Chasing Thunder Read online

  “If you want to talk about it,” he started, but she was quick to cut him off.

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” she snapped. “If you want a sob story, listen to talk radio.”

  He nodded and turned his attention back to the road. He knew that was all he was going to get from her. He had gone too far.

  In the end it didn’t matter. The news hit his police radio by the time they reached San Bernardino. The Hard Candy Killer had struck again.

  Tammy was dead.

  19. NOTHING ELSE MATTERS

  “Is it going to hurt?” Baby asked, her eyes big and blue.

  “Yep,” Jack chirped.

  Her eyes widened even more. Snake and Kid suppressed grins as they watched Jack set out his instruments for her very first tattoo. “Really?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he assured. “Worst pain you’ll ever experience in your whole life.” He gave her a wink and she playfully scowled at him. “I can take a mallet and knock you out now if you’d like.”

  “I can take it,” she promised.

  “Spoken like a true biker chick.” Jack grinned. “Maybe after this, you can take a ride with me on my bike. I call her the Serpent,” he added, flashing his tongue like a snake.

  Snake bent down and put his hand on Jack’s shoulder. “If you do, I’ll break every single bone in your body.”

  Jack laughed. “Big Daddy,” he said to Baby, motioning to Snake over his shoulder. She just grinned. That was fine by her. “All right, so what are we getting?”

  “Something visible,” Snake said for her, and she nodded.

  “On my wrist,” she said and offered her arm forward. “I want a lotus flower. Green and pink and yellow.”

  He nodded. “Lotus. A beautiful flower that grows out of muck. I like it.” He grinned. “Surprised you’re not getting a Wyndryder tattoo.”

  “Jack,” Snake cautioned, but Baby was intrigued.

  “What’s the Wyndryder tattoo?”

  Jack looked up at Snake, who glared down at him. Finally he rolled up his sleeve, baring his right bicep. It was the symbol of a snake circling a tornado within a diamond border. “It was our crest,” Snake explained softly. “‘Riding the Wind. Saddling the Storm.’”

  She glanced back to Jack. “Do you have it?”

  Jack shook his head. “No, you have to be a member of the Wyndryders to wear it.”

  She glanced to Kid, who answered her unspoken question with a shake of his head. “Who has them?” she asked Snake.

  Snake rolled down his sleeve. “There aren’t many of us left. Jimmy. Me.”

  “M.J.,” Jack supplied as he wiped her wrist clean and prepped the area. “That was her first tattoo.”

  “Yours, too,” Snake chuckled, and Jack laughed as they remembered how nervous he was to ink M.J.’s skin, especially with a tattoo that important. It was their calling card, their brand . . . their identity.

  “We’ve all come a long way from there, haven’t we?”

  Snake said nothing and Baby glanced at her bare wrist. “I want it.”

  Snake turned back to her. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Baby.”

  Her eyebrow arched. “My body, my choice, right?”

  Kid looked at his brother, who sighed. “She’s gonna kick my ass, you know that, right?” Jack laughed and Snake smirked at him. “Yours, too, Laughy Joe.”

  Baby shook her head. “No, she won’t.” She squared her shoulders. “I won’t let her.”

  All men present shared a chuckle. Snake placed his hands on her shoulders. “Spoken like a true Wyndryder,” he said. He then bared his arm so that Jack could reference the decades-old design and get to work.

  Kelly pulled to a stop on a side street near M.J.’s apartment, but she made no move to get out of the car. “I’m not going anywhere, Harris. You might as well keep driving.”

  “Some things can’t be unseen,” he cautioned. “You seeing that body won’t make her any less dead. Or you any more responsible.”

  “I’m seeing this through to the end,” she said in a low, lethal voice. “So take me with you or I’m walking, but I am going. And there isn’t one goddamn thing you can do about it.”

  With a sigh, he put the car in drive. Ten minutes later they walked into the morgue, where Richard and Landers stood around the covered body—what was left of it. A green Agent Llewellyn sat in one corner, a wet cloth covering his mouth as he tried not to vomit.

  “It’s one thing to read about it, huh?” she asked as she walked to the metal slab.

  “You need to leave, M.J. I don’t authorize this,” Richard told her.

  She glared at him. “Since when have I needed your authorization, Dick?”

  Without any preamble she pulled the sheet from the decimated corpse. She sucked in a breath as she studied every detail, from the missing hands and feet to the missing vagina and anus. Her hands gripped the sheet until they were practically purple as she eased it back up over the torso and head.

  Tammy’s lips were sewn shut, but inside her mouth was a tiny, white cardboard stick. The bastard had forced a sucker into her mouth, and M.J. knew without any doubt that it was green.

  She looked at Kelly before she turned and headed toward the door. Her eyes were bloodshot and glassy as she turned back to the room full of men. “Make sure they ID her,” she said in a voice that trembled with her rage. “She wasn’t a Jane Doe. Her name was Tammy. And she wasn’t just some faceless collection of body parts. She was a person. She was a child,” she added, and her voice cracked as her throat closed. She slammed her fist into the wall, leaving a sizable hole in the plywood before she stalked from the room.

  Kelly chased after her, catching up with her by the water cooler in the hallway. “Hey,” he said. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she snapped. “All my parts are in the right places.”

  He lifted his hand to touch her arm, but dropped it helplessly. “Let me take you home.”

  Tears she didn’t want to shed found their way out. “And where’s that?” she challenged.

  Kelly didn’t know what to say. He knew that she was still reeling from their trip to Vegas, and likely from all the memories that had surely bubbled to the surface of the day her mother died. And now, to see this? He couldn’t even imagine.

  Agent Llewellyn joined them in the hall, holding onto the wall to steady himself. M.J. turned away. “You okay?” Kelly asked the agent.

  He nodded, holding the cloth to his mouth. “You were right,” he said to M.J. “It’s a lot different than reading about it.”

  She turned on the agent. “So you’re the expert. Tell me something I should know about this killer.”

  He looked just as helpless as Kelly. Finally he eased down into one of the chairs along the wall. With a shrug he said, “He punished her. She was blonde and pretty and perfect until she was defiled by sex. So he removes anything that might have been corrupted. Like cutting out a cancer.”

  “What about the sucker?” she challenged. “That’s new, right?”

  He nodded. “It’s clear our perp is getting off on his newfound fame. The Hard Candy Killer is a ‘Prophet of Judgment and Death.’ He’s going to make the crime scenes more elaborate, and hopefully take more chances. Then we’ll catch him,” he promised M.J.

  She shook her head. “I can’t wait that long.” She turned to leave. Kelly shared a glance with Llewellyn before he followed.

  Kid was listening to music in his headphones when he saw the silk poster that hung over his window move and a darkened figure slide through the narrow opening. He was out of his bed in an instant, with the nunchuks that he kept under his pillow clutched tightly in his hand. M.J. held up her hands and indicated a time-out, and Kid fell back against the bed.

  “Jesus Christ, M.J. You gave me a fucking heart attack.”

  “Sorry,” she said, with enough decency to look chagrined.

  “What are you doing, crawling through the window?”

  She sat in t
he hanging Papasan chair next to his entertainment center. “Moonlighting. I actually meant to hit the house next door. Just your friendly neighborhood cat burglar.”

  “M.J.,” he admonished.

  “I gotta lay low for a while, Kid,” she answered honestly.

  He nodded. “I heard about the latest victim,” he said, and she looked away. “What can I do?”

  She rose from the chair to join him on the bed. “I’m so glad you asked.” She withdrew Baby’s wallet from her pocket. “I found this. It’s Baby’s. I want you to find out what you can so we can get her the hell out of here before this psycho finds her.”

  Kid looked down at the wallet. In it were all the answers to the questions he had, which Baby might not ever give him. With a few keystrokes he could uncover her entire life, from the hospital where she was born to her latest test scores from school. And he was good enough that he could dig even deeper and maybe piece together why she left.

  He shook his head and looked away without taking the wallet. “I can’t do that,” he said quietly.

  “Of course you can,” she cajoled. “If anyone can, you can.”

  His eyes met hers. “Fine. Let me be more specific. I won’t do that.”

  Her brow furrowed. He had never turned down a request before. “Why not?”

  “Because I want her to tell me, okay?” He sighed as he rose from the bed. “I want her to trust me with her story. With her life.”

  M.J. tried not to let her frustration show. “Do you have any idea how locked up that girl is? You could wait forever.”

  Kid turned back to her. “Like ten years?” he asked pointedly.

  She stood as well. “We don’t have that long, Logan,” she said. Her use of his real name served two purposes. One, it alluded to the seriousness of their situation. Two, it treated him like a man, not their kid mascot. She held out the wallet again, but he shook his head. “We’ll keep her safe,” he promised. Both of them knew it was a crock of shit.

  She nodded and pocketed the wallet, then slipped out of his room into the hallway. She didn’t stop until she closed Snake’s bedroom door behind her. He was on the bed, the room darkened, illuminated only by the light coming from his open laptop. He was surprised to see her, but wore it well. “I didn’t expect to see you here,” he said as he closed the computer and set it aside.

  She said nothing as she crawled in bed next to him, right into those big, strong arms she had been missing all damned day. Her eyes shone bright with unshed tears as she glanced up at him. Wordlessly, he bent for a kiss.

  The minute his lips met hers, slowly, lovingly, the dam finally burst, and M.J. broke down in his arms. He held her tight, his lips in her hair, as they rode the storm together.

  It had been a risk to come back to his house, but she couldn’t have made it through this night without him. Her ghosts were threatening to catch up with her. She needed him to capture every tear with a kiss, to mend every hole with his love.

  As the sobs subsided, he gently rolled her onto her back. He brushed her coppery hair from her face. They said nothing, losing themselves in each other’s eyes. He kissed her softly and she responded. She curled her body around him and he held her tight. His fingers danced along her skin as she pulled away the clothes, leaving no barrier between them.

  His bronzed skin fit tight against hers, every muscle to every soft curve. She locked her legs around his waist and was rewarded with a deep groan. She ran her fingers through his thick, dark hair as he kissed her sensitive skin. His eyes were dark and cloudy as he stared down at her. So many things were left unspoken.

  Their bodies communicated for them as they joined together as one. She gasped as he filled her. When his head bent for another kiss, she wrapped her arms around his neck and held him tight. She clung to him. He was her lighthouse in the storm, and he always had been.

  Tears squeezed through her tightly shut eyes as he made love to her. He took his time, loving her slow and sure. By the time he took her over the edge, there was no doubt in her mind that this was her home. This was her life.

  Snake was her heart.

  And, if only in this moment, nothing else mattered.

  By the time the sun rose, however, other problems reared their ugly heads. M.J. nearly hit the ceiling when she saw Baby’s new tattoo. It was the Wyndryder insignia, and the snake wrapped around her slender forearm, exploding from the inside of her wrist as it struck outward from the twister. After the initial shock, she settled into quiet disapproval. But, like Snake, she couldn’t argue that what this girl wanted on her body trumped what she thought she should have on it. They were bikers. They believed in freedom and rebellion and rattling cages. She couldn’t begrudge this girl for being so receptive to that message, especially after all that she had been through.

  And it was clear by Baby’s steely spine that she was ready to defend this choice. Her blue eyes met M.J.’s with no apology. She’d figured out a lot about this new family in the short time she’d been a member of it. She wasn’t easily scared away by M.J.’s ominous mood, which could loom over everyone like a thunderhead. She knew what motivated and what drove her, and she’d be damned if she’d let her drive her away.

  They were a family now, whether M.J. liked it or not, and the tattoo on her wrist proved that.

  But M.J. opted not to pick that battle. Instead she waited until she was alone in the bedroom with Snake before she confronted him in a rage. “What the fuck were you thinking? Don’t you know you just marked that girl for certain death?”

  “It was what she wanted, M.J.,” Snake said softly. He didn’t want to ruin their reunion with another bitter fight.

  “You didn’t see that other girl,” M.J. told him. It still turned her stomach to think about it. “We have to protect her.”

  “And we will,” he promised. “She’s one of us now.”

  “And the whole fucking world knows it,” she spat.

  He was undaunted by her mood. He knew she was speaking out of fear. And why shouldn’t she? The details of what had been done to the last girl, the one she had so desperately tried to save, would make anyone’s blood run cold. He took her in his arms. “She just wants to be like you, babe,” he whispered against her hair.

  She chortled. “Her judgment is clearly compromised.”

  He pulled away slightly to look down into those eyes he loved so much. “She sees you and she sees strength. You saved her life, M.J. You’re her hero. Like Pops was to you.”

  She pulled away. “Please.”

  He turned her back around. “The only thing that girl wants in this world is to belong somewhere. I would think you of all people would understand that.”

  “She needs to go home,” M.J. reiterated. “She’s not safe here, Snake. I have to get her out of here so I can deal with Isbecky once and for all.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?” Snake asked in a low, controlled voice.

  “Exactly what you think it means,” she said, her eyes unwavering.

  He nodded. “I see. So last night was a goodbye fuck.”

  “Screw you,” she snapped.

  He grabbed his holster from the chair and slipped into his jacket. “You already did.” He turned on his heel and stormed out the door.

  20. WHO ARE YOU

  Baby was up on the ladder loading T-shirts on the higher shelves when a voice from below caught her attention. She glanced down. A beautiful man with long, silky black hair and a goatee stood smiling up at her.

  “I’m sorry, what?” she asked as she climbed down.

  He laughed. “I said that I’m looking for Cooper Scoggins. Do you know where I can find him?”

  Her brow furrowed as she stared at the striking man, whose dark eyes were naturally framed by thick, dark lashes, making it appear as if he wore eyeliner. “Who?”

  “Cooper Scoggins,” he repeated. “The mechanic.”

  “Oh, Snake,” she said as she put it together. She wasn’t used to anyone calling Snake by his given na
me. “He’s in back. I can go get him if you want.”

  The man offered a dazzling smile. “That’d be great. I’m Xavier. The new bartender at the Snake Pit.”

  He held out his hand, so she complied. “Baby. You don’t look old enough to tend bar,” she said with a teasing smile.

  “Just barely,” he agreed. “Twenty-one.” He looked her over. “Sixteen?”

  She shook her head. “Eighteen,” she lied easily.

  He spotted her tattoo. “Oh, I guess so, huh. Nice ink.”

  A blush crept up her cheeks. “Thanks. I’ll, uh, go get Snake.”

  He nodded and she brushed past him to head to the garage. She returned with Snake a few minutes later, and Xavier sent her a heart-stopping smile as he walked away with his new boss.

  “Who was that?” Kid asked as he joined her. His voice was small and tight.

  She waved it away. “Just the new bartender. No biggie.”

  “You should be careful,” he warned. “This world isn’t like your old world. You can’t trust just anyone here.”

  “I trusted you,” she pointed out.

  “Just . . . be careful,” he repeated.

  She grabbed his hand in hers. “I will,” she said, sealing her promise with a peck on his cheek before she climbed back up the ladder. Xavier stopped by her section before he left to thank her for being so helpful. She laughed as she reached the floor. “That’s my job,” she chirped happily.

  He spotted Kid watching them from his spot at the cash register. “I’d ask you for your number, but I’m afraid your boyfriend wouldn’t approve.”

  Again she laughed. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  “Oh?” Xavier said with an arched eyebrow.

  “I don’t really do . . . boyfriends,” she said.

  “Oh,” he said softly. His dark eyes were hopeful. “Friends, then,” he said, offering his hand.