Bad Blood: A Short Story

By Joelle Fraser

What happens when you’ll do anything to patch into a Motorcycle Club? “Bad Blood” is the story about one man’s fateful decision to break the rules at any cost.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joelle Fraser
• Release date: Jan 10, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311490650

Joelle Fraser

Joelle Fraser is an award-winning author of two books, The Territory of Men, and The Forest House. She’s also the publisher of HardRider Press, whose short stories are set in the motorcycle world. www.joellefraser.com

Book preview

Bad Blood

A Short Story

HardRider Shorts #4

By Joelle Fraser

Hard Rider Icon

Copyright

Bad Blood

A Short Story

HardRider Shorts #4

Copyright ©2014 by Joelle Fraser

Smashwords Edition

The characters and events in this story are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Cover image design by Pro_ebookcovers.

Icon of motorcycle copyright jackrust / 123RF Stock Photo, used with permission.

Author photo by Noah Porter, used with permission.

Published by HardRider Press

HardRider Press on Facebook.

HardRider Logo

Table of Contents

Bad Blood

Come With Me Description

The HardRider Shorts Series

About the Author

Bad Blood

The lie came easily.

Later, much later, when Dave had plenty of time on his hands at Oregon State Prison, he would wonder about the lie. He wasn’t even sure it was a whole sentence, just a string of words blurted out before he had time to think.

Because that lie took away everything he’d ever worked for.

icon

Since he was a teenager, he’d wanted to be in a motorcycle club. His old man rode a knucklehead and took off whenever he got a chance, which wasn’t much because he worked long, hard hours at the lumber bill outside of Bend, Oregon.

He keeled over on the job the day before Dave’s high school graduation. Heart attack at 44. One minute he was headed to lunch, gray pail swinging in his left hand, the next he was facedown in the sawdust, dead before the foreman came back from a smoke break and saw him there.

Dave begged his mother for the Harley, the biggest connection to his father, who’d taught him to ride before he could drive. He loved its kickstart and its

Not until you’re 21, she told him. She wasn’t the kind of parent who negotiated. The bike stayed in storage.

And because things were tough after his old man died, Dave applied not for junior college but for a job, and he got a good one—as the assistant to the crime scene technician at the local police department. Everyone assumed he’d go to the Academy and end up a cop, but he didn’t want that.

What he wanted was to ride.

But not like his dad, a lone ranger rolling down the solitary highways of eastern Oregon.

No: Dave wanted brothers—guys who had your back because you had theirs. He wanted to be part of something, something bigger than himself. If you were alone, he felt, your life wouldn’t have much meaning. Nothing could provide it like a band of brothers.

His mother was against it and because he loved her, he figured he could wait. It might take a long time, years