Twyla Banner
- Earlier -
-1-
“Bella, bella, bella!,” Colette's smoky voice bellows in accented Italian across the sand.
I finish tipping the taxi driver generously and squint against the sun to see a sweet faced dark-skinned girl strutting purposefully out of the Inferno West club house, across the desert lot and towards Colette’s open arms.
The girl is so young and not at all what I had in mind for Billie Lowell, the Inferno West charter's vice president. Billie's beautiful, slim and petite but somehow still has legs for days in a pair of dark cut-offs. She's wearing a pink bikini top under her leather Daughters of Fury jacket—the VP patch stitched on the chest.
Colette is infused with the usual jocular energy and punch drunk grin she got when she was around her girls.
“Fuck! How long has it been, girl ?” Colette greets Billie with a big hug when she reaches her.
They exchange a complicated handshake that ends in a hug and Colette pecking the girl on both cheeks. The young VP then turns to me and reaches out her hand. I shake it politely.
“You must be Twyla,” Billie greets me warmly. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. On behalf of the entire Inferno West charter we’re deeply sorry for your loss.”
Your loss.
“T-thanks.”
It was the first condolences I’d received and it feels like a sucker punch.
Colette and I made a choice to omit the cartel part of our past from our Eastern State friends, neighbors and co-workers. When we left we didn’t tell anyone except her Original Furies where and why we’d gone.
“How was the flight ?,” Billie asks.
“Not bad,” Colette shrugs. “The taxi driver didn’t want to leave us ‘two nice girls’ out here. Shit like that is why I’m glad all the taxis in the East are self-driving.”
Billie laughs a little too hard, she’s giving Colette the admiring, starry-eyed, worshipful look all the Furies gave her.
“G's got a little lunch prepared for you in the club house,” Billie says. “We’ve also got a few prospects who’d get a kick out of meeting you Colette...I mean, if you have a minute.”
“Thanks, but we’re on a tight time table right now,” Colette says. “I just need the bike and we gotta go.”
“Yes, ma’am. She’s this way.”
The Inferno West charter of the Daughters of Fury Motorcycle Club had made their autoshop and clubhouse out of an old resort motel behind Cheek’s, a burger restaurant and strip club that came with the land. Colette had never loved the idea of the Furies having partial ownership of a strip club, but she couldn’t deny the revenue it bought in.
Billie leads us past Infero West's public bodyshop, around the back of the clubhouse and to the freestanding members only garage.
Colette and Billie fall in step ahead of me, talking with their heads together about club business.
I fall back.
I was the only outsider allowed to be involved in club business and I liked to help when I could but the business the Furies did always came with sad stories and I couldn’t fit anymore grief in my heart today.
Colette hadn’t meant to start a motorcycle club. Fixing and customizing bikes was the thing she was best at and in our early days she’d put it to good use wherever we went. The money was good and she loved the work.
When we settled in the East so I could go to law school she bought a small shop and started the motorcycle club on the side so she’d have people to ride with.
When we got the call from one of Colette’s teenaged cousins that she was running away from the family because her brother broke her arm, Colette and I took her in. Colette taught her cousin how to work on bikes and after a while the cousin left to start her own shop and took in another girl who’d also run from a crime family. It had kind of grown beyond her control from there and over the last decade and half the club grew rapidly and became a place for people who had once been considered victims to find power and purpose.
There were currently 5 charters across the world, including the Original Fury Charter Colette had started. They operated popular public autoshops to give members work and kept their own private garages and clubhouses for club business. I’d learned that each charter made sure their private garage had its own personality. The Inferno West’s is painted a serene gray, the bay doors surrounding it are painted with a stylized flame in the shape of a woman’s body. It said Inferno West across where the woman’s breast would be.
Colette and the other Original Fury officers had tried to make an effort to make their clubs environment different than the toxic old school patriarchal culture most of the members were running from but some things were easier said than done.
I spot the bike we came for in front of the garage. Colette gets a little
hop in her step as she gets closer. Her slick blue Covalcatti bike had been restored
back to its former glory by the Inferno West engineers. The new black paint job
revealed only small stylized remnants
from the bike’s previous life. This was the bike. The one that had started our adventures
together.
The adventure I liked to think we were still on.
Colette had ditched the Covalcotti bike at the border when we left all those years ago. When the Inferno West chartered 10 years ago she’d tasked them with stealing it back from her father, The Santoro Family patriarch. Barely 24 hours after the job was assigned the bike was in this garage and it’s been waiting for her ever since.
A pair of teen prospects are hand wiping the chrome and black finish of the redone bike with small towels and Francesca Santoro, Inferno West’s Sergeant at Arms and Colette’s half sister, is running through the motherboard commands.
“Yo, Frannie!,” Billie shouts slapping Francesca on her perfectly round ass.
When the other woman looks up from her work and spots Colette her big black Santoro doe eyes dampen.
Francesca and Colette exchange the typical handshake, hug and kiss greeting but Francesca goes in for another hug at the end, holding Colette tight, their leathers rubbing together.
They stay in the embrace, talking in rapid fire Italian. I'd learned enough Italian to be dangerous but when they were talking so fast it might as well be gibberish.
Francesca finally lets Colette go and comes to greet me, shaking my hand in the same respectful but not too familial way Billie had.
That was my role in this.
I was the Founder’s girl.
Which I hated but the position came with an endless supply of deference and respect.
Colette introduces herself to the two young prospects shining her bike with the hand towels. The two know who Colette is and are caught off guard by her interest in them. Their names are Iris and Xavier. Xavier was a Mjollner drug mule and Iris had been traded in the South American cartel.
The Daughters of Fury weren’t an
exclusively female club but a majority were women because most of the older,
smaller crime families they came from still had
old-fashioned rules about gender that often left anyone not a man victimized. Hell, even the Shy Cartel had been old-fashioned in that way with power moving from son to son.
Then there were the Furies who weren’t from cartel but had just been screwed over by them. Most were sex trafficking victims or ex-street samurai looking for a new start. I’d met a few who were running from hits the Shy Cartel had put on them because of debt. When I heard these stories I had to just smile and nod. The Shy Cartel wasn’t the worst of the cartels but even I couldn’t hide from its nature.
“Oh, fuck.” Colette moans, her thick denim clad thighs straddling the seat. “Damn, she looks good! You two did a good job.”
The two young prospects eat up the compliment and excitedly start telling Colette about the customization work they’d been apart of. Their faces were glowing with confidence as she starts talking shop with them.
When their conversation dies down Colette walks behind me and puts her arms around my waist.
“Ready to go, mama ?,” she asks, settling her chin in my neck and pecking my cheek. “I know you’re tired.”
I was exhausted. But I wasn’t sure when the next time we’d be here would be. Colette rarely came back to the West.
“I’m not that tired,” I shrug pulling away and turning took look her in the eyes. “You should go see the club house and meet the rest of the members--”
Her forehead creases and I can read her concern through her
dark mirrorshades that reflected my slowly sunburning face. I'd inherited not only my father's hair color but also his inability to go out in the sun without catching fire.
“You sure ?”
“Yeah,” I nod putting on my brave face.
“Don’t do that,” she says in a low voice so only I can hear. “Don’t paste on that smile. They all know why we’re in town. You don’t have to pretend like everything’s okay.”
-2-
Billie leads us into the Inferno club house and it looks like every other Fury club house I’d seen. Big restored wood bar, mistmatched tables, leather booths, comfortable seating arcade games and lots of motorcycle paraphernalia. The design was raw and minimalist the most eye catching feature was the mural someone had painted of Alecto, Megaera and Tisiphone--the original Greek Furies—rising out of blood.
There was a lot less debauchery on display than usual. But that probably had something to do with all of the young prospective members sitting around the tables. Billie and Francesca give us a quick tour of some of the paraphernalia and then they start introducing Colette to the prospects—many of whom want to tell her their story.
“Twyla!”
I turn to see Gia De Rossi, the current president and founder of the Inferno West charter, walking over to me in faded jeans and a leather Fury cut. Her glossy fuchsia lipstick glowed against her tanned skin. Gia was another one of Colette’s many cousins. Gia had been a one of Nico’s beloved Covalcotti riders but Nico forced her give it up when she transitioned.
Once Gia was out of Nico’s sphere of influence she started seeing the corruption and problems for what they were and left the Family. She’s stayed with us in the East before coming back to start the Inferno West charter when she was 21. A decade later they had had over 50 members and were still growing. They were the closest charter to the Sprawl and a good place for runaway teens and preteens who weren’t ready to leave home forever.
Gia takes me in a hug. She smells like honey and leather—just like her cousin always does.
“I’m so sorry, Twyla,” she says. “I can’t imagine what you are going through,”
I nod.
“Come on,” she says putting a hand on my back. “Let’s get you a plate.”
“Oh, no, I’m fine--”
“Nah, it’s the good shit,” she says with a rye smile. “Not that bullshit food from Cheek’s. I know you hate that place.”
“I don’t hate it…it’s just taking everything in me not to go
over there and get rid of that damn comma,” I tell her and she laughs. It'd been my little joke for a few years because despite the sign on the strip club there was no Cheek. But there were plenty of...cheeks.
I follow her to the small buffet set up along the back wall of the club house. There are several pans brimming with generous servings of veal, lasagna, fresh pasta and homemade focaccia. I’m not hungry but I let Gia fix me a small plate of fresh mozzarella and spinach salad and we settle in the big president's booth in the back corner of the club house.
I nibble on the food and we catch up, keeping our conversation light. Gia keeps a watchful eyes on the Furies milling around Colette while we talk.
“Letty's messages said you don’t want anything from us,” Gia says when we’ve run out of small talk. “Give me the word. I can get you a full protection escort wherever you need to go.”
“Thanks, but we’re keeping a low profile. I'm not in the line of succession so think I’m safe from whatever this is.”
Gia’s eyes brighten as Colette approaches our table.
“Bella!” Colette calls to her and Gia blushes.
It was what Colette's grandmother had called all her grandaughters and great-nieces. Bella. Beautiful. Although Colette suspected she did it because she had so many granddaughters and great-nieces she couldn't keep their names straight. They all mimicked her when they repeated it back to each other But she'd passed away before she could say it to Gia.
“Bella,” Gia says softly as Colette kisses her cheek.
“You outdid yourself, girl. This place is amazing,” Colette smiles and then looks at me.”…But we have to go.”
“I understand,” Gia nods
She, Francesca, Billie and the rest of the officers walk us back to the remodeled Covalcatti bike.
“Don’t be a stranger,” Gia tells Colette. “You should come back this way more often, cousin.”
Colette just shakes her head in a non-committal way and saddles the bike. Nico had put a pricey hit on Colette for riding off with some “Shy Cartel whore” as he so fondly called me. But she’d had the final word when she went to Nico’s wake, put a knife through his corpse’s heart and then fought her way out of the church.
Nobody from the Santoro family had fucked with her since but she still didn’t like to come back West.
“ You do good work here,” Colette tells the officers. “Keep working your contacts. If you hear any tips about what may have gone down at the Washington mansion call me.”
After a few round of goodbyes and promises to visit we finally take off and for a moment the nostalgia hits me. It feels like the first time I’d saddled this bike.
Only now my short hair doesn’t blow in the wind and I’m used to being on a bike. I only need to keep one arm slung casually around Colette’s midsection and I check the messages on my syn while we ride. Muscle memory makes my body weight adjust to her turns and speed as we fly over 100 miles an hour across the desert and into the Sprawl.
It never got old coming back the Sprawl. The city changed everyday but the hum beneath it was always the same.
We check into a luxury casino hotel on the high roller end of the Strip. It was
insanely expensive and we couldn’t
afford it but I didn’t want us staying somewhere people would think to look.
-3-
“What do you want do, first ?,” Colette asks once were in the hotel room.
“Sleep,” I tell her falling face first on the bed. “We can start doing things tomorrow.”
“Billie gave me some of her sleeping pills. You want one ?”
She lies in the bed next to me holding out a small pink pill. I take it and bite it into two pieces and swallow half. I didn’t want to risk not getting up on time.
“Can’t believe I’m fucking back here,” Colette breathes pulling her shirt and bra off.
“You really don’t have to stay.”
“Of course I do,” she frowns. “Your fights are my fights.”
Deep down I always knew that but hearing her say it aloud reminds
me I’m the luckiest damn girl alive.
I roll towards her and give her a lazy kiss. She reaches under my shirt and deftly unhooks my bra and pulls it out the bottom of my shirt. I unbutton my shirt and she gently tucks herself into my chest---sucking lightly on my nipples. I occupy my hands playing with the zipper of her tight jeans until I can get my hand down her pants. She’s soaking wet like I knew she would be. Riding a bike—especially that bike always turned her on.
It probably wasn’t the time for this but I needed to do something. I slide down until I’m between her legs and add my tongue to what my fingers had started. I worship her with body my tongue, putting all my concentration on doing the things she liked .Colette had an amazing body from all the physical labor she did in the shop and her muscled thighs feel like a vice when they uncontrollably squeeze around my head.
I lap at her, enjoying the small tremors coursing through her body. I go back up to kiss her and then lie back on my pillow. She strokes me gently as the sleeping pill starts to kick in, rubbing pleasurable sensations over my body as I carefully fall into sleep.
***
-4-
I wake up 30 minutes late the next day. Colette is gone and left a note on my syn that she’d gone out riding.
I don’t get to enjoy the hotel’s opulent luxury bathroom because I have rush through my morning routine so we can get there on time. I throw on my navy empire-waisted, high necked chiffon dress and nude heels but my hair doesn’t want to cooperate.
Colette comes in as I’m fussing with a hair straightening tool. She looks amazing in high waisted black trousers and a thin blousy shirt under her leather jacket. Her hair is slicked back into a severe ponytail at the center of her head the luscious black curls spilling from the rubber band only looking slightly blown out from her ride.
“You need a fucking haircut-,” I snap at my own reflection,.
“You look beautiful,” she says smoothing down the stubborn pieces of my pixie with the thick gel she used to tame her curls hair into it’s sleek ponytail.
I didn’t have time to put on makeup but that wasn’t
important anyway. Nobody would be looking at me. I throw on some mascara and strap a small revolver to my inner thigh. Colette wordlessly takes her beloved gun out her suitcase and holsters it in her ankle.
We walk arm and arm to the hotel's roundabout where she'd left her bike. Colette dons her thick black mirrorshades and I pull on a helmet and settle the
flowing fabric of my dress between my legs as I straddle the bike behind her.
The ride from the hotel to the MBC headquarters in Mojave is a lot quicker on Colette’s bike than the train. We’re early but a massive crowd has already gathered out front of the MBC headquarters waiting for the memorial service to start. Everybody is wearing identical black arm bands on their shoulders and milling around somberly.
“Lot of people loved your brother--,” Colette observes as
she walks the bike backwards into a tiny space between buildings.
“A lot of people worked for him,” I correct her as we head to join the memorial service crowd. “I guess I should call Ivy.”
I look into my Syn to send a message but I see Ivy beat me to it.
I can see you. Stay where you are, I’m coming, Ivy's message says.
I look around the quickly growing crowd and it’s not until I
hear the steady click of her heels that I spot her. She weaves through the
crowd with her head held high in a steely gray suit and gold heels. We hug and I sigh into the
familiarity of her.
She and Colette exchange polite but distant nods like they
always did. The Donnelleys and Santoros had a long, brutal history that
pre-dated both of them but they both still seemed to hold on to it.
“Ivy, I’d really like to meet with the Board to discuss the exactly what Rias had in the will and the succession pla--,” I start
“We’re working on all that now,” she assures me. “The service is about to start. Come on, I want you on stage too--”
“No, I’m not really—I just want to blend in--”
“No. He was you brother--”
“Mother thinks this wasn’t accident,” I whisper. “I can fill you in later but I’m supposed to be looking for anyone suspicious who may have done this.”
Ivy’s expression darkens.
“I figured it was foul play,” she says. “I still want you up there. Do it for me. I’m not sure I can stand being up there alone.”
I reluctantly leave Colette and follow Ivy to the stage.
The memorial service is part revival and part religious service---on the surface Rias was a member of the Reformed New Revolution but he’d never been observant. Everyone from C-Suite executives to line workers in the hospital cafeteria share stories of the man my brother, sister in law, and nieces had been. They were giving and kind and taken entirely too soon.
No one mentions the cartel because this wasn’t that kind of event.
Everyone present on stage talks—except me. No one acknowledges or even asks who I am,
they probably think I’m Ivy’s daughter or niece. My parents had done a decent job keeping me away from the spotlight.
After it’s over I pull Ivy aside and fill her in the best I can on what I knew.
“Sara needs to find a way back here. She’s going to miss the funeral…,” Ivy says when I finish. “Maybe we can put it off--”
“She wouldn’t have come anyway,” I remind her.
After my Dad died mother had given up on public grieving.
Ivy gets pulled away by some of the board members and we part with plans to meet up later and discuss who would take over the company and what we would do if Kenji tried to take his right.
“Ms. Banner!—excuse me!-- Ms. Banner--”
I turn around to see a boy jogging toward me. Colette is by
my side instantly, her hand going for the firearm but the boy’s gait was quick and even. From a glance I could
tell he wasn’t carrying and I silently signal that to her. She backs off.
“Ms. Banner,” the boy says, standing ramrod straight in front of me.
“Yes ?,”
“Um, my name is Scott Byfield,” he introduces himself. “We met last year at Mr. and Mrs. Washington’s anniversary party. I was a guard, well I was the girls’ driver but I once drove you back and forth to the airfield--”
“Scott I appreciate you introducing yourself and I’m sure my brother appreciated your services but I really can’t do this right now--”
“I have information,” he says. “Atleast I think I do. It’s about the explosion…I
don’t think it was an accident and I don’t know who to go to but I figured
you’re family so…maybe you can tell someone importan--”
“What do you know ?,” I ask pulling him into a corner, away from the crowd.
“I was fired a few weeks ago,” he admits sheepishly. “I mean, I deserved it because El and I---well—never mind. Anyway, a couple days after I was let go this other ex-guard came to my apartment. He asked me if I wanted a better deal. Said he and a few others were working on something big that would teach the Washington’s a lesson. I wasn’t into it because I knew I deserved to be fired. Um, anyway the deadline to accept his offer was the day before the bombing happened--”
“What is the name of the guard who approached you ?,”
“Thad Jens...he's older. I heard he worked for Rayne for a little bit at the end...but I went to find him already. I thought I could get some info but Thad’s gone missing.His roommates said he packed his shit and left a few days ago.”
“Thank you for telling me this,” I say and relief washes over his face.
“I’m not much but if there is anything I can do--”
I consider telling him El is alive but before I can my syn buzzes in my ear. I step away from him to answer it and he folds back into the crowd. So this had been an inside job. But could a bunch of disaffected guards do this on their own--
“Twyla ?,” Mother barks into the line.
My mind had started reeling and I’d forgotten I was on my syn.
“I’m here. Sorry. I’m just processing a lot of information right now. I just got some intel that some of Rias’ ex-guards may have been in on this--,”
“No shit. Twyla, listen to me.” Luce's harsh voice cuts in. “Haley went to the Sprawl to deal with a Maxwell issue and now he is missing—”
My stomach sinks.
“What--,”
“I need you to send me all the raw security footage from Ft. Perch Medical Center and the train station for the last two days--,”
“Send you what ? How exactly do you expect me to do that ?,”
“Break into the server room. It’s either on premises or in a secure station nearby. You might have to go to the archive and steal blueprints to find it. Or bribe someone. Once you get in to the server, install a spider code to--”
“Can we back up a minute ? I don’t know how to do any of that--”
“She’s right. It’s too hi-tech,” Mother cuts in. “It could take weeks. You need to work this low-tech, Twyla. Ask around. See if anyone has seen him--,”
“Do you still want me to keep an eye out for Kenji--,”
“Yes, you’ll have to do both,” Grandma Sara tells her. “And we need to give you an update about Kenji.”
Colette finds her way back to my side and slips a hand around my back. She stares at me quietly as I stare out into nothing with my mouth agape like a fish until I finally hang up.
“What now ?,” she asks.
“Just everything,” I sigh. “Zacharias’s guards were in on this. Haley has gone missing. And it turns out the man they thought was Kenji wasn’t actually Kenji--,”
I fill her in with more details as we walk back to where she’d parked her bike.
“Maybe we should split up,” I say when she hands me the helmet. “I’ll stay here and see if anyone else knows anything about what happened that night and you can look for Haley-”
“We need to stay together. People are going missing,” she reminds me. “I’ll send what we know to the Furies to see if anyone knows anything. You and I will go together to find Haley.”
-5-
With her slick bike we easily weave through the memorial traffic and out of Mojave. Colette guns it across the desert to Ft. Perch’s bubble city. She’s pushing the bike to over 150 miles and I have to plant my face on her back to make sure I don’t fall off because if I did I’d probably break every bone in my body. Colette wasn’t a perfect driver. She’d had a few accidents and they’d been terrifying but the worst that had ever happened was a shattered wrist.
When we pull into Ft. Perch Medical Center, nearly all of the staff are wearing their black arm bands in memory of my family. The receptionist at Bright Seas recognizes me from the memorial stage and tells me Haley came in a few days ago to drop of a toy but he’s been on personal leave taking care of Luce for a while.
Our next stop is Grayson’s school and the front office informs me that Haley hadn’t been to the school since he picked Grayson up the day before the explosion.
I walk back to the bike feeling defeated. Maybe I should have asked better questions but I didn’t want to set off any alarms.
“Haley doesn’t go anywhere but to this school and work,” I tell Colette. “I don’t think he even knows any other people.”
“What about Virtue ? Didn’t he know people there ?,”
“I mean yeah but, it’s been years.”
“Doesn’t matter, worth a shot,” Colette reasons.
I don’t have any better ideas so I straddle the bike and we take off for the inner Sprawl.
The kitchsy retro neon sign out front was usually lit up a soft pink but with Charlotte and Jean both gone the sign has been turned off. There’s a lock on the front door and a closed until further sign right above it. It made me a little sad. Jean had had the brothel for as long as I could remember and I don’t think I’d ever seen it closed.
We do a quick walkaround of the building. There’s a hologram of Charlotte’s face projected on the side of the building. She didn’t take a lot of photos but in this one she was behind her desk looking just off camera with a smile in her eye. She had hand on her chin and the other holding up a stylus. She was totally in work mode. The way she’s sitting kind reminds me of the photo of Audrey Hepburn she loved and whoever chose this picture chose well. Beneath the hologram little electric candles and paper flowers left in her memory.
Charlotte and I had never been close growing up because she
was always closer to Zacharias but once they got married
I’d gotten to know her better. She was hardworking, funny and brought out the best parts of my brother while also keeping him in line.
“Twyla Banner! Holy shit, is that you ?,” a voice in the distance calls.
Colette is instantly at my side in defense mode as I turn to see Pretty Boy ambling toward us--although he was less of a boy these days than ever. Still, he wore the full body suit of the ink well.
“Hi,” I smile.
He gives Colette a once over but she just stares at him coldly.
He quickly diverts his attention back to me. I hadn’t seen Pretty Boy in years but he’d spent hours at my house when I was a kid doing ink for my brothers. I knew Haley had been seeing him regularly for a couple of decades.
“You’re the last person I expected to see here,” Pretty Boy grins. “Are Sara and Luce with you ? I heard about the fire at Treasure Island--”
“They all got out,” I assure him. “Hey, you haven’t seen Alex Haley, have you ?”
He looks down and scratches the back of his neck.
“What do you know ?,” Colette demands.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, I don’t know a damn thing,” he says quickly. “You should talk to Mav. He was in my shop and he said he saw Haley a few days ago.”
“Mav ?,”
“Maverick Black. He works out a club in the West Strip called Effigy--,”
“You mean brothel ?,” Colette asks with an accusatory eyebrow. She had hang ups about brothels because the ones in her family had been nonconsensual.
Pretty Boy shrugs.
“Probably. I’ve never been there. It's half baked club started by some of the Control pros after Control was shut down.”
Charlotte had closed Control when she officially took the club over from Uncle Jean. She’d been trying to make Virtue a legitimate business and she couldn’t do that with a secret part of the brothel that ran on blackmail and extortion.
Pretty Boy gives us the coordinates and we ride over to the wealthier end of the Sprawl. Effigy had nothing on Virtue. The space is rundown and small from the outside. The front is mostly empty and parts of it still looks like they were being put together. The doors are wide open and when we walk in two beautiful young girls in baggy clothes are messing with a holographic sign, lining up the signals to make it show the price list.
Colette stands behind me and I don’t have to look to know she has her arms crossed and her judge-y face on.
“We’re closed today,” one of the girls says.
“I’m looking for Maverick--”
She immediately shouts his name in a sing song voice and after a moment a stunning man in his early 30’s, with a face so perfect only Uncle Jean could have put it together, comes out the hallway. He smiles at me, his pearly white front canines pointed in a way that was kind of sexy.
Why was I blushing ? I found men attractive but something about his masculine energy was sending tingles up my spine.
“Looking for me, huh ? I don’t think I know you yet, gorgeous,” he says in a growly voice.
He steps way into my personal bubble and lets one hand rest on my lower back. It’s a little too low and before I can shake it off he delicately traces the curves of my chin.
With a leather riding crop.
It makes me feel threatened and when I feel threatened I react.
I twist his wrist until he drops the riding crop, I hook my heel under his calf and flip him on to the floor. He resists the gravity pulling him down and flails so instead of landing on his back like he was supposed to he lands on his face. He lets out a shrill-y scream that makes the girls working on the holosign giggle.
A tiny trickle of blood seeps from his perfect nose when he looks up all shell shocked.
“Ah—what the fu--”
“Maybe you shouldn’t put your hands on people without asking,” Colette spits down at him as she holds out her hand toward me.
“Sorry, you weren’t supposed to land like that--,” I add
stepping away from him and taking Colette’s hand so she can pull me closer to her. She kisses my cheek possessively.
“What the fuck!,” Maverick shouts cradling his nose and standing up. “Who the hell referred you again--”
“Nobody. I’m Twyla Banner,” I introduce myself. “I’m Luce Grace’s sister.”
He frowns as he wipes the blood from his nose with the back of his hand.
“Explains a lot,” he grumbles kneading out his back. “I thought you were my private session. You know I’ve known Luce for years and he’s never once mentioned a sister.”
“It would be weird if he did,” I point out and this makes Maverick smile. “Listen, can we talk ?,”
Maverick nods.
“Let’s go upstairs to my apartment. I need to wash my hands and maybe find an aspirin or twelve.”
I reluctantly follow him after Colette and I have a silent argument. It was stupid to go to a second location with a stranger but I didn’t like this place and part of me stupidly didn’t want to be seen in a brothel. Especially not one my brother may or may not have gone to.
Maverick’s apartment could just barely be called an apartment. It was a one room loft the size of a microchip with barely any furniture. The minute he lets us in Colette starts casing the apartment—walking around the space in big circles and scanning every inch of the place. Maverick washes his hands and face in the bathroom and then starts flitting around making drinks that we don’t ask for. When he offers them neither of us take them.
“You can sit down,” he says to Colette who is still circling the small apartment.
“Nah,” Colette responds tersely.
“She gets restless,” I explain. “Look, have you seen Alex Haley ?”
“No.” Maverick says with a smile, shaking his head. “He kind of fell of the radar with the whole baby thing.”
“Really ? Because that’s not what Pretty Boy said,” I counter.
He looks caught and smooths out his thick gorgeous hair.
“Haley is missing. You may have been the last one to see him,” I explain.
“Where’s the kid ?,” Maverick asks.
“None of your business,” I tell him.
“Okay….yeah, I did see him like two or three days ago,” Mavericks says carefully. “It was at Treasure Island—or what’s left of it. We just spoke briefly. Small talk. Then I left-,”
“Why were you at Treasure Island--”
“I was cutting through.”
“Try again, piece of shit.” Colette barks.
She steps in front of me and tosses my mother’s engagement
ring from her first marriage on to the coffee table. Mother had always kept it
in her lockbox in her dresser.
I stare at the ring and then at Maverick. He looks down.
“Did you steal this ?,” I demand, snatching up the ring.
“Look, I can explain.”
“You fucking better--,”
“Whoa, look I’m not the only one,” he says quickly. “There’s been this rumor in the inner sprawl forever that Rayne left Sara Grace a shit ton of his money in cold cash but she and Luce were too senile to know how to spend it. They say that's why the place is called Treasure Island. It started as a joke but I don’t know…there’s some compelling theories. All kinds of people have been going through the remains of Treasure Island looking for it. ”
“You mean looting ? Seriously ?,” I snap.
“This fucking city,” Colette mumbles.
“Alright, I'm not proud of it but we need money to get the club off the ground and before I saw Haley I figured she was dead and didn't need the ring. The day I saw him I went early to avoid the competition,” he says. “Maybe the other…looters saw Haley and took him off ? Sara and Luce had some scrap parts that are worth a lot and some of those guys can get pretty fucking violent--”
“I want names--,”
“I don’t know….I don’t know these people--”
“We gotta go,” Colette says suddenly, coming to my side.
“I’m not done with hi--,”
“Someone from the Furious Sound charter ID’d that picture Luce gave you of Kenji,” she says in a halting tone. “Or fake Kenji, anyway.”
Maverick is staring at us but Colette gives him a cold stare that pretty much ensures he won’t be repeating what we are talking about.
I touch my syn and sync it with Maverick’s sharing my contact info with him.
“If you hear anything about Haley or the looters you call me,” I tell him.
He nods as we exit.
Colette speed walks back down the street to her bike. As I straddle the back she shares with me the messages she got from Furious Sound president to my syn.
I almost fall off the bike as I read it.
“What the fuck ?,” I say to myself.
I don’t even have to ask her where we’re going next.
Because I know.
---
A/N
When I started Sunshine, of all the things I never planned on doing, this chapter was the most unplanned. I never thought I'd write Twyla again but somehow I couldn't let go of the 'Colette having a motorcycle club' thought experiment.
Also, yes it's hard for me to write the plural of Furies because it looks like furries.
And in some ways Twyla/Colette is another bodyguard pairing but I see Twyla as more self-sufficient. Her voice is a lot like El's so I hope they don't sound too similar.