Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
The next afternoon, I woke up to a text from Liam, confirming the intel I extracted from the kitchen man. There was a hit on one officer working for the Sandstone police department. He wasn’t sure who, but he promised to keep looking. Unless he found something today, there wasn’t anything either of us could do about the situation. The next item on my list this week was attending a retirement party for one of them.
You heard me right.
When the invitation came, it surprised me because he knew exactly who I was. Over the last year and a half, I had come to know him very well. The circumstances of us meeting were not great, but at least it didn’t involve me being arrested for anything. Detective Sergeant David Callahan was one of the least judgemental and by the book police officers I had ever dealt with.
Because of that, I respected the shit out of him.
It was one reason I was so surprised at receiving the invitation to his retirement party. They didn’t invite people like me to rub elbows with law enforcement personnel. Thankfully, my brother not only taught me how to blend like a chameleon, but to talk like an upstanding citizen. My educational background and attendance at the university were also a great cover.
That and I wasn’t the typical biker chick, at least not when I didn’t want to be. When the invitation came to the clubhouse for me, I immediately called him up. He wouldn’t take no for an answer, so I told him I would come as my alter ego for the night.
Certain points of my life were contradictory, but I wouldn’t change them for the world. I rubbed elbows with many different individuals, from college professors to the homeless. It all came with the territory. The only ones I actively avoided conversing with were fake people.
If there was anything my life taught me, it was how to carry on a conversation. I had no qualms about tonight. I didn’t even ride my bike to the pub; I drove my truck. I maneuvered it into the parking lot and squeezed into the last available spot, shut off the ignition and hopped out.
I barely stepped in the door before someone roughly manhandled me to the side. Whoever the asshole was, he was lucky I had enough of awareness not to drop his ass to the ground. The last thing I would have wanted was to draw attention, considering we were in a room full of cops. He whipped me around to face him.
Of course.
“Get your hands off of me,” I told Braxton, then looked at him all sweet and innocent while I added, “unless you want me to make a scene?”
My old fuck buddy released his hold on my upper arm immediately.
“You following me?” he demanded.
That accusation hurt.
I wondered why I hadn't heard from him in a while. I couldn't exactly ask about him without bringing my interest to Erik's attention. So I just let it go. Now I knew why.
“Unlikely,” I responded. “I'm here for the man of the hour.”
“As if,” he replied.
“Why else would I be dressed like this?”
Tonight I decided to wear a deep burgundy vintage floral lace sleeveless cocktail dress that completely covered my back.
Wouldn’t want my ink to start a riot.
“You know Callahan?” he asked suspiciously.
“Served him a couple of drinks and sent him home in the taxi,” I responded vaguely.
“I highly doubt that, since he’s not your kind of cop.”
“How do you know he’s not my kind of cop? What exactly do you think you know about me?”
“I know everything I need to know,” he scoffed.
“You mean you know everything you think you know,” I responded. “Excuse me, I’m gonna get a drink at the bar.”
I didn’t even give him a chance to respond before I walked away.
At this point, I could see that he had his dial permanently stuck on judgement, so there was no reason to continue the conversation. It was going to go absolutely nowhere, and I wasn’t here to placate his beliefs about me. After all, up until a year ago, he thought I was good enough to fuck, but now I was just the gum on the bottom of his shoe.
I ordered a shot at the bar, downed it, and then asked for a bottle of beer. If he was going to be here tonight, I needed something to settle my nerves. I took my drink, turned around and surveyed the room, taking it all in.
It was possible the target was in this very room tonight.
Too bad it wouldn’t be as easy as a neon sign flashing above their head with a big arrow pointing down.
As I stepped away from the bar, Callahan walked up beside me. “Hi Harleigh girl,” he greeted me with a smile. “I’m glad you could make it tonight. Was that Officer Erickson you were talking to over there?”
“Yup,” I responded.
“I didn’t know you guys knew each other.”
“Oh, he only thinks he knows me,” I laughed.
“How did you guys meet?”
“He arrested me,” I deadpanned.
“No shit.” He barked out a laugh. “Let me guess. The charges didn’t stick, and you were out before he could even finish the paperwork.”
“You got it,” I told him.
I still couldn’t believe he was retiring tonight. Sure, he was an older man, but I couldn’t see him just sitting around twiddling his thumbs. He was too involved in everything to just pack it all in. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was one of those detectives with scads of banker’s boxes full of photocopied case files.
“He should know better than that. Did you sic your brother on him, or just deal with him yourself?” he teased.
“What do you think?”
“What you do never fails to amaze me,” he replied. “I still remember the first time I met you.”
“It wasn’t a great reason for us to cross paths, but I’m glad we did.”
“I’m glad I looked past my immediate reaction to a fourteen-year-old serving alcohol in a biker bar, even if I was a little skeptical of just how much help you could be.”
The Reapers were regularly contacted by all different kinds of people, from all walks of life. They ranged from police officers who were annoyed with justice never being served, to the homeless prostitute who watched one of her friends get into a vehicle and never return. Some of them had money to pay us, while others didn’t, but we never discriminated. Sure, we needed money, just like everyone else did, but sometimes the reason for the job was more important.
You see, not all the cops were against us. Callahan was a few years out of retirement. An older detective who worked in the sex crimes unit, who was at the end of his rope trying to figure out how to catch the perpetrator. So he did what most cops would never have done. He walked in to the Reapers den of deviance and debauchery and put his career on the line. He asked for a favour. There was a pedophile on the loose in the northwest quadrant of the city, luring children into his car. They knew who he was, but they couldn't catch him in the act.
When the parents came to us with their accounts of what happened, the children were so traumatized they couldn’t identify the prick. He was the eldest son of a business owner who had major international connections, so as soon as they brought him in for questioning, they released him.
Then he snatched the son of a high-ranking official while they were walking down the street. He dragged the mother halfway down the block because she refused to release her grip on the rear trunk spoiler. When he sped around the next corner to evade getting caught, the woman lost her hold and rolled through the intersection into oncoming traffic.
Luckily, she survived the whole incident with nasty road rash and a broken wrist. She ended up in the hospital sedated and under watch because she wouldn't stop trying to find her son. The problem was, she had no clue where to look. So when she snuck out of the hospital the first time, they found her in the street trying to accost drivers with any vehicle remotely similar to the one involved in her son's kidnapping.
It had been all over the news, so it wasn't a surprise to see the officer sitting at the bar when I opened the night of the incident. In all honesty, we were already on the case. Ridding the world of disgusting creeps was at the top of my priority list.
I could tell by the look in his eyes, he was determined, but uncomfortable being in our den of lawlessness. Being barely eighteen at the time, I hadn't worked at the bar for very long, but I knew how to read people. Everything he had been privy to in the case frustrated and haunted him. I remembered the day like it was yesterday, and it wasn’t because it was my first time dealing with tragic circumstances.
I passed him a glass of our best Scotch and said, “We're on it and this drink and the next is on me.”
He glanced at me and replied, “but you're only a kid yourself.”
“Only a kid would understand the monsters hiding under our beds. I'm old enough to be the one to help slay them myself,” I answered. “Do me a favour, though.” When he nodded, I continued, “If you drink too much, don't argue with me about sending you home at the end of the night in a taxi to your wife.”
His eyes shot up to meet mine and narrowed. “What do you know of my wife?”
“I know she worries every night you go to work that she’ll have a knock on the door saying you won’t be coming back. I know she’s counting down the days for your retirement and can’t wait to go on a trip with you,” I responded.
The Reapers knew anything and everything about certain individuals. Especially those who were in the news in relation to whatever case we were interested in. As soon as they mentioned Callahan’s name with relation to the case, I had Liam do a background check.
“So let’s make sure you get home to her safe and sound tonight, even if you are a little worse for wear after the drinks.”
That night, Callahan and I talked every time I wasn’t serving drinks. He seemed like he needed an ear, more than the usual people who came into the bar to share their woes. He was still at the bar drinking when I received the call. My brother Kujo took over the bar for me and I went hunting.
I nodded one more time before I headed out the door.
When I approached him a month later to ask for a favour, he expected the worst of me. I didn’t blame him. I could have asked for almost anything, but I didn’t. It was my chip to cash in, so I used it to have him come and assist me with a presentation for my class. It floored him when I said I was in my third year of university.
We never spoke about how the boy was returned to his parents in the middle of the night. He never asked why no one had seen or heard from the pedophile. I never told him how I cut the prick’s balls off and delivered him to his father. In fact, I paid his secretary two thousand dollars to allow the delivery guy to enter a board meeting and toss them into the middle of the table. Attached to the package was a note with a stern warning about the Reapers not tolerating crimes involving children.
What I really wanted to do was mail the pedophile’s balls to the boy’s parents, like they did in this biker television show I watched. However, I thought better of it, considering the mother almost had a mental breakdown during the time of his kidnapping.
The chime of a text coming through interrupted our conversation. I pulled it out of my clutch and glanced down, seeing Kujo’s name and K911 flash across the screen. Several years ago, we devised a plan for sending texts so that we could avoid answering calls when we didn’t need to.
“Sorry, Callahan, that was work. I gotta take off.”
“Sure, kid. “Keep your nose outta trouble,” he told me.
“What if the trouble finds me?” I teased.
“Then you hand them their ass.”
“Yes, sir. Enjoy retirement,” I told him as I hugged him tightly and slipped an envelope into his jacket pocket. It wasn’t nefarious in any way, but I couldn’t have his coworkers think it was a bribe. The envelope contained a couple of tickets to the Bahamas and an Air BNB rental for a month.
“I can't take this,” he replied, with an unsuccessful attempt at getting me to take it back.
Which was why I had been so sneaky with the pass off.
“You can and you will,” I replied. “Besides, I owe you one for all the conversations and for agreeing to be a guest lecturer for my violent offenders’ unit. The professor gave me an A plus for my report and your presentation.”
“Harleigh, you’re a sweet kid. One of my first training officers gave me a parting quote from Friedrich Nietzsche. ‘Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process, he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.’ Don’t let what you do change a thing about you.”
“I won’t make you any promises, but I’ll try my best,” I told him.
* * *
My heels clicked on the tile floor as I weaved my way through the boisterous crowd to the door. Just before I made it to the exit, Braxton stepped into my path again.
Only this time, he dragged me into a bathroom. It was déjà vu all over again as he flipped the lock and marched me into the corner against the wall.
It was then that I realized what a sick, fucked up puppy I was.
No matter how pissed off I was, his manhandling was turning me on.
Some women wanted to be used and abused, taken to new heights. I, for one, enjoyed when men threw me around. It turned me on when they just took me without saying a word. When they just fucked me into oblivion and made me beg for more.
Braxton was one of those men.
With both hands grasped firmly behind my knees, he hoisted me up against the wall. Braxton balanced me against the wall with one hand as he pulled my thong to the side, positioned his cock at my entrance, and thrust forward. We held still for a moment while I adjusted to his girth, and then he fucked me into oblivion.
It was quick, and it was dirty, but I loved it.
“Why. Do. You. Have. To feel so. Fucking good?” he groaned out between each thrust.
Spots filled my vision as I came, while he pounded me through it and emptied his seed deep inside me. He rested his forehead against my collarbone as he breathed heavily from exertion. After several moments of neither of us speaking, he gradually released my legs one at a time.
Once my feet hit the ground, the muscles in my legs twitched, making me unsteady and in need of his support.
“I have somewhere I need to be,” I told him, once I regained the use of my legs, then stepped to the side to go around him.
He matched my steps. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I’m leaving. I have places to be.”
“I don’t know what you think you’re up to, but I’m onto you.”
“Sure you are, sweetie,” I told him as I reached over and straightened his tie. “Just make sure you don’t get burned when you go rushing into that fire.”
His eyes darkened with a mixture of violence and lust.
The perfect combination.
Somehow, I predicted it was going to be me getting burned before I was done with him.