Wild Rider (Bad Boy Bikers Book 2) (13 page)

Then there was that Nurse. Pretty woman. She seemed to already be fucking up Beretta's head. Tank just hoped it wasn't the bad kind of fucking up—the kind that would make his brother more prone to errors and mistakes.

It was a whole big mess they were in, all right. It was a big mess and the only way they'd get through it was to work together.

Locke kept talking. It's what he did best. “It’s weird how it was soft and it was hard, right? Her methods.”

“Yeah. Winced at the walnut thing.”

“Right? And I
saw
her put the walnuts down. It was just knowing that’s what he was feeling. She really convinced him.” Locke shook his head, adjusting himself in his crotch. “Bad time to pledge Copperhead, man.”

“Missed out on the bull market.”

Locke turned away from his binoculars, raising an eyebrow at Tank. “The what now?”

“The bull market.” Tank shrugged. “You know. When the market is good. Running strong. Pushing upwards. Prices rising, people making money hand over fist. Economics.”

Locke was aghast. “Since when in the fuck do you know about economics, Tank?”

“I read books. You should try it sometime.” He slapped Locke’s shoulder and pointed. “Check it out.”

Black vans were arriving. Tank started running the camera as Locke looked through the binoculars, spotting more places to snap photos. They could both see the goods, though—unloaded off the trucks—four of them in all—were bags and bags of cash and drugs, stuffed so full that the product was spilling out through the zippers.

Paydirt.

––––––––

I
t was no picnic, talking Georgetta into letting her work again.

There were all kinds of questions. Where had she been? Why hadn’t she called? Was everything okay?

And then there was the implicit question, the most important question, the question unasked—was Helen telling the truth?

Helen’s story was that her cousin had called, in town and in trouble from an ex. It was easy to provide details for the cousin’s trouble—she’d had plenty of experience with shitty exes, after all.

Anyway, in the story, she then proceeded to lose her phone—she held up the burner that the Wrecking Crew had given her to prove her point, as Georgetta had seen her old phone quite a lot—and forgot to call because she was so caught up in the emotion of her cousin’s plight. That morning, she’d sent her cousin off on a plane to Tampa and hopefully, to safety.

End of story.

Detailing that piece of fiction was the longest half-hour that Helen had lived through in the normal course of her life. She thought of the previous three days of sensationally shitty excitement as
outside
the bounds of that normal course, because in that particular period of time distortion, any given five minutes was the longest thirty minutes of her life.

As she spoke, everything narrowed and winnowed down on her field of vision, on her ability to talk and not choke up and just reveal the truth in a blur of tear-flooded emotion. The corner of Georgetta's desk was worn and scratched from where Georgetta had hit it over and over again with the nearby filing cabinet. There was a soft scratching sound from the air conditioning as it flipped on and off again. Her pens were all the same brand, many with the caps chewed through.

At the end, it was clear without her saying that Georgetta didn’t really believe her. But at the same time, Helen had  worked there for four months now without a single slip-up, and had come into the job with a hearty recommendation after years of working in Marlowe. She showed up on time, she didn’t complain, and she made damn good coffee.

Georgetta gave her a pass based on her record, not her story. Helen knew this; they both knew, but neither of them acknowledged it.

“If there’s any more funny business,” said Georgetta, “you better be up front with it right away, or else that’s it. I’m giving you a second chance, now.”

“I know,” said Helen. “Thank you. I won’t make you regret it.”

And Helen truly hoped she wouldn’t.

The rest of the workday passed without incident. Helen was thrown right into the thick of the work—scrubbing down bedridden patients, setting a broken arm, stitching up the head of a child who fell hard on a black top during a game of tag. She made the strongest pot of coffee she possibly could, flinging the weak stuff straight into the toilet, just to get on Georgetta's good side.

Her mind was in her work. It was, really.

Not on Beretta. Not on his cock being so perfectly close to being inside her the night before. Not on the brilliant way he had eaten her out.

And she absolutely wasn't thinking about how she was still dead scared about what might happen to her now that she was so caught up so intrinsically with the Wrecking Crew.

She thought about work. Her mind set itself to tasks, and she did not allow distractions.

Or, this was the attempt. But as the day wore on, her focus waned, no matter how much coffee she drank. The exhilaration she felt at it all was undeniable. The danger. The excitement.

The sex.

Oh fuck, the
sex.

Growing up in Marlowe, seeing the stud bikers prowl through town on their thick hogs, having their way with women everywhere and kicking ass in every last place they stepped in, she had developed a plethora of fantasies about them.

It would have been dishonest of her to deny that she used to fantasize about exactly this. Clutching her pillow tight in her room, feeling rejected at school and at home, dreaming of some black knight in leather armor with a chrome-steel steed draping her over his back and promising to keep her safe, to make her his forever, to let her know where she really belonged.

To make her his property forever.

Of course, in those dreams, the danger wasn't ever really real. They weren't up against an entire gang of insanely violent meth heads. They weren't on the run from the Cartel with a debt that they couldn't possibly pay back.

But the sex? Oh, god yes, the sex was even better than she had fantasized.

Beretta was all kinds of things, but she never would have suspected that one of them was being so incredibly gifted at eating her out. He hadn't ever done it when they had been together before—not all the way to her climax. He was a generous lover, and would take his time to get her dripping wet, but he always did it as a prelude to entering her.

Perhaps that was for the better. If he had licked her like he had last night, then she might never have left him.

And maybe that's not for the better at all.

An annoying, self-doubting thought. She pushed it aside.

In many ways, it was even more intimate than normal sex that he would lick her out straight to her orgasm. Strangely, she felt closer to him as she woke up than she ever had before.

During the day, she would drift from to time, recalling the intensity of his tongue, the ferocity of his licks, the perfect rhythm he had achieved to get her going...and she would need to run to the bathroom and splash a little water on her face to keep her mind steady.

And so the workday progressed, and Helen felt almost normal by the end of it. That was when Georgetta asked to speak with her again.

At first, Helen began to panic—
she's found something out. I'm fired. I'm exposed
.

But though Georgetta's face was clouded with concern, it was not the kind that foreshadowed Helen getting dumped from the hospital. They walked to a dark hallway together where there was only one room occupied.

Georgetta kept her voice low. “Someone came in earlier, looking for you. You were busy with a patient.”

“Oh,” said Helen. Immediately, she thought Georgetta meant Beretta. “Did he give you any trouble?”

“Said he was a friend of yours. Said you had a lot of history. Wanted to talk to you.”

“Wait.” Helen squeezed the bridge of her nose with her fingers. If Beretta wanted to see her, he wouldn't have used any pretense. He would have just talked to her. “What did he look like?”

“White boy. Blond hair. Good looking, though a little on the skinny side.”

“Yeah, that’s—” she shook her head. “Yeah, okay. Sorry.”

“I told him you were unavailable.”

“Thank you.”

“I didn’t like the look of him.”

“Me neither. Ex-boyfriend. Sorry.”

“I see,” said Georgetta. “Not your cousin’s ex-boyfriend. Your ex-boyfriend.”

Now, this was getting embarrassing.

“...yeah.”

“I see. Well,” said Georgetta, taking Helen’s hands. “I know all about the exes of cousins and how shitty they can be. ‘Specially the kind of fools that come round to a place of work and expect an audience just ‘cause they showed up. So I tell you what. You have any more problems with your cousin’s ex, you just let me know. And I’ll take care of things here at work, all right?”

Guilt flooded through Helen’s system. Georgetta had the right idea and the wrong idea simultaneously, and there was really no good way to tell her without making her feel betrayed for believing Helen’s lies.

All this lying had turned Helen into a snake eating her tail. The sooner it was done, the better.

“Thank you, Georgetta. I appreciate that. And your...discretion.”

Georgetta winked and walked back down to the nurse station. Helen was left alone in the hallway with its soft blinking lights, opening and closing her hands again and again in the dark as Georgetta's warmth faded from her palm.

––––––––

“S
o here’s the deal,” said Beretta, laying out a map. “Ace got us the blueprints for the steelworks. I’ve been studying them all day.”

They had changed motels, moving across town. After the episode with Damage, it only made sense to move on to a new place. The body had been disappeared, but that didn't mean they ought to stick around where all the evidence could be. Beretta had lived long enough in this life to know that you didn't just hand the enemy an opening.

Even though it was a different motel, the set-up of the room was still similar. The beds were on opposite sides and the windows had different blinds—the kind that opened vertically instead of horizontally. There were pictures of farmland over the beds and the bathroom's wallpaper had a lighthouse theme.

Outside, the sun had set and night was falling on Stockland. It was Friday night—two nights left before the deadline. Cars could be heard revving up as teenagers took joyrides with their dates. Their new motel was next to a club, and as the night progressed, the deep bass sounds from it got louder and more distinct.

Behind Beretta, Helen sat in a corner on a chair, looking vaguely interested in the plan. None of the men had a problem with her being there—she was in it now, she might as well be in it all the way.

Ever since their encounter—when he had tasted her again, enforced his will upon her in that deliciously intimate way—he'd noticed her staring at him. Wanting him. She saw the soft little motions of her mouth when he pulled on his biker vest or when he fired up the engine to his bike.

A suspicion began to nag at him—about why she had left in the first place all those months ago. Like it wasn't
him
that turned her on, it was the fact of him: the fact that he was a biker.

Well, that was fine, wasn't it? She shouldn't be in his life anyway.

Right? Wasn't that what he was supposed to think?

No. You're supposed to be thinking about the plan
.

Beretta tapped his hands along his jeans, wishing for a quick piece of candy. Instead, he pointed to various points on the map. “They’ve got sharpshooters here, here, here, and here. Not to mention armed patrols running along these catwalks and in front of every entrance. There’s only about a thirty second gap between any patrol, and I’m pretty sure they’ve set up motion detectors to let the guards know when someone’s walking in through the perimeter”

“Rattler’s getting paranoid in his old age,” said Ace.

With good reason
, thought Beretta.
We’re coming to steal his money.

“The major problem we’re facing,” said Beretta, “is that doing this is going to be pretty much impossible.”

Ace laughed at that, making a “no shit?” face.

Beretta continued. “He’s too wily for us to outsmart him. Anything that looks like a con will just end up with people getting shot. He took down—what was it?”

He looked to Locke, who nodded and leaned forward. “They nearly shot the pizza delivery guy when he walked too close. Put a few rounds in his car.”

“And that was a pizza they actually ordered.” Beretta rapped his fingers on the table. “So, a con is out. They’ll just shoot us. And we can’t overpower them, because he’s got a small army in there. Even with as nice as it would be to just kill Rattler dead—and god knows we should try if we get the chance—I don't see it happening during the heist. They've got too many people on their side to fight them square.”

“So what’s left?” asked Tank.

“We’ll have to distract them,” said Beretta. “Something big. Something massive. Something so huge they’ll be running all over the place, too fucked up to stop us as we roll in and take the cash.”

“And the drugs,” said Ace. “We can sell those.”

“Yeah,” said Beretta. “But the cash is the priority. We can’t overload ourselves. And honestly, when we’re coming out of there, we’ll be roaring fast. I don’t want to get pulled over with bags and bags of drugs. At least cash is legal.”

Ace’s face shifted to one side, a half-frown, but he nodded. “Yeah, all right. Good point.”

Maybe it was the pressure of the situation, but none of them were bickering at each other. Maybe they were learning to work together after all.

“What kind of distraction are we talking here?” asked Locke. “Bunch of hookers? I know some girls.”

Tank shook his head. “Are hookers your answer to everything?”

“What?” said Locke. “Look, I don't care how professional these guys are. You put a bunch of hot women in skimpy clothing and parade them past, they're going to lose their focus for a little bit.”

“I don’t want to put anyone else in their line of fire if we can help it,” said Beretta. “And I don’t know that that would work anyway. No, it’s gotta be something...explosive.”