Faith Ryder’s gig with her family’s retribution company has kept her single and living out of her car for the last two years. Business clients seeking justice outside of the law have been as questionable as her dating life, but recent cases have all led back to the circumstances surrounding her mother’s demise twenty years ago.
As the cases heat up so does her love life as she encounters the man who broke her heart and the childhood friend who wants to claim it. Both men infuriatingly offer attraction and information but are as dangerous to her heart as the company’s biker clubs and cartel clients.
In Midnight Ryders, Faith must figure out how deep loyalty and blood run as she is tested again and again.
Excerpt
Faith Ryder slapped two hundred crisp dollar bills down on the gold fleck linoleum counter and thought of the salty diner fries and watered-down milkshakes the cash could have provided. At least half a month’s worth if they were careful and stopped at cheap back road gas station eateries. Nothing chain or commercial.
Stupidity had a price though, and today it would cost her two hundred dollars.
She tapped on the glass as the loud smack on the counter hadn’t received a rise from the attendant. “I’m here to bail out Leroy and Devon Ryder.”
From behind the counter, the stoop-shouldered deputy didn’t glance up but heaved her overly endowed, five-foot frame up out of a creaky chair and grabbed a clipboard velcroed to the wall.
The double chin and stubby legged woman huffed as she sank back into her rolling chair. “Disorderly conduct. Each a charge. I’ll get started on the release papers.”
Faith waited, thumping her fingers rhythmically against the new bills.
“You can have a seat,” the deputy said, fiddling with her computer keyboard. “It’ll take a while.”
Faith smiled, although the woman’s refusal to make eye contact meant the gesture didn’t have the intended effect. “Don’t I have to sign papers?”
Her question earned her a brief moment of scalding eye contact with a side of glaring disbelief. “I’ll call you when the papers are ready.” The deputy then turned away from the counter signaling an end to the conversation. Faith had not made a friend with this one.
Turning toward the blue plastic chairs and solitary potted ivy of the drab waiting area, she chose the chair directly across from the window. If Ms. Teresa Compent, as her nameplate read, decided to glance up from her humdrum tasks, the direct view of Faith would serve as a nagging reminder that she was waiting. Faith had a feeling she would become quite acquainted with this hard plastic chair before the morning ended.
Three hours and nineteen minutes later according to the metal clock on the wall, Faith had signed those release papers promising her pops and brother would appear in court, she’d counted the ceiling tiles (fifty-eight), she’d returned ten emails about various cases, and she’d stretched her legs seven times, when finally from behind the locked door, the two miscreants shuffled out, both ruffled from their overnight, drying-out stint.
Devon emerged from behind the heavy door first. His hair was disheveled and his beefy hands were tucked into the pockets of his creased jeans. A stench of stale cigarette smoke and whiskey wafted around him.
With his sheepish brown, almost black eyes, he stared into hers and frowned. “See, I told you she’d be mad.”
Pops, who hobbled behind, grunted, a scowl etching deeper lines into his forehead.
Devon swiped at Pop’s forearm with an unrolled fist, a hint of a smile beginning. “She came to get us though, just like you said.”
Pop’s scowl deepened and a low growl rumbled in his throat. “Son, let’s get out of here before we discuss business.”
Faith snatched her crossbody from the next plastic chair and followed the two out the door of the Lauderdale County police department. Alabama. Nothing ever went well for them here. The two should have known that before pulling whatever stunt that had led to an arrest which would leave them scrounging for scraps of food by the end of the month. After waiting all this time, her anger had dissipated—at least for the moment. With her pop’s sulkiness, she suspected something had happened that would rouse her fury as soon as the two shared their misadventure.