“Those kids he hit, the ones on the Kawas—they were good kids. Knew the rules.”
“Yeah,” Simon agreed quietly, smoothing his hand over his beard. “Their info was in the paper this morning—just eighteen, twenty years old. And five other kids—little kids—were hurt or killed. It’s fucked up.”
“We can’t answer every wrong in the world, brothers.”
“A wrong on the road at home, though…” Rad pushed.
Delaney’s brows drew in, and Rad knew he’d pushed as far as he could. “We have business of our own to attend to, and that’s where our focus needs to be. The Volkovs are adding product and changing the routes. And Kirill wants us to scout a second route, heading north. That is going to take some recon and some diplomacy. So let’s let Hutch do his job. We have plenty of our own work to do—which’ll get us hurt if we fuck it up.”
Feeling restless and dissatisfied, Rad crossed his arms and leaned back, but he didn’t protest further. Delaney was right.
But if he ever happened upon the guy who’d torn up that stretch of 75 last night, he’d make sure it was a memorable encounter.
CHAPTER FOUR
Willa woke the next morning stiff, sore, and groggy. She’d had another beer after Rad had left, and she’d needed to pop a couple of Percocets to calm her knee down, and the combination, while not lethal, had sent her into a heavy, dreamless fog of a sleep. Six hours or so of perfect stillness had turned her aching body to stone, and for a few minutes, she lay staring up at her ceiling light fixture, watching the sun dapple shadows through its wicker shade, and seeking the will to move.
Ollie sat at the side of the bed, whining. She didn’t need to turn her head to know he was staring fixedly, willing her to get up and let him take his morning pee.
Her body felt like it had gone through the spin cycle in an industrial washing machine, her head was still muzzy and slow, and she had a nasty case of the guilts for the way Rad had left.
That was dumb—she didn’t know anything about Rad, and she hadn’t done anything but politely draw a boundary around what he could know about her. But he’d helped her out, and he’d been offering even more help. Her reticence had obviously hurt his feelings, and she felt bad about that.
The thought that a rough man like him could be that sensitive, though—it made her smile a little. After a few hours in his presence, Willa was getting the impression that there were many facets to Radical the Bull’s self-concept.
She also felt bad that he’d left at all. His company had made her feel calm after an emotionally wrenching night, and, yeah, she’d felt safe with him. For a beat or two, she’d really considered telling him the little ditty about Jesse and Willa, taking the help he’d offered.
But she didn’t spend her life afraid. She had taken measures to protect herself, and she was stronger than she’d been. Leaning on a guy was bad form and never as safe as it seemed. Hiding behind one was worse. If Jesse did find her—and, come on, she knew he would eventually, no sense lying to herself—she could handle it. On her own. She’d made sure.
Ollie whined again and pushed his cold, wet nose at her bare arm.
“Okay, buddy, okay.” Turning the top sheet and chenille cover back, Willa examined her right knee. It was as fat and ugly as it was sore. She bent it slowly, experimentally, and hissed at the fresh pang in the steady ache. But she could move it. A few more flexes, each painful but manageable, and she decided that it was tissue damage only. She just needed a day or two of RICE: rest, ice, compression, and elevation.
Ollie stood and began his Outside Emergency Dance, hopping and wagging and whining.
“I’m coming. Hold your water.”
As she got to her feet and put weight on her knee, she grunted, and Ollie stopped dancing and came over to sniff at her leg.
“I’m okay, Ollie.” She tugged lightly at his ear. “Let’s go.”
~oOo~
Normally, Willa would send Ollie out on his own for his morning piss-and-sniff while she got busy starting a pot of coffee and hunting up breakfast. He knew where he was allowed to go in the yard and where he wasn’t, and he didn’t need her monitoring him. But on this morning, a beautiful, dewy early April morning promising a bright, warm spring day, Willa stood on her little brick patio with the kitchen door open behind her, and let the good air and the sweet scent of her lilac bushes, freshly blooming, ease her aches and lift her spirits.
She’d bought the house because of those old lilac bushes lining one side of the yard. It was a good house through and through, and she loved every inch of it—God, how she hoped Jesse wouldn’t find her here, or if he did, she hoped she could make him go away—but it was the lilac bushes, so reminiscent of her grandma’s house, that had made the decision for her. She’d created a whole garden of purples to suit those bushes, which had been growing almost as long as her house had been standing.
This was the home she wanted to keep. This was where she wanted to grow roots as deep as those under the lilacs. This was where she’d make her stand, if she had to. She loved her family, but the little town in West Texas where she’d been raised was not her home anymore. This was her home. This was where she’d build her life.
It was time to stop living like she was under siege.
She put her fingers to her lips and closed her eyes, remembering the warmth of Rad’s mouth, the scratch of his beard. The taste of him.
Ollie trotted up with a faded tennis ball in his slobbery mouth—a treasure from the yard. Smiling, Willa leaned down and opened her hand, and he dropped the slimy thing into it. She tossed the ball underhand down the center path, and he bolted away, his powerful muscles turning his body into a missile.
He could play fetch nonstop, possibly until his feet wore clean off, and since they clearly wouldn’t be able to take a run around the neighborhood today, Willa knew she should toss the ball for a good long while, but she had something she needed to do, so she made him drop the ball after about five minutes, then struggled up the steps and into the kitchen to make them both breakfast and get their day going.
She felt better. She’d made a decision.
~oOo~
Her thought that she’d be up to driving today was a bit ambitious, however. Even the ten minutes it took to get to Brian Delaney Auto Service had taxed her right leg hard. All that city driving, stopping and starting, had made her knee throb.
She should have called. But that seemed too passive a move, too easy to ignore. Anyway, she wanted to see Rad, to look him over in the full light of day, in the calm of a normal situation, to check her read on him and be sure.
The station was on a corner lot in a rough area just off downtown Tulsa. A lot of dilapidated buildings and vacant lots. It was a mixed-use area, with old brick four-family flats sharing blocks with dusty storefronts—a VCR repair, a smoke shop, a laundromat, a furniture store with painted windows advertising mattress and box spring sets from $100!—and other dubious business ventures above them. On the opposite end of the block from the Sinclair station was a storefront church: Glory to the Savior Fellowship, as an inexpertly hand-painted sign over the door declared.
The Bulls seemed to have something of a compound on this block of Third Street: the service station on the corner, then, next door, across a narrow gravel alleyway, a big four-family flat with a sign over the door: a menacing black bull in flames, with the words BRAZEN BULLS arcing above it, and OKLAHOMA arcing below it—a painted replica of the patch the members wore on the backs of their kuttes. A metal sign bolted to the brick next to the door announced that it was Private Property. Authorized Entrance Only.
Their clubhouse, Willa assumed.
The yard was plain, not even a boxwood hedge for adornment, but the small patch of grass was tended and green.
Next to the clubhouse was a large gravel parking lot behind ten-foot chain-link fence topped with taut strings of barbed wire. Not exactly a welcome mat.
But the station itself was bright and open. The building was wel
l-kept and seemed, by the standards of an automotive repair shop, tidy. Business appeared brisk; the bays were full, and there were vehicles on the lot and at the pumps. Men in green uniforms moved about, and there were men—most of them elderly—hanging out before the front door on the molded white plastic chairs that came five bucks apiece at Wal-Mart. Far more bright life and activity seemed concentrated in the corner lot of the station than anywhere else on or around the block.
In a burst of poetic sentiment, Willa had the thought that the station was the heart of little community, frail though it seemed.
She pulled her black Ford pickup onto the lot and parked it on the side, in the only available space. As she worked her stiff leg out of the cab and stood on the pavement, she heard the unmistakable ding-ding of a driveway bell—they were a full-service station. She smiled at that. Full service was on its way to becoming quaint these days.
Limping toward the door of the station, she caught plenty of interest from the men on the lot. A few she recognized from the night before, even though they were wearing Sinclair uniforms and not their kuttes.
The station was only that—gas and service. Beyond a couple of vending machines bookending a short row of battered vinyl chairs against the back wall, and a round rack of air freshener danglers on the counter, there were no other customer products or comforts. Behind the counter stood the only person in the room—a shockingly good-looking man, in his mid-twenties or so, with a full, trim beard and slicked-back blond hair. The sleeves of his uniform shirt were rolled high on his arms, showing enormous biceps. Wow. A primitive-looking bull tattoo charged over his right forearm—also enormous.
White gauze wrapped his left forearm—and then Willa had a flash of memory. He’d been at the scene last night, she thought. She hadn’t noticed him much, but she remembered a Bull getting patched up at the ambulance nearest Chase’s truck.
A white oval patch on the right side of his Sinclair uniform shirt showed the name Apollo in red script. He stopped writing on a clipboard as she came up to the counter, and he smiled blinding white teeth at her. “Help ya?”
“Hi, yeah. You brought my bike in last night? The silver 883?”
His grin faded out. “Shit—sorry—you were in the wreck last night. You okay?”
“Yeah.” She tipped her head, noting his arm. “You?”
He held it up and gave her a friendly shrug. “Yeah, I’m good. Line of duty.”
“I just wanted to check on my bike. And I left some things in the saddlebags. I was hoping I could get them.” She had intended to ask for Rad, but the question wouldn’t come out.
Apollo set the clipboard down and came around the counter. “The bikes from last night, and a couple of the cars, are in back, on the wreck lot. We’re still clearing out the work that was in the bays already before we can take a look. I can take you back to check your bags, though. Just need to see some ID, make sure you and the bike match.” He went back behind the counter and riffled through an inbox of paperwork.
She didn’t remember telling Rad or any other Bull her registration information—but she’d told the deputy who’d taken her statement. They must have gotten it from him. That made her taking a ride from Rad a little bit less stupid; he’d have had her address anyway.
Besides, it hadn’t been stupid. Reckless, maybe. But he wasn’t a bad guy.
“Willa Randall, on Vincent?”
Nodding, she opened her wallet and showed her license.
“Okay, cool. Let me call in one of the guys to watch the counter, and I’ll take you ‘round back.”
“I got her, brother.” Rad was standing in the doorway to the bays, wiping his hands on a faded red shop towel. He wore a uniform just like Apollo’s, but much grimier. The oval patch on his shirt read Radical in the same red script.
When Willa’s eyes met his—wry and brown—he winked. “Hey, darlin’. How you doin’ today? Better?”
His hair had a remarkably edgy style—undercut, with about six or eight inches of length on top. She thought of it as a young style, but it worked on his world-weary head. Last night it had been loose, and he’d shaken it from his eyes or raked it back again and again; today, at work, he had it pulled tightly back in a stubby ponytail.
In the dark scruff that covered the bottom half of his scalp, Willa was fairly sure she could detect a tattoo. Not surprising; most of the skin she’d seen so far was covered with ink, from his hands to the base of his throat.
Remembering to answer him, she blinked and said, “Yeah. A little sore, but better.”
He shoved the towel into a back pocket and then stepped all the way into the front room. “Well, let’s take you back, then.” With a sweep of his hand, he indicated that she should go out the front door ahead of him, then he led her around the building.
“Still holdin’ that leg straight, I see.”
“I’ve got it wrapped up, and I’m taking care of it. You can relax—I’m sure it’s just tissue damage. With rest, I’ll be fine.”
He chuckled but said nothing as they came to the back of the building and the ‘wreck lot.’
“Jesus.” She stopped cold. The red and green bikes that had been hit first barely looked like bikes at all—just piles of metal and plastic. The odor of spewed fluids and mechanical fire still clung to the rubble.
It took a painful moment before she could tear her shocked eyes from the sight of those ruined bikes and the memory of the poor kids who’d been on them. The whole of the night, every sense, every memory, seemed captured in those broken bits.
She recognized a couple of the cars, too, and tried hard not to see the blood.
In comparison, her bike seemed practically roadworthy. She was almost embarrassed to have it taking up space among the tragic remains of the crash.
Maybe that was why Rad’s unwavering concern for her leg irritated her—it was silly to fuss about a sprained knee, considering all that had been lost last night.
Confirming her impression, Rad said, “Law was here first thing this mornin’, and insurance. Both cleared yours for repair, so we’ll probably get to it before lunch, at least for a once-over. The rest of these’ll be totaled out. Yours, we can probably fix, if there’s not damage hidin’ somewhere.”
“It’s not a rush,” she muttered, barely finding the breath to make the words audible. She put a hand to her chest and felt her heart pound.
A heavy hand came down on her shoulder and squeezed gently. “Willa?”
“Just…shit, last night.”
“Yeah. You okay?”
She turned and looked up at him. “Can you stop asking me that?”
“No.” His lopsided smirk oozed up one cheek.
Her decision to come to him in person was predicated on wanting to get a read on him in daylight, in calm. So she studied him now—and saw the same man she’d met last night. Cocky. Sardonic. Pushy. A jaded, amused view of the world. A man who saw something he thought needed doing and did it. And direct as fuck.
“You’re kind of an asshole, aren’t you?”
He didn’t lose the grin, except in his eyes. “You know, that’s been said. But I’m not keen on gettin’ called asshole for bein’ concerned.”
“Even if I don’t want it?”
“Concern’s not somethin’ you give away, darlin’. It just is. You don’t wanna answer, that’s on you, but I’m gonna ask.” He nodded at her bike. “There somethin’ you want out of there?”
That had just been an excuse to explain why she’d come over rather than called. All her saddlebags held was a backpack half-full of dirty clothes and a little pouch of travel-size toiletries and makeup. She’d come for another reason entirely than her bike or its contents.
She went to her bike. The fork was almost folded in half, and the tank was badly dented. Both tires were flat. There was probably other damage, but she’d gotten off easy, especially considering where in the chain reaction she’d been. All around her, people had died.
Her saddlebags were badl
y scuffed but intact. Bending over and setting her right leg out at an angle, she unfastened the buckles and pulled out her backpack. She slung one strap over her shoulder and limped back to Rad.
This was the moment. If she was going to say what she’d decided, in the safety of her spring-sunny kitchen that morning, to say, she needed to do it now. Or hobble her way back to her truck and slink home to ice her knee.
“I feel like I should apologize for last night, but I don’t think I did anything wrong.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “That’s a place I know well. Okay. So don’t apologize.”
“But I hurt your feelings.”
Another shake of his head. She didn’t believe that—he’d been offended; it had been obvious.
Crash (The Brazen Bulls MC Book 1) Page 5