by Zoey Parker
The door opened, and the officer glanced past me to Liza, confused by the fact that I was calling an end to the meeting or making sure she was okay.
I smiled at him and shrugged. “She’s all right,” I said. “Our meeting is just over. Take me back to my cell.”
I was led back to my cell as an officer entered the room behind us to escort Liza out. If she had thought anything of my early exit from our talk, she hadn’t shown it on her face. She’d just sat there as I got up to walk away. If anyone understood what I was thinking or how I felt, it was Liza. She’d worked with so many of us over the years that she was probably thinking the same things we were.
I had to keep my mind busy. I was starting to get worried about everything again. I had to have something to occupy my time. It did me no good to sit around thinking about how Mr. Smithfield had been able to manipulate every detail of my case so far. At least I had a lawyer who was beyond his reach, and I knew the guys in the Vicious Thrills were beyond his reach. Hell, he hadn’t even been able to find Lucy through us, and we had her while he was asking questions.
Once I got out, I knew Lucy was going to be my only real shot at taking her father down. I was going to have to use her to get to him. It was great knowing that, but, at the same time, I dreaded having to use her like that, especially against her own dad. I knew she still loved him. I knew it still bothered her that she’d been cut off. No one liked to be shoved aside by their folks. At the same time, he was drawing some pretty serious lines for her.
Then, it occurred to me that while I was locked away, he was probably going to try to get to her. He’d already gone looking for her once, and their little talk before the raid on the club had gone poorly. I had even more reason to get out. Even with Lucy staying at the clubhouse, I wasn’t sure if she were completely safe from her father’s influence.
Unfortunately, all I could do was wait to hear back from Liza about my bail. I lay on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, knowing my world was more than likely falling apart outside the jail.
Chapter 26
Lucy
I stepped off the bus in a small town I’d never been through before. It was one of those places off the beaten path where people always seemed to end up in the movies, right before they started their new lives.
But there wasn’t much about the bus terminal that made me feel hopeful. There were people sleeping on the benches outside the bus station, and a few inside. Businessmen and homeless people slept almost side by side. Some were waiting on the bus. Others were just trying to stay somewhere safe.
Afternoon was turning to evening. I saw a suit stand up and stretch before grabbing a couple of bags that were sitting with him and heading for the bus. I walked in and found a seat. I hadn’t decided if I wanted to take another bus, or where I wanted to go if I did.
I didn’t even know where I was.
I sat and dropped my backpack at my feet. I looked around for anything that would have told me the name of the town where I’d stopped, but I didn’t see anything. I saw a couple of vending machines and a few people milling about in the large lobby. It was silent except for the occasional detached voice echoing off the hard tile floor.
I pulled out my phone. I didn’t have any calls from Blade. I figured he would have been out of jail at least by the time I stepped off the bus. Apparently, they had him on something serious. Either that or he wasn’t going to call.
Robby had called a few times. The MC must have realized I wasn’t at Blade’s house. I figured they’d learned that by about the time he called me the first time. I didn’t listen to any of the voicemails, but I imagined him standing outside the door to Blade’s sprawling home, checking his phone to see how long I’d been inside.
He’d probably called out for me before walking through the entire house to find me. He probably didn’t know about Blade’s emergency stash. He probably hadn’t found the letter I’d left. Still, after searching the house, he’d probably called the clubhouse to see if I had somehow gone there without him. When he realized I wasn’t turning up, that was probably when he’d called me.
I felt bad for deserting him like I had. He probably felt like I’d made a fool out of him. To make matters worse, if Blade was still in jail, he probably didn’t even know I was gone yet. I assumed the only person they would have allowed him to talk to would have been his lawyer, if he even had one.
My father knew all the lawyers. He knew everybody. He had friends on the force, which was definitely how Blade wound up behind bars. He even knew all the judges. Blade had all of the odds stacked against him, and I was sitting in a small bus station a hundred miles or more away, unable to do anything to help him.
I wasn’t completely unable to help him. I had carried the phone he’d given me with me on my trip, so I supposed I wasn’t completely ready to move on and let go. At any point, I could have called Robby or any of the other guys in the MC to let them know where I was. I could have called my dad to let him know what was going on and try to make an arrangement with him to have the charges dropped.
I was starting to wonder if maybe I was making a mistake by hopping the bus and leaving town. Maybe I had acted a little hastily in leaving the way I did. Maybe I should have tried to go home. I could have reenrolled in school. I could have done whatever needed to be done to put my life back on track and to stop disrupting Blade’s life.
By leaving, I had done exactly what my father wanted me to do. He wanted me away from Blade and the MC, at the very least. He wasn’t going to help me, but he did not want me seeking help from men like them. That much was obvious.
The whole bit with Dylan coming to see me had just been a ploy to get me away from them. Unfortunately, I’d also left them wide open to his attacks by getting out of the way. There was no way they could defend themselves against someone who had a hand in every pocket in the city. I hoped the networks they’d built through the MC were able to provide them with ways around my father.
I turned my phone over in my hand while I sat and thought about how I could have helped. Taking Blade’s money and running wasn’t going to help him. It was supposed to help me. It was supposed to help my baby boy, to keep him out of his father’s hands.
I knew Dylan didn’t really want our son. How in the hell was he going to explain to his wife – or ex-wife, considering the ring was gone – that he suddenly had another baby she hadn’t given birth to? No; what seemed more likely was that my father was going to take custody from Dylan once Dylan got the baby from me. I had no idea how that would have worked, but it seemed like something my father would do. Dylan wasn’t interested in our son any more than he was interested in getting back with me.
As night settled in, the bus station quieted down. Soon, there were only the rugged homeless people sleeping on the benches outside. Everyone had cleared out of the main room. Even most of the employees behind the ticket counter seemed to have disappeared. I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know if they were going to lock up and send me outside or what, but I figured as long as no one said anything to me, I was fine inside.
I didn’t have anywhere to go. I could have checked into a hotel nearby with the money I’d taken. I could have grabbed another ticket to another destination, hopped another bus, and found my way to another city, putting more distance between myself and the MC, more distance between myself and Dylan. I could have gone home, back to Blade and the rest of the Vicious Thrills.
I realized I was in the same position I’d been in when I first met Blade. I had no home, no place to go, and no one to call. But this time I had money, and I actually did have someone to call for help— just not locally. They would have been there as quickly as possible to pick me up. They might have even had people nearby to take me in for the night until someone could come get me in the morning. I started to seriously consider calling Robby.
“I’m sorry, Miss, but we’re about to shut down for the night,” a young voice said to me.
I looked up from my phone
and saw a young man in a uniform. He looked nervous for having to approach me. I’d never heard of a bus station that wasn’t open all night.
“Won’t there be other buses coming through?” I asked him.
“If there are, they just drop people off outside. We aren’t as busy as the bus stations in the big city. We only run a few buses a day for the most part. Our main function is letting people connect to other lines to go to different places,” he explained.
“I don’t have anywhere else to go right now,” I told him.
“I’m sorry. We can help you make a hotel reservation for the night over at the desk,” he offered.
I looked at the counter and then back outside. I didn’t know where I was or how I was going to get to a hotel from the terminal. I also didn’t know how I was going to get back to catch another bus in the morning.
“What time does the next bus run in the morning?” I asked.
“Early. Our first bus usually departs around six forty-five,” he told me.
“I guess I’ll join the people sitting outside, then,” I said, grabbing my pack from the floor. I stood up and started to walk toward the benches outside.
“I really don’t recommend sleeping out here. It’s not all that safe,” the young man said behind me as I walked away.
“Neither is what I was leaving behind,” I said under my breath as I walked through the door. I walked along the platform lined with benches. Most of them were already taken.
Judging by what I could see of the city from the bus station, I was probably in the company of the entire homeless population. It didn’t look like the town was big enough to have many more people living outdoors. Then again, I could only see a small portion of it from where we were.
It was likely that the terminal was on the outskirts of town. It stood next door to a convenience store at the corner of the intersection of two highways. In the yellow streetlight standing at the corner, I couldn’t see anything else near us. There also wasn’t much traffic, rendering the night almost completely silent. I could hear the bell on the door of the gas station every time someone walked in or out.
I found it hard to believe that a town without a twenty-four-hour bus station could support a twenty-four-hour gas station, especially considering that I hadn’t heard a single car pass by since I’d walked outside. It seemed like a bit of a waste, but at the same time, if I needed anything in the middle of the night, it was just a short walk away.
I found an unoccupied bench and lay down, using my pack as a pillow. The men and women sleeping on the other benches made me feel sort of safe. They didn’t all look ragged and worn out. There were a couple of people dressed nicely, probably waiting on a late-night bus that was supposed to be passing through or the first bus of the morning, as if they believed they were going to miss it if they waited anywhere else.
I pretended to sleep. I closed my eyes and listened to the sounds of the night around the bus station – the occasional passing car, the ding of the bell at the gas station every time someone opened the door, the homeless man snoring three benches over, the hum of the lights. I kept my ears open to the night.
It was the first time I’d spent the whole night outdoors, on the street. There wasn’t a Blade or a Robby to save me in this small town. And even though the boy inside had tried to offer me a little help, I wasn’t prepared to take it.
I began to wonder if my pride and stubborn sense of independence were helping me at all. It was starting to seem like what I considered independence was just me being stubborn. The phone was in the front pocket of my jeans. All I had to do was take it out and call one of the names listed in my contacts. Any one of them probably knew who I was. Any one of them would have been more than happy to come up and get me from wherever the hell I’d found myself.
I didn’t even know where I was. How was I supposed to call someone to tell them to come get me? My original ticket had been for Albuquerque. It didn’t say anything about the stops along the way. I could have stayed on the bus and wound up somewhere out west, somewhere nicer than the little town where I’d stepped off the bus. But following the ticket meant making it easier for anyone to follow me, and that wasn’t part of my plan.
Chapter 27
Blade
“You’re out,” the cop at my cell door said as he slid the bars aside to let me out.
“I’m out?”
“Yes, your bail has been posted. You’re free.”
I stood up and started to walk toward the open cell door. “I didn’t even know the judge had set bail,” I said, suspicious that I was being set up.
“He set it this morning. Your lawyer must have convinced him somehow. Anyway, it’s been posted. You can’t stay. It’s time to go,” the officer explained.
I cautiously walked out of the cell and walked down the hallway to get my personal belongings before leaving. It seemed he was not setting me up for anything. I really was free to go. I grabbed my personal things up front and started toward the door. That was when I saw Robby waiting for me just outside.
“Come on. Let’s get in the truck. I’ve got some things to tell you,” Robby said, patting me on the back with one of his large hands.
“I don’t like the sound of that,” I told him as I walked with him out to the truck and climbed in the passenger side.
“You’re really not going to like it when I tell you.” He climbed in and started the engine.
My heart sank. Something had happened. “What is it?” I asked as I pulled the seatbelt across my chest and he pulled out of the parking spot.
“Lucy is missing.”
He’d just said three simple words, but they crushed me. I had been expecting to see her as soon as I got out. I had hoped to be able to check on her when I got home.
“Missing how?” I asked. My first thought was that her father had come and taken her somehow. I tried not to be immediately angry with Robby or my younger brothers. They’d all been tasked with watching her, but I didn’t know what happened, so there was no way to put it off on them.
“I took her to the house to grab a few things, and from what I could tell, she dipped out while I was waiting on her to come back out,” he explained.
“You don’t think someone kidnapped her?” I asked.
“How? She was in the house alone,” he told me.
I felt certain, just like Robby did, that no one else had been in the house at the time. It would have been impossible. Still, after everything, it seemed incredibly unlikely that she would have just left like that. I didn’t want to believe it. I almost wanted to believe she’d been taken from my house instead.
“Did you check the house?” I asked him. I needed someone to be mad at for it. Robby would have made an easy target, even though I really knew better.
“No, but tell me, would you have checked your house before letting her into it?” he snapped.
“You’re right, Robby. I’m sorry, man. I just can’t believe she’d run off like that,” I told him.
“I looked all over the house. If she was still in there and just hiding, she’s good.” He chuckled.
Robby and a few other guys had helped me comb the club for drugs after letting go of some of the girls. I had seen how thorough he could be. If he said he looked for someone in my house, I knew he had.
“Does the rest of the MC know she’s missing?” I asked.
“Yeah. I’ve got everyone looking for her. No one has been able to turn up anything.”
“How in the hell does someone disappear so completely?” I asked him. Of course, she could have had some help, I thought.
“Want me to drop you by the house or take you to the clubhouse?” he asked.
“Drop me at the house. I’ll head to the clubhouse later. Tell Brick I want to talk to him about what we’re going to do about Bryan Smithfield, Lucy’s father,” I told him.
When he let me out of the truck at my house, I went inside immediately and started looking for Lucy myself. I wanted to find some clue
as to where she’d gone or why she’d left. I didn’t notice anything anywhere in the house. Nothing was out of place.
Then, it occurred to me to look in my closet. I had told her about the emergency cash I kept hidden behind the false panel in the wall at the end of the shelf on top of my clothes. If she’d left the way she supposedly did, she would have taken that money.
I pulled the panel back and, sure enough, the gun lay there undisturbed, but the money was gone. I closed the panel and started looking around the rest of the room. I found a note on my desk from her. Her beautiful handwriting stretched out across plain white paper.
My love,
I’m sorry I had to take your emergency cash. I will pay you back as soon as I’m able to. I hope to be able to tell you one day why I have to leave this way. I’m sorry, but it’s for the best. It’s not your fault, and it’s nothing you did.