Biker Daddy (The Grimm Tales of Smoky Vale Book 1)

by Gianni Holmes

  “Grimm, qué te pasa?” Mateo called after me, but I didn’t have time to explain. There was barely time to breathe.

  My heart pounded so hard in my chest, blood rushing to my brain with such force I could not acknowledge anything but getting to my boy. Still several feet away from the door to the male bathroom, I noticed water tinged with pink running along the floor.

  The bathroom door was ajar, prevented from closing by the body of a woman who lay on the floor with her lower half outside the door and her top half inside. I shoved the door open, taking in the woman dressed in the café’s waitress outfit whose sightless eyes were open, her face permanently etched in shock. A pool of red blood stemmed from her neck.

  “Oh fuck! Catherine!” Mateo cried out from behind me.

  The woman was already gone. I was familiar with that dead stare. Spotting Jamie’s body cast aside on the ground like a rag doll, I rushed toward him.

  “Oh no, no, no, Jamie!” I dropped to my knees on the wet floor and shouted at Mateo. “Call a fucking ambulance now!”

  I rolled Jamie’s pliant body over onto his back. His eyes were closed, his face pale and wet. His hair and clothes were soaked. A bruise had formed on his left jaw, a nasty cut above his left eye oozing blood. I reached a hand out and cupped his face and groaned at how cold he was.

  No blood, except for the cut above his eye.

  I tried checking his breathing by placing my face next to his mouth and nostrils, but I was shaking so badly it was hard to tell if I felt anything.

  “No, Jamie, you cannot do this to me!”

  I tapped his face with my hand, trying to wake him up. All I felt was the cold wetness of his skin. Why is he so fucking cold? “Please, baby. I can’t lose you.”

  “Is he dead?”

  Mateo’s question halted my runaway emotions and pulled all the unraveling seams back together. I refused for it to end this way.

  “No!” I shouted at him, focusing on Jamie. “He’s not dead.”

  He can’t be dead.

  “Okay, baby, you’re going to be okay.” I tilted his chin and raised his head, hoping I was doing it right. I had no fucking idea if he was breathing or not. My nerves were too frayed for me to be positive, but I would perform those rescue breaths on him in case he needed it.

  I prayed like hell to a God I didn’t even believe in that I had been paying attention when Jamie and Joel had both taken CPR classes in the tenth grade. They’d practiced on me until Jamie got carried away and tried to wriggle his tongue into my mouth and I’d called off being their dummy.

  The angle of Jamie’s head hopefully set right, I sealed my lips across his, hearing his words echoing in my head as he chastised Joel for doing it wrong.

  “You goof, you have to lock your lips tighter than that so all the air passes to the victim.” He’d shoved Joel aside and proceeded to demonstrate with the tightest lip lock I’d ever experienced. And after, he’d promised to behave too, which was the only reason I had agreed to them practicing on me.

  “Five breaths. No longer than a second each.”

  I never realized I’d paid attention so keenly to what Jamie had said until that moment.

  Inhale.

  Exhale.

  Rinse. Repeat.

  Before I could blow the first breath into his mouth, I felt the faintness of his. He was already breathing! I was so relieved I closed my eyes for a second and…

  …breathed.

  “He’s alive,” I announced, glancing up at Mateo, who had just gotten off the phone but ended up staring at the body on the floor. What if Jamie ended up like her? He was still not out of the woods yet.

  I couldn’t figure out what had happened, but it had to do with Di Oro. There was nowhere the bastard could hide that I wouldn’t find him, but that was for later. Right now, I was completely focused on Jamie waking up and telling me he was okay.

  “Come on. You stay alive for the people who love you, Jamie.” I brushed the wet curls from his forehead. “You stay alive for us. There’s so much we still need to say to each other. Don’t you fucking die, you hear me?” I kissed his forehead, the small button nose. “Don’t you dare die on me. Joel will never forgive me. I-I need you.”

  I lost track of how much time had passed. I kept checking Jamie to ensure he was still breathing. In the background, I heard Mateo making calls, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off the man in my arms. I felt like if I looked away even for a second, I would miss him passing away. Like I could do something to prevent it from happening.

  “I think I hear the ambulance pulling up,” Mateo stated quietly from behind me. “I’ll let them in.”

  “For God’s sake, hurry.”

  I didn’t know what else to do for him but hold him. He was so motionless, so unlike the vibrant boy I’d come to know. He looked…no, I would not think it.

  The ambulance had responded quickly to Mateo’s call, but by the time they rushed into the bathroom, I felt like I had been waiting for hours.

  The paramedics, a female and a stocky well-built man almost half a foot shorter than me, rushed into the bathroom, armed with a stretcher and a medical bag. They placed their burden on the floor and, with only slight nods, separated to the two bodies on the floor.

  “What happened?” the man asked as he reached for Jamie. “Sir, you have to step aside so I can tend to him.”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted, even though it pained me greatly to say so. I reluctantly released Jamie into his care, standing out of the way but close enough to never lose sight of him.

  “No one can say how he got injured and where he may have suffered trauma?” the paramedic asked as he worked, checking Jamie’s pulse and breathing. “Vital signs are unstable,” he reported to the woman working on the other side of the room to check on the fallen waitress. I could have told her not to bother.

  The female paramedic must have concluded the same. She joined her partner, and they got the stretcher out and transferred Jamie to the apparatus. They made it difficult to see everything they were doing, talking to themselves in codes I didn’t understand.

  All the medical code switching only worsened my state. I leaned heavily against the counter, only noticing then that the faucet was still on and water was running over. Something was stuffed into the drain to prevent the water from going down. Jamie’s wet hair and face. I’d thought at first it was from the water on the floor after he had fallen, but that wasn’t it at all.

  “I think someone was trying to drown him,” I said more to myself than anyone else. I pushed my hand into the cold water and pulled out the bandana that had been wedged tight into the drain. I squeezed it into my fist, picturing Di Oro’s neck replacing the bandana. I would crush the fucker like a bug. I would make him suffer as sure as Jamie had with his head underwater.

  “We’re going to transport him to the hospital,” the female paramedic announced as they both moved toward the door with the stretcher between them. “The police will have to assess the other body.”

  “I’ll ride with him.”

  They rushed out, ignoring me. I couldn’t fault them since their attention was fixed solely on Jamie and keeping him alive. The café had been cleared and the Open sign turned to Close. A couple of diners who must have just been evacuated stood outside the building, watching the goings-on. One man had his phone out, videoing the scene. That pissed me off to no end.

  “Hey!” With long strides, I reached him before he could even blink. I grabbed his wrist and glared at him. “Drop it!”

  “You can’t do—”

  I squeezed his wrist; he screamed. “I’ll fucking snap your wrist, man. You don’t want to mess with me right now. I said to fucking drop it, you piece of shit.”

  He dropped the phone to the ground, and I squeezed another time, then pushed him away from me. The few people that remained had stepped back from us, watching me warily. I didn’t give a damn how they reacted to me. I stomped on the phone, shattering it, and returned my attention to
the man cradling his wrist.

  I pointed at my leather jacket. “You ever see this cut and pull out your phone again, and you’re a dead man. Fucking dead.”

  His face paled, and I stepped away, striding back toward the ambulance where they already had Jamie in the back.

  “I’m riding with him,” I announced when they attempted to close the door.

  “I’m sorry, but it may be best for you to use your own transportation and meet us at the hospital,” the male paramedic responded, glancing from me to the man whose phone I had smashed. “We can’t have you interfering, and the patient needs our undivided attention.”

  “I won’t interfere. I just need to be with him to ensure nobody fucks up and he dies or else—”

  “Fuck, Grimm,” Mateo spoke up, appearing at my side. “You can’t threaten them when they are working to keep him alive.”

  I ignored him and hopped into the back of the ambulance. They couldn’t have had a serious concern about me riding with them as they made no effort to stop me once I was in.

  I watched them work an oxygen mask to cover much of the lower half of Jamie’s face. He was hooked up to a machine, vitals read before the female paramedic climbed into the driver’s seat. While I kept my eyes on Jamie, I heard everything she reported as she started the vehicle.

  “This is unit medic 3. I have a male in his twenties found unresponsive postassault. Suspected case of attempted drowning and strangulation. Ventilation being assisted. Vitals are as follows: heart rate 96 and regular, blood pressure 134/68, skin cold and wet, pupils sluggish but reactive. Arrival expected to hospital eight to ten minutes.”

  The sirens came on as we barreled into the traffic. I took a seat beside Jamie’s stretcher, holding one of his hands between both of mine while I watched the other paramedic check on Jamie. He glanced down to our clasped hands.

  “What’s the patient’s name?” he asked.

  “Ja—” I paused and cleared my throat, then tried again. “James Matthew Dehaney.”

  “As in Chief Dehaney?”

  I nodded, swallowing hard. How would I break the news to Dehaney and admit to him how right he was? “Jamie—I mean James is his son.”

  “I assumed you were a relative.”

  “He’s my partner,” I answered, staring right back at him, daring him to say something. He simply nodded, then went back to checking Jamie’s body for injuries.

  I squeezed Jamie’s hand, willing him to return the pressure or some sign from him to let me know he was still with me. Was this karma getting me back good for the less than desirable life I’d lived? My fault. If he died, it would be all my fault. Now more than ever I understood why Dehaney wanted Jamie to stay away from me. I was a danger to him for as long as I was in his life. I always knew it.

  “What the fuck is that?”

  I raised my head at the voice of the paramedic. He was peering out the glass at the back of the ambulance. We were almost at the hospital now, and I knew exactly who would look after Jamie while he was there. He never failed to sing Dr. Collier’s praises about how thorough the doctor was, and I needed the best for him.

  “What is it?” I asked, immediately thinking the worst, like Di Oro coming back to finish what he had started.

  “We’re being trailed by a gang of bikers,” he answered nervously, glancing from me back through the glass.

  “What?”

  I tore myself away from Jamie’s side and checked out what the paramedic was referring to. Just as he had said, there was a trail of bikers behind the ambulance. I could pick out Zak, the twins, Mort, and even Clem.

  My brothers’ presence reminded me that I wasn’t alone in this. They had come to care for Jamie in the little time they’d known him. They were there for support, and just knowing they had come stabilized my emotions.

  “It’s fine,” I told the paramedic. “They’re with us.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Jamie

  “Dr. Collier?” The words came out as a croak, my throat hurting like the inside had been scraped raw. I frowned at the doctor, who was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes.

  He hovered at my bedside. Something was off about him. It took me a while to figure it out. For the first time, he wasn’t decked out in his infamous scowl. He looked almost thoughtful, and was that a genuine smile?

  Snippets of what had happened flicked through my mind like a camera. A shiver ran through me, and I started shaking. I had been drowning, my lungs starved for air when the waitress had knocked, announcing she was just bringing in supplies. Had I died and gone to an alternate universe? I couldn’t think of anything else to justify the smile that turned Dr. Collier from being attractive to smoking hot.

  I tried sitting up, but the doctor placed both hands on my shoulders and easily pushed me gently back to lie down. I felt so weak I couldn’t muster up the energy to resist physically, although I did voice my concern.

  “Where am I?” I rasped.

  What I meant to ask was how did I get there? From the familiar room and equipment, I knew I was in the hospital, but gaps existed in the fabric of my memory. Gaps I needed to be sewn back together to understand what had happened over the last…How long I had been unconscious?

  “You’re in the hospital because you almost drowned,” Dr. Collier replied. “I’m here because I was rudely awakened by twin demons who informed me that I had only one option and that was to come with them to the hospital.”

  I frowned at him. Had I damaged my brain somewhat from all the oxygen deprivation? I didn’t understand a thing he’d just said. “What?”

  The doctor pulled back on my eyelid and shined a penlight into my pupils, then repeated the action with the other. “What I’m trying to say, Dehaney, is that I was threatened by your big bad biker boyfriend to either show my face here at the hospital even though it’s my day off, or I better get my ass out of town.”

  I groaned, closing my eyes as I thought of how scared Grimm would have been. “I’m sorry about that, Doc. He was just worried about me.”

  “Apparently you spoke so highly of me that he was convinced I had to be the one to attend to you.”

  I didn’t respond, conserving my voice for when I truly needed it. It still fucking hurt to speak. He continued to check my vitals. “How are you feeling?” he asked. “You were unconscious when they brought you in. We had to run some tests to find out where you had sustained injury. It seemed you suffered a blow to the head and some trauma to the neck. You have bruises to the ribs as well.”

  “I’m feeling like I died and came back,” I answered.

  “Well, thank God it didn’t get that far. You weren’t breathing sufficiently on your own, but we were able to stabilize you with oxygen.”

  “I’m fine,” I replied, eyes trained to the door.

  “Does it hurt anywhere in particular?”

  “My head a little.” I kept watching the door. “My throat too, but otherwise, I just feel like I was handled too roughly.”

  “Ah. Tilt your head back for me.” I did and allowed him to check my neck. “The bruises will fade over time. You’ll live. And stop watching the door. I’ll get your man to you in a bit. He doesn’t know you’re awake yet, or we wouldn’t have been able to keep him away.”

  I dropped my eyes to the bed. “He’s not a bad guy.”

  He patted my shoulder. “He nearly got thrown out of the hospital after creating a ruckus. Not only did he have his men drag me down here but when I showed up, he also threatened me if you were to die under my care. And he’s not a bad guy?”

  Shit. Grimm had done all that while I was unconscious? “He’s just fiercely protective of those he cares about.”

  The doctor and I had never seen eye to eye, but for some reason, I wanted him to understand the kind of relationship Grimm and I had. I wanted him to see why I couldn’t just walk away like he’d told me to do. I needed him to know why, even with all the risks involved, I’d expose myself to it all to be with him.


  “The man loves you to a fault,” he stated, surprising me. “And it’s clear from the number of motorcycles parked on the hospital grounds and the tattooed guys sitting in the waiting room intimidating the staff by their sheer presence that you are a part of a group of people who care about you.” His voice lowered to a near whisper. “I can see why you’d rather stick around.”

  “You can?”

  He didn’t reply to my question but moved away toward the door. “Brace yourself. I should only allow one person to see you, but something tells me I won’t be able to keep them all away.”

  “Dr. Collier,” I called to him before he could slip through the door. “Thank you for coming.”

  He smiled at me and winked. “They didn’t leave me with much of a choice, but even so, I would have come anyway. I like you, James. You remind me some things I had forgotten are really important. Like love and family—not necessarily the blood-related ones.”

  The door closed softly behind him, and I was left alone to my thoughts. I closed my eyes, trying to remember the details of what had happened in the bathroom at the café.

  At least one mystery was solved in who wanted me dead, and it was worse or better than we’d all thought. Better for Grimm at least. Not so much for my dad, who had made Grimm out to be the cause of all my woes.

  We had all been chasing the wrong tail of the wind.

  The turning doorknob drew my attention to the door. I dug my fingers into the sheet at the sight of Grimm filling the doorway. I tried my best to give him a smile, but it wobbled. I held in the sob, though. Seeing him brought back the moment when that bastard was trying to drown me, when I thought I would die. All I’d longed for was one more chance to see him and let him know it was not his fault.

  “Grimm, it’s not your fault,” I said in my raspy voice.

  Guilt was written all over his face. I could only guess at the thoughts running through his mind. Of what he had endured while I had been unconscious. Probably agreeing with my father that if he had stayed away, none of this would have happened. He didn’t say anything but gently closed the door behind him, then walked over to my bed.