Don't Fear the Reapers (Renegade Reapers MC #1)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

“I kill people and I’m good at it.”

“Sure you do, sweetheart.” Sitting across from me in the booth, the prick of a man was sorely overdressed in his Armani suit. Since he refused to meet me on any other day than today, he had to deal with the risk of grease stains on his thousand dollar clothes. Even his silver cufflinks rivalled the value of my entire wardrobe.

No rest for the wicked.

We were having our meeting at a greasy spoon diner around the corner from the clubhouse. It was one that we frequented often enough that they looked the other way when we were there. This type of work was common place for our members, but since this conversation could be traced back to the club we rarely met regarding these matters behind our doors. Even if there were bound to be whispers of what we did, we couldn’t draw the attention of the local PD.

That would just be considered bad business.

The diner was fairly ordinary. By day the sun hitting the walls made them a blinding robin’s egg blue. At night they were more tolerable, but I still wondered what would make the owner choose such a colour. It peeled away in some areas and often drew my attention from my task. The ambiance was perfect for most of the conversations I needed to have away from the club house.

Flo (short for Florence, cause I asked), the waitress, had worked here since before I moved here. She served me my first piece of apple pie when I was six years old. Every week since then I made a point to stop by and when I was old enough to earn a living of my own I tipped her well to keep my drinks flowing and her lips shut about what she may or may not hear.

I stared back at the asshole. An internal war raged as I ignored the desire to argue with him. That was also bad business, and a waste of my time in my already tight schedule. It didn’t matter to me if he wasn’t intelligent enough to see past my outward appearance. Genetics blessed me with blue eyes, wavy blonde hair and the body of a stripper, but it also worked against me because my value was often underestimated.

He could continue to think whatever he wanted, for all I cared. There wasn't about to be any pro-feminist speech brought up to force this guy to conform. No point beating a dead horse. At the age of nineteen, I was already in my fourth year of university, working on a major in criminal justice. Next year, if everything worked out, I would attend law school.

Too many men like him underestimated women like me.

Him and every other dickweed that made it his personal mission to oppress women.

Sooner or later, it would bite him in the ass.

“Go and tell whoever you're farming this job out to that they'd better get it done right or I'm gonna take a night or two with you as payment.”

Case in point.

First of all, there was rarely a case we outsourced.

Secondly, my brother would rather cut this guy’s dick off than barter me to him for the night.

Hell, I would slice it off myself.

There was no way any man was going to own me.

“Hey, biker chick, am I boring you?”

Fuck. He was talking to me during another one of my pointless inner monologue tangents. It wasn't like he was going to learn anything.

“Pay attention to your betters. All you females that hang around with those one percenters are the same. Maybe if you had a brain in your head, men would want you for more than the slit between your legs.”

I held back my scowl, schooling my face.

This wasn't my first rodeo, and it wouldn't be my last. I just prayed my background check would come back flawed so that I could drop this job.

I'd show him just what I liked to do to insolent little men. You know the ones that overcompensated with their cars.

Something to prove they didn't have a micro penis.

Judging by the Porsche, his was no bigger than a pickled gherkin.

“How do you want it done?” I asked next.

It was the most important question of the operation. The specifics of each job were essential. I wasn’t alone in wanting this type of information. Reapers were all sticklers for the details, right down to the colour of socks our clients wanted us to wear, if that was something they wanted to dictate. After all, there was a little bit of a control freak in every one of our clients.

“I want it to look random. It needs to garner sympathy for me so that I look good to the board of directors at our company. A divorce would get too messy and I don’t want to have to worry about a child custody battle where all my indiscretions get dragged into public.”

“Okay. Are there any other specifics?”

“It can’t ever come back to me.”

“If there’s anything we are, we’re always discreet,” I told him.

“Anything else?” I asked. For a guy who wants to have his wife killed, he seemed to not have thought everything through. “Is there a day that works best? What about the method?”

“On Wednesday nights she runs a meeting for cancer survivors. It gets out late and it’s at a community centre in a neighborhood known for its vagrant population.” He paused for a moment and ran his hand through his hair, as if he was trying to come up with a plausible scenario. He went on to explain in detail exactly what he wanted done to the mother of his children. Then he ended with, “Just make it messy.”

“Sure, that would work.”

“Perfect,” he replied with a sly look on his face.

“Send the payment via wire transfer to the account number listed on the back of this card,” I told him as I handed over a plain white business card with a code on the back. “Once the funds are in the account we will consider the contract activated. Should you decide not to go through with it, you’ll owe ten percent for this meeting.”

No one ever takes the option of backing out of the arrangement. However, if they did, then we have leverage for future dealings, evidence that we could use at a future time to our advantage.

* * *

“Did the money get transferred?” I asked my broker.

“It’s in there. I’ll move it in about an hour and close the account.”

I had a guy.

Everyone like me needed to have that guy.

The one who could move your money around and launder it. Especially when your source of the money is earned through illegal means. For our hits, we had several numbered accounts in banks around the world. Once the number was used for a transfer, the account was emptied into several funnel accounts and then it was closed. In the case of the client taking the second option of backing out, the account was kept open with the money inside to use as proof of the transaction for blackmail material. All the money was funnelled back into the Reapers, but whoever did the jobs was allowed to keep ten percent of the fee as a bonus. We all had our specialties.

“You’re the best.”

“I know.”

“Don’t let your head get so big you can’t get out of the computer lab,” I teased.

“I for one think that you’d enjoy my big head immensely.”

“Ugh.”

“Okay, okay. It was a bad joke. Don’t unleash your brothers on me.”

“It’s not my brothers that you need to worry about, Liam,” I warned him, jokingly.

“I still like to think of you as the little girl at the playground with pigtails. Not the hellion that you’ve become. A woman who looks like the girl next door, but is lethal as a black widow spider.”

“Awe, Liam, you got me right in the feels.”

Liam was the quintessential computer nerd from school, and for that he was constantly bullied. He was the reason for my first suspension. I was in grade three when I knocked out the bully from grade seven, who also happened to be one of my brother Kyle’s friends. Sucks that the punk hadn’t listened to Kyle and heeded his warning. Before I socked him in the jaw I overheard my brother warn him my older brothers taught me all their moves. My family wanted me to be able to protect myself from bullies, especially when Kyle left to go to junior high. Children could be cruel, and when most of them learned who I was, it tended to escalate.

Liam often wore two helmets for the Reapers.

In addition to being our tech guy, he was also our money guy. He wasn’t involved in the investment side of things, but he was responsible for limiting the traceability of it. He knew all the latest advances in places to wire cash. He was the one to suggest we diversify and convert portions of our portfolio into monero, which hides virtually all transaction details. Liam had warned us bitcoin, the other form of cybercurrency criminals used in the past, was easily traceable. According to him, there were transaction details regarding the source, quantity, and where it was going.

We became fast friends and stayed that way even to this day. When I left for homeschooling, Liam persuaded his mom to fast track his education so I wouldn’t leave him behind. A year later, when we were fourteen I suggested my brother Erik put Liam’s abilities to test. Just as I assumed, Erik learned exactly how smart and valuable my best friend was. We put him on the payroll immediately. With the compensation he received from the club, he had no problem paying for his degrees in computer science. He wanted to graduate with a degree, even though he would never use it because he was set for life with what we needed from him.

It was one of the reasons I trusted him implicitly with any and all tasks I had when it came to computers. He was a patched in member, but we didn’t have him show up for church every Sunday like everyone else did.

For Liam’s security, he was usually at an offsite location and joined us through a secure channel video conferencing app he created specifically for our crew. We couldn’t chance him being seen entering the clubhouse, so I was usually the only one who met him in person offsite.

The next thing I needed to do after I confirmed the he wired the payment, was get down to business. I had a lot of preparations to make before the body was in the proverbial ground. This contract needed to be fulfilled by Friday at the latest.

I didn’t want the client to go and find another hitter before I did the job.