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existed beneath the veneer of polite society and wondered how she could spin this
experience into something fit for print. “Stay sweet, sweetheart,” he told her, chucking
her chin gently. “And stay away from bikers like me and Hunter — they’ll only drag you
down.” Impossible. They’d lifted her up. She was different, more worldly after a few
hours spent in their arms. She’d forever crave their touch…always remember how it felt
to be desired by men like them. And she knew there was no cure for that particular addiction. Zoe didn’t know what she was going to write about but she did know she was
sinfully ruined in the best possible way. It wasn’t until she was back at her own apartment, showered and tucking herself
into bed with total exhaustion that she knew without a doubt that no matter the risk…she
was going to dig into the Simms case…if only to find out more about Jax Traeger and
Hunter Ericksen.
Hunter Ericksen.
Jax had barely returned from the back door when Dimas entered the room with a two club girls on each arm. After the sensual feast they’d enjoyed with Zoe, the club girls looked downright anemic — flat, little titties and even flatter asses — with pocked faces from too much meth in their lifetime and lank blonde hair that was fried on the ends. In spite of all that they weren’t ugly, just hard and used…and definitely not to his tastes after sampling the sweetness of a certain reporter who didn’t have enough sense to be
scared of them. “See? I told you I’d deliver,” Dimas said smugly, offloading the two grinning
women toward Jax where they quickly draped themselves over him, purring and giggling
like schoolgirls, one going so far as to grope his groin in search of his dick. “That girl can
suck the chrome off a ball hitch,” he promised, settling in a chair and snagging the
whiskey bottle. “What do you think? Want to give her a spin? Club discount, as always.”
Hunter took a seat at the small poker table with a second bottle of whiskey in front of him and one of the women immediately detached from Jax to edge her way into his lap, saying with breath that reeked of cigarettes and booze, “I’m down for whatever you want, big boy. I’ve heard stories about the way you fuck and I’m ready to see for myself what all the hype is about.”
Dimas, a man they’d known for many years and considered a friend, grinned wide
and knowing as he enjoyed watching his club girls do their thing. It was his job to manage the women and thus far, he’d never disappointed. Of course, Dimas made a killing with his whores but Hunter and Jax didn’t mind paying the man for his service to the club because it kept the guys out of trouble and satisfied. A man with a well-milked cock was far more chill than a man all juiced up with blue balls so yeah, Dimas’ girls were a solid investment most times. But tonight…neither Hunter nor Jax were interested and Dimas was quick to notice their disinterest. He snapped his fingers and both women stopped their attempts at getting either men’s attention and looked fearfully at Dimas, waiting. “Go find someone else to blow…me and the boys got business to deal with,” he said roughly and they scuttled from the room like frightened goats. Once the room was clear, Dimas tipped the bottle up and finished off what was left, saying as he wiped his mouth, “Seems like someone has already taken the edge off. Want to tell me who the girl was?”
“Which girl would that be?” Jax asked with a lazy shrug. “I have a tendency to lose count.”
“I’m not talking about a club whore…I’m talking about the chick playing at being a whore. No one claims to be one of mine unless I’ve vetted them — I have a reputation to uphold and no one is going to fuck with that without paying the price.”
“Relax Dimas, no one is screwing with your rep,” Hunter said, bored as he cracked open the second bottle. “Have a drink, calm down.”
Dimas’ narrowed stare didn’t soften as he said, “Where is she? I know a woman came in and no one has seen the girl leave.”
“Careful, Dimas,” Jax said, his tone dangerously soft. “You’re in my house, remember? Whether or not we were entertaining a woman in here is none of your goddamn business and neither is where she went. You feeling me?”
Dimas, sensing he’d overstepped choked down his outrage and tried to slow the locomotive in charge of his mouth but the effort was damn near visible as he shook with impotent rage at being denied the answers he demanded. A few heartbeats later, a short smile found its way to Dimas’ lips as he dropped into the proffered chair opposite Hunter and poured himself a shot. “You and me…we go way back, yeah? I provide the whores and you provide the cash. It’s a good relationship. I just don’t want anything getting in the way of that good exchange between us. If someone else was providing you this service…well, I think I have the right to know about the competition.”
Jax laughed and grabbed a deck of cards. “Settle down, Dimas. No one is edging you out. You’re still the man we go to for good times. Whoever the girl was…she’s nothing and she doesn’t matter, okay? How about a little Seven Card Stud?” he suggested, pulling out a wad of cash and dumping it on the table. “I’m ready to take some of your money.”
Dimas, never one to turn down an opportunity to gamble, grinned and pushed forward the shot glass. “Get ready to lose, muthafucka…you ain’t shit with cards against me and you know it. We’ll talk business after I kick your ass and take your cash.”
“Sure,” Jax said, looking to Hunter. “Am I dealing you in?”
“Not tonight,” Hunter said, his mind still on Zoe. He shouldn’t be thinking of her. But something told him that Zoe wasn’t going to stop digging into Simms’ death and that was going to put her squarely in the middle of a turf war that she didn’t have the weapons to protect herself with. While Jax kept Dimas busy, he was going to do a little checking of his own…he wanted to know everything he could find out about Zoe Delacourte.
#
Zoe popped into the newsroom, secretly delighting in all the aches and pains left over from last night’s activities, and sailed past her editor’s office to go straight to her tiny cubicle where she spent too much of her life researching stupid articles that nobody in their right mind cared about. There was no substance, no meat to the stories she’d been writing as of late and she was under no illusions that they might matter to anyone but that was all about to change as soon as she managed to dig up some more information.
Collecting her writing pad and snagging a new pen from the supply closet, she headed over to the cop reporter’s desk where she found him scrolling through entertainment news sites, not even pretending to work. “Got a minute?” she asked, leaning into his cubicle space with an eager smile. Derek Michaels, the world’s most repugnant police reporter on the planet, didn’t hide his irritation that she was interrupting his Internet time but she didn’t care. He was her best resource at the moment and she wasn’t about to be intimidated into backing down, not when everything was so fresh in her mind.
“Don’t you have a Top Ten list to write? Something like The Top 10 Reasons Why Fat Girls Can’t Get Dates?” He smirked at his own stupid joke and she hotly wished Jax or Hunter had heard him say that — they’d likely fashion a belt out of his own intestines for a dig like that. Okay, maybe that was a bit macabre but Derek was a dickhead and deserved it. Derek was always making snarky jokes about her weight, always outside of earshot of the boss, of course, because he wasn’t stupid, but he never missed an opportunity to let those arrows fly. As if Derek were God’s gift to women. The man smelled like the tail end of a deodorant stick after spending its entire life smashed in someone’s armpit.
“You know, all that misdirected anger against women could mean you harbor a latent desire to get railed in the ass by a big ol’ bear of a man and you’re just too much of a pussy to admit your own true nature.” She smiled sweetly, not quite able to believe such filth had tripped from her mouth but damn, it’d felt good to s
tick it to Derek for the first time ever. Before he could recover and counter with something equally vile, she charged forward with her objective. “What do you know about the Simms murder on the west side of the city?”
Derek, still scowling, answered, “What’s it to you?”
“What does it matter? Do you know anything or not? Maybe I was wrong to come to the cop reporter for information…I just thought you might know some details not readily available to the general public,” she said, playing to his ego. Derek liked being the man with privileged information, the guy who went on ride-alongs and hit the bar with the boys in blue after hours. She shrugged and pushed away from the cubicle wall, pretending to walk, saying, “Never mind. I should’ve known you don’t have any real information.”
“Hold on, hold on,” Derek called after her, his brow bunching into a scowl. She returned with a dubious expression, although he plainly took the bait and started talking. Geesh, the man would make a terrible spy. “I didn’t say I didn’t know anything. I just wanted to know why you were poking around.” He drew a breath and his expression turned serious. “Okay, you want to know what’s really going down? This is what I know…the guy was shot in the back of the head, execution style and according to the detectives, there’s no leads, and frankly no one cares. The guy was a low-life who was offed by another low-life. Not a lot of manpower that’s going to that case but I have my own theories…” He paused then asked, “Want to know what I think?”
“Sure.” She shrugged as if she could care less either way but was humoring him. “Lay it on me.”
“The cops don’t like to give it too much press but there’s a turf war going on between The Kings and the Road Dogs and it’s getting dirty. Simms wasn’t the first dead motorcycle club member who ended up in the morgue.”
“No?” That piqued her interest. “Who else?”
“A club girl, Juanita Sanchez, was found in a back alley on Washington Avenue, behind a bar in Road Dog territory. Word was that Juanita was part of the dog crew but no one’s really talking about what really happened.” “Do you think the two cases are related?” she asked.
“Seems to reason. Why else would club members on both sides end up with bullets lodged in their brain, killed execution style unless they were connected somehow.”
“And the cops don’t want to pursue it?”
“Naww, not enough resources to put someone on the case 24/7 like it needs. Budget cuts, man, they’re a bitch. Right now, the citizens are lucky to have a uniform show up when they place a 911 call. The investigations department is a ghost town.”
That didn’t fill her with a lot of confidence. She drew a deep breath. “So what are they killing each other for? Why are they fighting over territory?”
“The Kings have been on top for too long. The Dogs are hungry — and hungry dogs will snap at anything.”
Zoe grimaced but it was probably an apt analogy. Switching tracks, she said, “I need to run a public records search on a handful of people. I need your logon and password for the background check program licensed to the paper.”
“Is that so? And why exactly would I do that?”
“Because if you don’t I’m going to march into McMurphy’s office and file a grievance against you for creating a hostile workplace for the past six months with every fat joke you’ve ever uttered because, yeah, I’m taking it personally.”
He barked a short but unsure laugh as he dared her, “Go ahead…you got no proof. Besides, everyone thinks my jokes are funny but you.”
“Well, we’ll see. In the meantime, it’s a mark on your permanent record and that’s bad timing for someone who’s been shopping around their resume.”
Derek lost some of his cocksure attitude. “Yeah? How do you know that?”
It was her turn to smile. “You’re not the only one who’s good with computers. And honestly, you should really learn to log out of your email account. Anyone could see what’s coming and going through your inbox.”
“You sneaky little—“
“Careful…name-calling is so hurtful,” Zoe said with a pretend sad frown. “So, what’s that logon and password again?”
Derek shook his head, plainly screwed and not happy about this sudden turn of events where Zoe was the aggressor instead of the victim, but he scribbled the information on a sticky note and handed it to her with a scowl. “If you get caught doing something illegal, you didn’t get that information from me.”
“Don’t worry. It’s not as if I’m surfing porn on company time,” she said sweetly, folding the slip of paper in her hand before tucking it into her pocket as she walked away from him, secretly chortling and drunk on her own success. “Thanks a bunch!”
Zoe returned to her computer and her joy fizzled when she saw McMurphy waiting for her, a dissatisfied frown on his paunchy mug. “Delacourte…you were supposed to deliver a 500-word story on dog grooming an hour ago. Where is it?”
“Didn’t I send that? Oh! That’s right, I stayed late at a friend’s house last night and I completely forgot to send it. I will do that right now, Mr. McMurphy.”
“Don’t be getting sloppy, kid. Deadlines are a reporter’s bread and butter. If you can’t hack the deadline on a feature piece, how are you going to handle anything more serious?”
She tried not to protest or inadvertently spill the beans that she’d actually been working undercover — or trying to at the very least — but the urge to defend herself was hard to contain. Somehow by the grace of God, she kept her mouth zipped and simply nodded meekly as she always did when McMurphy groused at her for whatever reason. Besides, no need to rock the boat prematurely. If McMurphy thought she was towing the line, he wouldn’t pester her while she ran around doing the real work. Sighing, she hit send on the email she should’ve sent before heading off to see Jax and Hunter, and then quickly logged into the public records search.
“Let's see what a public records search will find,” she said, smiling to herself. “There are definitely perks to having the newspaper's resources at my fingertips. Why haven’t I thought of this before?” She typed in Jax Traeger and Hunter Ericksen to see what would pop up. Too many search hits. She tried narrowing the search to location and known association and came back with a more manageable list. After a few false starts she managed to click on the right names and begin reading up on her two favorite bad boys. “Let's see what kind of skeletons are hiding in your closet,” she murmured to herself. A litany of petty crime offenses were listed on the rap sheets, from petty theft to burglary and one felony a piece for aggravated assault. So maybe it wasn't far-fetched to hope for Jax or Hunter to do some damage to Derek, she mused half-jokingly. The criminal arrest record gave her a fairly accurate view of who they were as adults but she wanted to dig a little deeper. She wanted to know what they’d been like as kids, but unfortunately juvenile records were sealed when they turned 18. Chances were they’d been bounced in and out of the foster system but there was no way she’d be able to discern that from the search. The only way she’d be able to find out that information would be through someone in social services and she didn't have that kind of pull or connection. That left the old-fashioned way of digging up information — asking around. Maybe if she went to their old neighborhood she might be able to find information that someone would be willing to part with for 20 bucks. Go, big spender. Hey, 20 bucks was all she could spare. Hopefully it would be enough. #
Zoe spent half the afternoon driving up and down city streets that were completely unfamiliar to her. In her life she’d never had reason to come down to this side of the city. Pure poverty stared back at her from every angle. From rundown buildings to city streets pocked with potholes, this was probably no place for someone whose best line of defense was a witty comeback. But even so, she wasn't about to back down — hell no, not yet. She was burning with an insatiable need to know more, to know why Jax and Hunter didn't just toss her on her ear like they should’ve. She'd sensed something with them, something maybe t
hey didn't want to admit, something that thrilled her to her core — her dark, perverted and quintessentially unladylike core. If she were smart she would’ve heeded their advice but she was too far gone, too obsessed with the idea of digging into their dangerous lifestyle to catch a glimpse of the life she'd never known. Maybe this was the true danger of investigative journalism — losing yourself. She already felt that she was a league away from the person she was yesterday. Maybe it was naïve to think that one night of soul-shattering sex with two wild guys was enough to forever change a woman but she couldn't deny how she felt. A recklessness threaded her soul and hummed in her veins that hadn't been there the day before and she wanted to experience more. Hell, she wanted to feel more. If Jax or Hunter showed up this very second and commanded her to do terrible, dirty things to them right here in the street she'd probably do it. Good God, where did your sense of dignity go? Right out the freaking window apparently. And she didn't feel the least bit ashamed. Maybe that was the problem. She’d felt nothing but exhilaration since leaving that dirty barroom. Those men had unlocked something inside of her that was wild and insatiable and she had no interest in shutting that Pandora's box. Besides, once you've tasted the forbidden fruit there was no going back to plain old apples. Of course, that might prove a problem later when she reentered the dating pool but for now, she was going to savor every drop of this newfound confidence and thirst for life. And if one more person made another fat joke, they might just get a fist in their face for their trouble. Her fist.
She rolled up on the street that was listed as their home address when they were 18 and sat in the car watching, looking for something that might jump out at her as important. The street wasn't quite as dilapidated as the others but there was definitely an air of sadness and despair that clung to the concrete. She imagined growing up in a place like this would've been tough. It was nothing like her ordinary upbringing. She’d enjoyed birthday parties and sleepovers and all manner of normal American girl childhood stuff, which taking a look around this place, was the exact opposite of her life. She tried to imagine a young Jax and Hunter running around this place, laughing like demons, playing in the street, making the good girls swoon with their bad boy attitude and she smiled at the idea of what that might look like. But her smile soon faded as she realized she couldn't romanticize what a childhood growing up in this place must've been like. People didn't end up running biker gangs without a fair amount of pain and suffering in their lives to propel them to that place. Refocusing, she pulled her cell phone out and snapped a picture of the neighborhood. She wanted it as a visual reference for her notes later. She wasn't sure what she was going to write about or even if anything here played a part in Simms’ murder but for some reason she wanted a memento. Abandoning all good sense, she exited her vehicle and walked up to the house. What was she doing? She hadn't a clue. She was running on instinct, or whatever else served as intuition when you didn't have a clue as to what you were doing, and knocked on the door. She waited a heartbeat and then knocked again. The door opened slowly and frazzled woman peered out, immediately scowling when she saw Zoe.
