by Vivian Gray
There was another way to express that same thought, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to say it. It was funny; here they were having a baby, and she couldn’t say the three little words that were so obvious. Of course, he didn’t say them either. So maybe that was okay. They were at least terrified together. Because he felt it, didn’t he? He had to.
She pushed away the worry and tried to just breathe. It didn’t work very well. She hated the insecurity that wouldn’t just let her be. She wanted to relax here and be safe and calm. There had to be a way to make that happen. She would find it. That would be her new plan. She’d make it work, somehow.
She gave him a big smile that somehow seemed too bright and tried to let go of the sudden wave of fear.
Chapter Seventeen
Jacob
There was something off with Laurie, and Jacob couldn’t quite figure out what it was.
After that time in her office, he’d thought everything was sorted. He’d felt calmer about what had happened, had seen where he’d been a fool and made mistake after mistake. He was ready to come to terms with his fear and be fully committed to her and the life they were building together.
But now she was pulling away from him, and he didn’t know what the ever-loving fuck to do about that. He couldn’t even put his finger on exactly what was wrong. She was still worshiping his cock every chance she got, she never ever turned him down, and she came hard as anything when he fucked her. She was even more involved with the club girls, and she was managing the beta testing of the app in ways he would never have thought of. She was working on the healthcare app – the one she kept calling a passion project, despite what he could see as its clear possibilities for making millions of dollars – and whenever he asked, she was happy to show him what she was doing.
But there was something not quite right. Her smiles were just a little slow to appear, her eyes were always just a little bit focused on something else, and her touch, when he didn’t touch her first, was just a little hesitant.
It was his payback, maybe, for screwing up so hard. It wasn’t for him to decide when he’d earned back her trust, after all. That had to come from her. But God, he wished it could come already.
When George finally came back to the clubhouse, his knuckles bloody and his face a walking storm cloud, Jacob almost relished the chance to get out of his own head. He didn’t even need to say a word; Snake-eye got up from where he’d been sitting with Delilah on his lap. He tapped Patriot on the shoulder. The three men followed him into the war room and sat down in the same places where they always sat.
“You were right,” George said as soon as the door closed behind Jacob. “His father was Mike Tellman, and the guys called him just Patch because he’d been such a nightmare when he was trying to get into the club. Whip’s name is Christopher Tellman, though he’s gone by his mother’s name – Spear – for decades. Never had it legally changed, just uses it, which is why he’s been so hard to track. Probably has no idea what his father did, just that his father was murdered.” George glanced at Snake-eye who nodded. “It was brutal, Jacob. Patch was all but shredded. They didn’t even find him for a few days. It was a damn mess.”
Jacob sat back, rubbing his hand over his chin. He hadn’t shaved yet today, and the rasp of his hand was the right kind of distraction. “I’d want revenge too.”
Patriot was still for a moment, then nodded. “I think any of us would.”
“So what’s our next step?”
Snake-eye took a long breath. “I dug up some proof of what happened. Pictures of the girl, her statements. It’ll be hard to show him, though, if he doesn’t want to believe it…”
“What does he have at his back?” Jacob asked.
George kept talking. “A small group, really, not any kind of club to speak of. They’re holed up in a warehouse on the far side of town – far from where the auction was held. I think they’re planning a move, but he doesn’t have anything like what he bragged about. He’s not going to take us down through numbers, and if he’s the one moving product into our territory, he’s buying from someone else and just playing distributor.”
“Alright. So what’s our move?”
Before anyone could answer him, there was a soft, polite knock on the door. “Yeah?” Jacob yelled, and Delilah stepped in. “What do you need?”
She smiled that pretty smile that made Snake-eye melt. “Sorry to bother you gentlemen, but Jacob, Laurie’s out here getting nervous because of her OB appointment. You were going to drive her?”
Jacob bit back a curse. Yeah, that had been the plan... but now, he had to handle this. For a moment, he was torn; the club or the girl? He shook his head hard to clear it. He’d been at every single OB appointment, and this one was just a checkup. She was still a few weeks from being full term, and all they were doing now was checking her weight and making sure her blood pressure was okay. She’d understand.
“Tell her I’m sorry,” Jacob said, and as soon as the words were out, he was sick to his stomach. If he’d gotten up from the table, though, he wouldn’t have felt better – just torn up for a different reason. “Tell her I’ll be there next time, and give her the keys to the Camry so she can drive. Okay?”
The look that crossed Delilah’s face wasn’t a happy one, but she didn’t disagree with him. “Alright. I’ll let her know.”
Looking at Snake-eye to make sure he’d made the right choice would be a mistake. There wasn’t a right choice to make this time. They knew where Whip was, and in all this time they’d been trying to track him down, that hadn’t been true. They needed to strike now; take out this threat before it got worse. It felt bad today, but in the long run, it would be the best thing he could do to take care of Laurie and his baby.
“Our move,” he said, drawing the men into the planning, and hoping the girl would be able to forgive him.
Chapter Eighteen
Laurie
Laurie tried to hide the shock when Delilah came out of the back holding a set of car keys. “They’re pretty intense in there,” she said. “I think George came back with some information they’ve been waiting for. Jacob said to say he was sorry, and to make sure you had a car to drive.”
Laurie took the keys and nodded; she didn’t really know what else to do. She had to leave in the next few minutes if she was going to be on time for her appointment. “Thanks.”
Delilah nodded, but her expression was soft, concerned. “I could go with you, if you want? If you’re nervous or something, I can be there.”
“I’m not nervous,” Laurie said. She pushed her face up into a smile. “It’ll be fine.” People always said that you couldn’t fake a smile, that you couldn’t make it touch your eyes if you didn’t mean it, but she’d found that to be absolutely untrue. You could fake anything if you tried hard enough, and happiness wasn’t any different. “Thanks again.”
She turned and left the clubhouse, refusing to shed a single tear along the way.
She’d pulled back hard from Jacob after the app had been finished and he’d held her so tight while they’d had sex. She didn’t mean to, but she hadn’t been able to start. Suddenly, all the times he could have said “I love you” and didn’t were ringing like bells, deafening. It was utterly ridiculous. She hadn’t said it either, after all, but she couldn’t stop hearing the silence. She was having his baby; wasn’t he supposed to say he loved her? Wasn’t that how this worked?
Pulling back was the thing least likely to make him say he loved her, and yet it was the thing she kept doing. Her fucked up childhood for the win, or something. She’d never felt so overwhelmed in her life, not when she was a little kid scrounging for food, not when she’d finally left and made it on her own, and not when she was putting herself through college and pretending that none of her past was actually hers. She didn’t know how to do this, but she didn’t know how to do anything else.
Still, there wasn’t anything else she could do. She started the car and pulled onto the road. She�
��d get to the appointment, and then she’d come back, and she’d apologize to Jacob for behaving the way she had. She’d show him that she wanted them to be better than just... what she’d been pushing them toward. That she could reach out, too. Hey, maybe she’d be brave and be the first person to say “I love you.” Thinking back, she wasn’t sure she’d actually said those words since she was a scared little kid. Maybe saying it would feel good.
By the time she was merging onto the bigger town roads that would lead her into the city and to her doctor’s office, she was feeling... well, almost hopeful. Close to it, anyway. So it took a few moments for the roar of an engine to break through her awareness and make her notice. She glanced in the mirror, and her heart went cold.
There were four motorcycles behind her, riding two by two. She didn’t recognize them from glances in the rearview, but there was no real way they were Talons; Jacob wouldn’t send some kind of honor guard after her. And, frankly, the men she knew were too careful to ride up this close on a car.
They split, after a moment, two staying behind her, and two coming up alongside; one road right at her door, one at the rear flank of the car. She glanced to her side and felt nausea roar through her. Riding at her window was the man who had been there when she woke up in a dark building, terrified and having no idea where she was or what was going to happen next. The man Jacob had been hunting for months, trying to control to make sure that she was safe. The man who seemed to have some sort of sick vendetta against her and her baby.
Whip gave her a sick, mean smile, and then his bike roared. He and the man behind him pulled in front of her, boxing her in. Laurie’s heart raced; she had no idea what her next action needed to be. She thought of calling 911 or Jacob, but her phone – her phone was in her purse, which she’d left at the clubhouse because she’d been so stressed about leaving on her own.
A sick, sharp taste rose in the back of her throat, and Laurie felt a kind of fear that she hadn’t felt in decades. So when the car tore out of a field, slamming into her front end and giving her one terrifying moment to scream before she went off the road, she had no chance to react, other than with total and complete terror.
Things went fuzzy and gray for a while. She heard things, here and there. She hurt, God, she hurt in so many places. The baby. The baby, her belly, had her belly been hurt? Was the baby okay? She was wet everywhere, but was there blood? She wanted to open her eyes and look, but she couldn’t get anything to behave. Her body wasn’t listening to the things she wanted. There was a ringing in her head that made it hard to hear anything.
Far away, there was a crunching metal sort of sound and then hands on her body, dragging her free of the car. She tried to get her feet under herself, get some kind of purchase so that she could fight back, try and make them stop hurting her, but there was no way. There was no motion, no balance; the world was spinning in every direction at once, and every move made it worse. She knew she was going to be sick just a few seconds before she did, and her great victory was managing to turn ever so slightly to the side so that she vomited on the ground, not all down her front.
She felt wetness between her thighs, and that made the terror shoot higher. She didn’t know if she was bleeding. She needed to know if she was bleeding.
But she couldn’t get herself well enough organized to open her eyes and find out before she was tossed into a van – yet another van – and left there. When they closed the doors, it was entirely dark, and she wouldn’t have been able to see even if she could get her eyes open.
The last time this had happened, it had been a nightmare that turned into a dream. Maybe this time, she’d just get the dream. That would be better than just getting the nightmare.
***
It was the screaming pain in her belly that brought Laurie around. A white fire tightening around her entire abdomen as everything clenched. She wanted to cry out, but it hurt way too much; she couldn’t do anything but breathe.
And then pain faded, leaving her sagging and exhausted. Her head was spinning and hurt, and her body ached in a million different ways. She tried to remember what had happened, where she was. Everything felt blurry, and thinking hurt. It took several long moments for her to piece it all together. The car, Jacob telling her to drive herself to the appointment. The motorcycles, corralling her car. A crash that is nothing but bright white light. Pain. And wetness.
Laurie’s eyes flew open, her heart slamming against her ribcage. She was on a bed, the kind of stained mattress and steel frame thing you saw in prison movies. She felt something metal around her ankle, but she couldn’t see well enough to know what exactly it was. A shackle, a handcuff. Something. That wasn’t what mattered.
It made her dizzy and sick to move, but she moved all the same, reaching around her belly. She couldn’t see, couldn’t twist to see what was happening. There was nothing else to do but reach around her huge belly and press her hand between her thighs. She brought it back up to her eyes – no blood. Thank God, no blood.
And then another lightning twist through her belly. It was lighter this time, weaker... but this time she knew what it was. Contractions.
It was too early. She had two more weeks to go before she was full term. This couldn’t happen. She couldn’t have contractions while she was chained to a bed in a room made of cinderblocks, while she was cold and bruised.
It was good that the contraction was lighter the second time. Sometimes they just happened when she was thirsty, or just relaxing. Her doctor had said it was perfectly normal, her body practicing for labor. But they’d never hurt like that before.
The crash. Laurie couldn’t remember the details of the crash, but that other car had come out of nowhere, slammed into hers, and things had gone dark. She had barely been able to breathe. Everything had hurt. Could the baby have been hurt? Oh God. She needed a doctor, a hospital, she needed to not be captured in a room.
Whip. She’d seen Whip. Oh God.
She needed Jacob. She needed him now. And she’d pushed him away so hard that she wasn’t sure if he’d even come for her.
There was no time for crying, she told herself as fiercely as she could. She had to figure out a way to get out of this. In case the contractions continued. In case they got stronger. She had to be safe. She had to keep the baby safe.
Chapter Nineteen
Jacob
Jacob leaned back in his chair, the plan settled. He and the Talons would ride like they hadn’t done in years, and they would take out the Devil’s Weapons. There had been unanimous agreement among the officers; serious threat or not, the Weapons were causing problems that were not acceptable. They needed to be dealt with immediately. Whip would die; the others would face whatever fate seemed most appropriate. There was no telling how deeply involved the others were in their vendetta against the Talons. Whip’s reason for hating them was so personal that it might be easy to either convince the men to join the Talons or convince them to head out of town without further incident. He’d have to see what happened next.
But before he could give the command to head to assemble the rest of the men and ride, there was another tentative, polite knock on the door. He looked up as Delilah poked her head in again. A flash of irritation rolled through Jacob; he’d told Laurie to go to the appointment on her own, had she decided to ignore him?
Delilah was holding something out to him though. “Laurie forgot her purse, I guess,” she was saying, “but someone keeps calling her.”
That was strange. Jacob reached out and took the phone from Delilah’s hands. He recognized the phone number; that was the OB’s office. The irritation was replaced with fear. He tapped to pick up the call. “Hello?”
“Oh – hello, is this…” A rustle of papers. “Is this Mr. Lee?”
“Yes,” he replied. “Is Laurie okay?”
A soft laugh on the other end of the line. “Honestly, Mr. Lee, we’re calling to check in. Laurie missed her appointment today, and we wanted to make sure everything was okay,
so we could see if she needed to reschedule for later in the week, or if we’d just see her at next week’s—”
The fear accelerated into terror. He made himself breathe. “What do you mean Laurie missed her appointment?”
The silence was deafening. Terrifying. And suddenly it wasn’t just his. “She had an appointment scheduled for eleven, and she didn’t arrive. I don’t—I’m not sure—”
“Thank you,” Jacob said, looking for the path of least resistance to end the call. “I’ll call you back about rescheduling if we need to do that.” He disconnected the call and forced himself to take several long, slow breaths before saying a word.
When he looked up, George had his phone out and was tapping away. “There’s a car,” he said. “Crashed. T-boned, it looks like. No one at the scene, officers still sorting things out.” More tapping. “It’s ours, or at least the plate is.”