Authors: Carmella Jones
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BETRAYED
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Chapter One: Trevor “TNT” Thompson
“Ain’t no such thing as a free ride,” I growled. “There was an agreement made between you and the Hell Dogs, and we expect you to hold up your end of it.” I was there to collect the money on stripped parts for one of the Hell Dogs’ minor operations in stolen car parts. We’d shipped the parts, but hadn’t received our payment.
“I’m tellin’ you”—Arty’s voice took on a higher pitch, showing that he knew he was in some deep shit—“things haven’t been good for a couple of months, and I can only give you part of the payment.”
“We don’t run a credit union, Arty,” I said in a low tone. “Maybe you should have considered your cash-flow problems before you asked for the parts.” When it came right down to it, I didn’t really have the patience for collecting from a small timer. I typically took care of larger accounts. The problem that we’d run into with Arty was that he’d been ignoring our other guys, and Bulldog felt like I would be able to get under his skin better than the other guys.
Another reason I was the one who took care of most of the collections was because I was even tempered and didn’t go postal as easily as the others. I tended to get what I wanted in a more amiable way. When that didn’t work, the shock of my nasty attitude was intimidating as hell; no one ever wanted to see me go postal. I was leaning on Arty with just a touch of my nasty side, hoping that he would get the message that he was very close to something truly unsavory.
“I understand,” he said softly. He stared down at his grease-stained hands. He was just like most mechanics: Regardless of how much Goop they used or how often they tried to wash their hands, there always seemed to be a little bit of black in the cracks and creases.
I had to decide the best way to go about getting Arty’s attention. Fucking him up or killing him attracted unwanted company from law enforcement, though it was likely that if I gave him a few friendly taps on the noggin and ribs, he would leave law enforcement out of it. There were, no doubt, plenty of things going on in Arty’s shop that he didn’t want to have the law looking into.
“Look, Arty,” I smiled, “everybody makes some mistakes. It’s part of doing business, right? You live and you learn, but you’ve been living a little bit too long at the expense of the Hell Dogs, understand?”
He nodded, certain that the reference to living was a veiled threat for his imminent death.
“So, here is what I’m gonna do,” I started out. I got up from the chair where I’d been lounging and went around to his side of the filthy desk in his office, pushing a manual for General Motors power trains onto the floor so that I could lower myself onto his desk. I took his jaw in my hand and turned his face toward me, squeezing with my thumb and middle finger on the two pressure points at the hinge. “Until I receive from you the sum of what you owe the Hell Dogs plus half again that much in interest, you no longer own this shop, any of the items in it or any profits that come into it. During that time, you and I are going to become really good friends, because you’re going to be seeing a lot of me. Understood?”
He winced as he nodded in response.
“On every occasion that I visit,” I went on, “I’m going to require all of the profits that you made for the previous week.”
“But I gotta pay my rent and eat,” he tried to say.
“You’ll be eating a lot less, then,” I grinned, releasing my grip. “I would hate to have to put you out of business,” I said, tapping his cheek just hard enough to leave red finger marks. I moved my hand to his shoulder. “Just in case we aren’t clear, let me leave you a little reminder.” As I spoke, I swung hard with my left fist, feeling it sink into his gut.
While he doubled over and tried to get air back into his lungs, I stood, put on my Ray-Bans, turned toward the door, stopped and turned back toward him. “See you next week, buddy,” I grinned.
There wasn’t much to Arty’s shop, but if the Hell Dogs took it over and sold the tools, equipment and the building itself, the return would be about ten times what Arty owed us. The tactic had been used a number of times in the collection of debts and had been part of the reason that the Hell Dogs had prospered rapidly. In fact, one of the major jobs for our “loan officers” and “sales reps” was to scope out places that would bring in a decent return and then try to squeeze more out of them than they were able to handle, basically make them overextend and be forced to sign over their property.
Most of my efforts were concentrated on the collection aspect of the business and, like I already mentioned, I typically dealt with much larger operations. Once the money was collected, I got cleaned up, put on some nice clothes and then hit our casinos in Vegas. I was allowed to win part of the time, that was considered my “salary,” but most of the time I was simply passing money off to the house, making it impossible to trace where that cash had come from.
I carried out that job because I was more graceful and amiable than most of the other guys and I could pull it off. To the outside world, I was a high roller who bought rounds for everybody and was the life of the party. I liked to play, and everybody liked to be there when I did. I drank as much as I felt like drinking and stayed out as late as I liked with whomever I wanted. I woke up with a different piece of ass every morning, smacked that ass after she finished polishing my knob in the shower, and then started a new day all over again.
I had survived being an explosives expert in the Corps and had done two tours in the land of sand disarming IEDs or securing them and setting them off. I was originally given the nickname “TNT” in the same creative way that most Marines get them: My first and last name both start with the letter T. It was just pure, ironic fortune that it also worked perfectly with my rating.
I’d been acquainted with Bulldog since we met up in Baghdad and got to talking about Harleys, so it was only natural that when I got out, a couple years after he did, I looked him up. We’d taken a ride out into the Nevada desert one afternoon and found the shade of an old shack to sit in while Bulldog told me what he was into. When he first offered me the job, I hesitated. It wasn’t because I was a goody two shoes, but mostly because I wasn’t really an outlaw either. I really didn’t want to get mixed up in drugs, prostitution, gun-running and such.
“That’s exactly why I want you,” Bulldog said. “You won’t be mixed up in it at all. You’ll just be collecting money and blowing it having a good time.”
Only part of what he had told me was true. Initially, it had been mostly the truth, but as time went on, I got pulled in deeper and deeper. In addition to getting in deeper, I was becoming less and less impressed with Bulldog and the way that he had manipulated things in his favor, many of them at my expense. He’d intentionally drawn me in to the point where if he went down, I would go down with him. I hadn’t ever intended for that to happen. I was in deeper than anyone, but by all appearances I was still on the outside. I’d considered getting out completely, but it was really hard to leave the lifestyle that I’d gotten used to.
Chapter Two: Leila “Peachtree” Pierce
I pulled up in front of the Hot Hound Bar and Grill, kicked my hog out of gear, turned the key and swung my leg over my Fat Boy. The ground still vibrated a little bit under my feet because I’d been in the saddle for about six hours straight. Reno was alright, but I was ready to get back to the coast. I wasn’t one to screw around once I set my mind to doing something.
I pulled the brown envelope out of the pink saddlebag on the left side and headed for the door. The lighting wasn’t good under the best of conditions when you came straight in out of the sun, but it was even worse whenever you forgot to take off your shades. I reached up and pulled them off before continuing further into the club.
“Hey, Peach,” Zane called out from behind the bar.
“Hey, Z,” I nodded in the direction of his voice. I still couldn’t see him. “Bulldog here?”
“HQ,” he responded. He was referring to the office in the back of the club where the president of the club did his business. “Crown ‘n’ Coke?”
“Nah, just a beer.” My throat was dry and a beer would taste pretty damned good after such a long ride.
“I’ll bring it back,” Zane said, sending me on my way to the back. He’d just come into focus, and I continued down the hall, past the bathrooms to the office.
Most people tapped on the door before entering. I never bothered with that formality. I’d caught Bulldog on more than one occasion “interviewing” a new groupie, but that sort of thing amused me, so I was never embarrassed about what I might walk in on. Instead of finding him with a groupie, I found something even more entertaining as I entered. His head was all the way back, his mouth was wide open and he was snoring. It sounded like a pig snorting, and he looked stupid as hell.
An evil grin spread across my face. I tossed the heavy envelope on the desk close to him and watched him come unglued.
“Is this what the president of a fucking motorcycle club does all day?” I grinned.
“Fuck you, Peach!” He wasn’t all that happy with the start that I’d given him.
“Nah. I’m kind of tired. Long ride.”
Bulldog pulled the envelope toward him, opened the clasp and peered inside at the stacks of bills that I’d brought back from Reno. “You count it?”
“I was supposed to do that?” I held my blood-red painted fingernail to my blood-red lips and acted like a dumb blonde.
“Smartass,” he grumbled.
I was about to respond with something sarcastic, but Zane came in with my beer, and a bottle of scotch and a glass for Bulldog. I was more interested in the beer than I was in my response. I took a long pull on the frosty mug and sank into one of the leather chairs in front of Bulldog’s desk.
There were a lot of reasons I was a runner for an outlaw motorcycle club. That list of reasons began with the fact that there was nothing about me that screamed either “former military” or “biker chick.” In fact, if I had had that sort of sick, twisted affinity for putting my body on display for the whole world to see, I might have given Giselle a run for her money. So, I guess you could say that I was something of an anomaly. But don’t be fooled, I can still kick your ass.
I wasn’t necessarily into bad boys, but because I was something of a bad girl, that’s who tended to be around me whenever my feet hit the dirt. I did my tours, having been sucked into the United States Marines by their own version of the “be all you can be” slogan. It had sounded like a good idea to my rebellious teen ears. My parents wanted me to go to college and become a doctor, engineer or something respectable. So, I joined the Marines and did neither.
I got the name Peachtree when I was in the corps. They wanted to give me a nickname that matched the first letter of my last name, and since I was born and raised in Peachtree, Georgia… Yeah, that’s how creative they are. Most of the time they just called me Peach or Peaches. You have to understand something about me from the beginning: I was and always would be a rebel. So, instead of being the butch bitch that you think of when you see a military broad, I tried to stay girly, which isn’t easy when you’re being taught to kill somebody.
Long story short, I did my time, got out and used my G.I. bill funds to become an engineer. It’s funny how things come full circle. But I’m still rebellious. My rebellion comes in the form of a Special Edition Fat Boy Harley that has chrome in every place that chrome can be put. The paint spec on it is a metallic blood-red that matches my lipstick color of choice. I like the way those tuned pipes purr and the roar of the counterbalanced, twin-cam engine when I give the throttle a quick twist. I also like the feel of power between my legs.
That’s not the only power that I like to feel between my legs, if you get my drift. It’s not because I’m a slut or a nympho, but because I know how to use what I’ve got to get what I want out of guys. And, I find that I want a lot of things. It’s a finely honed skill that I perfected whenever I wanted a weekend pass or didn’t particularly care for the duty that I had drawn. It’s hard to believe that men in the Marine Corps would be so undisciplined, right? Trust me, I wasn’t your average lay. There was always someone willing to modify my orders after receiving a little bit of motivation. When I got out, I didn’t lose that talent, or the inclination to use it.
Though I was never inclined toward having chicks as friends, I did have one really good one, with a similarly “creative” name, Dawn “Dishwater” Cassidy. We met in basic and we pretty much stuck together throughout our tour. Dish was the one who talked me into moving to the golden coast after getting out of the military. The feel of the salty Pacific breeze playing with my honey-gold hair, whenever I rode the coastal highway wearing my bright pink skid lid, got me hooked on California, and I never even considered going back to Peachtree.
Dish also introduced me to another rebellious world, one where women haven’t really had a great deal of power or control: a motorcycle club. I’d been accepted as a member of the Golden Coast Hell Dogs not just because I was a former Marine, but because Bulldog said that any woman who could handle a Fat Boy the way I did was man enough to be a part of the club. Bulldog was Jackson Snodgrass. He was the club president of the GCHDs.
The Hell Dogs only accepted former or active Marines. Their name was a variation of the Marine Corps moniker, “Devil Dogs,” which was given to them initially in WWI by German soldiers. Dispatches from the German front at the battle of Belleau Wood reportedly stated that the fresh American troops, Marines, fought like
Teufelshunde
(devil dogs)
or
Höllenhund
(hellhounds). Marines had proudly worn that label since 1918.
Having performed courier duties for the GCHDs, I had gotten to know the ins and outs of the entire “business” operations. Those operations included prostitution, extortion, drugs, weapons and pretty much any other black market niche that could be thought up. In all truth, I probably knew more about what was going on in the club than Bulldog did. The stupid look that I’d seen on his face when he was snoring already had me thinking about wanting to sit in his chair instead of mine.