Dakota had no sense of place or time. Sometimes she would look at the clock after what felt like hours only to see that a minute had passed. She was dressed in a set of pale blue scrubs. When she had come in, her clothes had been covered in dark blood. For a while she had sat in them, numb to how uncomfortable they were. Finally a kind nurse had gently helped her change into a pair of scrubs and had held Dakota while she cried.
“Dakota, are you all right?” a deep voice asked as a nurse escorted an older looking gentleman into the room. It was six-eighteen in the morning and his best friend had just been shot, but still James Hastings looked impeccable. He was wearing a blue three-piece suit with a red and white striped tie and a matching pocket square, his shoes reflecting the light from the overhead lamps. Dakota started to cry again the second she saw him.
“Shh, there there, it’s all right. Everything is okay,” John said as he sat down next to Dakota and enveloped her hand with his. “Your father is made of strong stuff. He won’t let a few extra holes slow him down.”
Dakota scoffed at that, and tried to stop her tears and calm down. She had been crying almost non-stop for the last four hours and was always surprised when her body managed to produce even more tears. Every time she thought she couldn’t cry again, she would hear or see something and it would begin again. She was unable to control anything.
“Here,” John said, handing her a Starbucks cup. “Triple cafe, skim milk latte with sugar free vanilla, right? We can’t have you drinking the hospital swill.”
“It’s a pretty nice hospital,” Dakota managed to say.
“I suppose it’s all right,” John responded and he sat down across from her at the table. “Tell me what happened.”
“I don’t know. I woke up to gunfire. By the time I got to Dad, whoever it was, was gone.”
“You must have seen or heard something.”
“Just an engine and the sound of someone driving away fast, nothing else.”
“The cameras, did they catch anything.”
“The police are looking at them now. Hopefully they’ll know soon.”
“I don’t love having the local PD be in charge of this. There has to be a consultant or someone we can hire who can move faster, get more done. I have the number for someone. I’ll give it to you.”
“No,” Dakota said, shaking her head. “No, thank you. My father was a big benefactor with the local cops. We’ve had the commissioner over for dinner. I trust them on this.”
“Well, I may have my man look in on this. Two sets of eyes are always best. But in the meantime, how are you? What can I do for you?”
“I don’t know. I feel like I can’t do anything until I know how he is. I can’t even think past the next second, because what am I going to do if it’s the worst?”
The door behind her opened and Dakota turned to see a woman in a scrubs and a white lab coat walk in. Her nametag said Kelly Farraday and, beneath that, “Trauma physician.” This is it, Dakota thought. She felt out of breath, and then she was crying again, tears pouring from her eyes.
“Dakota?” the doctor asked gently, pulling out a chair and sitting next to the crying girl. “I’m Dr. Farraday, I treated your father today. I want you to know that he’s alive.”
Dakota let out a choked sob of relief, pulling the short doctor into a strong embrace.
“Thank you,” she cried. “Thank you.”
“He’s still in intensive care, and he hasn’t regained consciousness yet. The bullets did a lot of damage to his left lung and kidney, and he lost a lot blood, but he’s stable at the moment. We’re going to try to keep him stable and wait for him to improve before we do any major surgeries.”
“Why the wait?” James asked.
“Surgery is hard on a healthy body. It’s prudent to wait until we can be sure that his heart can take it before we do anything more complicated.”
“Maybe we should get a second opinion on that,” James said to Dakota.
“I’m sorry, sir. What is your name and how are you related to Mr. Kane?”
“I am James Hastings, John’s oldest friend, and this girl’s godfather,” James explained, his annoyance showing on his face.
“Well, James, Mr. Kane is well known around this hospital. The Chief Resident and the Chief of Surgery are personally looking after Mr. Kane. You’re free to seek a second opinion, but it’s the opinion of everyone who’s treated Mr. Kane that we should wait.”
“The doctors know what they’re doing, James. We should trust them.”
“Thank you,” Dr. Farraday said.
“Can I see him?” Dakota asked.
“Briefly, but he’s not conscious. You can see him for a few minutes, but then I think you should go home and get some rest. Your father won’t be waking up anytime soon. He’s heavily medicated to help him rest. Your father is well looked after, Ms. Kane. You should take care of yourself.”
“Yes, I completely agree. You need rest, Dakota. I’m calling for a car and sending you home and I don’t want to hear one single word of argument,” James said as he stood, taking a moment to adjust his suit before walking out of the waiting room.
“It’s good that you have someone who’s looking after you. You shouldn’t be alone in times like this,” Dr. Farraday said.
“Thank you,” Dakota said. “Can I give you my cellphone number so you can call me if anything goes wrong?”
“Of course, and I’ll walk you over to see your father.”
CHAPTER THREE
The intensive care unit was unearthly quiet. The only sound was the rhythmic pings from monitors letting the doctors know that everything was fine. Her father’s eyes were closed and there was a breathing tube down his throat. It looked like he was hooked up to a dozen machines, and IVs ran from both arms. His face was paler than before, and when Dakota leaned down plant a kiss on his forehead, he didn’t move. She knew she needed to go home, but there was nothing at home. Everything she wanted was in this room. She would stay as long as they would let her.
But, eventually, night fell and Dakota was ordered home. She returned the next day and the day after that as the various people in her father’s employ swirled in and out of her vision, attempting to fix what was broken, all of them determined to keep Dakota safe.
“You hired a biker to be your bodyguard?” Marley’s voice was so loud Dakota could hear it up a flight of stairs and through about three solid oak doors.
Dakota had been staying in the house since her father’s attack, back in her childhood bedroom. Only now, the gate was always locked and the security system was activated at all times. James and the police had decided her apartment in Center City was too dangerous and, besides, Dakota was planning on moving in once her father was released from the hospital anyway. She wanted to be there to take care of him. She had wanted to make sure the house felt like a home for him. She didn’t want him to feel alone. It felt strange, that even though someone had attacked the house a few days ago, she still felt the safest there. It had helped that the security company had sent over a representative to make sure all the alarms, cameras, and sensors were still functioning; the place was locked down.
“Yes, and he’s going to be here any minute,” Dakota answered slipping her favorite diamond necklace around her neck as Marley walked in. “Is that what you’re wearing – to a children’s benefit?” Dakota asked.
“It’s for the after party, duh.”
While Dakota was wearing a simple black dress that fell just above the knees and had a simple, but elegant lace back, Marley, on the other hand, was wearing a silver mini-dress that was about three inches long. A bottle of champagne was chilling on a small table in her room next to a tray of finger sandwiches and fruit, and the first thing Marley did was grab the bottle and expertly pop the cork and pour two glasses.
“But we have to go to the actual benefit first,” Dakota reminded her.
“Yeah, we sit, eat some crappy food, ignore some boring speeches, and then we go to the af
ter party with your new biker bodyguard.”
Dakota snarled at her reflection in the mirror. A bodyguard, it was ludicrous. Whoever had come for her father didn’t want anything to do with Dakota. She had been sleeping in the same house when her father had been attacked and no one had even noticed her. There were no bullet holes in her room, no evidence at all that anyone would want to hurt her. Dakota had made this argument to the police, to James, to her father’s lawyer, to the insurance agent, but she had been overruled at every turn. It was all in her father’s papers, his lawyer had explained; there were instructions on what he wanted to happen should he be injured and unable to make any decisions. Part of those instructions included protection orders for Dakota. It was in her best interest and it was what her father, who was still in the intensive care unit at the hospital, wanted. So under the heavy blanket of parental guilt via lawyer, the kind Dakota was most used to, she reluctantly agreed.
“It’s like I’m a child again,” Dakota said as she slipped her lipstick into her Chanel purse. “There’s going to be someone telling me where to go and what to do. I mean, whoever came after my father doesn’t care about me at all. I was in the house when he was attacked and no one came anywhere near me. It’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?” Marley asked. “Someone shot your dad in his bed and the cops have no idea who it was. Why not just let this bodyguard hang around with you? You can at least enjoy the eye candy.”
“I work with abused children and battered women. Do you really think they’re going to be able to relax and talk to me with a giant bodyguard always hanging around? I can’t take him to the shelter or the home. Everyone will be on edge and nervous and that’s the opposite of what I’m trying to do.”
“Well, maybe you should take a break from all that charity work. It’s practically a job for you at this point. You’ve been running from the hospital to the home to the shelter and now this benefit; you need to take care of yourself.”
“Miss Kane, there’s a Mr. Mendel here to see you,” the housekeeper said over the house’s intercom.
“Yay! Let’s go meet your new biker,” Marley said, downing her glass of champagne in one gulp.
With Marley at her heels like an eager puppy, Dakota walked out into the main entryway of the house to greet her new protector. The Kane house had been built by her ancestors over one hundred years ago. It was a massive house, over twenty-thousand square feet, with a grand marble staircase that led to the east and west wings of the house, a solarium, an indoor Olympic-sized pool with a retractable roof, a formal dining room that could seat over seventy guests, and a ballroom that could host up to three hundred people. The house was detailed with stained glass skylights, hand laid mosaic tile flooring, and solid maple and oak doors, floors and railings. They had a movie theater entertainment room (minus sticky floors and stale popcorn), and indoor squash court. There were twenty bedrooms and twenty-five bathrooms along with living quarters for household staff. It was huge and a ridiculous place for one person to live; she had chastised her father for it many times.
Now as she glided down the marble steps and into the beautiful foyer with sea green accents to compliment the cold marble, she tried to make every effort to not be too rude to her new bodyguard. Whoever he was, his back was turned as she came down the stairs, wearing a leather jacket and Dakota could make out the bulge of a gun in its holster under his arm. She decided then and there that she didn’t like him. He was in a deep discussion with the housekeeper and she could hear him asking how many windows there were, how many different points of entry.
Then he turned around. He was tall, over six feet, and all muscle. His eyes were dark, but clear, like he was really seeing everything. He had jet-black hair that he parted to the left and every now and then a strand of it would slip over his eyes. He was wearing a black t-shirt, black jeans, and a black leather jacket, and he wasn’t at all what Dakota had expected.
“Damn,” Marley whispered in her ear. Dakota had stopped on the stairs; she had been so taken aback by how handsome he was that she had actually stopped in her tracks. But Marley wasn’t so easily deterred; she slunk down the staircase, walking slowing putting one foot in front of the other to elongate her legs. “Hello there,” she purred. “You must be Dakota’s new knight in leather armor,” Marley reached the landing and gave him her hand, but instead of kissing it, he took it in an awkward handshake, barely looking at her.
“Nice to meet you,” he said brusquely, he was looking at Dakota, “Miss Kane, could we could talk privately before we leave?”
“Anything you say to me, you can say to Marley. I’m just going to tell her later anyway.” Dakota said as she joined Marley on the landing. “And you can call me Dakota,” she said sticking out her hand and giving him a firm handshake. His large hand enveloped hers, and she was suddenly aware that he could have crushed her fingers easily if he wanted to. But he was gentle, firm, but gentle with his rough and calloused hands. No one Dakota Kane knew had hands like that. The men in her life worked mostly on computers, the skin of their hands protected by gloves when they did something as strenuous as driving. She got the feeling that this man had never worn any kind of glove in his entire life.
“Dakota, I’m Adam Mendel, I’m your new personal security guard. We should go over a few things before you go out,” he said, and his voice was strong and deep. When he spoke to Dakota he mostly looked around him, but when he chanced to look her in the eye she was taken aback. His eyes were large and brown and seemed to have an endless depth to them. And was Dakota imagining something or was he nervous? He seemed to be swallowing a lot and was having trouble looking Dakota in the eye. What was she going to do with a nervous bodyguard?
CHAPTER FOUR
The line was around the block. It actually traveled from the front door of the club down the street and around the corner – a line fifty people deep on a Saturday night at only nine o’clock. It was happening: Adam’s club, Scarred Angels, was officially a success. He had spent the last ten years devoted to the club and to making it a working, legal business, and it was finally paying off.
He was practically skipping as he walked past the line and surveyed his clientele. There were girls in skirts that were too short, shirts that were too low, and heels that were too high, exactly the kind of girls they wanted. There were also plenty of guys posturing and posing in front of the girls. Everyone was giggly and loud and boisterous. It was going to be a good night. They were primed to make a lot of money.
“Do you see this?” Adam asked to his friend and co-owner Joey who was standing next to the bouncer, trying to look cool.
“Dude, we are blowing up. We’ve made it,” Joey said, hitting Adam on the shoulder in his excitement. He was craning his neck to check out the line, counting heads, and he kept hitting Adam in the shoulder with every other word.
“This is a good crowd,” Adam said.
“Twenty bucks at the door, three drink minimum. We are going to make some money tonight!” Joey said loud enough that several people in line turned to stare at him.
“All right, man, let’s go in. Mike,” he said, turning to the bouncer who was ninety-two percent muscle, “no drugs, and nobody underage – no matter how cute they are.”
“You got it, boss,” Mike said, crossing his arms and staring down the line of eager twenty-something’s.
Once inside the club, Adam and Joey turned away from the dance floor and entered the “Employees Only” section. The music could still be heard in the back, but it was filtered through the walls, just the sound of the bass and drums making it through. It made it sound like the building had a heartbeat.
“I got more good news for you,” Joey said, pulling up his email on the phone. “Good job, a lot of cash and incidentals, plus the promise of good referrals. You know the Kanes right?” Joey asked.
“I’ve heard of them,” Adam said. “Their name’s all over town.” In fact, for a few years before he turned ten, Adam had stayed in the Kane Home for
Young Boys after his parents had been arrested. But he wasn’t going to tell Joey that; he didn’t want to tell anyone that. “Didn’t one of them get shot up in his bed the other day?”
“Not one of them, the one, the patriarch and money strings holder himself, John Kane. Shot six times while he slept, drive-by shooting from out front, right through the windows. His daughter was home. She found him and called the cops. He’s still breathing, but it doesn’t look good.”
“Who did it?”
“The cops have no idea and neither do we, but they want protection for the girl. Even with her father alive, she’s worth a mint. They figure whoever is going after him might come for her next. They want protection for her. Round the clock, and they want us.”
HANDS OFF MY BRIDE: Scarred Angels MC Page 2