“We’re not the only town that’s been hurting because of Doyle’s trafficking, and without the club, this would’ve been a lot worse. I think it’s time.”
Cherry watches him go with a satisfied look in her eye at the prospect of the club taking action again, but there’s something in that gorgeous face of hers that’s bothering her.
“What’s the matter, something up?”
“Hm? Oh, no,” she gives her head a shake. “I mean...if you and the union are headed out to ride, that means ‘goodbye’ again, doesn’t it?”
I laugh out loud, throwing my arm around her and yanking her into my side to her surprise before pressing a deep kiss into her. She yelps, but then her body relaxes and gives a soft moan at my kiss.
“Are you kidding?” I finally whisper when we break apart, but I keep her in my grip. “You’ve done more investigative work for us than anyone has been able to in all the years we’ve been protecting this town. We’ll need you to help us bust up these fuckers. And besides,” I add with a wink, “I think it’s about time you really saw the States from the back of a motorcycle anyway, and I don’t have any intention of letting you leave my side. And hey, should make one hell of a story: reporter travels up and down the coast, busting human trafficking rings and rallying the underdogs.”
Her mouth starts to spread into a smile as I speak, and she bites her lip to try and hold it back, but by the end of it, she just puts her hands on my face and pulls herself up into another deep kiss while Genn explains the situation to the rest of the club not far from us.
We ride the very next day.
The wind whips across my face, my knuckles are bitten by the dust of the road, and my kutte flaps around me as I lead our pack of bikes down the interstate, heading south. Men and women I can trust with my life are behind me, the open road is ahead of me, and if that weren’t enough, the most brilliant and gorgeous woman I’ve ever met has her arms wrapped around my waist, her heart beating furiously at the first taste of real freedom out here.
We carve a path from city to city, county to county, state to state, starting south in Delaware and Maryland before whipping around north across New York and onward to Connecticut. With each stop, Cherry gets more shrewd at gathering information for the club to use, identifying crooked cops, bought judges, and fat-cat bosses after each lead.
The immigrants rescued from Bayonne didn’t know much, but a laptop Mikhail confiscated from Marty Chandler’s house provided more than a few leads for us to go on. The nearest connection the slimeball had was just a few towns over, and that proved to be only the beginning of a long string of rings. Every local crime lord had tangential connections nearby just like Marty, and once Cherry was able to establish a pattern to fill in the blanks left by Mikhail’s evidence, the rest was just a matter of the union Club doing what it does best.
The first bust goes down just a few towns south of Bayonne. After Cherry’s secured a solid lead to a warehouse down by the docks, our bikes roar out to the site on a night a shipment’s supposed to be made, according to a dock worker with a conscience. The moment our headlights shine on the armed men bringing in living cargo around midnight, shots start going off.
As it turns out, most of the goons hired to ship the immigrants in aren’t paid well enough to stick around once we’ve turned up the heat. Our club knows how to handle itself in a firefight, and it isn’t long before most of the creeps go running for the hills, leaving us to take the law into our own hands with the dock owners who make it all happen. But not before we put down a few of their men, and they give us a few injuries in return. Anya’s going to have her work cut out for her over the next few weeks.
The situation is dealt with, and just as expected, when we call the hospital in to tend to the immigrants, there’s no voice up top telling them to hold back; the feds are in hiding, and we’ve struck while the iron is hot.
One of the locals tips us off about a brothel a few towns further south, and we’re off again. It’s an even simpler job—our bikes come roaring off the interstate, surround the house where the sex slavery ring is operating, and before the pimps know what’s pulled up on their front porch, we’re kicking down the doors and taking over the place.
It doesn’t take long for us to get a reputation. After a few more towns, bosses and crime lords alike start getting nervous at the news of our kutte being spotted on the roads nearby. The sounds of our engines tearing into a dock or a warehouse district sends the slavers running, and the ones that put up a tough fight quickly find themselves outmatched.