“We’ve got a name,” Rick said, practically jumping off his bike when they came back one night from a ride. “We finally cornered one of the kids who works at the grocer. Got the guy’s name, contact info, the works.”
“Finally,” Roarke growled, moving to his own bike quickly.
Hanna made a move to follow but he turned around quickly.
“I don’t see you with a bike,” he said.
“Good thing yours is big enough for two.”
No woman had ever ridden passenger on his bike. He’d fucked plenty, some for extended periods, but none of them got to ride on the hog. He stared at her and she stared right back, her arms crossed over her chest. He could feel the eyes of all the other riders around him, watching and waiting.
While anyone else might look at this as a moment to assert dominance, to tell her off or to show off for his riders, Roarke was incredibly turned on by it all. Her power stance, the flex of her arms, the quirk of her eyebrow, the demands she was making with her body as well as her words. All of it was incredibly sexy and, for the first time in his life, he wanted to submit to it. If there weren’t several pairs of eyes watching him he might have lunged forward and jumped her bones right then.
“Hold on tight,” was all he said as he walked over and swung his leg over the bike.
She followed behind him, taking her time to drape her leg over the bike. He felt her hips settling in at his back and her legs hug his as they set on the stirrups. Her arms snaked around his middle and hugged just enough that he could feel her breasts pushing into his back, even through the leather of his jacket. He refused to shudder, not in front of everyone. He may have loved her power-play, but he didn’t need her smirking in her dominance with everyone there to watch.
“Ready when you are,” she whispered in his ear.
He couldn’t even be angry at himself for the things her voice seemed to do to him. He was in the middle of breaking the case and all he could think about for the past thirty seconds was preventing a hard on for everyone to see. As soon as the motorcycle revved up, he forced it all away and focused on the task at hand.
They rode off down the road in a swarm of bikes. They’d come at this slippery delivery man like a horde ready to pummel him into the ground until he started talking. The town learned to fear a gang of Pharaohs headed down the road, especially at this time of night.
As they rode, he wondered why he’d never thought to actually have a woman ride with him. It was invigorating but his pride had prevented him from it for a long time. The way she held him and hugged at him. He could smell her perfume, even with the smell of gas and exhaust all around them. He felt the power of the bike between his legs, the speed they were going as the wind whipped around them, a woman at his back. He’d never felt anything like it and he let himself relish in it, just a few seconds longer, before pulling his attention back in as they neared the entrance of the apartment building the tip had given them.
It was a rundown place, easy to get into since they had no buzzer code, it was covered in tags from other gangs but Roarke ignored them. He had no time for respect of turf right now, and if someone wanted to claim he was overstepping his bounds by going after a guy who belonged to Coyote territory, then he’d gladly step in to prove his point.
“Locked,” Rick said, testing the front door. “Mouse, you’re up.”
Mouse stepped forward with his pocket knife already out. He stuck it in the lock and began working it. He’d taken up his family business as a locksmith when he dropped out of high school at sixteen. It proved to be an invaluable skill when it turned out he could make a lot more money breaking into places than installing ways to keep people out. He set to work, turning the lock and listening to the sounds like a heart surgeon. Everyone sat quietly because, small as he was, he had a tendency to have a temper when anyone disrupted his concentration.
“Open says me,” he said with a smirk as they heard a click and the front door opened with ease. “They have some shitty lock work.”
“Give them an estimate later, let’s go,” Roarke said, yanking him up to his feet and pushing him inside.
The others followed behind as Rick called out 3C as the apartment number. They took the steps two at a time, Roarke wasn’t going to risk this guy being tipped or getting skittish. He’d avoided them for almost a week and he finally had him in a corner. He walked up to the door when they reached the floor and banged on it, loudly.
“I could just do my thing again,” Mouse said.
“If this gets to the cops I want them to know he let us in,” Roarke said. “Besides, I’m no snake. This guy is going to look me in the eyes willingly.”
There was no answer. He banged again, three more sturdy, hard knocks. Finally, there was shuffling from the other side of the door. He banged again, two more times. The door opened just as much as the chain lock on the inside would allow and a sliver of the face of a man looked through.
“Who the fuck are you?” he asked, not sounding nearly as fearless as he likely wanted to come off.
“Isaac Gilbert?” Roarke said.
“That’s me. I asked who you are,” he said, his voice even shakier than before.
“You delivered to my bar the night my sister disappeared, I want to talk,” he said.
“Open the door or we give it a gentle nudge and pay to replace that chain,” Roarke said evenly.
Even with only a portion of the man visible, he could see the bounce in his neck as the muscles worked to swallow. Perhaps some beads of sweat were going down his neck as they spoke, maybe every part of him hiding behind the door was shaking. All it would take was a few more nudges and the man would break.
“I’ll call the cops--”
“Wrong.”
Roarke pushed on the door, giving it just enough pressure for the chain to snap open and the door to swing wide. The man fell back, surprised. He stumbled, nearly landing on his own kitchen floor as Roarke moved in, Rick beside him. The others followed in and Hanna stepped forward, in that same power stance from before that won her a spot on his bike.
The man was scrawny and young, barely out of high school. He was days past the last time he should have shaved and there were visible sweat stains on the armpits of his white tank top. His boxers were the most stereotypical design of hearts on a plain of white and Roarke wondered if he could get the boy to piss himself.
He and Rick stepped forward and hauled the boy to his feet by his chicken wire arms and held on tight, enough to bruise where they gripped. They felt the boy wince but he didn’t dare say a word as he stood there, helpless.
“Did you, or did you not, deliver shit to my bar on September 23rd?” Roarke asked. “I’m only going to ask one more time before I start breaking things.”
“I did. You obviously know that already,” the boy said in one last show of bravery that earned him a slap across the face from Rick.
“You want to tell me more about that?”
The boy didn’t answer. He stared like a deer in headlights, visibly shaking now. He was young and it was unfortunate, but Roarke wasn’t about to let that stop him. He didn’t care about this kid who probably spent his days high as a kite and binging junk food when not forced to make the rounds to various restaurants to haul beer for minimum wage. Maybe this would be a wakeup call for him to get his life together.
“Well, more than one way to do things, yeah?”
He and Rick dragged the boy out, who was now protesting, claiming he didn’t know anything. Roarke wasn’t having any of it, everyone had something to say when there were nails pressing under their fingernails. He kept a grip so tight on the boy’s arm he thought he might crack the bone underneath. Maybe this would be a sign to him to start working out too.
“Roarke,” said Hanna from behind him.
He could hear her hesitation. He refused to turn around and see it. She was part of the Caracals, or so she claimed, she knew this how things worked. Maybe she never laid hands on anyone herself but she couldn’t play squeamish now. He let her ride on his bike, but he wouldn’t give her this. This was his sister’s life he was balancing and part of his job, part of his livelihood and lifestyle.
They dragged him outside, by then he was a yelling mess, perhaps waking up half the building but they kept on, dragging him off to the side. Rick was already lighting up a cigarette, taking a drag to test it, ready to press it against the soft flesh on the boy’s arm, ready to watch it melt underneath. The boy was crying and pleading, claiming he didn’t know anything, that he could prove it.
They never got the chance.
A shot rang out and, on instinct, they dropped to the ground, hands over their heads, releasing in the boy. Roarke heard him hit the ground between them and was ready to compliment him for his instincts to at least do that when he noticed the dark, gaping hole in the side of the boy’s mousy blonde hair. Blood poured out like a waterfall and God knew what else from inside his head. He had been dead before he even hit the ground.
He turned. The shooter was already on the run.
“Let’s go!” Hanna shouted, already vaulting herself onto Roarke’s bike.
He didn’t need to be told twice.
***
The shooter took off on his own bike and it became a chase within seconds. Nobody could match Roarke for his driving, he knew that much. He knew these streets better than anyone, could handle the turns and the potholes and the cracks in the road. There was nowhere this guy could go that he couldn’t follow. On any other day he might have reveled in showing off to Hanna, today he wanted nothing more than to crush the skull of the man who held that gun and pulled the trigger.
“Get up as close to him as you can,” Hanna shouted in his ear.
His thoughts exactly. He did so and she reached out with one foot. He watched her wind up and then, with all of her might, deliver a strong kick to the stomach of the man. He buckled. His bike began to swerve. He struggled to regain control. He slowed. Roarke moved in and bumped him again. He drove off, veering, and crashed right into a pile of garbage set out for the trash truck in the morning, his bike skidding across the asphalt in a sight of sparks. That bike would never ride again, and neither would the driver if Roarke had any say.
He put out the kickstand and cut the engine quickly. Hanna leapt off the bike and he followed. The man, disoriented, tried to scramble away but Hanna tackled him, putting him in an expert chokehold. Maybe he’d underestimated her. He walked around to face him. It was a face he didn’t know, but he was willing to bet all the money in the till of his bar that he was hired by the Caracals
“Where’s my sister?” he asked.
“I don’t know who that is,” he coughed out through his suffocation.
“The Caracals having been taking girls, kidnapping them,” Roarke said, grabbing the man by his hair and pulling.
“I don’t know anything about that shit, I swear,” he said. “I was hired to take out some people. Loose ends or some shit. Don’t know anything else.”
“Who hired you?”
He hesitated.
“Use your tongue or lose it,” Hanna said sharply.
“Some chick. Thin. Black hair. Dark eyes,” he said. “I didn’t get a name I swear.”
Roarke and Hanna’s eyes met, somewhere in the middle, in the air between them, the realization was there. Roarke felt his blood run cold, his stomach turn into knots. He felt himself start to sweat and his hands shake. He saw an image of Isabelle in his mind’s eye. He saw her there, innocent and smart and everything he never was but hoped someone in the family would be.
“What chick?” he demanded, through gritted teeth, his face inches from the gunman’s, “What else?”
“I don’t know. Fuck man,” he said, fighting for breath under Hanna’s grip. “She had a butterfly tattoo on her wrist.”
“What the hell?” Roarke breathed out, calmer and quieter than he’d been since this began.
He looked up at Hanna, imploring her to have some way out of this, some way to make it all not real. But she looked just as lost. Her grip in the gunman faltered and he managed to get a clean shot from his elbow to just above her eyebrow. She let out a grunt as she fell back and he broke free.
He rushed over to the wreckage of his bike and let out a growl.
“I’m coming for a replacement bike from you fuckers, don’t forget it,” he said. He ripped the license plate off the back of it and then took off running down the street. Roarke let him go.
Hanna got herself to her feet, holding the point of impact. Underneath her fingers a bruise was already forming and blood was trickling out from between her digits.
“Bastard,” she hissed.
Roarke needed a drink. Several, actually. He didn’t say a word as he walked over to his bike and got on, sitting there waiting for Hanna to come over before speeding back to his apartment.
***
“You’re taking this pretty well.”
“Why? Because I’m a girl? If we actually got squeamish about blood we’d have a real problem every month.”
“I just meant that facial wounds bleed like a motherfucker and you’re sitting there like it’s a papercut.”
“Not my first time wounded.”
She thought about the first time she managed to slice open her forehead. It wasn’t even in the line of duty. She was twelve and she fell off the swing set James had made for her in the backyard. She’d been terrified then, all the blood that seemed able to pour out of her head. It took ten minutes for her uncle to calm her down and tell her it was normal. As an adult she was wary just to make sure it didn’t get in her eye while she chased down a perp with a gushing forehead wound.
In Roarke’s apartment he was applying gauze to it between bouts of cleaning it. Eventually, the gauze took and the wound began to clot. The gauze stuck to her forehead of its own accord but his hands remained. He was no longer looking at the cut on her head, but his eyes were traveling over the expanse of her face, taking in every inch he could see there. She very quickly felt self-conscious and fought a squirm. He seemed to read her mind, his free hand coming up to push back a stray piece of hair, brushing her cheek softly in the process.
She fought the urge to sink into it. It was impossible to fight now. She knew what the rippling currents between them were and she knew she wasn’t the only one feeling it. It would be so easy to lean in and just let it happen. No one would know, no one would see them. They could release everything that was bottled and building, she could act on all those things she thought about while watching him sleep, pretending not to see how hard he was in the morning when he woke up.
She saw heat in his eyes, when they finally met. She could see what he wanted there, the things he might imagine. She wondered what it would be like to watch those eyes over top of her while he moved inside her, while he fell apart from the feel of her around him.
But a ring from Roarke’s phone broke the tension and she realized it was probably for the best. He went to answer it, and she thought about the massively long cold shower she would be taking later tonight.