Heart of a Tattooist: Dark Romance MC Club Alpha Bad Boy Obsession (Tattooist Series Book 3) (3 page)

She certainly liked to live dangerously.

Where the hell could she be?

He said, “Roger—is your sister still working as a P.I.?”

“Yeah, why? You want Dani to track her down?”

Mitch looked out the window. “I do.” He managed to keep the dryness in his voice to a minimum.

Roger chuckled, “Yeah, sure. No problem. You want to call her or should I?”

Mitch snorted. “I’ll call her if you give me her number.”

Roger rattled it off and added, “That’s her private friends-and-family-only number, so don’t go handing it out or anything.”

Mitch nodded. That Roger would give him Dani’s personal number said volumes about how he felt about that video that Bobby had shown them.

Fear rolled over Mitch. The motorcycle club was small, in its way. It hadn’t even made it out of Memphis, and likely they preferred it that way. A club that stayed in one place and steamrolled its way into the kind of fear that people in Memphis obviously had for them was something to reckon with.

And their reach might very well extend past Memphis.

At the very least they might be only too happy to ride wherever Cara was and kill her for the sheer hell of it, and to get revenge for that bastard who had tried to get her to give him a blow job and a free tat.

Dani answered the phone and he said, “Hey Dani, it’s Mitch.”

Worry crept across her voice and through the line, “Did something happen to Roger?”

“No. Shit, sorry, should have considered you would naturally think that if I called your personal line.”

Her voice, a rich contralto, came across the line again, “Oh, no problem. I mean that he’s okay…anyway, sorry. You caught me by surprise, is all. What can I do for you?”

“I need to find someone.”

“Anyone I might know?”

“Maybe; you do like tattoos, after all.”

Dani’s next words came behind a gust of laughter, “Now this is true, and intriguing to boot. Spill it already.”

Mitch tried to keep the frustration out of his voice. “I need to find Cara Van Tear. Only I don’t think she’s tattooing right now. In fact, I’m pretty sure she isn’t.”

Dani asked, “Cara Van Tear? I’ve heard of her: Blond, beautiful, talented with a gun. Utterly heartless.”

He snapped, “She’s not heartless.”

“This isn’t about a tattoo, is it, Mitch?”

His fingers clamped down on the phone. “Does it matter?”

Dani said, “I charge a little more for some things than others.”

Mitch pressed his lips tight before talking again. “I’m sure you’ll be earning good money on this one.” He briefly filled her in on what had happened in Memphis.

Dani swore under her breath, “Yeah, that’s fucked…so she’s where? Atlanta? Okay, I’ll start there but the truth is she might have hopped the next bus out of Atlanta and gone anywhere. If she was tattooing she would be easier to track down, but I think I can manage it.”

“Keep me informed on what’s happening.”

“Will do.”

He hung up and leaned his head back against the back of the seat and closed his eyes. If anyone could find Cara, it was Dani. But that didn’t really ease his mind.

Cara was beyond exhausted. The sun beat down on her body, hard, and the thick yellow glow drained her energy in a way that even the heat in Memphis had not been able to do.

The crowds mobbing the streets today, like too many days, were made up of sun-stricken tourists and cruise-ship passengers. They ignored her for the most part and she huddled deeper into the thin shade offered by the small hut-like building’s roof.

Her hair itched on her scalp and her skin, turned a deep golden-brown, itched as well from the continual wash of salty air coming in off the restless sea.

Key West was a madhouse. The narrow streets were fronted by bars, shops, and small houses painted in pastel hues. The traffic was bumper-to-bumper and the clamor of car horns and swearing drivers filled the air.

The homeless were everywhere, ignored by the millionaires who lived in ridiculously modern homes with exorbitant price tags. They were also ignored by the tourists.

Cara dropped a few quarters into a cup and kept going. She’d learned early that many of the homeless came from the Northeast, driven southward by the hope for a more hospitable climate.

They often starved in plain sight; she had recently been fired from a job at a little diner when the manager had caught Cara giving away the food that they were supposed to toss into the trash bins every night.

It was an insurance thing; her manager had told her as he had sent her packing. They couldn’t give the food away to the homeless because they might get sick, and sue. It was the most ridiculous thing she had ever heard.

Being without a job wasn’t acceptable either.

She’d been hiding for months and she was sick of it.

Not tattooing was a hardship for her, not being able to bend her hand to the gun and make loveliness blossom on skin—that was beyond untenable to her.

So was starvation and homelessness.

She had to work, and she knew that she was taking a huge chance. That Junior had never gone to the cops was a fact. Cara kept close tabs on that. No warrants for her arrest, no reports to the Better Business either. Nobody said anything, and that was what worried her.

People who didn’t mention revenge or retaliation were from one of two categories of people: Ones who didn’t want it, and ones who intended to have it and were making sure they didn’t get caught or stopped.

She was betting that Junior and his friends were in the latter, up until that morning when she had been checking over the Memphis news again and run across a story about Junior.

He’d ended up dead on the street, gunned down by some dope dealers. Likely he had been trying to use his uncle’s status to score free meth or cocaine, or he had decided to be his uncle’s pincher—one of the people who terrorized local neighborhood dealers into cooperating or losing their product.

Either way he was dead and, whether that vendetta had died with him or not, she needed to work, and she needed money fast.

And she needed on a soul-deep level to tat again too.

She headed for a tattoo shop, shaking her head when she caught sight of herself in the single plate-glass window.

She’d given up on trying to do anything with her hair, which frizzed often in the wet heat. She had it cut to her shoulders then dyed it a stunning blue, deciding the long platinum hair she’d once sported was too visible. She’d also lost weight she couldn’t afford to lose.

She’d sold a few of her corsets in Atlanta, at a motel down the street from a strip club, and while she had mourned the loss of the expensive leather and lace things for a little while, she could not now imagine herself ever wearing them again.

She was as far removed from the woman who’d worn those corsets as she could be. The only thing left of that Cara was a burning love of the art she had stopped practicing months before.

She’d learned plenty over the last few months. She had learned that she was tougher than she thought. She’d finally seen that there was a life outside tattooing. It wasn’t a life she wanted to live, no, but it was there and it could be lived if it had to be.

As she passed through the doors of the shop, she winced. It was a gritty place, flash art hanging on the walls and one private room. There was a man getting a tattoo in a chair right near the front.

Small, cheap, and fast… The kind of shops she had worked in before making her reputation and name.

She stopped and stood at a respectful distance as the artist at work finished a colorful mermaid on the customer’s leg.

He got bandaged and a quick aftercare spiel, handed over a few limp twenties and a fifty, and went out the door, giving her a long appraising look as he went.

The artist gave her an equally appraising look. She sized him up too: Tall, muscular, and with really good ink on his arms. His hair was short, almost military in cut. There was something about the way he stood; his bearing told her that he might actually
be
ex-military.

He spoke in a low smoky tone, one that had a long drawl in it. Texas, she guessed. “What can I do you for?” His eyes took her in again.

She knew what he saw. Slim, average height. Full-sleeved tattoos. She took a deep breath. “I need a job.”

His eyebrow tilted. “It’s Key West. If you’re going to live here, you probably need two.”

“I’ll settle for one that will keep me under a roof.”

His eyes didn’t change. She noticed than that they were a deep chocolate-brown, much like Mitch’s eyes.

Mitch.

Why couldn’t she shake him from her head? She said, “I tat. I tat well too.”

“You got a name?”

She sighed, “Yeah, but I’d rather folks not know it was me just yet.”

His expression didn’t change, but his eyes became slightly more guarded. “You running from something?”

“Isn’t everyone?” Her tone was as guarded as his eyes.

He said, “Could be. But if you’re going to work here I need to see your work, and I need to know what I’m letting myself in for.”

She cleared her throat. “You from Memphis?”

He gave her a look that said plainly he was wondering if she were sane. “No. Tyler, Texas.”

“You know anyone in Memphis?”

“No, but I’m guessing this has something to do with Memphis, so why don’t you spill it and let us get down to whether or not you can actually tat?”

She drew a deep breath and pulled her phone out. She clicked on the footage from that day in Memphis and then handed it to him. He watched the video. She said, “I should have warned you…”

“Don’t worry about it.” His voice held amusement. “I don’t believe in forcing women or walking out with someone’s time and ink and not paying.”

She sighed. “Look, I don’t need trouble and I’m…I haven’t tatted since then, so…”

“Because you’re scared they’re still looking to retaliate, or because you are afraid you’ve lost it?”

“I’m afraid of them.” Her voice dropped. She bit her lip. She wasn’t used to being afraid. Generally speaking, doing things that were crazy and even life-threatening made her feel far more alive.

This whole mess had done nothing of the sort.

She added, “He wound up dead in the street yesterday, so I figured what the hell, they have to be more pissed at whoever killed the rotten bastard than me by now, right? I can’t keep hiding and I need to work. Period. They didn’t file a complaint, so nobody knows what I did, outside of the guys in that shop, and I doubt they’ll ever say it either. Gutless bastards.”

“I’m Shane Wells. Show me what you’ve got.”

She held out her hand. “My name’s Cara Van Tear.”

He let out a low whistle and he shook her hand. “I see. I’ve heard of you. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to see you tat, though.”’ He motioned her to follow him to the reception desk. “Come on, let’s see your book.”

Gratitude ran through her. “You should know they might be looking for me.”

“Oh they’re probably looking for you, but if they come here they’re going to find themselves in a shit storm. Nobody screws with my crew.”

“It’s a motorcycle crew.”

“I’ve seen worse. They out of Memphis?”

She nodded. Somehow she believed he had seen worse, but that didn’t make her feel any better. She took out her tools and laid them out. Shane said, “Nice.”

She took out her book and he flipped through it. “This is really good. Just like I heard. You do your sleeves?”

“Parts of them. My ex did some parts and I let a few others do work where I couldn’t reach.”

He nodded. “Looks good. It’s a small shop. I get little custom work of the kind you’re used to. You want that work, it’s yours. Ditto the flash and stencil crowd.”

“I don’t want to take your income.”

“You won’t. I don’t really enjoy it anyway; I’m guessing you’re used to the kind of custom pieces like what are in the books, and I don’t really care for it.”

She frowned. “Why don’t you do custom work?”

“I do, but only if it matters to me too.”

He was totally confusing. She asked, “Matters to you? Shouldn’t it matter to the customer?”

The question popped out before she could stop it. Shit. She had probably just blown it. Now he would bounce her out the door without a single thought.

“Yeah, it does, but my real reason for tattooing is not to do this. I do a certain type of work and this stuff, the flash and stencil and the custom stuff you’ve been doing, doesn’t speak to me like it does you.”

Now she was intrigued. “Come again?”

“You’ll see. In fact, you can give me a hand with the woman coming through the door, since she’s booked out most of the day and I already set up the shop as closed for the rest of the day because of it. That is, unless you want to start tomorrow. I’ll split the pay with you if you want to work with me on her.”

She turned. The woman walking through the door looked drunk. Her hips and legs swayed at odd angles and she lurched slightly with every step.

“Check it out, Shane, new feet.” She lifted a pant leg to show the artificial legs, and pity swept over Cara.

Shane said, “Lillian, meet my new tat artist…sorry, I totally forgot your name.”

He was giving her a chance to give herself a new name. She swallowed hard and said, “Cara. I’m pleased to meet you.”

It was the first step out of the terror that had seized her ever since she had stood in that bus station and heard the sound of motorcycles rushing down the streets.

Shane smiled, and she saw approval in his eyes. It was gutsy, anyway. Lillian shook a little as they went into the private tat room. She couldn’t quite get up on the bed and Cara made a move to help her, but Shane shook his head and she held back, watching as Lillian grimly climbed on the bed and then scooted backward until she could finally settle in.

Lillian took her shirt off and pity became sorrow. Long jagged scars covered Lillian’s upper body.

Cara leaned in and said, “They didn’t keloid.”

Shane nodded once. “Nope, and that means we can work on them.”

Work on them? On the scars?

Shane slipped on a latex glove. “Let’s see this.” His fingers ran gently over the scars. Lillian took a long breath. “You still have pain?”

Lillian said, “Just the phantom kind.”

“I know that feeling.” His voice said he did know it.

Cara looked at him again, trying to gauge it out, but Shane was unreadable.

Shane took out a pen and paper and began to draw a lovely series of things, long chains of flowers, a string of hearts on delicate loops and whorls. Then he went to the machine, copied them onto stencil paper, and came back with it and a stick of men’s deodorant. The usual tattoo artist’s trick. Press the stencil onto the skin, swipe the deodorant across the back to transfer the ink to the skin, and let the customer see what the outline of it would look like on their skin.

Immediately the scars were transformed. Cara gnawed her bottom lip for a moment while Lillian stared down at the outlines and then she said, “Maybe if you added…here…” she took the pen and began to draw right on Lillian’s skin, adding detail and shading so that the outlines had more depth.

She stepped back. Shane nodded and said, “Yes, precisely what I was thinking. You have a hell of a hand and eye, Cara.”

“Thanks.” That pleased her.

Shane snapped a pic and showed it to Lillian. “What do you think, L?”

“I like it. Can I get it all done today?”

Shane shook his head. “Don’t think so. It will take hours and it’ll be pretty painful.”

Lillian said, dryly, “I’m used to pain.”

What had happened to her? Cara wanted to ask but she didn’t dare. Whatever it had been it had been traumatic and life-altering, that was apparent. She said, “What if we both worked together, Shane? It would cut down the amount of time it would take.”

Shane said, “We can try, but if it doesn’t shake out that it all gets done today don’t worry. Always here.”

Lillian smiled. “Okay then.” She lay back down, raising her arms up over her head.