Hart

by Monroe, Evie

  He motioned over to the robotic arm on the coffee table. “What’s that?”

  “That? I’m always building shit to help at the Leaf. That’s a robotic arm that’s going to be part of a drone for oil changes. My dad hated anything tech. But when I was sixteen, I gave him a diagnostic probe that could scan a car and give you a diagnosis in thirty seconds. Now, he’s always having me make all this shit for him.”

  I left out the part about my father being a lifetime alcoholic, which was the real reason I’d made all that shit for him. Most of the time, the tremors were so bad he could barely hold a wrench anymore. And why I preferred tinkering up in my room instead of at the garage. My dad usually beat the shit out of me whenever I was in his path, so I tried to stay out of it.

  The kid kept squinting at me. “Shit. Why are you not working for Microsoft or Apple or some shit like that?”

  I shrugged. “Big corporations suck. And I like my life. The Cobras are my brothers. I got everything I need right here.”

  He gave me a doubtful look. He watched me in silence as I plated the grilled cheeses and slid one over to him. I turned off the stove and sat across from him. “So . . . what about you? You got parents?”

  He shook his head.

  I raised an eyebrow as I chewed my sandwich. “You on your own? Who do you live with?”

  “My sister,” he mumbled as he swallowed loudly. “But she don’t want me around. I fucked her over too much. She got sick of me after I got fired from my job at Jack in the Box.”

  This was progress. He was actually saying more to me than half-form sentences and grunts. “She kicked you out?”

  “Not really, but she probably will now, after what I did. But I’m not sure I want to go back.”

  “She’s pissed at you just ‘cause you got fired?”

  He stuffed the rest of his sandwich in his mouth and chewed slowly, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “No. Not just that. That was just the start of it. I got high in the bathroom so they canned me. I needed to make money because she’s always short on rent and I’d been helping. I started dealing drugs around the high school. No big deal.”

  He was talking low, trying to be all tough, assert himself. I could still see the shadow of the scared boy underneath. The kid didn’t have anywhere to go. He needed a friend. And if he really chose the Fury as his friends, he’d be fucked. I only hoped it wasn’t too late.

  “You use?”

  He shrugged. “Little pot and stuff mostly. Other stuff sometimes.”

  “Don’t know how the Fury is, but Cobras don’t tolerate our guys doing drugs.”

  He gave me a defiant look. “They never said nothin’ about that to me.”

  “So…what? Your sister found out about you dealing drugs?”

  He shook his head. “No. Not Char. She works too much to notice much of anything I do. I was doing pretty well …” He mumbled into his lap. “Then one of the Fury guys saw me on the street and told me I should join the club. That way, if the police came after me, I wouldn’t be alone. He said it was like an extra level of protection ‘cause no one fucks with them. I met with the guys and liked them. I never really had . . . anything like that, you know?”

  “Yeah. I get it.” As the bullied kid, I knew what having an MC on your side could do. But the Fury? I’d heard stories about them. They used their prospects as human shields. As far as I’d seen, and from what I’d heard from Zain, it wasn’t a brotherhood. Not like the Cobras. “But how much do you know about the Fury?”

  He let out a snort and gave me a sly look. “More than you.”

  I didn’t know if that was true. In my years, I’d heard a lot. Yes, it was a lot of second-hand information, but I had first-hand information, too. In addition to Zain’s horror stories, they’d kidnapped Nix’s girl, nearly killed our president and his family, and the former president of the Fury had almost murdered his own daughter. And if that wasn’t enough, the Fury had also bombed our first clubhouse and was fond of taking pot shots at us whenever they saw us around town.

  I figured we had a pretty good reason to despise the hell out of them. But the Fury scum had probably filled this kid’s head with a lot of lies about us. So telling him what I knew probably wouldn’t have done a hell of a lot of good. It was their word against ours.

  I backtracked. “So you ain’t planning on going back to your sister?”

  “Nah. She broke into my room though and found a gun I had, and who-knows-what else. She started yelling at me and telling me I needed to shape up. I’ve had it with her. I got on my bike and tore out of there. That was last night.”

  He’d cleaned his plate, so I took it from him and put both of ours in the sink. In my head, I wondered how hard it would be to get this sister to chain him up. Because right now, she was about the only friend he had.

  “So where were you going to stay then?”

  He shrugged.

  “You new to Aveline Bay?” I asked him.

  He shook his head.

  That surprised me. “Because when you were out there, you were driving like you had no fucking clue where you were going.”

  He crossed his arms over a t-shirt for a band I’d never heard of. He had skinny arms with a little bit of muscle, like he’d recently been picking up the free weights. “I was supposed to meet someone from the Fury somewhere. But when I got there, nobody showed.”

  “Oh yeah? Who?”

  “My sponsor.”

  “Who’s your sponsor?”

  He gnawed on the inside of his cheek. “Not sure I should be telling you all this. Why do you care?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t. Just making conversation.”

  That wasn’t the only thing. I needed to get this guy to trust me and see if I could trust him. But right now, it felt like it was all up in the air.

  Yeah, I saw a lot of myself in him. But that didn’t mean I was going to let him out of my sight.

  Not for one second.

  Chapter Four

  Charlotte

  I paced around the little apartment, the sun fading to a dark night sky. I checked on the animals, filling their food and water and changing out litter, trying to decide what to do next.

  I had to go past Jojo’s bedroom to get to my bedroom at the end of the hallway. His door was open, just the way he’d left it when he stormed out the previous day.

  I stopped in front of it, then peeked inside. I flipped on a light and scanned around. The gun had shocked me; now I wondered what other horrors I’d find.

  It smelled awful, like feet and body odor and stale food. Dirty clothes almost completely covered the floor, and I saw a half-eaten Pop-Tart on top of the hamper.

  If that was all I found, I’d be happy. But after finding that gun, I knew I’d find a lot worse.

  I guessed he didn’t have a permit. California had pretty steep gun laws. What would he do if the police stopped him? Did he care they could arrest him?

  I moved around to one side of the bed, shuffling through an ankle-deep pile of dirty clothes. As I did, my toe smashed against something hard. I bent over, my mouth forming silent curses before screaming out a strangled “Gah!” of complete agony.

  I lifted up a dirty Nirvana shirt and saw a dumbbell. That meant the rest of his weight set was probably around here, as well. This place was like a friggin’ minefield.

  I limped slowly, my toe aching like a mother and shoved aside some of the clothes on top of his messed up bed. I sat down onto the mattress, wondering if I should start calling police stations and hospitals.

  Before my ass hit the sheets, I realized that they were gross with dirty stains. Ugh, I thought. When was the last time he’d washed these?

  I stripped the bed and threw the sheets in the hamper. Then I sank down onto the bare mattress, looked around and wondered what other dangers lurked in here.

  As I sat there, I thought of the times Jojo would come home from school and wrap his hands around my neck. He’d been such a little stinker, but also th
e biggest sweetheart, too. He’d made of his finger paintings and drawings in school for me. In middle school for a mother-son baseball game at school, he addressed the invitation to me, and we’d had a blast. At fifteen, I taught him to drive for the first time. Nervous, because he didn’t want to screw up, he drove donuts around the high school parking lot at a top speed of fifteen miles per hour.

  It didn’t matter that he was only six years younger than me, or how old he got, or even that I was still his sister. And he was still my little brother. I loved him, no matter what.

  I needed to find one of his friends to contact.

  The problem was, I didn’t know any of them. I only saw pictures of him partying with them in his social media posts. I didn’t have phone numbers.

  I started to rummage around some more, finding things I wish I hadn’t. Condoms—well, he was nineteen, not nine, so I’d figured that was happening. A few dime bags with a little bit of pot residue in them. I’d learned about the pot smoking when his job kicked him to the curb, but I’d suspected that wasn’t his first rodeo and he’d been a user long before then. A hardcore porn magazine—Blech.

  Then I noticed something on the night table, under a couple of empty Coke cans. Something he’d drawn on the back of a napkin, a little doodle. Jojo could have a career as a great artist if he’d focus—he used to scribble cartoon characters all over his school notebooks.

  He’d sketched a picture of a motorcycle silhouetted in flames, drawn, Hells Fury Forever. Underneath that in fancy letters it said, “J-DAWG”.

  J-Dawg? My little brother? What kind of stupid name was J-Dawg? Sure, he was a little misguided sometimes, but he wasn’t a common thug.

  At least, I hoped not.

  I wanted to crumple it up. When he got the bike I thought he might get involved in a club. But whoever the Hells Fury guys were, I’d bet money I didn’t have they were behind Jojo acting less like the Jojo I knew, and more like an America’s Most Wanted poster boy.

  I piled up some of his dirty clothes and threw them in the hamper along with his sheets, then carried an armful of dirty plates and glasses out to the kitchen. I tossed it all in the sink and sat down on the couch with my dogs, Burt and Ernie, and my kitty, Opie. Absently petting them, I looked up the number for the Aveline Bay Regional Hospital.

  When someone answered, I said, “Hello, my brother is missing, and I’m worried about him. Could you tell me if you’ve admitted a Joel Grayson?”

  “One moment.” I put my feet up on the coffee table as I waited. “I’m sorry. No one by that name.”

  “Okay,” I said, both relieved and frustrated. “Thank you.”

  I hung up and thought about calling the Aveline Bay police, but then a better idea came to me. I had a profile on Facebook, and one on Instagram, for the sole reason of checking up on Jojo’s antics. He probably had some friends on there I could message.

  I opened it up and realized he hadn’t updated his Facebook page in over a year.

  It was a long shot. But it was better than nothing. I opened up a few profiles of the people he’d been close to before and sent out a few messages. One of them replied right away: Joel? No, haven’t seen him in months. I thought he died.

  I threw back my head and rubbed my eyes. That was not what I wanted to hear. The way my parents had been when we were younger, I was super-sensitive to drugs and addiction.

  So I did the only thing I could do. I went back to checking hospitals and police stations in the small towns and communities near Aveline Bay. Each time a nurse or officer put me on hold to check, I held my breath, waiting for the bad news.

  It never came. None of the other hospitals or police departments had seen him, either.

  The good news still didn’t set my mind at ease.

  Jojo wouldn’t do this to me. But I had no idea what this “J-Dawg” Grayson would do.

  Chapter Five

  Hart

  By the time we got around to turning in, it was after three. I showed the kid to the bathroom and let him have free reign over my bedroom, knowing the most damage he could do was to the sheets. The bedroom had no windows he could escape out of, so I figured it was safe.

  I stripped to my boxer briefs and stretched out on my lumpy couch with my robotic arm for company, staring at the ceiling.

  As tired as I was, I couldn’t sleep. Didn’t want to risk the kid sneaking out on me while I was catching some Zs. I could have probably rigged up an alarm but didn’t have the energy to do it.

  Before I knew it, the sun peeked through the blinds and I hadn’t dropped off for a second. Giving up on sleep, I got up and pulled on my jeans.

  I pulled my phone out of my jacket and found the kid’s there, too. I texted Cullen, Cobras owe me big time for this shit.

  I scrubbed my hand through my hair and tried to take a look at the kid’s phone. He had it password protected, but that wasn’t a problem for me. I easily opened it and saw he had four percent of his battery left.

  At my desk, I sorted through a bunch of geeky supplies and found what I needed to pry open the back of it. I added our own little tracking device, then went inside the programming guts and added the code that would allow us to listen in on all the conversations that the kid had from this phone. By then, I’d used up the battery.

  I set it down on the coffee table, went to the kitchen, and poured myself a bowl of cereal. As I sat there eating, I got a text back from Cullen: Good man, senator.

  Yeah, whatever. I thought of Jet, probably getting some pussy with that hot doctor of his right now, and I didn’t even get to sleep in my own bed. Where was the justice in that? Apparently, it paid to be an asshole.

  An hour later, the kid still hadn’t woken up. Fucking sleeping beauty. I had to go into my bedroom and bang on the wall. “Hey. Kid.”

  Nothing.

  “Joel.” I banged harder.

  Nothing.

  What the . . .?

  I stalked across the room and shoved him. He groaned.

  I opened my dresser and pulled on a t-shirt. As I turned around, he snored again, back asleep.

  I reached over and yanked the sheet off the bed. “Get your ass up.”

  He rolled over and cracked open an eye. “What time is it?”

  “Late. Come on. Get your ass up. I want to talk to you.”

  He sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes. He had a skeletal, concave chest and already sported a tattoo on his arm. Something with a skull. Tough guy. “Fuck,” he moaned. “I want to sleep.”

  I motioned to the bathroom. “Wash up. Take a shower. Then meet me out in the living room.”

  I strode out to the couch and peeled off the sheet and covers I’d used. Fifteen minutes later, the kid appeared. He looked even more run-down than yesterday and hadn’t taken a shower. I could smell him from across the room.

  He sat down at the same seat he’d occupied last night at the kitchen island, and I pushed a bowl and a box of cereal over to him, then got him the milk from the fridge.

  As he poured it, he looked at me warily. “What did you want to talk about?”

  I leaned over the island. “Listen, dude. I can’t keep you here. But I need to know what it is you think you saw last night. So you’ve got to level with me.”

  He shoveled a spoonful of cereal into his mouth and said, “Honest. Nothing. I saw two guys with Cobras on their kuttes, and I dunno. I thought if I offed one of them, it would impress the Fury.”

  I stared him down, until his tough-guy façade started to crumble. His shoulders slumped. “I know, I know. That was damn stupid. If I killed someone, I’d go to prison forever and Char would never forgive me.”

  “Char? Your sister?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” He mumbled.

  “Sounds like she’s got a real short leash on you.”

  He laughed bitterly. “Yeah, I guess she does. She’s had to be protective of me ‘cause we grew up in foster care. She’s always been too serious for me. She wouldn’t know fun if it bit her on the ass.
” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t have been able to hit your guy, anyway.”

  “What were you doing down there?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Scar sent me.”

  Scar. The name rang a bell, but I couldn’t place it. “Scar?”

  “He’s the vice president.”

  Oh, right. The vice president who’d assumed the position after Cullen had killed Bruiser. “Why did he send you?”

  He shrugged again. I began to think he used the gesture in place of speech. “Why else? To see what you guys were doing.”

  I scratched at the three-day stubble on my chin that was on its way to becoming a beard. “You do that a lot?”

  He dunked some of the cereal with his spoon and bobbed his head. “You kidding me? I’ve been following you for the past week.”

  I had to laugh. Was he serious? He was about as graceful on a bike as a bull in a china shop. How had we not noticed him? From the look on his face, he wasn’t exaggerating.

  Christ, we were getting sloppy. “What else have you done, gangster?”

  “Well, Slade’s a little bit all over the place with what he wants done. I get the feeling he’s kind of nuts. But one thing he was pretty set on was tracking you guys 24/7.”

  I stared at him. This was good info. He was still referring to Slade as if he was alive. Maybe he didn’t have any idea what Nix and Jet were doing that night. If so, he couldn’t have been following us that closely. Or he was just fucking stupid.

  From what Joel was saying, if they were so interested in our operations, it was clear we were ruffling their feathers. “So what do they know about us?”

  Joel shrugged. “Everything.”

  That wasn’t good. “What do you mean, everything?”

  “All of it. They know your business of boosting cars. They know who your contacts are. They want to bring you down, but they’re searching for the right time to do it. They said you killed a couple of their guys in a shootout a few months back. Fury is gonna fuck you guys up.”

  “They kidnapped an innocent girl,” I muttered.

  “They said she wasn’t innocent.”