Wicked Legacy: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Rough Jesters MC Book 8) Page 4

  The bus shuddered to a stop and I climbed out of the seat, stepping onto the sidewalk in the now-steady rain. Dark was starting to fall, which meant the evil came out at night in the form of the cartel. Women and children were the most vulnerable at night, snatched off the street to face unspeakable horrors and certain death. Every day it seemed there was a female missing, the news channels finding it difficult to keep up with the numbers.

  The resistance had started to combat the kidnappings, but it would take a hell of a lot more than just them alone to make it stop. Even the police force was corrupted by the cartel, not bothering to do near enough to find the lost souls.

  Walking up the stairs to my apartment, I unlocked the door with my key and pushed it open, the smell of tacos heavy in the air. “Hello?”

  “In here.”

  I walked around the corner to the living room, finding my sister sitting on the couch, watching TV. Amelia was lying on the couch next to her, her little face relaxed as she slept. My heart lurched in my chest as I gazed upon her innocent face, knowing that there were many reasons why I was doing this.

  She was the main one. I wanted to get her out of this dangerous country, to somewhere we could live a good life.

  Falling into the nearby chair, I pushed my wet hair out of my face. “How was she tonight?”

  “She was fine,” Emily said, her voice hushed. “I think she took the bottle much better this time around.”

  I sighed. Well if that was the case, maybe I would have a better night’s sleep.

  “Where were you, Cora?”

  The tone in my sister’s voice told me she didn’t believe for one minute that I was out running errands. “I was doing something for the resistance.”

  “Like what?” she asked.

  I stared at her. “You don’t want to be caught up in this, Em.”

  “You shouldn’t be caught up in this, whatever it is,” she shot back, looking at her niece. “This little one will need her mother.”

  “I’m being cautious,” I grumbled.

  “Cautious is not good enough with these people,” Emily said in a tired voice. “I don’t want to come and identify your body in the morgue, Cora.”

  This was an argument we had often, which was why I tried not to talk about this with her at all. “All I did was talk to a guy tonight, Emily. There was no danger.”

  Well, maybe a little bit of danger, but I wasn’t going to tell her that.

  “A guy? What kind of guy?”

  Swallowing, I reached down to pull off my boots. “A guy that the resistance is interested in acquiring for help.”

  “Your face is flushed,” she accused as I put my boots aside. “You know this guy.”

  I pulled off my socks and stuffed them in the boots. “It was Amelia’s father.”

  “What?” Emily blurted out, clapping her hand over mouth as she glanced over at my sleeping baby. “Are you serious? Did you tell him about his daughter?”

  Rising from the chair, I walked barefoot into the kitchen, searching for something to drown my sorrows. My meeting with Clayton had left me feeling unnerved, the fluttering in my stomach not willing to settle.

  Emily followed me into the kitchen, propping her hip against the counter as I found a bottle of wine in the fridge, reaching into the cabinet for a glass. “Well?”

  I turned to face my sister. “Yes, I did, all right?”

  “And?”

  “Nothing,” I blurted out, the wine splashing into the glass. “He doesn’t believe he’s the father. End of story.”

  “Yeah, right,” Emily muttered. “Just like a man to deny that he is capable of procreating. Once he sees her, he will know.”

  I took a shaky sip of the wine. “I’m not sure I want him to see her.”

  Emily’s eyes widened. “Come on, really? What if he’s loaded and can support you both so you can stop pretending to be some sort of spy? Think about Amelia.”

  I was thinking about Amelia. While I wasn’t scared of Clayton, I didn’t know what his background was or if he was a decent guy. He was a biker and could be one of those guys that would take full advantage of his parental rights, taking my daughter away from me.

  Or he could put her in certain danger. No, I wasn’t so sure if I wanted him to meet his daughter under those circumstances. “I don’t know if I can trust him, but it’s not going to stop me from continuing my work with Siren, Emily.”

  Emily rolled her eyes. “I really wish you would go to the police about Red. Just think of the charges you could press, which you should have pressed a year ago.”

  “He’s got ties with the police,” I said evenly, remembering the money that had gone into the hands of the chief of police more than once in my presence. That was why the police overlooked the bar and all its activity, including selling to minors and lacking the necessary permits for liquor.

  Not to mention the fentanyl going out of the building now. No, they would laugh me out of the station and then tell Red, who would make my life a living hell, more so than he already had.

  Emily laid her hand on top of mine, her sparkly nails looking foreign next to mine, always bitten down to the quick. “I want you to start everything over, little sister. You deserve a better life than this. Amelia deserves more. If this guy is not the one to do so, then you should be. You’re a mother now, Cora. That trumps anything.”

  I knew that. It scared me to think that Amelia was dependent on my every move, that the wrong slip of information or the wrong look at Red could end my life and take her away from me. Before Clayton had slipped back into my life, I had felt alone.

  But now he was a means to an end. If whatever partnership he wanted could start with Siren and Voodoo, then Red would go down and I would be free; free of this resistance and free of him.

  I needed for this to work with Clayton. I needed for them all to take down the cartel, starting with my boss. The moment Red was snuffed out was the moment I would take Amelia and my sister, and we would run across the border and never look back on our time in Mexico.

  If Clayton chose to follow us, I didn’t care. I just wanted to be done with my time with Red.

  So I placed my other hand over my sister’s, giving her a faint smile. She had been there for everything: for Amelia’s birth, for her first diaper change. She was always there whenever I needed her, like when Amelia ran her first fever and we couldn’t figure out how to use the thermometer.

  She had been there when the tears had refused to dry up, when I thought my life was over and that I wouldn’t be able to take care of myself and a kid.

  Emily had been there for it all and I wanted to give her a better life, which I could do once this job was done. “I love you,” I said softly. “I’m trying to do this for all of us. I wish you could understand that.”

  Her expression softened. “But you could be killed, Cora.”

  “I won’t be,” I interrupted her, giving her hand a squeeze. “Trust me.”

  She swallowed. “Can you trust him?”

  Could I trust Clayton? One, I didn’t know him, so that question was already up in the air. Two, I knew he wasn’t working for the cartel, which gave him a check mark in the ‘good’ column. Three, I had his child, and no matter how much he was denying that fact, I imagined there was lingering doubt in the back of his mind that it could be the case.

  A man who looked like Clayton couldn’t be lacking in the bedroom department. “I think I can,” I finally said.

  Emily eyed me. “For you and Amelia’s sake, I hope so.”

  It wasn’t until I was in my bed, Amelia’s little body snuggled in her crib next to my bed, that I thought about Clayton again. My veins were humming with the wine I had consumed, but nowhere near enough for me to forget about the events of the day. Clayton hadn’t been a person I had thought about often since our night together, and once I found out that I was pregnant, I really hadn’t thought about him at all.

  But seeing him today had brought up all sorts of thoughts. No
w, coupled with Emily’s questions, I really didn’t know what to do about him being able to see Amelia, or the fact that he was my child’s father. We were inexplicably tied together for the rest of our lives, whether he believed he was her father or not.

  Even if he didn’t want anything to do with her now, there would come a time when she was older and might attempt to seek him out herself and he would be forced to face the fact that he had missed out on her life.

  I really didn’t want that to be the case. Even though I knew nothing about him, I felt like he wasn’t a bad guy.

  Maybe a little scary, but not a bad guy.

  Rolling over to my side, I watched Amelia’s little chest rise and fall in the dim light of the bedroom. That was my whole world in that crib and whatever I did from the first moment I gazed on her face was for her. Clayton was part of that decision. The moment I saw him I could have backed out of my agreement with the resistance, not getting involved with him and further complicating things.

  But that would mean the cartel would win and I couldn’t let that happen. I wasn’t just fighting for myself and my family; I was fighting for all those who had been affected by the cartel, all those that had suffered unnecessarily.

  I could be a means to the end.

  Closing my eyes, I tried not to picture the biker, the way his hand had rubbed over mine after I had punched him. His touch had been so gentle, so surprising that I had nearly thrown myself at him.

  I couldn’t let him that close again. I wasn’t looking for someone to anchor me, nor did I need someone to warm my bed. What I needed was for everything to go according to plan, and the day I could leave this country forever couldn’t come soon enough.

  Siren and Voodoo had been complacent when I had told them that Clayton would be in touch, which made me wonder if this was going to work at all.

  It had to. Red had to go down for his involvement with the cartel, effectively cutting off the vein that fed the evilness in this country.

  Then I would figure out whether or not Clayton deserved to be in his daughter’s life.

  Or if I wanted him to be in her life. It would be my choice until Amelia was old enough to make her own decision.

  But if I did allow him into her life, he didn’t just bring himself. He brought whatever he was involved in, the danger that could threaten our very existence.

  It wasn’t going to be an easy decision.

  Chapter 6

  Halftrack

  I walked into the Jesters’ clubhouse, nodding to those that were milling around the main room. It had taken me three days to get across the border instead of the usual few hours, attempting not to draw attention to myself. That had lasted only two of the three days, getting into one skirmish with a group of Aztecas that were hell-bent on taking my bike.

  I had killed them all, but not without taking a knife to the forearm that was still hurting like hell.

  But now, I was home, even if it was temporary.

  Ignoring the bar, I walked back to the room that the Jesters used as a council room of sorts, finding Chains, Widow, and the Castillo chief of police in attendance. Alisha Poole was now married to a former Jesters’ council member and while that normally did not mesh well, she had proved to be a formidable police chief who was fair in her judgment.

  That and we tried to stay out of her direct path.

  Chains acknowledged me first. “Halftrack.”

  “Chains,” I replied, dipping my head before falling into one of the open seats at the table. “I trust you got my text?”

  He nodded. “You made contact with Siren and Voodoo.”

  “Through an intermediary,” I reminded him as Widow sat up straighter in her chair. I knew there were still hurt feelings between her and her former road captain and didn’t want to give her false hope that I had actually seen Siren in person. “I passed along the information.”

  “Good,” Chains said, crossing his arms over his chest.

  “There’s more,” I said, catching all their attention. “The intermediary is currently a spy for the resistance. Her boss is working with the cartel, pushing shipments of fentanyl over the border. She’s been passing along the information to Siren and Voodoo in an attempt to stop the shipments. “

  “That’s perfect,” Widow announced, a grin on her face. “We can hit those shipments.”

  “Or we can,” Alisha reminded her. “After all, I don’t pay my guys to just sit around and write parking tickets.”

  Widow eyed the chief of police. “We can do it without all the red tape you have to go through, Alisha, and you know it.”

  “Maybe,” Alisha said with a wry grin. “But we can do it all proper-like and the cartel members won’t end up dead.”

  The two women glared at each other and I shook my head, wondering how the hell we managed to keep the peace between the club and the police department anyway.

  “Ladies,” Chains muttered. “Put your damn claws away. This is a partnership, remember? Not a competition.”

  Widow sniffed, clearly still at odds with the other woman. “Who is this boss and where can we find him?”

  “He goes by Red,” I offered up, not able to give much more than that.

  Alisha’s eyes widened. “Did you say Red?”

  “Yeah,” I said slowly. “Why?”

  Alisha swore, her fighting with Widow momentarily forgotten. “If it is the same Red I know, he’s not someone that will be able to be taken down lightly. I tracked him once when I was with the ATF, but his ties with the cartel run deep. He’s laundering money for them, not just drugs, and no telling what else we haven’t caught.”

  Well, shit. It seemed that Cora was in a bad way with her boss, a dangerous way. Something passed through me and I fought the urge to head back across the border to make sure she and the kid were safe. No wonder she was being so cautious.

  She had a hell of a lot to lose in the hands of a dangerous man. “There’s more,” I forced out, grinding my still-sore jaw, a constant reminder of her. “The intermediary has a kid.”

  “Good,” Widow said. “That will allow us to negotiate for more information with this person. I’m sure she would like asylum in the States.”

  Chains was eyeing me, clearly seeing that there was more to the story, so I decided to give him what he wanted. “She says the kid is mine.”

  A pin drop could have been heard in the room as all three stared at me, their mouths open. Yeah, it was the same way I had felt when Cora had first told me, too. “What?” I asked. “My shit does work, you know.”

  “A kid,” Widow whispered. “You have a kid, Halftrack.”

  I was still getting used to the idea myself. “Can we get back to the situation at hand?”

  “Yeah,” Alisha said, recovering from her shock. “We can. I want Red, and I don’t care that he’s in Mexico. Bringing him in would be a notch on my belt, a big one.”

  “In order for that to happen we need proof,” Chains said. “The shipments, the runners, whatever we can get our hands on to intercept those shipments and start putting pressure on this Red fellow.”

  “Can this woman be trusted?” Widow asked, looking all business.

  “I believe so,” I answered. “Siren and Voodoo seem to trust her, and I think we can do the same.” And it had nothing to do with the fact that she had potentially given birth to my kid.

  “Well then,” Alisha said. “We will need for her to give us any information she knows, as well as pass it along to the resistance. My jurisdiction doesn’t extend across the border.”

  “But the club’s does,” Chains stated, looking at his wife. “Remember that time we had the temporary club set up? We could do that again. Be closer to the action but lie low so that the cartel doesn’t get wind.”

  “Do you really think you can stay off their radar?” I asked. One or two crossing the border wasn’t something that anyone paid attention to, but moving an entire damn club? That was another discussion altogether.

  “We won’t take
everyone,” Chains continued, a light appearing in his eyes. “Just a few, namely the council members. Everyone will go at different times and by different routes. This club will remain intact and functioning while we are gone.”

  “It could work,” Widow said after a moment. “But we will have to be careful.”

  “Extremely careful,” Alisha added. “The moment the cartel finds out where you are, you are sitting ducks in its territory.”

  Chains grinned. “Yeah, well, it’s not anything we aren’t used to.”