Get Hurt (DDMC, 2)

Chapter 1: Lili

War is coming.

All of Las Vegas is bracing for it but when is the question. 

For now, the Mishiev Bratva is minding their P’s and Q’s. The Desert Demons MC have been laying low. But the calm that has resided over the city for the past two months won’t last forever... 

At least, that’s what the anchorwoman on Channel 13 is dramatically saying. I tear my gaze from the closed caption and look around the Texas Roadhouse on E Craig Road. I’m at a booth in the back, my view of the street was nothing but traffic. The place was packed on this Friday noon hour, and I’d been sitting here like a woman whose date has dumped her. I check my phone, scowl down at it, then set it aside. Luke is late. Not that I had anything pressing I needed to attend to for the rest of day. And he knew it, too. It’s the principle of the thing. 

The music is loud and country, the voices all around me annoying as hell and piercing my eardrums into oblivion. I gnaw on the peanuts in the huge, metal bucket before me, annoyed that my ex-partner didn’t have the decency to show up on time. It was his day off for Christ sake. 

“Another?” my waiter—Billy—nervously asks.

I look at the tall, empty glass that once had cold water in it. “Sure,” I say, pushing the glass toward him. “And some more bread.”

He swallows, his bird-like neck expanding like he’s ingested a boulder. “But, uh...ma’am, you’ve already had three servings—”

I give him a look.

“Okay, coming right up!” he squeaks. Billy takes the empty glass and hightails it out of there like I’d bit him.

“Scowling at your waiter isn’t gonna win you favors, Lili,” Luke remarks, appearing right behind the waiter. He’s marginally put together in scuffed up black boots, jeans and a long-sleeved, black Henley. His off-duty uniform. He’s usually a suit and tie type when at work.

“Well, well,” I scowl. “Detective Lucian Trinneer. How flattering of you to grace me with your damn presence after waiting for over half an hour.”

He slides across from me. His light brown hair is messy, not combed and slicked back like he usually does when he’s on the job. However, he’s armed and has his badge must be in his wallet since I don’t see it. His one blue and one green eyes look me over with a critical stare; and he’s thorough considering I’m seated.  

“You’ve gotten thin,” he remarks, mildly.

“Add you’ve gained a few,” I growl at him, loudly. 

But I wince internally at what he’s seeing. I had lost some weight but my diet now consisted of ramen noodles and free food wherever I could get it. It didn’t help that when I’m angry, stressed, unhappy, tired—pretty much any emotion I have—I ran or worked the weights to relieve some of that pressure. And being tall and naturally lean to begin with, I didn’t look good at this weight. Add that my income is paltry and I’d used up most of my savings, I was eating like a college student and I hated it. My pale skin has gotten pastier over the winter and it was only January. I could definitely use a little sun but not too much or my freckles stood out like neon dots all over my oval face. I didn’t do makeup. My red-black hair was up in a messy bun that I didn’t dress up either. I was in a similar pair of biker boots, black jeans with holes at the knees, and a NIN tee under a blue-and-yellow flannel button down, sleeves rolled up to the elbows. I know how I looked, like a starving EMO reject. 

“What I meant to say is that you look like shit.”

“Well, you’ve always looked like shit so here we are,” I shoot back sarcastically. Mature, I know. Eh.

He shakes his head. “I do you a solid and all I get is your sunny disposition. You sure haven’t gotten nicer now that you’re no longer a cop, St. Germaine.”

“Sorry, but bitch is in my DNA. You know that. So get over it already.”

He actually chuckles. “Right…”

When he tosses me a large envelope, I perk up. “Finally,” I mutter, glaring at him.

“You’re welcome,” he returns flatly. 

“Two weeks?” I ask, raising a brow. “For a simple GPS location?”

“It wasn’t that simple since this is off the books, and you know it. You also weren’t asking just for his location,” he shoots back. “And I got a job other than being your info slave.”

I grit my teeth at that dig but Billy returns with my water, more bread, and more peanuts since I’ve devoured half the bucket already. Smart kid. 

“Uh, you ready to order?” he asks, uncertain. He eyes Luke then me but not for too long. He takes out a pen and pad.

“Bud. Water as well,” Luke orders. “And a classic hamburger with fries.”

Billy writes that down and looks at me. “And you ma’am?”

“Food,” I lament, grabbing a piece of bread and lather it up with butter. “I used to have money for good food but ever since I got kicked off the force and eking it out as a lowly PI, my priorities have changed.”

Billy stares at me for a beat but recovers. He’s learning my ways. “So, uh...you don’t want to order then?”

I glare up at him. “Whadda think?” I ask him, and taking a big bite of delicious, warm—free—bread. 

“She’ll take a burger too,” he says, sighing. “With the works. An order of onion rings and a tall Bud, too. Put it on my tab.”

Now I really perk up. 

“Ah, there’s the nice Lili St. Germaine I rarely see,” he says dryly as Billy leaves us alone. 

I make a face. Me? Nice? I rip open the envelope and go over the intel Luke had gotten me. The last known location of one Aaron ‘Bomber’ Gallagher. “North Dakota?” I mumble. “Why the fuck is he there?”

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Luke says, sounding bored. “Guess that PI license doesn’t get you much mileage on intel—or much of anything, huh?”

He’s trying to be an ass and he’s quite good at it. When we played ‘good cop/bad cop’, neither of us could really pull off the ‘good cop’ role. “You know it doesn’t. Plus, getting it cost me a couple grand.” 

I wasn’t going to mention that I’d only had a few clients over the past three months since I’d become a bona fide Private Investigator. As a PI, I had access to a lot of databases but if the person I’m trying to find doesn’t leave a digital trail that’s aggregated in said databases I have access to, then I’m up a creek without a paddle. Gallagher had been paying in cash and he’d dumped his phone. The only way to get a location was to catch him making a call to his family or someone within the Desert Demons MC and he used a pay phone or from a bar or diner, or whatever place he was at.

Luckily, the Desert Demons MC was paying me well and I’d used all that money to pay bills that I still needed to pay off. Why they’d picked me when they already have a top tier PI firm—Titan Security Group—at their beck and call had always bothered me but whatever. It was cash-in flow vs all my cash flowing out and bleeding me dry. 

Luke really had done me a solid based on the quality pictures taken by local PD in Rapid City. He was staying at this dinky apartment in a shitty, remote area of the city. Feet of snow littered the landscape but what had me staring the longest was at the image of Gallagher with a pretty young thing that had her arms around him a little too tightly. 

“Link is not gonna like this,” I state, flipping through a dozen more but these others are of the bar he works at and basically living a new life. I’d have to get details on this woman fast. But the bar, Whiskey Blues, would be easy to find and therefore, its employee and business history. 

“Why’d the guy bale?” Luke asks. “I thought that was taboo in a biker gang?”

“It is. He’s going through some personal shit, based on what I was told. Left behind a family too,” I say, going over the photos and some notes written up for me as well. Nice. 

“Fucker,” Luke says heatedly.

I look up, briefly. I shrug off the personal details I know about my ex-partner, who has his own Daddy Issues. Mine are just as epic. “Yeah, but dashing dads are a dime a dozen.”

“Yeah…” he says, looking down and away.

Our food arrives just then, and I’m grateful. I devour my food. Luke watches me with a horrified look on his face. “What?” I ask him around my burger.

“I’d forgotten you eat as much as a linebacker and looks as pretty as one eating.”

I roll my eyes at his dramatic description. “I’m hungry.”

“When is the last time you’ve eaten a good meal, St. Germaine?” he asks, eating less voraciously than me.

“A while.”

“You know, you could appeal the board,” he says, tentatively. Again. This is like the fourth time he’s brought it up. 

My mood darkens. “No. That’s beyond a long shot. You know it too.”

He sighs. “Your ego has always been an issue, Lili.”

“Don’t I know it,” I say, taking a long drag of equally delicious beer. 

“You had to draw your gun?”

“I was making a point,” I grouse. “And I don’t regret what I did and I won’t apologize.”

“I’m not saying you should apologize, on either counts,” he says, slowly. “It’s just, for the sake of appearances and saying the words. That’s all it’d take—”

“What’s the point of appealing when I have to compromise my own morals?” I shoot back, crossly. “And considering how things were left afterwards, you really think the Sheriff is honestly going to be interested in saving my career?”

I should take comfort in that Luke took my side, when he didn’t have to and probably didn’t want to for that matter. And he shouldn’t have. He’d batted for me when I’d given him nothing but grief since we’d been partners and it made him look like a fucking moron to everyone in the LVPD. I’d always wondered why, but I didn’t really want to know. And he knew that about me, too. 

He levels me a look. “I know you well enough, Lili. The kind of person you are. You’re a cop, through and through. No other life is gonna cut it for types like us. We’re lifers. Good or bad, whatever that means.”

Being reminded of that stung in a way I loathed to admit, even to myself. But I broke the rules for the right reasons but in all the wrong ways. Some decisions are split second but I knew what I’d been doing. It just felt right. Because I know how broken the system is. I’m not helping it any more but sometimes, the law doesn’t serve justice to anyone—including the victims. 

“Anyway…”

He rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah…” 

Yeah. Enough of this touchy-feely shit. “So. How’s work?” I ask, needing to redirect this conversation away from me. 

“Work,” he says with a grunt and a wince.

We grin at each other at a cop’s universal answer to anything related to our job. 

“How’s your new partner?”

He shrugs, eating an onion ring. “By the book.”

I give a snort. “You must be on cloud nine, then?”

He smiles thinly. “Yeah, sure,” he says, looking down briefly. “Desert Demons aren’t your only client, I hope?”

It’s my turn to shrug. “Got a couple cheating husbands and stalking cases.” 

Kind of. They were still in the works. 

“Good…”

“Yeah…”

“You doing anything for Christmas?” Luke asks, taking a long pull of beer. 

I shrug. “No. You?”

“Going back to Clearwater at the end of the week. I skipped out on Thanksgiving so my family said I had to make it for Christmas.”

“That’s good,” I say, knowing his history a bit. Not that he talks about it much. Most of his family was in a cult but some had seen the light and had gotten out. “It’s good to around family when you can.”

He winces then gives me a floppy grin. “It can go one way or the other pretty fast with my family.”

I smile. “Enjoy them, Trinneer,” I tell him. 

He sobers and nods. “I will. Believe me, good or bad, I enjoy them a lot.”

We eat in silence and I think we’re both happy about that. Truth is, I’ve missed him, and the aura that he brings—of being a cop. The cop’s life. I’d once bled blue for this city, for Metro, and while I’d been no peach, I got the job done, my way. As a female detective, everyone—coworkers, the system, criminals, the public—didn’t always feel like a woman should act like one no matter what. 

Fuck that. 

If someone attacks me, I attack back, no matter who that person is. I won’t roll over and be steamrolled—like Metro did with me. I won’t bend or break, not for anybody. 

Not even if it costs me my job. 

Not even if it’s left my reputation in tatters.