VANDAL

 

Amber Morgan

 

Copyright © 2017

 

 

 

Chapter One

 

The Harleston docks were no place to be after dark. Drug dealers and hookers prowled the shadowed corners of the warehouses. Down at the waterfront, drunks and junkies huddled around burning garbage cans, sharing needles and cheap cider. The air was rank with the stench of urine, puke, and good old-fashioned despair. It was the sick heart of the city, and Dru “Vandal” Curtis could think of a million places he’d rather be on a hot and sweaty Saturday night.

But Beak Davies was down here somewhere, getting his rocks off with a hooker who looked just young enough to appeal to the snitch. That was the plan, anyway. If everything went right, Beak would be too busy whimpering pathetic sweet nothings into Sienna’s ear to notice Vandal closing in on him. He’d be dead before the blow job was over, murdered with a gun registered to a rival MC gang member. Vandal could pay Sienna and slip away into the night, job done.

So Vandal ignored the stink and the heat, and slunk through the docks towards the abandoned warehouse where Sienna should be giving Beak the time of his miserable life. One shot and Psycho City MC would be one step closer to cleaning up two of their biggest problems. Beak had spilled his guts to the Harleston PD one time too many about the city drug trade, and a murder rap against the Black Dogs enforcer would help weaken that gang’s already tenuous hold on the city.

He heard Beak before he saw him. A few feet away, hidden in a dark warehouse doorway, Beak’s distinctive nasal voice was impossible to mistake. Poor Sienna. Must be hard to concentrate with that racket buzzing in your ears. Still, she was a pro.

Vandal slid the gun from his coat. His leather gloves were way too fucking hot for a night like this, but of course it was a sensible precaution. Still, he was looking forward to dumping the piece and stripping off the gloves. He stopped at the corner of the opposite warehouse, now able to see Beak pressed flush against the door, head thrown back in ecstasy. Sienna’s pale blonde hair shone in the sickly light from a nearby street lamp, her head bobbing up and down as she worked Beak with her mouth.

Beak made a sudden, convulsive noise and Sienna smoothly rose and stepped away, wiping her mouth. Vandal waited until she was well out of his line of sight before he acted.

A rush of blood filled his ears as he squeezed the trigger. It drowned out the sound of the gunshot, but not Sienna’s squeal of surprise as Beak collapsed, blood spurting from his throat as the bullet hit home. Heart pounding, Vandal hurried over to check on the snitch. From this distance, a miss would have been a major fuck-up, but you never just assumed you’d hit your target. Not if you had time to check.

Sienna smoothed down her ass-skimming schoolgirl skirt and glared at Vandal. “You couldn’t have yelled a warning or something?” She was chalky-pale, the only sign of nerves she let slip.

“You know better than that,” he said. He bent over Beak. Even in the patchy light of the street lamp, it was clear he’d snitched his last. Vandal straightened up, satisfied. He wasn’t squeamish about blood or dead bodies, but the less time he spent around this one, the better. He beckoned Sienna away, pulling a wad of cash from inside his coat. “You know what to say if the police come calling?”

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, rolling her eyes at him. She was cute, in a baby-faced way, but she looked closer to fifteen than twenty-five, and it skeeved Vandal out. On the other hand, that had made her the perfect bait for Beak. “I know the drill. I didn’t see anything, I panicked when I heard the gunshot, I ran.” She held her hand out expectantly.

He handed her the cash and she grinned wickedly. “Take the rest of the night off,” Vandal said. “You’re too traumatized to stay on the streets, right?”

“If you say so.” She glanced back at Beak’s corpse, wrinkling her nose is disgust. “I would have been anyway, I think. He was gross. Where are you going now?”

He shrugged. The less she knew, the better.

“Are you meeting the guys? Are you meeting Cannibal?” She tried to sound casual, but he caught the undercurrent of hope in her voice.

“Go home, Sienna.” He gave her a little shove. “Won’t be long before somebody reports the gunshot.”

She snorted. “You know where we are, right?”

It was true that on the docks nobody was likely to blink at the sound of a gun going off, but that didn’t mean they should hang around a crime scene. “Go. I’ll tell Cannibal you said hi.”

She took off, spike heels clacking on the worn stone. Vandal took off in the other direction, down between two warehouses. There was a dumpster at the end of that narrow passage where he could drop the gun. The cops would find it easily enough, but that was part of the plan. Brutus, the Black Dogs enforcer, wasn’t known for his shining intellect. Dumping a hot piece thirty seconds from a murder site was probably something he’d actually do. Probably something he’d actually done. There were reasons the Black Dogs were losing their grip on Harleston.

And Psycho City was just waiting to swoop in. His club already controlled most of the drug trade, but it would still take some work to cut the Dogs’ ties with the Irish Mob in the area. Taking out Beak was a step in the right direction, and getting a key member of the Dogs tied up in a murder investigation was a bigger step. Beak was a good little informant—the cops would take his death seriously, and taking him out of the picture protected Psycho City’s interests a little better, as well as opening up potential new ties with the Madden Boys.

All in all, not a bad night’s work. Vandal dropped the gun in the dumpster and strolled away from the docks. He stripped the gloves off his hands, ignoring the slight shaking of his fingers. Experience told him a few shots of vodka would stop that. He headed into town to put his alibi in place.

****

Half an hour after shooting Beak, Vandal was inside O’Malley’s, an Irish bar that specialized in craft beer and excellent seafood. It was part-owned by one of Psycho City’s brothers, who’d trained as a chef while serving time for armed robbery. Chopper had stayed away from the generic tourist trap décor you got in a lot of “Irish bars,” and decked the place out in dark wood and crimson leather. Low lighting shone on framed photos of local sports heroes and woodcuts of old sailing boats. There was nothing that said “biker bar” about the place. It was a respectable, profitable, and popular business. That, of course, was the point.

Vandal found three of his brothers at a table in the corner, hunched over their beers and bowls of sea bass chowder. The mouth-watering scent of bacon and pepper hit him hard. He never ate before a job and he was always starving afterwards. “Any of that going spare?” he asked as he sat down, snagging a chunk of thick, crusty bread from the plate in the center of the table.

“Buy your own, cheapskate.” Spider, the MC Vice-President gave him a searching look as he joined them. “All good?”

Vandal swallowed a mouthful of bread and nodded. “All good.”

Spider gave a satisfied grunt and waved over a waitress. “Vodka on the rocks and a bowl of chowder for my boy here,” he ordered.

The other two men at the table were two of the club’s enforcers, Cannibal and Spark. All put together, Vandal thought, they looked like trouble. Tall, lanky Spider with his wild gray hair and long beard. Hulking Cannibal with his buzz-fade mohawk and the intricate tattoos crawling up his neck. Spark, with his numerous facial piercings and blue-streaked hair. Vandal himself, dressed all in faded black, his dark hair pulled back into a sloppy bun—a man-bun, Spark would say—felt like a crow among peacocks.

But again, that was kind of the point. His brothers were a loud, flashy crowd. They drew attention. People would remember them being in O’Malley’s, and if, pushed, yeah, they might remember the quieter, drab guy that was with them. He’d probably been there all night, they’d guess. Just making less of a show of himself than the other three. As the club’s Sergeant at Arms, Vandal considered being invisible a key part of his job, one that allowed him to be effective at it.

“Sienna okay?” Cannibal asked.

Vandal smirked. Cannibal had the same, too-casual tone that Sienna herself had used to ask about him. “She’s good,” he replied. “Asked about you.”

Cannibal looked thoughtful. Spark elbowed him. “Never mix business with pleasure, man.”

“I’m not fucking brain-dead,” Cannibal said, scowling.

Vandal’s vodka arrived and he knocked it back a little too quickly. Fire spread through his throat and belly, burning away the flush of adrenaline that shooting Beak had triggered. His hands were steady when he set the glass down. It wasn’t that killing bothered him. Not entirely. He’d done one tour of Afghanistan as a Marine and killed plenty. There were acceptable losses. Beak, a pervert with a mouth too big for his own good, was definitely an acceptable loss. But part of him never got used to it. Never wanted to. When you got used to killing, you lost … something. Something Vandal didn’t want to lose.

But you had to have a flexible sense of morality in Psycho City, especially as Sergeant at Arms. And the MC had taken him in after he’d been discharged from the Marines. It had been an honorable discharge, sure, but that didn’t matter when you couldn’t get a job and the state didn’t give a fuck about your welfare. When you woke up screaming every night and couldn’t afford medication or healthcare. He glared at his empty vodka glass, knowing he was letting his mind go to bad places.

“So!” Spider jolted him from his reverie with a slap to the back. “Time to cut loose, huh? What d’you boys think? Make a night of it here or head to a strip joint, or back to the club house? Any ideas?”

“I’ll go with the majority,” Vandal said. “As long as there’s hot chicks and cold beer.”

“Strip joint, then,” Spark said. “The Black Cat?”

“Always a good plan,” Spider said. “Let’s get our boy here fueled up and go start some trouble.” He winked at Vandal.

Vandal grinned back, relaxing. Business was done. It was time for pleasure.