Megan - Day 1

“You must be lost.”

The rough voice boomed through my driver’s side window as I parked my white rental car. The voice came from a biker straight off a Hollywood set. His long black beard didn’t match his stringy brown hair. He stood well over six feet, wearing black jeans, a leather biker’s vest, and black boots. He leaned against his Harley with his ankles crossed, staring at me with curious amusement shining in his gaze.

As I peered through my windshield, my gaze swept the area surrounding what I assumed was their motorcycle club. The clubhouse sat far back off a quiet highway nearly surrounded by woods. Initially, I’d driven past the building that resembled a double-wide mobile home at first glance.

When I’d driven closer, I found that it was an old wooden homestead with peeling white paint that the bikers had turned into their clubhouse. “Club” was painted in big dripping black letters above the entrance door.

The dirty and unsavory looking bikers milling about all possessed similarly tall, muscular statures, wore jeans, and black leather vests that showcased their MC’s logo on the back. The logo was a fully armored knight, riding a steel horse. Instead of a sword, he carried a machine gun with two additional guns strapped to his back.

Inquisitive gazes zoomed in on me as I cut my engine and contemplated opening my door to approach the shabby white building. I was out of my element and freaked out by what I’d set my twisted mind to attempt with these bikers, but I didn’t have any other options.

After rolling up my window and exiting my vehicle, I slinked past bikers who stopped what they were doing to gape at me. My purse strap was my unsteady anchor as I gripped it in my clenched fist.

Two bikers, who had their heads under the hood of a big-wheel, blue pick-up truck, stopped studying the engine. Another one stopped shining the pipes on his big-boy motorcycle. Others, drinking beer and talking trash to each other paused their conversations. A group sitting under a tree around a picnic table stopped their drinking and loud talking, and their gazes locked on me.

All bodies outside the clubhouse stopped whatever they were doing to gawk at me. Fingers started to point, and faces frowned as I ambled closer to the club’s entrance on shaky legs. Open-mouthed expressions, pinched brows, and evil stares followed me as I reached for the door. Surprised, I hadn’t expected to make it that far.

The tremble in my body had grown so intense that I fought to keep down the sandwich I’d forced myself to eat earlier. Sweat drizzled down my back, and I was sure it was not the late June heat causing it. I was scared. No, fuck that. I was scared shitless, but my need to rectify a situation that loomed at my back was greater than my fears. Even as my heart threatened to punch the hell out of my ribs to break out of my chest, I was set to proceed with my plan.

I entered the club and prayed with each shaky step I took. The floorboards creaked under each of my wobbly steps and sounded like rolling thunder despite the noise of the group inside. The door didn’t close behind me because the group I thought I’d left outside held it open as they peeked into the club after me.

When I spotted the man I was searching for, I approached and called out to him. “Mr. Shark?” I asked in my normal, low, and passive voice.

“Who the fuck is asking?” The biker’s bass-filled voice questioned before he turned to face me. Now, facing me, his penetrating blue-eyed gaze locked with my gaping brown eyes. Eyes laced with distaste and alarming hate swept down and back up my body.

“My name is Megan Jones. I’m—”

“Speak up!” he snapped.

I jumped damn near out of my skin. The air around me grew thicker inside the dingy dive. The air-conditioning unit buzzed with life as voices quieted to a low hum. The whine of country music sounded from someplace in the background. It was just as hot inside this place as the ninety-two-degree Florida heat outside.

This was just what I needed. When the piercing, blue-eyed menace I’d disturbed raised his voice and told me to speak up, all eyes jetted in our direction from every corner of the large dusty room. It wasn’t hard to decide that the eyes that probed me belonged to a group that was not used to seeing the likes of me.

I cleared my throat and clamped my unsteady hands together. Murmurs and not-so-hushed voices sounded. The group was no longer talking about whose mufflers on their oversized trucks roared the loudest or how many times their motorcycle engines had been rebuilt. I was a much more interesting subject for them to talk about.

“Who in the fuck is this black bitch?” a voice called out over the crowd of about twenty, scattered throughout the bar.

“What in the fuck does she want?” another voice asked.

“Does she not know where the fuck she’s at?”

I did my best to ignore the questions being asked. An African-American woman walking into a known racist motorcycle club wasn’t something that occurred every day.

“My name is Megan Jones,” I announced again to the biker I’d presumed was Shark. I craned my neck up to see his bearded face. “I’m here on behalf of my sister, Jennifer. She took drugs from your club on credit and didn’t pay you on time.” I paused to swallow enough fear to keep talking as the menacing glare of the mean biker locked on me and seared me down to my quaking bones. “Your men chased my sister down and promised to kill her if she didn’t pay what she owed them. I’m here to see if I can pay for her mistake.”

The towering biker loomed. Middle-aged, he was bearded with a long scar over his left cheek. He didn’t say anything. He just stared, seemingly through me. His dark hair was cut low to his skull, which was unexpected since I’d lumped every biker into the long-dirty-oily-hair category. His deep-set, blue eyes bore flashes of the hard life he led.

His arms were a canvas for various tattoos that likely continued under the leather vest and black T-shirt he’d paired with well-worn jeans and black boots. I’d learned through studying this organization that the president of the August Knights Motorcycle Club was named August Knox IV and was called Shark.

He tilted his head and glanced around me, undoubtedly expecting more people to be with me.

“Sir, I assure you I’m alone,” I confirmed. My words sounded as shaky as my body was. “I want to make things right with you so that your men won’t hurt my sister.”

The tall biker glanced around without saying anything. He stood, staring at me, likely wondering if I was truly crazy enough to do what I was attempting to do. He took a step closer to me, and I inched back.

“Are you one of them escaped crazies or something?” he asked as he tried to get a better look into my eyes. He probably thought I was high or drunk. Eyeing me suspiciously from head to toe, he leaned in close enough that his warm breath brushed my face.

Other than shake my head to answer his question, I didn’t move any other part of my fear-frozen body.

“No, sir. I’m not crazy. I came to see if I can pay my sister’s debt. I don’t have a lot of money, so I’m willing to pay you in installments if you’ll allow me.”

I swallowed the brick-size lump in my throat and quickly sucked in a huge gust of air as the big biker strong-armed me. My tennis shoes squeaked against the dirty, brown linoleum floor as I struggled for balance. My shocked eyes bulged from their sockets as he backed me up and gripped my tense shoulders before he slammed me into the wall behind us. My anxious fingers dug into the particle board wall I had been harshly introduced to. Pain registered, but my true fight was to not pass out from fear. The country music in the background halted, tones hushed, feet stopped shuffling, and interested gazes zoomed in on Shark and me.

“Who in the fuck are you?” he asked. His demanding gaze warned me not to fuck with him. “You better be lost or crazy because you have stumbled into the wrong club. Don’t you know this is a whites-only establishment? There ain’t no signs posted, but anybody around here who don’t live under a fucking rock knows that fact.”

My voice cracked. I squeezed my eyes shut so tight that water oozed from between my lids as I fought against the pain of the tight grip Shark had on my shoulders. I balanced on the balls of my feet because he’d hiked me up the wall a couple of notches.

“Sir, I’m who I say I am. I’m here to square my sister’s debt. She’s on drugs, and I’m usually left to clean up the messes she makes. I checked her into rehab and now I’m here to try to do right by you and your men on her behalf, so...”

I was losing it. I’d promised myself I’d do this with bravery, but I was so damn scared, I was losing what little courage that remained to tears.

I swallowed hard to find my voice to continue. “So, they won’t come after her again or try to kill her.”

My nerves taunted me so harshly that I babbled, likely telling him shit he didn’t care to know. Just when it appeared I was getting through to him, Shark gripped my forearm and dragged me to a nearby chair at one of the five cheap wooden tables in the small dining area. He shoved me into the torn red leather bottom of a wobbly metal chair. I landed hard enough that I gripped the edge of the table to keep from tumbling to the floor as the chair grunted angrily beneath me.

“How the fuck did you know I was Shark?”

I’d studied as much information as I could gather about his MC before I approached them. They had a social media page that had a large following. People loved dangerous people, so I wasn’t surprised that a known criminal element like the August Knights had captured a large amount of attention.

My shaky finger pointed at Shark’s chest. The black leather vest he wore was filled with his MC’s patches. The word, “President” was on a patch that stuck out on his chest. Anyone who knew of the August Knights Motorcycle Club knew that Shark was the president.

Although Shark looked meaner than a rattle snake about to strike, he stopped looming over my shaking frame and took the seat across the table from me.

“Talk.” He spat that single word in my direction.

The background silence was as alarming as Shark’s presence. The hum of the AC unit and cursing drunks outside were the only sounds that carried over my thundering heart.

Without glancing at them, I sensed the hot gazes of the group inside boring holes into me from every direction. After I relayed my reason for being there to Shark twice more, the tightness around his eyes remained, and his glare of uncertainty increased in its intensity.

Shark cut me off in the middle of one of my shaky sentences about wanting to help my sister.

“So, let me get this shit straight. You drove out here to nigger-lynching territory to broker a deal with me so that my men would leave your drug-addicted sister alone?”

I flinched at the sound of the N-word being voiced so loudly in public. Truth was I was one woman in the middle of redneck alley. Therefore, there wasn’t shit I could do or say about him using the N-word.

I nodded my head, answering yes to his question and the oddest thing I’d seen since I’d arrived happened. As Shark stared me down, he laughed, it was a deep boisterous laugh. As his shoulders shook, he tapped at the table like I’d given the ultimate punchline.

The tension in my shoulders coiled tighter as Shark’s roaring laugher spread throughout the room. Although they had no idea what he was laughing about, others began to laugh along with Shark.

There was no doubt in my mind that Shark thought I was a damn fool, and he was probably right. I knew as well as the next person that this was about as insane a move as I could have made, but I had to convince them that I was determined to do everything in my power to save my sister.