Her bike wobbled, and her helmet jerked in my direction, whipping her blonde braid across her slender back. I slowed but didn’t turn my head. I didn’t have to. The rear camera showed her decelerating, her head rotating to watch my retreating backside.
I didn’t know what was more enthralling, knowing she was here for me or not knowing the reason why. She rolled in on too much money to be a reporter or undercover cop. The aftermarket upgrades on her bike alone cost fifty times more than the average bike here. She didn’t engage in the rowdy shit talking, wasn’t scantily dressed, and never flashed her tits like the women who frequented the races. Hell, in the nine months since I first noticed her, I’d never seen her remove her helmet.
She stood out like a sparkling jewel amidst the cesspool of thugs, gangsters, and bikers who arrived in groups. She came alone, watching the finish line from the seat of her flashy pasta rocket. No license plate. No apparent weapon. She might as well have waved a sign that said Rob me, rape me. She was either stupid or I was missing something crucial. Both notions fucked with my head.
A squad car swerved in behind me, blocking my view of her, and a man’s voice bellowed over the loudspeaker. “Pull over and step away from the bike.”
One of these nights, when I wasn’t bleeding all over the fucking place or hightailing it from the boys in blue, I’d follow her, corner her, then…what? My cock jerked in answer.
Caning it down State Street, I carved the next corner with a horizontal lean. Six blocks later, the flashing lights dimmed to tiny blurs in the backdrop. I veered onto the entrance ramp, merged onto 290, and opened the throttle.
Last thing I needed was a fling with some well-to-do, danger-seeking fangirl. She was probably just a bored housewife, looking for the kind of hard fuck she wasn’t getting from her uptight husband. And there I was, lollygagging after every goddamned race, flirting with the five-O on my ass in hopes of seeing her. A dangerous distraction.
My mother’s death had instilled a sense of purpose in my life. As much as racing channeled my anger and breathed life into my memories of her, the money I won funded her purpose. My purpose.
When my mother died, she had no money, no family, and no gurgled final words to offer her only child. What she left me with was knowledge. Dangerous knowledge of buried scandals, corrupt corporations and politicians, and their hushed victims. Victims like her.
I weaved through interstate traffic, the anguish in my leg clawing through my body as the engine exerted max power. But I was free and alive to see another sunrise. To finish what my mother had started.
4
Kaci
Kathleen Baskel glowered at me from across the boardroom table. Ugh, that look. It twisted with the same disgust she used to give my scuffed sneakers after I’d spent an afternoon chasing Collin along the banks of the Outer Drive Bridge.
I straightened my back in the stiff leather chair and offered my sweetest smile. She didn’t always look at me like she wanted to ship me back to boarding school. Sometimes, her dark blue gaze touched my face with warmth and approval. Didn’t it?
Who was I kidding? My mother was a cold-hearted bitch.
She smoothed a hand over her dyed auburn hair and gave the bob an extra pat at her jawline. Her fingers lowered to tap the armrest of her chair, and she blew out an irritated huff. Then she huffed again as if annoyed by the fact that I had caused her to expel a noisy breath. “Stop being so difficult, Kaci.”
A flush crept up my neck, brought on from her nasty tone and intensified by the unwavering scowl of the man in my periphery. The man I had yet to make eye contact with.
I folded my hands on the table. “I’m not being difficult, Mother. I’m merely stating facts you refuse to hear.”
Her lips formed a stern white line. “Collin—”
“Is not trying to vilify the Chicago PD.”
She flared her nostrils, the only bits on her Botoxed face that moved. “Interviewing Officer Dipshit on our television broadcast is—”
“Daniel Wyatt has twenty years on the force.”
“—a childish way to raise ratings.” She sat back and set her jaw. “Not to mention the upheaval it will cause among our supporters.”
There it was, the driving force behind this meeting. Whatever alliances our parents had built over the years controlled every goddamned thing at Trenchant.
I stared at the woman across the table, her slender frame showcased in a black pantsuit from the latest Chanel collection. The ostentatious diamond on her ring finger cost more than the average annual income in Illinois. She had more money than she could spend in a lifetime. What the hell did she gain from her supporters? Special favors? Popularity in her haughty clubs? Influence and attention?