Crash

by Elana Johnson

  “Did he still have the bag?” Lucas asked.

  “The bag?”

  “The duffle bag,” Lucas said.

  “I have no idea.”

  Lucas looked at Julie, who immediately left the room and stepped out into the hallway. It wasn’t hard to look at the board and see where the patients were. It also wasn’t hard to figure out which one was the biker.

  “Frogger,” she said under her breath, a measure of disgust in her voice. She hurried around the corner and into his room.

  It wasn’t dark. It wasn’t noisy. There was only calmness. But her entire frame quaked when his eyes met hers.

  “Did you have a bag with you, sir?” she asked, her voice much too high. “We’ve had a theft, and—”

  “There’s been no theft,” the man said, his voice low and full of power. This man didn’t need to yell to be heard. This man was used to speaking and having every word obeyed with exactness. “You’re Julie Paige.”

  She cocked her head. “Do I know you?”

  “Not yet,” he said, a cruel smile curving his lips. “Tell your boyfriend that you’re mine.”

  Fear reached right into her chest, grabbed a fistful of lungs and ribs and other organs. Squeezed tight. “I’m sorry?”

  “I’m claiming you for the Devil’s Breath. Tell Lucas and Maverick if any Sentinel even comes near you again, they’ll have to answer to me.”

  Julie swallowed, wondering why she’d thought she could walk into this room and fool this man. And how in the world could she convince him that she’d need a place of sanctuary with Lucas?

  She couldn’t. Frogger would see right through it, just as he did now.

  “Go on,” he said. “Scamper back to your House and tell him.” He leaned back against the pillows. “And get my real nurse in here. My head is killing me.” His eyes drifted closed, a clear dismissal of her.

  She glanced around the room for a duffle bag and didn’t see one. Before she could take another breath filled with so much terror, she fled the room. Outside, she pressed her back against the wall and sucked at the air.

  “Are you okay?” another nurse asked, and Julie nodded quickly.

  “Did that man have a bag when he came in?” she asked before the woman could walk away.

  “Not that I’m aware of.” The nurse walked away, and Julie did just want Frogger had told her to do—she scampered back to Lucas.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Lucas glanced at Julie as she re-entered the room. She went straight to the chairs lining the wall and sat down. She cradled her head in her hands and started rocking back and forth.

  “No bag?” he asked.

  “No,” she said without looking at him. Phoenix watched her too, and Lucas suddenly knew what had happened.

  “Okay,” he said, tapping on his phone to stop the voice recorder. “I think we got it. Let’s go, Jules.”

  She didn’t move, and Lucas had to go over to her and physically help her stand. He moved her out of the room, throwing Phoenix a look over his shoulder that he hoped conveyed his gratitude for the man. He’d told everyone he knew about the Breathers and what to do if they encountered them. He wasn’t happy it had been Phoenix, but this could be a break the Sentinels needed to keep Jordan’s insane plan from being needed.

  At the same time, Lucas knew the first steps of the plan had already started.

  “He claimed you, didn’t he?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “He said to tell you that if you or any Sentinel comes near me, they’ll have to answer to him.” She drew in a shaky breath. “He was terrifying.”

  Frogger, Lucas thought. They hadn’t even known he was the President of the Breath for a long time. He did lead them in, but only by a wheel. He didn’t have a commanding presence, and he wasn’t the biggest of the bunch. If Lucas could’ve picked who the President was, he’d have chosen Fire, the loud-mouthed, burly biker who played the part as well as he looked it.

  But he knew the President was here tonight—he’d seen his name on the board. And he’d come alone.

  It didn’t make sense.

  “Stay here,” he said, positioning Julie around the corner and out of sight. Unused equipment filled the hall, and unless the hospital suddenly got a twenty-car pile-up to deal with, no one would come down this way.

  He ducked back around the corner, his pulse bouncing in his chest. Everything inside him screamed not to go talk to Frogger. But his feet still moved. He called Maverick, glad when his boss and best friend answered on the first ring.

  “He left a bag,” Lucas said. “The cops might have it.”

  “On it,” Maverick said.

  “He claimed Julie.”

  Maverick swore, and the message got passed along.

  “I want to talk to him.”

  “No,” Maverick said, his voice not loud but definitely shouting at Lucas. He stared at the door where he knew Frogger was. “Don’t, Lucas.”

  “It’s Frogger,” he said. “And he was here alone. I just want to know why.”

  “He won’t tell you,” Maverick said. “And we’re close to finding out anyway. Leave this, Lucas.”

  Indecision raged inside him. He wanted to keep Julie safe. He wanted answers. He wanted his life to go back to his long, boring days at the library, where he wished something exciting would happen just to make the time pass faster.

  Now, time was crawling by, almost moving backward. Nothing made sense anymore.

  “Brit has the bag,” Maverick said. “I’m on my way to the station to look at it.”

  “He won’t say what’s in it?” Lucas turned away from the door concealing the rival biker. He hurried back toward the hall where he’d left Julie.

  “He said I could come look. He’d give me five minutes, and that was all.”

  “Get pictures.”

  “You’re working all night?” Maverick asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll have Vice keep you updated,” he said. “And you have to keep us appraised of what’s going on there.”

  “I will,” Lucas said. “I got Phoenix to tell me his side. I recorded it. I’ll send it to Electron so he can shrink it down and send it out.”

  “Great.” The roar of a motorcycle starting filled Mav’s end of the line. “Gotta go.”

  “Bye.” Lucas knew he was speaking to dead air as he rounded the corner.

  Julie was gone too.

  His heart skipped. He looked down the hall as if he’d see her there. He didn’t.

  He slumped against the wall, a long sigh leaking from his mouth. What was he supposed to do now?

  Wallowing had never helped him, and Lucas got right back to work. He sent the audio file to Electron. He got back on his feet. He went back to Phoenix Addler’s room and stood outside it. He could see Frogger’s doorway from his position, and he only blinked because it was an involuntary thing his eyes did.

  No one went in or out of Frogger’s room, and Lucas stayed in the emergency department until a blonde woman bustled into the room and said, “Nix, you ready to go home?” His wife helped him up and out of the room. Phoenix looked back at Lucas once he’d reached the corner, and so much passed between them without a single word being said.

  Lucas strode over to Frogger’s room and got the attention of a nurse. “Do I need to stay and make sure this guy doesn’t cause a problem?”

  “He left,” she said.

  “What? Already?”

  “Checked out against medical advice,” she said. “He’s been gone for a while.”

  “Can I go in?”

  “Be my guest.”

  Lucas ducked into the room, not sure what he was expecting to find. Maybe a message written in blood or something, though that was terribly dramatic, and not really the motorcycle club lifestyle.

  Of course, the Breathers had bombed Lucas and his clubmates on the side of the road—in neutral territory, no less. So they weren’t afraid to go to the terribly dramatic ends of the Earth.

 
Thankfully, there was no blood in the room, other than a few spots on a towel that had probably come from Frogger’s mouth or nose. He’d left that on the bed, and Lucas glanced around, searching for something. What, he didn’t know. The message had already been given. Julie herself had conveyed it.

  His heartbeat pinged around his chest at the thought of breaking up with her. “You have a plan, so you don’t have to do that,” he muttered to himself. He couldn’t believe what he was doing for Lawrence Paige, and at some point, he was going to have to tell Julie the truth about her brother.

  Heck, there were still a lot of things about him she didn’t know, and Lucas didn’t really want to tell her about his life on the streets, his previous addictions, or that he’d almost joined an outlaw club once upon a time. Lucas rather liked his secrets, and he hated that she might think of him badly once she knew them all.

  He turned toward the small counter with the small sink, and his eyes caught on a scrap of paper. Anyone else might have overlooked it, thinking it was an errant piece of trash. Not Lucas.

  Swiping quickly, he grabbed the paper and read, See her again, and his death will be on you.

  Death.

  Lucas sucked in a breath, spun around, and pulled his phone out to call Maverick again.

  “I’m sure of it,” Lucas said later that day. He hadn’t even gone home to shower before heading over to Ruby’s. Maverick didn’t have ice cream. Karly didn’t have pizza. Jordan had taken the day off of work.

  “I can’t hit you,” Jordan said, anxiety in his eyes.

  “Someone needs to,” Lucas said. “It has to be real.” He needed to be beat up. Badly. He needed to barely be able to drive to Williamsburg, and he needed to show up spitting angry and extremely bloody. “And then I’ll tell them I need them to go get Julie, that you guys might take her hostage, and I couldn’t get her before everything went to chaos.”

  His muscles hadn’t released once since he’d gotten the note in Frogger’s room, hours and hours ago. He’d somehow managed to stay through his shift, but he did not go to the cafeteria during his dinner break. He didn’t want to run into Julie. He was sure Frogger had just as many spies and moles as Maverick, and the last thing he needed was a brawl at their place of employment.

  “Mav.”

  “He’s probably right, but let’s wait for a minute.”

  “Wait for what?” Lucas asked. “We know there was cocaine in that bag. We know he’s been moving it across the border disguised in pottery. We know why they’re here, and why they’ll never leave without a fight. We have to take the fight to them.”

  He’d stared in disbelief at the images Jordan had sent in the middle of the night. All of the drugs were gone from the duffle bag Phoenix had seen, and no one quite knew how. The only theory they could come up with was that the boat captain had come back to get them. But if he had, and he hadn’t paid Frogger…there would be a piper to pay for that too. A big one. A loud one.

  But the bag had been swabbed and tested, and it came back positive for cocaine, as well as ceramic clay. It had been Lucas who’d finally texted on the group string to say, My guess is they’ve been hiding drugs inside pottery.

  And that made the most sense. And he also knew cocaine was more lucrative than marijuana, and the Breathers would not simply roll over and leave Forbidden Lake. Anyone who’d believed that before was lying to themselves, and Lucas hated that he’d probably been one of them.

  “We can take it to them in fifteen minutes,” Maverick said. “Now sit down. You’re making me nervous.”

  “I don’t care,” Lucas practically spat at him. “It’s time to do this.” He clenched his fists and braced himself. “Someone hit me.”

  Neither Jordan nor Maverick moved, so the blow to Lucas’s face caught him completely by surprise. Everything fired within him, including a white-hot dose of pain from the left side of his face.

  Lucas yelped and groaned, almost at the same time, turning to the man standing there. It was Tyson, and Lucas hadn’t even seen him come in. “I’ll do it,” Tyson said. “Because yeah, this better look real.”

  Eighty minutes later, Tyson drove through the streets of Williamsburg, his motorcycle engine disturbing the quietness of a Monday morning.

  “Do you know where this place is?” Lucas asked, his voice slurring a little. He’d been bleeding for an hour, and he could barely hold himself on the bike.

  “No idea,” Tyson said. “But I guarantee they saw us enter town.”

  He made a right turn, and sure enough, four motorcycles blocked the road in front of him. “Hang on,” he said, but Lucas didn’t have time to grab anything before Tyson gunned the engine. He nearly flopped off the bike, and his abdomen muscles screamed at him, as Tyson had definitely gotten in some kicks while he’d been beating Lucas.

  He hit the brakes hard and turned sideways, skidding to a stop only a few feet from them. Lucas couldn’t hang on any longer, and he toppled from the bike.

  “He’s yours,” Tyson sneered, and Lucas’s desperation reached a new level. He didn’t want Tyson to drive away and leave him here with these guys. Fear like he’d never known streamed through him.

  “He betrayed the Sentinels,” he said. “Didn’t want to give up the girl.”

  “Please,” Lucas begged, but he wasn’t sure who he was talking to. “You have to go get her.”

  “Bold move, Bulldog,” someone said.

  “Don’t call me that,” he snapped at them. “Maverick sent me with the rat, so as to not cause any more issues with your turf war.” Tyson revved his engine, and Lucas rolled onto his side. In the next moment, he peeled away, showering them with bits of gravel and lots of dust.

  “Please,” Lucas moaned again.

  “Load him up,” someone said.

  “What about Julie?” he rasped as cruel hands hoisted him to his feet. “And I can’t ride right now.” He wheezed as he tried to breathe. “I think they broke my ribs.”

  The men talked among themselves for a few seconds. They didn’t seem happy to have him, and he didn’t blame them.

  “Go get the sidecar,” one of them said, and Lucas recognized Fire’s voice. He’d come to the club and requested Wednesday nights for the Breath. “And we’ll send someone for Julie.”

  “I have a job,” Lucas said next. “I can’t just not show up.” He made a show of patting his pockets. “They took my phone.”

  “We’ll take care of all of it once we’re off the street,” Fire barked. “Now shut up and sit here.” He helped Lucas onto his bike, and Lucas sighed in genuine relief. But the show was just beginning, and he hoped he was up to the task of fooling this very dangerous club full of outlaw bikers.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Julie flipped her phone over, unsure of what to do. She’d left Lucas in the emergency department hours ago. He hadn’t called her or texted her. She hadn’t seen him during their dinner break, and she’d come home, showered, and slept as if everything in her life was normal.

  But it wasn’t, and she needed to face that fact.

  She paced in the bedroom, on the edge of a cliff, wondering if she should just call him again.

  “Three times is enough,” she told herself. The man knew her number. He’d see her messages. He knew where she lived. He was probably asleep too, as they were both on the graveyard shift again tonight.

  Or he might be busy at Ruby’s, brainstorming with Jordan and Maverick and everyone else that Julie had met there. They needed a plan for what to do next, and though Julie knew it involved her and Lucas going to the Devil’s Breath for sanctuary, she didn’t know what every piece of that looked like.

  She didn’t even know what the first piece of that looked like.

  She turned on her heel at the same time a crash came down the hallway. A yelp left her mouth, and Julie darted over to the door at the same time Riley started barking. “Shh,” she begged the dog. She grabbed the animal’s collar and dragged her back into the bedroom to close the door.

/>   With it locked, she retreated into her master bath and then her closet, closing and locking every door behind her that she could. “Shh,” she whispered to Riley again, sliding down the wall behind the closet door, her phone clutched in her fingers like it was the only lifeline she had.

  Because it was.

  Riley whined, and Julie didn’t know what that meant. A bark was for a bad guy, and a whine meant Lucas had come?

  Her fingers trembled as she swiped on her phone, and it took her a couple of taps to get her phone opened properly. Half of her brain screamed at her to call Jordan or Maverick, but she didn’t have their numbers. The other half wanted the boys in blue here as soon as possible.

  That half won, and Julie dialed 911.

  “Emergency services, state your emergency.”

  “I think someone is in my house,” she said, her voice barely audible to her own ears.

  “I have you at twelve-twenty Glover Street? Is that right, ma’am?”

  She didn’t even care about the ma’am. She kept her eyes fixed on Riley, who sat at attention right behind the door, her eyes never leaving it. Her tail didn’t thump or wag. “Yes,” she whispered. “I heard a crash, and I hid in the closet. I don’t know what’s going on out there.”

  Riley barked, and Julie cried out. She clapped one hand over her mouth to force herself to be quiet, and tears started tracking down her cheeks. The emergency operator kept talking, her voice soothing but definitely on the urgent side too.

  “Don’t hang up with me, okay? I’ve got police and paramedics on their way to you. They’re only seven minutes away.”

  Julie nodded, but that didn’t contribute to the conversation. She didn’t want to talk, and she strained to listen to the operator and hear anything beyond the door. She reached out and stroked Riley, who did turn to look at her. Another whine, and the dog lay down.

  “Shh,” she said again, trying to soothe her. Or maybe Julie was trying to soothe herself. She wasn’t sure.

  What she did know was that seven minutes took an eternity to pass when she was scared out of her mind, and it wasn’t until the woman on the other end of the line said, “Okay, ma’am, the police are at your property now. Stay where you are, okay? I’ll tell you when you can leave the closet.”