Rocco Read online

  Of course, there could have been any number of reasons, but on the outside, without knowing much of what had gone on or any of the evidence, it was nearly impossible to even begin to think about what might have really happened.

  Considering this town, any number of things could have been the truth.

  Devil Hills wasn’t exactly known for its family-friendly atmosphere, and there was certainly enough violence that went on in the streets on the daily. But still, most of that violence was geared toward those in gangs.

  There were plenty of biker gangs in the area, with one of the largest being centered right there in town. A lot of the cases I had dealt with through the years had something to do with those kinds of gangs and the violence that went along with them.

  But, to know that some man who appeared to have been randomly targeted while working a late night at his restaurant was something new for both of us. Well, unusual anyway. It wasn’t that it never happened, but it wasn’t normal. We both knew we were bound to see a lot of paperwork from it – even if I wasn’t the lawyer who got involved.

  “Well, do you think you’re going to get a call on that one?” Sarah asked as I thumbed through the discovery for the Anderson case.

  “Who knows,” I said with a shrug. “I’m sure we’re going to end up hearing about it through the office, but I’m not sure I want to get involved with this one. I’ve got enough on my plate already.”

  “I guess it depends on the pay,” she said with a smirk. “Or the glory that could come out of taking on the case. You know you’re bound to be asked to handle one side or the other, since you’re one of the top attorneys in town.”

  “No doubt about that,” I said with a nod. She was right. I was one of the top attorneys in the area, so I was likely going to be asked to get involved in some way. How? I wasn’t sure yet.

  I just knew it was only a matter of time before we heard more about it. And, I had to admit, I was a little curious.

  It wasn’t every day we dealt with something like this.

  Chapter 3

  Rocco

  There were a number of things I found to do with myself during the day, but there were plenty of times when I was more than happy to drift around the MC and see what the other men were doing.

  With so many diverse personalities within the club, there were generally a lot of options when it came to who I was going to spend the day with and what I was going to do with my time.

  Of course, I was always happy to help out anyone who needed it, but there were still things that I would rather do more than others. And, some of those things revolved around cars.

  I loved cars. I always had. Of course, being in a motorcycle club meant that I spent a lot more time with bikes than I did with cars. Most of what we did in the club revolved around our bikes, after all, and there were plenty of times when I would take the day to just help someone else get something done.

  It might be selling one of their bikes, buying a bike, or buying parts to a bike, even. I might be giving a ride to get a bike from another town. Needless to say, being in the MC as I was, a lot of my world revolved around bikes.

  But, whenever I got the chance to do something down at the shop with Harley, I was more than happy to take it.

  He fixed and modified bikes for a living, and I enjoyed spending time down at the shop and giving him a hand when I could. Of course, being in town as he was, there were a lot of muscle cars that came through needing modifications, as well, and he was the man for the job.

  Those were really the kinds of things I liked working on. Whenever I had the chance to lend a hand with the cars, I was down there. It felt good to be able to help him, and I enjoyed working on the vehicles that came through.

  Today, he was going to work on a 1969 Mustang that was in near-mint condition, and I was eager to lend a hand with the job. Of course, I wasn’t the only one who would be down there for the day. Along with for the ride were Roman, Ryder, and Ares.

  They were all just as big of fans of the muscle cars as the tricked out bikes that came through the shop, and they were all more than a little excited to see what Harley was going to do with the vehicle he had for the day.

  It belonged to one of the businessmen in town. The guy was a real prick, but he did have a nice car collection, so we were all pretty eager to see what was in store for this car today. The guy had more money than he knew what to do with, and he certainly dumped a lot of it into his collection.

  Of course, there weren’t any complaints from the boys down at the shop, and we were pretty glad to have the steady cash flow coming into the MC, as well. Without the money we were getting from the cocaine, it was nice to make money where we could.

  Of course, I let Jett and Draven worry about that more than I bothered with it myself. Jett being the president and Draven being the treasurer, they were the two who had to deal with it a lot more than the rest of us. But still, I knew it was a relief for both of them when they didn’t have to stress out so much about where we were going to get funding.

  We would pull through. We always pulled through in one way or another. That was just the way we did things. Still, if there was something any one of us could do that would make it easier on the club as a whole, I knew we would do it.

  The shop helped a lot. It was a way for us to get the money we needed, but not have to deal with the cops. At least, not much anyway. Since it was a shop that was owned by the MC, or rather largely run by the MC since the owner was a member, we were often under the scrutiny of the police.

  That didn’t bother Harley, however. He was most often on the up and up when he conducted his business, and he wasn’t afraid to have the authorities drop in randomly.

  After all, we were all used to the cops showing up at inconvenient times in our lives, and we all knew it was likely they were going to do it again, too. So, whenever we did deal with illegal substances, we were careful not to use them or keep them in plain sight.

  There was no need for the cops to know where they were, and no one in the club wanted to risk them coming up on us when we were right in the middle of taking care of something.

  But with the drugs out of the picture, we hardly ever thought about the cops coming down on us out of the blue. There was no reason for that to happen, and we could just focus on getting through our own business and taking care of our own problems.

  If there was one thing I upheld most of all about being in the MC, it was that we were to run our own show as much as possible. Things had always been that way for us, and I felt that was how it should be. The cops had their place in society, but as far as we were concerned, we weren’t part of society.

  We were our own society, and we did things our way.

  So, when the sound of sirens came blaring up the road, we couldn’t help but look at each other with slightly raised eyebrows. No one had been doing anything at all that day. No one down at the shop, anyway. We were all focused on helping out with the new car, and there wasn’t anything illegal about that.

  But, in an instant, the small group of us standing outside the garage was thrown into chaos as we were suddenly surrounded by a group of cops. Their weapons were drawn, and they shouted orders to us as soon as their doors were open.

  “Get on the ground!”

  “On the ground, now!”

  “Hands where I can see them!”

  “Let me see your hands! Show me your hands, now!”

  The orders were raining down on us faster than we were able to keep up with, and I was sure the shots would be fired. If there was one thing we avoided at all cost, it was getting into a shootout with the police. There was no reason for it, and we wanted to stay away from that sort of drama as much as possible.

  After all, we were doing fine on our own. It had been a while since and of us had wound up in jail, but from the looks of things, that was all about to change.

  Several of my partners were shouting to the police, asking what we were doing wrong and why they were coming down on u
s so hard. Of course, I knew it wasn’t really going to get us anywhere. It never did. We could shout and yell at them all we wanted, but once they were on top of us like that, the best way to get any information out of them at all was to get a lawyer involved.

  I did my best to look around and try to figure out what was going on, but it seemed Roman was the one they were after. It would make sense that of all of us Roman would be the one who would be most likely under their surveillance. Being the sergeant at arms as he was, he tended to be involved in a lot more of the violent side of things.

  But, as far as I knew, he hadn’t been involved in anything that would get the cops riled up, and it didn’t make any sense to me why they were taking him away in cuffs and leaving the rest of us.

  We had been doing the last several operations as groups. So, unless Roman had been involved in something that we weren’t aware of, it didn’t make any sense that he would be taken away without there being some sort of explanation that would keep the rest of us from fighting back.

  “Keep your head up and your mouth shut!” I yelled after Roman as they were putting him in the back of the cop car. “I’m going to talk to Jett and Draven and come for you! I’m going to be down there before dinner, don’t worry!”

  I knew if he was on his way down to the police station, they were going to find a way to keep him there. There was no doubt about that in my mind. Whatever he was being arrested for, that meant he was going to end up staying. And, I wasn’t going to leave him in there.

  No, whatever he had done, we were going to get to the bottom of it and get him out of there as soon as possible. I had a feeling it wasn’t anything, and this was a bullshit excuse to pick on the club for whatever reason the cops had to get us all worked up. But I wasn’t going to get into that with them – or anyone else for that matter.

  Right now, I couldn’t do anything to stop them, and I wasn’t going to sit and try to guess what Roman had done to piss off the authorities.

  At the end of the day, the result was the same: he was being carried off, and we were going to have to bail him out and figure out what was going on. He might need a lawyer, but they weren’t hard to get.

  All I knew was that first things were first. I had to get to Jett and tell him what happened, and then we were going to have to get a hold of Draven and look over the finances of the MC. We might not have a lot we could blow on something like this out of the blue right now, but we would likely be able to get enough to get him out at least.

  It would get paid back when he went to court, but that was all shit we could worry about later.

  Right now, I just wanted to get Roman out of those cuffs and have him brought back to the clubhouse so we could talk. There had to be an explanation for what was going on, and I wanted to know what it was.

  Hell, we didn’t have the time for this right now, and I wasn’t in the mood. It had been a long day, and I was looking forward to working on the car – not heading down to the police station and dealing with those assholes all afternoon. I would do it, sure, but I would rather not.

  But all Hell had just broken loose, and it was up to me to start fixing it. So, I might as well get a start on it now.

  The sooner I got bail money together, the sooner I could get him out of there and we could get back to the bar and talk.

  And, maybe then we could get some answers. I knew I was sure looking for some.

  Chapter 4

  Amelia

  “I don’t want to be dramatic or anything, but it just freaks me out to think how close you were to the scene of the crime. I mean, you might have been right next door when the man was being stabbed!” Sarah shook her head as she sipped on her drink.

  The thought gave me chills, even though I did my best to hide them.

  “I try not to think about it like that, but you’re right,” I admitted. We had a newspaper on the bar in front of us, both of us reading the latest coverage of the story. It had been in the paper that morning, but I had been too busy trying to catch up on work to have the time to read the latest in the paper.

  I tried to keep up with what was going on around town, but there were mornings when I had to deal with emails and case files more than I had the time to sit down and read the gossip columns.

  Not that this case was gossip, but still. I knew if I were to try to sit down and read it, then I was going to wind up getting sucked into what else was going on around town, and I just didn’t have the time to deal with it.

  I had to focus on what was going on with my cases first and foremost. I had a lot of people relying on me to get the best result possible for them, and I had to throw my heart and soul into my work if I was going to make that happen.

  Truth be told, there were a few more bleak cases on my docket than I would have preferred. But, I was tough, and I was a damn good lawyer. I knew if they stood a chance of getting what they wanted in court, then I was the one to make it happen for them.

  At least, I was going to do my very best.

  But, as my assistant and I were trying to relax a bit at a late lunch, it was hard for us not to talk about the attempted murder. It was nice to grab a drink to take the edge off the stress of the morning, but I had to be careful. The more I read about this case, the more agitated I became.

  The man who had been the victim of the crime was the owner of the very restaurant next to the one I had been dining at the night of the crime. It wasn’t entirely clear yet why he had been stabbed, but we did know that he was a wealthy businessman, and he didn’t have any friends in town.

  From the sounds of things, he was uptight, snobbish, and he liked to have things done his own way. With that in mind, it wasn’t entirely out of the question to think that he would be the target of a crime.

  “I would say it sounds like he had it coming to him,” Sarah said as she read on. “I mean, if you’ve got that kind of money and you’re going to flaunt it to the world, you’re going to have to be ready for the consequences, you know what I mean?”

  “Of course,” I said with a nod. “We all know that anyone in town would like to have that sort of money. But at the same time, to come at him when he was in his own restaurant and to try to kill him with a knife – that seems a little sloppy for someone just after his money.”

  “What do you mean?” Sarah asked, and I continued.

  “I mean, think about it. When we deal with these kinds of cases, the people who are after someone’s money usually come after them at home in bed. I would think if someone was trying to rob this guy, then they would have come for them when it was most likely he would have something of value on him,” I speculated.

  “But if he was at the restaurant, then maybe the person thought they were going to get him with the moneybags at the end of the shift or something,” Sarah offered, but I shook my head.

  “That’s a good thought, but I bet you if that was the case, the person would want to get the most out of the attack. If they were going to go for the money at the end of the shift, why not wait until they were dealing with an employee or someone who was far more likely to just give them the money and run? I mean, this person clearly wanted this man dead. It was deliberate, and it was done with purpose.” I glanced down at the paper as I spoke, and Sarah continued to read the article.

  “Well, he said something to the hospital that got one of the local MC guys arrested,” she said.

  “Oh?” I bristled at the thought of the MC, but I tried to play it off. Sarah was too busy reading the article to pay me any attention, and she didn’t notice.

  “It sounds like the guy was part of the Steel Wings. You and I were just talking about them the other day, weren’t we?” she asked.

  “I’m sure,” I drawled. I knew my words came out flatter than I would have liked. I didn’t want to talk about the MC, but I had to admit, I wasn’t surprised to learn the crime had been committed by a guy who was part of them.

  After all, the people who were part of those clubs weren’t anything but criminals an
d lowlifes. They would get what they wanted out of anyone they came into contact with, and then they would leave them for nothing.

  I had seen enough of what they could do, and I had dealt with them in the past. I didn’t want to go into it, but I knew they weren’t good people. But, the tone that I’d used was enough to catch the attention of Sarah, and she looked over at me with one eyebrow raised.

  “Have you had to deal with them before?” she asked, clearly interested. I brushed it off with a wave of my hand. I knew she was just curious, but I didn’t want to get into the details of the situation with her now.

  In my own mind, once someone was part of an MC like that, it told me everything I needed to know about them. But, I wasn’t going to go into that with her. We were at a bar, and that meant anyone could hear what we were talking about.

  As a lawyer, I did my best to stay as unbiased as possible when I was in public. At least, when I was on the job. Sure, I might be on lunch, and this might be a technically free moment for me, but I didn’t know who else was in the bar. I didn’t want to discuss things like that in a town so full of people who all but worshipped or idolized those who were in the MC.

  It's was yet another thing I didn’t understand about Devil Hills or the people in it. They had great respect for the Steel Wings MC, but it didn’t make any sense to me why they would. Sure, the members of the club would do things here and there that would help the people in town, but the good deeds seemed pretty few and far between to me.

  Considering the amount of violence the club brought to the streets of the town, and considering the fact the cops were always after them for one thing or another, or I was constantly dealing with some ripple effect of what they had done. I had to assume the place would be better off without them.

  Yet somehow, it was as if the people in town valued the members of the MC like a second police. It was hard for me to watch, knowing that the MC was notorious for breaking the law and living life by their own rules.