Authors: Carmella Jones
Chapter Seventeen: Peach
It was obvious after I hung up with Trevor that my plan was already taking shape. Not only was Bulldog pissed about being set up and accusing Trevor, but Trevor was already responding the way that I thought he would. He had a thick shell and was a cool customer, so it would take a lot more to rattle him. I was pretty sure from the tone of our conversation that he was beginning to be rattled a bit. Maybe I hadn’t needed Sal after all. No, it was better to have that little extra push.
I avoided Bulldog for a little more than a week. That didn’t seem to be bothering him, but was starting to make me wonder. I would have preferred to have kept him close where I could get a measurement on how effectively our plan was working, but I wasn’t going to go crawling to him, not after the way he’d acted toward me. Still, it made me nervous, wondering what he was up to and if he suspected either Dish or me.
I talked to Trevor nearly every day, sometimes even twice. He had cooled off and was taking things in stride, just as I knew he would. He was overly concerned about Bulldog and me being back together, not out of concern for Bulldog and me, but—I had the suspicion—because he had a thing for me. Though that had been part of my plan too, there was a tiny little pinprick of guilt in the back of my mind. It would neither go away when I tried to dismiss it nor grow enough to consume me. It just seemed to linger there like a splinter.
My conversations with Trevor were typically light and playful. Both of us liked to tease and he was nearly as good at it as I was. He had charm that ran all through him and he had a cocky confidence about him too. I was not only attracted to him for all of those reasons, but we’d also discovered that we had a lot in common. I’d weakened in my resolve more than once when it came to dragging Trevor into my plan, but turning back was not an option; I pushed forward.
When the call from Bulldog came for me to go back to Reno, it was all business. At least it was a good sign that he wasn’t onto me. He’d never trust me to make a run for cash if he thought I was involved in his being set up.
“Can you make a run?” he asked, without even greeting me.
“I suppose that I can,” I responded casually.
“They’ll have one tomorrow,” he responded.
“Does this mean that we’re talking again?” I teased.
“Yeah, I guess,” he admitted.
His tone sounded remorseful, but I didn’t expect an apology. I waited several beats. “Is that it?”
“Well,” he said, “I suppose I should say that I’m sorry for jumping down your throat a couple of weeks ago. I was upset about a lot of shit, but I didn’t need to take it out on you.”
I nearly stopped breathing for good, and I’m pretty sure that my heart didn’t beat for at least five seconds. Had Bulldog just apologized to me? “Was that an apology?”
“Don’t make a big deal out of it,” he grumbled.
I decided to cut my losses. “Okay. I’ll run to Reno this afternoon then.”
“Peach?” he added, just as I was about to hang up. “Be careful. Keep your eyes open and your head on a swivel. There’s some shit going on out there and I don’t need you getting caught up in it.”
“Dish said something about the cops,” I replied. I decided to do a little fishing to see of Sal had done what I’d paid him to do. “It’s probably just a rumor that will blow over.”
“I don’t know, Peach. I saw Sal last week and he said that there’d been some people asking questions with my name in them.”
“No shit?” I responded with a shocked tone. So, Sal had done what I’d paid him to do. I was going to have to go ahead and give him the bonus that I’d promised him after all. I did a quiet fist-pump, but I couldn’t celebrate. I still needed to play my surprised role. “Are you sure I should be going to Reno, then?”
“Yeah. We need to keep doing what we do,” he said. “They probably won’t connect you anyway. Just be careful.”
When the call disconnected, I knew that I was on track with my plan. Bulldog was paranoid. I would need to do a little bit more work on Trevor, but, since I was headed back to Reno, that was going to be easy to do. For the first time in a very long time, I was excited to straddle my Fat Boy and head toward Nevada.
Finding Trevor wasn’t nearly the ordeal that it had been the time before. I’d called to let him know that I had arrived and he was already waiting for me in the casino. The evening was similar to the one that we’d had before, except I’d given in to allowing him to take me to a nice dinner instead of out for waffles, and we had turned in sooner in order to get an early start on quenching the fire that we’d already fanned into white hot coals.
Exhausted from going wild all over each other’s bodies, I was lying in his arms with my head on his chest and thinking about how much I could get used to being with him. I knew that I couldn’t allow myself to get in too deep if I hoped to carry out my takeover of the Hell Dogs, but it was getting harder for me to fight back that nagging splinter that grew to about ten times its size when Trevor and I had met up that evening. It wasn’t an easy fight, but I pushed it down and drove ahead.
“So, I have something I should tell you,” I started in softly.
“Yeah? What’s up?”
“You’re not going to like it,” I said. I was stalling, not really wanting to carry out the next part of my plan, but knowing that I’d really come too far to turn back anyway.
“I won’t know until you tell me.”
In that very same moment that I decided to push forward with my plan, I knew that, though I might gain control of the Hell Dogs, I would probably lose something more precious. I did it anyway. “Bulldog has somebody keeping an eye on you.”
“He what?” Trevor said, sitting upright as if he had just been awakened by a nightmare. In the process of his reaction, my own comfort was quickly shoved aside and I sat up too.
“He’s got someone watching you,” I repeated. I heard myself going through with my plan almost as if it was someone watching themselves in an out-of-body experience.
“What the fuck is his problem?” Trevor raged. It was a side of him that I’d never seen before and it was, even for an ex-Marine, frightening. I honestly hadn’t expected his explosion. “I haven’t done anything to him and all of a sudden, the stupid bastard is coming unglued!”
I shrugged, not sure of what to say. I was also regretting that I was putting him through this. That was the first time that I began to have doubts about being able to keep my plan going. The problem, however, was that I’d pushed a boulder off a hill and it had bumped some other boulders, and they had all begun to tumble of their own accord.
Chapter Eighteen: Bulldog
“How was Reno?” I asked when Peach came in, tossed the envelope on my desk and slumped into her usual seat. It had been a couple of weeks since I’d seen her and, to tell you the truth, she was looking better than ever. I was regretting that I had pushed her away.
“It was Reno. Same as always,” she replied in a bored tone.
“How have you been?” I asked.
She chuckled. “You don’t talk to me for two weeks and you ask about Reno before you ask about me?”
“Hey, give me a break,” I tried to keep the tone my voice even. I didn’t need to get into things with her. I was under enough pressure without fighting with Peach too. “I got plenty of shit to deal with. I was just trying to start a pleasant conversation.”
Peach sat there quietly for several minutes before she started off in a soft tone. That wasn’t something that she often did. “Sal still snooping around?”
“Not, Sal, really,” he said. “He’s just keeping me up to date on what he’s hearing. Thank god he’s on my side, at least.”
“You better hope he’s on your side,” she replied.
“What do you mean by that?” I asked, wondering if she knew something that I didn’t.
“Nothing,” she replied. “Jesus, you’re paranoid. All I meant was that he just has a lot of shit on you. If he ever turned against you, he could nail your ass big time.”
I didn’t need that little reminder. I was already looking over my shoulder enough as it was. The thought of having Sal coming at me too didn’t make me feel any better. I took a deep breath, pushed down the rising tension that had been my constant companion for several weeks and focused on counting the money that I’d pulled from the envelope. Peach remained quiet, watching me.
While I was busy counting, I couldn’t help but get the feeling that she was studying me intensely. She typically ignored me while I was counting the money, but she seemed to be keeping a close eye on me. Was there something going on that she was afraid that I’d pick up on? Was there money missing and she was afraid that I’d figure it out? Was I just losing my fucking mind for thinking that Peach was doing anything other than casually looking on? The last was probably the correct answer.
Another thought came to me as I finished counting and passed the bills for her cut across the desk toward her. Had she found out about Dish and me?
“Pleasure doing business with you,” she said, gathering up the bills and slipping them inside her leather jacket just like she always did. She stood up and started toward the door.
Usually, whenever she left my office, she did some sort of routine to tease me. The time before, she had been pissed, but I was hoping that she would pick up where we’d left off. She opened the door and started to step through.
“Peach,” I called after her, “are we okay?”
“We’re fine. Why?” she asked, studying my face.
“Nothin’,” I replied. I didn’t want to sound like a whining teenager who was losing his girlfriend. “Just checkin’.”
“Look, Bulldog, I know you’re under a lot of pressure, so I’m just sort of backing off and staying out of the way. I appreciated the apology, though.”
“Those are rare for me, and I meant it.” I replied. I felt like I was begging. It wasn’t something that I was used to doing. “You mind if I come over later?”
“Knock yourself out,” she grinned and pulled the door closed.
It wasn’t what I was used to, but it was at least a step in the right direction. If I could get back in with Peach, she’d probably be able to get rid of a whole lot of my stress. I still didn’t know if she knew about Dish and me doing the nasty while she was out of town, but she didn’t seem to be pissed at me, so she either didn’t know or knew and didn’t care. The thought of getting her out of her clothes and doing all sorts of dirty things to that spectacular body of hers was already making me feel better. I’d even started to whistle a little tune as I filled out the deposit slip and gathered the cash together. Maybe things weren’t as bad as I had made them out to be.
I’d just finished locking the floor safe and was about to get up from my desk when there was a knock at the door. “Back so soon?” I called out, hoping it was Peach, but not thinking about the fact that Peach never knocked.
“Soon enough, I suppose,” the voice on the other side of the door answered. It was Sal O’Neal. That was strange. He never came to the office. He didn’t want to be seen connected to me.
Instantly, I felt the bile rise up in my throat. He was there as a member of law enforcement. I checked to see if there was anything lying around that might incriminate me. Seeing nothing I called out to him in a casual tone. “Come in.”
“Bulldog,” Sal said stepping through the door with another man wearing a suit and looking like he’d just been dragged to the opera with his wife. “This is Detective Taylor from Salt Lake.”
If I hadn’t pushed the bile down, I would have thrown up right then. Doing the best I could to not appear to be guilty or paranoid, I stood and reached toward detective Taylor. “Pleased to meet you. We can go out in the bar and talk, if you like? I’ll buy you a drink.”
“We probably ought to keep this private,” Taylor said in a soft tone as he gripped my hand quickly and then let it go.
“Alright, then?” I wrinkled my brow and glanced at Sal, who tried to keep his face neutral, though his eyes told me he was uncomfortable with the situation. “Have a seat. What brings you all the way out here from Salt Lake?”
“We just wanted to ask a few questions about the Hell Dogs and what sorts of things they do as a club.”
“Not much, really,” I shrugged. “We own this bar together. It turns a pretty decent profit at times. We go out on rides on the weekends and sometimes take some longer trips together when the guys have time. It’s really just a lot of retired jarheads who like motorcycles and like to tell lies about how good we are with the ladies.”
“Excuse me if I don’t buy that, Mister Snodgrass,” he frowned. “My understanding is that the Hell Dogs have a wide network that deals in black market goods, drugs, prostitution, extortion and money laundering.”
Again I shrugged, spread my hands and wrinkled my brow. “I don’t know where you got that. I’ll admit that some of our guys are pretty rough looking and we occasionally get into some fights. Hell, we’re all former Marines, and the egos in here are well fed, but a network? Drugs? Prostitution? I suppose some of the guys have smoked some weed and solicited a hooker on occasion, but, hell, who hasn’t?” I chuckled.
A corner of his mouth turned up for a single tick of the second hand on his plain watch. “There have been some illegal events taking place in Salt Lake recently, and your name has come up specifically. Would you like to explain why?”
I shrugged and spread my hands wide again. “I’ve only ridden through Salt Lake going to Sturgis a couple of times. I don’t see how anyone can connect me to anything in Salt Lake. Where is this all coming from?” My response was actually true. The Hell Dogs had dealings in Salt Lake, but I was rarely anywhere near the city.
“I’ll ask the questions,” he snapped. “We have our sources.”
I immediately thought of TNT. What had he told Taylor? How the hell could he think that he could set me up and not implicate himself? The next time I saw the bastard, it wasn’t going to be for a handshake and a shot of single malt scotch.
The interview continued in much the same way. There were lots of questions hinting at things but nothing was really asked that told me that Detective Taylor had anything on me. He was there on a fishing expedition. Sal had played his role of neutrality perfectly, not asking questions, making speculations or letting on that he knew me in any way. When they left, we didn’t shake hands, though I’d extended mine toward each of them. It was pretty obvious that Detective Taylor wasn’t buying anything I told him, and I was sure that Sal was just playing along. I
hoped
that Sal was just playing along. Like Peach had mentioned earlier, Sal had a lot of shit on me. I didn’t need him to turn against me.