“I haven’t thought about that,” Lucas said. “I’ll admit I probably acted a little irrationally.”
For some reason, that got three of the four Breathers to smile. The only one who didn’t was Mustang, and he maintained his even gaze, never looking away from Lucas.
“Is Julie coming here?” he asked. “And do you guys have any painkillers? Something to eat? My ribs are killing me.” He touched his chest, a single throb moving through his body.
“Come with me,” Bridge said. “I’ll get you something.”
“I’m not into hard drugs,” Lucas said.
“No?” Bridge started for a doorway in the corner, and Lucas scanned the group again before following him. The other three Breathers fell into step behind him, and Lucas felt caged. Trapped. “They’d help the most until those ribs heal,” he said.
“Julie’s a nurse,” Lucas said. “She’ll help me know what to do to heal up right.”
“In the meantime,” Sweet Pea said, sidling up beside him. “You can literally be close to knocked out.”
“No, thanks,” Lucas said, glancing at her. Her dark hair hung from a high ponytail, and it looked like she hadn’t washed it in days. She wasn’t anywhere near as sweet as her name suggested, and Lucas wanted to recoil when she showed her crooked, yellow teeth again.
“Water,” Empire said, pushing a bottle into Lucas’s hands the moment he entered the kitchen. “Painkiller.” He dropped four pills into Lucas’s palm, and Lucas looked at the small, burgundy items.
He suddenly didn’t want to take them. He hesitated for probably too long, finally throwing them into the back of his throat and twisting the lid on the bottle. After washing them down with half the bottle, Lucas took the longest, deepest breath he could stand and took in the kitchen space.
Maverick would love to make ice cream here, that was for sure. How this club had so much money and was so nice wasn’t lost on Lucas. He also knew that the money the Breathers enjoyed was illegal. Wrong. And while he needed money as much as the next guy trying to pay his bills, he wasn’t willing to be a criminal to do it.
“About Julie….” he said.
“Jeez, he’s like a broken record,” Empire said moodily, leaning against the counter and folding his arms. “Fire went to get her.”
Lucas ground his teeth together and nodded. “Great. Thank you. What time is it?”
“Almost eight, lover boy,” Bridge said. “Oh, can that be his name? Lover Boy?” He snickered like he was the funniest man alive, but everyone else just looked at him.
Lucas thought Lover Boy was as bad as House, but he didn’t say anything. He’d do whatever it took to keep Julie safe and get the Breathers out of his town, including being called Lover Boy.
His stomach gurgled, and he normally didn’t take pills without eating something. He looked at Empire, who stared steadily back.
“So….” Lucas glanced at the others too. “What do you guys do all day?”
“I’m going back to bed,” Mustang said. “You guys know what to do.” He left, and Lucas had the very real feeling that the guy in charge had just left. At least the guy in charge of this particular group of bikers.
“Let’s go get something to eat,” Empire said. “We’ll be back about the same time as Fire if we go now.”
“I’m out,” Bridge said, narrowing his eyes at Empire.
And there was the fissure.
“Come on,” Empire said. “We won’t be gone long.”
“We were told not to leave,” Bridge said. “You guys do what you want.” He turned around and headed for the door that led back into the big common room. “And we’re supposed to give him a room and make sure he knows where he can and can’t go.”
Lucas frowned, but said nothing. He didn’t like being talked about as if he wasn’t present, but he wasn’t going to bring it up right now. “I can’t stay here anyway,” he said. “Some of us have jobs.”
Sweet Pea and Empire looked at Lucas as if they didn’t understand the concept of a job.
“Julie won’t be able to either,” Lucas said, hoping to get some details ironed out before she arrived. “She’s a nurse at the hospital. She can’t just quit that.”
“Boss won’t like that,” Sweet Pea said.
“I don’t need to be a Breath—be a member of the Breath to be with Julie,” Lucas said. “Right? I just can’t be a Sentinel.” He looked from Empire and Sweet Pea standing together in front of the fridge to Bridge hovering in the doorway.
“I mean, technically,” Bridge said, frowning.
“Okay,” Lucas said. “So maybe what I need to be shown is the door.”
Bridge folded his arms and spread his feet. “We don’t make it a habit of letting anyone come to our clubhouse,” he said, a darkness entering those nasty eyes. Lucas guessed he probably carried some weight in the club too, and the longer he looked at him, the more familiar his face became. Lucas was sure he’d seen Bridge on the surveillance tapes.
“We’ll take him to breakfast,” Sweet Pea said. “Make sure he knows how things work here.” She approached Lucas and patted his chest as she passed. “You can ride in my sidecar, Lover Boy.”
Empire chuckled as he walked by Lucas too, and he just stared at their backs, his new name ringing in his ears—and not in a good way. If Jordan or Electron or Ian ever found out….
He heaved a sigh, determined to keep his ears and eyes open while he was with the Breathers so he could find the exact place to cause a problem, get the information he needed, and then get out.
Chapter Sixteen
Julie couldn’t feel her face by the time the biker came to a stop. He’d stopped just once on the way from Forbidden Lake, and that was to tie a strip of black cloth over her eyes. She hadn’t told him she’d kept her eyes pressed closed the whole way there, and she was taking that secret to the grave with her.
“You can get down now,” he said, removing the cloth from her face. “You’ll talk to no one inside.” He gave her a hard look. “I’ll take you to your bedroom, where you’ll stay until I come get you.”
“Lucas—”
The biker growled, and Julie snapped her mouth closed. Instant fury shot to her head, and she swore he had a red outline around him every time she blinked.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Fire,” he clipped out. “And trust me, honey, you don’t want to get burned by me.” He possessed hard, cold eyes the color of a dark, deep lake, and Julie had no doubt she didn’t want to get burned by him. “Follow me. Don’t touch anything.” He walked away from her, and Julie turned around to see they’d parked in a parking garage. Third floor.
Fire walked toward a building with a sign that had probably used to tell people what they’d find inside. But there was nothing on it anymore. Still, Julie had been working at the Forbidden Lake Hospital for years, and she knew a medical center when she saw one.
She glanced left and right as she crossed the lot to the doors, almost not making it inside before they started to slide closed again. This had definitely been a hospital or clinic at some point in the past, and she wondered how secure this place was. Wouldn’t this outlaw club want to be able to lock everything down and keep everyone out?
“Keep up, sweetheart,” Fire said over his shoulder, and Julie’s anger boiled. She didn’t appreciate his patronizing tone, nor the fact that he thought she should be able to keep up with his long strides.
He paused in front of a door that required a code to enter, and he tapped on the keypad, shrill beeps filling the air. The door clicked; Fire pushed it open; Julie followed him inside. The door clicked closed behind her, but she almost rammed into Fire, who’d paused again.
This time, he put in a combination on a lock that was required to be released before a roll-up door could be lifted. Julie felt like she was going to work at the Gap, not entering some outlaw motorcycle club. At the same time, she drank in the security features of this place, and she knew she—or anyone else—wouldn�
�t be getting in and out of this place very easily.
Clangs and shuttering sounds filled the air as Fire lifted the gate, and he waited for Julie to join him on the other side before pulling it back down and re-securing the padlock.
“This is insane,” Julie said, looking at the long hallway in front of her. “Do you get a lot of people trying to get in here?”
“More than you think,” Fire said. “Stay close to me.” He went down the hall, and Julie did what he asked. Multiple doors branched off of the hallway, but Fire passed all of them. The place held an unused air about it, and Julie wondered if this was simply part of the labyrinth, if Fire would lead her through a midst of mazey halls and locks and doors until she was helplessly lost.
Maybe that was part of the way they made sure their clubhouse was secure. Keep it right under everyone’s nose, but make it impossible to access.
Julie saw her first glimpse of sunlight when they entered what had clearly once been a waiting room. But she wasn’t close enough to the windows to see where they were, and Fire stepped in front of her before she could truly make the effort. “Fourth door,” he barked, his hand pointed to her left.
She turned and saw eight doors there, all of them identical. She moved over to the fourth one and tried to open it. Locked.
Fire entered another code—this one only six digits—and they stepped into another hallway. This one was much shorter, and through one last door, they finally arrived in a room that looked like someone had used it in the last century.
A plethora of sofas filled the space, and it smelled like someone had made coffee here at some point in the past.
Fire paused, and Julie did too. “Huh,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
“It means I thought they’d have your boyfriend here by now.” He scanned the room. “Maybe he’s not up. He was pretty beat up.”
Panic rose through Julie. “He was?” She stepped in front of Fire, not caring about the consequences. “Did you guys hurt him?”
Fire glared at her with those hooded, dangerous eyes. “Not us, sweetheart. His club.”
Horror struck Julie right between her ribs. She didn’t believe that. Couldn’t believe it. “No.” She shook her head. “You’re wrong.”
Fire didn’t even blink. “Bulldog dropped him off, with instructions from Maverick himself.” He delivered the words without a single iota of emotion, his eyes never leaving hers. “He lost consciousness before we even got him here.”
Julie’s breath shook inside her lungs. “Take me to him,” she said as strongly as she could. “He could be seriously injured.”
“He could,” Fire said. “And he’ll come to us.”
A sense of helplessness welled up inside Julie, and she had no idea what to do about it. “Why did you guys claim me?” she asked. If she had to stand in this cold, sterile room, she might as well get some answers.
“Because we can’t be sure of what Lawrence told you.”
“Lawrence?” Julie’s heart bumped in a strange way. “Where is he?”
“You don’t know?”
“No, I don’t know,” she snapped. “He came to my house for maybe five minutes. I told him to call my mother, and then I slammed the door in his face.”
Fire’s eyebrows went up, and Julie took a long, deep breath, trying to calm down. “Where is he?” she asked again, once she felt like she had control of her emotions.
“He’s around,” Fire said evasively. “I’m sure you’ll get to see him soon enough.”
Julie’s fingers clenched into fists, and she couldn’t stop herself from sighing in a frustrated, angry way. Fire started to chuckle, which only increased her annoyance with him.
“Trust me, I’m out of patience too,” he said a moment later. “Where the devil is Mustang?” He pulled his phone out of his back pocket and stabbed at it, finally lifting it to his ear.
Julie tried to learn as much as she could from the room, but it was literally four white walls, with doors leading out of it, and a hallway in the left-hand corner. There was nothing to learn here. Anything the Breathers didn’t want prying eyes to see was surely behind more coded doors, down long hallways where only one person could fit across, and through roll-up doors.
This club didn’t take chances, Julie knew that. If she and Lucas were going to learn anything and get out of here alive, they needed a miracle.
“Mustang,” Fire barked. “Where is everyone? I said nine.” He took a couple of steps away from Julie as he continued to bite words out to the other biker. “No, they’re not here.”
Julie made her way over to the nearest couch and collapsed onto it. She’d slept last night, but not well, and not for long enough. She wondered what the beds were like here, and she reminded herself she wasn’t on vacation.
She rubbed her hands down her face and smoothed her hair back into a ponytail. The silence of this place would make anyone go mad, and she wondered how the bikers managed it. The clubhouse also wasn’t like anything she imagined. Tyson had painted a much darker picture of the inner workings of an outlaw biker gang, and this wasn’t it. Not even close.
“Mustang’s on his way.” Fire sank onto the couch on the other end, a sigh coming from his mouth. Julie watched him, thinking maybe he hadn’t slept a whole lot last night either.
“Do you live here?”
He looked at her, something teeming behind the danger in his eyes. “We all live here, yes.”
“I can’t live here,” she said.
Laughter drew her attention, as well as Fire’s, and the man jumped to his feet, holding out one hand to indicate for her to stay where she was. But Julie recognized at least one of those laughs, and she got to her feet.
She kept the couch between her and Fire—and her and the people coming through the door she and Fire had used to enter this room.
“What in the world are you doing?” he demanded, striding toward them. “Empire? Sweet Pea? You left?”
“Relax, Fire,” the man said. “The guy was hungry, and we don’t—” He cut off when Fire’s fist connected to his mouth. The woman he was with shrieked and dropped to her knees as the man fell to the ground.
Lucas had been with them, and he looked from the man on the floor to Fire, his eyes wide.
“Where’d they take you?” Fire grabbed Lucas by his collar, and even from her position fifteen yards away, Julie could see the dried bloodstains on Lucas’s clothing. He’d gone out in public like that?
He winced under Fire’s grip, and she said, “Hey, you’re hurting him.”
Lucas looked at her, panic in his expression. “I’m fine,” he said. “We went to breakfast. I don’t know where. I stayed in the sidecar, blindfolded, and with a full helmet on until they came back.”
“Where did you eat?” Fire growled.
Julie arrived in time to watch the woman help the man up. He kept his hand over his nose, but his eyes glinted with malice too. Julie’s pulse bounced around inside her chest, and her level of adrenaline felt suffocating.
“Outside, Fire,” the man said. “Jeez. You didn’t have to hit me. We know what we’re doing.”
Fire thrust Lucas away from him, and he stumbled backward. He was definitely injured, because he didn’t catch himself with the grace Julie had seen from him before.
“You ate outside, in thirty-degree weather?”
“Yes,” the woman hissed at him. “And we’re back before nine. So take it down a notch, would you?”
“There they are,” another man said, and Julie spun to see two more men entering the room. Neither of them were Frogger, and Julie was starting to get confused with all the new people she’d met in the past few days. There was so much leather and denim, steel-toed boots, beards, tattoos, and death glares. Julie could definitely do with less glaring.
But she’d taken plenty of angry looks from patients in pain, and she could handle these guys exactly the same way.
“They went to breakfast,” Fire said, almost tattling
to the two new men.
“I told them they shouldn’t,” one said while the other stopped and glared.
Julie stepped over to Lucas and laced her arm through his, searching his face for signs of pain. He didn’t even try to hide them, and that alone spoke volumes about how bad his injuries were. “I need to examine him,” she said.
But the other bikers had started arguing with one another, their voices growing louder every second. Unwilling to stand there and perhaps take a punch if this fight got physical, Julie led Lucas over to the couch she’d been sitting on.
“What happened?” she asked, keeping her eyes on the group of Breathers. She could definitely see the divisions between them, but she had no idea how to exploit them. They just seemed like a big, loud family that didn’t get along so well. Just like most families out there.
“Tyson beat me up,” Lucas said, flinching as he laid back on the couch. “To make my split with the Sentinels look real. It was my idea.”
Julie tore her eyes from the bikers and focused on Lucas. “You don’t have your phone?”
“No.” His eyes searched hers. “You do? He didn’t take it from her?”
“He did,” she said. “But I brought a second one.”
“You have two phones?”
Julie gave him a small smile. “Which is exactly the reaction most people have. That’s why he didn’t ask me for all my phones. Just the one.” Julie put her hands on Lucas’s brow line and said, “Let me look at this eye. Does it hurt?”
“Everything hurts.” Lucas relaxed into the couch and let her look. The eye was puffed and bloodshot, but there didn’t appear to be terrible damage.
“We need ice on this,” she said. “And painkillers.”
“I took some of those before we left for breakfast. I think they’re starting to kick in.”
Julie would’ve put him on a drip to get powerful painkillers, because she suspected he had some bruised, cracked, or broken ribs. “Where else?” she asked.
“My ribs,” he said, and Julie gently tugged up his shirt. In any other situation, she might have stared at the sculpted lines of his muscles, or the ink curling across his chest. The thick, dark lines of his tattoos were beautiful, and she wondered what they meant. They seemed tribal, with intricate designs flowing up under his T-shirt and surely across his shoulders.
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