Chapter 12

 

Blade

 

“Clear!” The word was repeated, shouted, several times throughout the clubhouse.

 

I opened my eyes just as the door to our room was kicked in. Suddenly, men in Kevlar vests stood in front of us when guns and flashlights aimed at our faces.

 

“Freeze! Put your hands where I can see ‘em!”

 

I raised my arms up, holding my hands to shield my eyes from the light. My sheets were still around my waist, hiding the lower half of my naked body—not that it would have mattered. It wouldn’t have been the first time the cops had seen me naked. Next to me, Maggie sat up and covered her breasts.

 

“Hands up!” the cop reiterated.

 

“You can see her fucking hands,” I told him. “Unless her tits are weapons, you need to calm the fuck down.”

 

“Watch your mouth,” the cop growled, the barrel of his rifle right in my face. If he’d even thought about pulling the trigger, my head would have decorated the wall behind me. But he was more likely to piss himself from the adrenaline than to shoot me, so I wasn’t that worried about it.

 

“Get up,” the other cop said.

 

“Can we get dressed?” I asked as I stood up from the bed. I didn’t lower my hands to cover myself, figuring they deserved whatever they saw since they’d barged into our place.

 

Maggie, on the other hand, stood up slowly, moving one arm across her chest to cover her breasts and sliding a hand down between her legs to hide herself from their eyes and lights.

 

“Got any ID?” the first one growled again.

 

“It’s a bit late for that, don’t you think, officer?” I asked with a smirk on my face.

 

“I’m only going to ask for it one more time. Do you have any ID?” He spoke slowly, deliberately.

 

“In my wallet, in my pants pocket,” I said plainly, letting the officers know I wasn’t bullshitting them this time.

 

“Grab it. What about you?” he asked, turning to Maggie.

 

“She doesn’t have her ID on her,” I told him as I got dressed. She stood there, shaking and silent, staring at him with that deer-in-the-headlights look on her face.

 

“I was talking to her, dipshit. You worry about your own damn business.”

 

“I’m just trying to help you out. I can vouch for her,” I said.

 

“And why should we listen to you?” the cop said, turning and stepping to me. This jackass was acting more like a common street thug than an officer of the law.

 

“Because I carded her at the club where I was working the door last night,” I told him, lying through my teeth.

 

“Then, where is her ID now, genius?” He stood face to face with me, right up against me.

 

I had to look down at him, as he wasn’t as big as his mouth. “It’s probably in her purse, which we think someone lifted from the club last night. That’s how she ended up here. She came to me about it, we started talking, and there you go.” I held out my hands and shrugged.

 

The officer, accepting that he wasn’t going to get anywhere else with me, stepped back and looked at naked Maggie, still covering herself. “Is that what happened?” he asked her with the same pointed tone.

 

She nodded.

 

I knew I was sticking my neck out for her and taking a leap of faith by vouching for her to the cops, but I felt like I could help her more than they would. I knew something wasn’t right about her situation, but I didn’t trust their ability to fix that for her.

 

“Get dressed,” the officer snarled as he walked with his partner back to the door. He told his partner to keep an eye on us and to take me downstairs once I was dressed.

 

Looking past the cops into the hallway, I could see members of the MC being escorted away from their rooms by the police. I had never seen the clubhouse get raided before. We’d had cops stop by on numerous occasions, but I had never seen anything like what was happening in front of me.

 

“I’ll be right back. I’m going to find out what’s going on,” I told Maggie as I walked away from her toward the door.

 

The officer standing by my door walked me downstairs. I noticed when we made it downstairs that the only people who had been pulled out of the rooms upstairs were our members. None of the girls or old ladies had been pulled. We stood lined up in front of the cops as they came back downstairs.

 

“Listen, we got word that there might be an underage girl here,” one of them said. “We’re trying to locate her and anyone who might have any information as to her whereabouts.”

 

I tried to keep a blank stare as I listened to what they were saying.

 

“We got word that she might be involved in sex trafficking, and we’re trying to locate her. So far, no one here matches her description, but we were told someone here might know more about her.” He paced in front of us as he talked, saying his words slowly, as if we were hard of hearing or a little slow on the uptake.

 

I followed him with my eyes so I could try to get a glimpse at everyone else. The others stood straight and tall, each with blank forward stares. They kept their faces unreadable. It was what we did.

 

It was obvious they were looking for one of the girls from the auction. The only girl from the auction who didn’t seem to have been properly vetted was Maggie. There was no information on her, and she’d even come in without an ID – the real reason she hadn’t been able to show it to the cops up in our room.

 

Something wasn’t right. I felt it in my gut. When I’d told the cop I was vouching for Maggie, he took my word. She must not have matched the description of the girl they were looking for. I didn’t dare ask any questions. I remained silent and listened as the officer talked.

 

“As usual, no one knows anything, huh? Well, unless someone speaks, I’m taking you all down to the station,” he threatened.

 

“Look, man, no one here is involved with sex trafficking,” our president, Senior, spoke up. “I wouldn’t allow it, and if I find out that anyone is, rest assured, you won’t have to deal with them, officer.” Senior looked around at the rest of us with his last statement and gave us all a stern stare.

 

“Thank you for your cooperation,” the officer said. He, too, looked us over one last time. “If anyone can think of anything, please call the station.” He looked back at Senior and handed him a business card. “And if you find out anyone is involved in this sex ring, you let me know.”

 

“Got it,” Senior said as he took the card.

 

“All right, boys,” the commanding officer said, summoning the other cops to fall in with him as he left the building.

 

I wondered who could have tipped them off that someone was here, at the clubhouse. The auctions had never been raided. They were secret. The only people who knew about them were participants. Then it hit me: there were a few gangs who knew about the auctions and had been trying to move in on them. It was entirely possible that one of them was behind this little underage sex slave scare.

 

Luckily the cops hadn’t said anything about the auctions, just about the sex trafficking. They probably didn’t know anything about the actual operation.

 

We dispersed. Senior grabbed me by the arm as I started to head back upstairs. He pulled me aside while everyone else went on about their business. “Do you know anything about this underage girl they’re talking about?” he asked me under his breath.

 

“No way, but I can probably find out,” I told him.

 

“The only reason I ask is because I know you occasionally work for Vlad, and this sounds like the kind of shit he’d have his hands in.”

 

“It does,” I agreed, “but I haven’t heard of anything like this through his men. This is new to me.” I had to walk a careful line. No one knew I had a girl from the sex auction up in my room. They didn’t know the nature of the work I did for Vlad. It was like Senior told the cops: if he had known, the MC would have handled it.

 

“Well, let me know if you find out anything. We can’t have the cops hanging around the clubhouse like this.” In his tone was a warning to handle it myself. In his eyes, I saw he knew something wasn’t kosher about the whole situation.

 

“Right, I’m on it,” I told him, pulling out my phone like I was going to start making calls. He clapped a hand on my shoulder, dismissing me.

 

I hurried upstairs, back to my room, where Maggie was going to be waiting for me. The run-in with the police left me with a few questions. After being on the street as long as I had been as a biker, and fulfilling as many roles as I did for other “organizations,” I knew when something smelled fishy, there was usually a reason for it.

 

In other words, someone didn’t show up at random at a sex slave auction without someone being behind that person’s appearance. To top it off, everyone backstage had seemed a little on-edge all night, worried someone was going to show up to start trouble. I was starting to think that person had tried to live vicariously through some of the girls who had been there.

 

I opened the door to my room and glanced in. Maggie was back under the covers, sleeping soundly. I considered waking her to ask her more about the boyfriend she’d been running from when she ended up on the street. If he had any connections, he would have been just the person to call the cops or set her up.

 

Before I could walk into the room, my phone went off in my hand. I didn’t recognize the number. I closed the door and stepped back into the hallway. I stared down at the number. I didn’t feel comfortable answering a number I didn’t know, but the timing was just too coincidental not to be significant. Accidents never happened in my line of work.

 

They were almost always planned.

 

“Hello?”

 

“Is this Blade?” a man’s nervous voice asked on the other end.

 

“Who’s asking?” I said in return.

 

“Look, man, I was told to call Blade. It’s about last night.”

 

Last night? I wondered. “Yeah, this is Blade. Who am I speaking with?”

 

“My name’s not important. I was there last night, and I need to talk to you about a problem. It’s about one of the girls,” the man on the other line said.

 

My heart sank into my stomach. My veins turned to ice. The hair on my arms stood on end. I glanced at the closed door to my room. I’d never had a night go so wrong after the fact, but here it was, the middle of the next day, and the night before kept getting worse and worse.

 

“First, tell me who you are,” I said in a slow, deep voice. I wanted to let him know I wasn’t going to tolerate any games when it came to talk of the auction.

 

“I used the name Titus Bard last night. That’s all I can tell you,” he said.

 

Titus Bard had been one of the buyers. I knew if he were calling me, there had to be a big problem with the girl.