Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
STRIDER
W hen I return to the club, it seems ominously quiet, as if you could cut the atmosphere with a knife. As Prez, I’m not used to being given the cold shoulder as I enter, nor treated to some of the looks of derision that are being sent my way.
What the fuck?
I’m really not in the mood for this. It’s hard enough returning, knowing I’ll see Jasmine while accepting I’ve lost all right to touch her.
I don’t understand what I thought I’d get from introducing her to my wife. I just knew it had to be done. Jasmine deserved to know the complications I had, and seeing Anna would explain more than any inadequate words that could come out of my mouth.
In a different world, a different time, Jasmine would be mine.
I suppose I thought she’d wait, that she’d comprehend that I still wanted her around. But while I hadn’t blatantly lied to her, I had let her think I was single and free to explore a relationship. She could rightly berate me for leading her on.
Straightening my back, I broaden my shoulders, ready to accept whatever the brothers want to bring. The expressions on their faces make me suspect Jasmine has got in with her side of the story first. I hadn’t taken her for a blabbermouth. I hadn’t explicitly asked her to refrain from telling all the brothers about my wife—of course, they know I’ve got another life. But that’s far from unusual. Many bikers also lead civilian lives. Only my top team, the brothers who I’ve ridden with longest, know the details of Anna’s illness. I’m not ashamed of it, but I haven’t wanted any concessions made because of what I’ve got to deal with outside of the club.
I’ve prided myself on being an MC prez and a husband to a terminally sick wife.
Damn it. I never wanted my two lives to collide, but Jasmine might have spread my secrets far and wide. Though, as I glance around at the assembled brothers, no one’s looking at me with the compassion I’d expect if they’d been told about the seriousness of Anna’s plight. If anything, they look disgusted with me, making me feel angry inside. How dare they judge me for making the best of the hand I was dealt, one I never asked for ?
Heading to the bar, I rap on the top when the prospect doesn’t turn to me immediately.
“Jack,” I demand once I have his attention. Then, casting my eye around, I don’t see the person I’d prepared myself to see. “Where’s Jas?” I snap.
It’s not the prospect, but Buzz who answers me, his sudden bark from behind making me swing around as he repeats, “Where’s Jasmine?” His eyes are open wide, and his head is shaking. His forehead furrows. “You know where she is.”
“If I fuckin’ knew, I wouldn’t be asking.”
“Well, she’s not fuckin’ here. She’s gone.” Clearly seeing my look of disbelief, Buzz’s frown deepens. “What the fuck did you say or do to her, Prez?”
At least he’s still giving me the respect of my title. I suppose that’s something. Draining the shot of Jack in one swallow, I brush my hand over my mouth, glance around to make sure no one else is within hearing, and lean in close before I say softly, “I read that book you gave me. Knew she was developing feelings for me. So I took her to see Anna, show her why she had to shut those emotions down. That there was no way I could reciprocate them.” Buzz has been one of my closest friends since I joined the club, and there’s nothing he doesn’t know about me. He’s known Anna, met her, and knew she was always there in the background. Had been my sounding block when I needed to vent, first about my wishes she’d be more involved in the club, then was there for me every step of the way since her diagnosis a long ten years back.
His reaction isn’t what I expect. “You fuckin’ what?” Buzz shakes his head in disbelief, his eyes widening as he stares at me. “You’re head over heels for Jasmine.”
My mouth drops open. I thought I’d hid my feelings better than that. I never concealed that I was attracted to her. Sure, my monopolising her services, even after I no longer used them, was a huge fucking sign. But love? I open my mouth to deny it and find that I can’t. I shouldn’t. My loyalty lies in a different direction. Leaving aside the question of how Buzz can so easily read me, I explain why I must obfuscate. “I’ve got Anna?—”
He doesn’t accept it and doesn’t let me finish. “You’ve got a living corpse. A woman you were going to divorce years ago.” He rubs at the sides of his temples. “A woman you only stayed with out of misplaced guilt.” Rubbing salt in, he adds, “A woman you fell out of love with before she got ill.”
“Did I?” I hiss, the old argument resurrecting in my head. “I met her, fell in love. Married her. Then she changed. Sure, I was going to leave her, but had she become someone else because the illness made her that way?”
“You’d already married in haste and had started repenting in leisure,” he throws back at me. “Don’t bullshit me. I was there.”
But it’s an unanswerable question. How much of it was the blossoming natural animosity between Anna and me, and how much was her own brain changing the woman I once loved? Had it been me who caused it? This isn’t the first time I’ve had this argument with him.
I try to get him back on point. “Where’s Jasmine gone?”
His eye roll is admirable. “Whatever you hoped to gain by taking her to see Anna, you must have fucked up. She took only one message from it—that she is no longer welcome in the club.” As I open my mouth to explain I said nothing of the sort, he tempers his words. “Or maybe the facts came as too much of a shock, the extent to which you’d been hiding things from her.” He holds out his hands in a defeated gesture. “We did our fuckin’ best to get her to stay, but she packed her bags and left. Other than taking her prisoner, there was nothing else we could do.” Seeing me go rigid and my look of shock, he softens slightly. “She left on good terms with us, and an understanding she could always come back.”
For a moment, I’m speechless. I need to speak to her. I need to explain. The loss I feel hits me like a blow to the chest. I take out my phone to call her. She misunderstood. I’d just wanted to show her why she shouldn’t develop feelings for me, as I wasn’t in a position to offer her a happily ever after. Not while Anna continued to breathe, and I couldn’t commit to how I’d feel once she was gone. The last thing I wanted was for her to leave the club. The phone connects, but the ringing sounds quite close to me.
With eyes narrowing, I watch Buzz take the device out of his pocket and show it to me. “Club phone. She left it in her room.”
My gut clenches as a chill goes down my spine and I spit out. “Tell me she took one of the club vehicles.”
The tightening of his jaw is the only answer I need. “Godfuckin’damnit!” I slam both palms down on the bar. It’s only a second before I yell, “Data. Get over here!”
Buzz steps back as Data arrives. I don’t even need to open my mouth before he’s answering me, concern lines etched on his face. “She’s off the grid. I don’t even know what name she’s using now. I’ve tried the name she gave us but come up with nothing, and Frobisher is also a miss.” He nods a Buzz. “I think you’re right and she’s using a new identity.”
Why wouldn’t Jasmine just be using her real name? Oh, I don’t doubt she’s got the smarts to do it, but the question is why. The only reason that comes to me is she hates me so much she’s doing everything she can so I can’t find her. No phone. No trackable vehicle. No fucking clue where to start.
Clenching my fists I feel emotions sweep through me I didn’t even know that I had. Clarity comes to me, far too late. Buzz was right. Anna and my marriage was already on the rocks before Picks Disease hit. The love for her had already been lost. But the guilt that I might have been responsible was a weight I’ve carried far too long. And couple that with the one thing she wanted I’d given to somebody else, the pregnancy, it had completely fucked with my brain. I’d lost everything when I made Jasmine terminate her, our baby. All because I thought I owed it to Anna, a woman who by then, couldn’t even tell down from up, let alone be able to understand what was happening.
Tequila joins our party. He nods at Data, who raises his chin back, as though they’re sharing a secret only known to them. But when Buzz tilts his head, I realise it’s a confidence shared by the three of them.
“Spit it out,” I demand.
Buzz shuffles, then asks, “You really have no idea, do you? Just how much of her book did you read?”
The question catches me by surprise. Sure, the plot was engaging, but I’m no reader. And I thought I’d read far enough. “I stopped at the part when the heroine fell for the Prez.”
It’s my enforcer who breathes out. “I think you ought to read the rest.”
Before I can comment, Buzz states, “I’ve read them all. You already know why. Club girl writing about an MC might let something slip. All the previous books were fine. Good, readable, but light. This last one though? It’s deep. Dark. Smacks of autobiographical to me.”
Tequila shakes his head, but his words are affirmative, he doesn’t deny Buzz’s assumption. “I thought that too.” His face tightens. “I hope to fuck we’re wrong, but if we’re not? Jasmine is in deep trouble.”
My enforcer isn’t a man to make a crisis out of nothing. He’s careful, takes time to weigh up all the facts and, to date, hasn’t led me wrong. A cold feeling settles in my gut as I realise I can’t dismiss their concerns just because I hope that they’re making something out of nothing.
“Okay,” I breathe out. “Tell me what’s so bad in this book that she wrote.”
“Best read it yourself, Prez. Don’t take our word for it. See what you think of it, and whether we could be right.” Buzz’s raised eyebrow is a challenge that I can’t turn down.
Perhaps he’s right. Maybe I know the girl better than them and will be able to tell them it’s all imaginings conjured up out of her head. I’ve never met anyone so straightforward before, what you see with Jasmine is what you get. How could she have a secret past that’s full of danger now? No, they’re wrong. And seeing it written in her very own words will cement my opinion I’m right.
With a raise of my chin, I reach over the bar, grab a bottle of Jack, and go through the back of the clubhouse and out to my room.
Book lovers would probably hate me, but in my haste to get to Jasmine after discerning the depth of her affection to me, I’d thrown the book face down, and still open at the page which was the last one I’d read. Seeing it now, I’ve broken the spine. I’m sure that won’t make the list of my worst crimes and serves me well now. I’ve no need to search for the place I left off.
Swigging whisky straight from the bottle, I settle down, propping a pillow behind my head.
Jasmine can’t have led a secret life or be running from a past worse than perhaps a jealous ex. It’s not possible, surely? Laughing internally at my officers’ interpretation of the fiction that surely came straight out of her head, I start reading her words.
Despite that I don’t normally read for fun, once more I find myself drawn into her story. It’s no wonder she’s found success. Her writing flows well and her descriptions draw me in. The interactions between the club members make me laugh. Until… I get to the part when the fictional heroine’s background comes out.
Drawing my legs up, I sit up straight as it slowly dawns on me that Buzz and Tequila might be on to something. I’ve already accepted, and as proved by Jasmine’s own reaction, the first half of the book, her longed-for relationship with the MC prez was based on real life. Now, the amount of description and detail certainly looks like it’s been written with the knowledge of someone who has lived through severe trauma.
They can’t be right, can they? Surely, I’d have seen something in Jasmine, a haunting in her eyes that screamed of abuse. But then, I hadn’t really looked at her the first few times I took her to my bed, far more interested in her other assets to spend time reading the emotions on her face.
Jasmine can’t have described herself. If she has, it’s unbearable. After a few more minutes, I have to toss the book to one side as it’s just too fucking hard to read anymore. Hoping with everything I am that if this has been her life, she’s overdramatized what she went through to maximise the angst in her fictional world. Brushing my hands back through my long hair, I conjure up a vision of the beautiful face I’d eventually come to know so well, wishing I had her in front of me to ask, did you really suffer? Was this your life?
Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I never thought to question why someone like her had walked into my club, prepared to whore for my brothers. She’d so entranced me that as far as I was able to, I took her as mine. She’d never been a club girl in my eyes.
Because she hadn’t been one. If even half of what she’d written is true, she came to us for the protection clubs like ours offer to property and to hide. No one would think of looking for her here. Not someone born into the wealthy family she had been.
If any of this is true, of course.
It can’t be. I stare at the book as though it could give me answers, but apart from offering more pages to read, it’s of no help.
My officers were concerned that Jasmine might really have been telling her story. I can’t afford to doubt the rights of their insight. I can’t afford to be wrong. She might think time is on her side. That after three years, she’ll have been placed in the past. But I’ve known bastards like the one described, and they never give up. If even half of her story is true, she’s in danger.
I push up off the bed, striding to the door and go back through to the clubroom. I waste no time raising my voice. “Church, now!”
“About fuckin’ time,” Shotgun murmurs as he walks past me, quickly followed by Buzz, Tequila, Mex, Data, Shout, Radar, Madman and Shark. Horn and Hustler aren’t around, but they can be forgiven for missing an impromptu meeting.
I give them a moment to get to their places and settle down, then bang the gavel. With all eyes on me, I point to the man at my left. “Shotgun. Want to fill them in?”
Grimacing, my VP replies, “You want me to tell them what a dick you’ve been?”
Snorts of laughter quickly die as Buzz slashes his hand through the air and then takes the floor. “This may be something. May be nothing. But hear the facts, then you can decide whether it’s a life-or-death situation and whether we take it on as a club.” His eyes meet mine for a moment, and I nod.
Shotgun raps his hand on the table, and they all fall quiet.
The Arizona Charter has got StoryTeller who can weave a good tale. We might not have similar, but my VP doesn’t miss that definition by a mile. Far better than I could have done, he enthrals us as he tells about an author who decides to use her background for her novel. With only a quick glance my way, he describes the relationship between the club girl and the MC prez, and then goes on to the darker parts of the story, the bits that make my stomach churn and the whisky I’ve drunk want to resurface.
I force back bile as he comes to the end.
There’s silence around the table that’s broken only when Madman cackles. He thumps his fist onto the wooden surface. “Good one, VP. You really think Jasmine’s different from any other patch-chasing girl? She got her eye on our prez.” He waves my way. “I suspect Prez told her to get lost when he saw where things were headed. Girl left because her nose was put out of joint.”
My hands clench. In some ways, Madman isn’t wrong. I’ve nothing to offer to Jasmine, but I didn’t really think that when I returned to the club, she’d have packed her bags and would be gone.
It’s Mex who gets his word in next. “Must admit, I’ve not read all her books?—
“Surprised you can read at all,” Shout butts in, causing a raucous laughter.
Two raised middle fingers is his response before he continues, “But I did read the one we’re talking about. She uses her words well. Can draw you into her world.” He taps his head. “I believe her imagination is where this is all coming from. I thought it was far-fetched as I read it.” He frowns as if he might be missing something. “What I don’t get is why you think she’s relating her own life now.”
“Because she can?” Tequila suggests. “She’s got her readers believing the stories she weaves. Maybe she feels more confident. She’s not visited therapists that I know of, so perhaps it’s cathartic to get her history out, and safe because it’s dressed up as something made up.”
“Which she’d have gotten away with,” Buzz jumps in. “Except for the relationship between the heroine and Prez. If that follows real life, why shouldn’t the rest?”
I feel I need to point out, “Except I didn’t claim her.”
I swear Buzz mouths idiot under his breath.
“So why the fuck are we here?” Madman states. “That’s the proof that there’s nothing to this. Prez don’t feel anything other for her than a hole in which to place his dick.”
Rage rushes through me at his description. There’s so much more to my relationship with Jasmine than that. But I’d be betraying another woman if I admitted I had feelings for her. Even so, I can’t leave it like this.
“Your prez, VP, enforcer. and sergeant-at-arms give credence to believing she’s in danger. So, we’re going to treat it that she is until we know for certain.” I give my best presidential stare at Madman, keeping my gaze there until his drops, then turn my attention to Data. “You found anything?”
With a loud cough, Data clears his throat. “I found Jasmine Smart.” Just as I breathe out, thank fuck, he continues, “She died as an infant of three months old, thirty years back.”
“What?”
“How?”
The questions come so fast that it’s hard to tell who’s asking them.
“Fuckin’ fake identity. Just like in the book,” Tequila gets in.
As the implications hit, I find it hard to draw oxygen into my lungs. The girl in the book bought an expensive new ID, which is proof that Jasmine did the same. One more reason not to dismiss the predicament it’s possible she’s in. “And?” I snap, eager to hear the rest. “Where is she now?”
Data’s creased eyes meet mine. “Sorry, Prez, she’s off the grid. Can’t find her anywhere.” His head moves side to side slowly. “I don’t know where to start. She may have bought another identity and is using that now.”
“Why would she change her name again if it’s served her well for three years?” Buzz’s brow creases.
Tequila shrugs. “Maybe she wouldn’t, but here she was guaranteed a place off the grid with no questions asked. She didn’t have her name on any rental leases, and we paid her in cash.”
Shout raises his hand, and I give him a nod. “She must have a bank account. She got payments for her books each month.”
“But in what name?” Data ponders.
Something hits me. “Frobisher. That’s her pen name. Maybe she was able to set up an account using that.”
Data shakes his head adamantly. “Don’t you think I didn’t try that first? Been digging, and there’s no account for a Jasmine Frobisher, just like there wasn’t a Smart.” His hands brush back through his hair, the gesture showing his frustration. “We don’t know anything about her, where she came from—even the little she gave us when she arrived, I suspect was a concoction to hide her tracks.”
“Frobisher,” I repeat, making Data’s eyes widen.
Exasperated, he spits out, “Prez, already told you I’ve looked into that.” He stands from the table and goes to bang his fist on the wall.
“Data?” I snap, getting his attention. “Buzz had mentioned she said her pen name was the maiden name of her beloved grandmother. Why would she make something like that up?”
Buzz lets out a long breath. “Good catch, Prez. Well, now, surely that’s somewhere to start.”
Data crosses his arms. “What? You want me to search for an old lady who happened to be called Frobisher before she got wed and one who has a granddaughter—fuck, even Jasmine might not be her real first name.” He snorts. “Do you want me to limit my search to the mainland USA, or do you want me to make it worldwide?”
Completely straight-faced, Shout remarks, “She has an American accent.”
I almost wish I had a camera ready to record our computer guru’s expression at that comment.