save Tiffany.
Then, afterwards
, he thought,
Then there will be a reckoning
.

Chapter 10

Crouched again by the door, she heard a phone ring, then ‘Jax’s end of the conversation.

“Hey… yeah? He went? … And? And you’re certain they met. … Anyone been able to talk to Iron?”

Iron? Who was that?

“No? So he’s got no idea… Must have been some surprise for him with his breakfast. … No, I bet he didn’t. You got no idea how he is then? Yup… Yup, I bet. Okay, good work.”

Then he was talking to Mace.

“We’ve got what we need.”

Mace said, “Not until the morning, bro. Not till it’s done. But he took the meet?”

“He went, yeah. He met him and they talked. Chatted away for about fifteen minutes over breakfast.”

“And we have a reliable witness?”

“Not only, we got pictures.” Now the two men were up on their feet. Tiff flinched each time a step came closer, knowing she should get away from the door but unable to move, desperate to wring whatever she could out of their conversation. They paced around as they talked. One of them opened the refrigerator. Tiff heard the fizz of cans as they popped open.

Mace said, “I wonder what they discussed over their coffee.” His chuckle was a dry rasp. “Must have been a regular country club morning meeting.”

“It’s done, Mace. We have it.”

“We’ll see tomorrow.”

The creak of a boot came towards the door and she jumped back for the bed and under the cover.

The door opened and Mace stood in the frame, his eyes narrow. Tiff kept her eyelids almost closed. She was sure he couldn’t see that she was watching him, but it was hard to keep her eyes relaxed so they didn’t flutter. His lips tightened and he closed the door again. She couldn’t make out what he said as he strode back across the floor of the other room.

Was it Daddy they had been talking about, meeting someone called ‘Iron’ over breakfast? And this ‘Iron,’ whoever he was, had no idea about it? What did it mean? It was hard to keep all of the details straight when she had so few fragments of information to go on.

Chapter 11

Tiff was dozing when she heard the noises in the next room. She woke up fast when ‘Jax’s voice raised. “Someone gets killed, you’ve made me an accessory.” His menacing growl went on, “If you do that, Mace, I swear,” boots clomped and thudded around the next room as he paced and talked, “I will hunt you down. I will nail you to a floor and then kill you in the slowest and most painful way imaginable.”

Tiff got her ear to the door in time to hear Mace’s snarl. “Good luck with that, bro.”

“We got what we need.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know it and you know it. It’s just what Weinberg said, it’s a done deal. We should close up and clear out of here right now.”

“Oh, I’m fine with that part. I just don’t see us carrying baggage.” A chair scraped, “And not turning loose something that could compromise us.”

‘Jax’s voice hardened. “There isn’t any way that she could compromise us, is there.” There was tension in the long silence. Tiffany wished so hard that she could see what was going on in that room. ‘Jax’ again, his voice lower, “How can she compromise us, Mace?”

“I’m just saying, no point in scattering loose ends around, is there.”

“If you’ve done something dumb, then it’s on you. We’re taking big risks here for the health of the club, but I’ve had your back all the way, Mace, and I still have it. Just don’t act against me.”

“Yeah, and I bet that ain’t all that you had.” There was a rush and the sound of bodies coming together.

After what seemed a long moment, ‘Jax’ said, “This is for later. We’re not done with this.”

“Maybe, but your plan to haul out still looks good. Could be time, bro. I say we clean up and go.”

“Then we do it my way.”

A pause and Mace said, “Then we wait.”

There was quiet for a time, so Tiffany slipped back into the bed. She turned it all over in her mind, searching for ways to interpret what she had heard. Ways to read it which didn’t imply that Mace wanted to kill her, and ‘Jax’ was the only thing stopping him.

In the next room, the sullen silence remained. After a long while, murmurs and grunts sounded like one of the bikers was making a call, but she couldn’t even tell which one.

An agonizing half hour passed, maybe more, or perhaps it was only twenty minutes—she couldn’t tell any more. A buzzer squawked, sharp and loud, in the next room. Tiff’s body clenched at the shock, at the sound she hadn’t heard before.

There was movement in the next room. The outer door opened. Then voices, low, but calm, murmured back and forth in some talk she couldn’t make out. Then ‘Jax’ said, “Okay, thanks. Bye.” There was a response she also couldn’t make out, and door closed again.

After a while, the door to her room opened and Mace brought in a whole pizza still in its box, with a beer. He set the box on the little table with the beer on top.

“I’ll leave you a spliff, too.” He drew a fat blunt from the top pocket of his shirt and placed it on top of the pizza box before he left, closing the door softly behind him.

She shivered.