Biker Justice: A Skull Kings MC Novella (7 page)

“Take my tips, then!” Terrence squeaked. “I’ll give my share of tonight’s tips. All of ‘em.”

Once again, Logan glanced sidelong at me for my approval. I nodded.

“What a great boss!” Logan exclaimed, clapping Terrence on the arm. “Now, I better see some top-notch, Carmen-level customer service tonight, and if she suspects you stiffed her as much as
one
dollar—”

“On my honor as a business owner, you can trust me,” Terrence said, shakily lifting two fingers in some sort of bizarre salute.

I almost laughed.
Honor
and Terrence didn’t go together, but there was one thing he was afraid of, and that was the Skull Kings. As annoyed as I was at Logan, at least he’d gotten me out of work for the night.

“You’re a good man, Terrence,” Logan said, waving as he walked toward the door. He hooked me with his arm and steered me to the exit. “Come with me,” he whispered.

I was surprised when he led me to his Harley and offered me a spare helmet. “What are you doing?”

Logan’s face was impassively serious, all of his previous good humor gone. “Put this on. Trust me.” When I didn’t answer, he added, “I’ll get you home in time to feed Xander a nice, homemade dinner.”

He didn’t wait for a response and bopped the helmet onto my head. I stared as he fastened the strap under my chin.

“Why didn’t you call me?” I sputtered.

Logan’s fingers slowed. His eyes remained fixed just below my face. “Why didn’t you call
me
?”

“That’s not fair,” I said with a scoff. “You’re the one who lied about who you really are. You’re supposed to call first.”

“I didn’t know there was a specific protocol to follow.”

“There isn’t. It’s just plain good manners. It would’ve also helped to know that I was going to go for a surprise ride when I showed up for work today.”

Logan grinned in spite of himself. “You’re free to go if you really want.”

I crossed my arms, eyeing the seat of the Harley. “Well...where were you planning on taking me?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Come with me and find out.”

My left foot inched forward.
Should I?
My mind was cautious, but something in my gut urged me to swing my leg over that seat and wrap my arms around Logan’s middle. I dared myself to do it, knowing that I wouldn’t have the nerve if I waited just one second longer.

“Xander eats his dinner at seven,” I said as I settled myself behind him.

The motorcycle growled to life, vibrating powerfully between my legs. Logan turned his head to the side, and I caught sight of the outer corner of his mouth as it turned up into a grin.

“That gives us plenty of time.”

For what?
I couldn’t help but wonder.

Suddenly, we lurched our way out of his parking spot. I gave a surprised shriek and tightened my hold on Logan’s torso. His belly undulated as he laughed, the sound of it impossible to hear behind the pistoning engine.

The wind stung my face as it whipped past, but I felt exhilarated. Sarah’s car was just turning into the parking lot, showing up ten minutes late as always. I lifted a hand to her surprised face behind the windshield as we made our final exit.

* * *

I
watched the town scroll past at dizzying speed. First, we were on Main Street, the signs of the businesses reduced to colored blurs. I caught a glimpse of the Sudsy Lady and wondered if Lisbeth was inside. Two seconds later, we were on the other side of the railroad tracks, crossing into the old industrial part of town. Then, that too fell behind us, and Canyon City slowly gave way to the wild desert landscape.

A week ago, I would’ve wondered if Logan was actually a serial killer planning on indulging his murderous urges out in the middle of nowhere. Hell, I still wondered that, albeit a little facetiously. I couldn’t help but identify all the perfect ways he could dispose of my body out in the desert amongst the dead bushes and starving coyotes in the shadows of the canyon.

But something told me I could trust him. Maybe it was the way he fastened the helmet under my chin himself, or his tight grip and gentle steering as we sped through town. I wanted to believe that it was all for my safety, that he cared that much about me, even though he’d lied about most of the stuff I’d grown to know about him.

I
needed
to believe him. I didn’t know how I could live with myself otherwise.

After a few minutes of endlessly flat terrain, I spotted a small structure on the horizon. We approached it quickly. At first glance, it looked like one of the many abandoned ranch houses that populated the area, leftovers from the Spanish cattle-driving days. But there was shiny, new glass in the windows, a good roof that had to be less than a decade old, and fresh motorcycle tracks in the gravel driveway.

Something inside of me told me that this house in the middle of nowhere, barely within the boundaries of the county let alone the town, was where Logan lived, and his claims of being an undercover agent seemed more plausible.

I was the first one to get off the bike once it stopped. “What is this place?” I asked.

Logan slid off, planting his boots into the ground next to me. “My secret hide-out,” he said plainly, but there was a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “I usually sleep at the clubhouse now, but back in my prospect days...” He gestured to the small house. “This was my home.”

I shook my head, trying to imagine a younger, friendless Logan sitting alone in this place, twiddling his thumbs until he was given permission to show up at the next Skull Kings hangout.

“Honestly, this whole FBI thing is really hard to believe,” I said.

“Then, I’ll help you believe it. Come inside.”

Paint flaked off of the ancient door as it creaked open. Logan flipped a switch, and the entire house buzzed with the efforts of a hidden generator. Then, a single yellow light bulb popped to life over our heads, and I took in the whole living room with one glance.

A futon was pushed into a corner, currently converted into a makeshift bed. There was a scrubbed wooden table with a radio, a rag rug in the middle of the floor, and piles of clothes. The bathroom was through a door on my right.

“Take a seat. Can I offer you a drink?”

I wasn’t sure if he was joking or not. There was no kitchen or refrigerator. “No thanks,” I said as I lowered myself onto the futon.

Logan’s wallet chain and keys rattled as he crossed the room to a metal filing cabinet. He inserted a key into the lock and opened one of the drawers. He came back to me holding several small items. The first thing he handed to me was a photograph.

“That was me five years ago,” he explained as he sat down. “My first day working for the FBI.” His cheeks darkened. “My, uh, mom took that before I left for work.”

I stared at the picture in my hands. The young man in the photograph was unfamiliar. He was thin and fresh-faced, wearing a starched shirt and tie while posing stiffly in front of a door. His hair was shorn and parted to one side. He looked like somebody who drove a Prius, who wore sandals on his pasty-white feet on the weekends and wouldn’t have been caught dead inside of a tattoo parlor. He was a stranger to me, but his smile was recognizable. I felt the shock all over my body.

“You look so...”

“Preppy?” Logan offered immediately.

“Well...yeah. How old are you in this picture?”

A beat passed. “Twenty-eight.”

Twenty-eight. Five years ago.

“I’m older than you thought, aren’t I?” Logan said with a high, nervous laugh.

I felt my mouth fall open. I looked from the photo to the flesh and blood Logan sitting at my left. This whole time, I’d thought he was my age,
or younger.
He certainly acted that way. But with this new revelation and in the light of the single light bulb and the scarlet sunset coming through the window, I began to notice the minute signs of aging that I’d never noticed before. He had fine lines around his eyes and mouth and a few threads of silver in his sandy-blonde hair.

This isn’t the real me.
His words echoed once again in my ears. I’d had no idea how true those words were until now.

Logan cleared his throat loudly, obviously unsettled by my silence. “Uh, well, anyway. Here’s my I.D. from back then.”

He passed me a generic clip-on badge. He looked surprised in his headshot, wide-eyed and unsmiling, but now I knew that he was just very young in the picture. Beneath it were the words,
Assistant Research Specialist, Investigative Analysis.

He tapped the first line of words and read them aloud. “I was basically the office bitch,” he explained. “You wouldn’t know it from T.V. or movies or anything, but most jobs in the FBI involve reams of paperwork, and that’s what I did for about two years. Did you know that Canyon City is a major hub in the underground drug network?”

I looked up from the I.D. badge in surprise, jarred by the sudden question. “Uh...no?”

“Well, that’s what the department was investigating. They had a pretty small file on the town, so nobody was interested. But then, they got a tip that somebody was dealing out of Amazon, and that’s when the Skull Kings got on their radar.”

“Oh, my god. The MC is dealing drugs?”

“No, not at all!” Logan said quickly. “It was actually the Scorpions, but the Skull Kings were just more visible. I only realized that the Kings were clean after I got inducted, so it was a huge mess. I had to figure out how to gather intel on the Scorpions while keeping my cover. I did a pretty shitty job, though, because the Kings thought I was double-crossing them. That time when I said I got jumped by Scorpions, that was actually the Kings—” he paused to wave away my cry of alarm “—but that’s not important. Basically, the FBI found themselves in need of a special agent who fit a certain criteria. I got the job. That’s how I ended up here.”

Logan passed me something else: his badge. I flipped open the leather cover. It was just like in the movies, with the official-looking seal and everything. Logan looked older in this picture, with slightly longer hair and a thinned out face. But that wasn’t what caught my attention.

I held the badge up to the light, hoping that the poor lighting was playing tricks on my eyes. But the words were still there, clear as day. I read them aloud.

“Special Agent
Michael Holder
?”

I didn’t even know his real name. He’d done things to my body to make me breathlessly cry out his name, and it wasn’t even real. Suddenly, it was all becoming too much, too soon.

“Logan” ripped the badge out of my hands. He grabbed my shoulders, roughly maneuvering me to face him head-on. There was an imploring look in his eyes.

Blood pounded angrily in my head. “How about the Skull Kings? Do they know?”

Logan gulped. “Yes.”

My voice wavered as I struggled to speak. “And Aspen?”

“Aspen knows, too.”

I made a strangled sound with my throat, my outrage too great for words.

“Carmen, please understand. I came here to do a job, but then I got involved with the MC, and I started getting to know you better, and...” He searched my eyes as he struggled to find the right words to say. “Logan is my middle name. And everything that I’ve told you about my feelings, about how much I wanted you,
that’s
all true.”

I shrugged his hands off of me and inched away. “I don’t know,” was all I could say. I repeated it softly to myself as I stared at the Spartan interior of his living room, the badge lying at our feet, and the gleaming Harley parked outside, framed in the window of his secret lair. I looked back to Logan.

“Why? Why are you telling me all this? Why now?”

Logan exhaled slowly, but his gaze never broke from mine. I felt a rush of adrenaline as I steeled myself. The seconds mounted, one on top of the other.

I wondered if I was ready to hear what he had to say.

“I couldn’t lie to you anymore. And—” he drew in a shaky breath “—I need your help.”

––––––––

H
elp?

“How exactly can I help you, Special Agent Michael Holder?”

“Come on, I’m serious.”

I crossed my arms. “Well? What do you want from me?”

Logan rested his elbows on his knees and laced his fingers together. He chewed on his bottom lip. “It’s about Lisbeth.”

A flare of irritation broiled up inside of my chest, but I calmed it back with a few deep breaths. “Okay. It’s about that tattoo, isn’t it?”

“It goes deeper than that,” Logan said, sounding exhausted. He sighed and began rubbing his eyes. “I recognized the compass from my days as a research assistant. It didn’t mean anything to me at the time, but when Lisbeth came back into town with that image on her arm, something clicked. You see, the Scorpions were the dealers, but we never found the supplier. That’s part of the reason why I’m still here.”

“And what do Lisbeth and a bunch of prostitutes have to do with it?”

“Remember I told you the rose was a symbol for the prostitutes? It’s just a small fraction of what the compass gang does. They have their hands stuck in a lot of cookie jars: money laundering, gun trafficking, prostitution,
drugs.
I know it’s kind of a long shot, but I got a hunch that Lisbeth showing up in town was not a coincidence.”

“And?”

“And obviously, I can’t out her to her brother or the rest of the MC because we have no idea how deep this goes. But until I find out, she might be in danger.”

My mind worked quickly, piecing the odds and ends together. “So, you want me to convince Lisbeth to tell you what she knows.”

“You’re the only one who can get the truth out of her. There’s got to be more to her story than what she told you, don’t you agree?”

I wasn’t exactly sure, or maybe I just didn’t want to know. Thinking about what Lisbeth had to do to get inked with the rose was horrible enough. But if there was something
worse
coming, then Lisbeth really was in danger.

“I don’t know if I can, Logan.”

Logan nodded. Suddenly, he looked tired. He looked
old.
“I understand. We’ll talk about it some other time. But think about it, okay? And keep an ear out. The compass affiliates have a sort of code that they use to recognize each other in the streets. They call themselves ‘True North.’”