Smolder: Trojans MC (49 page)

It took her a moment to regain her strength. David was still inside of her, and she could feel his pounding heart begin to quiet and calm down, as his hands traced patterns over her back and arms. Finally, Olivia pulled herself off of him and rolled over onto her back so she was lying next to him. Together, they looked up at the stars.

“I can see how you could like this,” Olivia said, as she snuggled closer to David. He wrapped his arm around her and kissed her forehead, as the fire crackled next to them and the stars loomed above.

EPILOGUE

Olivia smoothed her white dress over her stomach and looked into the full-length mirror, facing first this way and then that way as she looked at her strange reflection staring back at her. The woman in the mirror wasn’t Olivia Waters, the tough police officer. She was the soon-to-be Olivia Creely.
Olivia Creely
. Every time she thought of it, Olivia felt the butterflies in her stomach flutter, and a smile would creep over her face. She wondered when—exactly—she had turned into a giggling schoolgirl, considering she had never been one before.

The dress was floor length and silk. It clung to her bust and then flowed, covering her legs and shimmering when she moved. There were thin straps over her shoulder, and her mother was wiping away a tear as she came into the dressing room with the veil.

“You just look so lovely,” her mother said between sobs. “What happened to my little tomboy who swore she would never ever marry a gross, dirty boy?”

“Keep it together, Mom,” Olivia said. “If you keep crying, then I’m gonna start crying and we’re really going to ruin our makeup.” She looked at her mother in the mirror; she was a shorter version of Olivia, only her mother preferred makeup and long hair to Olivia’s more relaxed style. “Wait to put the veil on. I want to see how everything looks out there,” Olivia said, as she stepped off the platform. Lifting her skirt to keep it clean, she walked over to the balcony and peered down into the crowd. It was an odd sight for sure.

One side was filled with police officers wearing their dress blues and decked out for the occasion. Down below, Olivia could see Detective Farraday sitting next to her captain and her lieutenant. There were her old friends from Olivia’s days at the academy and her trainee, Ted, who had really come into his own in the last year. They had ridden together one last time only a few days ago; Olivia would begin her training as a detective once she and David came back from their honeymoon.

The other side of the church was something else indeed. The bikers had fancied up in their own ways. They were all wearing suits or pressed shirts, but their long hair and their beards gave them away. Well, that and the long line of gleaming motorcycles that were lined up outside of the church. A strange sight indeed, a sea of motorcycles and police cruisers baking in the parking lot.

“Get back here!” her mother scolded gently. “You can’t see the groom before the altar, and he can’t see you. Everything down there is fine.” However, Mrs. Waters couldn't help but give a nervous glance to the men beneath her, it was unusual that was for sure.

Olivia looked at the clock on the wall as she felt her stomach churn. This was happening; it was really happening. They had joked about going to the Little Blue Chapel in Vegas; they had seriously considered just going to City Hall and signing all the necessary paperwork. Yet, in the end, they realized that they had done nothing wrong, so why shouldn’t they get married in a church?

“Are you ready?” Mrs. Waters said.

“Is he out there?” Olivia asked.

“He’s at the altar, looking rather nervous, but also very handsome. Let’s not keep him waiting any longer.” Olivia reached for her mother’s outstretched hand, and with her bouquet in the other, they walked together towards the chapel. They waited in the wings and watched as Olivia’s cousins and nieces acted as flower girls and bridesmaids. Each one of them waited on the sideline, and then their cue came on and they took a step down the aisle and out of Olivia’s view.

Olivia Waters had taken on bikers and drug dealers and murderers, but she had never felt as nervous as she felt at that moment. She held tightly to her mother’s hand as the last bridesmaid began her walk, and then the processional music began. Olivia could hear the sound of throats clearing and fabric moving, as people out in the chapel stood up to watch her walk down the aisle.

The music was playing as Olivia took a deep breath and then took her first step and emerged in the church. She could hear people sighing sweetly and whispering to each other. On every face she saw, whether biker or cop, there was only happiness and love. Finally, Olivia looked up at the aisle and there was David, wearing a perfectly-fitted suit and tie. His hands were crossed in front of him and a smile spread across his face, as his eyes finally met with Olivia’s.

At the end of the aisle, Olivia kissed her mother on her cheek and watched as her mother hugged David. Then, she put Olivia’s hand in David’s and took her seat. Olivia looked up at the handsome man before her, her soon-to-be husband. In mere minutes, they would be married, bonded for their entire lives. In his eyes, she saw moonlight bike rides and passionate love; she saw them walking hand-in-hand down the street with nowhere in particular to go. She saw her whole life with David Creely stretched out in front of her, and she smiled, as the priest began to speak.

THE END

Chapter One

There was a bear trap hidden under the leaves. That’s a lie. There were many bear traps hidden under the leaves. They waited, buried underneath piles of fallen debris, well hidden from any prying eyes. Some of the leaves were green and shiny and still had a little bit of life in them, others were brown and dry and they crinkled and crunched when stepped on. The leaves, and the bear traps hidden in them, surrounded a grey, unassuming building set far back in the woods.

There was only one dirt road that leads to this building. It wasn’t on any maps, no one owned it, and no one paid taxes on it. Technically it did not exist. It was a single-story, cement, rectangular building. It did not have any utilities connecting it to a power grid; there was no electricity, gas, or plumbing. There was only one large generator sitting in the leaves outside of the building and it was used to power a few weak light bulbs when the men had to work late into the night. 

No GPS could bring you to this building; only someone who had been there before could show you where it was. But Falcon had been there many, many times. He had been one of the first people to see the large empty landscape and realized they could put a building there and no one would notice. One hundred and fifty miles outside of LA the grey, cement building sat unbothered on the northeast corner of a large hunting preserve.

The bear traps weren’t for the bears, though Falcon always thought it would be cool if they got one. No, the bear traps were for rivals and the rare inquisitive hunter who forgot curiosity killed the cat. Fortunately, hunters had yet to be a problem. The sounds of motorcycles, the noise of the generator, and the smell of other alpha males kept any game away. Since the animals didn’t go there, the hunters didn’t either.

As he drove his bike down the dirt road that led to the Screaming Eagles processing building, Falcon saw a hunter high up in a tree stand. The hunter had built his tree stand atop one of the tallest and oldest trees in the reserve and it gave him a good view, potentially too good. Falcon had stopped his bike on the road in order to watch the hunter, a pair of binoculars in his hands. He was facing west, away from the processing center, and he hadn’t turned around at the sound of Falcon’s bike.

Fingering the Glock he kept in his holster, Falcon watched the man for a few minutes. But the hunter remained high up in his tree and Falcon decided killing him would be more trouble than it was worth. He got back on his bike and left the lone hunter behind as he rode the last mile the low, grey, cement building. He stayed on the dirt road, being careful to avoid the traps, as his spotless, black and chrome Harley Davidson took him quietly to work.

He sped past the places he knew the bear traps to be hidden and smiled to himself. If that hunter did get curious he would quickly come to regret it. The low, cement building had no front or back, no distinguishing marks of any kind. There was one large receiving bay door on the north-facing side and Falcon pulled his bike around to it to key in his code on a sophisticated lock. After a few seconds the large receiving bay door rolled open and Falcon Marks had ten seconds to push his bike through the doorway before the doors would automatically close crushing anything that was in the way.

The warehouse had exactly the kind of stale chemical smell you would expect a drug-processing center run by bikers to have. The chemical smell was mixed with the smell of stale cigarettes, weed, coffee, and oil. There were a few pin-ups taped to the cement walls, but other than that the place was barren. There were rows and rows of table with small scales and hundreds of little baggies and boxes stacked up along the walls with bare light bulbs swinging gently over them.

Falcon pushed his bike into the processing center and quickly put it with the others. It would look to obvious and suspicious to leave a dozen gleaming motorcycles outside of the building that technically didn’t exist and so they were always brought in where they could be hidden from view. As Falcon turned away from his bike Billy the Killer, a tall and well-muscled man and a leader in the Screaming Eagles club, greeted him. He was the boss, and Falcon a foot soldier.

“Going smoothly?” Falcon asked.

“Smooth as a Megan Fox’s ass,” Billy answered holstering his gun. “You run the route?”

“All one hundred and fifty miles of it. It’s wide open and there are no detours and the cops are in all the usual places,” Falcon answered. It was his job to do the dry run the day of the transportation. He needed to travel the route himself with his eyes open looking for anything suspicious or out of the ordinary: roadwork, detours, random police searches. He had done the trip in seventy-five minutes and was feeling, at that moment, rather confident.

To Falcon’s left, a plain white U-Haul truck had been backed into the processing center and it was currently being filled with drugs by the members of the Screaming Eagles. Hundreds of kilos of meth rocks and pseudoephedrine had been packaged inside of crates of travel mugs.

“A cup of joe keeps you from looking like Moe!” The cups declared with a picture of Moe Howard making his grumpiest expression. The drugs were stashed in the mugs with the lid attached securely. The first three rows of boxes would be nothing but the travel mugs; the last eighteen rows would hold the real goods.

Falcon had arrived just in time. As he watched, the last few boxes were piled into the truck and then they were ready to go. The driver was a young kid named Eric. He was new to the gang and got the job as driver because of how clean cut he looked. With no beard and no visible tattoos the cops had no reason to harass him, and he was often able to get out of jams on charm alone.

“You ready, hoss?” Falcon asked as he walked up to Eric and clapped him on the back. Falcon liked Eric; the kid was young and didn’t look like a traditional biker, which had made it hard for him to feel included in the club. But Falcon had taken him under his wing and Falcon looked like he could have been a cover model for Bikers Monthly. He was big guy – 6’5” with major muscles and full tattoo sleeves on each arm. He had dark hair and dark brown eyes, so dark they almost obscured the pupil. But the thing that most people talked about was the enormous falcon tattoo on his back. It stretched from his neck all the way down his back and from shoulder blade to shoulder blade. It had cost two thousand dollars and taken seven sessions. It was beautiful and terrifying all at the same time.

“There’s a hunter in a tree out there, but he wasn’t looking this way. I don’t think we need to worry about it,” Falcon said to Eric and Billy.

“Probably best if bodies aren’t piled up around the bunker,” Eric said with a scoff as he climbed into the driver’s seat of the truck.

Billy led the way, the truck following right behind him. The rest of the Screaming Eagles waited their turn and, as the headlights of the truck disappeared into the forest, Falcon lit a cigarette and took a heavy drag. Once the cigarette was burned to the filter they would follow the truck. The bikes needed to stay with the shipment just in case any rival gangs tried to jack it. But they couldn’t look like they were following the truck. A truck escorted by ten bikers was like a big flashing sign for the cops. Falcon took another drag from his cigarette. He was sitting astride his bike, the engine not yet on.

He smoked his cigarette all the way down to the filter and then he tossed it on the ground. Making sure to stomp out any embers so the dead leaves didn’t turn into burning leaves, he slipped his helmet over his head and the rest of them followed suit. They were ready to go. Ready to get this job over with, make their money, and go home.

But before he could start his bike, Falcon heard someone give three loud, long hits to his horn. He whipped his head up at the sound in time to see Billy racing back towards the processing center.

“Fucking cops! Scatter! Scatter!”

“Shit,” Falcon hissed under his breath as he brought his bike to life and turned away from the road, sending clods of dirt up into the air. He drove back through the fallen leaves, sending them scattering and flying in his wake. He drove quickly, swerving around the dangerous bear traps, hoping that at least one cop stumbled into one. The men around him did the same, each one riding as if his life depended on it. It was every man for himself now.

Behind him, he heard the scream of police sirens as they sped down the dirt road towards the grey building. There were a lot of them and the sirens were bleeding through the thick forest as Falcon’s heart started to pound. Every biker knew his life would end in death or jail, and they had always been told death was preferable. But while he had always known it would end this way, being faced with the reality sent his heart racing and his eyes went wide as he searched desperately for some way out.