by Brook Wilder
“That was very entertaining you know. My, my… you have been holding out on me, my friend.”
I turned and leaned against the door, hearing Neil’s bike start up and drive away.
“There’s nothing going on.”
Amy laughed, shaking her head.
“If you had seen that look he gave you, honey, you would think so differently. That man, he’s in love with you. Anyone can see that.”
I pushed away from the door and collapsed in the chair instead.
“Maybe at one time, but that… it’s a long story.”
Amy sat on the couch, propping her boot-clad feet on the coffee table.
“Well I think there is something you haven’t been telling me. First, I want to find out about the salon, and then you can give me the juicy stuff.”
I sighed.
“Someone tried to kill me yesterday, burned down the shop instead. Neil saved me.”
“What?” Amy shouted, her pretty face horrified by my words. “Did you tell my father?”
I nodded, thinking about my conversation with Grant yesterday. Neil had hated the fact that I had spoken up, but it was my brother’s reputation on the line, not his. I had to get to the bottom of this, even if I wound up dead as well.
“He’s going to help me clear my brother’s name.”
Amy nodded. We had had more than one conversation since Leo died, Amy helping me through the hard times, like when I’d broken down in tears in the shop, unable to continue. She had been my only true friend, those days.
“Well if dad said he was going to do it, he’s going to do it. If he doesn’t… well then it couldn’t happen.”
Despite my reservations about Grant, I believed Amy. She should know.
“So,” Amy said, pushing her long hair out of her face.
Last week I had tipped it with electric blue, giving her an edgier look than normal. Amy was a formidable woman, and I had learned a great deal about her during our time together in the shop. She wasn’t what I would have expected from Grant Travis’s daughter.
“Tell me about you and Neil.”
“There’s not much to tell,” I forced out, leaning back in the chair. “He’s helping me.”
“In more ways than one,” Amy laughed, cutting off any other lying words I had formed on my tongue. “Come on, Roxy! You’ve slept with him. I can see it written all over your face.”
Oh, I had done a great deal more than slept with him.
“Fine, I slept with him,” I finally said. “But we aren’t sleeping together any longer.”
She eyed me, some sympathy in her expression.
“Because you think he killed your brother.”
“Yeah.”
That, amongst other things.
After last night, I was starting to have doubts about that theory though. It just didn’t make sense, even with him being Grant’s assassin. I had gotten to know the tender side of Neil, the one that held me while I slept and kissed my forehead when he thought I was still asleep.
I couldn’t imagine him shooting my brother, not unless he was defending himself against him and it was the only option he had left.
Amy dropped her feet and leaned forward, her eyes on me.
“Listen, Roxy, I’ve known Neil a long time, and I know you have as well. When I saw him and Leo together at the club, there’s no way I would imagine him shooting him without just cause to do so.”
“It’s the same just cause he had to shoot the rest of them that followed Grayson instead of your father,” I reminded her, a bitter taste in my mouth. “What would stop him for doing the same to Leo if he thought he was a traitor?”
“I-I don’t know,” Amy admitted. “But I just… I don’t think he did it. For my father to promise to look into your brother’s loyalty… there’s something going on that we aren’t privy to.”
I hoped so. Oh, how I hoped so. Could our relationship be repaired after everything that had happened? What if it came out that Leo hadn’t been a traitor?
Or even better, that Neil hadn’t shot my brother?
“If Neil didn’t shoot Leo, then who would?” I asked aloud, more to myself than to Amy.
Amy laughed.
“There’s so many enemies out there. I imagine they could make you a list at the club of everyone that has it out for our boys.”
Yeah, I imagined there were. It could have been anyone in Grayson’s camp or in the brotherhood, or – even worse – the Muertos. Anyone could have seen my brother’s vest and shot him just because he had been a part of the Horsemen.
But it had been Neil’s type of sniper bullet they’d found in my brother’s chest. Unless someone else had the same gun. It was possible. All of it was possible, but I needed proof.
I needed more than just my gut feeling.
“So, how was the sex?”
I laughed and threw a pillow at Amy, feeling a lightness in my chest for the first time in a few weeks. That’s why I enjoyed being around Amy. She kept me grounded, helped me forget for just a little bit that life sucked.
“I’m not kissing and telling.”
“Oh yes you are!” Amy announced with a grin. “You know I tried once to get Neil in my bed. He wouldn’t even give me the time of day, so for you to do it… it’s pretty amazing.”
I was glad I wouldn’t have to pull those blue tips out of her perfectly round head for sleeping with my man.
“Fine. It was great. It was better than great.”
I missed it so much. It was hard to believe how much I had gotten used to having Neil in my bed, by my side, until he wasn’t there anymore.
It sucked.
“I knew it,” Amy sighed, a faraway look on her face. “And the way he looked at you just a little while ago… I would kill for someone to look at me like that just once. All they see is Grant’s daughter, the untouchable in terms of the last name I carry.”
I saw the pain in her face and wished I could give her some words of advice. Heck, I wasn’t the one to be giving any advice whatsoever. My love-life was a shambles.
“But,” she said, drawing in a breath. “It won’t be like that forever, and at some point I’m going to find it too.”
“I hope you do,” I whispered.
Even with the challenges of my current relationship, I had felt the love Amy so desperately wished to have. I had felt my heart full of joy whenever Neil was near, felt him touch my body in ways I hadn’t imagined would happen.
And Neil had given everything to me. He had given me his heart, his love, his laughter, his trust. The stories he shared with me had caused me to laugh and to cry, to lay in his arms and think that nothing could ever go wrong with what we were sharing.
But it all had gone wrong, horribly wrong.
“Aren’t we quite the pair?” Amy remarked with a laugh. “Too bad it’s too early to drink.”
I laughed as well.
It was much too early to drink.
Chapter Twelve
Neil
I pulled up in front of Leo’s house and cut the engine, looking around to see if we had been followed. I had told a nervous Rox to wait until nighttime before we came here, wanting to keep her shielded for as long as I could.
Though she had been on pins and needles for much of the day, she had relented. The visit with Amy had done her some good as well, some of the tension around her eyes easing by the time Grant’s daughter had left the apartment.
I was glad to see her go, only because she had given me a knowing smile and pat on the shoulder as she had walked out. I could only imagine what they had talked about while I was gone or what Amy had gotten out of Rox.
Lord help me if she told her anything embarrassing. The entire fucking club would know about it by tomorrow morning. I liked Amy. She was as tough as balls, but her mouth… it never stopped running.
“You ready?” I asked Rox as we climbed off the bike, walking up the driveway together. “I can go in and look by myself if you want.”
She
shook her head, her red hair still visible in the darkness.
“I’ve made my peace with this house. I want to find this evidence, so we can put this behind us and move on.”
I looked over at her, wanting to ask her what ‘moving on’ meant to her. Was she willing to give us another chance? Hell, I missed her, and the more I was around her, the harder it was to keep my hands off her.
But Rox never looked my way. She marched up to the back door and inserted a key, pushing the door open before looking at me.
“You want to search the place first?”
I grinned, pulling two guns from their holsters at my side.
“You’re learning.”
She arched a brow.
“Two? Really? Don’t you think that’s a bit extravagant, or does it make you feel manlier?”
I chuckled.
“Babe, you already know what I’m packing. I don’t think I need to prove it.”
As soon as the words left my mouth, her smile slid off her face and she looked away, swallowing hard. The fun was gone between us, the joking we used to enjoy caged for now.
Instead of apologizing, I moved into the house, silently stalking through it to burn some of my anger toward the situation before having to face Rox again. I swept each room, hoping like hell that someone was there so I could shoot something, my fingers itching to pull the trigger. I wanted this to end. I wanted my damn life back and Rox’s as well.
With me though, not against me.
Clearing the house quickly, I walked back into the kitchen and gave her a nod.
“All clear.”
She cleared her throat and came inside, shutting the door behind her.
“We probably shouldn’t use lights, I guess.”
I shook my head.
“As little as possible. Got a flashlight around her somewhere?”
She shrugged, opening a few of the kitchen drawers, and finally found a few that worked, turning them on before handing one to me.
“We should start in the bedroom. If my brother was hiding anything, it would be in there.”
I gestured for her to take the lead, and she led me to the back of the small house, evidence of her cleaning visible with each sweep of the flashlight.
“When are you trying to move in here?”
“By the end of the week,” she said with a chuckle. “My rent is due, and you’ve seen my apartment. I don’t want to spend another six months in that hellhole.”
I didn’t blame her.
“You got the smoke smell out of here.”
She looked back, a smile on her face.
“Leo would kill me if he knew I ran those purifiers in here to kill the smell. Next up is to paint, but I can do that while living in here.”
“Your brother sure did love his cigarettes,” I chuckled as we walked into the bedroom.
Already, the closet was empty, the drawers pulled out and empty as well.
“He sure did,” she said with a sigh. “I always thought he would die from some sort of lung disease.”
I grinned.
“I thought he would set his ass on fire for dropping it while he slept.”
Rox laughed as she placed the flashlight on the dresser to illuminate the small bedroom.
“You know he burned himself more than once by doing that.”
Oh, I knew. I had more than one time put his ass out for nearly setting my house on fire while drinking and enjoying his damn cigarettes.
“Well,” she said, placing her hands on her hips and looking around at the nearly barren room. “I’ve cleaned out all the drawers and the closet. There was nothing there, other than the letter I found. Where do you think he could have hidden anything else?”
I tested the flooring, finding some give.
“Maybe in the floor, or in a false place in the wall. Start looking for holes in the carpet seams.”
She nodded and we both dropped to our knees, feeling the carpet for any changes to the seams. I hoped that the evidence was in there somewhere, giving us something to start with to prove that Leo had been telling the truth.
And to give Rox the peace of mind she was looking for.
“I found something!”
I crawled over to her location and felt the area she was pointing to. Sure enough, there was a groove in the carpet, like someone had cut it out before. Attempting to keep my own excitement under wraps, I pulled my knife from my pocket and pried the carpet up, noting that the floorboard underneath was loose.
“What is it?” Rox asked nervously, as I worked on the floorboard, succeeding in getting it pulled up enough to reach my hand in.
It connected with a hard metal surface and grabbed a hold of it, pulling it through the hole I had made.
“Oh my God, is that it?” Rox asked, excitement in her voice as I shone my flashlight on the box.
“It appears to be something important,” I answered, sitting back on my heels and turning the box over in my hands.
It was a small box, barely big enough to hold a large folder, and as I rotated it in my hands, my heart stopped in my chest.
There, on the side, was a key pad and hole for a key.
Shit.
“Crap,” Rox exclaimed as she saw the same thing I did. “Do you think we could break into it without the codes?”
I swallowed hard. We didn’t need to. I would almost bet my bike the code was in the letter somewhere.
But the key?
Fuck, she was going to kill me. I had the damn key.
“The letter,” Rox breathed, grabbing my arm. “I bet the code is in the letter! Where is it?”
“At home,” I forced out, finding it a bit difficult to breathe with her so close.
If she had known what I already knew, she would shoot me.
“We need to go to my place.”
Rox stood, brushing her hands over her jeans.
“Alright then, let’s go.”
I stood reluctantly, the box still in my hand. I should tell her that I had the key. I didn’t like keeping secrets from her, especially not about her brother. She had let me come here because she had trusted me, and if I broke that trust, I would lose her.
“Rox.”
The window shattered behind us, and I threw her to the floor, covering her body with mine as the bullets struck the wall.
We had been found out.
“Stay close to the ground!” I yelled at her, grabbing my guns from their holsters.
I had to get her out of here.
“Give me a gun!” she shouted, her words muffled by the rapid gunfire and the fact that I was lying on top of her still. “I can help fight.”
“No,” I bit out, rolling to her side.
It was my job to protect her, not the other way around.
She looked over at me, and I could make out the fury in her face.
“Give me a damn gun, Neil. I can help get us out of this if you would just trust me a little.”
More gunfire tore into the wall ahead of us, the doorway beckoning us to make a break for it.
“Fine,” I growled, handing her one of mine. “Don’t fire until we get into the kitchen. I don’t want them to figure out our location in the house. Stay low and don’t shoot me in the process.”
That got a small smile out of her.
I gave her a nod and inched my way on my stomach across the floor, the gunfire stopping for a moment, probably to reload. Rox beat me there, and together we made our way down the hall, heads down and low to the ground. More glass shattered in the living room, and I held my arm out to Rox, getting her to stop as we neared that room. If someone was coming into the house, I was going to protect her at all costs.
“Your brother’s truck still in the garage?” I asked in a low voice.
With this type of assault, I would never get to my bike without getting shot.
“Y-yeah,” she said close to my ear. “The keys are in it, as always.”
“Good,” I answered, handing her the box. “On my sign
al, get to the kitchen.”
She made a sound, but I wasn’t buying anything she had to say. Raising my gun, I pointed it in the direction of the living room.