Biker Chicks: Volume 2 Page 4

  My Harley was parked just inside the front door, engine compartment over the linoleum in case of a drip or two. I hadn’t wanted her to come back and try messing with it. Then I really would have to shoot her, and I didn’t want that. Shit had gotten messy enough.

  Giselle’s bloody knife sat on the kitchen table in a plastic bag; I’d been careful not to touch it with bare hands. I’d also left all the blood on the floor. Police might need to photograph it. If Jake chose to call them, that is.

  He’d been silent and withdrawn while I dealt with the aftermath, and I let him stay that way. I didn’t need to ask him why calling the cops was a matter of debate, why he’d kept putting up with her shit; I knew the answers because I’d been where he’d been, felt the sting of insult when somebody asked a question which started with why don’t you just. Abuse ran on its own twisted brand of logic, one that only made sense to people who’d been through it.

  Everybody else only thought they understood.

  “So,” he said, “I guess that’s it.”

  I didn’t reply.

  “Now she’s going to go and tell everyone I messed up her face, and I get to take an ass-beating from the first wanna-be Galahad she comes across.” He smirked. There was no humor to it. “I appreciate what you did, Kestrel, really I do...but I hope you understand it doesn’t solve shit.”

  I stayed silent. I could sense a rant coming, a head of steam which needed to be let out.

  “People don’t get it,” he said, staring down at the bloodstain on his jeans. “They say ‘man up’ or ‘handle your shit’....yeah okay, and do what exactly? Hit her back?” He snickered. “Yeah, because a night in jail will totally solve all my fucking problems.” Another humorless laugh. I could hear the bitter anger it covered.

  “And the cops? Oh they’re a big help. I called them once...they kept asking me if I’d put hands on her, never once asked how my nose got bloodied. The next thing I knew I was on my way to jail. Cost me five grand I didn’t fucking have.”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “People say, ‘leave her’. Well I did...now what? Get a restraining order? Yeah, trust the people who put me in cuffs for not wanting to be whacked with a broomstick to protect me...great fucking plan.”

  Jake slumped in his chair. “It was the same story when I was a security guard...a girl gets catcalled at and I’d have to bounce the guy. Some sloppy-drunk cougar grabs my dick while I’m putting her in a cab, and I get told to laugh it off.”

  He held up his bandaged hand. “What about this? Am I supposed to laugh this off too? Is this a fucking joke?” His anger was naked, unmasked. “Because I don’t think it’s funny, Kestrel. I don’t think it’s funny at all.”

  “Me either,” I said.

  He shook his head. “The worst part? There are a lot of guys who think she-done-me-wrong is reason enough to act like a douchebag. You meet a lot of those, working in a bar.” His eyes found mine, and I winced at what was in them. “I don’t want to be that guy, Kestrel...but Jesus, at times like this it’s real fucking tempting, y’know?”

  “So why don’t you?”

  “I don’t want to be that guy,” he said.

  “Yeah, but why?”

  He shrugged. “Giselle’s that girl.”

  I reached over and squeezed his uninjured hand. “Thanks.”

  “So...what now?”

  I ran a finger along his cheek. “The way I see it you’ve got a couple of choices. You can let her go to the police or you can call them yourself.”

  “I already said why that’s not going to work.”

  I smiled at him. “Things are different this time. You’ve got something you didn’t have before.”

  “What’s that?”

  I hooked a thumb at myself. “A witness.”

  He pointed at my bruised left hand. “You do realize they might arrest you, right?”

  “I might not wear underwear,” I said, “but I do own some big-girl panties.”

  He blinked in surprise, obviously unsure of what to say, and I could read his face. Are you actually trying to help me?

  “I made this my business,” I said. “Business isn’t done yet.”

  There was a long moment where neither of us spoke. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “I don’t want to do this,” he said. “Giselle...she needs something other than jail.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure she does.” I stood up and put my hands on his shoulders, made sure I had his eyes. “Can you give it to her?”

  Another long silence, one where Jake’s face took on a form of sadness most people never had the misfortune to experience. The hardest part of playing for stakes was recognizing when you couldn’t win.

  “I guess not,” he said.

  I waited while he worked the facts out for himself. He had to.

  Jake picked up his cell phone, punched three numbers and waited. “Police,” he said. There was another pause, then some tinny babble from the other end.

  “I want to report an assault,” he said.

  I squeezed his shoulder, and prepared myself for the worst. Now the cops would come...and I’d been the one to draw blood.

  VII: Can’t You See

  My palms sweated while the patrolwoman ran my driver’s license. I’d paid a lot of money for it, but I’d yet to find out if I’d paid enough.

  Dealing with cops was always a nerve-wracking nightmare for me. My mother had raised me to fear the system and that ran bone-deep, deep enough that even though I could have registered myself I’d gone the other way instead. Over the years I’d taken all the steps I could think of to make sure officials never looked too closely at me; my fringed leathers were expensive custom work, not done in the style of an outlaw biker. I kept my Harley spotless and my riding well within the law. If I did have to talk to cops I was all smiles and ditzy giggles. Taken in sum I came off as a rich hippie chick who liked to ride, and that’s what the cops saw when I interacted with them. I did one other important thing, which was never, ever go near them on my own steam.

  A rule I’d just broken.

  Two uniformed officers had answered Jake’s call. Before they’d arrived we’d gotten our story straight, which amounted to us editing out the part where I’d stuffed a piece down Giselle’s throat, as well as to give my name as Jennifer Cartwright. He’d wanted to ask, but he hadn’t.

  They’d photographed the spattered blood and put the knife in an evidence bag, commending us for being careful to preserve it. Then we’d both answered ‘a few questions’ for three hours as the two cops separated us and did their best to poke a hole in our story.

  Giselle had already been found. Another citizen had seen her bawling in a gas station parking lot and phoned it in. Supposedly she was in cuffs...but then again, so was I and so was Jake. Blood had been spilled, and until the police got a handle on who did what we’d all stay that way. It was a question as to which story they would believe, a fact which in turn depended on my driver’s license checking out. If it didn’t, I was screwed. I hope you appreciate this, Jake.

  He stood twenty feet away in the apartment’s parking lot, eyes wary, face pale but composed. Even across the distance I could read his expression; it belonged on somebody heading for their execution. He was certain this wouldn’t work. I didn’t blame him.

  The patrolwoman pushed her radio aside and walked back over to me.

  “Okay, let’s go over this one more time. I want to make sure I have it straight.” She was mid-forties, stocky and graying, with medium-dark skin and a nose that made me think of hawks. Her name tag read JIMENEZ. “Ms. Plantard pounds on the door, you let her in, she tries to hit you and you knock her down.”

  “I didn’t let her in,” I said. “I opened the door to tell her to stop kicking it. Jake was worried she’d leave dents.”

  Jimenez nodded. “Noted.” In a self-defense plea, everything counted. I couldn’t appear to be the aggressor, not even a little bit. “Then she whips out a knife and cuts him, and you knock her down ag
ain.”

  “I didn’t want to get stabbed,” I said.

  “And that’s it?”

  “I walked her to her car,” I said, “to make sure she didn’t damage my bike.”

  “She claims you shoved a gun in her mouth, threatened to kill her.”

  I laughed. “That’s ridiculous. I don’t even own a gun. You can check my bike if you want.”

  My Colt was at the bottom of Jake’s sock drawer along with my holster, cleaning kit and spare bullets. Jimenez made a show of poking through my saddlebags and carryall; she looked in a way that told me she knew she wouldn’t find it. Afterwards she walked back over to me.

  “Turn around,” she said.

  “Am I being let go?”

  “I’m not in the habit of arresting victims of aggravated assault,” said Jimenez as she unlocked my cuffs. “Besides, Ms. Plantard also has assault on an officer to worry about.”

  “Wow, really?”

  Jimenez nodded. “She spat on the officer who tried to restrain her.”

  “Damn,” I said. Assault on an officer was a felony; Giselle was staring hard time in the face. Oops.

  “Nice to take a calling station off my beat’s list of problems,” she said.

  “Seems to me you could have solved this a lot sooner,” I said before I could stop myself.

  “Ma’am, to do my job I need one simple thing,” she said. “When I show up, the vic has to point a finger at somebody and say ‘they hurt me’...and they have to keep doing that until I find enough evidence to put the perp in a cell. If they don’t, I can’t serve and protect.”

  I glanced over to where Jake stood, rigid and nervous.

  “With domestics, there’s always a script,” she said. “With this one, it’s pretty simple...we get a call about a woman screaming bloody murder. We show up. He’s withdrawn, she’s hysterical. He’s got bruises, she doesn’t. We ask him where they came from and he tells us he tripped over something, or walked into a door or whatever.” A wry smirk. “It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to wonder why a guy who deals cards for a living is also clumsy enough to hurt himself twice a week. But he doesn’t speak up, so there’s only one thing I can do....write it up as a noise complaint so I don’t have to arrest him and leave. Wash, rinse, repeat.”

  “Here’s an idea,” I said. “Arrest her.”

  “If he says the bruise on his face came from walking into a door, I have to take him at his word.” She adjusted her service belt. “This is why cops say ‘thank you for your cooperation’...If the victim lies to protect their attacker, we can’t do a damn thing.”

  I didn’t like it, but I knew from experience she was right. I thought back to all the times I’d fed the cops a story to keep my old man Byrd out of cuffs. I’d done it for the same reason Jake had, done so for the same reason everyone else lied to the cops on somebody’s behalf.

  Nobody wanted to rat on a loved one...even when doing it was the smart answer.

  Jimenez turned and waved to her partner. “Take the cuffs off, Parker,” she called out. “We’re done here.”

  When the officer did, Jake rubbed at his wrists, face a mask of disbelief. Jimenez handed me back my driver’s license. “Like I said, glad to see this mess sort itself out.”

  “Thank you for your cooperation,” I said. She chuckled as I moved in Jake’s direction.

  “One more thing,” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Your driver’s license had a few irregularities.”

  I froze. Fuck.

  “Nothing serious, you understand...but stuff like that can make a cop suspicious at a traffic stop. When you get back to Ohio, you might want to look into it.” She smiled. “You know, like a good citizen should.”

  “I will,” I said. Should’ve paid more. “Do I need to stick around?”

  “Officially I’m supposed to tell you to,” she said. “You mentioned you were just passing through though.”

  “I am,” I said.

  “My advice? Keep going.” She tipped her hat before collecting her partner in by eye. I watched them both climb into their squad car and drive away. I’d just been handed one more reason to go.

  Jake walked over, his hands in his pockets, face tired and solemn. When I slid my arm around his waist, he smiled and ran his fingers through my hair. “Thanks,” he said.

  “No problem,” I said. More or less.

  “If you want to be on your way, I understand,” he said. “I’m really sorry about getting you mixed up in all this...Christ, all you wanted was a hookup.”

  I held him tighter. “Shit happens.”

  VIII: Scene of a Perfect Crime

  A half-hour later Jake and I sat at his kitchen table, sipping coffee. I’d helped him mop up the blood and otherwise set the kitchen back to rights. It was amazing, how much of a mess a fight could make.

  Jake was quiet and grim-faced; I wasn’t surprised. Most people didn’t know how it felt to finally get away, but I did. It was a weird blend of disbelief that it had happened and relief that it had, sprinkled with a case of nerves about what would come next. Every relationship left a hole behind when it ended, and with bad ones the hole was bigger, harder to fill.

  Hopefully Jake had gotten out before the hole had become too big to deal with. From the way he’d treated me so far, it seemed like a safe bet that it hadn’t. Time would tell.

  I buried a wince in a sip of coffee. I didn’t know why I was even thinking along those lines. In a couple of weeks I’d be on my way. That’s my man, I’d snarled at Giselle. What the hell was that about?

  Jake turned his empty mug around in a slow circle, eyes locked on it but not really seeing it.

  “How you holding up?”

  “Don’t know,” he said. “Not sure what I’m supposed to do now.”

  “Want my advice?”

  There was a long pause before he looked up, realizing that I actually did mean it as a question. “Sure.”

  “Give up on ‘supposed to’. It doesn’t exist.”

  A small smile. “Okay, then what does?”

  “What you want,” I said.

  Another long pause. “I...” he laughed. “I kinda feel like celebrating, honestly.”

  “I can think of a few ways to do that.”

  He glanced over, raised an eyebrow at me. I grinned back.

  “We were discussing something before we were so rudely interrupted,” I said with a grin. “Remember?”

  “Yeah.”

  A few minutes later we were between the sheets, his hands and lips gliding over my skin and leaving fire in their wake. His touch was slow, gentle with hesitancy and I matched the pace of my caresses to his. He was the one who needed to move on; I let him do it his way.

  In the warm dimness of Jake’s bedroom I caught that same mischievous light in his eyes that had first caught my attention at the poker table, burning brighter as he ran his tongue down between my breasts, along my stomach, diverting along my thigh, mouth nibbling at my ankle.

  “Tease,” I hissed.

  “That’s not teasing,” he whispered back. “Lie still.”

  He planted kisses along my leg, drew a spiral around my patch with his tongue while two fingers brushed my outer lips, moving with a slow deliberate pace that left me aching. The spiral drew tighter, culminating with a flick of his tongue against my clit, faster and faster...

  ...but right before the end he slowed, and started over.

  Again and again Jake brought me to the edge; again and again he paused, drawing the pleasure out until I didn’t have words for how badly I wanted the release, until I would have sold my soul for one more flick of his tongue. When he gave it my world exploded in white light, a bomb behind my eyes. It took a solid minute for my body to stop shuddering, another several before I could breathe properly. When I looked down, Jake had his chin resting on my hip, an impish smile on his face.

  “That’s teasing,” he said.

  “I...I have a rule,” I said after two trie
s, chest heaving. “If I can...feel it in my knees...it’s an orgasm.”

  “Where’d you feel that?”

  “Toes.” I pulled at his shoulders. “Now gimme.”

  “Yes ma’am,” he whispered back, reaching for the condoms on the nightstand.

  There was no teasing, not this time, just the slow firm strokes he had done before, pushing against me while his hands slid up under my back, holding me close. He didn’t last, but I didn’t blame him...and I didn’t need him to either, not with my body still spun up from his half-hour of delicious torture. He bit my neck when he came and I raked him with my nails, a cry of pain and pleasure sounding out from both of us. I held him tight, and he did the same to me.

  “I think this’ll be a fun couple of weeks,” he murmured, forehead against mine.

  “Won’t it just.”

  Jake brushed hair out of my eyes. “I can’t believe you’re sticking around.”

  “You fulfill the three requirements of a good fling,” I said. “One, you’re fun to be around. Two, you respect boundaries.” I ran my hands up his back, enjoying the feel of his arms around me.

  “And three?”

  I flexed my pelvic muscles; he gasped. “You give great dick.”

  “You’re shameless.”

  I grinned. “Shame is for people afraid to have fun.”

  We re-arranged ourselves to cuddle. While we did, the thought I’d had before Giselle had shown up came back, only stronger...it would indeed suck to leave Jake behind. That was the whole problem; the better it got, the more interesting he got, the more I invested in having him the more the thought of leaving became unpleasant. Staying wasn’t possible though. Such thoughts were a damper on the pleasure of his arms when he put them around me.

  I was able to fake being civilized for a short time, but it was tiring to do. Worse, there was always the chance that something would provoke me and I’d show the people around me my true colors. I was an alley cat, and the pampered house pets of law abiding society had a habit of making me want to pop my claws. Like Giselle, with her trauma-drama and her garbage mouth and her stupid slap-happy bullshit. I was lucky the cops had known she was off her nut, lucky that Jimenez had been willing to let me off the hook about my ID. I needed to move on before my luck ran out.