Chapter 4
Petra Thomas was bored out of her mind as she sat at her desk in her office writing up reports from her recent undercover work.
For almost three years she had worked as an undercover agent for the ATF in a notorious biker gang known to traffic guns, drugs, and even women and children.
Every single day in that club, it took sheer willpower not to pull her gun or badge and blow the fuckers away for what she had seen and heard first hand.
That’s why she was sitting in this boring ass office now, writing down what had occurred.
When the raid happened, the first thing she did was not resist, and she had been arrested along with everyone else.
After four days of sitting in a jail cell with the other women, and it was safe to do so, she had been released and immediately whisked away in the dead of night to where she currently sat.
Bored as all hell. She missed riding the motorcycle, the air in her face, the freedom of the road.
With a gigantic sigh, she picked up her pen and got back to work.
As she continued to write her reports, her mind kept going back to one particular biker in the club she had infiltrated. He had started out as a prospect, but quickly made it through the ranks to a full patch member in two years. His club name was Psycho, and she had fallen for him.
Petra shook her head and mentally berated herself for falling for someone that was so bad that he would never be seeing the light of day ever again.
If the club members didn’t stay in jail with the charges of trafficking against them, then there were enough RICO charges to keep them locked up for the rest of their lives.
She shook her head again, and picked up her pen to try and finish her reports.
It had been eight months since she returned to her office and it was driving her crazy not being out there with her knees to the breeze.
While she had been undercover, she had added to her tattoos she already had, and now she sported a full sleeve on her right arm, and she had an intricate vine with flowers encompassing her entire left leg from ankle to hip.
She was proud of it. Unfortunately, she has to keep them covered while in the office.
At six o’clock that night, she tossed her pen on the top report and sighed heavily, while raising her arms above her head and blowing out a frustrated breath.
She had finally finished them and all she had to do now was make four copies of them and turn them into her supervisor.
Technically, she only needed to make two, but she learned a long time ago to cover her ass.
She will make the two extra copies to have as a safeguard.
She refused to allow her supervisors to run rough shod over her ever again by saying she had failed to turn in any reports.
She even made sure to use the feature on the copier that would put the time and date on each page as to when it had been copied.
By seven-thirty, she had made her copies, placed the one copy each on the desks of her supervisors, placed one copy in the false bottom of her desk, and packed the other one in her briefcase to take home and put in her safe at home.
She nodded to the security guard at the desk in the lobby, signed out, and went out to her car.
On the way to the parking lot, she heard a bike in the distance, stopped, closed her eyes, and listened as it roared down the street.
With a heavy sigh, she entered her car, started it, and headed home.
At home, the first thing she did was put the report in her floor safe beneath her desk, then went to her room to grab some clothes and head to the shower.
Forty minutes later, dressed in shorts and an oversized tee shirt that she had ‘borrowed’ from Psycho, but never returned, she entered her kitchen, opened the refrigerator and wrinkled her nose at how empty it was.
She grabbed her phone and quickly ordered takeout from the local Chinese restaurant two blocks over.
As she waited for her meal to arrive, she got out her favorite bottle of wine, and poured herself half a glass.
She stood looking out the windows at the city, feeling alone for the first time in a long, long time.
No matter how many times she told herself to stop thinking about Psycho, his image always popped into her mind, most of the time during an important meeting or when she least expected it.
She knew she would never see him again because he had been arrested with the rest of the patch holders from the club she had infiltrated to gather information against them.
She jerked at the knock at her door, and looked at the clock as she hurried to the door, expecting her food.
Instead of looking through the peephole, she whipped open the door and stood there in shock.
She almost dropped her wine glass, but the man standing there reached out and took it from her all the while juggling the pizza box he held.
“Psycho,” she whispered. It took about five seconds for her to realize what was happening. “How did you find me? When did you get out? I thought the charges against you would keep you locked up for the rest of your life? Are the others out? How did you find me?”
“May I come in?” he asked softly. “I come in peace and with an explanation, as well as a proposition.”
Before Petra could answer, the delivery guy for the Chinese she had ordered arrived, and she gave him the tip she had placed next to the door, then with the bag in her hand, she sighed heavily, stepped back, and allowed Psycho to enter her apartment.
They gravitated toward the kitchen and placed both of their food purchases on the counter.
Instead of saying anything, Petra automatically got them plates and silverware, and poured more wine into her glass and looked at Psycho with a raised brow.
At his nod, she got him a glass and they finally settled at the table with food and drink.
She made sure the wine bottle was close at hand, she had a feeling she would need it for its contents, or as a weapon until she could get to the weapon locked in her gun safe in her bedroom.
Neither of them spoke until Psycho had finished at least two slices of pizza, and half of her meal was gone.
“I’m not who you think I am,” Psycho said as he settled back with the wine glass in his hands.
“Oh?”
“What would you say if I told you my handlers are Paul Flynn and Duane Kessler?”
“I’d call you a fucking liar because they are from two different agencies, not one.”
“Fair enough,” he said and leaned back, but moved his hands slowly as he pulled out a slim black wallet from his back pocket and placed it on the table.
When she didn’t take it, he spoke, “Flynn owed me from a case I worked for him years ago in my home state. I mean he owed me big.” He used his hands to spread them as wide as they could go.
“Go on,” Petra said as she settled back in her chair to study him.
Psycho reached up and rubbed the scar in the center of his forehead, but Petra leaned forward and stared at him in shock.
“What happened to the spider web tattoo?”
“I was able to get it removed, unfortunately, the scar remains. Not from the tattoo removal, but from what happened and why Flynn owes me.”
“Can you tell me what happened?”
“Can you tell me if you’re ATF or DEA?”
“ATF.” She held up her hand as she rose to her feet and went to her purse. She withdrew her own slim black wallet, and together they looked at each other’s. “Wow, you have credentials from both agencies.”
“Yes, because I wanted the added protection, and like I said, they owed me.”
“How?”
He again pointed to the scar in the middle of his forehead.
“They were the ones that indirectly caused this. In my home state, I was a cop for the local sheriff’s department.
Almost fifteen years of service. I rode a motorcycle for pleasure, not for my job, nor for any bad reasons, just because I like bikes.
A group of bikers arrived in town.” He shook his head and held up his hand.
“All good. They are all former military and Flynn had basically hired them to see if they could find out where the drugs were coming from. Everyone involved behind the scenes knew it wasn’t them.
Because they had a gigantic meeting in the area I worked, I learned of what they planned. ”
“Being a cop, you were privy to that information.”
“Correct, however, the main character in this entire operation and I had a hate slash dislike relationship. She hated me, I disliked her, but, if she wasn’t involved, then the operation wouldn’t take place.”
Petra couldn’t believe that she felt instant jealousy at his words.
“Nothing like you might be thinking. I had a history with her, and I didn’t know it at the time, but I fucked up. Nothing sexual, nothing romantic, nothing like that.”
“Then what was it?” Petra hid her clenched fists beneath the table.
“Are you former military?”
“No, I got my degree and right out of college I was recruited by the ATF. I’ve worked my way up to where I am now.”
“Okay, I can’t give you names, I still need to protect the innocent. Anyway, I was in the Army. When I got out, I went to college to get my degree, and after that, I started with the sheriff’s department. I did like you, worked my way up to Deputy Sheriff. I was second in command.”
“Okay, but what does this have to do with that woman?”
“Background context. Anyway, a buddy of mine reached out to me with a favor. He was black ops with the Marines.”
“Ah, secret missions, no one is to know you’re there. In and out.”
“Correct. Anyway, their team consisted of five members. You couldn’t get any more elite than this team.
My boss at the Sheriff’s department was a former member of that team.
When he left, they brought someone else in.
The favor asked of me was to contact the only living relative of this new recruit and inform her that he had died in the line of duty. ”
“But he didn’t.”
“Correct. I ended up going to my boss and asking him how I could do it. He gave me suggestions, and I followed through with them. I typed up a letter on official letterhead stating that he served his country well and died a heroic death. I arrived at her house with the letter, and dressed in my Army dress uniform. Everything was going well until she started questioning me about when she could expect to receive his body, I panicked. She must have seen it because she started yelling at me, calling me a liar, and then I blurted out that she would never get his body because he was nothing but pink mist.”
“Jesus, Psycho, that was cruel.”
“I know, but like I said, I panicked. She kicked me out, and I didn’t see her until several years later. It was only about a week before those bikers showed up. I didn’t know that she was friends with my boss, or that he knew why I was tasked with this favor. He never told me about it.”
“Shit, was it a set-up?”
“Not really, it all came out at the end and when I saw her again it was at my boss’s house.
She was extremely cold and standoffish to me.
So much so that after she left, my boss asked me what I did to piss her off.
That’s when I reminded him what we had discussed about telling her that her brother had died. ”
“She didn’t believe you. Do you know why?”
“A couple of days later, it was revealed that it was all my fault she didn’t believe me. See, the letter I typed up was on Army letterhead, and I wore my Army dress uniform.”
“So, what does that have to do with anything?”
“The guy who allegedly died was a Marine.” At her confused look, he shook his head.
“Never in the history of the military would one branch tell a family member from another branch that their loved one had died while serving their country. I never thought to ask my friend asking me the favor which branch of the military the quote, unquote, deceased served in.”
“Shit, you really did fuck up. Let me guess, she saw through your lie.”
“Yes, that’s when she started questioning me, and I panicked and told her that her brother was pink mist.”
“Meaning there was nothing to bury.”
“Correct. The bitch of it was, she was only seventeen when I told her, she would turn eighteen a couple of months later. She had already lost her parents to one illness or another.”
“Leaving her all alone after you told her that her brother perished.”
“Correct.” Psycho sighed heavily, placed his glass on the table, crossed his arms in front of him, and rested them on the table.
“That’s my story with her. When those bikers arrived, they met at her cabin, next door to my boss.
I was there, she was angry and snippy with me.
I flat out asked what I ever did to piss her off, because I only saw her that one time. ”
“What did she say?”
“She pointed to some guy and said he was the one I told her was dead.”
“Crap, so it came back to bite you in the ass?”
“Yes, we agreed to avoid each other at all costs, which I was happy to do. That weekend a mission was discussed, with full cooperation from the DEA and ATF to allow those bikers to set the scene, the government agencies would stay in the background and when the time came, they would make the arrests.”
“Were they like the Devil’s Scorpions that we took down?”
“Absolutely nothing like them. These guys were the good guys who happened to fly colors and ride bikes. No drugs, no illegal sex trafficking, no illegal firearms. If I didn’t mention this before, there were three clubs involved in the planning stages.”
“Can you tell me what they were planning?”
“Setting up a gigantic event to bring in bikers from all over to participate as customers.”
“What type of event would do that?”
“An underground MMA fight, with women being the fighters.”
“No way.”
“Way, and that woman I mentioned earlier, she was the lead draw. Apparently, she was good, undefeated. The planning happened, the event took place, then all hell broke loose.”