by A. E. Fisher
“So,” Anna said, luring Ash’s attention back to her. “You wanna tell me where you’ve been?”
“A little bit of here and a little bit of there.” She shrugged, looking in Anna’s general direction.
Anna went quiet then, her eyes flashing with a bit of everything, the usual bullheaded woman carefully thinking over her words as she regarded her supposed best friend. The same best friend that ended up getting her stabbed with this shit—which I realized would have been a good comeback to her in the house.
“You know these aren’t necessary, right?” Ash grumbled, tugging on the bindings holding her onto the chair. “I’m not going to run.”
“Your history says otherwise,” Anna grumbled. “Remember Madrid?”
“Oh, come on,” Ash groaned. “That was ages ago, and the bellhop untied you later.”
“You chained me to a fucking radiator in the middle of July!” Anna snapped.
Ash let out a soft whine. “Come on, untie me.” She lifted her foot, nudging it against Anna’s shoe. “I’m sure your big, bad, and uglies will stop me from leaving. Unless you don’t trust them to keep a hold on me?” She said the last comment while turning her head in my direction, a small smirk on her lips, challenging me.
I couldn’t stop the growl.
“Stop provoking him,” Anna said, kicking Ash in the shin.
“Bitch,” Ash hissed, and Anna shrugged, walking over to me and holding out her hand.
I didn’t want to hand it over. I really didn’t. But I did anyway, giving her the blade and watching her maneuver around the back of the chair, cutting through the ties as the bitch I was seeming to dislike more and more was set free in my compound.
She stood tall, her dusty boots wrinkling as she stretched up onto her toes in a long, lithe pose. Dropping down onto her heels, she looked to Anna. “Where can I get a drink in here?”
“From him.” Anna jabbed her thumb in Lamb’s direction, causing Ash to instantly frown. “But not yet.”
Ash cocked her head to the side, studying Anna’s gaze as it wandered toward me.
I saw the moment she understood what Anna wanted. It was the moment when the carefree attitude dropped and I got a good look at the fortified stone walls at her core.
Her expression sobered, her jaw tensing, as she looked down at the blonde she was ready to kill a man for.
“They want the story,” Ash stated, biting down on her lip, not looking pleased in the slightest bit. Her eyes didn’t leave Anna’s, but if they had, I was sure she’d be glaring daggers at me.
“The whole story, Ash,” Anna said softly, her eyes locked on Ash’s until whatever message passed between them.
Ash nodded, her eyes glaring holes into the floor. “Fine,” she conceded, chewing on her bottom lip. Then she turned to me, looking over Anna’s head, and despite not being able to see through her glasses, I could tell her eyes were meeting mine. “What do you know?”
“The Black Jacks,” Lamb answered instead. Ash’s jaw ticked, but otherwise, she didn’t acknowledge him.
“That’s it?” Ash snapped, head turning to Anna, forcing Anna’s back to straighten.
“Don’t look at me like that, Ash,” Anna growled. “I also showed Wolf the file.”
I saw Ash straighten her spine like a rod had been shoved up her ass. “You did what?” she hissed, pissed, as a snarl broke through her teeth, not looking at me but directing her aggression toward Anna. It was the first intense emotion I had seen from her that wasn’t immediately shut down.
I was aware of Lamb shooting a questioning look in my direction, but I ignored him. When I’d seen the file, I had wanted to show him it, but that was before Anna burned it, and from what I could read from her at the time, I wouldn’t be able to convince her to let Lamb have a peek. From Ash’s reaction, I could see how deadly protective they were of it, only solidifying my thoughts. I’d just have to deal with Lamb later.
“Ash,” Anna said, her voice softening slightly, shaking her head. “They’re involved now. There was nothing I could do.”
Ash clicked her tongue but otherwise didn’t argue with Anna as she dropped down onto the metal chair, lips flattening into a straight line as her head turned ever so slightly in my direction.
“What’s your connection to Rothwell?” I asked, fed up that this interrogation wasn’t making any progress. My arms, wrapped so tightly around my chest, were beginning to ache.
The sunglasses may have been shielding her face, but they couldn’t hide the soft, genuinely happy smile that pulled on her lips. “I shoved a knife into his wife’s chest.”
The way she said the words—so casual, calm—unnerved the very deepest part of me. I’d seen a killer in the past, hell, I’d met a serial one or two, but this girl... I hadn’t met anybody like her.
At my silence, Ash must have seen my reaction, and I saw her walls shut back down, story time over. “That’s all you need to know,” she said, looking over to Anna. The disappointment was clear in Anna’s eyes as she shook her head at her, but Ash shrugged it off, pushing herself up from the chair and moving past Anna without a second glance. “Time for my drink.”
Ash reached for the door, her body moving forward with the wide motion, only to find herself staggering to a stop as a figure blocked her path.
Lamb looked down at her, forcing the brunette to lift her head up to face him. The carefree attitude around this girl turned guarded the second her eyes met his. Lamb’s previous stare had evolved quickly into a bone-chilling glare, his silver-brown eyes locking onto her with an absolute focus that forced her to stop in her tracks.
Ash turned her head away, her eyes boring into his chest. “Move,” she growled, her sharp British tone ice cold.
What felt like a lifetime passed before Lamb stepped aside, and Ash didn’t waste a second as she grabbed the door and lunged out of it.
I sent Lamb a questioning look, but whatever had taken over him had passed, and he just gave me a shrug before following her out the door. I stared at the metal door leading to the stairway to the upper floors, wondering what exactly I had just witnessed.
“Don’t think too much about it,” Anna said softly, causing me to turn to look at her. She was staring at the door, too, her eyes slowly moving away from it before she looked at me, offering me a tired smile. “She has that effect on some people.”
“I don’t like her,” I grumbled, unsure what it was exactly that I didn’t like. “There’s just something that doesn’t quite fit with her.”
“Despite the fact she just point-blank told you she murdered someone?”
“I’m not blind. I know she said it that way because she’s defensive. And I’ve lived enough years to know that that isn’t the whole story,” I grumbled, trying to work my head around it. “But she also helped out Mallory. I get the feeling there are more sides to this girl.”
“I suppose it would appear that way to you.” Anna chuckled, reaching up to touch her ear, fiddling with the earring. I recognized it as a comforting gesture, and the foreign sight of it on Anna made me frown. Ash wasn’t the only unusual thing since her appearance. Even though it had only been a few hours, there was this side of Anna peeping to the surface, an Anna I didn’t know.
“Why? What do you see?” I asked, despite being unsure if I really wanted to know Ash’s true nature or not. I had a feeling getting to know this girl wouldn’t be quite the ride I would expect.
“A girl who’s led a life spinning lie after lie to protect herself. She’s got one face but many masks, to put it eloquently.” Anna’s voice was soft, softer than I’d ever heard it, and despite the part in me that resonated with the gentleness of the sound, it didn’t last long enough for me to figure out for what reason. Instead, it turned into a harsh grumble. “Although half the lies the bitch pulls are utter bullshit.”
I looked down at her, at the force she was glaring at the door with, and was reminded of what Anna had said earlier. “Madrid?”
“Don
’t,” Anna hissed, “ask about Madrid. Ever.”
With that, the sassy blonde turned on her red boots and marched out of the room with an echoing force, leaving me helplessly wondering about it.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Anna
“Well... this is nice,” Ash grumbled, looking around one of the spare rooms at the compound. It had a bed, two bedside tables, a lamp, and a set of drawers and an attached bathroom.
I glared at the tall brunette’s back as she rummaged through the empty drawers. She chuckled when she found the bottom drawer shoved full of condoms, but it didn’t lighten my mood. “What the fuck was that?” I growled at last.
“What was what, Anna?” Ash closed the drawer, hesitating before she turned to face me, her glasses reflecting my crossed arms and scowl.
“Your story. You didn’t tell them everything,” I pushed, getting annoyed at her constant side-stepping.
“I told them all they needed to know,” Ash retorted, standing then moving over to my side of the room. “Everything else is unnecessary.”
“You should tell them everything. They can protect you.”
Ash stiffened, a frown appearing on her lips. “You’ve changed.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
Ash didn’t correct me; instead, she took a step forward, her hand reaching up to brush a stray hair out of my face. “You haven’t told them everything, either. I can see the way he looks at you. Are you sure you want to tell him everything? About our past? About who you really are?” She hesitated with her next words, her eyes skimming down to where I knew the scars from my wound were hidden. “About what you found out at the hospital?”
Ash’s eyes, through the darkness of her glasses, looked up to me with the same steel-piercing stare I had known for years. The same glare that reminded me there was nothing to be hidden from Ash.
“How did you—”
“You still have me registered as your next of kin,” she answered, a small almost smug smile pulling on her lips. “So, let me ask you this: You’ve told him you love him, and I’m sure you do; that jacket”—she said on a bitter hiss—“is proof of that. I couldn’t imagine you allowing yourself to become property otherwise. And yet, you still keep secrets from him. You can’t tell him everything. So, do you really love him?”
“I do,” I growled.
“Do you love him?” Ash repeated again.
“I just said I fucking do.”
Ash stepped into my space, her face coming close to mine, breath rolling over my cheeks, eyes so close I could see into them through the lens of her sunglasses. “Do. You. Love. Him?”
“I do,” I breathed. “I really do, Ash.”
Her eyes studied my face, and then the tension dissipated. She stepped back, her expression soft. “Then tell him everything.”
“But you just—”
“It doesn’t matter, Anna,” she interrupted, her thumbs gripping the loops of her denim shorts. “This is your future, now. Not mine. I told my half, basic albeit, but it’s not the whole picture. If you want any kind of life with this guy, you need to tell him.”
“But everything is—” I paused, seeing Ash’s don’t-make-me-repeat-myself frown. “Are you sure?”
She let out a tired grumble. “I just said so, didn’t I?”
I replied with a soft sigh as she smirked at me.
“Have you always been this easy to convince?” She laughed, earning herself a hard punch in the arm.
She rubbed it, but her wide smirk had a foreign chuckle rising from the depth of my chest. I was unable to contain it as we broke into full-out laughter. I reached my arms forward and wrapped them around her neck, dragging her down to my height, and despite her awkwardness, hers folded tightly around me.
“I’ve missed you,” she whispered in my ear, her head in the crook of my shoulder as I did the same thing, breathing in her familiar scent mixed with the scent of salt and dirt from her wandering adventures.
“Yeah, me too,” I admitted and released her.
Moment over, she dumped her bag on the bed, the clink of glass bottles in her bag making me frown, but I ignored it as she flashed me a grin. “You need to tell me everything.” She sounded like an excited school girl.
“Oh, so you don’t know already, Miss I’ve-obviously-done-background-checks-on-all-of-your-associates?” I scoffed, dropping onto the side of the bed, making her bounce a little.
She puffed at a brown hair falling over her face. “Oh, you caught that, huh?”
“Yeah, I did,” I grumbled, glaring at her.
“I had to make sure you didn’t end up with any dangerous nutters,” she whined at me in a pitiful defense.
“Dangerous nutters?” I let out a loud laugh.
Well, she has a point, I thought, thinking about it. Jax, specifically. They were all weirdos. Dangerous, too. Not to me, though.
“They good to you?” Ash’s voice suddenly turned serious, and I was caught off guard as she lay there, looking at me, her glare, even through her sunglasses, intense.
“Yeah,” I said honestly. “They’re good.”
“Good,” she said. “I won’t shoot them again, then.”
“Too right, you won’t,” I growled. “Only I get to shoot them.”
“Tell me, then,” she said softly, lying back down, head propped up by a tanned arm. “Tell me the story,”
“All right,” I said, getting comfy, kicking my feet up on the bed and propping up a pillow. “Once upon a time...,” I began, watching Ash roll her eyes. And then I told her everything in detail this time, not brief like during our last meetups. I told her about how I got to Fellpeak. How I joined the Black Angels. And how Wolf and I came to be.
And Ash listened quietly the whole time.
She didn’t smile or joke. She simply listened to me as I told my story.
And when I finished, we both curled up in bed and fell asleep next to each other for the first time in a long time.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Wolf
To say tensions were high would have been an understatement.
Ash sat at the bar, her head turning as she overlooked the room through her dark sunglasses. As I assessed her from my leather seat on the furthest end of the room, I noticed how her gaze didn’t linger on the knife marks in the doors, nor the bloodstains that we hadn’t managed to get off the paint, nor the big and burly brothers who usually drew attention. No, it was focusing on the cracks in the walls, the slight lift of some of the floor boards, and the precise order of the alcohol lined up on the shelves; a bottle of Jack Daniels in particular.
I must not have been the only one watching, because Lamb reached up to the shelf, lifted the bottle from its place, and broke the seal on the unopened bottle. He set a glass in front of Ash and poured a double measure before pushing it toward her.
I waited for her to take the glass, and so did Lamb.
She didn’t take it. Instead, we watched as she reached down into the backpack she had apparently stored at Anna’s house before coming to her rescue—which Anna had sent a brother to go collect, compared to last time—and unzipped the tattered thing, reached in, and pulled out a glass bottle.
She uncapped it, put the Jack Daniels bottle to her lips, and took a long mouthful before continuing to peruse the minute details of the room.
I expected Lamb to annoy her about it like he would if it had been anything else. But ever since her arrival, Ash hadn’t been the only one on guard. Lamb may not have been looking at her directly, but his attention was glued to her. The calculative air about him that he normally hid was on full display as he took the abandoned glass, downed the whiskey, and put the bottle of Jack back in its rightful place.
He had barely put the bottle back before Sweets leaned over the bar, her chest almost falling out of her little skimpy shirt. “Lamb,” she purred, flipping her long blonde hair, drawing his attention. Lamb turned slowly and leaned his hips back against the shelves, folding
his arms over his chest as he looked Sweets straight in the eye, not giving her tits a single glance.
He crooked a blond eyebrow at her, taunting her to try harder.
That was the Lamb I knew. Seeing his playful albeit sadistic side come out of the muted coldness relieved the slight restlessness inside of me. It had been there the second my eyes had landed on Ash, and I hadn’t been able to shake it since. The skin of my leg ached in memory of the gunshot wound in my leg. It was barely an ache, a flesh wound like she had said, and didn’t bother my walking like I had expected, despite having been shot only a day ago.
I had thought Anna was wild when I’d first seen her. Now I was beginning to see that she wasn’t the only one. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know who taught whom.
Thinking of Anna made me realize that she wasn’t there. My eyes scoured across the clubroom like lightning, and I knew for sure she wasn’t in the bedroom nor my office after she had stained my expensive oak desk because she was pissy at me.
An unwarranted growl left my lips, and the noise drew attention from a few of the passing girls, all of them skittering quickly out of my line of sight.
I looked up, seeing Ash almost completely done with her bottle of Jack in the five minutes I wasn’t glaring holes into her, and I was sure she was a little unsteady. I looked to Lamb, wondering if he would take the bottle away from her, but noticed that he had long since abandoned the bar and joined Pretty on the couch, along with Sweets, Ember, and Georgia. He had probably lost interest in her after all.
Just as my gaze left Lamb, I spotted one of the weekender’s old lady walk in Ash’s direction. I recognized the tall, busty brunette as Moon’s old lady of about two weeks—Michelle? Misty?—as she propped her hands on her hips, stopping in front of Ash.
It wasn’t hard to hear her snap even on the other side of the room. “You need to stop perving on my old man,” she hissed, flipping her hair at her.