AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Prologue
Devil
SixMonthsAgo
"You're shitting me," I growl, glaring around the room at the seven stone-faced cops watching me with the same exact expression. I know they expect that look to project a sense of calm authority, as if they can will their confidence into me if they don't blink for long enough.
It isn't fucking working.
I know bullshit when I smell it. And it's coming off these motherfuckers in waves.
"You've all lost your goddamn minds," I mutter, pacing in angry circles around the conference room. I'd rather climb the grimy beige walls. "Every last one of you. This will never work."
"It'll work," Special Agent Forsythe says.
I spin on my heel to face him. "Yeah? Then you march your happy ass onto the Diamond Kings ranch and pretend you're one of them." We both know he doesn't have the balls big enough to do it. That's exactly why I'm in this godforsaken meeting. I flick my gaze around the room, hitting every one of them with a blistering glare. "They don't fuck with cops."
No outlaw motorcycle club deals with cops. Anyone who does is persona non grata. If motorcycle clubs have one rule they all agree on, it's that one. And these assholes want me to patch in and join their ranks.
That'll go over like an erect cock at a convent.
As soon as they figure out that I have a badge, I'll be buried in an unmarked grave so far out in the desert that it'll take centuries for archeologists to dig me up. Shit, if they even find me.
"They aren't our target," Forsythe reminds me, stubbornly holding to his talking points. Guess he's been appointed the figurehead of this little powwow. Funny. I figured it'd be Johannsson, my captain. But he's in the corner, jaw clenched, steely gray eyes hard, silently shooting me a death glare.
I ignore the shut the fuck up and cooperate coming through loud and clearin said death glare. It's my ass in the fire here, not yours, fuck you very much, Captain.
I focus my disbelief on Forsythe instead of running my mouth. "Do you think it fucking matters who the target is?" I ask him derisively. "You've been working RICO cases involving motorcycle clubs for what? Ten, fifteen years? You know damn well MCs don't talk to cops. Whether they're the target or not, they aren't going to take kindly to having an undercover cop all up in their business."
The Diamond Kings are small fries compared to a lot of MCs. They run guns and dabble in a few other illegal ventures when the need arises, but for the most part, they raise and breed their horses and stay out of trouble. We have bigger priorities and more dangerous criminals to worry about. Like the fucking Satan's Savages. Those assholes are a problem.
They're becoming a very big problem.
Until recently, all we had were rumors that they were dabbling in human trafficking. And then Siobhan Lansing escaped from their compound with her sick newborn. She was able to hide the baby before the Savages ran her off the road. She survived long enough to implicate them in a human trafficking scheme and tell us where to find the baby. The note she left with the baby raised some serious fucking concerns, but no one is talking.
Right now, it's her word against theirs…and she's dead.
So are the assholes who ran her off the road.
My bad.
It's not like I meant to kill all three of them, but damn. They were shooting at us with a dozen civilians in the line of fire. I did what I had to do.
The big bosses do not agree. Rationally, sure. They know I made the right call. But behind closed doors, they're still riding my dick about it. Dead men tell no tales, and they want this one told and the whole damn MC brought down. Especially with the Silver Spoon MC breathing down our necks about it. Siobhan's sister and baby are under their protection. And unlike the Savages and the Diamond Kings, the Silver Spoon MC aren't outlaws. They're rich-as-fuck men with connections. The kind of connections the big bosses lose sleep sweating over.
"Then I suggest you don't get all up in their business," Forsythe says as if he's delivering sage advice. "But you're the only one of us who could sell it and you know it. They'll peg the rest of us cops as soon as we step onto the ranch. You know bikes and you know bikers. As far as they know, you are a biker."
I always knew my time with the Brothers in Blue—a motorcycle club of law enforcement officers—was going to come back to bite me in the ass with these uptight fuckers someday. I just didn't expect it to be this day. This asshole isn't wrong though. Out of everyone on this task force, I'm the one who looks least like a cop, talks least like a cop, and walks least like a cop. I've spent far too long working motorcycle gang crimes, and no one who looks like a cop makes it long in that job.
I never set out to be a cop in the first place, but there's something particularly satisfying about dropping motherfuckers who deserve it. When MCs can't play nice, I make them. It keeps the adrenaline flowing nicely. That's what I get out of it. The satisfaction. The thrill. I'm not talking about killing people—that's always a pain in the ass. But watching their carefully laid plans blow up in their faces, chasing them down, even a little hand-to-hand? That certainly doesn't suck.
I'm an adrenaline junkie. Sue me.
My dad raced dirt bikes before he died when I was twelve. I spent my teen years giving my grandmother angina, determined to follow in his footsteps. And then I lost my best friend during a race at nineteen. That was the last time I ever raced. But I've been at home on the back of a bike since I was a kid. If it has power, I want it in my garage. I should have kept that shit to myself since Forsythe is determined to use it against me now.
We can beat around the bush here all day, but we all know they aren't really giving me a choice in the matter. They may couch it as a request and tie it all up in flowery speeches or fancy bows, but at the end of the day, it's all smoke and mirrors. This isn't a request.
I did the crime. I get to do the time.
