Page 17 of Rough Rider (Bad Boy High)
Bam’s occupied do i need a second
For anyone else, yeah, for you no. I’ll send a newbie to watch your back just in case. Sending you the address. You don’t need to collect anything. Just deliver a message. The Riders are watching
I wait for the address to come in and then delete all the messages. Clark uses a different stolen phone every day just in case he’s caught and they subpoena his phone records. From the gossip, it’s said that the only people he texts from his main phone are his mom and his school.
I shove my feet into my work boots, steel-tipped of course, and cover my shaved head with a skull cap. I don’t carry any weapons in case I get picked up. There’s always something at the destination I can use, whether it’s a bottle, a brick, or the dumbass mark’s own possessions.
The location is a gaming room just on the edge of Riders territory. Or I should say, territory that the Riders want to make their own. With the Pipefitters and Smoke Crew battling out the neighborhoods above Sixth Street, the buffer space between Sixth Street and Thirty-first, where the Riders territory south of Sixth Street starts, has been ignored.
Whoever runs the Riders thinks that we should start exploring that area, beginning with the high school on Thirty-first and Templeton. High schools are rich for recruits. Pipefitters became powerful because there were three high schools in their region with two of them being filled with rich kids. Rich kids love their nose candy and have plenty of funds to pay for it. The not so rich kids were filled with envy for everything their peers had and found a way to live that Benz, Canada Goose, Supreme sneaker, Thursday drop lifestyle by selling school tests, drugs, and even themselves. Everything south of Sixth Street was poor and rough and sprawling. Even ifyou wanted to sell, there wasn’t any money to buy it. But there were a lot of us. I’ll never know why, but us poor folks always like having kids, so there were teens everywhere with very little to do. A few years ago, rich people decided they wanted to live along the river, and the nicest parts of the river were in the southern part of the city. As money flowed downstream, Riders numbers increased right under the Pipefitters’ noses.
Rumors are that they are big users of their own product, and that’s why they couldn’t sense what was happening. I don’t really know. That’s above my pay grade, as they say. I’m a soldier, not a lieutenant.
As a good soldier, I find my way to the gaming room. The person at the front desk is half asleep. She gives me a bare nod as I walk in, not even bothering to ask for payment before putting her head back on her arms. There are a group of kids in the back. I count five guys and two girls sitting in a semicircle around a single guy, who is in the gaming chair. They’re all smoking despite the non-smoking signs, and there are several beer cans on the floor. The girls immediately stop laughing as I approach. Their sense of danger is more refined. I jerk my head, and they murmur something to their companions, probably about using the bathroom, and scuttle away when I reach them.
“Who are you?” one of the guys asks, his chin jutting out belligerently. I reach past him and slam the sitting guy’s head onto the keyboard. I do it again before one of the guys punches me. I shake my head and slam the guy’s head a third time into the keyboard. Blood gushes out of cuts in his forehead, and when I release his hair, he slides unconscious onto the floor. The five guys rush me. I knock two of their heads together and slam another one against the computer monitor, and the two that are left step back, looking ready to piss themselves.
“The Riders are watching,” I say, delivering the message.
I have no idea if they understand what I said, but they’ll tell their leader when he comes to. I reach into the computer player’s pocket and pull out a wad of cash. I peel off a couple of bills and press the rest back into the hand of one of the guys still standing. He takes it with shaking hands. Without another word, I leave, placing the two bills on the front desk. “For cleaning and damages,” I explain to the clerk.
She nods with wide eyes, fully awake now. Outside, the two girls are waiting.
“I’m Lexie,” says a dark-haired one.
I don’t even give them a second glance. There’s only one girl I want, but I know I can’t have her. This is no world for her.
Chapter Fourteen
ANDY
When I wake, the bed is empty. I sit up, glancing around, but there is no one in sight. It’s disappointing, but I’m sure Niki has a life to get back to. I should do the same. I make myself get up and reluctantly put back on my uniform and grab my phone. I smile when I see it’s on the charger, and I know I hadn’t put it there.
It’s a small thing, but it’s sweet. Holy crap, the bar is on the floor for me when it comes to people going out of their way, but it’s not only that. Niki had spent most of his day with me yesterday and let me take over his bed. I’m not used to that at all. He hadn’t expected anything for it, either.
I grab the rest of my stuff, double-checking to make sure I have everything before I head out. I stop short when I hear a noise coming from the kitchen.
“Hey, thanks for—” I stop speaking when I see it’s not Niki. It’s his friend, Bam.
“You’re up.”
“Yeah, I’m going to head out. Thanks for letting me crash.” I owe him some sort of thanks since he made it possible for Niki to stay with me last night.
“Niki will be back shortly. He had to take his sister to an appointment.” Niki is nothing like he appears. I never would have pegged him as a caretaker, but that’s exactly what he’s done for me since the moment I met him.
“Okay.” I shrug, feeling awkward all of a sudden. “I’ll text him later.”
“All right.” We both stare at each other.
“Again, thanks.” I take a step back and then another before I spin on my heels and dart out of the building. When I hit the sidewalk, I pull out my phone to text my mom, letting her know I’m headed home.
I keep my head down, not wanting to draw attention to myself. When she doesn’t text back, I call, but it goes straight to voicemail. It’s not normal for her to not text at all. She might go a few hours, but eventually she gets around to texting me. It may be to ask me for a favor or for money, but I hear from her nonetheless.
Worry starts to settle in that something may have happened. Especially with the way Niki and I found the apartment I share with her yesterday. That thought has me picking up my pace.
I’m almost home when I get a call, seeing it’s Rico. My stomach sinks. I can’t get a hold of my mom, and now her boss over at Blush is contacting me. Dread fills me. I can’t stand Rico. He’s the new owner there. He bought it out when Samuel retired.
Samuel had his issues, but overall he meant well. He also never gave me the creeps. I think it was because the word was that over the twenty years of owning a strip club, he wasn’t hard up to get into every girl’s pants.
