One

 

KYLE

 

The familiar landmarks passed by me as I drove toward the Knights MC’s clubhouse. I refused to let myself take the trips down memory lane, because as far as I was concerned, the only memories from here were ones that starred in my nightmares.

Every little girl dreams of their wedding, plans it out and pictures the person of their dreams vowing to love them forever. The big dress, the flowers, the cake and their Prince Charming. My best friend in second grade had been slightly different, she'd pictured the woman of her dreams and her being the one wearing a tuxedo. It had always intrigued me, and then last year she married that woman; both of them wearing the big white dresses and looking like Disney Princesses. It had been beautiful to see, and I was happy that she'd found her Princess Charming, but whereas a majority of little girls’ dreams bloomed and grew, mine had gone down in a blazing inferno soon after they’d started. 

Rolling my eyes, I let a quick reel of my childhood flash through my mind. Parents in a shit marriage, arguing all the time, alcoholic mother, absent father, abusive mother, blah, blah, blah. My childhood was like an episode of Jerry Springer. Me trying to get Dad’s attention and then the bitch from hell blowing her brains out. Go Jerry, go Jerry, go Jerry!

If it hadn’t been for my uncle taking me in the day I found her, I probably would have been a pathetic biker whore or a junkie. My uncle Duke ran a security and investigation company called Indigo, and from the day I arrived, I’d been put to work. I spent the last seven and a half years perfecting my shooting and other skills, and received my helicopter pilots license by twenty-one and was hired by the government for special operations both at home and abroad that same year. We were known as ‘The Ghosts’ because we could get in and out of places without being detected, and I loved every second of it.

The chanting for Jerry started up again as I pulled through the open gates of the Knights compound and into a parking space in front of the building that looked a lot better than it had when I was a kid.

Looking in my rearview mirror, I watched Match pulling into the space behind me. We’d been in the ‘pits’ together and just arrived back, but we always had our own vehicles because our jobs weren’t really compatible with a car sharing scheme. On the far edge of the lot was the trailer that Duke transported our bikes in; they were a must when we took on cases like this. You never knew when you needed dexterity and maneuverability. The guys all had Harley’s, but I preferred speed, so I bought a top of the line Kawasaki Ninja. It had wider wheels, a custom paint job and was sexy as hell. The same could be said about my car. I did a job in Monaco and was given an Aston Martin to use to help with my cover; I fell so much in love with the car that I’d ended up buying myself one last year and fuck me was it sexy. My Vanquish S was black inside and out and had the new smart touch screen panel on the dash, it was a dream car that cost me a fortune.

There were a lot of close calls over the years working for Indigo, but I got through them. Now, twenty-four hours after I arrived back from the Sand Pits, the name we’d given the fires of hell in the Middle East, I was in front of the Knights Compound, a place that I swore that I would never ever return to. Why? Because I loved Duke, because I owed him everything and because he said the one word that would get my attention away from my hatred towards the building and the person that it currently held – trafficking. Human, munitions and drug trafficking was a huge problem in the world and trying to isolate cells and stop it was one of my priorities.

I knew I was procrastinating and delaying the inevitable, so focusing back on Match, I burst out laughing as he tipped himself out of his truck. It hadn’t been an easy job this time and both of us had some injuries that would take time to heal, but our team had made it out and we did what had needed to be done, so it had been a success. Poor Match, though, he had been on top of me, protecting me, when a mud wall had fallen on us; so, he was slightly more bruised than I was which meant that getting in and out of vehicles wasn’t the most comfortable thing to do as he’d just demonstrated.

I might have sat in the car procrastinating for a bit longer, but movement over at the door got my attention and had me getting out of my car so that I didn’t look like I was hiding.

Standing next to Duke was the man that I never intended to see again, Nixon ‘Preacher’ Ripley – also known as my sperm donor. He looked exactly like he had when I’d left.

As they started to walk toward me, a couple more men came out of the building. One of The Ghosts, Data, and one of the Knights who I didn’t recognize.

Looking over at my uncle, I grinned as he walked up to me and pulled me up in a bear hug.

“Glad to have you back.”

I groaned as he put too much pressure on my bruised ribs and he released me quickly with a frown.

“Couple bumps and bruises old man, no big deal.” I shrugged, determined not to let on how much the little bitches hurt.

I was saved from doing a show and tell by Data, who pushed between us and gave me a hug too. “Great to see you, babe!”

“Yo, what the fuck am I?” Match shouted from beside his truck.

“You don’t get a hug because you don’t got tits!” Data yelled across to him making us all laugh, apart from Preacher who was standing staring at me with a look I couldn’t figure out.

Pulling his shit out of the back of his truck, Match walked over to us scowling. That was normal for him, he wasn’t a smiley kind of guy. In fact, in all of the years I’ve known him, I could tell you how many times I’d seen him smile – thirteen times. Normally a smile would soften a guy’s face, but on Match he looked scary.

Making my way around to the trunk, I took out my civilian duffel bag and my military one followed by my cased rifle. Grabbing up my duffels, Data headed toward the door to the compound and disappeared inside. The guys knew better than to touch my rifle, even if it was just to carry it for me.

Ignoring Preacher, I headed in the same direction, but came to an abrupt stop when I heard him say my name. Turning to face him, I raised an eyebrow and made sure that the expression on my face remained neutral as I made eye contact with him. We looked so alike, something that I hated because it was a constant reminder of the shit storm that had been my childhood.

“It’s good to see you,” he said softly, looking awkward and uncomfortable. Good!

Nodding, I turned back and continued until I got to the door. Taking a deep breath, I entered and had to give my eyes a couple of seconds to adjust to the dimness in comparison to the bright sun outside. Looking around, I noticed the changes that they’d made to it. The clubhouse that I remembered had been seedy, full of sex and most likely harbored bacteria that hadn’t been discovered by scientists yet. Now, it was clean, tidy, the guys were in line and my boots weren’t sticking to the floor as I walked toward the rest of my team.

Before I could reach them though, Duke was calling me back. “We’re headed this way,” he tossed a nod toward the hallway that led to where the important rooms of the MC were. The armory, church, the offices, they were all down there.

“I’m not locking it up,” I said, pointing at my rifle.

Duke knew better and chuckled shaking his head at me. “Church, Kai. We’re heading straight into this.” He used my nickname to stress that this was serious business. To the world I was Kai, to my team I was Kai when a tactical mind was needed. Few knew the difference, but in instances like this, it prepared me.

I heard the rest of the team walking toward where we were and followed Preacher and Duke to Church, aware of the unfamiliar biker walking beside me the whole time. I hadn’t been introduced to him yet, but at the same time I didn’t really care. I wasn’t going to be best friends with any of the guys, so why give a shit?

“Jagger,” a deep voice murmured beside me, and I finally turned and took him in. He was tall with dark hair, that much I could see in the dim lighting of the hallway. Nodding at him, I turned back to navigate my way into the room and sat down next to Data at the huge table that dominated the room.

Looking back up, I looked properly at the guy who had just introduced himself and took in a swift breath that had my sore ribs screaming. He was hot in a way that no doubt made him very popular with the ladies of the club, hell ladies of the world. He had a short beard, broad shoulders, messy hair and those hazel eyes totally hadn’t been done justice in the dimness.

“You’re drooling,” Data snorted beside me, pulling up screens on his laptop.

Shrugging, I made myself comfortable after I put the rifle case carefully on the floor. The rest of the club and Indigo quickly filed in and got themselves situated while Duke stood at the front of the room with Preacher.

Just as the door shut, it started. “You know why we’re here,” Preacher bluntly stated as he looked around the room. Before his eyes could land on me, I looked down at the table and listened, not wanting to make eye contact with him. “There’s been an increase in the amount of kids and women who have disappeared or who’ve been snatched in broad daylight from whoever had them at the time. So far, there’s been two boat loads intercepted, however, we were too late for a majority of the victims onboard. There has also been a spate of drug related deaths, and the FBI is saying that the Venezuelans are attempting to control drug distributions again. Evidence also shows that they’re responsible for the bad batches of drugs making their way around the streets. Yesterday, a group of college kids were found dead at a party in a neighboring fraternity house. The drugs they bought had been cut with rat poison – the MO of the Veneno.”

My head jerked up after hearing the familiar gang’s name. The first job Duke had ever given me was to look into a trafficking ring in Belize ran by the Veneno. They were selling young girls to a group of traffickers in Boko Haram and had snatched a fourteen-year-old girl from Washington D.C. I spent months investigating it with another member of the team called Sharkey. What we came across had sickened me and I began fighting that war from that day and any time there was an issue with traffickers, I was called in. I kept my eye on the bigger groups, but there were always smaller ones popping up and joining in. The Veneno, though, I knew like the back of my hand.

Beside me, Data pressed something on his keyboard. The projector in the center of the table came to life, projecting a screen onto the wall beside Duke.

"Why the fuck would they do that if they were trying to control distribution?" One of the bikers asked.

“Think about it,” the guy who introduced himself as Jagger responded “Spread bad shit around, use your own guys to deal the good shit and the other dealers lose business while you take it instead. It’s a basic control method.”

“Sounds fucked up to me,” the biker replied. “I would have spread the good shit everywhere so that you were known for it.”

This made sense, but I already knew the answer.

“But then you still have competition. If there’s high levels of rat poison and no one knows who it’s coming from, but you’re known for distributing the best shit? Then the competition fades because dealers will go where they know the best drugs are,” Jagger explained.

Before anyone else could reply, Duke spoke up. “Jagger’s right, the Veneno want complete control at any cost.” Looking around the room slowly, he made sure to skim every face; a tactic he used to get a groups full attention. “The rest of Indigo had the opportunity to meet and get to know the Knights yesterday. Kyle and Match have just returned and will be joining us,” he nodded in our direction and I could feel most of the eyes in the room looking at me. Grinning, Duke went on, “I can see some of you looking at Kyle wondering what the fuck she’s doing here, let me show you.”

I looked behind him as footage from our bodycams and the helo-cam started playing on the wall. Because of who he was and the reputation he had, Duke had the clearance to watch recordings from missions. It wasn’t the first time that he used select pieces to outline our abilities to clients; the difference this time, was that it was being shown to a bunch of bikers who probably thought that I was the secretary.

Data was the one who had compiled the footage that was now playing. He added music from Linkin Park, which had us all chuckling because it was no secret that I regularly hummed their songs while I was waiting or I needed to focus on a target. To each their own, we all had our own methods of passing the time by centering our focus on something else. One of the guys that I worked with from the SAS hummed the British national anthem when he was trying to concentrate on a target. The British special forces were a fucking riot.

I watched the footage as I got into the Raider helicopter; I loved that machine. It hadn’t been rolled out to the military yet, but we’d needed to be fast and effective so we were given the lease to test it out and it performed like a dream. It was outfitted to suit us, too.

In the footage, we were searching for the target, I’d been testing the bird’s maneuverability while Match looked around us for tell-tale signs of a hostile camp. I watched the image on the wall as I banked left just as the missile alarm went off. It was an easy maneuver to avoid it in the Raider, though, and it missed us easily.

“Oh goody, they want to play rough!” My voice sounded over the Linkin Park song, Iridescent. The video feed cut to us flying away and radioing in ‘confirmed’ which was our code for a confirmed hit and confirmed neutralization of the target. Nowadays, we had to be careful what we said, and although they weren’t good guys, there were still lives that had just been lost.

The tune playing changed to Jay-Z and Linkin Park’s, Numb/Encore. It must have been one of the members of the unit taking up position at the back whose cam footage was being shown, because I was further up ahead and we were doing a search of the area looking for recent passage by foot or vehicle. I had on a gray t-shirt, my camouflaged Kevlar and matching pants and we were all carrying our assault rifles in front of us, with our guns strapped to our thighs. The bag on my back had been modified to carry my sniper rifle so it wouldn’t hit me in the leg. Normally, we would have been in full camo, but there were moments when we had to take our jackets off and this had been one of those times.

We all burst out laughing in the room as I turned around on the screen and yelled, “what the hell are you waiting for?” to my guys at the same time as it was sung in the song. Fucking Data, pain in the ass, but it was a great catch.

The next footage was the one that had made my name what it was. Two years ago, we’d been dropped in for a retrieval of two soldiers captured by Islamic State fighters. As we dropped down the ropes, hostile soldiers had opened fire on us so we had to run and hide behind a big mud bank. My rifle was set up and ready to go, so I focused through my scope, just as a soldier aimed his RPG launcher at the helo still dropping guys down. It was a split-second shot, and because the wind and angle were all set, I took it. It had hit the RPG as the guy had hit the trigger, causing it to explode and take down the group that had been firing at us. Apparently, a shot like that was a billion to one, but I’ve done better since. I’m not bragging, but I’d been testing out a Canadian military issued McMillan TAC-50 and had taken out a militant at roughly 3,000 meters. That record had since been broken by a member of the Canadian Special Forces and fuck me was I proud of the guy who did it. That’s fucking skill!

I lost interest in watching the rest of the video feed and instead looked around the table learning the new faces. A lot of the old ones caught my eye and grinned or winked at me, but I kept looking back to the guy Jagger, who was with Preacher outside and was wearing the VP patch on his cut. He darted his eyes over to me and we sat staring at each other until one of the other MC members that I didn’t know suddenly whispered, “Fuck me! You’re Kai Ghost.”

I was used to people being shocked when they saw me. Aside from the short blonde hair, necessary for missions, I was curvy and looked just like a rebellious bitch, I guess. Totally not what you’d expect for someone who held the label as one of the best snipers in the military and a special operations soldier, either. But hey, it was so much fun to fuck with people when they labeled me as either a bimbo or a girl playing dress up.

 

JAGGER

 

Kai Ghost, why did that sound so familiar? Looking at the blank expression on her face, it was hard to read if the name meant anything to her or not.

“You didn’t realize that?” The other ‘Ghost’ who arrived with her asked as he leaned back with a big grin on his face. He swung his arm around the back of her chair, gripped the back of her neck and gave it a shake. Why this pissed me off I didn’t know, but I wasn’t liking it. “I mean, you’ve just watched her in action, and trust me that’s the tip of the iceberg, and she’s carrying a fucking badass rifle and the name didn’t drop?”

“I thought it was a man!” Gauge said, still sounding shocked. There was a chorus of agreements around the table as I still tried to think of how I knew the name Kai Ghost.

I was about to ask Preacher when it hit me.

“Back the fuck up! You took out Ramirez and his band of fuck ups.”

This chick, sitting watching us all, was a bad guy’s worst nightmare and a good guy’s wet dream. I already knew it was a woman, but I pictured some chick built like a brick shit house. I mean, didn’t you need some sort of padding on you to lie down waiting for your mark? They spent hours, sometimes days in those positions and from where I was sitting the only padding she had was tits…really nice ones, but…

My attention was snagged by Preacher sitting down heavily in his chair. I guess he hadn’t known either.

“You never told me,” he croaked at Duke.

Preacher kept me up to date with shit going on, and one of those things was his daughter Kyle. Every week he talked to Duke and get info on her, but apparently, this had been left out of those conversations.

Duke gave a shrug as he looked over at Kyle, but it was her who answered. “I told him not to.”

“Why?”

“Because it was none of your fucking business.” Her expression didn’t change, neither did the tone of her voice, but her eyes went cold.

We all knew about the issues between Kyle and Preacher, but she didn’t know the truth because he was a jackass and hadn’t told her. Obviously, Kyle wasn’t going to forget it, which you could understand if you listened to what she knew. Judging by her reaction to seeing him again and then again just now, Preacher was going to have to deal with that shit ASAP.

I couldn’t stop staring at her as Preacher slowly stood back up and rejoined Duke as they rolled out the details they had on the traffickers. I already knew the information that was being passed on, so I watched our guests as they took it all in. None of the Ghosts looked surprised by what they were being told. There were a few side glances when names were mentioned showing that they had probably dealt with them at some point, but throughout it all, Kyle sat there with a neutral expression on her face listening.

She wasn’t the typical MC Princess that we had all met at some point in our tenure in the Club. I transferred from my own Dad’s Chapter to this one, but before that, I’d met many a MC Princess and every single one had been a pain in the ass. Kyle, though, she was far from that. She wasn’t the type of chick that I normally went for, but fuck me if I couldn’t look away from her. I was starting to think that the tough exterior was just that, a front to protect a vulnerable part of her. I’m not a shrink, but I was pretty certain you couldn’t go through what she did as a kid and walk away okay.

Normally women were passing interests. Being part of an MC made it almost impossible to settle and I’ve never met a woman who’d make me want to. It had been a long time though, because we’d been so heavily into working on the trafficking situation and shit like women weren’t important or a priority. I was a grown man with control over my dick unlike the younger members of the MC.

Kyle, though, she was something different. How, I didn’t know, but I wanted to find out.