“Shut up!” Josh and I said at the same time. Josh grinned at me before he added his own threat - if you could call it that. “You better treat her right. She’s still my niece, and you fuck with her, or she gets hurt, I don’t give a damn that you have a club at your back. I will find a spot for you inside the fucking mountain and make sure your sorry carcass is never found. You feel me?”
“I feel you. Same goes for my boy. Don’t give a rat’s ass about his mom aside from her being whole and healthy for my son’s sake, but you fuck things up for him, and you won’t even make it inside a mountain. I’ll leave you as carrion for the creatures in the desert.” He nodded his head and left with Glitch to go check on my woman’s house.
16.OFF THE RADAR
SAMMY
I wasn’tsure what was going on with the club, but Bigfoot hadn’t been my shadow for a few days. In fact, the last time I’d seen him was three days earlier when he dropped me back off at the library after our weird lunch at the diner. It felt almost as if my family had been avoiding me too.
My dad was a given, since he didn’t pay me much attention when his wife was around anyway. Josh had been strange for weeks, so it was par for the course with whatever he was going through. The bigger issue was that Uncle Brady hadn’t dropped by like he normally did. I would have been concerned, but he did at least text me and finally called last night to tell me he had to go out of town to search for some parts for a motorcycle.
That left me in the company of the club’s prospect, Kingston, who felt more like a ghost lurking about than anything else. I tried to invite him into the house, and you would have thought I threatened to cut his balls off with a dull butter knife.
Eventually, the poor kid had to do more than just piss. That was the one time he asked to come inside, and it was also when I took the opportunity to give him the slip. I hoped like hell I hadn’t just ruined his chances at becoming a club member, but I needed to get to Albuquerque to take an exam, and there was no way I could do that with a very conspicuous shadow following me around. I was lucky enough to be one of the few students who were granted a spot in the remote student program with the Anderson School of Management. While it was part of the University of New Mexico, they normally had a pretty stringent “must attend in person” policy. The only thing I wasn’t exempt from attending in person was my exams.
My school was a little over a two-hour drive away. Considering my shadow wouldn’t take two hours to shit in my bathroom, I turned my phone off for the drive there. Once I got to the school, I left it off since I’d be sitting for a test and didn’t want to be accused of cheating or get thrown out because my phone went off in the middle of the exam.
I knew that it was risky but hoped that whoever had been targeting the Kings of Anarchy MC realized that I wasn’t a soft target after two of their men disappeared. Then again, I supposed that could backfire on me since they’d be out for revenge for their friends. Those were the thoughts that threatened to cripple my ability to do well on the exam. Every time I had to think too hard to come up with an answer, a random thought of enemies lurking in the background would pop into my head. It made me want to search the room for anyone paying too close attention to me, but I had to refrain. Me glancing around at all the other students in the exam wouldn’t look good.
It might not have been a terrible thing to have the prospect shadow me to school, unfortunately it was too late to consider that option. Once I finally finished with the exam and turned it in, I reached into my bag and turned my phone on and was instantly greeted by a text from Bigfoot.
Bigfoot: You can’t hide from me Sammy. I’m coming for you. You’re mine!
Sammy: You’re the hide and seek champ, not me. “Me Bigfoot. Me come for you. Blah, blah, blah!”
Bigfoot: You’ll come for me baby. That’ll be the best part.
Sammy:
Bigfoot: Prospect is already on his way to Albuquerque, baby. You should have known better than to slip away from club protection. He was there to be your shield, should it be necessary.
Sammy: I had an exam and they don’t exactly let you have a buddy sit with you when you take them.
Bigfoot: You could have mentioned it, and we would have worked something out.
Sammy: I guess I’ll know for next time.
I hated that he was being so civil about my disobedience, especially since I knew how seriously he took my safety. It made me equal parts swoony and hot to think about the way the man cared for me, and then there was his text about making me cum. It was probably a good thing he wasn’t there. We might have ended up in the slammer for public indecency, to hell with his baggage and my issues.
Bigfoot: Which part of campus are you on?
I was about to answer when I heard the scrape of someone’s shoe too close to me for comfort. I glanced up to see two goons dressed in suits approaching from either side of me. At first, I thought maybe they were feds or some sort of law enforcement who came to try to get me to inform on the Kings of Anarchy, but that wasn’t the case. When I looked a little closer, it became obvious that they were both Hispanic, and the suits were nothing like what feds might wear. These were designer garments, and the men did not have that polished and put together look that went with the clothing they wore. They looked more like soldiers playing dress-up.
Despite the fact that the parking lot was still crowded, the two goons quickly pushed me into the back of what looked like an armored Range Rover. That was no easy feat. I might have been tall for a woman, but the vehicle had been lifted and one of the goons had to shove me up and into the seat. Once I was able to sit upright, I came face-to-face with a man who identified himself as Diego Rivera.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked. I didn’t bother to answer more than to simply shake my head. He sighed. “Seems the further we get from the border, the less known we are. It is both a blessing and a curse.”
“I’d truly love to sit here and feed your ego until you feel good about who you are again and your place in the world, but I’d much rather you get to whatever other point there was in kidnapping me.”
He chuckled lightly and his eyes sparkled with the genuine humor he found in my words. “A woman who doesn’t have a healthy sense of fear, I see.” He nodded as if answering his own unasked question. “It makes sense, since it is reported that you may have taken out two of the men who work for my family.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I insisted.
“Of course you don’t. Not intelligent enough to keep from being a smart-mouth but aware enough to deny killing my men.” He smiled and tapped the seat between us with his finger. While I was focused on that, he leaned forward. “Let me be more clear then, shall I?” When I didn’t answer, he continued. “A man went missing on a night when you were the only person in his vicinity who wasn’t too injured to do anything to him. It was a quiet stretch of US-60 just over the border into New Mexico from Arizona.”
“Contrary to popular belief, I am not some sort of guardian angel of US-60. It was fate that I was even on the road when a man crashed. How am I also expected to be there when someone else crashes or goes missing?”
“There you go again with that smart mouth.” It was obvious that he was more amused than annoyed with me, but I knew if I kept it up, I would run his patience dry. “I have it on good authority that he was there at the time of the crash, and that you would have seen him there.”
