by Sophia Gray
“What are you going to do?” she asked. “Let Brewer cut off my fingers? You already nearly got Ethan killed!”
Gregory stared at her. “How did you know...” He stopped himself, but it was too late.
“Because I’m not an idiot,” Amelia snapped. “And just because you tell me to leave a room doesn't mean I have to go!”
“Did you tell Ethan?”
She threw her hands up. “You are missing the point! You nearly got two men killed! Three if you count whoever it was that they hired to actually do the job. And for what? Another term in office? My God, Dad. That’s sick!”
“It’s not sick! I’m helping--”
“You’re not helping anyone do anything!” Amelia said viciously. “Your numbers are in the toilet; your popularity is sliding because of this stupid war on motorcycle clubs--”
“That wasn’t even my idea, but I had to promote it because of--”
“Because you're a puppet!” she shouted. “And that makes anything else you were planning to domeaningless!”
She thought for a second that her father was going to hit her. Then he stuck his finger in her face and said, “You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, so don’t act like you do.”
“And where’s my thank you for saving your life?” she demanded.
He wrenched the door open and stormed out. Amelia grabbed her cell phone and dialed a number she’d never thought that she’d use.
“News 6?”
“Hi, this is Amelia Stratton and I need to leave a message for Marta Waters.”
“Okay,” the receptionist said. “Amelia...wait. Did you sayAmelia Stratton?”
“Yes, I--”
“Hold one moment, please.”
She’d barely gotten to hear the hold music before the call was picked up again.
“Hello, this is Marta Waters.”
“Um, hi.” She hadn’t expected to actually get to speak with the woman. “This is Amelia Stratton. I...I was just wondering if you might have time to talk to me today?”
“Well, that depends,” the news anchor said. “Right now I’m at Nevada General interviewing someone else. When would be a good time for you to do an interview?”
“What a coincidence,” Amelia said. “I’m on the fourth floor of Nevada General myself.”
“Are you here to see Ethan?” Marta asked, her voice growing more interested with every passing moment of the conversation.
“No, I’m a patient. But I have information about what happened at The Angel’s Keepers headquarters. I’d also like to talk to the police, so...”
“I’ve got some good contacts down at the station. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Wait!” Amelia said suddenly. If Ethan had been shot, there was a good chance he might be in the same hospital. “Are you interviewing Ethan?”
“I’m sorry; I can’t divulge that I’m interviewing Ethan.”
Sounding like a yes to her. Amelia chewed her lip. What else did she have to lose? “Tell him I’m sorry about his club. Tell him I didn’t know. That’s not why I left.”
The call disconnected and Amelia let her head fall back against the pillows. She’d done everything she could do. Now she just had to hang onto the baby.
Chapter 28
Ethan
“She’shere?” Ethan asked. “In the hospital? Why?”
Marta shrugged. “She didn’t say why she was here; she just said she was a patient. Then she asked me to pass along the message to you. Can we wrap this up before someone scoops me, please? I’ve already got the best detective in the whole department meeting me in her room.”
“Fine,” Ethan said flatly. “I went to meet William. Michael and Bear were there. Bear shot me and started a fire. We got out. Now tell me what else Amelia said.”
“I’ve already told you everything she said! But that sounds like your way of asking me to interview her first.”
“Yeah, do that,” Ethan agreed. “Then come and let me know what the hell is going on, please.”
“I’ll let you know something soon,” Marta said, jumping out of her chair. “Don’t go anywhere...” She trailed off, looking at him in the hospital bed. “Okay, I doubt you’re actually headed out anytime soon, but the point is, Derrick will want to talk to you, too.”
“Yeah, been waiting for that,” Ethan said. “I’ve got a hell of a lot to say.”
When she was gone, he looked around. He was hooked up to an IV drip. His right hand was bandaged and his left arm was wrapped carefully. Hadn’t they done pretty much everything they could do? He sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. What was the point in sitting in this bed when he could figure out what was wrong with Amelia?
He’d heard Marta say Amelia was on the fourth floor, but he hadn’t gotten a room number. Ethan pulled his jeans on carefully. He managed the zipper, but the button defeated him.
Carefully, with his lower lip between his teeth, he disconnected the IV and tugged his shirt on. He didn’t bother with boots. Just as he made it over to the door, a nurse walked in.
“What are you doing?” she demanded. “Mr. Billings, you are not well enough to be out of bed.”
“I seem like I’m doing fine,” he said, aware that he looked the exact opposite of fine. He was still covered with blood, dirt, and soot in places and his hair was probably standing straight up. His clothes stank of transmission fluid, gasoline, and smoke. “Come on, I just wanna take a walk around.”
“No,” she said flatly.
Ethan felt his jaw clench. “Okay, let me put this another way. The woman I’m having a kid with just checked into this hospital somewhere on the fourth floor and I’m going to find her no matter what you say.”
The nurse stared up at him, wide eyed. “But I can’t let you--”
Ethan walked away.
She jogged after him, each of his strides equaling two of hers. “Mr. Billings, I will call security,” she said firmly. “I cannot let you leave your room. You haven’t been released by the--.”
He pressed the button for the elevator and caught her upper arm, pulling her in with him when the doors slid open.
“You can call them from the fourth floor,” he said just as firmly. “I just need to know she’s okay. After that, you can do whatever you want with me, up to and including throwing me out on my ass.”
When the doors opened at the fourth floor, the nurse sighed. “What’s her name?”
“Amelia Stratton.”
He followed her to the nurses’ station where she checked something. “Follow me, please,” she said briskly and he did.
She knocked on the door of room 423 and they heard Amelia call to them to come in. Ethan pushed the door open and Amelia’s face went white.
“You’re not the detective,” she said blankly and then blushed. “I was...we were expecting...”
“I know,” Ethan said. “Amelia, what’s wrong? Why are you here?”
Her hand drifted down to her stomach. “I...there might be something wrong.”
Ethan pushed past the nurse and walked into the room. “When will we know?”
“It could take a few days, since it’s so early.”
He brushed her hair back. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“Things have been happening so fast,” Amelia answered. “Miller and Brewer tried to torture my dad and--”
“Miller and Brewer?” Ethan asked sharply.
“Yeah, they’re some guys my dad knows. I don’t know how he got involved with them, but they seemed pretty rough.”
“Yeah, I guess they are. They’re the ones who sent Michael and Bear to burn the place down, too,” Ethan said. “I heard them say it. So did William.”
Marta was watching the interaction with realization dawning on her pretty features. “Do you have first names?” she asked. “Not that I think there could be more than one Miller and Brewer.”
“I don’t,” Ethan said. “Bear just used their last names.”
“Warren,” Amelia supplied. “Warren Miller and Richard Brewer.”
“Oh my God,” Marta said and she sounded literally reverent. “This is exactly what I’ve been waiting for.Exactly.”
Ethan looked at his bandages and at Amelia in her hospital bed. Then he looked at Marta with a raised eyebrow. “Really?” he asked.
“Well, obviously not all of this,” she said impatiently, gesturing at the two of them. “I could have done without the shooting and the trauma. But do you two haveany idea who Miller and Brewer are?”
“Assholes?” Ethan asked. “Because that’s about all I’ve got.”
“They own half of Vegas, using a variety of shell companies,” Marta said. “And we’ve all known that they were dirty for a while, but no one could pin anything on them! There have been so many rumors of drug trafficking around them that it’s ridiculous. It makes perfect sense now, all of it!”
“So then why don’t you educate us?” Ethan said, exchanging a bewildered look with Amelia.
“Ifthey’re trafficking, they’d want to eliminate the competition,” Marta said, looking at Ethan like all the pieces were fitting perfectly.
“Okay, yeah, but we’re not trafficking anything,” Ethan pointed out.
“No, but you’re not the only motorcycle club on the face of the Earth, are you?” Marta asked impatiently. “There must be one that is and that one must be big competition. If Miller and Brewer found a way to shut them all down, they’d seriously screw over the one they want to get rid of.”
“Then why did they come after me so hard?” Ethan demanded. “Stratton was pretty focused on me.”
“You knocked his daughter up and then basically spit in his face with your charity drive,” Amelia said wryly.
“Exactly,” Marta agreed. “It didn’t start out personal for Stratton, at least not exactly, but you kind of made it that way. Miller and Brewer wouldn't have cared, as long as it was getting them the results they wanted.”
“Shit,” Ethan muttered, dropping into the chair by Amelia’s bed. “I guess I did kind of make myself a target.”
“That has to be one of the dumbest plans I’ve ever heard in my entire life,” Amelia said. “There’s so much that could go wrong!”
“On the face of it, yes, it really is,” Marta agreed. “But how else were they going to approach it without getting their hands dirty?”
“It sounds like I need statements from everyone.”
They all glanced up to see a tall man in a dark blue uniform standing in the doorway. His badge gleamed on his broad chest and the gun at his side made Amelia swallow hard. This was real. She was about to make a statement to the police about her father.
“Amelia,” Ethan said in a low voice, seeming to read her thoughts as he always did. “You know doing this is gonna incriminate your old man, right?”
Amelia nodded. “Yeah, I do.”
“There might not be any going back.”
She nodded again. “I know, Ethan. It’s okay. I have to do this.”
He reached out and took her hand in his uninjured one. “Is it okay if I stay with you?”
She looked at him steadily. Then, seeming to make a decision, she turned to the reporter and the detective.
“Can you give us just a few minutes before we start please?”
“Sure,” Marta said, sounding surprised. “We’ll just be right outside.”
Ethan thought that the implication was pretty clear.Don’t make a run for it because we’ll grab you in a heartbeat. Not that there was any way in hell that he was going to miss his chance to bring Stratton down.
A lot of memories had burned up in that fire, along with his and William’s bikes. And the ‘36 Flathead. Who knew how long it would be before he could find another one of those? But, mostly, he wanted to nail the guy to the wall for the hurt he saw in Amelia’s eyes when she talked about her father.
“What is it?” he asked when Amelia didn’t speak. “They’re gonna get impatient and we should probably get going with the statements before these guys go to ground and get really hard to find.”
“I want you to know why I left,” she said.
Ethan braced himself. “Okay. Yeah, I’d really like to know.”
“I don’t want to marry you.”
“Yeah, I got that.” It didn’t hurt any less, no matter how many times he heard it. “I wasn’t gonna push you about it. I mean, hell, you’re in the hospital.”
“No,” Amelia said. “I don’t think you understand. I don’t want to marry you just because I’m pregnant. I--”
“I didn’t ask just because you’re pregnant,” Ethan cut in. “Shit, is that really what you thought?” He pushed his hand through his hair and a small smattering of ash speckled her clean white sheets. “It’s 2017, it’s not like you’re gonna get stoned in the streets for getting knocked up.”
Amelia’s mouth dropped open. “Then why did you ask me?”
“Because I fucking love you!”
“Well, you never said that!”
He looked at her. “I guess I didn’t, did I?”
“No,” she replied emphatically. “You did not.”
“Well, I’m saying it now. I love you, Amelia. No matter how fucked up your old man is. No matter what other shit we’ve been through, or shit that’s coming down the pipeline from what we’re about to do. I love you and I don’t wanna spend my life without you.”
Amelia threw her arms around him and he gave a small grunt of pain when she smacked the gunshot wound.
“Sorry,” she said against the side of his neck.
“It’s okay. You’re worth the pain.”
He pulled back just enough to cover her mouth with his. The kiss went on and on, growing deeper and deeper until Marta knocked on the door. “You know,” she called. “This sort of pushes the limits of a reporter’s patience.”
Ethan pulled back, tracing the curve of Amelia’s cheek with his uninjured hand. “Ready, baby?”
She laced her fingers with his. “I am if you are.”
“Come in,” Ethan called. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
Epilogue
“Would you please put that down before Ethan kicks my ass?” Ryan asked, yanking the box out of Amelia’s hands. “Go sit in the shade like a lady, okay?”
“There’s nothing in it except for pillows,” Amelia protested.
“Yeah, but he’s irrational,” Jimmy pointed out. “Stop trying to be helpful and just sit down and look pretty.”
“Sorry, that’s taken,” Penelope said, fluffing her hair with the hand that sported the diamond Taylor had bought her the week before.
She did almost everything left-handed these days, hoping people would notice and make admiring comments. Most of them did, but only because it was so obviously what she wanted them to do. Her enthusiasm was too cute for anyone to want to harsh her buzz.
There wasn’t a sparkler on Amelia’s left ring finger. Not yet, anyway. She and Ethan had talked about it and decided to put their money toward the house they’d found to rent and for baby things. There would be a lifetime to find a ring and a stable start to their family was at the top of the priority list at the moment. But Amelia made a point of pointing Penelope’s ring out every time she saw it sparkle or flash.
“Wait,” she said, letting her mouth drop open in exaggerated shock. “Are you reallyengaged?!”
Penelope grinned and thrust the ring under Amelia’s nose. “I didn’t tell you?” she said, continuing the joke.
“I think I might have heard something about it,” Ethan said as he walked by with a stack of boxes. “Maybe seven or eight hundred times, or something. Give or take.”
Penelope flipped him off and he laughed.
“You’re going to hurt your back,” Amelia said. “Or your shoulder.” His shoulder had healed well, but it would always hurt. She usually rubbed it at night for him and, even though he never complained about pain through the day, she could tell he appreciated it.
He put the boxes in the truck. “Nah, I’ve got another twenty good years.”
“And think how much more you’d have if you lifted with your legs,” Amelia replied.
He slung his arm around her shoulders, dropped a kiss onto her hair, and walked back into the house for the next set of boxes.
“I can’t believe you’re really leaving,” Penelope said. “You’re gonna come back for the wedding, though, right?”