Sentinel

by Brook Wilder

  My fingers flexed on her hips, craving more, but there was no way I would push her that far right now. It wasn’t fair.

  I had to prove I wouldn’t up and disappear in the morning. I had the Legion, sure, but it wouldn’t drag me from her again, not any longer than necessary. “Let me take you for dinner, a drink, whatever you want.”

  Becky’s lips parted. “That’s it?”

  I gave her a half shrug. “It’s a start, at least. Anything else, you get to call the shots.”

  A smile curved her lips. “That’s dangerous territory, there.”

  I gave her an answering smile, already my breathing coming easier. Maybe we’d get through this. “Oh, I know, but if you send me home alone tonight, I might just cry.”

  She laughed and it was music to my ears. Everything was going to be okay. I would crawl on my hands and knees in the desert to make this thing work this time.

  For her, I would do anything.

  “Alright, fine,” she finally said, reaching for her bag hanging on the chair. “They don’t need me here anyway, and I am starving.”

  “Food it is then,” I said, gesturing for her to go first. My mind was already racing with possibilities, what might happen at the end of the night and if it meant me just holding her while she slept, I would take it. Sure, I wanted to ravish her until we were both spent, but I was content with just about anything except her being pissed at me.

  A loud pop echoed down the hall as Becky stepped out and I froze for a half a second, shock vibrating through me before I realized that Becky was falling back. I reached out to grab her and we both fell back into the office, her landing on top of me.

  She didn’t feel right. The way she landed… “Beck?” I asked, shifting her in my arms so I could look at her face.

  It was then I saw the blood spreading across the front of her shirt.

  **

  The next hour was hell. There were no other words to describe what I was feeling other than being in a dark place I couldn’t control, one of relentless pain and chaos.

  “Shit man, will you sit down? You’re wearing a hole in the floor with all your pacing.”

  “Leave him alone! You would be doing the same thing.”

  Fox and Nat’s voices barely broke through the haze crowding my brain. I wanted to see Becky, know that she was all right.

  If she wasn’t, I didn’t know what I would do. The familiar sense of turmoil crept into my mind, making it hard to think. How could this have happened? Who did this?

  “When are they going to let us know something?” Misty said from the corner of the room, her eyes red rimmed from crying.

  “When they can, I’m sure,” Alice, Derrek McMurray’s fiancée, said gently.

  I knew nothing about Alice or Derrek really, but I was grateful they were here.

  Fox hadn’t let Nat out of his sight since they’d arrived, his hand always touching her as if she might disappear into thin air.

  I knew that feeling. I couldn’t believe that an hour ago, Becky had just agreed to go to dinner and now, now her blood smeared my shirt, and my hands still felt sticky even though I’d washed them over and over again.

  God, I hated this feeling.

  Derrek gave my shoulder a squeeze. “You want something from the machine?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  He patted my arm before walking away, joining the crowd gathered in the waiting room. I was surprised how many people had shown up, but half the Legion was there, along with Gallery crew, some even half-dressed straight from the club itself. Many people in this town loved Beck, that was for sure. I just hoped we all got to tell her.

  She wouldn’t die. Beck was too strong for that.

  The door opened and we all turned, expecting a serious man in a white coat to walk in and tell us the worst.

  Instead four Cazadores walked in, led by Emilio Nieto himself. I clenched my fists and stepped forward, itching for a fight. I needed some way to release my nervous energy, and hell, this was the perfect way.

  “Whoa,” Emilio said immediately, holding his hands up. “We aren’t looking for a fight.”

  “Stand down, Kid,” Fox growled, though he came to stand next to me, cracking his knuckles. “What the hell do you want, Nieto?”

  “I came to offer our assistance,” he stated, eyeing me. “Becky has always been good to my boys. Besides, I think I know what happened.”

  “What?” I barked.

  Emilio swallowed hard, looking me in the eye. “I think it was Marco.”

  Someone gasped in the room and I went still.

  “Why do you say that?” Fox asked, surprised himself.

  “Because, hell,” Emilio started, some of the fight leaving his shoulders. “Marco’s been missing for weeks man. We went to his place today and, he’s got damn pictures up. Pictures of Becky and I can tell they weren’t... she didn’t give her blessing is all I’m saying.”

  I turned around put my fist through the wall, instant pain raging up my arm and into my shoulder. Marco shot Becky. I was going to fucking kill him.

  Derrek grabbed me and shoved me to the side, and held me there by the arm. “We will get him, I swear it, but you have to calm the fuck down. They will throw you out of this joint if you don’t, and Beck needs you.”

  “I’m good,” I forced out, my whole hand throbbing. Fuck, I think I broke it. “I’m good.”

  “Good man,” Derrek said, loosening up his grip on me.

  I rolled my shoulders and turned to Emilio and his men. “Where do we start?”

  “Hell, I don’t know,” he said, rubbing the back of his head with his hand. “We’ve gone everywhere we can think of. He’s hiding himself good, which tells me he’s got something to hide. You didn’t see anyone?”

  I shook my head. I’d already replayed the scene several times in my mind, mentally going over every detail. “I was focused on getting her out of there.” Her blood was all over the place, people were screaming and filling up the halls. It’d felt like ten years had gone by the time the EMT’s got there, and by then, the place was in an uproar.

  If it was Marco, he could have easily hid in the chaos.

  “If he did this,” Emilio said, his expression growing dark. “We want to handle it our way, provided you get your time in with him first.”

  I gave him a sharp nod. “And he won’t walk away?”

  “He won’t walk away,” Emilio promised. I stared at him, having no reason not to believe him. Clubs took this shit very seriously and with the fragile truce between us and the Cazadores in the aftermath of the Rebel set up, I knew he wouldn’t go back on his word.

  Provided I didn’t fucking kill him with my bare hands.

  “I just don’t understand,” Nat said in a quiet voice. “If he’s obsessed with her, why would he shoot her?”

  “Who knows?” Fox replied, his thumb rubbing over her hand. “He sounds like he’s crazy as hell.”

  I rubbed my bruised knuckles, wondering if my return had anything to do with it. Based on everything that had transpired over the last three months, nothing had happened like this, when Becky would have been alone and vulnerable.

  But it still didn’t make sense.

  The door opened and my mind emptied of thought when a tired looking man in hospital scrubs entered the room, his eyes widening at the amount of people present.

  “I assume you’re all here for Ms. White?”

  “Yes,” Nat said as I struggled to form words on my tongue.

  His expression gave nothing away and I steeled myself against what might come out of his mouth, what I might have lost tonight.

  “Okay, well, is there any family in the room?” the doctor asked.

  I stepped forward without hesitation. “I’m her family.”

  He looked me up and down. For a moment I thought he wasn’t going to tell us anything, but then he let out a sigh. “Ms. White took a bullet in her shoulder. The bullet tore through some blood vessels there before exiting out t
he back, which is a good thing. I repaired the damage, but she’ll have to stay in the hospital a few days to recover. She lost a lot of blood. Her body is very weak right now, especially because of the baby.”

  The floor seemed to spin beneath my feet and my knees nearly buckled. “What did you say?”

  “The baby,” he repeated, looking about the room. “She lost a lot of blood, but the baby appears healthy.”

  A baby. He had to be fucking kidding. “How far along is she?” I asked, the room deathly silent around me.

  The doctor looked at me again, as if re-evaluating his decision to divulge any of her information. “How are you related to Ms. White again?”

  Fox stepped forward before I could say anything. “He’s her cousin. All she has left since her parents died. The rest of us are close friends.”

  The doctor looked from Fox, back to me, but finally said, “She’s three months along.”

  I tried to think back to our time at my parent’s house, but my brain wasn’t exactly cooperating in doing even the simplest of arithmetic.

  We hadn’t used protection. And she hadn’t said anything, hadn’t even acted remotely hesitant. I’d assumed she was on the pill.

  “Give us about fifteen minutes and then you can come back to see her,” he said, before heading to the door. “One at a time.”

  “Well,” Fox said after a moment. “Maybe we should go get some air.”

  “I think that’s a good idea,” Emilio said, giving me a nod before leaving. Slowly, more people followed them until it was just me and Nat left in the room, Fox waiting for her at the door.

  “Give her time to explain, alright?” she said, squeezing my arm.

  I looked down at her. “Did you know?”

  She shook her head, a sly smile on her face. “No, Becky wouldn’t share something like that.”

  I let her go, rubbing a hand over my face.

  Well, shit.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Becky

  The beeping woke me up. Slowly, my eyes fluttered open and I stared at an unfamiliar ceiling, the background noise gradually clarifying. The steady beat of the beeps was my own heart, thumping in my chest.

  For a moment, I just stared, growing accustomed to my body once more while I tried to figure out how I’d ended up here. Fuzziness had settled in my brain for some reason. The bed underneath me felt odd, my throat was all scratchy, and my left arm was numb from my shoulder to my fingers.

  What happened?

  Scared now, I turned my head slowly, and saw my arm was indeed still attached to my body. Thank God. For a moment there, I thought something had happened to it.

  But when I tried to move it, I couldn’t get my mind to connect with my arm. It just laid there no matter how hard I tried.

  Turning my head in the other direction, blood dripped at a steady pace from a bag above my head into my arm, startling me.

  What happened?

  But then a pair of familiar blue eyes locked on mine and I swallowed. “Gary.”

  “Beck,” he said whispered. “How do you feel?”

  “I’m not sure,” I answered, my voice hoarse. “Why… am I here?”

  He blew out a breath and it was then I saw his bloodshot eyes, the lines of exhaustion on his face.

  “Is someone dead?”

  He shook his head, a sound escaping him. “No, but you nearly died. Do you remember being shot?”

  I just stared at him, searching my foggy brain for any small detail that would remind me what took place before I woke up in this bed. “We were going to dinner,” I finally said, snatching on to the snippets flying through my mind. “Something knocked me to the ground.”

  “That would be a bullet,” Gary supplied for me, his voice dropping a notch. “From Marco.”

  My eyes widened. “Marco? But why would he shoot at me?” Sure, he was a vile piece of shit, but there wasn’t anything in our past to inspire this. And he hadn’t ever seemed deranged. Or at least, not in this way.

  “That’s the million-dollar question,” Gary said, his eyes focused on me. “They found pictures in his room, pictures you obviously didn’t know he took.”

  I suddenly couldn’t breathe, trying to figure out where or when he’d taken them. How often had he watched me when I wasn’t aware? And I was sure the pictures he took revealed way more than I’d shown anyone.

  Well except Gary.

  Gary’s fingers curled over my hand. “Calm down, Beck.” His eyes leveled on the monitor that now beeped relentlessly. “They said you had to stay calm.”

  “I can’t believe this,” I said, feeling his warmth seeping into my skin, wishing he would curl around me to give warm up the rest of me. I was unbelievably cold, chilled to the bone.

  “We got guys looking for him,” Gary continued, his finger tracing the vein on my hand with his fingers. “The Cazadores are also looking for him. Don’t worry, he will pay for this.”

  “This is crazy,” I breathed. I’d been shot by a man I barely knew for seemingly no reason.

  Maybe he was deranged, and I’d missed the signs.

  But what did Marco have to gain by killing me? The Gallery would go to the Legion, and outside of the money tied up in the club, I didn’t really have much myself.

  It just didn’t make sense.

  “The bullet went through your shoulder,” Gary said after a moment, his fingers stilling on my hand. “You lost a hell of a lot of blood. I thought you were dying.”

  The emotion in his voice made my breath catch in my chest. He sounded tortured and I didn’t know what to say. Everything had gone wrong between us and just when we were about to start fresh, I nearly died. “I don’t know him,” I forced out. “Not enough for him to shoot me.”

  Gary blew out a breath and released my hand. There was a shift in him. “Yeah well, I don’t think anyone knows you really, Beck.”

  I stared at him, seeing the hardness in his face. “What do you mean?”

  He shook his head, standing. “I shouldn’t have said it, not now.”

  Oh, how I wished I could cross my arms over my chest! “Well you did, so spit it out.”

  His eyes leveled on mine, muscles tight in his face. “I know you’re pregnant.”

  I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. Pregnant? I couldn’t be pregnant! I hadn’t had sex in three freaking months, not since he’d left.

  Oh no.

  “When were you going to tell me?” he continued, oblivious to my shock. “Dammit Beck, this isn’t something I would have expected you to hide from me!”

  I snapped my mouth shut, feeling the anger well up inside me. He had no faith in me. Nothing had changed between us. “Get out.”

  His eyes met mine and I wished I had something to throw at him.

  “I said get out!”

  Gary’s gaze narrowed. “You’re fucking kicking me out?”

  “I am,” I said, fumbling for my call button. “And if you don’t, I’ll get someone to help you find the door.”

  His hands clenched at his sides, and for a moment I thought he was going to refuse to leave. The veins in his forehead bulged, and if I didn’t know any better, I would have thought he wanted to hit me.

  Gary would never lay a hand on me, I knew that. God, where had all this gone so wrong?

  “Fine,” he ground out, stalking toward the door. “But this conversation isn’t over. You understand? We will talk about this.”

  “I’ll look forward to it,” I forced out past the emotions clogging my throat.

  He glanced back at me before exiting the room.

  I held my breath, making sure he wasn’t going to bust back into the room before allowing a sob to escape.

  I was pregnant. I mean, the last three months had been hell, with the Gallery, and the mess with the Legion. With Gary gone. I’d missed my period a couple times, but I thought it was because of stress.

  Not because I was carrying Gary’s child.

  Carefully, I moved my hand over my fla
t belly, mindful of the blood still running into the crook of my arm. There was a kid growing in there. I was going to be a mom in about, well, six months or so.

  I wasn’t ready for a baby. My life was unstable, my love life even worse. I was amid some sort of turf war, plus I had a crazed man running around shooting at me for some weird reason.

  I closed my eyes, the tears leaking from under my eyelids. There was no doubt in my mind I would have this child. I wasn’t about make an innocent baby pay for my mistakes. Which meant Gary would be in my life for at least eighteen years.