Trouble: Crooked Souls MC (3 page)

Gabriel

She would be back. There was no way she could react the way she had and not come back. If not for more of me, then for more information. As sexy as she was, I hoped I never saw her again. It could only mean trouble.

The club had a way of dealing with trouble. Even though I didn’t know this girl I didn’t want it to come to that. I thought back and could remember the people we’d punished or otherwise silenced over the years. There had been a lot of them. Too many to count. I’d been there for some of them. It wasn’t pretty. I didn’t want her to go through the same thing.

I couldn’t remember her sister very well, but I hoped somebody hadn’t decided she was trouble. It would be a shame for such a pretty girl to go out like that.

I got myself together in the back room before going back out to the bar. As soon as they saw me in the doorway, my guys cheered and stomped. I held up my hands, pretending to feel modest, making them cheer louder. I wasn’t sure what they thought we’d done, but they probably thought I fucked her, or at least made her suck me off. I figured I’d let them think what they wanted. It only added to my legend.

Most of what people said about me was true. My favorite hobby was sex, end of story. When I saw a woman I wanted, I took her. I’d fucked every woman in the bar that night at one time or another, sometimes two at the same time. I rode my bike hard and my women harder, and just about as often. It was who I was, and I liked myself the way I was. The club was the perfect place for me to be myself. These guys thought it was something to be proud of.

Rusty was already pouring a round of drinks by the time I walked up to the bar. I took a glass, raising it to the rest of the guys. They all came to get one of their own—there were a dozen guys there, patches and prospects. I looked out over them. They were my guys. I was their leader. It was a good feeling a moments like this.

“To the meanest son of a bitch in town, and the Crooked Souls!” The guys cheered Rusty’s toast before tossing back their liquor. A few of them patted me on the back. We laughed over how I’d shut the little bitch down. I stayed quiet when they asked me what I did to her. They had imaginations. And my image wouldn’t be helped if I admitted I hadn’t done anything worse than kissing her and grabbing her ass. They might have thought I was losing my touch.

Even when we were all laughing, I couldn’t stop thinking about the missing girl. Sabrina, her name was. I remembered her better than I’d let on. She looked just like the girl who came in looking for her, except younger. She was dating Thorn…at least, she was when I last saw her.

Thorn was my best friend. We met on the first day of grade school. Both of us were from shitty homes, with parents who didn’t care about us. We were each other’s family. I would ride into hell for him, and I knew he would for me.

We were like brothers, and we had shared everything over the years. Now he was my vice president and second-in-command. Our bond was tighter than anything else in my life. There was no way I would betray him, even when I knew he was wrong. Most of the time I could convince him to change his mind before he got into serious trouble, and he did the same thing for me when I lost my temper.

Now I heard that Sabrina had vanished. I’d noticed she wasn’t showing her face around here, but I thought she and Thorn had broken up. She wasn’t a part of the club. She just hung out here because she was dating Thorn. Some of the girls, like most of the ones there that night, were permanent fixtures at the bar and the clubhouse. They served us, serviced us. Anything to be part of the action. It was sad when you took a minute to think about it.

Ever since that last day I saw Sabrina, when I rode over to Thorn’s and saw her leaving, I knew there was a problem. She had looked like she’d been crying, which I hated to see a woman do. At first, I had wanted to ignore her—it was none of my business if the two of them were having trouble. Personal shit was personal, even though Thorn was my closest friend. But she had seen me and walked over to the bike. She was a sweet girl. I remembered how she’d tried to smile even though she’d looked like shit. They had been fighting. It was obvious. But she had tried as hard as she could to pretend everything was okay. We’d stood in front of the house talking for a few minutes. I guessed that was where these so-called witnesses were getting their stories. They needed to mind their own business.

Sabrina wasn’t the first girl who had trouble with Thorn over the years. I remembered not being surprised at the time that she’d looked so upset.
Just another one of his fuck-ups
, I had thought. Thorn never had a lot of luck with women. When we were kids, like in high school, he used to go through girlfriends almost as fast as I did. Only I didn’t bother calling them my girlfriends. I’d fuck ’em and chuck ’em. Thorn actually tried to date women, for real. But it never went well.

He would blame the girl every time it went south. She was crazy. She wanted too much from him. She was jealous or controlling. She was a prude.

But after a little while, it hit me: it couldn’t
always
be the other person’s fault. By the time we were seventeen and he’d gone through something like three dozen girlfriends, I figured the problem was with him. He was the only constant in all of these relationships where things had gone to hell for one reason or another. I couldn’t tell him how I felt about it, though. Guys didn’t talk about things like that, especially not guys like us. It would be weird. Besides, he wouldn’t have listened to me.

So it didn’t surprise me when I saw how hurt Sabrina looked. Not physically hurt—I wouldn’t let Thorn get away with that, friend or no friend. I had no time for guys who hit women. It wasn’t fair to them when they couldn’t defend themselves. Sabrina was just as tiny as her sister, maybe smaller. Five feet three, at the most. I’d have kicked the shit out of Thorn if it looked like he was beating her.

When she stopped coming around, I told myself it was for the best—for her, anyway. Thorn wasn’t the kind of guy who should be permanently fixed up with a woman. I’d never understood why he kept trying to go for a relationship. Me, I just wanted a good time. It would have been smart if he would come around and start thinking the way I did.

I thought Sabrina had left him, and I’d pushed her out of my head. She was hardly there, anyway. It wasn’t hard. But then Thorn started falling apart. He was still falling apart now.

I had to wonder, sitting at the bar with the guys, if he hadn’t done something to her. Maybe he got mad and lost his mind for a minute. It happened all the time. Crimes of passion or whatever they were called. But at the end of the day, it wasn’t my problem. I couldn’t get involved. If he did hurt her or even kill her, it wouldn’t look good to the cops if I was involved somehow. And if Thorn did kill her, and if he admitted it to me, I’d be pulled in somehow.

Just then, Thorn walked in. He’d been MIA lately, showing up now and then. And when he did, he looked like shit. Just like he did right now. He was a mess. Unshaven, dark circles under his eyes. His clothes looked like he’d been wearing them for days. It didn’t take a genius to see something was wrong. But even though he’d been getting worse and worse since Sabrina left, he wouldn’t admit what was happening. At first, I had assumed he was upset over their breakup and taking it a little harder than he usually did. Now that the sister had come in looking for her, I was having second thoughts.

“Hey, man,” he grumbled, sliding onto a stool next to me. Rusty poured him a drink. I watched as he threw it back. He signaled for more.

“Hey, yourself. Where you been? Could have used you earlier today. A bunch of the guys went on a run, almost fucked it up.”

“How?”

“They almost got the order wrong. You’re always the one who keeps an eye out for shit like that. What happened?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“You should have been here to make sure it didn’t. That could have cost us a lot.” I was trying to get through to him, even to get a reaction other than indifference. It was like talking to a wall.

“I’m sorry, okay? I’ve had a lot of shit going on.” He stayed quiet and stared into his glass.

“Why don’t you try telling me about your shit? Maybe I can help.”

“You can’t help me,” he mumbled so quietly I almost didn’t hear him over the music and laughter around us.

“Since when? Listen to me,” I looked around to make sure nobody was listening, “I need you right now. We’re a team. If you fuck up, it looks bad for both of us.”

“I won’t do it again. Okay?” He looked at me, and I could have sworn I was looking at a stranger. There was no friendship. He looked hard and cold. For a minute, I almost wondered if he was working with another club against me. No, that was impossible. I’d known him my whole life.

He got up to sit near the stage, where two of our girls were dancing. I watched him. What was happening to us? The last thing I needed was to look weak in front of these guys. I made it a point to smile like everything was okay. There were eyes watching me closely, everywhere. I hated to have a paranoid thought like that, but it was true. I couldn’t get away from the feeling that I was being watched all the time for the first sign of weakness so somebody else could jump into my seat.

Thorn and I had been part of the club for most of our lives. Neither of us had family ties, and we needed to feel like we belonged somewhere. And the club just seemed so cool. It still did. I still loved it. It was the only place I’d ever felt like I fit in. I didn’t fit in at school. My teachers hated me, the kids called me white trash. Thorn was the only person I had in those days. Then we found the club. We found a family.

Only now that I was at the head, life was a lot more complicated. Why did I ever want to be in control? The idea of being president of the club was exciting on the outside. Being in power, keeping us strong, leading us to the future. If I knew then what I knew now…I shook my head at myself, laughing. In those days, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. When Spike made it known to the rest of the club that he wanted me to take his place, I was on top of the world. What a stupid, naïve kid I was back then.

These were my friends all around me. I sat down at one of the tables, and right away the girl who had been on my lap when that little blonde first came in sat back down. She was giggling, rubbing herself on me. I could have this every night of my life, and it was a great feeling. Only I wondered if it was real. Back before I was president, I didn’t have to ask myself if the girl actually wanted to be with me because she wanted to or because she wanted to be with the head of the club. I didn’t ask myself if the guys around me were laughing at my joke because they thought it was funny or because they thought they had to. And I never had to worry about who was trying to get me out of power.

That was the worst, and it was why I couldn’t let Thorn be the weak link. I knew there had to be at least one or two members who wanted to see me get knocked down so they could take my place. I had to show them I was strong, that the club was strong. Screw-ups like this morning couldn’t happen again.

That was why I couldn’t have anything to do with Sabrina’s disappearance. That was all we would need, to have the cops look at us more closely. We had a sort of unspoken agreement with the police in this town. As long as we weren’t burning shit down or causing too much trouble for the people who lived there, we were left mostly on our own.

If that little blonde, whose name I wished I’d gotten, didn’t stop poking her nose in where it didn’t belong, we could all be in a lot of trouble. The police would come around, start asking questions. They might find out about club business, and we’d all end up in jail. The rest of the club would kick me out of my seat for sure. While I wasn’t as thrilled to be president as I used to think I would be, I didn’t want to lose my role, either.

There was Thorn, acting like nothing was wrong. Drinking harder than I’d ever seen, laughing louder than he usually did. Was I covering up for him by ignoring what might have happened to that girl? She was only eighteen. Practically a kid. Her sister obviously cared a lot about what had happened to make her vanish. It didn’t matter, though. I had to think about the club. I just hoped my best friend and second-in-command hadn’t done something that could get us all in big trouble.

“You okay, baby?” The girl on my lap was rubbing up on me, trying to get me off. I nodded my head. I had been too distracted to notice what she was doing.

“Yeah, I’m fine. It’s been a long day.” She looked disappointed. Why not? I fucked her before. She knew how good it was and wanted more. They all wanted more. I ran my hand over her hair and remembered how pretty that blonde’s hair was. This girl’s hair was rough and dry, like she used too much product in it.

“I’m going home,” I said to the guys.

“Gotta rest up after all that action,” one of them said. The rest laughed hard.

I let them believe what they wanted while I finished my drink and walked out the door. All of a sudden I needed a little peace and quiet.

Kat

By the time the front door swung open, I’d dozed off a bit. My plan had been to sit in the parking lot, waiting Gabriel out. Only he had taken a while. I’d been so tired after all that emotion, and bored half to death. Eventually, I fell into a light slumber.

In my almost-dream, while I was floating between being awake and being fully asleep, I replayed, ad nauseam, the confrontation between Gabriel and me. At first, I’d been scared half witless. Then I’d been so turned on I didn’t know what to do with myself. When he kissed me, I couldn’t keep struggling. Every bit of my body wanted to give into him. It felt right. Somehow, I felt like it was what I was supposed to do. I had responded to him so strongly, my nipples tightening so hard they hurt, a rush of warmth spreading between my legs. I remembered how it felt, how much I had wanted to give control over to him and let him do whatever he wanted to with my body. I knew he could make me scream if he tried.

I jumped, startled by the sound of the screen door slamming shut. I shook myself, the last bits of my fantasy fading away. There he was, leaving the bar. I knew that massive build, the cocky walk, even when he didn’t think anyone was watching him.

Hatred boiled in my veins. What right did a nasty, evil person like him have to walk around free when a good, sweet girl like my sister was…wherever she was? He could come and go as he pleased, have a drink at the bar, get his bulge rubbed while he watched a girl dance for him, then hop on his bike and go to the next place. Wherever he wanted to be, he could be.

Something told me that whatever he wanted, he could get. That kiss came to mind again, though I cursed myself for letting it get to me. A man who kissed like that probably did other things just as well. That kind of man could have anything.

So why choose this life? I couldn’t understand it. Maybe he was too stupid to do anything else. Or maybe he was just a really bad person to the core. A regular life wouldn’t suit him. I tried to imagine this rough, sexy, charismatic man sitting behind a desk somewhere. It didn’t work.

I watched as he got on his bike, strapping a helmet over his short black hair. I was parked beneath a tree, tucked into the shadows. I could watch without being noticed. At least, that was what I hoped.

He pulled out of the parking lot, hanging a right. I turned the key in the ignition, deciding to follow him. I hoped my showing up at the bar had shaken him up. Maybe he would lead me somewhere that would provide a clue.

I hung back two cars, wanting to hide my presence. Wondering where he was going. I hoped he didn’t lead anywhere too dangerous, but then again nothing was too dangerous where my sister was concerned. If I was worried about the danger I never would have stepped foot into that bar. I knew Gabriel was only trying to scare me when he warned me away…but there was no ignoring the obviously threatening vibe I felt there.

He turned right a few miles down the road. I followed. We were winding our way through wooded areas. Was this where my sister was left? Maybe a cabin somewhere around here? My heartbeat quickened.

It was dark out here, the only light coming from my headlights and the tail lights of the bike far in front of me. I had to hang back now that there weren’t any cars between us. How many cars came out this way at this time of night? I hoped my tailing wasn’t obvious. Or that he was too lost in his thoughts of my sister to notice.

We came to the edge of the woods, where the side road we’d been driving down met another main road. I was relieved to get out of the area, the thought of Sabrina alone in the thick wood too awful to bear. If he had stopped there, what would I have done? I would have kept driving. Otherwise, he could have done anything he wanted to me. There wouldn’t be witnesses. This was looking like a worse idea with every mile we traveled.

Gabriel turned left. I waited for two cars to pass in that direction before following him. I felt safer now, better covered. All seemed well enough. He wasn’t speeding or trying to lose me, so I was pretty confident he hadn’t noticed me.

The further we drove, the more anxious I became. Where was he heading? We were now driving through a pretty dangerous part of town, one I never visited. Rows of cinderblock houses lined both sides of the broken street. There was one car between us, while I tailed at a lengthy distance. I needed to be able to react if Gabriel came to a sudden stop.

And he did, turning into a driveway of one of the homes. Shit! I pulled the car into an empty space five houses down, cutting the lights immediately. I didn’t see him get off his bike or go into a house. I only knew he’d parked somewhere up there.

Why was he here? Was this where he lived? My nose wrinkled in distaste. I’d assumed a criminal like him would live in a nicer house. Evidently, crime really didn’t pay. I snickered to myself, waiting to see what would happen, if anything.

How long should I sit here? What was I even waiting for? After twenty minutes I was ready to give up. I’d been stupid to think this would lead anywhere. Who did I think I was? Nancy Drew?

A rattling noise at my passenger door startled me, before the door swung open. My hand went for the ignition, fumbling with the keys.

“Stop.” It was him. He plopped down beside me, then slammed the door shut.

“What are you doing? Get the hell out of my car!” I could hardly breathe, I was so surprised.

“Not until you tell me what the hell you think you’re doing, following me around.” He glared at me, and there was no mistaking the anger in his voice.

“Following you? Get over yourself.” I hated this man, and I didn’t care if he knew it.

“If you’re not following me, what the hell are you doing here?”

“I live around here.”

He smirked, his eyes narrowing. “You? Live here?”

I shrugged. “So what? What are you trying to say?”

“I’m trying to say you don’t live anywhere near here. I’ve never seen you around. And a girl who drives a car like this doesn’t live in my neighborhood. Because, trust me, this car wouldn’t last long around here.”

I’d hardly considered my used car a luxury item. “You park your shiny bike in your driveway, and nobody’s taken it.”

He grinned, the light from the streetlamps glinting off his teeth. He reminded me of a shark. “That’s because they know what’ll happen if they so much as touch it.”

I scowled, knowing he had a point. My argument was getting me nowhere, fast.

“So try again. Why are you actually here? Why did you tail me the whole way from the bar?”

“I told you!” Now I was shouting. “I live around here, dammit!”

“You do? What’s your address?”

Shit
. I stayed quiet. I didn’t even know which street we were on right now, I’d been so intent on keeping my eye on Gabriel. Besides, I couldn’t name any of the streets in this part of town.

“I thought so,” he said, and I wanted to slap the smug right out of him. As it was, my hand itched to reach out and make contact with his face. I decided that would be pretty much the same as signing my own death warrant, so I fought the urge.

My heart thumped like mad. I wondered if he could hear it. It seemed like he should be able to. I could barely breathe. What was he going to do to me now that he knew I’d been trailing him? Why didn’t I think things through before I did them?

Because of Sabrina. She was worth this. But what good would I be to her if I was dead?

“So, what are you going to do to me?” I asked, hating the shakiness in my voice.

He looked me up and down, a slow smile again spreading over his features. I thought of a shark, again. I didn’t like the look in his eye. “Be serious,” I said, sounding angry this time. I was glad. I wanted him to know I wasn’t somebody to be screwed around with.

“Fine. Seriously, I don’t know. I haven’t decided. What do you think I should do to you?”

“I think you should tell me what happened to my sister.”

“You don’t listen, do you?” he asked. “I told you, I don’t know what happened to her. That’s the truth.”

“You’re full of shit.”

“You’re desperate.”

His words hit home. I
was
desperate. I couldn’t live without knowing the truth, even if it put me in danger.

I was also intensely afraid of him. I had the feeling he was toying with me. I watched him as he moved. I knew he was sizing me up, thinking about what he was going to do with me.

“You know,” he said, “if you’re gonna follow me around like this, maybe I should know your name.”

I couldn’t help smiling, just a little. “It’s Kat,” I said.

He nodded, like that made perfect sense. “I’ve already felt your claws, Kat.”

I blushed, remembering that kiss. How tightly I’d held him against me. How easy it was for him to turn me to mush.

I’d never been so close to a man like him before. None of the boys I was with when I was a kid were anywhere close to Gabriel’s league. It was like I’d graduated to the big leagues now, and I didn’t know what to do. My thoughts raced. What would he do to me? Drag me from the car? Take me here and now? Why were all my thoughts leading to sex? Possibly because he oozed sex appeal. Just the way he looked at me made me certain that his thoughts were going in that direction. Thanks to the way he kissed me at the bar, my thoughts were going the same way.

The thrill was the sexiest part. The excitement. Knowing it was wrong, knowing he was wrong in every way. That sort of thrill took a desirable man and made him irresistible.

I could barely speak over the pounding of my heart. My voice quivered. “So now that you know I was following you, what do you plan to do with me?” I wasn’t trying to be coy or sexy. I really wanted to know.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “I’d like to teach you a lesson, but I don’t think you learn lessons very easily. And I don’t have the time to drill it through your skull. But I can’t have you following me or my guys around. Do you know what happens to nuisances? And that’s what you would become, really fast. Nuisances have a way of being silenced. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“You couldn’t be clearer if you tried,” I said. I did everything I could not to show him the fear in my voice.

“So why do I feel like you don’t care?”

I looked at him, just as frustrated as he was at not being listened to. “Because I don’t.”