Fire in the Stars (Steel Souls MC Book 2)

by Nikki Groom

  “It’s just that you…” She shrugs. “You look too much like a good girl to be doing shit like that.”

  “You know nothing about me,” I snap. “Nothing.”

  “Fair enough. Not judging.”

  Neither of us speaks for a few moments. I sit and stew on her comment. I look like a good girl? What does a good girl even look like?

  “I’m Carrie.” She stretches her hand between us. I hesitate, but when I see her eyes, I realize it’s a token of apology.

  “Sadie,” I reply. Shaking her hand. “You’re cold,” I comment, feeling her palm against mine.

  “I’m always cold.” She laughs. This makes me look at her. I mean, really look at her. She’s painfully thin. Her bones poke out from under her skin, and it’s noticeable even through her clothing. Her cheeks are drawn in and hollow, and her eyes sunken amongst dark rings. “Drink. Drugs. It does nothing for your figure, darlin’.” She waves away her words as though they mean nothing. But I feel the pain behind them.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Why the drugs?” she replies.

  “Yes, I mean, look what they’ve done to you…”

  “Girl, when you have a life like mine, it’s not worth living anyway.”

  Her words break my heart. Possible scenarios run through my mind as to what her story is. I know what it’s like to live with demons. But I’m fighting mine and winning. She’s given up and lost.

  The cell door flies open, and an officer I’ve not seen before steps in.

  “Ms. Foster,” he announces, making me shudder. “Follow me.”

  Carrie grabs my arm desperately. “Just do as they say. Follow their orders, and you’ll be fine.”

  I close my hand over hers and smile. “Thanks.” I stand, glancing down at her. “But what about you?” Despite only being a matter of minutes in each other’s company, I feel a connection with this broken woman.

  “I’ll be the same person tomorrow as I was yesterday. Don’t let it happen to you.” She gives me a sad smile and the police officer starts to get impatient and bangs his baton twice on the cell door.

  “Sometime today, Foster.”

  I smile back at Carrie. I feel empty and sad, my feet are heavier than ever and my body aching from the kicking I took and holding myself tightly for so many hours as the officer walks me to an interview room.

  I’m seated at a table in the middle of a white-washed room. There’s a tape recorder and another chair opposite which sits empty while I wait. I glance around, looking for secret recording devices or two-way mirrors, then laugh to myself. This isn’t CSI.

  But, after the panic at the fight, a night in the cell, and the fear of the officer that has quite possibly broken my ribs, I hadn’t thought further back than yesterday. Being in this room—the way it feels so official, makes my heart beat harder and faster as I remember back to Donny Carden, and the pedophile in the woods. What if I wasn’t arrested because of last night? What if they know everything? My palms start to sweat, and I rub them on my dirty jeans.

  “Ms. Foster,” a man announces as he strides into the room. He’s fairly short in stature, but he commands the room with his presence. “I’m Sergeant Miller. I’ll be interviewing you this morning.” He takes a seat opposite and arranges some papers on the table in front of us. When he looks up at me, he smiles kindly. I don’t know what to do with that gesture. My experience with Reno PD in the last few hours hasn’t exactly been stellar.

  “I believe you’ve already been read your rights, but just in case you had forgotten… Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to consult an attorney before speaking in this interview, and to have an attorney present during questioning now or in the future. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you before any questioning if you wish. Do you understand this?”

  “Yes,” I whisper, barely being able to meet his gaze.

  “Would you like an attorney?” I pick at the skin on my thumb with my hands in my lap as he speaks. His voice is calm, controlled, and totally neutral like he’s done this a million times before. He probably has done this a million times before, but I haven’t, and I’m fucking terrified.

  “Um …”

  He raises his brows while waiting for my answer.

  “No.” I look from him to the officer standing guard at the door. Do they think I’m stupid enough to try and run?

  “Do you know why you’re here?” he asks, giving me that smile again. I want to wipe it off his face. To tell him to stop with the niceties and be fucking real. I’m in deep, and I wish he would stop trying to sugarcoat his treatment of me.

  “Yes,” I snap, sitting back in the chair with a huff.

  “Well …” he indicates for me to elaborate.

  “Well…What?” I reply in annoyance. With him, the situation, and everything taking over from my fear. His pleasant demeanor slips for just a split second as something flashes in his eyes.

  “Care to share?” he presses.

  “Care to share?” I choke out a strained laugh. “What is this, a counseling session?”

  “Ms. Foster, I urge you to consider your answers carefully. You are currently under arrest, and, through your own choice, have no attorney …”

  “So why don’t you tell me exactly what you’re charging me for, and we can all go back to what we’re supposed to be doing?” I realize that to survive this, as I have survived everything that has come before, I have to brave through it. I have to at least show that I’m not weak and that I have nothing to hide, even if the two things couldn’t be further from the truth.

  He continues with a frown. “You were arrested at the scene of an illegal fight. Were you aware that you were breaking the law by being there?”

  I sit straighter and answer in the most innocent voice I can manage. “No, sir.”

  “Who were you at the fight with?” he probes, narrowing his eyes as he asks the question. And the penny drops. He doesn’t know anything about me, or about what I’ve done in the past. He wants info. Info I refuse to give him.

  “I was on my own,” I answer. Mainly because it’s the truth. I wasn’t there with Ram or Ruck. It just so happened that they were there, too.

  “You…” He asks pointedly in disbelief. “You went to an illegal, underground fight…on your own.”

  “Yes, sir.” I nod, trying to stifle a grin.

  “Why did you go alone?”

  “No comment,” I state.

  “Didn’t you think it would be dangerous for a lone female to be in a warehouse full of sweaty, chemically impaired, drunk, testosterone-fuelled men?”

  I shrug but don’t answer. He wants me to admit that I was there with someone. I won’t.

  He slides a photograph across the table to me. “Do you know this man?” I take a breath before answering. and the officer’s gaze doesn’t leave my eyes. The photograph is of JJ. The man that everyone fears. The President of the Steel Souls MC. The man who stroked my hair and spoke softly to me to calm my racing mind when I had a panic attack.

  “I’ve seen his face before. I don’t know him, though,” I say calmly, knowing it’s not the reaction the officer wants from me. It’s not really a lie. I have seen him around, but I really don’t know him very well at all.

  He places another photograph on top of JJ’s. “What about this one?”

  It’s Ramsey.

  I push a breath past the lump in my throat. Do I know him? Do I really know him? What’s more pressing in the back of my mind, after what I did--is he still going to want to know me?

  “No,” I answer, completely unconvincingly.

  “Did you see these men at the fight?” he asks.

  “No,” I answer immediately. Suddenly it feels like all the oxygen is being sucked out of the air. The walls start to close in, and the noise in my head starts to play on repeat. White noise. A deafening, panic-inducing, silent roar.

  “Do you—” He’s interrupted by another officer e
ntering the room.

  “Sorry, sir,” the officer apologizes, scuttling to his side and whispering in his ear before leaving again.

  Sergeant Miller scoops up the photographs and papers from the table and stands to leave. “We will continue this in a few moments. Excuse me.”

  I breathe a huge sigh of relief. With the pressure off, if only momentarily, I close my eyes and listen to Ramsey’s familiar, soothing voice in my head telling me to ‘Breathe in …and out.” The way he did at the bar. It worked then, and I hope to God it starts working now.

  Only a few minutes pass, and the door is opened by Sergeant Miller. “Ms. Foster.”

  “Yes?” I reply.

  “You’re free to leave,” he announces with a huff.

  “What?” I blurt out. It’s the last thing I expected him to come in here and say, and he’s clearly not happy about it.

  “There’s a Mr. Vaughn Campbell at the front desk waiting to collect you.”

  “Vaughn is here?”

  “If I were you, I’d take the opportunity and run.” He raises a brow at me, holding the door open. I don’t miss the double meaning in his words. He knows as well as I do that I have a connection with the Steel Souls. He just didn’t have enough time to get me to admit it.

  Chapter 3

  “Listen up!” JJ bangs the gavel on the table top, and the guys immediately stop talking and take their seats, focusing their attention solely on him. They know we’re missing some members. They know something’s not right. But so far, they’ve all been kept in the dark until we figure out a plan of action.

  “I know you’re all wondering what the fuck is going on …” JJ scrubs his hand across his face, and everyone around the table eagerly waits for him to continue. “Dev’s in a bad way. They’re putting his face back together as we speak, but he’s not out of the woods by a long shot.”

  My stomach churns at the thought of Dev being so fucked over. His face is shredded, and it’s gonna take a fucking miracle to knit that shit back together.

  “Ramsey was banged up for the night, but got off with just a fine and a slapped wrist, but Ruck …” his voice breaks, showing the real extent of his worry. “We’re almost certain the Wolves have him, along with Ramsey’s old lady, Sadie.”

  I keep my elbows on the table, my chin resting on my knuckles, and my eyes down. I can’t look at any of them right now, but I feel their eyes boring into me.

  “I’m sorry, bro,” Mo says quietly, gripping my shoulder.

  I nod, unable to say or do anything else without losing my composure.

  “So what are we gonna do, Prez?” Dingo calls out from the back of the room, asking the question that is on everyone’s lips. He steps forward with his hands on his hips. “We gonna pull together every firearm and storm their fucking den?”

  “Yeah,” Ziggy cheers. “Let’s blow every limb from their yellow-bellied bodies.”

  “NO!” JJ yells. “We have to bide our time here and stay in control. We fucked over their crew—they’re gonna fuck over ours if we so much as give a nod to that.”

  “So we sit back and take it like a bunch of fucking pussies?” Dingo questions, frowning deeply.

  “No. I’m saying we have to keep a level head. They want what we have. They want downtown Reno, the club, the girls, the deals. They also know that unless they all want to wind up dumped at the bottom of Lake Tahoe, they have to toe the line and keep our people in one piece.”

  “So,” I chime in. “We are going to give them what they want until I get my brother and my woman back, then I will peel their skin from their bodies, one dirty fucking dog at a time, while the others watch and listen to their screams.”

  “They took our warning and blew it the fuck up. They’ll be ready for a war,” JJ says, his voice rising with every second. “What they won’t expect is for us to sit on the back burner.”

  Dingo pipes up. “You mean to tell me you’re cool with sitting here, having a little chat like a fucking old ladies’ meeting, when they have one of our brothers and Ramsey’s old lady? Fuck, man… They could be putting bullets in their heads right now.” He slams a fist into a filing cabinet with a bang, but the roar that comes from JJ echoes around the room, stopping everyone from not only moving, but breathing too. JJ moves at lightning speed, crossing the room faster than I can get in his way to stop him. He clamps his fingers hard around Dingo’s neck, slamming him against the cabinet and getting right in his face. “Me and Tex spent the whole night looking for them. We went to every place those Wolves could have been. They’ve gone underground, you cunt.” He spits, pushing Dingo harder and cutting off his air supply. “Don’t you fucking tell me I’ve been doing nothing, or so help me God, I will put you in the ground alongside every one of those bastards that so much as touches Ruck and Sadie, do you hear me?” he yells, loosening his grip on Dingo who nods urgently. JJ pushes him aside, shoving him to the floor and turning his back to walk away.

  He feels helpless. We all feel helpless. But for JJ, this must be twisting his head inside out.

  The room stays silent, even when JJ is back in his chair with his head in his hands. No one moves. No one says a word. We all just wait.

  After a few moments, he lifts his head and straightens his back. “I want you out in twos. I want every single one of their known haunts watched. Their den, too. The second there’s a whiff of one of them, I want to know. The very second. Hear me?” he pointedly questions around the table. “It’s frustrating as fuck, but if we don’t know where they’re holding them, we can’t sort it out, can we? They’re underground, and we need to drive them out.” Everyone mumbles around the table, and I hate that JJ feels he has to explain his actions like that, but this is really not how we’re used to doing things. Historically, we would go in all guns blazing, fuck ‘em up, and get the fuck out. But there’s too much at stake here. My brother. My woman. I can’t even begin to think what will happen if we don’t get them back.

  “Keep your cells on you at all times. Be contactable. Stay alert and aware. I’m going to pay our friend Len a visit, see if Ramsey didn’t knock all the sense out of him.” He rolls his eyes in my direction. “Tex, you’re with me. Ram, stay here.”

  “WHAT?” I yell, jumping out of my chair. “What in the fuck am I gonna be able to do stuck here?”

  “Precisely. Absolutely nothing. I don’t need you out there getting yourself killed. You’re not thinking clearly, or logically, and I need you to be here in case they use this place as a contact.”

  “But—”

  “Just fucking do it, Ramsey,” he barks, slamming his palms on the table.

  I can’t take the tension in here any longer, and scrape back my chair, slamming it into the wall behind me as I storm out of the room.

  “Get back here, Ramsey,” JJ calls out as I exit the room. “Ramsey!” But I continue.

  I’ve never walked out of a club meeting before, but I’ve had enough of this shit. Enough of the waiting. Enough of the soul-sucking silence while everyone waits for JJ to speak. I know he’s doing the right thing. I know we have to sit back and wait, especially as there’s nothing we can be doing to solve this monumental fuck up. But it’s killing me. Literally draining the life from me to think of them and wait. I shove open the door to the yard, and despite my mind being in a million other places, instinct has me scanning the chain link fences around the perimeter. There are two prospects keeping watch, and nothing unusual is happening out here. Part of me wants it to. Part of me needs a distraction, a fight, to put a bullet in someone just to stop from feeling so fucking useless.

  I drop onto the bench under the awning where Dev has spent so many hours training over the last few weeks. Sparking up a smoke, I stare long and hard at the black and red punching bag where Dev’s iron fists have collided thousands of times. Fuck, I hope he pulls through this. He has to. We all joke that Dev is stone cold. Ninety-nine percent of the time he’s a walking block of fucking ice, devoid of emotion. But that other one percent,
the good in him? It’s so fucking good, and that little sliver is the piece that might just have died in him last night.

  I blow out a lungful of smoke and watch it dissipate into the air around me. Someone pushes open the door, and out of the corner of my eye, I see JJ coming toward me. I don’t look over. In fact, I don’t do anything. I just sit as I am, my shoulders rounded, my elbows resting on my knees, staring ahead to try and work my way around the solid brick wall that’s right in front of me wherever I go. JJ takes a seat next to me, picking up the cigarette packet off the bench and sparking up a smoke, too.

  He sits in silence for a while, blowing out huge clouds of smoke, one after the other. “Lia says I—”

  “You smoke too much, I know,” I grumble under my breath.

  “If you were anyone else, Ramsey.” He sighs, and I flick my cigarette butt to the ground, watching it bounce, and the ember continue to burn. “I should have knocked you the fuck out for leaving a club meeting like that …”

  “Fuck the meeting,” I snap, getting to my feet. I don’t think I can talk anymore. Or listen. I don’t want to listen to anything or anyone.

  “Don’t lose it now, Ram,” JJ says, his voice quiet and contemplative. I stop walking and sigh. “Ruck and Sadie need you. They need us to keep our heads on straight. They need us to be the same people we were before last night.”

  “But what if they’re not the same people?” I turn, facing him, and seeing the hurt that I’m feeling in his eyes too. “What if The Wolves have fucked them up? Did you think of that?”

  He drops his cigarette on the cement and squares up to me. “I’ve thought of nothing else. Never in my life have I been so scared. Scared of the outcome. Scared that it’s on me—that I could have done something to prevent all of this before it started.” I drop my gaze, staring at the ground between us. He grabs my chin in the palm of his hand, forcing me to look at him. “But that ain’t gonna help Ruck or Sadie. We will get them back, and we will deal with the rest afterward. Hear me?” He claps his hand on my shoulder, and I nod. “Now, let’s get back to business. Go get a fucking shower and wash Dev’s blood from your body, you’re fucking covered in it.”