Still Waters (Greenstone Security Book 1)

by Anne Malcom

It was almost worth seeing him to give her a reason to smile like that.

  Almost.

  She had Lucky to do that.

  “Yeah, well, if I were you, I wouldn’t be so cut up about having such a hunk stalker. At least when he ties you up in the basement you’ve got something pretty to look at.”

  She winked at me, a buzzing sounding from her pocket. She reached to grab it while her eyes flickered over to him once more. “I’m guessing you’ll be sticking around for the party after all?” she said with a certainty I did not like.

  “No,” I snapped immediately.

  At the very same time Rosie declared, “Yes,” confidently.

  My head snapped to my best friend, my ice queen glare on full blast.

  “Well, you two have fun working that out,” Bex said, a smile in her voice as she cradled the vibrating phone. She gave me a knowing look. “I’ll see you inside.”

  I didn’t even wait until she turned her back to head to her man, phone at her ear.

  “Have you ever heard of the fucking girl code?” I hissed at Rosie, giving her my full attention.

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “Yes. I had a hand in writing it. In a past life, at least,” she said confidently. “And section 22A directly says one shall not let one’s girlfriend fuck up a potentially mind-blowing orgasm with a hot soldier with muscles, tattoos and an accent, under the penalty of death.”

  I raised my brow, folding my own arms. “And who will kill you if you don’t do that? I know who will if you do,” I threatened.

  She grinned at me. “Try me, Lulu,” she taunted.

  “Really, Zee? You’re going to try and butt into whatever this is that so isn’t my love life when I’ve kept silent for almost a decade about your fucking disaster?” I hissed.

  Low blow, but I was getting desperate, as I sensed that Keltan wouldn’t stand there forever doing his best to encourage someone to carve him out of marble.

  Indeed, his jaw turned hard, and he pushed off the SUV, his destination clear.

  I stepped forward, intent on wrestling her for those fucking keys if need be so I could get the heck out of dodge and not stop until I reached Columbia. It was nice there when I rescued Rosie those years ago. The men didn’t speak the language, which meant no trouble.

  And there was cheap booze.

  And shoes.

  Win-win.

  Rosie let out an exaggerated sigh. “Touché. Who needs weapons with girlfriends when you’ve got words?” she asked, unfolding her arms and rounding the car.

  She wasn’t mad. She wasn’t even impressed. We fought dirty. Someone had to teach those outlaw bikers how to do it. And Rosie and I were the OG vengeance vixens.

  “Rosie!” Bex’s broken scream had us both halting in our tracks and staring across the lot.

  In my peripheral vision, I saw Keltan stop and do the same.

  “Get away from the car!” Bex yelled.

  And because we’d experienced one too many drills in that situation, we didn’t hesitate. We started to run.

  You heard it in someone’s voice, when they had knowledge that something was going to happen. Something bad they couldn’t stop, only try to save others from. And then you heard the other thing, that you couldn’t stop nor save anyone from.

  I heard that in Bex’s voice.

  Yet she still ran towards us. Like she would die trying.

  But then I wasn’t focused on her. My eyes were on the man sprinting towards me, obviously used to that same tone, his eyes grim with demons and intent on saving someone.

  He barreled into me at the same moment an echoing boom rippled through my ears and the air moved with the blinding heat of fire at our backs.

  His strong arms yanked me into his chest, and in midair, he moved us so that his body thudded on top of mine, covering me on the pavement that we’d slammed into painfully.

  My head cracked on the back of his knuckles, which prevented me from cracking it on concrete that would have been rather painful and potentially fatal.

  He stayed atop me as the heat licked our bodies, like the promise of death once cheated.

  My body throbbed in pain at the impact of hitting a hard surface so brutally, and my ears rang with a high-pitched whine that made even my thoughts hard to hear.

  Though my wrist was screaming above all that, the sharp pain taking over most of my consciousness, radiating to my shoulder.

  Because I was pinned underneath a man who ate The Rock for breakfast, I was paralyzed with the pain. My immediate instinct was to wrench my wrist away from the source of the burning pain and cradle it to my chest.

  Moments, seconds, or minutes later—time was increasingly blurry—he was off me, his face carved from granite, chocolate irises focused on me and saturated with pure worry.

  “Luce,” he said urgently.

  “Hand… on fire. Put it out, please,” I bit out, lifting my burning hand up. I jerked with surprise when I didn’t see it in flames. Instead there was a lump in the flesh that I was reasonably sure hadn’t been there moments before.

  Then again, Rosie’s VW Beetle had been there moments before. Now there was a flaming pile of wreckage.

  Rosie, I thought immediately, my arm forgotten.

  I tried to struggle at the same time Keltan’s eyes flared at my wrist, and he moved to jostle me gently but quickly into his arms.

  I struggled as he turned towards his SUV, the wrong way.

  Men were already shouting amidst the roar in my ears, sprinting towards the car.

  “Let me go,” I screamed, looking to see Lucky bent over Bex—who was thankfully moving and not squirting blood from stumps that used to be limbs.

  I snatched a glance at Rosie, who was standing with Cade’s hands at her neck, concern on his face.

  I sagged only slightly at the fact that she also seemed reasonably unharmed.

  “Let me go,” I screamed again, my voice sounding strangely muffled in my own head.

  Keltan’s eyes flickered to Cade’s and then me. “You need to get to a fucking hospital, Snow,” he clipped.

  “I need you to put me down,” I hissed, giving Cade another frantic glance.

  Cade’s eyes darted up, and he locked them with mine. Relief apparent, his eyes went to Keltan’s arm, and then my wrist at my chest. Then they flickered beside us.

  Dwayne’s tattooed hand slammed the door shut that Keltan had just tried to open. His name wasn’t Dwayne, not until Amy and Gwen arrived. All my life, I’d grown up calling him Ace—the only name he’d given me, despite him being around the same age as me.

  I reasoned his old name, the one we knew that Gwen’s dead brother used to call her, was the reason he went along with this new one without protest.

  The men cared about Gwen. It wasn’t hard, since she was awesome, but they cared about all the women. It was the way alpha males were wired. Archaic and so not feminist, but comforting even to a staunch feminist like myself.

  Which was why, despite my screaming wrist that was becoming unbearable and making my stomach roll, I was grateful for the alpha male intervention.

  “Where the fuck do you think you’re takin’ her?” Dwayne growled, the veins in his neck pulsing.

  “Take your hand off the door,” Keltan gritted out, voice promising menace. Violence.

  Dwayne didn’t blink at the gaze that promised the same. “Take your hands off Lucy, give her to me and you got a deal.”

  Keltan’s arms tightened, which I would have struggled against had I not been gritting my teeth to stop myself crying like a little girl from the pain radiating up my arm and towards my shoulder.

  “Her arm is broken,” Keltan said quietly. But not gently. No, his accent became so pronounced that his words almost melted together from pure fury. “She needs a hospital, and I swear to everything I hold dear, including the woman in my arms, I’ll shoot you dead if you don’t take your hand off that door,” Keltan promised.

  Dwayne’s resolve hardened, but then he glanced a
t my arm. “Fuck,” he muttered, his voice tight, face cloaked in anger and concern. He reached out to brush a wayward hair from my face with tenderness that starkly juxtaposed the anger on his face. “You need a hospital, Lu, and I need to kill whoever put you there.”

  He hesitated a second before giving Keltan one last glare and me a look before leaving.

  I hissed out an annoyed breath. Keltan didn’t hesitate in opening the door and depositing me in so quickly and gently, the motion seemed supernatural. Then again, so did the pain in my arm.

  I’d been hurt before. In a multitude of ways that had snapped pieces of my soul. It was excruciating, that pain. But when it was on the inside, you knew you had two choices: live with it, or give in to it.

  The physical pain of a broken bone was a little harder to live with.

  I noted with a detached sense of irony that it was the same wrist that Gray broke all those years before. The same soul too, but that was a different story.

  Keltan fastened my seat belt, and I let out a little moan of pain as his bicep brushed my wrist.

  His jaw tightened and the click resounded in the cab of the truck, somehow louder than the chaos just outside.

  And the chaos on the inside too.

  “Sorry, baby,” he murmured, the hardness of his voice a memory. He cupped my jaw for a moment, the rough calluses of his palms scratching my cheek, not unpleasantly. Then he was gone and the door slammed shut with such force it shook the cab and jostled me in my seat.

  I let out a louder noise considering no one could hear me as Keltan was rounding the truck in record time.

  He’d flown out of the park the moment his ass hit the seat, managing to do it at a dizzying speed while not hitting a human or any bits of burning wreckage.

  Impressive. Then again, I guessed he had enough experience navigating vehicles through burning wreckage.

  We screeched out of the parking lot and onto the street leading into Hope.

  “Doctor is the other way,” I said tightly, trying to distract myself by listening idly to the sirens in the background.

  That meant Luke. Luke would protect Rosie. Though all the men in the club would die before they let harm come to her, or Luke come within four feet of her.

  Keltan’s knuckles strained as he clutched the steering wheel. “Not goin’ to a doctor. You need a hospital. Closest one is Hope. Still too fuckin’ far.” His accent was so thick in his fury that I could barely understand him.

  “I don’t need a hospital,” I argued slowly, measuring breaths against the pain. ‘The doctor here is equipped to deal with broken bones.”

  I had experience. Not just my own. Lucky had snapped his own wrist when he decided to karate chop a plank of wood to win a bet with Gage. He’d been a lot tougher than me and had whined when I dragged him to the doctor, saying he wasn’t going to lose the bet and had an entire other hand to win with.

  Then he’d cut the cast off two weeks early because it was hampering him from “living his life and fucking bitches.”

  That was before Bex, of course. Now she was his life. No other woman existed for him.

  Keltan glanced sideways at me, eyes blank before focusing back on the road. “Baby, your fuckin’ bone is almost protruding through your skin. You’re going to a fuckin’ hospital. And you’re movin’ to a fuckin’ city that has one in closer vicinity.”

  I rolled my eyes, irritation serving as a great painkiller. “Yes, because I’ll surely get blown up by a car bomb more than once in my life.”

  His chocolate eyes were almost black. “You’re not goin’ to be in this danger. Ever. Again.”

  Wrong.

  I was in the car with him.

  And that was danger in itself.

  Rosie: Are you okay? Someone said your arm is broken. I’m coming to the hospital. Right now. I just have to kill my brother first. And the deputy sheriff.

  Me: I’m fine. Getting a cast. Making sure it’s black. Like my soul.

  Rosie: How are your eyebrows? Mine didn’t fare well.

  Me: Are you okay? Is everyone else? Bex? And RIP to your eyebrows. But if that’s the only funeral we’ll be planning, then their sacrifice was worth it. I may wear black a lot, but that isn’t because I’m expecting any more of this shit.

  Rosie: Chill, dude. Everyone is fine. Though Bex ruined her jeans and lost a shoe.

  Me: Bummer.

  Rosie: I know. But you did miss an epic speech about how we’re all diamonds and Bex managed to sass her way out of lockdown. Even I couldn’t do that. I’ve been trying for two decades. I think she’s my new girl crush.

  I smiled down at my phone, happy that everyone was okay but worried too. This was an act of war. And the Sons of Templar didn’t respond well to those. Especially when the women could get hurt. They got serious about that.

  There would be blood.

  Laurie’s face came to mind, unbidden, and a lance went through my heart, much more severe than the gentle tenderness in my wrist when the two were compared.

  “You’ll need to stop texting now,” the doctor informed me, his voice clipped.

  I snapped my gaze up from my phone, wiping my face of the errant tear that decided to rebel and not stay contained in my eyes.

  Keltan, who had been silently resting on the wall, arms crossed, face like thunder, immediately pushed off.

  “Lucy,” he said urgently, nearly shouldering the doctor out of the way. His eyes scanned mine. “Where are you hurt?” He glared up at the man in the white coat who paled when faced with Keltan’s glower.

  “What did you fuckin’ miss?” Keltan demanded.

  I laughed. Not a happy one. Maybe slightly hysterical. At the whole situation. At Keltan demanding the doctor fix the reason for my tears. Emotional wounds couldn’t be fixed by science. If they could, life would be a lot different. As would death, I reasoned.

  “It’s not something that he missed,” I told Keltan sharply, cursing myself for my vulnerability in front of an alpha male. They sniffed it out like muscle supplements. It was catnip to them. Give a muscled man with caveman tendencies a woman who needed saving and you gave him his goal for the next however long it took to get her into bed or save her.

  Keltan had already gotten me into bed, so it looked like he was still trying to save me, despite all his previous words that I was going to be the one doing that.

  Maybe neither of us could.

  “I’m fine,” I said firmly. “Now, could you let the doctor do his job so he can give me some wonderful painkillers and I can go home, have a bottle of wine and then check on my friends?”

  Keltan stared at me, crossing his arms over his chest, his muscles flexing as he did so. He didn’t look convinced. He looked at me like he wasn’t seeing me. He was seeing into me.

  And that was more dangerous than usual, considering chaos was closer to the surface than usual.

  “I do not recommend drinking alcohol with the pain medication I’m going to be giving to you,” the doctor piped up.

  I rose my brow at him. “I wouldn’t recommend being a handful of feet away from a car bomb either, but I was. I think I’ll survive mixing Ambien with a glass of pinot.”

  Keltan glared at me. “She won’t mix them,” he muttered.

  Little did he know. He would not be around to monitor it. I’d make sure of it.

  Now why did that thought scare me more than the thought of not having wine at the end of this day?

  “Okay, thanks for… running towards a car bomb for me and shielding me with your body against the explosion, and then driving me home,” I said awkwardly, glancing across the cab of the truck at him. I fingered the plaster on my cast with my free hand. The weight of everything, including the email, was heavy.

  He had just parked at the curb outside my house. Not many words had been spoken since I got my cast on. Just worried glances. I would’ve preferred the words. The comfortable yet loaded silence was scaring me, because I had to get out of my car and into the silent silence of my h
ouse. The thought had me putting off getting out of the truck. Well, that and the man sitting in the driver seat.

  “Didn’t protect you well enough,” he grunted, eyes on my arm.

  I glanced down in the same direction, then back up. “Well, even though it’s covered in an accessory that won’t go with my usual style, I still actually have an arm. You know, instead of getting it blown off. So, I think you did okay, soldier.” My voice was softer, and nowhere near blank.

  He had been staying on his side of the cab, though his energy, his sheer Keltan-ness hadn’t been. It had wrapped around me and cocooned me in some sort of shroud that helped stop the real world from completely smashing through my defenses.

  Then it wasn’t just his presence. His hands snatched my face, and he was across the cab. The movement itself was quick, and the outward gesture could’ve been brutal. But he managed to command my attention like that, setting my skin on fire as his hands cradled my jaw like it was a fragile china doll.

  “Okay would have been making sure there was no reason for you to be within fifteen feet of a hospital,” he murmured. “Okay would have been not feeling the heat of a blaze that could have snatched you from this world while I watched. You were a hair’s breadth, baby.” His eyes blazed with the past and the present. “I know it ‘cause I’ve seen it. I didn’t do okay there either. In fact, I did a fuck of a lot less than okay.”

  My breathing was strangled at his touch, his proximity and the weight of the emotions that saturated his words.

  “Ian?” I guessed on a whisper.

  He jerked his head once in response.

  Of its own volition, my uninjured hand came to stroke his palm. I didn’t think of what an explosion would have done to an ex-soldier who had lost his best friend to fire. To war.

  I did think about it now. Because that’s where he was right now. On the battlefield, seeing that happen again. His eyes danced with demons.

  “I think you need to come inside,” I whispered.

  The demons remained, but something flared behind them, and his hands flexed.