by Monroe, Evie
I took a deep breath and set my jaw. “You think who knows?”
“The Fury. I think they know I’m working with you guys.” He voice cracked on the last word, and he let out a low groan. “What the fuck am I going to do?”
“All right. Calm down,” I said, standing up and pacing. As I did, I stepped on a bolt with my bare foot, and clenched my teeth, kicking it out of the way. “Okay, start from the beginning. Why do you think that?”
“They have photos, Hart. Of you and me meeting somewhere. I don’t know. They didn’t even point them out to me.” His words came out in a tumble. “They just fucking left them on the bar for me to find. I mean, they were grainy. But I’m pretty fucking sure it was obvious that it was you and me.”
I covered the speaker with my hand and gritted my teeth. “Fuck!” I growled.
I took a minute to consider my options. Why would they not tell him about them, unless they were fucking with him? Unless they didn’t realize it was him and me in the photos?
“Okay,” I finally said to him, calming myself. “Are you absolutely sure, that it was obvious to them that they’d nailed you and me? Could they have thought it was someone else?”
“No. No, I’m pretty sure they know it was me. Because when I got there they were acting weird. And then they kept making me go over to the bar to get them drinks, so I would see them. I’m telling you, Hart, they know.”
“All right, all right. Just play it cool. Where are you now?”
“I’m on my bike. I just pulled over onto the side of the road to call you. I don’t know what to do.” I could hear it in his voice, the panic rising, getting more and more frantic as we spoke. He was definitely not playing it cool. “Shit, man. Shit. What do I do?”
“Listen to me,” I barked out, turning toward my bedroom door. It remained closed, which was good. I didn’t want Charlie coming out so I’d have to deal with two hysterical people. Wherever he was, he was breathing hard and cursing under his breath. “Listen. Joel. Are you listening?”
He sniffled. “Yeah.”
“Do you know if any of them followed you?”
“Uh. No. I don’t think so. I mean. I don’t see anyone. I don’t . . .”
“All right. I want you to go to the Cobras clubhouse. Right now. Don’t stop for anything. I’ll text the guys and let them know you’re on your way. Someone’s usually there on the weekend. Knock twice on the door when you get there, and they’ll let you in. You got it?”
“Uh. Okay. I guess.”
I heard a noise down the hallway, toward my bedroom, which I chalked up to an open window and the curtains blowing in the night air. I’d have to get to the clubhouse right away. And I’d have to bring Charlie. She couldn’t stay here alone; it wasn’t safe.
“All right. I’ll be there in ten minutes, Joel, and I’ll bring your sister. Okay?”
“Yeah. Good. All right.”
“Stay calm, kid.”
I hung up and dragged a hand over my face. This wasn’t fucking good. The kid couldn’t start cracking. I could only imagine he hadn’t kept it together at the Fury meeting, either. He probably had his guilt written all over his face.
I quickly checked the tracker on his phone. He wasn’t too far from the clubhouse—maybe a ten-minute ride away. Good. He was out of the belly of the beast, at least.
Poor kid. All he had to do was get to the Cobra clubhouse. That was it. After that, we’d keep him safe.
I sent a group text to the other officers: URGENT: Hell’s Fury knows about Joel. Heading to clubhouse now. Let him in and keep him there.
A second later, I got a text back from Zain: Shit. I’m here. I’ll let him in.
Moments after that, as I headed back to the bedroom, a text came in from Jet: Heading there now. FUCK THE FURY.
The rest of the guys sent texts as well, letting me know they had my back. I opened the door and saw Charlotte sitting up in bed, the sheets pulled up to her chest. “Is everything okay?”
I grabbed her backpack and handed it to her. “Nope. We’ve run into a little situation. Get dressed and I’ll explain,” I said, finding my jeans on the floor and stepping into them.
Her eyes widened with worry. I knew she was thinking of just one person. The only person who ever really existed in her life. Her brother, who meant more to her than anything else in this world.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Charlotte
A situation could’ve been anything. A lost sock. A clogged toilet. Anything.
But I knew it had to do with Jojo. And though Hart wasn’t one to overreact, or even react strongly to very much, I knew it was something bad.
“What kind of situation?” I asked, holding the backpack on my lap and undoing the zipper.
He pulled his t-shirt on over his chest and ran his hands through his long hair before pulling it back into a ponytail. Then he sat down to put on his boots. He motioned with his chin to the bag. “Hurry up.”
I grabbed a t-shirt and jeans out of the bag and started to fish around for my panties. I couldn’t find them, and he was making me nervous, watching me as he tied his boots. “Is it about Jojo?”
“I’ll tell you on the way,” he muttered, grabbing his vest and putting it on.
Not finding panties, I decided I’d go commando. I’d put on my jeans and stood with my hands on my hips. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what this is about.”
He reached for my shirt, opened it up, and brought it down over my head, so that only part of my face made it through the neck-hole. I didn’t have a bra on, either, but at that point, I had other things to worry about. “Hart. You’re making me nervous.”
He didn’t answer me. He stormed out of the room, pocketing his phone. I found flip-flops and scuffed my feet into them, raking my hands through my messy hair as I rushed to keep up with him. When he reached for the door, I threw myself against it and closed it.
“I’m not playing. Tell me, dammit, Hart.”
He sighed. “All right. Fine. It looks like Hell’s Fury knows that your brother’s been meeting with us and helping us out.”
I suddenly couldn’t breathe. “Wait. I thought you said they wouldn’t find out. That he’d be safe. You promised me.”
“I know. I did. We were careful. But they found out anyway and now he could be in danger. So we’ve got to go. Now.”
I felt like the floor had dropped out from under me. My knees weakened as I stared at him in sheer disbelief. “But you said—”
“I said we’d protect him. And that’s what we’re doing. Now, let’s fucking go.”
I covered my mouth with both hands. “If anything happens to him . . .”
“Nothing will. I’ll make sure of that.”
I didn’t know what to believe. If I lost Jojo, I’d die. But I wasn’t thinking straight. I’d just had the most amazing night of my life and convinced myself Hart was borderline immortal and could do anything he wanted. Now, I wasn’t so sure.
I grabbed the door handle. “All right. Let’s go.”
Once outside, we ran into a pitch-black wall.
I jumped on Hart’s bike without waiting for him to put the helmet on me. When he did, I said, “Hurry, hurry.” All I could think about was Jojo in trouble. Jojo needing me. That he couldn’t deal with this on his own. That Hart may have said he would protect us, but I was the one who’d always been responsible for protecting my brother.
To think, I’d been so scared while riding on Hart’s bike, before. I kept looking at the pavement and worried we crash and I’d get splattered all over it. But when we sped off toward the clubhouse, I didn’t even think about the death trap. All that mattered was my brother.
Hart drove down a long, deserted pier, toward the ocean. The dark sky looked so calm, just a thin line of blue separating it from an equally calm Pacific. I squeezed my arms around Hart’s waist, trying to think positive thoughts.
When he pulled to a stop in front of a one-story warehouse, I saw a number o
f motorcycles, too many bikes to pick Jojo’s out, but I hoped his was among them.
Hart slipped the helmet off of my head and said, “Come on.”
I followed him and he rapped on the door. A second later, someone answered. It had to be a member of his club—a jacked guy with tattoos and a fuck you expression on his face. They fist-bumped and he let us in.
Hart said, “Jet, this is Charlotte, Joel’s sister. Is he here yet?”
Jet gave me a surly look and shook his head. “Not yet.”
And I totally lost it.
“He isn’t?” I shouted, getting frantic. “Where is he?”
Jet closed the door and drew the blind closed again as Hart wheeled on me, placing his hands on my shoulders. “Hey. Listen to me. Everything’s okay. He’ll be here any minute now.”
I reached for the doorknob. “Well, I want to go out and—”
He grabbed me and pulled me away from the door. “Charlie. It’s not—”
“Let me go!” I snarled, yanking away from him
“NO,” he barked, making me freeze in my tracks. He’d never raised his voice like that before, and it had the desired effect. He drew me away from the door. “It’s not safe. You need to stay here. If anything, I’ll go out and look for him, okay?”
His eyes burned intently on mine, making it impossible to disagree. At the same time, I realized we had an audience. My eyes trailed to his side to a long folding table, where five other guys sat smoking, each one bigger and more threatening than the next. Every eye in the place glared at me.
I gulped. “Okay.”
He noticed me looking at them and said, “Come on. Take a load off for a minute and meet the guys.”
Guys? These were more like monsters than guys. My worst nightmares. But I guessed I’d thought the same about Hart when I met him. I meekly followed him to the group.
“Guys, this is Charlotte. Charlotte, this is Nix, and Zain. And over there is Drake. Cullen. And you already met Jet.”
I nodded and peeped out a scared little, “Hi.”
The one I think Hart had called Cullen pulled out a chair next to him. “Hey, Char. Come and sit down. Can we get you anything to drink?”
I shook my head, and because they were still looking at me, I sat at the very edge of a seat.
Hart went to the fridge, grabbed a Coors, twisted the lid off, and handed it to me. “Just have it. Relax.”
I took a tentative sip, my knees shaking.
Hart pulled out his phone and started scrolling through it. Whatever he saw, he didn’t like, because he nodded at Cullen, who stood up. “All right. Let’s go.”
I jumped up too. “What? Where are you going?”
Hart avoided looking at me for the longest time, heading to the door with his head down. I grabbed him before he could get very far. “He’s my brother. Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
He looked over at Cullen, and then held up his phone with an attitude of resignation. “I told you I was looking out for your brother. Even when I wasn’t with him, I was still keeping tabs on him. I put a tracking device on his phone.”
“You did?”
He nodded, a sheepish look on his face.
Of course he did. He was a closet computer nerd. No wonder he hadn’t been too concerned when Jojo had gone off with the Fury before. But now, looking at Hart, I knew there was something else he was reluctant to tell me. I was getting good at reading Hart when he was trying to keep stuff from me. “And you can tell where he is? So where is he?”
“He was on his way here, when you and I left my apartment. He was only a few minutes away,” Hart said, not meeting my eye. “Now he’s downtown. Near the canning district.”
“The canning district?” I repeated, trying to get it through my head. That was where heroin addicts went to score. It was just blocks and blocks of burned-out old factories and homeless people and thugs. There was no reason for a normal person to go there.
My heart thrummed in my chest. I brought my hands to my cheeks. “Oh, God.”
Hart held out his hands. “Look, we don’t know—”
“Yes we do! He’d never go there on his own! They have him! And if they know what he did, they’ll kill him! I’m coming with you.”
Hart shook his head adamantly. “You definitely are not. It’s too dangerous.”
“But I have to! He’s my brother! What can I—”
He placed his hands solidly on my shoulders, holding me there, but even that didn’t stop my body from trembling.
“Charlie,” he said, low so the others wouldn’t hear. “We’ll take care of it. I’ll bring him home.”
Tears filled my eyes. He’d made promises before. “Will you?”
He put a finger under my chin, tilting my face up to his, and set a soft, dry kiss on my lips. “I’ll do my best, sweetheart. Just promise me you’ll stay here.”
I nodded, and Hart and Cullen grabbed their helmets and swept out of the room without another look back.
They seemed so confident, like this was business as usual.
But I was pretty sure I was going to have a heart attack. And it only occurred to me as I heard their bikes roaring into the distance, that Hart was in just as much danger as Joel was. And I hadn’t even given him a proper goodbye.
That was because he had made it seem like it wasn’t a big deal. But what if it was the last time I ever saw him?
As I slumped down in the chair, my stomach turned as I realized with a sickening feeling that I couldn’t bear to lose either of them.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Hart
We left Charlotte at the clubhouse with Jet and Nix, and the rest of us headed out in search of Hell’s Fury. Normally, we didn’t know where they’d meet, since they kept their clubhouse a secret and kept changing locations. But because I had a GPS tracker on Joel’s phone, I knew exactly where to find them.
The other men wanted to unleash a little hell on the Fury, but by the time I’d made it to my bike, a sick feeling had settled in my stomach. I never liked walking in on Fury turf. And now, they had one massive bargaining chip in their clutches.
Joel. I couldn’t let them hurt him. I’d promised Charlie.
They were down in the shit section of town, the canning district, home to the burned-out old businesses. Not far from the old ribbon factory where Zain and I had gotten caught up. Ground Zero. There’d likely be bloodshed tonight, and no police to break things up when shit got bad.
Maybe she already knew, but I didn’t want to tell Charlotte that. She worried enough as it was.
Hell, even I was fucking worried.
The night fell silent, as if it, too, held its breath, waiting for something bad to happen. Everything seemed to lead up to this big moment, a moment that would go down in the history of the two clubs. As we left the clubhouse, we all loaded our pieces.
“You think they’re expecting us?” Drake asked as he threw a leg over his bike.
I shrugged. If they were, it made sense why I’d tracked the phone to Ground Zero. Even the police didn’t like to go there. There, it could get as bloody as they wanted it to, and no one would arrive to break it up. Maybe that was what they were counting on. “Could be.”
We all climbed on our bikes and revved them up, heading away from the pier. At this hour of the night, the streets were deserted. It’d been a long night.
And if anything happened to Joel, it’d only get longer.
As we rode, I took out my phone and tried to gauge the location via the GPS. Based on the map, it looked like he was still in the parking lot of the old champagne factory. He hadn’t moved from that place in at least fifteen minutes. I took the lead and motioned for the guys to follow me.
Gradually, the businesses and buildings on Main Street became more and more run-down, until we rode by nothing but rows and rows of crumbling brick buildings, windows open and dark like the open sockets of a skull. Shapes of the homeless or junkies huddled in dark corners and waist-high weeds
on the sides of the streets.
As we got closer to the rubble of Ground Zero, I thought of what Charlie had said to me. Of how she and Joel were all alone in the world. She’d made a big leap in trusting me because she didn’t trust anyone. But she trusted me now. The weight on my shoulders felt so goddamn immense, I didn’t think I’d ever felt anything so heavy.
When I rounded the corner, I eased off the throttle and slowed down as I peered between the holes in a rusted old chain-link fence that went around the perimeter of the old champagne factory. A single streetlamp lit the place, casting a dim yellow glow on the lot strewn with garbage and a few empty dumpsters. But my eyes immediately set on the line of motorcycles set up along the crumbling brick walls. In front of each of them, a rider. I counted ten. Fury.
The one in the middle, Scar, stood over another person who was kneeling, his head bent low to the ground as if praying.
It was the kid. Joel.
With a gun, pointed straight at the back of his skull.
Fuck. This wasn’t going to end well. I hoped I was just overreacting; for one time in my life, I’d hate being right. No matter what we did, we’d see bloodshed tonight. And after I’d promised Charlie . . . fuck. I really wish I hadn’t promised her. The best I could do was try to limit the damage.
I rolled into the lot with the other men, pissed that they had us caged in by the fence with nowhere to hide. They’d planned it that way. Make us sitting ducks so the Fury could pick us off, one by one.
I stopped with Cullen on my right, Drake and Zain on my left in a line. Two opposing armies, ready for battle.
“Nice of you to show,” Scar called out, a smile in his voice. “Figured you’d get our message.”
I knew Scar, one ugly motherfucker. I’d forgotten what an asshole he could be. He was no better than Slade or Blaze. Totally bald, he usually wore a bandanna on his head. And he had this long, puckered red scar running from his temple, across his cheek, through his lips, to the other side of his chin. Rumor had it, he’d gotten it in a knife fight as a kid, but all of the Cobras joked he’d probably just cut himself shaving.
He tilted his chin to the sky and the light bounced off the shiny, mottled skin of his scar. It wasn’t a laughing matter, though. He looked pissed. Out for blood.