CHAPTER TWO
Isaac was interested.
The woman sitting next to him sharing her burger and fries was a knockout, but he didn’t think that’s really what had his interest. Sure, he’d looked her over good, and she was in his sweet spot—tall, shiny, dark brown hair pulled off her face and hanging down her back; lively light eyes, the color of which he couldn’t figure out. Great tits, just the hint of a swell of cleavage showing over the curved neckline of her shirt. She was simply dressed, too, in jeans, low-heeled black boots, a white t-shirt and a black leather jacket. The only jewelry he could see was a big silver ring on each middle finger and a pair of thin silver hoops just big enough to lie on her neck when she tilted her head. He bet that neck smelled nice.
Nothing on the left ring finger; he’d checked that out first thing.
He liked his women without a lot of frills. This one was gorgeous but didn’t look like it took her two hours to get that way. The kind of woman from whom he’d never hear the boner-killing plea, Watch my hair! Fuck, he hated women like that. He liked his fucks to get messy. So, yeah, he could sit back and look at her all day. But that’s not what had caught him.
He’d noticed her cage before he’d noticed her, when he, Len, and Showdown were on their way out of town earlier in the afternoon. That 68 Camaro was cherry. It was worth a lot of money, and it wasn’t so usual to see expensive cars around Signal Bend. Even the out-of-towners who came out on weekends to the shops on Main weren’t the ritzy “antiquing” types. The “Main Street Marketplace,” so-dubbed by the sad, little men of the sad, little Chamber of Commerce, was really junk shops. Permanent garage sales.
So a hot chick with money was at the one and only realtor in Signal Bend. That was worth a look. He’d decided he wanted to know more while they were still riding past her; he intended to put Bart on it in the morning. But now she was here at the bar, so maybe he could get what he needed straight from the hottie’s mouth.
She kept that pretty, rosy mouth closed, though. He didn’t even have her name yet. She was smiling, her eyes keen and sparkling, and she was sitting here sharing her eats with him—her reticence wasn’t hostile at all. In fact, he was picking up that she might well be good for a tumble tonight.
So why so cool? He wasn’t a big talker, but she’d said one word for ten of his. There was something going on behind those—blue?—eyes. Woman was smart, and she was paying careful attention. That had his antennae up.
Her name and address he’d have five minutes after he put Bart on it. Probably less. But there was something else, something deeper and much more interesting, to know about her.
Taking a pull from her bottle of Bud, she looked past him down the bar and rolled her eyes. Isaac turned and saw his guys all goggling at them like the assholes they were. Dan raised his glass of whiskey, and the other four followed suit, toasting him as if they’d never seen him work a chick before. Assholes. He lifted his beer to them and turned away.
“Don’t mind them. I don’t let ‘em out much.” He watched her tip the bottle up and swallow down the last of it. The way her throat moved as she swallowed, the muscles flexing rhythmically, gave him an urge to run his fingers across that smooth, sleek skin. He barely caught it back; his fingers actually stretched a little toward her, which surprised him.
She set the empty bottle on the bar. He drained his and did the same. “’Nother?”
She smiled at him—that smile said that she was on to him, and she wanted to make sure he knew it. “One more. Gotta drive home in unfamiliar territory, so I’ll need my wits.”
“I’ll see to it you get home, don’t you worry.”
“I’ll bet. One more. And thank you.” She pulled a fry heavy with ketchup and ate it, end first. It left behind a small, tomato-y drop, and he reached out to catch it with his thumb, but, with a sly glance at his reaching digit, she slid her tongue out and ran it over her lower lip. His balls clenched hard at the sight, and his cock filled out uncomfortably. He signaled to Rose to bring two more Buds.
As Rose was nodding, Isaac heard a crash behind him and instinctively looked at the mirror behind the bar. Jimmy Sullivan and Don Keyes were going at it and, in customary fashion, pulling in the rest of the crowd, men and women alike. His brothers were fairly leaping into the fray. Okay, then. He turned to his new, nameless friend. Way too pretty to get caught up in the melee.
“You should get behind the bar with Rose, Sport. Show’s startin’.”
Signal Bend, Missouri was named for a particular feature: a complicated bend in the railroad which bisected the town. When, after three massive derailments, the rail line acknowledged that the bend was more than a locomotive could take at speed, they installed a signal house at the location. As hard times hit the country at the end of the 19th century, and the huge farms around the railroad got sold off in parcels, bringing in a spate of residents to farm neighboring plots, a town had grown up around the little hut in which the signalman had lived and worked.
Eventually, Signal Bend got its own station, and it thrived as a community through the middle part of the 20th century. Never having developed any other kind of industry but farming and the railroad, and the commerce to support it, Signal Bend began to starve slowly as interstates and corporate farms became the way. By the 1990s, the railroad had been abandoned and suburbs of St. Louis finally had started to bump up against the farmland surrounding the town. A Walmart went up less than 30 miles away, drawing dollars from the locally-owned shops. Things in Signal Bend were getting dire. The most recent recession dealt the death blow, though the dying was slow. The only people who stayed around now were the ones whose families had been here for generations and knew nothing else. Not even many of them were left.
About half the family farms were still operational and still hanging on. The rest of the farmland was lying fallow or was being run by corporations, and many of the people working them commuted to work from other towns. These days, the most lucrative “commerce” in Signal Bend was crystal meth. As the Night Horde well knew.
A town like this, in the straits it was in, there wasn’t much to do at night. Everything but No Place was closed by 9pm. No movie theater or video store anymore; nearest ones were 25 miles away, in the same strip center as the Walmart. No cable TV or internet, unless you ran a dish, which not many could afford. Three things: drink, fight, fuck. All three happened just about nightly, and usually in that order, at No Place. On Saturdays, when Tuck, owner of the bar and Rose’s old man, brought in live music, you could add dancing to the list.
It wasn’t Saturday tonight, though. The drinking had been going on for a few hours. Now it was time for the fighting.
Usually these fights were little more than good natured scrapes, a lively but friendly disagreement turning physical. People cleared the furniture out of the way and tried to do minimal lasting damage to body or property. This one had a sharper vibe, though, Isaac noticed right away, when a flying bottle nearly missed his head. Jimmy and Don were really fighting, and that had changed the attitude of the whole bar. Isaac spared a quick second to wonder what the fuck was up and then busted Ed Foss’s nose for throwing a goddamn bottle at his goddamn head.
His brothers had noticed the difference in the scene as well, and most of them were going in hot. Isaac saw Dan, though, pulling two women out of the midst and sending them behind the bar. Leave it to Dan to remember his chivalry. As Isaac watched, amused, he took a punch to the lower back and turned to find Meg Sullivan glaring up at him, arm cocked for another go. He backhanded her and put her on the floor.
His chivalry wasn’t dead, but if a bitch was throwing sucker punches, she got what she got.
Aside from ducking flying bottles and putting thug bitches in their place, Isaac’s primary interest here was in minimizing the damage to the bar. Tuck paid the Horde to keep some semblance of order, so they were on the hook for damage done in these regular melees. Usually that wasn’t a problem. Tonight it was. So he stayed out of the fray as best he could and surveyed, looking for the flashpoint—which was not, surprisingly, Jimmy and Don, who weren’t fighting each other anymore. Showdown had Don on the floor, but Jimmy was engaged with Will Keller, and they were going at it with murder on their minds.
What the fuck was going on?
Then Jimmy got over on Will and put him against the wall, and Isaac caught a glint of metal in Jimmy’s right hand. Goddamn son of a bitch fuck. Nothing worse than a twitchy asshole with a blade. No. Not gonna happen. There were at least three brawling bodies between Isaac and Jimmy, but Isaac plowed through them and grabbed hold of Jimmy’s plaid shirt, yanking him back.
Not before his knife had found a home, though. Will went down quietly, sliding to sit on the floor against the wall, holding his side. Jimmy flailed with the switchblade still in his hand, now going for Isaac, but Isaac grabbed his wrist and broke it with one hard snap, and the blade fell from Jimmy’s suddenly useless fingers to the floor, embedding in the rough wood.
Isaac was proud to be a man who kept his cool in a brawl, but now he was filled with a heady fury. He put Jimmy on the floor, his knee on the wrist he’d just broken, and laid in with abandon, pulping the murderous asshole’s face.
A shot rang out, and the room went quiet. His knee still on Jimmy’s wrist, and one hand around his throat, the other cocked back, Isaac turned toward the sound. Meg was behind the bar, with the new girl, whom Isaac was beginning to think of automatically as “Sport,” in a chokehold, a little snub-nosed .22 at her temple. Sport’s hands were on Meg’s forearm.
“Back off him, Ike, or your new little friend gets a piercing.” Meg grinned like she was proud of her turn of phrase.
The force of the chill he felt surprised him. Without breaking eye contact with Meg, Isaac released Jimmy’s throat and started to back off, lifting up from his knees. He’d come up maybe two inches, when Meg was sailing over Sport’s shoulder and landing on her back on the bar. Isaac watched as Sport came in from the side with a hard punch to Meg’s throat, leaving a visible gash where her big ring connected. Meg immediately began to choke desperately. And then Sport had the gun and was emptying the cylinder. She looked over at him and waved the now empty gun, in a carry on gesture.
Grinning, Isaac came to his feet, bringing Jimmy with him. “You and me, Jimmy—and your lovely missus—we’ll be havin’ a talk.” He looked over at Show, who already had his burner open. Dan had taken Meg over from Isaac’s very interesting new friend. Len, and now Rose, were tending to Will, who didn’t look too bad off, thankfully. “Havoc’ll be around with the van any minute. Comin’ armed into Tuck’s place—very bad idea, my man. Regrettable.”
Jimmy was too messed up to speak. Isaac righted a chair, sat him down on it, and nodded for Dan to bring Meg over, too. Once Dan had charge of errant husband and wife, Isaac went to the bar. The rest of his brothers and the other patrons were setting the bar to rights. There was heavy damage this time, though. Dammit. The Horde coffers weren’t empty, but they weren’t so full they wouldn’t feel the hit.
Tuck was leaning on the bar, considering the scene. Isaac leaned over and put his hand on Tuck’s shoulder. “Sorry, man. We’ll get it straight by tomorrow afternoon.”
The old guy nodded. “I know. Thanks, Ike. Will okay?”
Isaac looked over and saw Will standing, his shirt open and a gauze bandage on his side. Rose had gotten her share of first aid practice over the years. “Seems to be.” He turned back to Tuck. “You know what Jimmy and Will are beefin’ about? That was no friendly disagreement.”
Tuck shook his head slowly. “They came in together, looked normal to me.”
Isaac considered that. Jimmy and his old lady had come in armed. That was a massive transgression, and they knew it. Something was up. He was looking forward to sitting down with the Sullivans tonight. Havoc had come in, and he and Dan were leading them out.
Now, though, the girl known as Sport was walking up to him, a wry smirk on her face and two beers in her hand. She held one out to him. “This is how you make your fun around here, huh?”
He took the beer and drank half down all at once. “Well, that was more fun than usual, but you know. Find it where you can.” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “You handled yourself, though. Got a self-defense class in your back pocket?”
She was drinking as he talked, and he watched her throat move again, entranced. When she pulled the bottle away, she was wearing that wry, enigmatic smirk. “Something like that.” She finished the beer and set the bottle on the bar. “Welp, I’m out. Interesting place you got here. Thanks for the Welcome Wagon.” She turned and walked out.
Holy fuck. Her ass. How had he missed that? He drained his beer and went after her.
She was moving fast and almost at her car when he got outside. “Wait up, Sport!” he called. She reached her car before she turned, crossed her arms, and waited.
When he was standing in front of her, looking down into those sardonic eyes, he said, “Still don’t know your name.”
“I have an idea you will soon enough. Why spoil your fun?” She put her hand on the door handle. Isaac was amped up from the fight and seriously intrigued by this woman. Acting on animal instinct more than anything else, he wrapped his hand around her slight wrist and pulled it away from the handle. She let him, still smirking.
With his other hand on her shoulder, he pushed her back against the Camaro. He leaned in close and murmured, “Something tells me you’re a lot of fun, Sport.” He kissed her.
Though she didn’t kiss him back at first, she didn’t resist, either. Her lips were warm, soft, and supple, and when he pushed his tongue against them, she opened her mouth and let him in. With a pleased growl, he released her wrist and shoulder so that he could cradle her face and kiss her properly.
Her tongue came alive then, undulating against his, and her arms snaked around his neck. He felt her wrapping his braid around her hand, and then she pulled it over his shoulder, bringing him even closer as she sucked his lower lip between her teeth, biting down. He was completely hard, his cock constricted in the leg of his jeans. When he dropped his hands to her hips and brought her tightly against him, she pulled away a bit. She licked her lips and looked up at him, her eyes contemplative.
He smiled. “Ah, Sport. I want to play with you. I got some business I need to take care of tonight, though. Pick this up later?”
“Won’t rule it out.” Damn, he was already growing to love that knowing smile. He kissed her quickly and put her in her car. As he watched her drive away, his smile became a snarl. He was extra pissed at the Sullivans now. They’d fucked up what would have been a really delightful night.
~oOo~
Isaac pulled up to the Night Horde clubhouse feeling agitated and angry. He glanced around the lot; looked like he was the last one in. Good. That’s how he liked it. He hated waiting for other people.
The Night Horde no longer ran a business per se, not a strictly legit one, anyway. In the town’s heyday and for some time after that, they’d run a construction company, but there wasn’t anything to build these days. By all appearances, they now were simply a recreational club. Wyatt and Victor had family farms. Havoc, Dan, and Bart worked at Keyes Implement Repair, fixing tractors, threshers, and the like. Showdown ran the feed store. Len owned the hardware store. CJ lived off his army pension. Isaac . . . well.
As a club, they earned three ways, the most lucrative of which by far was running protection and enforcement on the local meth pipeline from Crawford County, northeast to St. Louis and into Illinois, and southwest to Springfield, Joplin, and as far as Tulsa. They took a share from both sides of the line. No one in the club liked it, but meth was a way of life in mid-Missouri, and the only way to control it was to, in fact, control it. Help the local cookers get their product to a wider clientele. They ran it out of Signal Bend. All of it. Out. Let the cities deal with it.
Anyone who tried to keep it local had his mind changed.
The town had lost its police department in the early 1990s, when another national fiscal crisis had taken a toll. They were miles away from the nearest substation of the Crawford County Sheriff’s Office. Isaac’s father had led the club in those days, and, rather than watch the town and its environs descend into some kind of pioneer-days lawlessness, Big Ike had seen a way to keep order and make a buck. The Horde had become the town security, taking a monthly sum from local businesses for the promise of protection and a guarantee to fix the damage from what it could not prevent.
They were effective deterrents to crime. So effective, in fact, that Crawford County never saw a need to bring a substation within reasonable distance of Signal Bend, and the club maintained a cordial and very healthy relationship with Sheriff Keith Tyler, who took his cut of the meth profits and stayed out of the way.
The Horde also occasionally did custom bike work. That, though, earned, at best, a low five figures in a year.
The clubhouse showed its history as a rural construction company. The building was long, low, and serviceable, built mainly of cinderblock and surrounded by a large gravel lot that had once held heavy equipment. The property was ringed by an eight-foot, chain-link fence with privacy slats. Normally, though, the huge double gates were left open. There had been no need to lockdown for going on five years. They had beefs with crews in St. Louis and East St. Louis, but that trouble went down on the away field. It stayed out of Signal Bend.
Isaac was damn proud of that.
It’s why he was het up now. Something wrong was going down if Jimmy and Meg Sullivan, cookers extraordinaire, were walking around Signal Bend armed at all, much less bringing that shit into Tuck’s. And the dynamics of the fight were puzzling: Jimmy and Don Keyes first. Don had nothing to do with the trade, though he had a deep connection with the Horde. But then the shift to Will, who was just a farmer—and Isaac’s oldest friend. Good friends with Jimmy, too. Isaac had no fucking clue what that scene was all about. But he wasn’t going home until he knew.
Neither were the Sullivans. He went into the clubhouse.
The Horde were lined up at the bar or sitting at tables nearby. Rover, their Prospect, was pouring whiskey. And there were girls. Always seemed to be girls around. The Horde was the only MC for miles, and lots of farmers’ daughters managed to find the coin to tart themselves up and drive themselves out for a chance for a tumble with a biker. Hence the long row of dorm rooms at the back of the clubhouse. That, and space to entertain the occasional visiting brother. The Night Horde wasn’t part of a large charter, but they were friendly with several and allied with one, The Scorpions, an international charter based in Florida.
Show looked up and saw Isaac striding in. “Hey, boss. Jimmy and Meg are waiting for you in the Room. Made ‘em nice ‘n comfy.”
Isaac nodded. “You good to go, Victor?”
Victor stood on the rung of his barstool and reached over the bar. He grabbed a box of rubber gloves from the shelf underneath and tucked it under his arm. “You know it, Isaac. Born ready.”
The Room was a former repair bay they now used to do their dirtier, wetter work. A room one could hose out and scrub down with bleach, if need be. Not much call for it usually—in fact, it held the booze back stock right now, serving as an overflow storage area as well as an interrogation space. Jimmy and Meg Sullivan were gagged and tied to metal chairs, their arms bound to the arms of the chairs, positioned side by side, about three feet between them. Isaac hadn’t realized how much of a beating he’d laid down on Jimmy, but the skinny fuck looked pretty bad. His broken right wrist was swelling angrily, the hand attached to it livid.
Isaac looked at Victor, and gestured to Jimmy. Victor nodded and walked over to Meg. With a smile that should have turned her blood to ice, he ripped the duct tape off her mouth. She squealed as the tape took some skin with it. Victor pulled a wheeled tool chest up alongside Jimmy, and Isaac grabbed a stool and sat in front of Meg. She was the weaker link.
Isaac leaned in a bit. Her throat was swollen, with a gash still leaking some blood, where Sport had landed her punch. Sport—that’s were he should be right now, dammit, his hands around her naked ass. That amazing ass. He tried to smile at Meg, but it came out a snarl. “Okay, Meg, sweetheart. This is how we play. I ask you questions. I don’t like your answer, Vic takes something off your man. Do you understand the rules of the game?”
Meg took a big breath and began to blather. “Ike, man, you don’t gotta do that. You and Jimmy’s friends. I know you don’t want to hurt him, that’s crazy—NO!”
Isaac had nodded to Victor, who picked up a pliers and attached it to the nail of Jimmy’s swollen right pinkie. Without so much as a pause for a breath, he yanked, pulling the nail straight out. Still gagged, Jimmy screamed like a 12-year-old girl at a boy band concert. His eyes bugged out. Victor dropped the bloody nail into a steel bucket at his feet. The bucket was not small.
Isaac turned back to Meg. “The question I asked was Do you understand the rules of the game? You didn’t answer. Now I’m asking again. Do you understand?”
Weeping hard now, Meg nodded. “I understand.”
“Good. Let’s get to the real questions, then.”