Chapter 2
Laiken
It was strange for me to be back in Nevada. I hadn’t been back here since I left for the police academy. I had dreams of getting out of this dusty old town and never fucking coming back, but I guess life had a way of bringing things full circle. Now, I was back in a town I never thought I’d see again taking care of a mother that didn’t give a shit about me when I was growing up.
I guess that was what happened when family got sick.
I graduated high school and went to a local college. I doubled down on my classes and lived with my mom who guilted me into staying because she didn’t want to be abandoned again. My father died when I was young. A drunk driving accident where he was the shithead drunk driver everyone in the scenario hated.
It was nice to know I wasn’t the only one who hated my father as much as I did.
From that point on, Mom felt abandoned. Every time I went to go do something with friends, she would always throw me for a guilty loop. She’d accuse me of never wanting to spend time with her and told me she was afraid I wouldn’t come back. Every late night I kept, she always had to smell my breath to make sure I hadn’t been drinking. She went through these episodes where she could accuse me of being like my father, saying that I’d turn to alcohol when I was done with her.
I could see how her crazy attitude drove my father to drink in the first place.
For a while, I put up with the shit. I spent every free minute I had in college with her. But things got worse when I met people I wanted to spend time with, so I started lying to her about my classes. How many credit hours I was taking and lying to her about the times I needed to be at school. College went from being a requirement to a safe haven, and the more time I spent on campus, the less stress I felt. I cried whenever I had to go home. I cried whenever my classes were canceled due to weather. School got me out of this controlling, manipulative house. School got me away from a mother who didn’t want to admit she had mental issues.
And now, I was back home and dealing with them again.
After college, I knew I had to get out. I had to get away from my mother, but I also had to get away from him. He had been the best of me and the worst of me. He had brought out the good in my soul and delved into the parts of me that reflected more of my mother than I wanted. I had fallen in love with a man who kept secrets. A man whose lips felt good on the skin of my neck and whose hands held the globe of my ass as we made love against his motorcycle.
I fell in love with a man whose mind swirled with lies he told me constantly, and between the lies and the manipulation, I felt stifled.
So, I moved to Los Angeles after I graduated college. It broke my mother, but I didn’t care. It pissed him off, but I didn’t care. I attended the police academy and obtained every certification I could. I trained and tested in every area-- including the ones that weren’t required--, and I retook them until I passed with perfect scores. I wanted to work with the LAPD. I wanted to help people that couldn’t help themselves. I wanted to work alongside good people who didn’t manipulate. I wanted to work alongside individuals who were bound by the law to tell only the truth and nothing but it.
But I also needed to get out of Nevada because everything reminded me of him.
We did everything together. I met him my sophomore year, and we were inseparable. The dust his jacket carried called to me. It boasted of a free life… one I’d dreamed of living for years. He lived as if he was tied down to nothing. As if the entire world was his oyster and he was the only one allowed to do anything he could with it.
I was jealous of the freedom he possessed, and he showed me how to take back my life.
He showed me how to stand up to my mother. He showed me places I could go and have adventures. He walked me through canyons and helped me hike up red clay mountains just so we could watch the sun rise over the state. He held my hand as I introduced him to my mother for the first time, then he came to my defense when my mother accused me of replacing her with him.
He came to my defense when she tried to guilt me into staying with her instead of leaving with him.
But now, I was back. I was back in a state that bombarded me with memories of the love we had for one another. I was back in a state that held me, hostage, while I tried to spread my wings and fly. And all because my mother had cancer. When she first called me up about it, I actually thought she was lying. I thought it was another manipulative tactic to get me to come home. She’d employed many of them in the past. One time she called me and told me a close friend of mine had died, and it wasn’t until I tried calling her mother to ask what happened that I realized she was still alive and kicking.
That was what prompted me to call the local oncologist and actually confirm my mother was sick.
Without a second thought, I put in a transfer waiver with the police department and got transferred back home. Now, I worked with the local police department doing what I’d set out to do while taking care of my mother. I woke up and made sure my mother took her medication before I left for work, then I worked all day to try and not think about him as I rode around town. But everything in this fucking town conjured a memory of him, and I hated myself for it.
I hated that I could still think of him with such ease.
The fight that ended us was nothing short of disgusting. I called him a liar, and he called me clingy. I told him it was his unwillingness to open up to me in any aspect that forced me to cling to any part of him I could get. He called me manipulative and accused me of turning into my mother, and I slapped him across his face before he grabbed my wrist and threw me out of his life forever.
But I had loved him them, and I still loved him now.
I tried dating other men. Men who found women in power to be sexy and men who worked alongside me in other precincts. They were decent men. Good men who would find wonderful women to spend their time with. But every time I was with them… every time I spread my body for them… there was always something they weren’t doing. Something he always did that they were neglecting.
Jace was always in the back of my mind when I was with them, and I knew it wasn’t fair to them.
“Sergeant Riley.” I jumped slightly at the sound of my name, but quickly recovered.
“Lieutenant O’Hare. How can I help you?” I asked.
“The DEA’s here. I wanna bring you up to speed on what we’ve been dealing with,” he said.
“The DEA? Sounds serious.”
“It is,” he said. “Meeting in ten.”
“I’ll be there.”
I had just gotten into the office a couple of weeks ago, and I was still trying to adjust. Every precinct in the country had mandatory videos and shit to watch for newcomers, no matter how many years they’d worked in law enforcement. It took me the entire first week I was here to watch those dumbass videos before I was quizzed on them, then I was on my feet and in the field before I could unpack the rest of my desk.
I still wasn’t fully unpacked when my captain had come strolling in.
Having the DEA anywhere meant shit was going down. I was curious as to how long they had been here. I figured I’d get all that information in the meeting, so I grabbed my pad and a pen and headed towards the conference room. Whatever was about to happen with this briefing, I could tell it was serious. The meeting wasn’t just for me, that much I could tell. The room was filled with multiple DEA agents, my captain, and most of the police officers whose faces I’d come to recognize over the past couple of weeks.
Whatever I’d just landed into, it was going to be a shit storm.
It always was with the DEA.
“Officers, thank you for meeting on such short notice. This is DEA Special Agent Monaco, and she will be briefing you on the latest updates on the case. Agent Monaco, if you could give us a brief rundown from the beginning, I would be appreciative.”
“Of course, Lieutenant. For those of you are not quite up to speed, here’s what’s happening: there are two rival motorcycle gangs that dominate this area. The Devil Saints and The Road Rebels. Right now, the Devil Saints are under heavy surveillance for a connection to a drug smuggling operation that routes back to a very serious cartel coming out of Mexico.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“They were caught with a truck outside their main compound that was loaded with a specific drug combination that is signature to this cartel. The percentage of the additives cut into the drug were just a little off, but not by much.”
“How much is ‘not much’?” I asked.
“Less than one perfect,” Monaco said.
“Drug cartels are very specific with the things they add to their drugs. You sure we’re not looking at a copycat scenario?” I asked.
“Either way, The Devil Saints are under heavy surveillance from us until we can piece those questions together. Good to see your head is in the game, however, Officer…?”
“Riley,” I said. “What does this other gang have to do with this?”
“The two have a massive history that spans over three decades. Neither gangs make a move without the other knowing. The Road Rebels haven’t done anything yet to peak our interest-”
“But they’re a gang so you might as well keep your eyes on them anyway,” I said.
“Exactly.”
“That’s illegal surveillance.”
“I never said we were surveilling them,” Monaco said.
“You said you were keeping your eyes on them.”
“Do you have some sort of personal interest in The Road Rebels, Officer?”
“No, ma’am. I just want to make sure nothing impedes the investigation, and nothing gets my fellow officers or I in trouble. Illegal surveillance is illegal surveillance, whether it’s on a gang or on an A-student college graduate.”
“We get the point, Officer Riley,” my captain said.
I kept my mouth shut, but already I didn’t like the tree the DEA was barking up.
“For some reason, The Road Rebels have holed up in their own compound. We don’t know why this move was made, but we think it might have to do with the moves The Devil Saints are making. Their leader, Beast, has been very erratic lately. His wife and daughter have disappeared and our agents haven’t been able to get either one of them back on the radar.”
“You think they were killed?” I asked.
“I thought you didn’t enjoy delving into theories,” Monaco said.
“I never said that.”
“That’s one theory, yes. But, it’s nothing we can prove. There’s no blood trail, and there’s no chatter. They were just there one moment and gone the next. What we do know is that The Devil Saints are gearing up for something big.”
“How do we know that?” I asked.
Monaco shot me a death glare, but my captain stepped in quickly and came to my defense.
“It’s a good question. What is the new information you have for us?” he asked.
“One of our agents surveilling the Saints caught some chatter from passing crew members. My agent heard the words ‘grenade’ and ‘ammo’ used several times, and we have multiple pictures taken that show trucks moving into and away from their compound’s back entrance.”
There were pictures that flashed up onto the screen, and I could see the trucks they were talking about.
“The big man in the last picture is Beast. He’s the head of The Devil Saints, and we think he’s beginning to spiral.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“Chatter,” Monaco said.
“Will we get to hear this chatter?” I asked.
“Riley.”
“Sorry, captain.”
“Anyway,” Monaco said, sighing. “Now, we have to figure out what they’re gearing up for. We can’t see what’s in those crates and if we raid to figure it out, we risk the loss of many lives. What we’re trying to prevent is a war between the two gangs. Between the Saints shipping in whatever they have through their back gates and The Road Rebels stowing away, I think it’s building to something. We have to figure out what and we have to stop it.”
“And cut off the drug line,” I said.
“What?” Monaco asked.
“And cut off the drug line. That’s what started all of this, right?”
Special Agent Monaco blinked at me before she drew a deep breath in through her nose.
“If our theory pans out, Officer Riley, then we’ve got a bigger issue than drugs.”
“That’s code for ‘you haven’t found any other drugs except the one load,’” I said.
“Enough,” my captain said. “Get back to your office, and I’ll deal with you soon.”
“I just want to make sure everything is being done well. I’ve worked with both the FBI and the DEA before. I watched the FBI’s case unfold completely, and four murderers walked because of corners that were cut because of ‘theories.’ If all of this is true and it’s really this serious, we can’t risk this happening. There aren’t just lives in these gangs to save, there are lives in this town to save.”
I watched my captain’s face soften slightly, and I knew my words hit him in his gut.
“That’s all,” I said.
“My theories always pan out, Officer Riley, make no mistake of that,” Monaco said.
But for some reason, her words didn’t do anything to settle my gut.