11. Char
CHAR
I rushed away from the door, scooping my laptop up from the coffee table in the process. I brushed by the kitchen, snatching up my bedazzled tumbler filled with what was probably watered down Dr. Pepper at that point. I didn’t care, though. It was cold, and wet, and I needed it to help me focus.
What I did not need was to still be thinking about the way Gauge had looked at me.
Steady. Like he had nowhere else to be and had decided, without ceremony or explanation, that being on my doorstep was exactly where he belonged.
I shook it off. It was nothing. The man had come about a railing and said four words and left.
Four words was not a thing. Four words was not something to think about.
I needed to know everything about the Metal Reapers.
I settled my tumbler onto my nightstand and hopped into bed.
The only wall in the entire place separated my bedroom and bathroom from the rest of the studio apartment, and I was thankful for it.
I tucked myself beneath the comforter and propped myself up against the wall.
With my opened laptop in my hand, my fingers flew across the keyboard the second I opened up my internet browser.
I expected to find all sorts of things. Police reports. Articles. Blog posts. I mean, Miss Lilly made them seem as if they were a prominent fixture of this place. You know, despite the fact that I had lived there for three fucking years and hadn’t once heard of them.
But, no matter what keywords I Googled, nothing came up.
“What the hell?” I whispered.
My trembling hands created every single keyword combination known to man. Metal Reapers. Reapers Metal. Metal Reapers motorcycles. Motorcycle crew. Metal Reapers police reports. Police and Metal Reapers. Dallas Metal Reapers. Deacon motorcycle crew Metal Reapers.
The combinations continued until I was damn near cross-eyed, and not a shred of evidence of their existence popped up.
“Come on,” I said breathlessly as I reached for my drink, “there’s gotta be something out there.”
I ignored the watered down taste of my barbecue water—a nickname my mother had once given to my Dr. Pepper addiction—as I leaned back against the wall.
I closed my eyes, hoping that it might refresh my brain and reboot my focus.
There was no way in hell men like that skirted beneath something as imposing as news media.
I didn’t expect national headlines or anything, but no blog posts?
No scared little teenager tweeting about them from some bedroom corner?
No conspiracy theories on some old man’s blog out in the middle of nowhere?
The Weekly Layborn.
It was the only other place that I could think of that might have a mentioning of them somewhere.
It was the area’s local newspaper, but really it was just an overblown gossip column.
Miss Lilly was addicted to the damn thing.
She received a paper every week at her house and made sure the bar was stacked with them every week at the front door for people to pick up whenever they came in for a drink and some food.
It was my last shot at finding something, and I didn’t have much hope.
But, my fingers hadn’t given up yet.
“Come on,” I murmured as I pulled up their website, “please tell me someone had digitized your stuff.”
I had a great deal more success on their website, especially when I found a page where I could use keywords to search their archives.
Thank fuck, someone in this old school western knock-off town knew something about progressing with the times.
Typing in their names did the trick, and I found a picture of Gauge and Deacon standing outside of not one, but two other businesses in town that I recognized:
The mechanic shop on the other side of town, and the only other bar that rivaled our business.
Wait, they owned Lone Star?
“Jesus, you gotta quit living under a rock, girl,” I whispered to myself.
I scanned the articles, but nothing jumped out at me.
They were bland and plain. Exactly what you’d expect of articles announcing grand openings.
They were informative, sure. And it was clear that the writer of the articles thought of them as heroes.
Men, coming out of the woodwork and flushing the town with cash once more.
Buying up abandoned lots and placing businesses there that the town desperately needed.
I don’t think the town desperately needed a bike shop when absolutely no one except them rode motorcycles in the first place.
But, then again, I wasn’t the author of the article.
Still, I didn’t understand it. How the hell was there nothing on these guys when it was clear that they petrified everyone around them?
How had I never heard about them even though the entire town seemed to know who they were?
I mean, I’ve always been a hermit. Ever since my father went off to prison for beating my mother to death, at least. All I did was go to and from work, and it suited me just fine.
Unless I had to go to the grocery store.
Or, to the drug store. Or to the auto parts store down the road to get something to fix my rust-bucket of a car.
Hell, I didn’t even watch the news! My father had ruined that shit for me.
I mean, seeing your father’s face plastered all over the news while the entire world talked about all of the horrendous things he had done to me and Mom made me vow never to turn on a fucking television again.
It was why I didn’t own one. And sure, it wasn’t an exciting life.
But it was my life, and I enjoyed it. It suited me.
It kept me out of trouble, it kept my head down, and it kept me far away from anyone that could hurt me ever again.
And yet, as I continued typing in keywords, searching for more information on these men, I finally found the right combination.
The keyword string ‘motorcycle crew Metal Reapers info’ brought up an article entitled, Local Crew To Contract Services To Local Police.
I couldn’t click that link quickly enough.
“There it is,” I said as a grin spread across my face. “Come to Mama.”
I wiggled down into my covers as I drew my laptop closer to my face. I propped it up on my stomach before reaching for my drink, and I mindlessly wrapped my mouth around its purple straw. I dug myself into every word of that article. Five hundred of the most telling words on the planet.
It got juicier with every word I digested.
Axel, who was apparently the President of that crew at some point in time, had somehow struck a deal with the local police force over a decade ago.
He sported that same leather jacket the guys had been wearing when they came into the bar a week ago, and there was a nice picture of him shaking the hand of a man that was decked out in what looked like official police garb.
And when I read the small type beneath the picture, I sighed.
He was shaking hands with the town’s sheriff.
No wonder they think they’re important.
It wasn’t just who was in the picture, however.
It was their faces. Whoever this Axel guy was, his smile was big.
Broad. The picture was in black and white, and for some reason the man’s eyes looked almost…
familiar. As if I had gazed into them before or something.
But, it was the sheriff’s face that caught me off-guard.
The man looked terrified.
Behind his eyes, he hid his fear. His smile, never quite reaching his petrified eyes.
The sheriff looked toward the camera, but it almost looked as if he were begging for help.
Begging for anyone to step in and rip him away from the situation he had found himself in.
His smile was plastered-on, at best. It was the kind of smile Mom used to give me whenever I started crying because I heard Dad pulling into the driveway.
Something was very, very wrong with this crew.
And I owed it to the woman who gave me a second chance to get to the bottom of it.
Running had gotten me this far. Layborn was supposed to be the place where I finally stopped. And I wasn’t about to let a crew of leather-jacketed assholes take that from me without at least putting up a fight.
“I’m sorry, Miss Lilly,” I said as I closed my laptop, “but I can’t leave. Not just yet.”
None of it made any sense. As I drained the rest of my tumbler and set my laptop off to the side, I set my sights on the kitchen.
Why in the hell would the police force around here allow someone that frightens them to strike a deal for help?
It didn’t make any sense. Sure, our police force was small.
But, so was Layborn. Ten thousand people made up its populace, and that was on a good day.
So, what the hell did they need help for?
Layborn wasn’t a hub for anything. We didn’t contribute much in terms of commerce.
We were just a small, lazy-eyed town that almost felt removed from advanced society, in a way.
“It doesn’t make sense,” I whispered as I yanked my fridge open for more Dr. Pepper.
I should’ve known my evening wouldn’t be peaceful, however.
Knock knock knock.
The sound against my front door was strong, yet calm. Rhythmic. Patient. Not like the banging Dallas had beat down upon the wooden surface, and certainly not dead silent like Miss Lilly’s little knuckle patters.
Knock knock knock. “Char? You in?”
I froze at the sound of his voice. It wasn’t Dallas, that much I knew for certain.
“Who is it?” I called out.
“It’s Deacon. Can we talk?”
Deacon. That was his name. Wait, why the hell did he want to talk with me?
“About what?” I asked as I took a step toward the door from the kitchen.
“It might be easier for us to talk if you opened the door.”
“I don’t want you to come inside.”
“Then, I won’t.”
I found myself halfway to the door before I caught myself. “You should teach your other men that lesson.”
He paused, but only briefly. “I’ll make sure to have the conversation.”
And while I wasn’t sure what it was about his tone of voice that reassured me, but before I knew what the hell I was doing, I flipped the locks open and cracked the door.
“Yes?” I asked.
Deacon looked down at me with those haunting brown eyes of his and it clicked. Where I had seen those eyes before. The man in the picture shaking the sheriff’s hand had to be related to the man standing at my door. I mean, they were unmistakably related.
A family business. How quaint.
“What do you want?” I asked as I slid my stare down his body.
His stern features told me I was in for yet another wild ride. And yet, I felt heat pooling between my thighs as I stood there, drinking him in.
This wasn’t gonna end well for me.
Not by a fucking longshot.