“You lean on me,” he answers without a hint of hesitation. “Just lean on me. I’ve got you.” And he does have me. His arms wrap even snugger around me, his body practically cocoons me. But if I allow myself to fall into his protection, I just might break down again. And my head hurts too much to cry anymore. Which leaves me only one option, to change the subject.
“Any leads on the black SUV?” I ask. Monotone. Business-like. Drained.
“Houdini’s gonna die,” is his only response.
Eventually exhaustion carries me under. Thankfully, I don’t dream. A welcome reprieve from the heartache to heal, even if just for a night. When I wake, Duke’s side of the bed is cold. Jade plays with her Barbies scattered all over the rug on the living room floor, and Hero sits on my blue jean sectional watching a program on the television.
How had my sectional ended up here?
Before I can ask, Hero beats me to it. “Since Duke’s sofa broke, we brought it over this morning. You want some coffee?” He asks.
Coffee. Yes. I look down at my feet, and that’s when I realize how I must appear. Still wearing the black sundress from yesterday. My hair and face must look a fright. “Yes, please.” I answer him, then turn for Jade’s bathroom.
Sure enough, mascara tracks have dried in streaks down my face and my hair, a frizzy mess, sticks out all over from the once pretty bun.
Using one of Jade’s moisturizing wet wipes, I scrub at the makeup until I can pass for human again. And I’m able to pick out the hairpins holding my disheveled bun in place. But the dress, I can’t do the zipper. And I need help with the shower.
“Where’s Duke?” I ask when I make my way back out to the kitchen where there’s a steaming mug of coffee, sandy blond, on the island. I raise an eyebrow at Hero. “How’d you know?”
“Before he left, he told me you like the crème brûlée, and it should be sandy blond. So I guessed.” But I’ll note, he doesn’t tell me where Duke is.
“You draw the short straw?” I ask, then.
He cocks his head, face wearing his puzzlement.
“Guard duty,” I finish.
“Volunteered.” He counters.
What? “Why on earth would you do that? Jesse’s dead.”
“And that would be why. You and Jade need protection. I don’t have an old lady, but if I did, I’d hope a brother would step up to help protect her when I couldn’t be around. And our prez has enough to worry about. So here I am.”
“Elise loves you,” I blurt. “She says if she hadn’t met Boss first, that she’d have gone stalker over you.”
He laughs at my assessment of the situation. “Yeah, so she’s said. But as she did meet Boss first, and those two are head over heels for each other, I won’t get my ass handed to me for you saying that. Did she tell you before or after you and Duke hooked up?”
“After. When I told her I had a crush on…” I exhale slowly. Bringing his name into the conversation hurts. “Jesse.”
His face falls, and we both remain quiet for a minute before I voice what needs to be voiced. “I should leave here, shouldn’t I?”
“Excuse my language, but fuck no. Duke needs you here. I wasn’t around when his wife was alive, but from what the brothers say, you’ve changed him. Given him back something he was missing in his life.”
Of course, I open my mouth to dispute him, but am once again cut off by a sexy biker.
“And before you argue, one thing we know about Houdini, if he’s got a taste for you, he’ll hunt you down. Learned the hard way with Liv and Elise. Especially Elise. Your ass needs to stay put where we can protect you. None of us knew how he was gonna strike, so he took us off guard. That was his one chance. One.”
“But maybe—” I protest.
“One, Caity.” He cuts me off.
Because I know he expects me to, I nod once. Though the jury is still out if I exactly believe him or not. I mean, weren’t they already supposed to be vigilant? So how did he take them off guard? Yet somehow now I’ve got a psychopath after my daughter, and he tried to kill us.
And if that isn’t enough reason to grab my girl and run away, to a different continent if necessary… or have a nervous breakdown, hell maybe just be out-of-it drunk for a month or two, there’s yet another problem to deal with as a result of this hopeless situation.
“I’m going to lose all my patients,” I tell Hero, holding up my casted wrists so he gets the gist of what I mean. But it’s not just that. After having to take that week off after Jade’s injury, I was back for a week before the accident, and my subsequent week stay in the hospital. And still recovering, I haven’t been cleared to go back to work. Not that I could with casted wrists.
“Wouldn’t bet on it.” He offers with a knowing smile as he rounds the island, mug in hand and stops in front of the coffee pot. He pours himself a refill, then turns to lean his bottom against the edge of the counter, feet crossed at the ankles and an arm across his stomach. With the other, he lifts the mug to his lips, takes a sip and winces because it’s hot coffee, then goes on. “Not if all the flowers and cards dropped by the front gate or all the casseroles from those brave enough to approach Duke mean anything.”
To prove his point, he leans over and pulls open the door to the refrigerator. The completely full refrigerator. Every shelf stacked with glass or aluminum casserole dishes. Then to really drive his point home, he opens the freezer.
“Those are all from—”
“Your patients.” He cuts me off. “My count, you and Duke are gonna be eating tuna noodle casserole and lasagna for a year.” The jerk laughs as he shuts both the refrigerator and freezer doors, and then resumes his spot against the counter sipping hot coffee while I stand stunned into silence.
My patients aren’t mad that they have to deal with Dr. Misogynist-who-doesn’t-do-house-calls again? And for who knows how long?
“Jesus, Caity. You look constipated.”
So Hero’s a hot young biker who works a tight pair of jeans like a workaholic, could easily grace the cover of a romance novel and has a smile that could induce an orgasm just from aiming it at a girl. I walk over to him, over my stupor, and knee him in the boys. Albeit, my movements are slow and choppy due to my injuries and thus easily defendable. Thus, causing no pain except for maybe the one in his side from laughing at me.
“Mama,” Jade calls over to me. “Can I pway outside?”
Bad mom award. With all the heavy and latter not-so-heavy tête-à-têtes happening this morning, I forgot my girl was sitting in the living room, probably soaking up every bit of our conversation. “Sure Princess Jade, we can go out back. But first, you have to help Mom unzip her dress. I need to take a shower.”
Jade jumps up to help me but is stopped by Hero. “Sorry. Breakfast first, then shower.” When I roll my eyes at him, he holds his hand up for me to stop. “Duke’s orders. He said you’d argue about eating, but I wasn’t to let you out of the kitchen until you ate something. So sit your ass down, and I’ll fix your breakfast.”
Breakfast? Is he serious?
Jesse is dead, while Jade and I walk around with big, neon targets painted on our backs inviting Houdini to take his best shot. My man left me alone in bed, cold and casted, to go off doing God knows what, which means it probably has to do with the accident. Although, no one will explain a god dammed thing to me about the case. Do they have any leads? Are they planning a counterattack? Would it be safer for me to take Jade and visit my parents for a few weeks?
Because, I will repeat, Jade and I have big-freaking-neon, Houdini-inviting targets on our backs.
And they’re worried about breakfast?
I love that these men want to take care of us. Though I could live without the not listening to me because I don’t wear a patch or because I have a vagina, part. I don’t have the strength to fight it out today, which leaves me one choice. “You and Jade eat anything you like, but I’ll just have some yogurt and fresh fruit.”
17.
D
uke
We’d lucked out, though we didn’t know we needed to luck out. But shit, I ain’t looking this particular gift horse in the mouth. The Department of Fish and Wildlife had motion detection cameras hooked high to several trees around the area, tracking the habits of some endangered bat. The cameras automatically snap photos every couple seconds when movement’s detected.
They contacted us this morning because in the distance on several of their photos, beyond the bats, they captured a car running Doc and Peaches off the road the morning we ended up in Nashville. Because Tommy Doyle’s police cruiser is visible, and he knows better than to keep me in the dark concerning anything having to do with my woman or Houdini, we both got calls. That is, they called him. He called me.
So now I’m standing in some stuffy office with ugly brown carpeting and even uglier nineteen-seventies utilitarian office furniture—ironically with no view of wildlife in sight—of some environmentalist, perusing grainy black and white photos.
“You gotta be shitting me,” I whisper when I spy exactly why they called us. This DFW officer would have no reason to understand the significance. He just thought he’d been doing a good deed, calling us in after an apparent hit and run.
Except, except the hit and run ain’t about some punk kid texting and driving as Doc had initially suggested. It’s a black-fucking-SUV. A black SUV matching the one that killed Jesse.
Enlarging the picture, we’re able to recover a partial license plate. Tommy leaves to call it in in his official capacity. I call Blood.
My gut physically aches. Houdini, that asshole targeted Doc and Peaches. My girls. But what’s his angle? Why Doc? Why fucking Peaches? She’s just a kid, for fuck’s sake.
“Can we make out the driver?” Blood asks me.
“’Fraid not. They’re grainy black and whites. All we can tell is that the guy’s hair ain’t black or dark brown. He’s got a beard. Which last time we saw Houdini, he had not black or dark brown hair and a beard.”
“Not a lot to go on, prez.”
“You’ve worked with less.”
“True that. Anything else?” he asks.
“Just get me something to catch this fucker. He won’t walk away breathing again.”
“On it,” Blood answers, then hangs up.
There ain’t anything I like less than feeling helpless. I felt helpless with Dawna’s cancer. Now this fucker messing with my woman, with my little girl. My family. After all this time, all these years, I got me a family and he’s trying to take ’em away from me.
“Thanks for calling.” I bite out to the DFW officer as he hands off a manila folder to Tommy, shoot Tommy a chin lift to let him know I was out and then leave them to it. Tommy will call with any more. Me, I gotta shoot.
I mount my bike freed from the sidecar, and as I’m about to spark it to life, my phone rings. It’s my second in command. My right-hand man, Boss. “Blood call?” I ask instead of hello.
“He did. But not why I’m callin’.”
My body goes tight. What could have gone wrong now? “’Sup?”
“Wanted to make sure you’re alright.”
Well that got me. “What do you mean?”
“With all that’s goin’ on. Jesse. Caity.”
Don’t usually make this kind ’a small talk with anyone. Well, except for Doc. But she’s Doc so it’s different, but I find myself answering him honestly anyway. “Don’t know how you did it with Elise. We were with you, going through it right alongside you. But it’s different when it’s your woman.”
“Sure as fuck is,” he returned without hesitation. “It was the worst. And I’m still scared, though I don’t tell her that. But he could decide to come back after her with more than notes and flowers. Or Gun and that rattle. I’m gonna be honest, I hate that he’s goin’ after Caity and Jade. But I’d be lyin’ not to admit I’m relieved that for now, he’s not comin’ after my family. And I know that makes me a dick. Because I don’t want him comin’ after yours either.”
That comment should piss me right the hell off. But he’s right. Had Dawna been alive, despite hating Houdini going after Elise and Liv, I’d have felt the same way. Which makes me a dick, too. Boy, ain’t that some shit to think about? And I do, pausing, not speaking.
“Shit,” he mutters into the line. “You’re pissed.”
“Actually, no. At all. Because that’d be me, situation reversed. Just didn’t have a family to feel that way about when it was going down with Elise.”
“So what now?” Boss asks.
“Heading to the range. I gotta shoot.”
He feels me. When we get the chance to take Houdini down, I wanna be the one to put a bullet in his brain. I want it my eyes he stares into when he takes his last breath. For Jesse. For my family. And for that, I have to be on my game. No chance that my bullet will miss the target. No fucking chance.
“Meet you there,” is all he says before hanging up.
My brothers.
This is club life.
This is what people on the outside don’t get. Why I stuck with it after my dad got sent down on weapons charges. After my uncle, and then my blood brother and all the club brothers bought it from war with the Horde, why I took my place as president. Why, in the face of losing my wife, I didn’t renounce my club. Because when shit goes down, and life is full of shit, we need people we can trust at our backs. And even if I wasn’t the president, those men would always have my back.
Only now, after shoving my phone back in my pocket, do I let the bike rumble beneath me, and ride away.
***
Shooting with Boss was exactly what I needed to let loose. We didn’t talk, just kept emptying round after round into the targets. Couple of hours we stayed. Yeah, I’m gonna be ready for that son of a bitch, Houdini.
Afterword, we headed back to the clubhouse. Now Boss and I, longnecks in hand, sit at the bar in the dark room. Not long ago I’d have been a willing participant in the scene unfolding all around us.
Not often we lose one of our own. Not since the full-on war with the Horde decimated both clubs. Over what? Drugs? Fucking meth. Always someone willing to smoke, inject or slam it. Kept our pockets fat. Though fat pockets didn’t help my uncle or my brother, Rex, or half the damn club. Didn’t give us the time to properly mourn our fallen brothers.
At least, even though not a fully patched-in member, Jesse’ll get his proper sendoff—eventually. And the brothers can mourn him or celebrate him or hell, just celebrate still being alive, tonight.
The clubhouse is loud, at full potency for music and inebriation. Metallica pounds through the speakers. And with all families barred tonight, the Pieces and Hot Mamas fuck brothers on the sofas and suck cock down on their knees. Sly, for his part, has Vicki-Lee bent over the pool table, pounding her ass while Blue chalks up his cue and takes another shot.
Our parties don’t usually get this carnal out in the open, but with the amount of alcohol consumed tonight, it happens.
“You miss it?” I ask Boss, tipping my bottle out to the room to indicate the debauchery before us.
“Not one damn bit. You?”
“Nah,” I answer, honestly, and take another pull from my beer.
We both laugh and shake our heads.
“And she’s healing, so it ain’t like I can even go down on her. Doctor’s orders. She can’t bend to go down on me, either.” Why I feel the need to share, who the hell knows? But I keep spewing this crap. Sharing my feelings like I’ve grown a freaking vagina. Fuck, what’s that woman done to me?
“How she dealin’?” he asks, levity gone. “With all that?”
“Best she can, I ’spect. We hit a rough spot after the memorial, but she didn’t stay mad for long. Yelled at me, got it off her chest. Burned out as fast as she ignited.”
“Bodes well for your future.”
“Everything about her bodes well for my future.”
“So you gonna marry her?”
“You know, you’re the second b
rother to ask that.” I laugh again, this time the humorless kind, at him and myself.
The sound of a cue ball cracking against another catches our attention. Both Boss and I look over in time to see Vicki-Lee rear her head back and hit Sly in the jaw as she lets loose a high-pitched moan, the same moment Blue sinks the solid red.
Do not miss it.
“I’m out.” Boss drops his bottle back on the bar top. “Gonna go fuck my wife now.”
“Yeah,” I reply. “Gonna head home, too.” I stand then set my bottle down. “Oh, and Boss?”
He turns to me. “Yeah?”
“Thanks, brother.”
He dips his chin then walks away. I’m not too far behind him. Since no family allowed inside right now, and that means babies that cry and make your dick go soft, Elise and Gun are with Maryanne Doyle. They’ll stay at their own house tonight, then be back here tomorrow when Boss hits work again.
While he mounts his ride, I veer left toward my home and my woman.
18.
Caitlin
“I just don’t know how I’m supposed to stay.” I tell Hero out of the blue after walking back out from Jade’s room, down for her nap. We’d ended that line of conversation earlier before fresh fruit and playing outside. But that doesn’t mean I’d stopped thinking about it. Quite the contrary. Leaving here, getting away from Houdini seems all I can focus on.
When he crosses his arms over his chest and glares at me, I continue. If for nothing else than to defend myself. “That truck came barreling around the bend, Hero. Like he’d been waiting to see us leave the compound.”
“We figured,” he replies, dryly.
“No.” I protest as I sit down on the sofa and turn to rest my back against the arm, pulling my knees up, and squeeze a tan and blue striped throw pillow to my chest, curling around it like a rollie pollie bug. “You don’t get it. He’s watching me specifically. I’ve been thinking on this. Doesn’t it seem odd I get run off the road? My house gets broken into. And then we get run off the road a second time in only a couple of weeks? Whose luck is that bad?”
At Last (Brimstone Lords MC 2) Page 16