Chapter Nine
Colter
“Does anyone have anything?” Slash asked the next afternoon, coming into the clubhouse with a tray of coffee he must have picked up out of town, since we didn’t have a solid coffee option in Shady Valley.
Most of us had been up a good chunk of the night, just catching quick cat naps, just plugging away at our laptops to try to find something, anything, for him about Dylan.
“Seriously?” he asked, glancing around at our red-rimmed, tired eyes.
“She has no social media.”
“Who has no social media?”
“Bikers?” Sway said, shrugging. “None of us have any.”
“What I did find was a property record,” Rook said. “For, I’m assuming, her old clubhouse. The last record I could find was for a Darron Spencer. I’m assuming that’s her dad.”
“But you got nothing for Dylan Spencer?”
“No arrest record. Not even a parking ticket. She wasn’t some high-achiever in school, so there are no articles about her winning games or any extracurriculars. There’s just… nothing,” Rook said.
“What about Darron’s wife, her mother?”
“I somehow doubt Dylan’s old man married anyone,” I said, making Slash look at me, awaiting a further explanation. “Just her whole attitude toward relationships. She thinks they’re fairy tales. She said believing in love was like believing in Santa Claus.”
That got a few chuckles from the guys.
“Can’t imagine most clubs are a healthy place for a little girl to grow up,” Saint said, leaning back in his chair, his arms lifted in the air as he stretched.
“Yeah, meth was a big problem in Darron’s club. And it sounded like club girls were pretty regular.”
“You talked about all this on the way back to the motel?” Slash asked.
“It was a long walk,” I said, shrugging it off.
I went ahead and left out the part where I’d been fishing for information. Not because of what Slash wanted us to dig up, but because I was genuinely curious about her.
And there was no fucking way in hell I was going to say anything about her pulling a gun on me… or the little interaction afterward. The one that had her all melting and soft, that had her voice going thick and breathless.
I shook those thoughts away since getting a semi in the common area of the clubhouse was not ideal.
“Did she say anything else useful?”
“Mostly just that her dad was a dick. Misogynistic even to her once she got older. She got the house just because there was no one else to lay claim to it.”
Slash exhaled hard. “What about the clubhouse?” he asked Rook. “Anything on that?”
“I have a very grainy aerial view of it. Can’t really even see much of it.”
“Where is it?”
“Not far from where the drop was.”
“Anything about the former club members? The girls?”
“I did find two girls who were registered to vote at that address a few years back,” Saint said.
“And?”
“And I found arrest records for both of them,” Rook said, turning his screen for Slash to look at.
There were the two women—one blonde, one brunette. Both looked sunken in the face. Their eyes were hollow. Their skin fucked up.
“Meth, probably,” Rook said as Slash looked. “This is what those same women looked like a few years ago, per their socials.”
They’d both been gorgeous, healthy, glowing.
“Sick what Roach did to them.”
“So some of the girls have social media. Did you dig into those? Find other girls? Pictures of Dylan? Or the inside of the clubhouse?”
“Most of their socials are either locked down tight or inactive, from what I can tell. I have friend requests out to a few of them. If they accept, I can see more. But so far, no pictures of the clubhouse. Though there was one with Dylan in the background.”
It was a group shot with five girls leaning together, drinks in hand, grinning at the camera. The focus was on them. But Dylan was a shadow in the back corner, dressed all in black. Her head was thrown back, a big smile spread across her face.
She looked different.
Happier, obviously.
But also, calmer.
Less guarded.
All that was shit that Roach took from her.
He had a fuckuva lot to pay for.
“I was hoping we’d know enough to know if we can trust her,” Slash said.
“She saved my life,” I reminded him.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “There’s that.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t prejudge her,” I said, getting a brow raise from Saint, but Slash let it slide. “She’ll be here—now,” I said when the door flew open.
Then there she was.
“I figured it was only fair that I let myself in here when you let yourself into my room,” she said, shooting me a ‘Whattaya gonna do about it?” smirk.
“You broke into her room?” Slash asked. I could hear the question hanging there between the words. Why didn’t you investigate?
“I dropped off her medication,” I said, shrugging. “I couldn’t leave it outside the door.”
“Sure. That’s all it was. Just like you’re not all here, looking like zombies, because you didn’t spend all night trying to research me. How’d that go?” she asked. The light in her eyes suggested she knew exactly how it went.
“Did you have your info scrubbed, or did it never exist?” Rook asked.
“I have social media,” she said, making Rook look defeated. “But it’s under a fake name and I don’t use my picture.”
“Why?”
“I knew a girl in school who got stalked something fierce by some creep who came across her online. Stuck with me. Made me careful. You know, you could have just asked me anything you wanted to know,” she said, looking at Slash.
“I wanted something to compare what you said to.”
“I’m a lot of things, but I’m not a liar. I’m here to answer anything you want to know.”
“When did your cherry get popped?” Raff asked, making me shake my head.
But Dylan just shot him a bland look. “Seventeen. He was twenty-six. And, no, at the time, I didn’t realize how fucked up that was.” She paused, then shot Raff a little grin. “You’re not going to get a rise out of me. Believe me, I’ve heard and seen some shit.”
“Can I get you something to drink?” I asked. “Coffee?” I suggested when her gaze slid to the one in my hand. There was some kind of battle going on there. Maybe something to do with her sugar or something. I had no idea. But I suddenly wanted to learn everything I could about diabetes.
“Do you have any diet soda?”
“Just about every kind,” I said. At her scrunched brows, I added, “Club girls.”
“Right. Cherry then. So, what do you want to know?” she asked, looking at Slash.
“What was your club into?”
“Into?”
“Were you a one-percent club? Did you sell meth like your old man did? How’d you keep the bills paid?”
“I would never sell meth after what I saw growing up. We… dealt in secrets,” she said, taking the soda from me with a tightening of her lips that could maybe pass as a smile. If you were using your imagination.
“Is that a nice way of saying blackmail?” Saint asked.
“It is.”
“Who did you blackmail?”
“Married men, mostly. A club full of beautiful women… it’s not hard to honeytrap a philanderer into a compromising situation.”
“You fucked these guys to blackmail them about it?” Slash asked.
Dylan’s eyes flashed at that.
“No, we didn’t fuck guys to blackmail them. It doesn’t have to get that far for an angry wife to get her panties in a twist and her lawyer on the phone.”
“That’s taking a lot of risk,” Sway said.
“Is it? When the rest of us were around to make sure the jobs went as planned.”
“So, how did you come across Roach?” Slash asked.
“That was one unfortunate night,” Dylan said, exhaling hard. “We were over in L.A. for the night, working on two separate jobs at once. Which we’d done a bunch of times before but it must have made what we were doing more obvious to someone paying attention.”
“And Roach was paying attention,” Slash said.
“Yep. I guess he started staking us out. As I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, the clubhouse was pretty rural. Lots of ways not to be seen. And they weren’t. Seen.”
“How’d they get in to take it over?”
“That was on me. I went out of town for a month to be with one of the girls while she had surgery and through some of her recovery. By the time I came back, it was too late.”
“You can’t blame yourself,” I said.
“And yet…” she said. Her finger slipped under the soda tab, making it click and hiss as she popped it.
“Your girls were that far gone that fast?”
“Haven’t really known people who use meth, huh? It’s a fast addiction. Especially if you are injecting, and especially if you have the money to keep getting more each time it wears off. And Roach would have been supplying them around the clock, knowing his window was limited.”
“And what about the clubhouse itself?” Slash asked. “How’d he get to keep his hands on it?”
“The bastard drafted up fake lease agreements and proof of payments.”
“Proof of payments?”
“One of my girls used to help me with the banking and the books. She would have cashed the checks, I guess. I’m locked out of the accounts now, so I can’t say for sure.”
“Still, I don’t think that would have held up in court,” Rook said.
“The lawyer I contacted had mixed feelings about it. Apparently, he’d switched all the utilities over to himself and started paying them. It all looked legit. All I had was my word. He had paper trails. He said I could revisit it once the term for that contract was over.”
“What was the term?” Slash asked.
“Two years.”
“So, it was time to take things into your own hands,” he said.
“Yep,” she said, popping the p.
“What took so long?” Saint asked. “It’s been a year. What took so long to start making moves?”
“I got sick,” she admitted. “Really sick. And then after I got better, I got a different kind of sick. It took me a while to figure out it was Type 1 diabetes. Then I was focusing on trying to figure out how to manage that. And getting Sugar…” she said, patting the dog’s head.
“Can I ask why you picked a dog over a continuous monitor?” Rook asked.
“The doctor asked that too. But I couldn’t exactly tell him that I was worried that the app that goes along with that might be able to create a trail that led right to me and any illegal activities I was carrying out. Sugar can’t snitch on me.”
“That’s some pretty good forethought,” Slash said. “So, you said that Roach broke into your place, right?”
“Yeah. I didn’t think they saw me, but someone must have.”
“How’d they find you, when we can’t find you?”
“I told two of the girls where to find me when I’d been trying to get them out. I’m assuming Roach leaned on them until they spilled it.”
“And you’re sure you didn’t leave any clues to where you might be going?”
“Seeing as I didn’t know where I was going until after they left, no. But, I mean, you have to assume they are looking into you guys now.”
“Why’s that?” Raff asked, pills rattling in a bottle as he got his dose of painkillers.
“Because they’re going to assume we are working together.”
“And now you’ve made it so we are,” Slash said.
“You need me if you want to take these guys out for trying to kill Colter.”
“And you need us because you stand no chance against them on your own now that they’re onto you,” Slash said.
“Not a pleasant situation for either of us,” she said. “But we have a mutual enemy. We have something to offer each other. It makes sense.”
“Yeah,” Slash agreed. “Alright. I guess we’re in this together. But I don’t find my men expendable, so we are going to need you to sit down and help us jot down everything you know about all these guys. And your girls.”
With that, she finally relaxed enough to take a seat.
Rook opened a notebook.
Then she started talking.
I stood back, a little bit in awe, at how easily she recalled details about the club.
She drew a map of the clubhouse.
She could practically place every single tree and bush on the property.
What she was lacking was information on how many men there were, how many women might be around, and how heavily armed they might be.
“That was kind of the mission the night you guys showed up,” she concluded, sitting back.
“Whoops,” Raff, still on his couch, said.
“Well, we still need that intel,” Slash said. “And it would be helpful if we had someone who could get a few of us in and out of the area without being seen,” he added with a pointed look toward Dylan.
“I already said I wanted help with this, not that I wanted you to take over. I expected to be a guide.”
“Good. I’ll figure out who I’m sending and—”
“I’ll go,” I volunteered quickly. Way, way too quickly.
“Wanna be part of making them pay for trying to kill me,” I added, hoping everyone accepted that as the explanation and didn’t dig any deeper.
Because the fact of the matter was, I didn’t give a fuck about someone trying to kill me.
People had been trying to kill me since I was eighteen years old.
You get a little numb to that after a while.
Obviously, the real reason I wanted to go was because of Dylan. I could try to say it was to make sure she was safe. But that would be a lie. I was intrigued by her. I wanted to know more about her. I wanted more than that, if I were being completely honest.
It was just then that the door opened and in walked Detroit and Everleigh with that silly little smush-faced pile of fur Pekingese dog of theirs.
“Oh, hey!” Everleigh, ever a ray of sunshine, beamed at Dylan. “Oh, sweet baby!” she added, spotting Sugar.
“Ev, this is Dylan and Sugar. Dylan, this is Everleigh. And Sugar, that is Betty,” I introduced as Betty came running over toward Sugar, letting out playful little yips.
“She’s great with other dogs if Sugar is,” Everleigh explained. “And she’s used to big dogs. Sway and Murphy have two big German Shepherds.”
“You wanna play?” Dylan asked Sugar, who was doing happy little taps with her front feet. “Okay. Go ahead,” she cooed at the dog as she unclasped her leash.
The two dogs took off like a shot, running around, dropping down on their front legs, asses in the air, then tearing across the common area.
“I brought steak,” Detroit declared.
“I never thought I’d say this, but I’m getting sick of steak,” Raff grumbled.
“Yeah, well, you need the iron, so deal,” Detroit shot back.
“Let me guess. You’re also going to force spinach down my throat too.”
“It’s in the bag.”
“I guess that’s better than that chard,” Raff said.
“You staying for dinner?” Slash asked.
It took Dylan a moment to realize he was speaking to her.
“Oh, uh—”
“I can cook it however you need for it to be healthy for you,” Detroit offered.
“That’s… that’s not really necessary. I just need to know what’s in everything so I can dose my insulin,” Dylan said.
“Wanna watch over my shoulder?” Detroit invited, waving to the kitchen.
“Sure. Fair warning, I’m not a cook.”
“Good thing I just expect you to keep me company then,” Detroit said with a shrug.
Dylan moved to follow him.
And I suddenly decided I really fucking needed to learn how to cook.