by Zoey Parker
They could have been lying out on the hill like that instead of in here with their bellies full of whiskey.
I didn't know what the future would hold for the War Reapers. But I knew that because of the risks we'd taken tonight, at least we'd have a future. And that would be enough.
The door to the back room opened and Growler wheeled out. He was covered in blood and holding the blade that had belonged to Giovanni. The look in his eye was strangely peaceful.
I walked over to him and crouched down so we could be face to face. “Are you finished in there?”
Growler nodded.
I put a hand on his shoulder. “So now what, Growler? Have you decided?”
He nodded again.
“Is it time for you to go?” I asked gently. I was prepared for him to nod a third time. I was prepared to take him out back and end it for him quickly and quietly, if that was what he felt needed to happen so he could go out with some dignity. Most of all, I was prepared to make sure that when he left this world, he left it knowing that he'd had brothers who loved him.
But instead, Growler looked me in the eye and shook his head.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Lauren
As we walked away from the Devil's Nest, Nic put his arm around my waist. “I'm looking forward to finally seeing your place. If I'd gone back there to begin with, maybe none of this shit would have happened,” he joked.
I stopped and turned to him, taking Nic's face in my hands and looking deep into his eyes. He looked surprised. “Hey, I was just kidding,” he said. “I didn't mean to upset you.”
“I'm so sorry I ran off like that,” I told him. “I know you were just trying to protect me. If I'd stayed, you wouldn't have had to come after me...” I started to cry.
“Hey, it's fine,” Nic insisted. He put his arms around me and held me tight, whispering into my ear. “I understand. You were scared as hell and I sure wasn't helping with all that talk about Growler. Just...don't run off again, okay? I couldn't handle that.”
I heard the vulnerability in his voice and looked up at him. “Because of the baby, you mean?” I asked.
“No,” he said, shifting uncomfortably. “I mean, sure, I want to help you raise our baby...but I also want to be with you.” He took a deep breath and added, “I love you. Y'know? Both of you.”
“I love you too, Nic,” I said.
As we kept walking toward the CTA train station, I thought about everything I'd been through over the past couple of months. It was so strange to remember Christmas Eve, when it seemed like the worst things that could happen were getting turned down for a role and Jared breaking up with me. My world had felt like it was going to end.
But in the last two days I'd been threatened, attacked, shot at, and kidnapped and I was still here. I had strength inside of me that I couldn't have previously imagined. If it had been enough to keep me alive and sane through all of that, I knew it would be enough to raise a child.
Especially with Nic beside me.
Epilogue
Lauren
It had been almost a year since the night at the bunker. I still thought about it every day and I knew that Nic did too.
But we'd had a lot of other things to think about in that time, like the birth of our lovely son Bradley in September. There had been so many Reapers sitting and pacing in the hospital waiting room that the staff had nervously asked Nic to speak with Bard about it, since their presence was frightening the other patients' families. But even the Reapers who weren't allowed to stay sent stuffed animals and balloons to my hospital room to congratulate me.
There was also a large bouquet of flowers with a card that said, “Raise your kid right and keep your husband out of trouble. Signed, Supt. Grady.” That got a laugh out of Nic.
Bard kept running the Reapers and did a good job of keeping Nic away from anything too dangerous or illegal. It meant he'd had to give up his position as Sergeant-at-Arms, but Boomer seemed to be doing well with that role. Nic mostly worked as a mechanic now and he had even started collecting parts to build himself a new bike.
I'd managed to get a few roles in maternity-related commercials while I was visibly pregnant. Once I had the baby, Royce told me he'd be able to get more work for me once I'd lost the extra weight from the pregnancy. “Lauren my love,” he'd said with a wink, “take all the time you need. I'll let you in on a little secret. When you're ready, there will always be more commercials waiting for you.”
But now it was Christmas again. Nic and I decorated the tree while Growler played with Bradley on the floor, running a toy motorcycle across the rug and making engine noises in the back of his throat. Once his ankles had a chance to heal, he'd gotten a pair of prosthetic feet and done some physical therapy. He could walk short distances now and the doctors said that in another year or two, he'd probably be able to carry Bradley around. With the right customization for his prosthetics and a few adjustments to a bike, he'd probably even be able to ride again eventually. There was even talk of him getting a prosthetic arm at some point, but for now, he seemed to be managing well with his left arm.
As I helped Nic wrap the strings of lights around the tree, Growler stood up and walked into the kitchen. I was about to go in and see what he needed when he emerged again a minute later, slowly carrying a plate of cookies with a glass of milk carefully balanced on the edge. He brought them over to the fireplace and set them down in front of it. Then he nodded, looking satisfied.
“Hey, I thought you didn't believe in Santa Claus,” Nic teased him.
Growler raised his eyebrows, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a Santa hat. He placed it on his head carefully so the fuzzy white ball on the end hung over his eyepatch. Bradley cooed happily and Growler moved closer to him so Bradley could bat at the white ball with his tiny hand.
Nic plugged in the lights and they came on all around the tree. They twinkled red and white and green. I looked at Nic and saw that he was already leaning in to kiss me.
I kissed him back and wondered if I'd ever be able to stop.
THE END
A Taste of Zoey Parker
We also wanted to give you a taste of some of our other books! Included is a sample of BOUNTY by Zoey Parker, followed by a glimpse at Heather West’s MC romance, LEATHER AND LIQUOR.
A picture is worth a thousand words, but I only need three:
You. Are. Mine.
The life I lead isn't for the faint of heart.
A man like me has to say what he means.
Take what he wants.
And fight to keep what he has.
Erica thought she would be safe behind her camera.
Little did she know she was teetering on the edge of the rabbit hole.
When she sees something she shouldn't have,
she falls in.
She's lucky I showed up when I did.
Without me, she'd be thrown to the wolves.
Torn apart.
Devoured.
But it doesn't take long before she starts to wonder.
Is she better off on her own…
…or at the mercy of the beast inside me?
At the end of the day, it doesn't matter.
I tell her how it is:
"Moan as loud as you want, babe.
You aren't going anywhere."
Chapter One
Erica
This is a bad idea.
It was all I could think as I traveled deeper and deeper into a seedy part of town I had little experience with. The night seemed darker there, deeper. Scarier. As a kid I was fascinated with the way darkness changed the world around us. Things we wouldn’t be afraid of in the light, things we might even enjoy—trees rustling in the wind, a covered bridge, our own front yard—suddenly became ominous once the light went away. Shadow and darkness tended to do things to our brains.
That was why I started taking pictures in the first place. I became fascinated by the way light and dark played off one another. We all loved the
light. We sought it out. We basked in it. Yet shadow made for a great shot. Better than one that was over-exposed. A lot more could be shown in a dark shot with just a hint of someone or something coming out of the shadows than in one taken in a brightly-lit room.
Then again, we all brought a part of ourselves into what we observed. I could hang a print on the wall, taken in one of those dark rooms with just a hint of a shape coming out of the darkness—a face, maybe, or an arm or a desk chair, anything—and one person might find it inspiring, one might find it depressing, and one might find it frightening. Same photo, three reactions. We brought our projections to the image we saw, making it what we wanted it to be.
The only problem was, the part of the world I was exploring that damp fateful night wasn’t very pleasant even in broad daylight. Only the most determined Pollyanna could see anything positive there. Roughly seventy percent of the crime in the city came out of that specific area, only twelve blocks square.
And I was driving into it.
“You sure you’re gonna be all right out here?” The driver cast a concerned look my way in the rearview mirror. He was a grandfatherly type, and I saw the concern in his eyes.
“Sure thing,” I said, sounding more chipper than I felt. Really, all I wanted to do was go straight home and curl up in bed with a cup of tea.
It had seemed like a good idea when I came up with it. I was desperate to find something riveting, something visceral and unforgettable. I was getting photos together for a potential exhibition, one which I had a lot of hopes pinned on. It would make or break me as a photographer.
I hadn’t been seriously into the photography game for very long. I’d studied it in college, but since my parents nearly dropped dead at the thought of their daughter pinning all her hopes on a career in the arts, I couldn’t major in it and hope for them to pay my tuition. So I majored in criminal justice—they were hoping this would lead to law school—while minoring in fine arts. Three years after graduation and I was still fielding the occasional inquiry into when I would be applying for law school. But I was busy taking pictures.
I’d been taking pictures since I got my first camera. It was my tenth birthday, and I’d recently spent a rainy Saturday afternoon watching a documentary on street photography I happened to stumble across on TV. I was hooked. I imagined myself taking pictures of people in their everyday lives, capturing a slice of life for future generations to see and ponder. I would be famous, a champion of the people.
Needless to say, my first roll of film was a disaster. So was the next. I was still too young to be trusted with a digital camera, so all I could work with was point-and-shoot. It was all right—a digital camera would have been a waste of time. I needed to learn how to compose a shot first.
One thing my parents couldn’t ignore was my passion for learning all I could about the medium. I wouldn’t just point the camera at something and click away. I was very serious. I took out books from the library, spent hours doing research online. How to compose a shot. How lighting affected a shot. What made a good picture. Why photos taken by professionals were better than anything I could come up with. This wasn’t just a silly hobby for me.
It took three years of saving every bit of money I could get my hands on, but I was finally able to buy an actual, serious DSLR. Countless hours were spent taking shots, analyzing them, comparing them to the ones I saw in photography books and blogs. It became my life, and I was never without a camera in my possession.
So what was I doing three years out of college? I was working as a portrait photographer in a mall. Hence, my parents wondering when I planned to enter law school.
It was discouraging. I hadn’t spent so much of my life learning the art to take pictures of kids sitting in front of cheesy backdrops. Yet for all my studying the art, I had no idea how to break into the business.
That’s when I got the idea for the exhibit. After spending a lot of time at galleries in the area, I’d made a few friends and one of them agreed to showcase my work for a nominal fee. They had connections to art writers at local papers who would cover the exhibition. This could be my big break, enough to get my name out there and get people talking about me and willing to buy my work. I was stoked—this was the chance I’d been working toward.
All I had to do was take shots worthy of being put up for the exhibition. Nothing I’d already done was good enough. Even my favorite shots were shit all of a sudden. I needed something raw, gripping, evocative. Something nobody would forget.
Which was what gave me the idea to take shots of city life. Not the glamorous, flashy stuff. The seedy stuff. Gritty, raw, real. The only downside being the need for me to travel to these seedy places to take the shots.
It’ll be worth it, I thought as I rode in the back of the taxi. No way I was driving my car around there—I would even know where to park to keep it from being stolen.
“What’s a nice kid like you doing around here anyway?” The cabbie peered at me.
I smiled to myself. Yes, Erica. What are you doing here? This was a far cry from the suburbs.
“Taking pictures,” I said, holding my camera up so he could see it. I’d graduated to a much nicer model than the one I bought more than a decade earlier.
“Of what? A murder?”
A chill went up my spine. “Uh, I hope not!”
He chuckled. “Just wondering. Not many nice things happen around here. I’m sure you watch the news.”
“I do,” I said, looking out the window, biting my lip. I was well aware of what happened there.
“And you still wanna be here?”
“I’m a photographer,” I explained. “I have to go where interesting things happen.”
“Interesting. That’s a word that can have many different meanings,” he said. I smiled to myself. A philosopher cabbie.
We pulled up to the corner I’d asked for and I handed some money up to the front seat. “Can I ask one more favor?”
“Shoot.”
“Do you mind if I take your picture?”
He smiled. “I’d have worn a nicer shirt if I knew this was coming.”
I got out of the cab and looked around. What a depressing area. I felt distinctly fluttery in my stomach but put on a brave face for the driver.
“Okay, I’ll stand here,” I said, positioning myself to the left of the driver, slightly in front of him. I crouched down. “You just sit behind the wheel as though you’re waiting for the light to change.” It didn’t matter what color the light was or how long he waited—there was no one behind him. The street was strangely free of traffic. My stomach gave another fluttery feeling.
I got my shot and thanked the driver. “You want me to come back for you?” he asked.
I smiled. “I’ll call your dispatch when I’m ready. It shouldn’t take me long.”
“All right,” he said, grimacing. He looked me up and down. “Nice kid. A shame.”
I didn’t get a chance to ask him what the shame was before he pulled away. I didn’t want to know what he was thinking.
I looked around again. There might not have been many cars on this particular block, but there was a decent amount of foot traffic. I’d dressed in dark colors, hoping to blend in, and I realized the bagginess of the hoodie and jeans I’d chosen were probably meant to hide my body. It was a subconscious decision at the time. My ash-blonde hair was tucked up in a dark wool cap.
The only light came from the few working street lamps and the illuminated signs for the handful of businesses on the street, all food joints. Chinese takeout, pizza, wings. There was what appeared to be a market of some kind, too, but no market I would ever step foot into. The inside of the shop looked scarier than the street outside it, with dim lighting and a menacing man in a bloodied apron smoking a cigarette out front. I had my limits.
Still, he was a start. “Excuse me,” I said, approaching with caution. I spoke in a register lower than my natural one, in even tones. The last thing I wanted to do was show him how nervo
us I was.
He looked me up and down, his eyes squinting. “Yeah? Whaddya want?”
“I was wondering if I could take a picture of you.” I pulled my camera out from the large front pocket of my hoodie, where I’d been holding it out of sight as I walked.
“Why?”
“I’m a photographer. I don’t work for the newspaper or anything. I just find you interesting and thought you’d make a nice shot, in front of the window, smoking. That’s all.”
He looked skeptical but agreed. “I don’t have to smile, do I?”
I shook my head. “No, not at all. Look as though I’m not here. You’re just taking a break.” He did as I asked, looking as natural as he could. I snapped a few shots and showed him the screen so he could see how they looked.