Shelter From The Storm (The Bare Bones MC Book 6) Read online

  I knew that children with muscular dystrophy often didn’t make it to their thirtieth birthday. But it would be rude to bring that up, so I just looked up at him, stroking his face with the backs of my fingers. He moved his thumb to let me talk. “We’re kind of the same, then.”

  He nodded. “But I’ll tell you one thing. Don’t accept the identity the government has made for you. You make your own story. That’s one thing you still have control over. Creating your own story.”

  Fox had hit the nail right on the head. I’d been bucking authority, creating the story of Pippa Lofting, not just accepting the one the feds thrust on me. I felt in that second that Fox got me.

  So it seemed natural for him to bend his head for a kiss. We fit together like hand in glove, as though we literally had good chemistry with each other. He emitted manly pheromones that swirled in the air around me, complementing my womanly chemistry. Unconsciously he was sniffing out my molecules, finding empathy in my plight, even scenting my tears. The scent would’ve triggered his protective instinct, so I guessed this was his way of sheltering me from the storm that both our lives could become at any moment.

  The kiss turned passionate, and when I lifted a boot to wrap my calf around his, he slid a hand down my side and hooked my thigh in his hand. I hadn’t willingly kissed a man since that backstabber Russ, and it was like kissing your first new man after a divorce. All fresh, and strange, yet familiar in another way. With my thigh hooked like this I could bear down with my pubic bone against his erection. My short little skirt barely licked at my ass in the breeze and I felt my vulva quivering. On some atomic level, it responded to the proximity of this giant hard-on. My outer lips swelled and bloomed, and my innards shivered.

  But just as he was turning me to press me into the wall of the ordnance shed, he must’ve heard something. He broke the kiss and stood holding his breath, looking sideways. Shit. Were we already found out?

  Placing a “quiet” finger to his lips, he tiptoed around the corner of the shed. I followed like a Keystone Kop, peering around his arm. What the fuck? A beautiful bird of prey sat at the foot of the wall, disgruntled. He looked around himself with surprise, like what the fuck am I doing here? Yet obviously, he couldn’t leave, and he screamed that distant sort of cry you imagine pterodactyls make. Caw, caw. He was a red-tailed hawk, I could tell by the scream and his beautiful fan of burnt umber tail feathers.

  “He’s injured,” said Fox, going right up and squatting beside the bird. “Too bad I don’t have my falconry glove on me.”

  “Falconry?” I echoed stupidly. “What’s his injury?”

  Fox turned his head this way and that, deciding. “Ah, here.” He pointed to a spot beyond the raptor. “He was eating that snake.”

  “Rattlesnake?”

  “No, luckily. That Desert Nightsnake has a mild venom. I think he’ll be okay but I’m taking him somewhere safe.” He turned and looked me up and down. “You don’t have any clothes to spare. Run out there and see if anyone’s got an extra shirt, jacket.”

  “I’m on it.” I always wanted to say that, and now a person of authority was giving me a mission. As I raced back to the shooting line, a weird sight assaulted me. An extremely buff black man was leaning against the outside of his electric blue sports car, just watching. Some workers, operators and laborers and truck drivers, parked around that side of the building, but this guy was really out of place. First of all, what was so damned fascinating about a bunch of nerds shooting archery? Secondly, he was so obviously not a worker, with his shiny boots, mirrored shades, and enormously bulging muscles. Too much muscle. He could probably flex each pec independently of each other. Frighteningly, part of his jaw seemed to be eaten away, maybe by a tumor.

  I saw Wolf was charming Tracy with a shooting lesson, so I asked Tobias, Slushy, and Sax. “I need a spare jacket. Don’t worry, nothing’ll happen to it.”

  Tobias said, “I’ve got another one of these lumbersexual shirts in June’s Jeep.” I walked with him to the vehicle. “What’s it for?”

  I told him about the raptor, and then an idea occurred to me. “Hey Tobias. You can track people down, can’t you?”

  “I’d say I can, if my name isn’t Tobias Weingarten.”

  “Good,” I said, grabbing the plaid shirt rudely. “I’ll come by later, give you the details. Thanks for the shirt.”

  But Tobias, Sax, and Slushy now wanted to see the raptor, so I led a squad of men back with me to the shed. “Who’s that guy staring at us?” I asked off-handedly.

  “I don’t know, but I don’t like it,” said Slushy. “Any time anyone is staring at us in this game, it’s bad news.”

  “I’ll just go ask him,” said Sax, splitting off from our group.

  “There’s a raptor conservancy just outside of town,” said Tobias. “Maybe Fox could take the bird there.”

  I forgot about Sax in the excitement of watching Fox wrap the bird and hold it to his chest. By the time I remembered, the guy had taken off. Sax said he split when he saw him coming. I was left wondering if the guy was following me or Fox. I had a feeling there would always be that question with two fugitives like us.

  Fox insisted on following me down Mescal Mountain in the Jeep. So he must have seen the guy. Now he’d be wondering who the fuck the guy was after too.

  CHAPTER NINE

  FOX

  It was the strangest thing. In the middle of a loud, rambunctious game of darts with guys named Tuzigoot and Duji at The Bum Steer, I suddenly found myself walking out the side door and up some metal steps to the next floor.

  I was like a man possessed by an alien overlord. Must…walk…up steps…And I swear on my mother’s grave, I did not remember that up there was the apartment of Pippa Lofting, WITSEC witness for the prosecution.

  Duji and Tuzigoot seemed to know it, though. I was wondering why all the catcalls. “Hey, Fox! Nail her for me too!” “You go get her, you foxy bastard!” “Give her a moustache ride!” That last was from Wolf Glaser. I suspected him of having many more bad euphemisms up his sleeve. He was happy because Tracy had been hanging onto his arm for a few days now since hooking up at the outdoor range. The bowl-headed Tobias was nowhere to be seen.

  But once I was in the upstairs hallway, I saw a stranger at her door. I hung back, peering around the corner at the guy. His handsome face and bearing stuck a cold knife into my gut. I didn’t identify the feeling as jealousy until later. Who was this fucking guy? As a federal witness, she really shouldn’t be talking to anyone. Maybe he lived in the same building.

  “Okay, I’ll check back with you in a week or so,” said the guy, turning to leave.

  “Sounds good, Randy,” she said.

  I took the stairs two at a time, then straddled my scoot in the parking lot. The guy loped—yes, he actually loped, he was that leggy and graceful, like a runway model—to some bunkmobile of a Toyota. Randy. His asinine name matched his idiotic car, and my sicario soul threw daggers into the side of his head as he drove off.

  It was only then I realized I was jealous. I had one makeout session with a girl, and I was jealous? Of some guy named Randy? I never wanted a hookup, and certainly not with a mark. I could somehow squirm out of killing her without making myself look too bad, but a fling? What the fuck was wrong with me? I had advised her to create her own story. Well apparently I was busy creating mine without the consent of my own ego.

  Pippa’s impish nose got to me, I told myself. The fact that we’d both adopted literary surnames must mean something—or nothing. I liked that, although she should have been laying low and keeping a low profile, the sassy girl had taken the bull by the horns and gotten a job more to her scientific liking. Her Texas drawl, as though she had marbles in her mouth, got to me. She was a strong, brash woman who somehow also needed my protection.

  And I was supposed to kill her.

  I knew I should just select one of the Bone Lickers, “sweetbutts” who hung around The Bum Steer hoping to have their ego boosted by be
ing reamed by a biker. I got off my scoot to go back inside and grab Wolf, tell him we needed to do some more surveilling around the Ochoa ranch. But my phone chimed with a call I was required to answer.

  Ortelio Jones.

  “Ese, Fox!” He was either high or had just made a shit ton of money. “Just checking in. Want to see how the tuxedo rental business is going. Órale!”

  I had a story all prepared. “I haven’t been able to find her, but meanwhile I’ve been given an assignment by a powerful motorcycle club up here. It involves the Ochoas.” I knew that would sidetrack Jones.

  “As in Ruben Ochoa? Qué cabrón!”

  “The one and the same. We’ve got eyes on them, but if you want me to hit a couple, it’ll take a few days because their security is very tight.”

  Ortelio Jones wasn’t so full of chuckles anymore. He seethed, “Si. I want you to hit that gilipollas Ruben Ochoa. And his pinche guey son Abel too. I’ll text you some photos so you get the right guys.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” I had to grin mechanically and nod at Tuzigoot and a singer named Russ Gollywow, exiting the club to get on their scoots.

  “OK, done. Now I want you to keep looking for that slut whore Flavia Brooks. How many tuxedo rental businesses can there be?”

  “Got to go.” I thumbed the red hangup button. It was common in our trade to hang up like that. Other work sometimes snuck up on you, and you had to stop talking immediately.

  I sighed deeply. I’d bought a little more time, and could possibly earn more stripes if I hit those Ochoas. Do both Jones and The Bare Bones a favor. But eventually Jones would come back to the little problem of the mouthy Flavia Brooks who had dared to squeal on a cartel she’d somehow become involved with. I was getting drawn in by Pippa Lofting’s story. I always said “it’s impossible to hate anyone whose story you know.” I wanted to know how she’d gotten mixed up with the Joneses making meth in Corpus Christi. Were they holding something over her head? Her sister’s safety, maybe? That was their method.

  “Hey! Fox! Are you coming with us on the Winnemucca run day after tomorrow?” yelled Tuzigoot, about to start his engine.

  “Takes about twelve hours to get there. Bands, twats and pot!” yelled Gollywow.

  A motorcycle rally? It had never really occurred to me. “Yeah, I’ll think about it.” But instead of going in the club to get Wolf, I started back up the clanging metal stairs to the second story of the Victorian building.

  Safely inside the hallway, I texted Santiago Slayer a photo I’d taken of that enormously bulky operative, his mouth corroded from doing Krokodil. He had stuck out like a rusty nail in a kid’s playground, not even bothering to hide the fact he was eyeballing either me or Pippa.

  Do you recognize this guy? Because he seems to be following me.

  Slayer didn’t immediately answer, although I knew from Facebook he’d been at a party in Flagstaff the night before doing jello shots topped with Froot Loops.

  Pippa looked supremely surprised to see me. “Oh,” she just said, blankly. Like I was the last person she expected to see darkening her door. She wore a light summer dress, like the one she’d worn when she’d humped my thigh behind the ordnance shed. She was one steamy firecracker. Could we have something strictly physical? She might be mad when I inevitably left, but at least she’d be happy I didn’t bury her.

  I had to ask, “May I come in?”

  “Sure! Sure, sure.”

  The inside of her apartment was about what you’d expect from the WITSEC program. A few items from Ikea decorated the space with such sparsity it just screamed “federally protected witness.” At her flimsy desk of particle board sat a closed laptop, a skein of knitting yarn and needles, and a book about the Dust Bowl.

  “What wound up happening with that red-tailed hawk?” she asked.

  “Oh!” That had completely slipped my mind. “Right. I took it to the raptor rescue just north of town. They said it’ll take about a week for it to improve, but the poison isn’t strong enough to kill him.”

  “You seem to know a lot about birds.”

  “Do I? Well, actually, an associate of mine taught me the art of falconry.” I was peering through her Ikea curtains onto Bargain Boulevard to make sure that bruiser with the decomposing jaw wasn’t following us again. “It was something we did in our spare time.”

  “Oh, so that’s not something from your…your old persona.”

  “My existence in New Mexico? No, that’s new. Like I take it, knitting isn’t from your old persona.” I almost said “Flavia Brooks” until I remembered I wasn’t supposed to know about that name.

  “Hardly. I was into snowboarding and Krav Maga like I am now. They said those are generic enough things for the new me to do. But of course they wouldn’t let me take one rock from my three mineral cabinets. I loved collecting rocks. Apparently that would be an enormous dead giveaway.”

  It was actually nice to talk freely with someone in the same, totally bizarre predicament as me. “Sax, the guy shooting archery with us, he runs a rock shop here in town.”

  “Right. I heard that, but I don’t dare go by it, you know?”

  I knew. “I used to love to draw. I drew all these designs. See?”

  How could she not see? I had two whole inked sleeves, all of which had been done in Nogales since running from New Mexico. Just another feeble attempt at disguising myself.

  “Those are beautiful. This one says—”

  I drew the loose armhole of my muscle tank aside to display my pec. My nipple puckered when she leaned in close to read.

  “Mea culpa.”

  “Right. This acknowledges that what I did in New Mexico was my fault.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it wasn’t anything totally heinous. I don’t know. I just have a feeling about you. I know you’re a sicario and all, but I don’t think you mean anyone harm. I know that sounds stupid. I’m not explaining myself very well.”

  She looked adorable, as though toeing an invisible line on the floor. I said, “I think I know what you mean. Like, I’m convinced you didn’t do anything completely heinous in Corpus Christi.”

  “Not at all!” she cried, stepping close to me. She raised her little fists to my chest, and I thought she was going to grip my tank top, to breathe her hot breath on my pecs again. My cock lengthened at this thought, and I took hold of her shoulders to steady her. But she was just giving emphasis to her words. Her eyes were frantic. “I did nothing but fall in love with the wrong person, this despicable Coast Guard officer who used me, then turned me over as a prisoner to a drug cartel to pay off a debt.”

  I didn’t let go of her shoulders. “So you were…” I had to play dumb, as though I hadn’t seen the newspaper article. “You were arrested along with some cartel people, and turned yourself in in exchange for your testimony.”

  “Yes, exactly. These fucking asshole monsters, monsters is what they are, had me holed up in this warehouse for a whole fucking year knowing I knew chemistry and could cook meth for them. I didn’t see a fucking ray of sun for a whole year, all because this asshole Lieutenant Commander was selling stem cell research to some Mexicans—that’s how it started!”

  I stroked her hair soothingly. I sincerely didn’t want her to relive what was obviously a traumatic time in her life, but I was curious to know. If she truly had done something horrific, killed some children or something, I should probably rethink my approach, and just finish her off. “So what went wrong?”

  Now she relaxed, melting into my arms. Her little tits were plastered to my obliques, and her syrupy drawl became more languid, more drawn out. Her eyes were half-lidded, as though a tranquilizer had suddenly kicked in. “Through the scientists in Mexico City, he was introduced to these cartel guys because he wanted drugs. He wanted to sell drugs, but mostly Russ wanted to take drugs. He took so much he couldn’t account for it, and that’s when he told them to take me.”

  “Did you ever sell any drugs?”

  Her eyes popped open, but with a
n effort. “Good gracious, Ignatius, no! I’ve never snorted a single line of anything! Doesn’t agree with me. Russ told them I knew all about making meth, which was bullshit, but I learned. I’m a quick learner.”

  I believed her. I speared my fingers through her satiny hair, scratching her behind the ears like a cat. “Now I want to believe you didn’t have anything to do with selling stem cell research to Mexicans.”

  There was that slight pause, the shift of the eyes away from my face. “I had something to do with creating the research. That was my project.” Now she was able to look at me again. “But Russ’ deal, that was his and his alone. He told me what he was doing and I guess I could’ve done more to stop him. But I was in love…”

  I cradled her skull in my palm. I believed her. I’d done some moronic things in the name of love, myself. It was love that had gotten me exiled from New Mexico. Idiotic, blind, foolish, irrational love. I kissed Pippa.

  I parted my lips over hers and sucked. Instantly she flung her arms around my neck. She was so short she needed to thread her fingers together and practically swing from me like a little monkey. Lust surged through my groin with how artlessly adorable she was from head to toe.

  I kissed her as if it would erase all my past mistakes in love. Lola’s existence would be wiped off the face of the planet if I just replaced her with Pippa. Sliding my hands around her ass, I easily lifted her, precariously setting her on the Ikea desk. She wobbled, grabbing the edge as though she didn’t trust the flimsy desk either. I was lapping at the bottom of her tongue, feeling virile, potent, filled to the brim with testosterone. Her fragile womanliness made me whole. I slipped four fingertips inside her damp panties, swiping them against her swollen clit.