Chapter 11 #2
“Shit,” I muttered, slamming the laptop shut so hard the screen rattled. “What the hell have I walked into?”
My pulse was hammering now, the tequila sour in the back of my throat.
I couldn’t sit here anymore. The walls were too close, the silence too loud, the what-ifs piling up like bad data.
I needed air. Real air. Santa Fe was safe enough at dusk, nightlife spilling out onto the sidewalks, music drifting from open doors.
I could walk, clear my head, maybe think straight for five damn minutes.
I tugged on a pair of sneakers, yanked my damp hair up under a faded ball cap, and grabbed a small baggie of catnip from the counter—just in case the little traitor decided to show himself tonight.
The door clicked shut behind me, and I headed down the stairs into the warm evening glow, the desert wind tugging at the hem of my tank top like it was trying to pull me somewhere I wasn’t ready to go.
The sun had slipped behind the mountains hours ago, leaving the sky a deep bruised purple that bled into the streetlights.
I kept walking anyway, sneakers scuffing the sidewalk, ball cap pulled low like that would somehow hide the mess in my head.
The desert night air was still warm, carrying the faint smell of mesquite and distant barbecue smoke, but it did nothing to loosen the knot in my chest.
I couldn’t stop replaying it all. That professor back in grad school—the one who’d pulled me aside after my thesis defense, eyes intense, promising me “real-world experience” on a cutting-edge groundwater project.
I thought it was my big break. Turns out it was just his excuse to fuck me in motel rooms between lectures while his fiancée planned their registry at Crate & Barrel.
I’d been so stupidly flattered, so convinced I was special, until the day she showed up at the lab with tears and a ring and the kind of rage that made me pack my shit and run three states away.
Fresh start, I’d told myself. New job. New town. New me.
Except the new me was currently dodging texts from a tattooed biker who’d gone from “angry one-night stress relief in the desert” to…
whatever the hell we were doing now. Mason.
The sidewalk kiss still lingered on my lips like a brand.
The way he’d growled about saving him a dance, the way his fists had clenched when I dropped the “date” bomb.
It wasn’t a relationship. We hadn’t even labeled it a fling.
It was just blurred lines and bad decisions and the kind of heat that made me forget I was supposed to be keeping my head down.
And Bandit—God, that furry little traitor.
I’d left catnip in my pocket like some pathetic talisman, but the apartment felt like a tomb without his chaos.
The job… Jesus. The job was the worst part.
Dr. Harlan’s scared face, the Oakley name popping up like a bad omen, Rylee’s husband tied to the family that was probably dumping chemicals into the aquifer while I stood there with dirt under my nails and a fat raise that suddenly felt like hush money.
It was all too much. Regan acting like we’d been ride-or-die since kindergarten when we’d literally just met through Tank’s fiancée.
The way she lit up my phone like I was already one of the girls.
I didn’t belong here. I didn’t belong anywhere.
Maybe I should just go back, grab Dolores the cactus, pack the duffel I’d kept half-ready since the professor disaster, and split again.
Hit the road before the Oakley thing blew up or Mason decided to push for more than blurry lines or the Royal Bastards decided I knew too much.
This wasn’t the fresh start I’d sold myself.
It was the same old trap with better scenery.
Headlights washed over me from behind, slow and deliberate.
A big-ass black SUV rolled up alongside the curb, engine purring like it was stalking prey.
My stomach dropped straight to my sneakers.
Oh shit. This is just what I need. Kidnapped and trafficked in New Mexico.
Perfect ending to a perfect week. I gripped the catnip baggie tighter, already calculating how fast I could sprint toward the nearest open bar when—
The passenger window rolled down and a wave of giggling, perfume, and tequila hit me like a glitter bomb.
Regan leaned across the console, grinning like a lunatic, a plastic cup of something pink sloshing in her hand. “Please, you’re being dramatic. Get in.”
Tina—Regan’s loud best friend I’d met once at the clubhouse—poked her head between the seats from the back. “No, it’s not the day for excuses, Sienna. Get. In.”
No choice. The back door flew open and five screeching girls spilled halfway out, all body glitter and smeared lipstick and enough cleavage to blind a man. They were drunk off their asses, giggling like hyenas, hands grabbing for me before I could even back up.
“What the fuck—body glitter? Really?” I yelped as they hauled me toward the open door.
“Hurry up before the men catch up to us!” one of them squealed, yanking my arm. “We kinda split on the prospect—the guy trying to patch in, you know, the apprentice wannabe? Left his ass at the gas station with a fake text from Tank. Move!”
Regan threw the SUV in park, hopped out, and bodily shoved me into the middle row like I was a reluctant suitcase. “Fuck, did you guys ditch the SIM cards from your phones? We left all our real ones back at the clubhouse. Burners only from here on out.”
“Yep, I’m on it,” Tina said, already waving a cheap flip phone. “We’ve got burners here. No tracking, no royal-bastard boyfriends crashing the party.”
They slammed the door behind me and the SUV peeled away from the curb before I could even get my seatbelt on.
I was sandwiched between two glitter-covered women who smelled like a candy factory had exploded in a liquor store.
One of them—some cousin of Regan’s, I think—grabbed my face with both hands and grinned inches from my nose.
“Don’t even try to run, girl. It’s her bachelorette and there’s strippers involved. Oh my God, our men are gonna kill us if they see another man’s dick or a woman in G-strings. But that’s the point!”
Regan caught my eye in the rearview mirror, laughing so hard she had to swipe at her mascara. “Told you— you needed this. Now sit back, drink this, and try not to look so much like we just kidnapped you.”
I took the plastic cup she passed back—something sweet and lethal—and stared at the chaos around me: body glitter on every surface, burner phones glowing, the prospect they’d ditched probably already calling Tank in a panic.
My escape plan, Dolores, the road out of town…
all of it dissolved under the thump of whatever bass-heavy playlist was blasting.
I took a long swallow, the tequila burning all the way down, and thought, Well, shit.
At least Bandit wasn’t here to judge me for it.
The Airbnb was tucked into a quiet cul-de-sac on the east side of Santa Fe, one of those beige stucco boxes that looked like every other house on the block.
Regan had booked it under her cousin’s credit card and some fake Airbnb account that Hacker supposedly couldn’t trace—at least not for the next forty-eight hours.
“Burner life, baby,” she’d announced when we pulled up, waving a key fob like it was contraband.
The girls cheered like we’d just robbed a bank.
I just sat there in the back seat, sticky with sweat and glitter that had migrated from their skin to mine, wondering how the hell I’d gone from walking off my problems to being kidnapped into a bachelorette party.
Inside it was chaos. The living room had been transformed into a shrine to bad decisions: penis-shaped straws floating in a punch bowl, inflatable cocks taped to the walls like party balloons, and enough body glitter on every surface that the tile floors looked like a disco ball had exploded.
The AC was fighting a losing battle against ten drunk women and the desert heat still radiating off the walls.
I was hot, sweaty, and irritated in a way that had nothing to do with the plastic dildos dangling from the ceiling fan.
My mind was still out in the scrub brush with those water samples, with Dr. Harlan’s scared face, with the Oakley name glowing on my laptop screen like a warning label.
I tried. I really did. I took the fruity drink someone shoved at me, laughed when they made me wear a sash that said “Maid of Dishonor (For Now),” and even danced a little when the playlist turned filthy.
But my head wasn’t in it. The serious shit—the kind that could get people killed—was sitting on my chest like a lead blanket, and no amount of penis straws was going to lift it.
Then the doorbell rang.
The girls shrieked like it was Christmas morning.
“Stripper time!” someone yelled. The door flew open and in walked the guy—tall, ripped, oiled up like a showroom car, wearing nothing but a G-string and a smile that screamed “I’ve done this a thousand times and I’m very, very gay.
” He started the routine, hips rolling, music thumping, and the girls lost their collective minds.
One of them—some cousin of Regan’s—pushed me forward like I was the guest of honor.
He dropped into a squat right in front of me, junk swinging two inches from my face, and gave me a wink that said relax, honey, this is just theater.
I didn’t think. I just shoved both hands against his chest—hard enough that he rocked back on his heels—and stood up so fast the room spun.
“I can’t,” I muttered. “Not tonight.”
The music kept thumping. The girls stared. Then the snickering started.
“Dude, it’s a bachelorette party,” Tina drawled from the couch, drink sloshing. “Who invited the crasher?”
“Uptight scientist in the house,” another one laughed, not even trying to be quiet. “Bet she’s never seen a dick that wasn’t in a textbook.”
I didn’t wait for the rest. I shoved past the stripper, past the inflatable cocks, past the glitter and the giggles, and stalked straight out the back slider into the tiny fenced yard.
The night air hit me like a slap—still warm, still carrying that faint creosote smell—but at least it was quiet.
I dropped onto the concrete step, head in my hands, elbows on my knees, and tried to breathe through the knot in my throat.
Bandit. Mason. The aquifer. The Oakleys.
The raise that felt like blood money now.
It was all too much, and I was drowning in the middle of a party that wasn’t mine.
The slider opened behind me a minute later. Soft footsteps. I didn’t look up.
Regan lowered herself onto the step beside me, her shoulder brushing mine. She smelled like tequila and vanilla body spray. “So… you know what’s going on?” she asked, voice softer than I’d ever heard it. “I’m a good listener. Promise.”
I laughed once, bitter. “I can’t talk about it, Regan. It could get people killed. Like, actually killed.”
She quirked a brow, the fairy lights from inside catching the edge of her smirk. “Did you not know we’re in a motorcycle club? Do you know I’ve been burying shit since I was born? Burying big things. The kind that make the evening news look like a bedtime story.”
I lifted my head and looked at her then. Really looked. The desert wind tugged at her hair, and for the first time I saw the steel underneath all the chaos and the fairy-tale weddings and the texts that never stopped.
“You’re from here,” I said slowly. “Born here, right? Your family lives here?”
“My nieces and nephew are blood in this land,” she answered, voice low and steady. “The blood of our ancestors is in this land. Whatever it is, Sienna, it’s my problem too now.”
I swallowed hard. My hands were shaking.
“I need to be able to trust you to keep your mouth shut on this. Like, vault-level shut. I’ve got a big problem I’m trying to solve.
The kind that makes me want to pack Dolores the cactus, grab my shit, and split like the last scientist did. The reason that job was even open.”
She didn’t interrupt. Just waited, eyes locked on mine.
So I told her everything.
The water samples. The industrial solvents and heavy metals that didn’t belong anywhere near the aquifer.
Dr. Harlan snatching the cooler and telling me to keep it out of the database.
The tire tracks I’d found that didn’t match any official vehicles.
The way he’d said people get shot over shit like this.
The Oakley Company. The clean-cut dentist from the martini bar—the one with his arm around Mason’s ex—being tied straight to the family that owned half the land up there.
The raise that now felt like hush money.
The whistleblower-level nightmare I’d walked into thinking it was just a fresh start.
When I finished, my voice was raw. The yard was quiet except for the distant bass leaking from the house and the chirp of some night insect in the scrub.
Regan sat there for a long second, wheels turning so hard I could almost hear them. Then she let out a slow breath and grinned—sharp, dangerous, the kind of grin that made me wonder if I’d just made the biggest mistake of my life or the best one.
“I’m glad you told me this,” she said. “I’m glad you came to me with this.
We will figure it out. I’m definitely running for mayor now.
‘Cause as mayor? Maybe I can fix this shit. Stop the corruption at the source. Use the MC boys to go after the Oakleys where it hurts. No one—no one—is poisoning my baby’s drinking water.
Mine. My family’s. This is fuckin’ bullshit. ”
My stomach dropped. “But don’t do anything crazy, Regan. Please. I can’t have you do anything crazy or we could all get killed. I could get killed. I didn’t sign up for this. I wanted a new life, but I didn’t want to walk into a frickin’ true-crime episode.”
She bumped my shoulder with hers, the grin never fading.
“Too late, babe. You’re already in it. But you’re not in it alone anymore.
Now come back inside before those drunks decide to send the stripper out here to cheer you up.
We’ve got a wedding to survive first… and then we’re burning some rich assholes to the ground. ”
I stared at her, heart hammering, the desert night suddenly feeling a whole lot smaller.
And for the first time since I’d slammed that laptop shut, I didn’t feel quite so alone in the mess. Terrified? Yeah. But not alone.