I give him a smile. “Thank you so much for holding onto my keys. I feel like I need to apologize again for things getting… out of hand last night,” I say softly.
He shrugs. “Don’t mention it. Happens all the time here, girly. And it wasn’t your fault. That guy had it comin’. I saw what he tried to do to you,” he says gruffly.
I blink in confusion. “So it’s not just in my head? He really did try to… to roofie me?”
The bartender nods slowly, his eyes looking around the bar as though searching for any signs of trouble. “I’m sure it’s not the bastard’s first time doing it either,” he grumbles.
“Really? Do you know him? What’s his name? Who is he?” I fire off quickly.
“Slow down, girly. Don’t get ahead of yourself,” the bartender says. “Look, the guy’s name is Brandon. Local jarhead with a rich daddy. He’s a scumbag. I wish somebody would bring him down to size.”
I feel my face flush at that idea. I shake my head vigorously.
“Not me. I don’t want to cause any trouble,” I insist. I lower my voice and lean in closer. “In fact, if you could just keep this quiet, I’d appreciate it. I don’t plan on pressing charges and I kind of just want to forget it ever happened. Actually, forget I was ever here to begin with.”
A look of profound sadness crosses over the bartender’s face for just a flicker of an instant, and I feel that familiar pull in my gut. Pity. More pity. I can’t bear it.
But he sighs, “You got it, girly. You were never here and it never happened. But listen—be careful out there, alright? You got lucky last night, but it could’ve gone worse.”
“I know. Trust me, I know,” I reply heavily.
I slide off my barstool and walk out of the bar, clutching my keys. My shoes crunch on the gravel as I walk to my car, already pulling up my phone contacts list so I can potentially reach out to Bones. My heart races like mad. I don’t even know what to say to him. There are so many feelings I want to express, but I don’t know how to convert them into words. And the last thing I need is to come off like a blubbering, hysterical mess of a person in his eyes. I want him to think of me as a smart, put-together, sexy young woman. Not some terrified ingénue who can’t hold her own. Maybe that’s the truth, but it’s not the reality I want anymore.
But just as I’m about to dial his number, a push notification appears on my screen, interrupting me. For a split second I just groan and move to instinctively delete the notification, until my eyes land on the name in the headline and my blood runs cold.
“Jailed Pedophile Murray Smyth Awaits Appeal Hearing for Compassionate Release.”
Murray Smyth. Three syllables which have echoed in my head and left a foul taste on my tongue ever since I was twelve years old. Angrily, I hit the button to dismiss the notification and pause to draw in a slow, deep breath as I climb behind the wheel of my car. I lock the doors. Once, twice, three times in a row. I put on my seatbelt. I turn and look into the backseat, scanning it for signs of break-in. Bile rises in my throat and I swallow it back down, feeling like there are fish swimming around in my nervous belly. Then, the trembles start. My fingers first, then passing through the rest of my body until I’m shaking all over. With tears starting to blur my vision, I toss my phone down into the passenger seat and lean forward to gently rest my forehead on the steering wheel.
I murmur to myself, “It’s okay. You’re safe. Nobody knows where you are. Nobody knows what you’ve been doing. Nobody knows your name. They can’t track you down—not here. He’s far away, doing time. They won’t let him out. They would never. You just have to be more careful, just in case.”
I heave a deep breath and open my eyes again. Sufficiently pepped-up, I nod to myself as I turn the keys in the ignition and the engine rumbles to life. I slowly and cautiously pull through the parking lot and pause, looking both ways before I can drive out onto the main road. But something catches my eye and I do a double take.
A man on a motorcycle, his head blocked by a helmet except for his piercing gaze, which pulls away from the bar, over to land on me. He stares at me openly, which sends a shiver of horror down my back. He’s watching me. I have to get out of here. I peel out in the opposite direction, and even though he doesn’t make any indication to follow me, I can’t help but watch my rearview mirror the whole way home.
Bones
I glare at the flickering screen in front of me, where the live security camera feed is showing me everything that just happened upstairs. I can’t hear any of it, of course, but I’ve been glued to the screen since Lauren walked in, and I stare at the door thoughtfully for a minute or so after she leaves.
Breaker wanted me down here while Lauren arrived. I’m not happy about it. I should have been up there talking to her and making sure she isn’t still in any danger, but Breaker insisted that I stay out of sight. He wanted to see if she’d act differently with me not around.
But I’m starting to lose patience for all that careful nonsense. Being overly cautious isn’t what saved Lauren last night, and it’s not what I feel good doing right now down here when I could be up there checking up on her myself. I’m the one who started all this, and I want to be the one who sees it through.
Suddenly, my phone buzzes, and I look down to see that I have a text from an unfamiliar number. I furrow my brow as I open it and see a very different kind of text on the screen than I usually get.
Got your number from Breaker. Don’t be a stranger.
At the end of the second sentence is the emoji of a lipstick imprint, and when I first read it, I can’t keep a smile off my face. The thought of taking her phone and getting her number while she was sleeping had crossed my mind, but even I didn’t want to be that invasive at the time. But the bubbly feeling in my chest only lasts a minute as I re-read the first part of that text, and my brow furrows.
I shut the laptop and storm out of the office, through the clubhouse bar and upstairs to where the guys have already resumed business as usual in the bar. Big Daddy and Skid are shooting pool, and Breaker is talking to Kate at the far end of the bar before he sees me, kisses her, and starts coming my way.
But then he sees the look on my face, and he realizes he’s about to deal with a situation.
“Who the hell said you could give her my number, Prez?” I demand, stepping forward to confront the prez without fear.
He’s surprised by my outburst and strides forward to meet me, but the rest of the bar only gives us a passing glance. It isn’t all that uncommon for any two of us to have a shouting match with one another, sometimes with even more people involved. That’s just how we talked. Hell, it was how we blew off steam so that we didn’t blow each other’s heads off sometimes.
“‘Scuse me, Bones?” he says, crossing his arms and standing his ground as I march up to him with a hard glare.
“What happened to her being a liability?” I bark, throwing my hands up. “You could have just given my real-ass number to one of Diesel’s people!”
“Brother, I did you a favor,” Breaker says, brow knit.
I want to retort that I should just start handing out Breaker’s number to groupies, but I know that’s a line too far to cross. I don’t want to compare Lauren to some thirsty groupie, and the look in Breaker’s eye makes me suspect he knows that.
“So what,” I say, “one ride with her and suddenly you’re sure she’s trustworthy? What’d she say to you, huh?”
“Not a whole lot,” Breaker snapped back, raising his voice to match mine. “And what she did have to say was mostly about you!”
“I-” I stop. That legitimately takes me by surprise, and I don’t know what to say for just long enough for a smug smile to spread across Breaker’s face before he continues.
“Brother, I know where you’re coming from, I really do, but if she were in Diesel’s pocket,” he says, “don’t you think she’d have been more interested in the MC’s leader than you?”
“You don’t know-” I say, stopping mys
elf short, but it’s hard to push through his logic. “That girl is a hell of a lot sharper than she lets on, Prez. Don’t let her fool you into thinking any different.”
“She wasn’t trying to fool me about anything, except maybe how interested she is in you,” he chuckled, and both of our shoulders slowly relaxed as the tension between us faded. “No, I hear you, Bones—you’ve got trouble on your hands, but it ain’t the kind of trouble Diesel has his hand in.”
Breaker turns and starts to make his way back to the bar, but I scoff before begrudgingly step up to it further down as Eli starts pouring me a shot of whiskey preemptively.
“Fine, maybe she’s not a spy. But even if you’re right,” I growl, “I don’t need to get tangled up with some high-maintenance girl when we’ve got plenty of our own shit to handle. You shouldn’t have given her my number without asking.”
“Wasn’t like you were about to storm out of there and give it to her yourself,” Breaker says, raising his beer to him and tipping it toward me. “Besides,” he adds, wrapping an arm around Kate who’s raising an eyebrow at me, “women make the world go ‘round, brother.”
I stare at the two of them for a moment as Breaker turns to kiss Kate on the lips, and I roll my eyes, shaking my head and wondering what kind of a fit Breaker would have thrown if I had tracked down Kate and brought her here back before they got together. But I suppose he has a point. I watched Lauren every second that she was in the bar from the cameras downstairs, and I was no psychologist, but I could read body language. She wasn’t interested in anyone in the bar, least of all Breaker.
My jealousy isn’t just annoying because it’s unfounded, it’s annoying because I don’t even like feeling jealous over her. But goddamn, I cannot get her out of my head.
Just as I toss back the whiskey in a vain hope that it’ll take the edge off this day, the door of the bar swings open, and Ironside’s dripping form storms in, not even bothering to take his jacket off as he looks around at everyone whose attention just snapped to him.
“We need to ride,” his gravelly voice said with the kind of severity we all knew better than to blow off. “Our man in the police force just reported that Mayor Harley made an emergency call to the station.”
“On a Sunday?” I say, sliding my empty shot glass away and furrowing my brow.
“Exactly,” he says with a nod to me.”
“We need to go have a word with him,” Breaker says, standing up. “This can’t be a coincidence. Nothing happens in Pine Haven, and something like last night might be just enough to get people excited. Let’s go.”
Minutes later, we’re on our bikes and blazing down the road in the rain, carving a clear path through town with our ride as we storm into the nice part of town where the mayor’s house is. Like most local politicians, the mayor of Pine Haven belongs to a wealthy family that goes back a long ways, and even in a small town, his neighborhood is the one with the biggest houses, the most manicured lawns, and the fanciest cars.
When our handful of rugged, kutte-wearing outlaws rolls in on our thundering bikes, we draw some attention. The first few times we visited the mayor, someone called the cops on us. But by now, we have made perfectly clear that we’re the ones who’ll do what needs to be done to keep life in Pine Haven happy, even if that means sidling up to the mayor’s house and having a friendly chat every now and then.
As we pull up to the large, three-story house that looks big enough to house a dozen or so people at least, a white-faced gentleman peers down at us with fear in his eyes from a ground-floor window. I grin at him as he vanishes from sight, and a moment later, Mayor Hartley opens the door with a tight, mirthless smile as he waves to us. We dismount and stride up to the door, Breaker and I in front, Ironsides and Big Daddy taking up the rear while the two younger members who joined us hang back and watch the bikes. It helps to maintain a presence if we have people outside, too.
Discourages nosy neighbors, to boot.
“Bob,” Breaker greets the mayor as we make our way inside uninvited. “Good to see you again. Enjoying the weather today? Perfect for a ride.”
“I’ll have to take your word for it,” Mayor Hartley says as my dirty boots stomp across a pristine white carpet.
The interior of the guy’s house is a joke. At a glance, it looks like a generically classy semi-rich guy’s house, with high ceilings and a fancy chandelier in the living room and a fireplace loaded with pictures of him and his associates over the years, usually shaking hands. These are dotted with other pictures of him hunting with his friends, and a few family pictures are scattered around the rest of the house, along with a peculiar maritime aesthetic. The guy likes his ships in bottles, and even has what looks like a ship’s steering wheel mounted on the wall like a deer trophy.
“Where do you think he hunted that one?” Big Daddy whispers to Ironsides behind me, pointing up to the ship wheel, and I snort a laugh.
As they mayor shuts the door behind us, he looks us all up and down with an uneasy face. “I want to say I wasn’t expecting you all today, but I suppose that would be a lie.”
“We’d love to give you more heads up, if you’d just do me the courtesy of letting us know when we need to talk ahead of time,” I say as I ‘admire’ some of the decor.
“Why don’t you tell us what’s on your mind, Mr. Mayor?” Breaker asks, flopping down on the elegant couch and putting his boots up on the glossy mahogany coffee table. “Oh, excuse me,” he says, and he shifts his legs so that his boots are resting on a marble coaster.
Breaker doesn’t want to explicitly mention that we have a man in the police force watching him. The mayor probably either knows or has a strong suspicion, but if he hears it from Breaker, it would be impossible to justify not doing a clean sweep of the force and rooting out our informant who keeps us up to date on a lot of what goes on in Crooks County.
The mayor rubs his forehead and holds back a sigh, stepping over to a large armchair across the room to sit down. He probably wants to feel like he has some semblance of control here, and as tempting as it is to mess with the pompous ass, we do need his cooperation—coerced or otherwise.
“If there’s no sense in at least offering you a drink,” he murmurs before speaking up. “Look, you didn’t give me any choice. Last night, one of your people started a bar fight with a man named Brandon Robinson. That’s Master Sergeant Brandon Robinson of the US Marines,” he adds meaningfully, making eye contact with each and every one of us.
I can’t help but feel a jolt of pride at this new info about the wannabe rapist. I knew the guy I took down was military, but damn. Breaker doesn’t look quite as happy about that news, though.
“The man isn’t just a war hero in the eyes of the people of Pine Haven,” Mayor Hartley goes on. “He happens to be the son of a congressman. I know I can’t exactly put signs on people to tell you who not to bother, but good god, couldn’t you have shown some discretion?”
“Your ‘war hero’ didn’t show any discretion when he tried to slip that roofie into that girl’s drink!” Breaker says before I can stop him.
The mayor’s eyes widen, and he looks to me for confirmation. I looks pissed that Breaker just outed me as the one who got into a fight with this ‘Master Sergeant’, but I’m even more pissed that he’s saying it at all.
“We don’t just pick fights,” Breaker goes on. “That might be some bikers, but it’s not the Heartbreakers, and I stand by him on this. Your congressman’s boy was trying to date rape a friend of the club’s, and we have multiple witnesses who’ll swear to it.”
“Good Christ,” the mayor says, letting his face fall into his hands before he massages his temples and clenches his eyes.
“Breaker,” I say, even more pointedly, “she also said pretty goddamn clearly that she didn’t want to press charges, if I heard you right.”
“It doesn’t matter,” the mayor says, looking disgusted but weary. “He’s a well-respected man with his whole life ahead of him, this kind of sca
ndal can’t get out.”
“Hey, no, bullshit on that too!” I snap. “That piece of shit was just going to get away with that if I hadn’t stepped in. Mayor Hartley, are you going to tell me a woman’s life is worth less than some snotty rich kid’s reputation?”
“And his father’s,” the mayor says, opening his eyes and glaring at me.
That pisses me off so much that I take a step forward, fully intending to show the mayor exactly what I thought about that sentiment, but I feel a steel hand grab my belt and hold me back. It’s Ironsides, and he gives me a glare that urges me to stay put. I’m not cowed by any of the men in this room, and I’m getting more agitated by the second, but Ironsides gives me just enough time to think twice about what I was about to do.
“Gentlemen,” the mayor says, “I understand there seems to be a lot of personal baggage here, but the facts are that word got out about what you did last night, regardless of circumstances,” he says, looking up at me. “And because of what you did, I spent the morning on the phone with that Marine’s father, who’s now threatening to pull funding for a town development project that will keep a lot of hardworking Americans in their jobs.”
In the brief pause that follows, the mayor finds his spine and presses ahead.
“The congressman has warned me that unless I put you, apparently, in the county jail on aggravated assault charges, that money and those jobs go away. And if I let it get out that a congressman’s son was doing something like that—if it truly happened—then the consequences could be even worse. My hands are tied, and frankly, I don’t know what the hell you people want me to do about that,” he finished, leaning forward and speaking through nearly gritted teeth.
“Mayor Hartley,” Breaker says, standing up slowly and putting a hand out between us, “let me handle this. This is all fresh right now. Bones is one of my men, and I’ll deal with him.”
“Thank you,” the mayor says, sighing. “I don’t expect to hear the last of this, just, please, touch base with me before acting rashly.”
Bones: Heartbreaker MC #2 Page 5