Wicked Legacy: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Rough Jesters MC Book 8) Page 2

  There was not going to be any reconnection, not any Prince Charming riding up on his motorcycle and saving me from my current life.

  I had to figure this out for myself.

  The nurse finally came in and handed me my paperwork, cutting off any future conversations with my sister about how I had screwed up my life. I knew she only did it because she cared, and it made me feel so bad that I had snapped at her because of her caring attitude.

  So, when we walked out into the bright sunshine of another great day, I linked arms with her. “Why don’t we get some of those tamales from the corner shop? My treat.”

  Emily let out a sigh. “I don’t know.”

  “Come on,” I said, squeezing her arm. “You know they are really good.”

  Emily chewed on her lower lip. “And really cheap. Don’t forget about our budget.”

  I grinned. “All the more reason to go then.” I had skipped breakfast this morning, seeing that there was only one bagel left in the bag and knowing that Emily loved them.

  “Fine,” she finally relented, squeezing my arm back. “But I have to be back at the hospital by two for my shift.”

  I looked down at my watch. “Then we have two hours to eat a lot of tamales.”

  “Cora Jones.”

  We both looked to our right to find a woman standing by a gleaming motorcycle, her sunglasses hiding her eyes. She didn’t look familiar at all. “Yes?”

  “Cora, really?” Emily hissed. “You shouldn’t have answered to your name like that.”

  I pulled my arm from hers. “Well if I hadn’t, you just told her who I was.”

  Emily made a sound as I walked over to the woman. “I’m Cora. And you are?”

  She gave me a tight smile. “My name is not important right now. The less you know, the better.”

  Okay, this was really, really strange. “What do you want?”

  “You work for the Drunken Worm, right?” she asked. “With Red O’Neil?”

  I slowly nodded, tamping down the fury and disgust that raged in my body every time I thought about him. “I do. Please tell me you are the feds that are about to throw his ass in jail or something.”

  “Not exactly,” she answered. “But I do think I can help you if you are willing to help us.”

  I looked around, not seeing anyone out of the ordinary, and definitely no one else that looked like her. “Us?”

  “Cora,” Emily said, tugging on my arm. “Come on. Let’s go. This sounds too weird.”

  “It does,” the woman stated, giving my sister a confirming nod. “But I promise you, it will be worth your while.” Her eyes then slid down to my stomach, where the baby protruded over the top of my pants. “Congratulations on your pregnancy. I imagine your paycheck at the bar will barely put a dent in everything you need for your bundle of joy.”

  She was right. I hated that she was right. “What are you offering?”

  The woman took a step closer, towering over me by a good half foot. “With one job, I can give you what you make in six months. If you do this job right, I can give you that money on a regular basis.”

  “Cora,” Emily said urgently. “This is dangerous.”

  I shook off her grasp, my heart hammering in my ears. If I did whatever she was asking, I wouldn’t have to work for Red for the rest of my life. I could get my own place and take care of my kid properly, without the aid of others.

  “Think about it,” the woman urged, her voice soft. “We need your help and are willing to give you what you need in return, Cora. Whenever you want out, we will make that happen and then you can go live your life with your child.”

  I looked over at Emily, who had a look of horror on her face as she saw the finality in mine. This was my ticket out. This was what I had been praying for—a way for me to get out of my situation with Red and to help take care of this baby who would need more than I could provide.

  She didn’t approve, but I couldn’t let this opportunity pass me by.

  Otherwise, I would be stuck in this life.

  Swallowing all the reasons I should walk away from her, I turned back to the woman. “What do I have to do?”

  The smile she returned told me I was going to find out quickly.

  Chapter 2

  Halftrack

  I walked down the street; the town was eerily silent given that it was two in the morning.

  I was exhausted, slightly lightheaded from the lack of food that I had consumed today.

  Well, it might have to do with the excess amount of alcohol I had replaced it with, but that was beside the point.

  The point was, I had spent the last four fucking hours trying to find any sign of the rogue CIA agent and his road captain accomplice, but with no luck. I had been sent to Mexico for one reason and one reason only: to track down former CIA agent Voodoo and his new lady love, Siren, and ask for their help.

  I didn’t expect a warm welcome when and if I found them. Voodoo had infiltrated the Jesters’ ranks but had been kept a secret by the Jesters’ president, Chains, and his wife, Widow, who just happened to be the Hell’s Bitches’ president. Both biker clubs had been working together since their reunion, attempting to take down the Mexican cartel.

  Lately though, the clubs were in a shitty way. After it was discovered that Voodoo was a fed, all hell broke loose and the clubs fell apart. Recently, I had helped Two Tone track down and destroy a rogue Jesters club under the command of a former Jester himself, but there was still discord in the clubs.

  And the cartel was running rampant while the clubs tried to sort it out.

  So that was why I was back here, in this town, trying to find the two people that were rumored to be leading a resistance against the cartel on this side of the border.

  Siren would likely shoot me on the spot. The former road captain for the Bitches was as tough as they came, and she wouldn’t like the fact that Chains had sent me to fetch them out of their little love nest in Mexico.

  That is, if I could find them.

  I had tried calling Siren from the number that Widow had provided, having no luck. The number was disconnected, not that I blamed Siren for doing so. The moment she had chosen Voodoo over the club was the moment that she had ceased to exist in Widow’s eyes and I knew that the Bitches’ president still had a sore spot for Siren walking out on her, therefore causing others, such as Mama Bear, to do the same. Mama Bear had been there since the inception of the club, and it was a complete shock that she had quit the club.

  I didn’t dare call Voodoo. Hell, if he wasn’t attached to Siren, I wouldn’t even be fooling with him.

  He was the reason the damn club was in such disarray.

  He was the reason that Chains didn’t have a fucking handle on his own men. Why Chains was even entertaining the idea of working with the former fed was beyond me.

  But we needed help. The rumors of Siren and Voodoo running a resistance against the cartel had sprouted up months ago and we had kept a close tab on their movements and on if they were making any headway with the cartel. No matter what they had done to the clubs, we all had the same agenda in mind.

  The cartel had to be destroyed, and what better way to do it than to meet the cartel on its own turf?

  The duo had gained some ground and rumors were rampant on how the cartel would start fighting back. So far, small towns like this had become a war zone, innocent lives slaughtered for the sake of pushing the cartel out of Mexico.

  I was here to find out exactly how they were doing it and that had been my only agenda until recently.

  Thrusting a hand through my hair, I turned the corner, finding myself on the same familiar route I had been on a few weeks ago, when a piece of information had rocked my world.

  Well, I wasn’t quite sure if the information was accurate at all, so I had pushed it into the recesses of my mind, concentrating on my task at hand.

  I couldn’t be a father.

  “Shit,” I whispered, my boots splashing in a puddle from the recent rain.
Had I spent a night with her? I thought I would have remembered her at least.

  Now it seemed that night, whenever it was, was going to be the start of the rest of my life.

  Hell. It was likely just a quick fuck. Why, I didn’t even remember anything about it now, much less remember anything that stood out from the weeks and months of bed hopping.

  Hey, I was a guy, and a guy on a mission with nothing going on had very little else to do but entertain himself.

  But I did want to find her again, especially since when I had seen her just a few weeks ago, she had told me she could give me what I wanted.

  Well, that and the fact that I had left behind a kid in my absence.

  A kid. I had always been careful in trying not to procreate, not wanting to bring a kid into such a shitty world with a shitty father to boot. I wasn’t the fatherly type, nor had I had the greatest role model either. I was a kid who had grown up along the Alabama shores, using the gulf as a means of escape when my old man decided that he needed to beat on someone.

  My ma, she was a tough broad and could take his hits, doling out some of her own. The cops knew our house, knew the backstory, and the entire town knew that I was just a poor by-product of a shitty relationship between them.

  So, I spent much of my childhood at the beach, watching the other normal families enjoy their time together and waiting on the moment that I could bail from my life, strike out on my own.

  That moment had come the day I turned eighteen and I hadn’t looked back since. Hell, I didn’t even know if my parents were still alive nor did I care.

  That was why I could not be a father. I didn’t even want a real relationship. If the ones around me were any indication, I’d rather stay single for the rest of my fucking life.

  Shaking my head clear of the sudden direction of my thoughts, I shoved my hands in my pockets. I didn’t want to dwell on the past.

  Hell, I didn’t want to think about the present either, but I had to.

  My cell phone buzzed, and I pulled it out of my back pocket, frowning when I saw an unknown number attached to a text message. The Jesters had resorted to burner phones recently, afraid that since the feds had been in our ranks, they were monitoring our contacts too. Some of us had carried them and while I had one in my other pocket, I had kept my personal cell phone, too.

  I had paid too damn much for it to begin with to just chuck it in a drawer somewhere. That and I hoped that Siren would recognize the number, maybe even pick it up out of the twenty times I had tried to call her disconnected number.

  I knew she wasn’t getting the calls, but hey, a guy could dream, right?

  Thumbing over the text, I saw the address of a location not far from where I was, with no other instructions. Someone wanted me to go to that address.

  Could it be who I was looking for?

  Or was I being set up? A snag of doubt entered my mind as I thought about how I was alone on this side of the border, with no club backing me up. The Jesters weren’t exactly welcome in the cartel’s territory and anyone could be trying to eliminate us from the picture.

  It could be Voodoo or Siren trying to get me off their tail, taking care of me so that they didn’t have to worry about being found out. While Siren had broken free of the club and said her goodbyes, Voodoo was still on the run from the feds.

  They could feel threatened by my snooping around, drawing attention to them.

  Or it could be that they wanted to talk. While I had been discreet, I had dropped hints to what I hoped were the right players to get word to them that I wanted a meeting.

  Maybe it had worked. Maybe I had pestered them enough to where they had to listen to me before they made any further decisions.

  After all, I wasn’t going away. Hell, I was hoping to flush them out.

  Feeling a spark of hope, I tucked the phone back in my pocket and started toward the address. This could be the break I was looking for.

  This could be the break that we all needed. I needed Siren and Voodoo’s location. I needed their help, mainly so that the clubs could fight back and try to pull their shit together. We would never be the same Rough Jesters again. There were too many fracture lines; too many men had died on either side or bailed out when the shit hit the fan.

  But there was still hope to win against the cartel.

  I finally reached the location, an old graveyard that was hidden by a large, mossy tree hanging over the weathered gravestones. The rickety iron fence was easy enough to scale and I walked down the path toward the large mausoleum in the back of the graveyard, one that was dedicated to some sort of Mexican hero from the past.

  As I rounded the side, I noted a person in the distance, features hidden by the building’s shadows. When she stepped out into the dying sunlight, I couldn’t help but shake my head.

  It was that girl again, the one that said I was her baby daddy. “You.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest, her long, dark hair swinging about her shoulders. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing,” I muttered, choosing to keep the distance between us. She didn’t look like she had given birth recently, her curvy frame filling out the T-shirt and jeans she was wearing. I tried to picture her in my mind, knowing that she was the type of woman I preferred to hook up with.

  I liked a woman with handles to grab.

  That and I was a boob man, no doubt about it. This chick had enough to go around.

  I felt my cock tighten and willed it down. Oh, hell no. I wouldn’t be repeating whatever performance we had together anytime soon. “How did you get my number?”

  “That’s not important,” she stated, her mouth in a straight line.

  I mimicked her stance. “Listen, I don’t know who you are, but you have the wrong guy about this whole kid thing.”

  Her features tightened. “You think I brought you here to talk about that?”

  I gave a little shrug. She didn’t look like a half-crazed woman, hell-bent on finding her kid’s father, but one could never be sure, I guess. “What else would we have to talk about?”

  Her eyes glimmered with anger. “I don’t need you. I just … it doesn’t matter.”

  Interesting. “Well, I don’t need you either, and I sure as hell don’t have time for this,” I bit out, dropping my arms. “Good luck.”

  “Wait!” she called out as I turned to go. “I—God, you are infuriating! Siren sent me.”

  Well, shit. I turned back, arching a brow. There could only be one way she knew that name, only one way that she could throw it out there like that and be ready for my questions to follow. “You’re shitting me.”

  She shook her head. “Siren and Voodoo said you are looking for them. Is that not true, or do I have the wrong guy?”

  Chapter 3

  Cora

  I was baiting him.

  I didn’t expect him to be all grateful that I had contacted him secretly, nor did I expect him to think that it was anything other than the fact that he had fathered my child.

  Truth was, I had another reason, a very important reason for doing so, no matter how much I really didn’t want to. When Siren had told me that the very same guy who had gotten me pregnant was a Jester biker, I couldn’t believe it.

  After all, we hadn’t done much talking the one night we had together.

  But I knew a heck of a lot more now. My life had changed for the better, and I wasn’t just talking about the blue-gray-eyed child that was in my life.

  There had been a time, right after Amelia was born, that I thought I couldn’t be a single parent. Many tears had been shed on my sister’s shoulder in those first few weeks, wondering what I had gotten myself into and if I was even worthy of having such a perfect little girl.

  The worries had finally faded and now I had a bouncing three-month-old whose smile kept me going when I got down and out about my life.

  God, she looked a lot like the man in front of me.

  He took a step forward, his stormy eyes focused on m
ine. “You know Siren.”

  “And Voodoo,” I threw in, just wanting to see his jaw clench. “They heard you were looking for them.” He hadn’t been discreet about it. Every bar and shopkeeper had reported back that some gruff-looking American with storm clouds for eyes had been asking about the two former club members.

  I just couldn’t believe he was back, clearly for a different reason this time, and now I was the middleman between them.

  If only I could remember his name. Wasn’t that horrible? I hadn’t done a lot of sleeping around in my life, but in my defense, it had been nearly a year since I had seen him and spent a few glorious hours in his arms. He had been a bar patron and I had gone home with him to escape a demeaning time with Red.