Hunter remained motionless for a moment, his gaze fixated entirely on Ricochet. His sister? Hunter told me that he only heard from her fleetingly, a couple of times since the rescue…

Still rolling the words around in my head, I opened my mouth to repeat them. Before I could get a single syllable free, Hunter took a stride forward and snatched the letter from Ricochet’s fingers, startling both of us with the speed of his movements. Like a creature possessed, he tore the envelope open and began reading silently to himself.

Ricochet and I exchanged a quiet glance.

Hunter was already a little tense, but he was visibly stiffening as he read the words. Finally, he handed it my way.

I’d never met his sister before. She was a couple of years older than him and was already leaving for college when Hunter and I started dating...

I gave him a quick look before taking it.

They found me.

I’m on the road tonight and I can’t trust the phone. Juarez is coming home to roost. I’m not safe here, and you’re not safe either.

I’m heading to our old spot.

Meet me here. Please.

Hannah

“Shit,” I blurted aloud after reading the letter. “Hunter… What does she mean? Who found her? I thought we scattered Viboras Verde to the wind… Did you tell her about Juarez?”

At the mention of their name, Ricochet straightened his posture. “Is she in trouble?” he asked, staring hard at Hunter. I handed him the letter so he could catch up.

Hunter turned his head away, his voice dropping to a low growl. “It’s bullshit.”

“It’s going to be okay,” I offered up. “We can go meet her and…”

“No. The letter is bullshit. It’s a forgery… and a damned good one at that.”

“How can you be so sure?” I asked cautiously.

“It’s missing our code,” Hunter replied angrily. “But everything else is perfect. That’s her handwriting, her signature… and they know about our old spot. There isn’t anybody who knows about that but us. Everything’s there to make me think that this is real.”

He pounded a fist against the cabinet, rattling the dishes inside. “Whoever did this knows what they’re doing, but she’d never send me a message without the code…”

“What’s the code?” I asked him.

He threw me a glance. “Maybe we’re past having secrets, but there are things you’re better off not knowing. Whoever wrote this letter already knows too much, and if they ever got their hands on you, they’d tear your damn fingernails off to drag that little piece of information out of your throat.”

“That’s a bit of a stretch, don’t you think? I can handle myself,” I replied coolly, glancing over at Ricochet as he continued to study the paper.

“Maybe she just left the code off? Sounds like she was in a hurry,” Ricochet said.

Hunter shook his head. “No way. She wouldn’t send me a goddamn letter without our code in place… The question is, what kind of game are they playing here?”

“Either you’re being lured into a trap… Or they’re trying to get you to leave town,” I replied, the possibilities rolling round in my head.

Ricochet immediately stiffened in his chair. “Sorry I bothered you, boss… I’m going to get back to the clubhouse.”

“Wait,” Hunter told him, his eyes still locked onto mine. “How exactly did you come by this particular letter?”

Ricochet frowned, scratching the top of his head. “The Couriers, boss. One showed up in the dead of night. I was close enough to the door to hear him calling for delivery.”

“The Couriers…” Hunter tugged his stare away from me and scratched at his chin. “That’s interesting…”

“I get the feeling that these aren’t regular couriers,” I observed. “More of your Outlaws?”

After our last adventure together, I was familiar with the fact that Hunter had, as he put it himself, friends in wicked places. It seemed that every time he needed a little help, he knew a few people on the wrong side of the law to make things happen.

Hunter had been instrumental in bringing this little alliance together – criminals, rival biker clubs, and vigilantes were no longer restricted by in-fighting and disputes. I knew damn well if the feds ever got wind of this there would be a RICO case big enough for the front page of the New York Times…

Hunter grinned. “The Couriers run the kind of packages people don’t want to put a stamp on. They’re expensive, but they always deliver.”

“Why would they deliver a letter from your sister?”

“Because all of her letters come my way thanks to the Couriers... If they had known the code, I’d be packing my shit and heading out the door right now.”

“Alone?” I asked.

“You would be safe,” he said instantly. “Safe with the club. Nobody knows my old spot, and that’s another secret you’re better off not asking about. I’d only be gone a few days…”

I wasn’t convinced. Regardless, he turned to the letter on the tabletop. “…Whoever this is,” Hunter said, “they know what they’re doing…”

“Why don’t you just ask the Couriers who sent it?”

“The Couriers wouldn’t be in business if they kept those kinds of records. They run the perfect double blind straight down the chain. Dead drops and no questions asked. No paperwork, no names, no faces. I’m not getting shit out of them, and trust me, the Couriers are the last people on this fucking planet you want to piss off. They know where you live.”

Hunter turned quickly to Ricochet. “Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Go get some rest.”

“You got it.”

Hunter locked the door behind him. The faint sound of a revving motorcycle could be heard moments later. I quietly watched through the kitchen window as Ricochet roared off in a trail of dust.

“So… Do you think they have your sister?” I asked with a hint of fear in my voice.

“If they had her, they wouldn’t be sending a letter… They’d be sending a finger,” Hunter replied, sending a shiver straight up my spine. What the hell kind of life was I trying to get myself into?

“I think it’s about time you tell me everything you know about this case of yours,” Hunter replied as he strolled back towards the living room. “Whatever’s going on, I’ve got a feeling this letter has something to do with it”

Pouring us a fresh pair of coffees, I sat down with him on the couch, wondering how much caffeine is safe to drink when pregnant and refusing to even touch the cup.

Dammit, now I’m thinking about the kid again…

“The case,” Hunter called me back to reality. He took a swig of the black coffee without skipping a beat.

“Right… the case,” I mumbled.

Under his vaguely scrutinizing eye, I organized my thoughts. Everything I’d worked so hard for in the last few weeks had been building up to this moment…

“A valuable shipping container has gone missing from the Port of Los Angeles,” I replied. “My client asked me to use my connections to discover the whereabouts of this particular box… And they want me to find out if the Devil’s Dragons were involved in its disappearance.”

“Your connections?” Hunter asked, raising his eyebrows meaningfully.

“The Devil’s Dragons control the port. I… might have sold myself as having a direct line to your people,” I answered sheepishly. “I needed the job… And I wanted to see you…”

“Well, I might not have good news for you there,” Hunter replied, clearly weighing something in his head. “The Devil’s Dragons run the port down there, they aren’t my Dragons.”

“I wondered what they were doing all the way out there,” I mused. “So, what? They’re a splinter group? An independent chapter of the club or something? You’ve gotta have sway over them, right?” I slipped in a little coy barb: “I mean, you are their club president, right?”

Hunter chuckled, shaking his head. “Those guys are the first to carry the name… They’re the west coast originals, and they don’t fall under my jurisdiction whatsoever.”

Hunter continued, sensing my need for answers. “When I joined the club, a man by the name of Eduardo was in control. That night you came to see me at the club when we were kids… He was gunned down as part of the police raid.”

I remembered Eduardo. I only met the man once, in passing at that, but he struck me as a wicked and dangerous man.

“He was one of the original Devil’s Dragons… The only Devil’s Dragons original who thought the club needed to expand. He took a group of volunteers east from California and set up a new chapter in the desert. He chose Phoenix, Arizona, and that’s how he came into our lives. Eduardo focused primarily on establishing his dominion and building up the drug-running trade in our backyard…”

“Until the raid…” I said quietly.

“With most of the senior members behind bars or slain, it was easy to direct the others away from the drug-running roots… But I don’t have any control over the guys out in California, and they’re still dipping toes into some dangerous shit. I had a sit down with the president of the California Devils Dragons a few weeks after the raid, and if you thought Eduardo was a vicious guy, you didn’t even want to hear about Talon…”

“Hunter…” I asked, trying to keep the tension out of my voice. “How bad is this guy?”

“He’s pushing sixty, and he shows every goddamned year on his face. Talon is a foul, dangerous scrap of a human being,” Hunter told me as he took a large swig of his coffee. “Not as vicious as the cartels, but that ain’t for lack of trying. Talon has dabbled in all kinds of crimes… the really fun ones, too,” he clarified with a scoff.

“Do I want to know?”

He glanced my way. “The bastard’s robbed banks, supplied hard drugs, gotten involved in a few kidnappings, shifted contraband internationally, even attacked a fucking hospital once…”

THIS was the guy I needed to interrogate?

“Jesus,” I groaned, shaking my head. “Wait… you said he came here to see you?”

Hunter nodded. “No idea how he found us so quickly. He must have left Los Angeles the second he’d heard about Eduardo taking a bullet. Talon tracked what was left of the club across state lines.”

“What happened then?”

“He wanted answers… Wanted to know if anyone on the inside was looking for a change of leadership.”

“He thought somebody set up the club from the inside?”

Hunter grimaced. “Talon grew up with Eduardo and knew that fucker wouldn’t go down without a knife in his back.”

“Well he was right about that,” I observed, thinking to the dramatic standoff in the desert in front of the Outlaws. There had been a traitor, but it wasn’t one of the Dragons…

“If I’d have known then what I know now, maybe the bastard wouldn’t have decided to set an example for the rest of the boys…”

He instinctively touched the scar on his face.

“He used a switchblade. I never saw it coming. He must have kept the blade laced with something, because that hurt like a goddamn bitch and bled for a week.”

I reached up to place my palm over his hand, pressing instinctively against the scar. All doubts and fears were pushed aside by an urge to soothe the pain written across his face.

“Does it still bother you?” I asked.

He swept my hand away, putting a bit of distance between us.

“I’m done walking down memory lane Sarah. You don’t want anything to do with the docks, Talon, or any of the Dragons out in California. Whatever is in that container you’re supposed to be looking for is probably better left alone, and you sure as fuck don’t want to be asking Talon whether or not he was involved in stealing it.”

I hadn’t told Hunter, but I’d invested every resource I had and there was no going back. Getting kicked off the force didn’t exactly give me the best resume for starting up a private investigations company. This was my first client, and failure wasn’t an option. ‘Better left alone’ didn’t pay the rent, and I wasn’t about to go back to living with my daddy… I wasn’t sure I could face him every day, after what happened to him during that fateful raid on the Dragon’s clubhouse all those years ago.

He paused, studying my eyes and reading me like an open book. I wasn’t going to leave this alone, and he knew it.

“Who’s your client? Who wants to find this container Sarah?”

And there it was… The question I didn’t want to answer. The question I’d been avoiding myself.

“I don’t know…”

Now Hunter seemed even more interested. “How in the hell do you not know who your client is?”

“I was approached by a detective with a lot of cash. Her name is Paula Prescott,” I answered.

“I thought you said you didn’t know your client.”

“How many detectives go around paying off private investigators in briefcases full of cash, Hunter? She’s a puppet. Somebody with a lot of money is pulling the strings, but I need this… It’s enough money to take care of this baby for years, and there’s more coming if I can tell them what they want to know.”

“So, a shipping container goes missing, and some mysterious rich asshole is trying to find it… And you’re going to keep looking for it, aren’t you?”

“You know me too well, Hunter…”

“Maybe I do.”

“So… You’ll help me?”