Chrome & Leather - The Novel (Adriana Ness ♯1) (Motorcycle Club Romance)

CHROME & LEATHER THE NOVEL

by Deep Pink

Copyright © 2014 by Deep Pink

Cover Design by Deep Pink

Cover image © Depositphotos.com/fxquadro,

© Depositphotos.com/adrenalina

Book design by Deep Pink

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

First Published: September 2015

You always believed in me and supported me through the roughest of times. You know who you are.

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I had been undercover for three weeks straight. Sleeping on the street under dirty blankets and atop damp cardboard. My joints ached from the cold and the long nights exposed to the elements. I had infiltrated a bunch of homeless people who slept beneath an underpass. We spent our nights sitting around burning tires and talking about our previous lives. These people came from all walks of life. There was Bill who had once been a successful doctor until he got addicted to pills and under the haze of prescription drugs he had misdiagnosed one too many patients and had his medical license revoked. His life followed the all too predictable spiral of the other homeless people gathered around. The loss of a job, drug addiction and then the loss of his family. Until one day he had nothing and the only option was the streets.
 

I had my cover story memorised and when Bill passed me the bottle of cheap booze I drank from it and recounted my story. It was a tale of alcohol abuse, my kids being taken into care because of my neglect and then eventually I lost my house and my job and here I was at the bottom of societies shit heap. The other people gathered around and nodded their heads to my story, I was another broken woman amidst a collection of broken people.

My real life could not be any different. I was always a high achiever and finished high school with perfect grades. Since I was a little girl I had only ever wanted to be one thing, all because of my father. I wanted to be a cop. I was the youngest African American woman to make detective in my district and at twenty four I had made one of the cities biggest drug busts.
 

After nearly three months undercover I had infiltrated a drugs ring that was one of the sole suppliers of crystal meth to the hispanic gangs of the north side. Due to my sterling police work it lead to fourteen arrests including the scum bag who was leading that merry band of drug pushers.

That lead to a commendation and I was promoted to a newly formed crack division simply called Serious crimes. Our remit was to dismantle the drugs rings ravaging the city, the rackets run by the bikers, Chinese, and the Irish. We also tackled any homicides that where more then your usual gang shoot outs, domestic violence or snatch and grabs gone wrong. We tackled the really insidious stuff. As our chief liked to say we grappled with “the dark and oily beating heart of the city, and it was our job to squeeze”.

This was my current undercover role, I had my hand on that evil beating heart and I intended to crush the life out of it.

 
It had all started six months ago. Homeless people where going missing. This happens all the time and due to the nature of their lifestyle it never got reported. Then the bodies began to show up. Like clockwork for a month and a half once a week a new corpse turned up. Some trashy journalist named the killer “Jack the snipper” and the name stuck. The bodies we found had all been mutilated in the same way. The chest cavity was opened up and all the organs where placed beside the victim. All fingers and toes where cut off and arranged like a halo around the victims head. The victim was still alive when this was done and most likely died once the ribcage was broken and cracked wide open.

After the six bodies the murders stopped. We had no leads and the case went dead. Like anything to do with the down and the destitute the news cycle quickly moved on and it was forgotten about. That was until four weeks ago when a letter was mailed to our department. It was a single white sheet of paper and square in the middle of the page where the words “Snip, Snip” and a date one month from then.

That was now a week away and in my three weeks undercover I had made no headway. I got up from the heat of the burning tire fire saying that I needed to piss. At this time of the night I usually ambled around the edges of the homeless group pretending to be drunker than I was but all the time looking for anyone suspicious approaching some of the folks who hung out by the edges and never huddled around the fire with the others. These people where usually people who suffered the most with mental illness, drug abuse or a combinations of the two. Even in this small group of people there was a underclass and some of the better functioning people looked down on them. At the edge of the camp stood a small structure that was nothing more then a couple of broom handles stuck in the dirt with a yellowing sheet of plastic thrown over it.

I was over the other side of the camp and from the flickering lights thrown off by the small number of fires I could see a man was standing beside the haphazard shack and he was talking to the man lying down under the protective plastic sheet.
 

Sometimes do gooders visited this part of town and handed out supplies to the men and women. It usually consisted of toilet paper, shaving kits and clean socks and underwear. Things to make the people feel a little bit more dignified. I knew straight away that this man was not one of those people. From this distance I could see he was wearing a long dark overcoat and his leather shoes shone with a high sheen. This was someone with money and privilege and I knew he didn't belong here.
 

The man held out his hand to the man on the ground and he pulled him to his feet. The well dressed man put his arm around him and they walked off in the direction of some derelict and boarded up houses. Adrenaline coursed though my body and I knew this was it, I had to stop him. I dug into the deep pocket of my
 
beaten up army surplus jacket and pulled out my gun which had been hidden in a pouch in the lining. I got a visual on the suspect and moved low and slow around the edge of the homeless shelters. I moved swiftly and quietly through the scrub grass that poked up through the broken up concrete. Clear of the shelters I stood behind a large concrete pylon, the supporting strut to a bridge that had never been built, and poked my head around for a better look.
 

At the end of the street I could see the homeless man being lead into a derelict house boarded up with corrugated sheet metal. A part of the boarding was peeled back from the front door and they both hunched and squatted to squeeze in through the small gap. I judged the distance and it would take me approximately a minute at full sprint to get to the house. If I was wrong about what was happening my cover was going to be blown.

I shook off the many layers of jackets I was wearing until I was down to one stained and smelly t shirt. I ran as quickly and quietly as I could and covered the distance. I crept up to the half boarded up door and listened intently. From upstairs I could hear muffled moans.
 

I squeezed through the tight gap and stood in the hall of this derelict house waiting for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. The smell of piss filled my nostrils and the floor was covered in broken glass and trash. I heard another muffled whimper from upstairs and I tentatively put my first foot onto the bottom stair. The floorboards creaked and my whole body tensed up. I could hear my heart beating loudly in my ears. I tasted a metallic sourness in my mouth as another jolt of adrenaline coursed through me.
 

I climbed the stairs slowly and clicked the safety off my gun. At the end of the hall a dim light bleed out from under a closed door. I moved slowly ahead barely lifting my feet off the floor, moving in a quick forward motion shuffle. No noise was coming from the room.

I breathed in deep and then everything slowed down to a crawl. I kicked the door in and shouted “Police, nobody move”. The first thing I noticed was his smile. The well dressed man was ginning from ear to ear as if he was greeting a long lost friend. In front of him he held the homeless man with a scalpel to his throat. The homeless mans eyes were wide with fear and he held his bleeding hand to his chest. His clothes were stained dark with blood from his injured hand. On the floor lay three severed fingers.

If I live to be a hundred I will never forget that smile. It never wavered
 
as if frozen on his face. The suited man drew the scalpel across the homeless mans neck. Blood spurted out in a wide wet arc. My mouth opened in a horrified O and I unloaded three bullets into the suited man. The first hit his shoulder pushing him back and away from the homeless man who slumped to his knees as his life pulsed away through the gash in his neck. The second bullet hit him in the chest and then the third hit him in the centre of his forehead blowing out a wet spray of brain and bone onto the wall behind him.

He fell back against the wall and slumped to a sitting position. Even as the light of life flickered out in his eyes his face remained frozen in that ghastly smile.

I crouched beside the homeless man and the initial spurts of blood had stopped. His throat was cut completely open and within seconds he was dead. My hands shook as the effects of the adrenaline wore off and the carnage of the room filled my vision. I had got Jack the snipper but not before he struck again. I felt no sense of victory, only white hot rage at the world and at men like Jack who's sole purpose was to cause nothing but pain and misery.
 

I pull out my emergency cell phone that was stitched into the lining of my coat and called my captain. Within ten minutes the cars arrived and the house was washed in blue light.

That night as I tossed and turned in my bed, sleep would not come to me. I climbed out of bed and pilled some blankets in the corner of my room and slept huddled with my back against the wall. My dreams where filled with smiling men chasing me down long dark corridors.

The following morning I felt rough and shaky. My limbs ached and I had dark circles under my eyes. It always took me a few days to come back to normality after a log stint undercover. The worse time had been after the Longford case. I was two months undercover and at the very end my cover was blown. The whole thing had ended in a blood bath.

I tried to wash down some dry toast with some coffee and my stomach somersaulted as I swallowed. I stood over the sink gripping the edges until my knuckles turned white and dry heaved. Tears streamed from my eyes as spasms of dull pain accompanied the dry retching. Pull yourself together I thought and squeezed my eyes shut tight. The waves of nausea passed and slowly the world came back into focus.

Breakfast was not going to happen so I tentatively sipped my steaming cup of coffee. The coffee felt oily and bitter in my mouth so I set it aside. I needed to be around people as images of Jack the snippers wide grin kept flashing into my mind.

I left my apartment and headed to the station. Our department was in a windowless room in the basement and I think thats how captain Travers liked it. He oversaw our group of hard hitters with the stern love of a strict disciplinarian father. Our unit consisted of some of the most dynamic of policemen and women. They where not all high achievers like me, but each possessed something special that Captain Travers had observed in us and he had handpicked each of us for his squad. We where a dysfunctional family and we rarely gathered all together due to undercover operations.
 

Wade and Chow had been in deep cover for months now trying to break a Korean drug smuggling operation. Jenkins was embedded in a group who where looking like one of the biggest groups involved in human trafficking. Crenshaw was so deep undercover that no one else in the squad was allowed to know what his case was, speculation ranged from the bizarre to the laughable. A pool had started up making bets on what he was up to. The odds where currently stacked against my guess of
 
porn actor trying to crack open the largest ring of operators pushing questionable material.
 

I walked into our dimly lit room and was greeted by clapping from the few officers not currently on a case. Lloyd Stensel cheered the loudest, he was in his fifties and greying and his face was heavily lined. He had been my mentor when I first joined the squad. He had thought me everything I know about deep cover operations. I had great respect for the man. Diaz and Walters stood up on their desks and hollered loudly.

Stensel approached me with his hand out and I shook it, my small hand engulfed in the massive size of his bear paw. He pulled me close and embraced me, “Good to have you back”.