by Grey, Blair
Ray sighed. “He’s promised to crack down on the illegal activity going on in Las Cruces,” he explained. “And as you know, that’s something that appeals to a lot of the local residents. And especially the business owners who grudgingly pay us every month. He’s promised to do away with those systems.”
I snorted. “Like that’ll ever happen. I assume you’ve already bribed him to look the other way as far as Red Eyes is concerned?”
“Not yet,” Ray said grimly. “We have a meeting set up, but I haven’t managed to meet him yet.” He paused. “We need to get a good read on him. And we need to hold off on attracting his attention in ways we can’t afford, at least until we’ve got a good read on the guy. We need to know just what he’s willing to overlook.”
“Hopefully he’ll be on our side,” Cameron mused. “If we tell him about the Unknowns and can prove that they’re a threat to the local community, maybe he would allow us to stay in exchange for making that little problem go away for him.”
“It would be nice,” Ray agreed. “And that is the way these things have worked in the past as far as Las Cruces is concerned. But we don’t want to count on anything until we’ve met in person. People only like to do business with people they know. Especially politicians. He needs to trust us before he’ll agree to look the other way. And he’s never going to trust us if we prove that we’re a nuisance before he knows what the situation is.”
We were all silent for a moment, thinking things over.
My blood was boiling, to be honest. I couldn’t believe that, yet again, Ray was willing to let them come on to our territory and mess with our club. This was their third strike, as far as I was concerned. We had dealt with them for long enough.
First, they’d convinced one of the new local businesses that they were the top dog around here, that the Unknowns were the ones that businesses should be paying their dues to each month. Then, they had met up with Ray and Will out at a place of their choosing and tried to kill them. They’d outnumbered our two guys, and Red Eyes had simply gotten lucky that Ray could fight like he did. Next, there had been the incident with the clubhouse. And now the gutted fish outside Belle’s wedding.
Enough was enough. I didn’t understand why Ray didn’t see it that way.
I exchanged a glance with Cameron and then decided to try one more time. “If we go after them now, we could have them out of here before—”
But Ray didn’t give me a chance to finish. “We aren’t going to go after them until I say so,” he said firmly. “The time isn’t right, not just now.”
I stared at him for a long moment and then got to my feet, shaking my head. “I hope we don’t regret this,” I muttered before stalking out of the room.
The thing was, I trusted Ray. I knew the kind of experience he had better than most other people in the club. He and my dad had been partners, once upon a time, back when Ray had formed Red Eyes. Dad never told me all the stories about Ray, but he had hinted at enough of the things he had known the other man to do.
I had no desire to cross Ray. But at the same time, I didn’t always agree with the choices he made in the running of the club. Personally, I thought he spent too much time thinking and not enough time doing. It was why most clubs had divided leadership: so that no one person’s ways of dealing with a situation could handicap the whole club. But no one in Red Eyes dared to stand up to Ray.
And who really was supposed to stand up to him? Of the main crew, Will was just another enforcer, and anyway, his heart wasn’t in the club anymore. He was more invested in his classes at the local college, in building a future for himself and Belle, than he was in anything to do with the Unknowns. Oh, he did what he had to, but he wasn’t going to cross Ray, especially not now that the man was his father-in-law.
Who else was there? Braxton and Landon? The twins didn’t have enough of a brain between them to pose any sort of challenge for Ray. He’d walk right over any of their suggestions. Grant? He was twenty-two and the newest member of the MC. He was still getting his feet wet, only learning the business. He had no choice but to listen to Ray.
That left Cameron and me. No one really knew why Cameron was part of the MC to begin with; he didn’t seem the type. He was quiet, bookish, a fucking whiz with numbers but definitely noncombative. He didn’t have the size or the power to stand up to Ray.
Then there were the other part-time members, the guys who were there when we needed a specific job done. But they didn’t know the day-to-day business of running the MC, and they wouldn’t know about this thing with the Unknowns until Ray gave them a plan against them. They wouldn’t be able to stand up to Ray then; their only response would be to tell Ray that either yes, they could follow the plan, or no, they couldn’t.
All that left was me. If anyone was going to challenge Ray, it had to be me.
But without an official position in the MC, other than sometimes an enforcer, Ray could easily choose to ignore me. It drove me up a wall. Especially since it wasn’t like I was just spouting shit. I was smart. I had a master’s degree, even. I understood more about politics, risk and reward, psychology, and all those other social sciences than anyone ever gave me credit for. But that never seemed to matter.
To my surprise, though, Cameron hurried after me as I stormed out of the clubhouse. He didn’t say anything for a couple of minutes, just matched my strides as I stalked briskly down the street, keen to put as much distance between myself and the clubhouse as I could before I did something I would really regret.
“You’re right, you know,” Cameron finally said, his voice quiet but his eyes flashing. I stopped, turning to face him, wondering if he was serious. He shrugged when I stared at him. “We can’t wait for Ray to decide what he wants to do. It’ll be too late by then,” he continued.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Is this some kind of trick?” I asked. “Did Ray put you up to this, to test my loyalty or something?”
“No,” Cameron said, shaking his head, the hint of a smile lifting the corners of his lips. “Look, I’m not going to fight Ray on it. We both know that he’d have my hide if I did. He doesn’t respect me the way that he respects you. But you’re right. We can’t let this go unchecked. We can’t let the Unknowns take things too far. And they’re sure to do so if we keep letting things slide.”
“What about this business with the new sheriff?” I asked.
“I’ll try to figure out what I can about him,” Cameron offered.
“Good, do that,” I said. “I’ll handle the Unknowns. I’ll be discreet.” It was good to know I had some support from other members of the club, that I wasn’t the only person who thought we needed to act. But at the same time, Cameron wasn’t known for being involved in the physical side of things. He didn’t even want to stand up to Ray, let alone stand up to the Unknowns. I had to respect that.
I balled up one fist, silently vowing that I was going to do something about this. Even if it meant going against Ray’s wishes.
2
Leila
Monday
I scrubbed my hands, glad to be finishing up another shift. It had been a long one; I’d come in late the previous evening and worked the whole night, had a quick break around breakfast time, and gone right back to work until early afternoon. Monday—I guess it was Monday. With a schedule like mine, sometimes I lost track.
Amanda, the nurse I was switching off with, finally showed up. She was a few minutes late, as usual. I fought the urge to roll my eyes.
“All the paperwork is filed for everyone who came in during my shift,” I told her immediately, wanting to get out of there. I had things to do that afternoon. But I wasn’t going to shirk my duties even if she was late. “There are three people who are here to stay for at least tonight. Two were in accidents and had blood transfusions. Everything looks good, but you’ll need to keep an eye on them.”
“I know,” Amanda said, rolling her eyes at me. “Leila, tell you what? Why don’t I just read their files? I’m sure y
ou’ve listed everything in your notes there. You don’t need to give me the verbal report.”
“Uh, yeah, I do,” I said, frowning at her. “It’s hospital policy. Otherwise, something might be overlooked.”
“I know how to do my job,” Amanda said peevishly.
“I’m not saying you don’t,” I said sweetly, even though I had my doubts about how detail-oriented she really was. No point in voicing that aloud, though. “But it’s hospital policy.” I paused and then continued. “The third patient is an elderly man, Mr. Winters. He’s got pneumonia. I’m pretty sure he’s going to be all right, but better safe than sorry. There were a few other people who came in last night, too. A couple—”
“Okay, okay,” Amanda interrupted, throwing her hands in the air. “If you’ve already discharged them, I really don’t need to know.”
“Unless they come back,” I protested.
“Then you know what I’m going to do?” Amanda said, narrowing her eyes. “I’m going to get their names, and then I’m going to look up their records. Which I trust that you updated, with copious details about each patient and their situations.”
I wanted to protest further, but finally, I just shook my head. If she didn’t want to do her job the right way, that was her business. I made a mental note to talk to our supervisor about her, and then I left her to it.
It was a relief to walk outside. The warm sunlight and fresh air revived me a little after a long night in the stale, clinical smells of the emergency wing at the hospital. I stretched broadly, reveling in the way my shoulders cracked at the movement, relaxing me.
The truth was, no matter how difficult these long shifts were, I loved doing them. I loved working the night shifts; that was when things happened around here. You could wait around whole afternoons with no one coming in; it wasn’t like Las Cruces was that happening of a place. Or if people did come in, it was with little things like appendicitis or chicken pox. The night stuff was always new.
Not that I wanted people to get hurt just so I would have something to do, but I had gone into nursing because I wanted to help people, not because I wanted to chitchat beside the coffee machine for the whole time I was on duty. Other people didn’t seem to understand that.
Probably had something to do with my upbringing. There were plenty of ways that Dad and I didn’t see eye to eye, but he had raised me to be a hard worker, and I appreciated that now I was older.
I jumped in my car and headed straight over to Rachel’s house.
Rachel and I had been friends for over two decades now, ever since we were little kids and met on the playground. We’d been together through everything, good times and bad. She was the only person who really understood me at all, even though we were pretty different. But she knew my complicated background, and that was more than I let most people get to know.
When Rachel answered the door, the first thing she did was give me a huge hug, like we didn’t see each other nearly every day. The second thing she did was to eye me critically, clucking her tongue at me. “You look like shit,” she said as she stepped back to let me in. “Worse than a new mother, even.”
I snorted. “Well, it’s a good thing I’m not a new mother on top of everything else, I guess,” I chirped.
“Another night shift?” Rachel asked. “How many is that now, this month?”
“I’ve lost count,” I said breezily, falling onto her couch.
I was exhausted, I had to give her that. I probably did look like shit, too pale and with bags under my eyes. In fact, sitting on this too-comfortable couch had me close to falling asleep already. I grinned as she sat down across from me and shook her head.
“I don’t get it,” she said, not for the first time. “Why do you keep putting yourself through hell like this? I thought that was all going to stop once you turned your internship into a full-time position. It’s not like you need the money or anything.”
“I don’t,” I agreed. I shrugged. “You know why I do this, though. I didn’t get into this job just for the money.”
“I know that,” Rachel sighed. “But if you drive yourself into an early grave, it’s going to severely limit the number of people you can help over the course of your lifetime.”
I laughed, leaning back against the arm of the couch and putting my feet up on the other seat. “I may be wearing myself out, but I’m far from driving myself into an early grave,” I protested. “Besides, I enjoy what I’m doing. I enjoy helping people. And so many of the other nurses don’t want to work the night shifts. Someone’s got to be there for all the poor fuckers who come in after regular hours.”
“Probably true,” Rachel said. “But everyone needs to pull their weight.”
“Says the wife who has no one to help her out with raising her son while her husband is away on business,” I teased.
Rachel laughed. “Touché. But I’ve got you, at least.”
“Where is Gavin anyway?” I asked.
“Just put him down for a nap about half an hour before you got here,” Rachel said. Her eyes twinkled. “Hopefully he doesn’t hear you and come running out; he’s been getting pretty cranky when he doesn’t get his full nap in.”
I laughed. “We’ll keep it down,” I promised.
“Did you come straight over from the hospital?”
“Yeah, had one of those long double shifts,” I told her. “Why?”
“You hungry? I could make us some lunch.”
My stomach growled as if on cue. “That would be great,” I said. “You know I try to steer clear of the cafeteria as much as I can. I managed to sneak away to that little bakery near the hospital during my break this morning, but that was a while ago now.”
Rachel shook her head. “You’re not helping me believe that you’re not driving yourself into an early grave,” she teased. “Come on.”
We went into the kitchen, and she started pulling out different sandwich fixings, laying them all out on the island. We each assembled sandwiches for ourselves, and then I watched as Rachel made one for Gavin for when he woke up. Then, we took our sandwiches out onto the back deck so that we could sit in the sunshine.
“You know, you really need something in your life that isn’t work,” Rachel mused as we munched.
I laughed. “I have plenty of things in my life that aren’t work,” I protested. “I have you, for one thing.”
Rachel rolled her eyes. “But I’m just me. I wish you had exciting things in your life. So that I could live vicariously through you.”
“But I’m too busy vicariously living the mom life through you,” I joked.
“You really need to get yourself a man,” Rachel said, eyeing me consideringly. “A good romance would definitely spice your life up. I could help you get dressed up for dates and everything. It would give us plenty to gossip about, too.”
I laughed and shook my head. “I don’t have time for spicy romance,” I told her. “Besides, you know my standards are too high. No man would ever measure up. Especially not with you looking out for me. He wouldn’t just have to impress me; he’d have to impress you as well!”
Rachel giggled. “That’s true,” she agreed. “And we all know that there’s no one in the world who is good enough for you. But you should at least be having a little fun with things. You’re turning thirty soon.”
I snorted. “And what, there’s no more fun once I hit the big three-oh?”
“What if there isn’t?” Rachel asked, widening her eyes with mock innocence and making me laugh again.
The screen door slid open behind us. “Aunt Leila!” Gavin cried, running around my seat and climbing into my lap.
“Hey, Gavin!” I said brightly, my heart warming as it always did by Rachel’s four-year-old son. “How was your nap?”
Gavin wrinkled his nose. “It was boring,” he declared, giving his mom a look. I had to bite back a laugh.
“Do you want some lunch, baby boy?” Rachel asked.
“Uh huh!” Gavin said. Then, he t
urned back to me, biting his lower lip. “But can we play Frisbee after lunch, Aunt Leila? Mama’s no good at throwing.”
“I think Aunt Leila is tired and might need to go home,” Rachel said, giving me a look that said I didn’t have to agree with his request. “Maybe you and I can go to the park instead.”
Gavin’s face fell, but I was already grinning at him. “Don’t worry, buddy. I have enough energy to play Frisbee, at least for a little while. As long as you don’t make me work too hard!”
Gavin cheered, and I smiled over at Rachel, glad as always that she let me spend so much time with both of them. At this point, they were almost like my own family.
Almost. Despite everything I had said to Rachel, and despite the fact that I really did love my job, it would be nice, sometimes, to have someone there with me. Someone who really knew me, someone to stand by my side through thick and thin. Someone to help me relax at the end of these long shifts, to ease me back into the real world again.
But this was no time to dwell on that. I put a smile on my face as I waited for Gavin to finish lunch, and then he and I ran around the backyard chasing after his Frisbee.
3
Marcus
Thursday
A few days after our meeting with Ray, Cameron and I arranged to have lunch at one of the local businesses that paid the MC for protection. It wasn’t my favorite burger joint in Las Cruces, but they’d look twice before listening in on any scheming that Cameron and I might be doing. They knew what kind of trouble we could cause, and they didn’t want any part of it.
Smart people.
“You know,” Cameron said, chewing thoughtfully, “I have to wonder why you’re the one thinking with your fists instead of Ray.”
I laughed. “What do you mean?”
Cameron shrugged. “We all know you’re smart. Jesus, I don’t know if Ray ever even went to college. If he did, he keeps quiet about it.”