Page 2 of Monk
“Nah,carnal.You don’t need to see. You just need to do,”the man replies. “You know what happens to people who disappoint Mr. Zavala. He likes you, Spencer. Don’t give him reason to be upset with you.”
There’s a pause for a moment, and my heart thunders in my chest. It’s so loud in my ears, I’m half afraid they can hear it in the office. I can’t believe what I’m hearing. It makes no sense to me. Spencer is a lawyer, not a money launderer. Not a criminal.
“Tell Miguel—sorry, Mr. Zavala—that I’m not going to let him down. I won’t disappoint him,” Spencer says.
“See that you don’t,ese. Or my next visit won’t be so friendly.”
The chair in the office creaks, sending a jolt of fear through me. I know they’re getting up, and I have a feeling they won’t appreciate finding me lurking out here in the hallway. I turn and dart back to the stairs, moving silently up, taking two steps at a time. When I get to the second-floor landing, I duck behind the wall and listen to their footsteps echoing off the marble flooring.
Their voices are a low murmur, and I can’t hear what they’re saying, but their conversation sounds intense. Heated. My mind is still swirling with everything I’ve heard, trying to sort it out, and I don’t know what to think. I know it’s stupid, but I lean out just a bit and peer around the corner. I see them standing in the foyer, leaning close to one another, whispering urgently.
The man standing with my husband is a few inches shorter than Spencer’s six-foot-one frame. He’s wearing a nicely tailored dark suit, and though he’s not bulky, I can tell he’s fit. His skin is tawny, he’s got dark hair, cut close to his scalp, and a neatly trimmed goatee.
I rack my brain, trying to think back to the countless number of boring cocktail parties we’ve been to, but I come up with nothing. I don’t know the man. But there’s something about him that scares me. He’s not an exceptionally big man, but he has a presence about him that’s intimidating. It’s like the air around him just crackles with tension and the whispered threat of violence, and fear ripples through my entire body.
As if my thinking about him draws his attention, he starts to turn his head up to the stairs. I duck behind the wall, then dash back down to the bedroom. I quietly close the door, half expecting the man to burst in and shoot me or something. I press my ear to the door, straining my ears to listen. I hear the front door close and a moment later, I hear heavy footsteps on the stairs. Turning, I dash over to the bed and jump in, pulling the covers over myself, and then close my eyes.
The sound of footsteps stops just outside the bedroom, and beneath the small gap between the floor and the bottom of the door, I see the shadow of Spencer’s feet. I hold my breath, waiting for him to come in. Time crawls by and my heart is beating like a jackhammer inside of me.
But then he turns and walks down the hall, the echoed thump of his footsteps receding. Only then do I let out a breath of relief. I wait a few minutes just to be sure he’s gone, then grab the phone off my nightstand. After calling up Google, I type in the name, “Miguel Zavala”, and when the articles about him start popping up, my eyes widen. With each piece I read, the nervous feeling in my belly only grows stronger. I can taste bile in the back of my throat and feel like I’m going to be sick.
“What have you done, Spencer?” I whisper. “What in the hell have you gotten us into?”
Chapter Two
Monk
Taking a long drag on my cigarette, I let the smoke fill me before exhaling, the thick plume trailing from my mouth and scattering on the wind. I shift on my seat, trying to ignore the dull ache in my ass from such a long ride. I love the rumble of the engine reverberating through my body though, shaking me from head to toe, but it’s not an unpleasant sensation.
The sun is starting to slink toward the horizon, casting the scattered clouds in hues of red and orange. On my right is sheer cliff—a hundred-foot drop—and beyond that, the Pacific, the sun shimmering off it, making it look like an endless pool of gold. On my left are the soaring trunks of the sequoias, the tops of the trees seeming to reach the heavens themselves. It’s warm but not hot, and there’s a cool breeze coming in off the ocean that carries the heavy scent of the sea.
The rumble of my Harley vibrates through my entire body. The wind feels nice as it whips through the shoulder-length, sandy brown hair that’s spilling from the back of my half helmet. This is one of those quintessential, perfect California days that people in other parts of the country only wish they could enjoy.
Cosmo waves to get my attention, then points to Randy’s, a usual stop on our way back from a run to Sacramento. I give him a nod and we pull off the road and into the parking lot. I cut the engine, and the sudden silence is almost startling after nearly four hours on the road with nothing but the throaty growl of my bike in my ears.
“I need a beer,” Cosmo says. “Throat’s dry as hell.”
I unbuckle the chin strap and slip the half helmet off my head, then hang it on my handlebar. After taking off my gloves and stuffing them in my helmet, I run my hands through my hair and give him a nod.
“Yeah. I could go for somethin’ cold,” I say.
We head across the parking lot, the asphalt cracked and pitted, then up the pair of steps that lead to the wide, wraparound porch. Randy’s is an institution. It’s been around longer than the thirty years I’ve been alive, though I’ve never been able to figure out why. It used to be a biker bar. It was before my time with the club, but my MC, the Dark Pharaohs, used to be regular fixtures here. Back then, they say Randy’s used to be dark, dingy, and unfriendly… all key ingredients of a biker bar, apparently.
There’s nothing special about it and yet people flock to the place like it’s some kitschy tourist destination… like that bar in New York where they nail women’s bras to the ceiling. And once the tourists taking a trip up the coast started coming en masse, Randy’s cleaned up a bit and actively started courting those dollars. Not that I blame them. Relying on an MC as your main source of income probably isn’t the best thing for long-term financial planning.
Randy’s still has a certain amount of grit and grime to it, but it’s more for show now rather than being real. It’s like a Hollywood set with everything being staged and framed just to give it a biker bar feel without actually being a biker bar. They like it when we stop in, though, since we lend an air of authenticity to the place. We usually get our meals comped and twenty percent off our bar tab, so I’m not going to complain.
It’s not a bad place to stop for a burger and a beer, don’t get me wrong. The food’s good and the beer’s cold, but the way people show up here, taking selfies non-stop and looking at the place like it’s some wild, exotic locale just makes me shake my head. I will probably never understand people.
Even so, Cosmo and I still like to stop in on our way down from Sacramento to wash the road dust out of our mouths and fill our guts with some greasy food. The bell over the door tinkles as we stroll in, and Bob Seger’s playing on the old-fashioned jukebox in the corner. The lighting is dim, and everything is done in dark wood and fabric.
We head for a table, the peanut shells crunching beneath our boots. We sit down and a moment later, a pretty blonde steps over and flashes us a smile. Her eyes linger on me for a couple of beats longer before she turns back to Cosmo.
“Nice to see you two again,” she chirps. “How you boys doin’ today?”
“We’re good, Maggie. How about you?” Cosmo replies.
“I’m great,” she replies, then turns to me again. “And how you doin’, Monk?”
