by Sybil Bartel
Shit. “I have to go to the little girls’ room,” I lied.
Shade smirked. “I wasn’t born yesterday, princess.”
“Call me that one more time and you’ll regret it,” I warned.
Sinister, threatening and disturbingly suggestive, he smiled. “Promise?”
Ronan appeared behind Shade. “Car’s running.”
Shade raised an eyebrow at me as he spoke to Ronan. “Princess says she needs to use the bathroom.”
“And he’s not letting me,” I accused, telling on him like Ronan wasn’t on his side.
“I’m calling bullshit. Slider leads outside.” Shade tipped his chin toward the glass door overlooking the backyard. “I’m not in the mood for a pursuit.” He glanced at Ronan. “You?”
Ronan shook his head, but then he spoke to me. “Use the bathroom quickly.”
Crossing his arms, Shade rolled his eyes, but he nodded at the attached bathroom. “Go. Forewarning, you crawl out the window, you won’t like me when I catch up to you.”
Clutching my phone, I glared at him before rushing to the bathroom and locking the door behind me. Turning on both the fan and the water in the sink, I messed around on the expensive cell phone. I hadn’t had one in seven years, and the last one I did have was nothing even remotely as fancy as this one, but I managed to search and find the number for Talon’s surf shop.
Dialing, I prayed Braige wasn’t helping a customer and would answer.
Two rings later, he did. “Deep Six.”
“Braige,” I whispered. “It’s Shaila.”
“Hey, mamacita.” His voice softened. “You doing okay?”
“Um, yeah, but…” Shit. Suddenly, even though I was desperate, I felt bad about involving him. “I’m kinda in a pickle.”
His tone immediately turned hard. “What’s wrong?”
I dumped everything out. “I’m at Tarquin’s. He’s not here, but two guys from Luna and Associates showed up and they’re saying Tarquin sent ’em and I’m not safe, and I’m supposed to go with ’em to Miami. But Tarquin’s not answerin’ his phone, and I don’t know what this is about. I don’t wanna go with ’em, but they’re, like, armed bodyguards, and I ain’t up to puttin’ up a fight against that. I just want to come to work and do my job.” Inhaling, I asked a favor I knew I probably shouldn’t. “Can you come get me? Like real quick?”
“Damn.” He let out a long breath then used the nickname he’d adopted for me yesterday. “Shay, girl, your man called me early this morning. It’s why I didn’t come pick you up.”
Closing my eyes, I rubbed a hand over my face. “What did he say?” I could guess, but I stupidly held out hope I was wrong.
Braige confirmed my fears. “He said you weren’t coming back and to not pick you up… ever.”
“Time’s up, princess.” Shade pounded on the bathroom door. “Let’s go.”
“Is that one of Luna’s guys?” Braige asked.
“Yeah.” Fucking shithead Shade.
“I could come get you, but I’m no paid bodyguard, mamacita. If Candle told them you weren’t safe, then maybe you’re not?”
My hope tanked. “You know what, don’t worry about it. Forget I asked.”
“You sure?”
I felt bad for even calling. “Yeah, I gotta run.”
“You sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine,” I lied. “And I may be gone a few days, but I most definitely need a job despite what Tarquin said. Can I still come in to work when I get back from Miami?”
“Now, princess.” Shade banged again. “Hang up the phone.”
“Damn, babe. For real, you good?” Braige asked. “You’re worrying me.”
“I’m good. I just need a job when I get back.” If I came back here.
“Yeah, whatever you need, mamacita. Just call me—”
Despite it being locked, Shade banged the bathroom door open. “Let’s go.” Shoving a knife in his pocket, he made a “come here” gesture with his hand.
“Thanks, Braige. Gotta go.” I hung up and glared at Shade. “You’re rude.”
“You have no idea. Get your ass in gear, move out.”
“I’m not goin’ anywhere with you until I hear from Tarquin.” I knew my protest was futile, but I made it anyway.
Shade didn’t even miss a beat. “You walking out or am I carrying you out?”
Sighing, I walked past him and grabbed my bag off the bed. “What do you think?” I picked my boots up.
“You don’t want to know what I think.” Moving in front of me, Shade glanced around the house like he was hoping for someone to jump out so he could shoot them. Then he opened the front door and scanned the driveway and yard before holding the door for me. “Come on.”
I walked to the black Escalade that looked like the exact same ride that had brought me here a week ago and got in the back seat.
Shade shut my door before getting in front, and Ronan backed out of Tarquin’s driveway.
Not that I thought I’d get an answer, but I asked the question anyway. “Either of you gonna tell me what this is about?”
As predicted, neither of them said a word.
“Fine.” Not sure if I was more pissed off or worried about Tarquin, I settled back into the seat.
“Take a nap, princess,” Shade ordered. “You got a few hours.”
Hungry, thirsty, but too upset to say anything about it, I crossed my arms and looked out the window. I didn’t know what Tarquin was up to that would endanger me now that Daddy was dead, unless he was going after the Hangman MC, but I’d heard Shade tell Tarquin they were all handled.
Nothing I could do about it one way or another, I resigned myself to the long car ride and told myself that if he cared enough to keep me safe, then there was a pretty good chance he was coming back.
Not that I could make him if he didn’t.
Trying and failing to not get in my own dang head about everything, I closed my eyes. Thankful for once for a shitty night’s sleep, I eventually drifted off.
I jammed the gun into the asshole’s temple. “I asked you a goddamn question.” Four fucking hours I’d sat outside this piece-of-shit clubhouse waiting. “How many more of you are there?”
“I do-don’t know.” Cowering on the floor like a goddamn pussy, the shithead prospect had pissed himself when he’d walked in and seen all the bodies. “I-I can’t see how many are already de-de-dead.”
Still holding my 9mm to his head, I grabbed his hair and yanked his head sideways. “Then fucking count.” I knew how many pieces of shit I’d already shot. Five. He was going to be six.
Fucking Shade lied.
The Hangmen weren’t handled.
There were assholes still breathing, still hanging out in this fucking clubhouse drinking. I didn’t give a shit who had or who hadn’t fucked my woman. If the goddamn Hangman patch was on their cut, they were a dead man.
“P-p-please don’t kill me,” the pussy prospect cried.
“I said count!”
“F-f-five!”
“Who’s left?” I demanded.
“No one,” he sobbed like a goddamn baby. “We were all that was left.”
“Did you fuck her?”
The asshole looked up at me, surprised. “What?”
“Shaila,” I ground out.
The fucking piece of shit had the balls to frown. “Who?”
I jammed my gun harder against his temple. “Answer,” I warned.
“I-I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
My rage escalated. “Redhead.”
The fuck blinked. “The club whore?”
“Did you fuck her?”
He blanched. “No, I swear! I only stuck my fingers down her—”
I shot him between the eyes.
His body hit the floor with a thump, silence descended, and I stood there with my fucking chest heaving. Blood splatter on my boots, copper, stale beer and cigarette smoke filling my nostrils, I used my T-shirt to wipe my prin
ts off the gun. Holding the barrel with my shirt, I fit the gun into the asshole prospect’s hand.
Still using my shirt, I opened every bottle of liquor behind the makeshift bar and dumped them all over the fucking place.
Using a lighter I found next to a pack of smokes, I lit the fucking place on fire.
Then I walked the fuck out.
A hand landed on my knee. “Wake up, princess.”
Blinking my eyes opened, I looked out the window of the now stopped SUV. In some kind of garage with no windows, just concrete and a row of SUVs parked that were exactly like the one I was in, I pushed my hair off my face. “Where are we?” My throat dry, my voice came out scratchy.
“Luna and Associates,” Shade answered as Ronan cut the engine. “Come on.” He pushed his door open.
I followed suit, and cool air hit my legs. Feeling underdressed in shorts and a tank top, I grabbed my bag of clothes and my boots as Ronan made his way to my door while Shade rounded the front of the Escalade.
“It’s been real, princess. Dig the boots.” Giving me a smile or a smirk, I couldn’t tell which, Shade got behind the wheel of the Escalade.
Taking my elbow, Ronan nodded toward an elevator where a man I recognized was holding his cell phone as his fingers flew across the screen.
With honey-colored skin, closely shaved hair, huge muscles and full lips that were too pretty for a man, André Luna glanced up from his phone. “Miss Hawkins.”
“Mr. Luna,” I replied without kindness.
Hitting the call button, he tipped his chin at Ronan. “You’re late. Any issues?”
Ronan’s only response was a slight shake of his head.
I could’ve told Mr. Luna we were late because I was refusing to leave at first, but I didn’t. The elevator doors slid open, and André held the door for Ronan and me to step inside first.
After the door slid shut, André turned toward me. “You’ll be my guest for a day or two in one of our secure apartments for clients. Security is around the clock here, and meals will be provided. You can let Ronan know any preferences you have. All that we ask is for you to stay put. Scott will collect you when it’s safe.”
Andre’s scent drifted over to me, and suddenly it was as if a memory tried to surface. Like I knew him, like he was familiar to me, more so than just meeting him the one time in the hospital and on the ride to Tarquin’s house. Why would André’s scent be familiar? “Safe from what exactly?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss it,” he clipped.
“Because you don’t know?” I may not have been around him for the better part of the last decade, but I knew Tarquin didn’t broadcast his movements to anyone.
André’s jaw ticked. “Scott will fill you in when he gets back.”
I didn’t want to, but I had to ask the question. “And if he doesn’t come back?”
The elevator doors slid open, and André stepped out, holding the door. A silent Ronan and I followed, but then André stepped back inside. “If Scott doesn’t return in forty-eight hours, we’ll reevaluate. Ronan will escort you to the apartment. Let him know if you need anything.”
Anxiety threaded its way through my veins. “I can’t pay you for any of this.”
If I didn’t know better, I would’ve sworn André’s face softened with sympathy. But it was so slight and so quick, I couldn’t be sure.
“I am not now, nor do I plan on ever asking you for money, Miss Hawkins.”
It struck me then. “You knew my daddy.” Maybe that’s how I knew him.
André’s expression immediately shut down. “I’d met him.”
Past tense. He knew he was dead. “You feel sorry for me,” I accused. “That’s why you’re helpin’ me.”
“I am not in the business of charity, Miss Hawkins.” His voice lowered. “But I am not without compassion.”
“Compassion,” I repeated with disdain, using his fancy word for charity. “How tellin’.”
With a brisk nod, he punched a button inside the elevator. “Good afternoon.”
The metal door slid shut, and it hit me. André Luna was there the night Tarquin took me from the clubhouse. The memory was brief, and it was only a flash, but I remembered him now, or as much as my drug-addled brain would allow me to remember.
André Luna had been inside the clubhouse that night.
Ronan punched a code into a keypad on the wall outside one of the two doors in the hallway. A click sounded, and he pushed the door open. “This way.”
Shoving down embarrassment that André had seen me overdose, I followed Ronan inside a brand-spanking-new apartment that was gleaming with fancy white surfaces and even fancier furniture. Austere and modern and smelling like it’d been cleaned a second ago, it didn’t look like anyone had ever lived in it. I was even more uncomfortable than when I got out of the fancy SUV in the garage.
Holding my biker boots and bag of charity clothes, I glanced at the TV on the wall that was almost as big as the lumpy mattress I’d slept on growing up. “Charmin’.”
Ronan glanced around the apartment like he was looking for bad guys. “Do you have any restrictions?”
“Yeah, I’m locked up here.” In an ivory tower overlooking Miami. “And you’re not lettin’ me leave. I’d call that plenty restricted.”
“Dietary restrictions. Food allergies,” he clarified.
Feeling stupid, I clipped out a response. “No.” I was pretty sure no one had ever eaten in this place.
“Preferences?”
To leave. “You my personal cook now? Armored bodyguard to master chef? You gonna whip up somethin’ in that fancy kitchen if I say I’m hungry and sully all those perfect countertops?”
“You slept through breakfast and it’s past lunch,” he stated without emotion.
I counted the words in my head. “Huh.” Eight. “That’s more words at once than you said the entire drive from Ormond Beach to here.”
His gaze drifting to the skyline, he didn’t comment.
“You always so quiet?” I didn’t care if he was or not. I was uncomfortable and feeling combative.
“You need to eat,” he stated mechanically.
He didn’t look like he ate. He looked like a robot. Hot, muscular, dangerous looking like a hired killer, but still like a robot. “Is that you talkin’ or Tarquin?” Ronan didn’t strike me as someone who gave a damn if other people ate, let alone noticed when they did or didn’t.
In a rare show of humanness, he turned his stark gaze on me. “You never know what meal will be your last.”
Wow. “On that happy note, sure, food, why not?”
“Preferences?” he asked again, like he hadn’t just dropped his own version of a morbid bomb.
“Surprise me.” I waved a hand toward the kitchen. “Whatever is in there is fine. If it’s cooked, I’ll eat it.”
Without another word, he walked out of the apartment.
“Frickin’ prison,” I muttered, aiming for the slider doors to a balcony that overlooked south Florida’s high-rise jungle of steel, glass and concrete.
I watched the place burn.
Standing down the street, my bike a few blocks away, I stood in the shadows of a nearby abandoned industrial building and stared at the flames incinerating her past.
Seventeen minutes later there was nothing left but charred carnage.
Twenty-three minutes, the fire department showed up.
Twenty-seven minutes, the police.
Thirty-nine minutes, the coroner.
I walked back to my Road King undetected, found a hose behind an old warehouse, and rinsed my boots. Straddling the Hog, I fired it up and drove south.
A half hour later, I was parking in front of a Harley Dealership in Miami. Shoving my sunglasses to the top of my head, I walked in and bypassed the new rides in front. Going for the clothes, I went to the women’s section. Two fucking minutes later, I was in over my head.
“Can I help you?” a female voice asked behind me.
&nbs
p; I turned.
Short, no hips, big rack, she’d do. “What size are you?” I demanded.
Her cheeks flushed. “Depends.” Her glaze jumped to the jackets behind me then landed on my chest to avoid eye contact. “In a jacket, I’m a medium.”
“I need a small.” I nodded at one that didn’t have any extra shit on it. “That one.”
“Okay.” The brunette moved around me and looked through the rack before pulling a jacket out. “Here we go. Can I help you with anything else?”
“What size pants are you?”
Her cheeks flamed again. “Like jeans? Or leggings?”
“There’s a difference?”
“Mm-hmm.” She tried not to look at my ink. “Jeans are sized by waist size, like men’s jeans. Leggings are just small, medium, large, et cetera.”
“Leggings. Small.” I had no fucking clue what size my woman’s waist was. “And I need a long-sleeved T-shirt.”
“Okay, I think we still have some from the winter collection. They’re over here.” She walked to another rack.
I followed. She pulled some shit out, and I pointed to the one I wanted.
Smiling shyly but almost suggestively, she looked me in the eye. “Okay, great. Can I get you anything else?”
Two weeks ago, I would’ve given a woman like her a different answer. I would’ve taken her in the back and let her suck my dick while I pretended she had strawberry-blonde hair instead of brown. Then I would’ve bailed. The thought of that now made me fucking sick.
“Just ring me up,” I ground out.
“Oh, sure, of course.” Flustered, she led me to the register.
Grabbing two pairs of night-riding glasses from a display, I tossed them on top of the pile of clothes. The brunette rang everything up and told me the total. I handed my card over and saw a ring on her left hand. Feeling like a dick for my earlier thought, I muttered a thanks. “Appreciate the help.”
“You’re welcome.” She gave me another shy smile. “You have a lucky lady.”
I didn’t say shit. I grabbed the bag and walked out. Guilt eating at me, I shoved everything into one of the saddlebags and got on my bike. That cashier didn’t know what the fuck she was talking about.