Stryker's Desire (Dragons Of Sin City Book 1) Read online

  “You want a refill?” I looked up from my phone. Jimmy, one of the sons of the woman who owned the cafe, was standing at my table with a pot of coffee in his hand.

  “Sure, man,” I said, pushing my cup towards him. I’d been out late--really late--the night before, hanging with Nick and Olivia. She apparently wanted to do a special on after-hours parties in the local scene, and if my blurry memories were anything to go by, she’d ended up with more material than she could use. We’d gone to see Garage Collective and Bent Bridges at Chelsea Club, and ran into the boys from The Sweet Goodbye and Nolan from Bang-Bang; from there the night had just gone completely off the rails. As soon as Bent Bridges and Garage Collective finished up, we were all headed out to Scarlett’s, and then somehow found ourselves at the end of the night at Benji’s house from The Sweet Goodbye. I wasn’t even sure if Nick and Liv had managed to get home by the time I crashed in my own bed a few hours later.

  Jimmy poured me some coffee; I thanked him and watched him walk to one of the other tables. I’d managed to sleep for a couple of hours before the sun in my room made it impossible, and then made my way to the cafe. I didn’t have a hangover exactly--but I was definitely feeling the lack of sleep. Fortunately, we weren’t in the studio that day, or else I’d be in trouble. I scrubbed at my face and debated whether it’d be worth it to go back home just yet; I didn’t have anything on the calendar for the day, and not even really anything for the night. I obviously couldn’t hang out at the cafe all day, but I didn’t exactly enjoy the idea of spending the next several hours by myself, either.

  I opened up my messaging app and found Dan’s number. Yo. You up to anything today? I tapped send. If Dan was busy with Sophie, I told myself I’d check with Jules; if nothing else, Jules was good for some weed and beer and maybe we’d hit up the beach for a bit. I set my phone aside and drank down about half my coffee.

  Hey. Soph is helping clean someone’s place from Respects, so I’m free til tonight. Any ideas? I finished off my coffee and told Jimmy I didn’t want anymore; I was already starting to feel like my heart was going to pound clean out of my chest. As far as I knew nothing all that interesting was going on, but there had to be something to do for a few hours.

  Let’s meet up in Downtown and see what’s good, I wrote back. That was the best I could I do on only a few hours of sleep. I smiled to myself, remembering some of the high points of the night before; it wasn’t quite the way that things had been before, but it was good to be around other musicians, just hanging out and partying it up. I’d probably spent over $200 at Scarlett’s, but I didn’t think it was all that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. As long as the label didn’t drop us, I could always make it back later on when the album came out.

  Sounds good, bro. Meet you at Boston’s in like 30? I did a little mental math--it would take about fifteen minutes to get up to Delray from my place. I could wash my face, take a leak, and check on a few things before heading over. I texted Dan back that I’d see him then and took the check Jimmy had given me for the meal into the cafe.

  I felt a bit off as I made my way back home; almost sad. I’d been feeling that way a lot ever since things had gone south with the band; when Dan and I started bickering and rest of the group had to work around us. As a band, we were working on figuring out what the hell we were going to do with ourselves and how to deal with the change in the dynamic, but it was slow going, especially when we had to come up with an album that the label would be willing to put out at the same time. There were some days when I was pretty sure that in like--maybe twenty years--we’d be on some cut-rate Behind the Music web series, talking about how Molly Riot had gone from being one of the most successful indie bands out of South Florida to absolutely imploding in a matter of a year. No one seemed to really have any idea what to do to put things back on the rails and get us on track again; everything was about keeping the fucking train going, not about whether it was going in the right direction. I tried to be optimistic, but unless something changed really fucking drastically, I wasn’t sure we’d even have an album to put out in a few months’ time. I wasn’t sure if we’d even still have a band.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A week later I found myself sitting around my apartment; it was a night off from recording, and I’d slept in all morning just to avoid the fact that I didn’t really have anything to do and no one in the band to spend time with. I hadn’t bothered to go out to get breakfast--I’d ordered a big lunch on GrubHub, from one of the local pizza places instead.

  I was trying to decide what to do with myself for the night; Dan was going out with Sophie to see a movie, Nick and Olivia were going to some magazine event, Jules and Fran were working on new material, and Alex and Mary were doing something--I didn’t know or care what. I thought I could see who was playing either in Miami or in West Palm, but I didn’t feel like going to any of the usual places; I could see if anyone new was on Tinder or Bumble, but I’d gotten tired of first dates and hook ups. “God, I am fucking pathetic,” I announced to my empty living room. I’d been fighting the realization for a while; it wasn’t one that any guy would want to have about himself. But I had to face facts: there had to be a reason why every other guy in the band had managed to find someone to date before I’d managed to. There had to be something.

  I was considering what that might be when I heard my phone buzz on the countertop. Someone had texted me. “Please let it be Dan saying that Sophie’s on the rag or something,” I muttered to myself as I got up and threw away the leftover trash from my lunch, on my way to where my phone was. I tossed the trash in the garbage and grabbed my phone, unlocking the screen to see what the message was.

  Instead of being from any of my bandmates, it was from one of the guys from Bent Bridges, Nate. Yo! Neely broke his wrist falling out of the van and either we need someone to sub for him or we’re gonna get scrubbed from the festival lineup. My eyes widened; Neely was the drummer for Bent Bridges--Nate was the lead singer. I’d played with them a few times over the years, and I knew most of their songs. I’d known they were playing Big Noisy Fest out near Tampa, but I hadn’t really given it much thought since hearing about it a few weeks before.

  Shit, man! When do you go on? Tampa was about three hours away; it was a fucking haul, but it wasn’t impossible to get there in time, depending on when they were due to play. My phone buzzed almost immediately--Nate must have been waiting for my answer. I wondered how many people he’d texted.

  We’re on at 8. Think you can make it here? Neely said you can use his kit, since we’re already loaded in. It wasn’t ideal, of course; I preferred my own kit. But it would make sense to use Neely’s kit if I was playing with Bent Bridges, and anyway it would save time if I didn’t have to break down my spare kit and load it into my car. If I left in the next hour, I could get to Tampa by five, and work things out with the other members of the band with enough time to play the set. I took a deep breath; there’d probably be some bitching from the rest of the band, but I didn’t really care that much. We had another two days off, so I could play the festival, maybe stay to catch day two, and be back home before anyone would notice. It’d be in the New Times and maybe a few other places, but by then, I’d have time to explain it to the other guys.

  I’ll be there by 5. I put my phone down after sending the text and went into my bedroom. I was only going to be gone for a day--two at most--and I’d have Neely’s drum kit to play, but there were a few things that I always brought with me when I played a show, especially an out-of-town show, and I wasn’t about to leave without them, just because it was an emergency. I grabbed my tour backpack out of my closet and checked that I still had a clean pair of boxers and a clean tee shirt in it; I did. I went from my bedroom to my bathroom and back again, throwing in my deodorant, a pair of shorts, a pair of jeans, my toothbrush, and other items I didn’t want to go a day without. I zipped it all up, grabbed my keys, my phone and my charging cable, and fired off a quick text to Dan and Nick telling the
m I was going to be up in Tampa.

  I had to get gas in the car--it was a long fucking drive, after all--but I was on the road headed north and west within forty-five minutes. I blasted OK Go all the way, actually enjoying the sight of swampy, scrubby Florida woods as I followed the Turnpike, singing along to each of the songs. It struck me when I took a quick break to piss and grab a coffee for myself about halfway through that it should probably alarm me more that I was this fucking excited to be hauling ass up to Tampa to play for a band that wasn’t my band on such short notice; but I pushed the thought out of my head before I could really examine how important it was. I was happy, I had something to do, and that was enough for me.

  I thought about Bent Bridges a bit on the drive--traffic was better than usual, so I had enough bandwidth, mentally, to do something other than react to all the stupid drivers around me. Neely was probably totally appalled that he’d managed to break a bone the morning of a major festival date; I know I would have been. Big Noisy Fest was in its third year, and getting bigger; Bent Bridges’ slot wasn’t a headliner spot, but they were on just before the big headliner for the night, and I remembered they were slated to play the side stage the next day; they might back out of it, considering that they probably wouldn’t want to rely on a substitute drummer for too many dates, but if they were up for going on the next day, I wasn’t about to pass on the chance.

  Bent Bridges had been together for maybe two years; like most of the bands in the local scene, they’d come about as a result of the death of two other local bands: Jai Alai Inferno and Hunger Strike. Bent Bridges was dope, and I’d seen their first show since I’d gone to high school with Nate and Brant; I’d learned all their songs as soon as they came out with them, and I’d talked about them whenever someone asked me about influences. There was a point--back when Molly Riot was going off the rails--when I’d thought about seeing if Nate or Brant wanted to do something on the side, but I’d held off.

  It took me a moment of frantic Googling to find the festival site, which I probably should have checked on before I left the apartment; but once I was straight on where it was, it was easy enough for me to get there from downtown. I’d texted Nate from the rest stop to remind him to tell security to let me park in the area for the talent, and to give me a pass so I could get into the backstage area; otherwise I’d have driven fucking hours for no reason. But when I pulled up to the artists’ entrance, the guard there had my name on the clipboard, checked my ID to confirm who I was, and waved me past without so much as a word of complaint. I got the feeling that the festival wasn’t going exactly smoothly--the guards looked like they’d rather get the day over with and start over.

  I found somewhere to park and grabbed what I thought I was likely to need for the next few hours from the car: my backpack, a spare pack of smokes, the bag I kept spare drum sticks in, and a couple of odds and ends. I probably should have been more concerned by how excited I was at the prospect of playing substitute drummer for a festival gig, but I didn’t care; it was a big change from what I’d been doing for months. I was hundreds of miles away from the rest of my own band, and I didn’t have to think about the stupid shit we were going through for a solid day or two. That was enough for me.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Yo! Hail the conquering hero and all that shit,” Nate said, smirking as I appeared in the green room the venue had set aside for Bent Bridges. It wasn’t as good as some of the places Molly Riot had been able to get since Alex had had his run-in with the South Florida drug industry, but it was decent enough: a couple of coolers with beers, a broken-down couch, and a room full of decent guys. I gave Nate and then Brant a quick hug, and spotted Neely on the couch, his arm in a cast and a sling, looking morose.

  “Bummer, dude,” I said, shaking my head in sympathy. “That shit blows.”

  “You’re telling me,” he said, managing a little smile. “On the bright side, they gave me Vicodin, so at least I can buzz out while you’re fucking up all my brilliant beats.” I snickered.

  “You’re just worried Nate and Brant are going to want to kick you out in favor of me once they see how much better I play,” I told him. Neely rolled his eyes and sipped his beer.

  “I’m going to be out of commission a couple of months with this dumb-shit thing,” he said, carefully raising his broken arm in the sling. He shook his head. “Fucking bullshit, man.”

  “What happened?” I looked from Neely to Nate, who looked like he was about to bust at the seams from holding in laughter.

  “He fell out of the van,” Brant said. “We were loading in and he went to go grab something--what was it, Neel?”

  “Nate’s fucking iPad,” Neely said bitterly.

  “The iPad survived,” Nate told me, pressing his lips together.

  “Came in handy while we were waiting in the hospital,” Brant added. “Anyway, a couple of hours and an x-ray later, our comrade here has both bones in his forearm broken just past the wrist, so he’ll still be useful once he heals up, but until then…” Brant shrugged.

  “Want a beer? They’ve stocked us with Dogfish Head and Due South,” Nate told me.

  “Grab me whatever,” I told him with a shrug. We started to get into actual business, going over the set list, and I got out my sticks and a practice pad and ran through some of Neely’s parts with him carefully watching and giving me pointers. Obviously, I wasn’t going to be able to play it exactly the same way that he did; it was going to sound just a little different from me simply because I was a different drummer. But I could get close, and I could stay on the beat and pull off most of the fills that he did at least enough for the crowd to recognize it and the band to be able to keep up with it.

  After that we had about an hour and a half to kill, and I wandered around the backstage area a bit, checking on some of the other local guys I knew; of course, everyone asked what I was doing at the festival when Molly Riot was in the studio, and I had to explain I was subbing for Neely. Apparently, everyone had heard about Neely’s incident, but no one had known what the band was going to do to deal with it, at least for the festival. I couldn’t say anything in terms of what Bent Bridges’ long-term solution was going to be, but I kept myself on a tight leash when talking about Molly Riot and what we were up to.

  More than half the scene had heard that there were issues in the band, and even though I figured I could probably trust most of the guys and gals I was talking to, I also knew that there were journalists all around; not a good thing to be spreading gossip where someone could write it down. So, I stuck to the same official story we’d given the label, since it was at least safe: we were reworking the album, figuring out where we were going with our sound. Jack was definitely on board with what we were doing, encouraging us all the way, but it was taking time.

  “I’m just jealous you guys can spend this long in the studio,” Frank from Howler told me, shaking his head; his band had been one of the first acts of the day to take the stage, and he was halfway to being trashed on beer and pot and probably a pill or two. “What was your budget? Like a fucking million dollars?”

  “Half million,” I said with a shrug. “We’re having to negotiate to make sure the label doesn’t try to fuck us since we’re taking so long.”

  “I heard it started over a girl,” one of the journalists said, off to the side. I grinned at her.

  “I heard you don’t do rumors over at Anti-Spin,” I said, when I’d caught the badge she had on for the magazine she wrote for.

  “Everything is rumors,” she said with a shrug.

  “All I can say is that it’s fucking complicated to be in a band, and Molly Riot is still together, everything is good--we’re just taking our time,” I told the girl. “We’ve rushed into every damned tour and every damned album we’ve done and it’s been great, but we’re not getting any younger out there on the road--we wanted to take a little more time this time around.”

  I wandered away from Howler’s green room and the journalists packed i
nto it as soon as I could; I had to get ready for the gig, and the last thing I wanted was to spend any more time around members of the press than I had to. Nick and Dan had texted me back; neither of them was super into the idea of me being out of town for a couple of days, but since we didn’t have sessions booked, they couldn’t bitch at me too hard--especially when they were both all wrapped up with their sweeties for the break.

  I walked back towards where the guys in Bent Bridges would be waiting for me, getting ready to go out on the stage, thinking about the fact that I almost never found myself in the position to speak for the band. Normally it was either Alex or Jules that took over that job, though Nick occasionally liked to chip in. Dan and I had always sort of kept a back seat on those responsibilities since neither of us were into the idea of dealing with people from the press whose entire job it was to get a scoop, and who’d do whatever it took to get it. It still surprised me that Nick had ended up dating a reporter--but I had to admit that if I was going to date someone from a magazine, Olivia was a good choice.

  I was thinking about that when a flash went off in my face. I turned around, glaring even as the afterimage made it impossible to see. “What the fuck? Warn someone before you blind them,” I called out, trying to find the stupid-ass photographer who’d snapped me.

  “Sorry! I really am sorry, you just looked so perfect.” The voice was feminine and part of me was somehow both irritated and intrigued at the same time. “I didn’t realize I’d forgotten to turn down the flash,” the girl continued. After a moment, the spots in front of my eyes cleared and I could see the woman who’d blinded me.

  She was maybe a handful of inches shorter than me, with thick, long blonde hair, pulled out of her face with a messy tied scarf. She was exactly the kind of girl you expect to see on the beach in West Palm or Boca or maybe Broward--not stacked and plastic-enhanced, but with a freckled tan and muscles that showed she actually walked the beach, actually swam in the ocean. I thought to myself that she probably snorkeled, took pictures of what she saw. She had her camera in her hands still, the strap around her neck, but for her it looked less like a tool of a profession and more like part of her actual body, like she’d fused with it somehow. She was wearing jean shorts and a tee shirt--the approved Florida Festival Uniform--and she had a badge pinned over her right breast that proclaimed her to be a photographer, officially sanctioned by Big Noisy Fest.