by Blair Grey
I didn’t know what to say to him. Could I tell him that it was Ray? Did I actually believe that it was Ray?
Before I could say anything, Ryan was continuing, though, “It’s Ray Thompson. I had some of the other guys follow him as their lead, and they confirmed it. He’s not out of the country on business; he’s in the hospital.”
“Do you know why?” I asked, trying to feign surprise. But I could tell that Ryan wasn’t buying it. He shook his head. “No one seems to know what it is, but he’s in there, all right.”
I remembered what Grant had said, about how his adoptive father was getting out of the hospital the next day. Should I tell Ryan about that?
Of course, I should tell him. It was my job to tell him. This was the whole reason that he had me trailing Grant. To lead him to the big fish. To give him information about Red Eyes that he needed to know. But at the same time, to tell him would be to betray Grant’s trust.
It was the same thing that I had been wrestling with ever since Grant and I had had sex the previous night. I didn’t want to view this as a work assignment. I was having a hard time viewing Grant as the bad guy. But he was the bad guy. That was undeniable.
I had to tell Ryan that he was getting out tomorrow. This could change things.
“What?” Ryan suddenly snapped, clearly seeing right through me. “What’s going on?”
“Ray’s in the hospital now. I was going to tell you that.” It was a lie, but he didn’t need to know that. Not when I followed up the information with: “But he’s getting out of the hospital tomorrow. Grant is going to be there to pick him up. And probably Cameron as well; he was there visiting Ray the first time that Grant went over there.”
Ryan stared at me for a long moment, surprise clearly written on his face. “You’re sure about this?” he asked.
I nodded, trying not to feel like I had just betrayed Grant’s trust. Grant hadn’t told me that I needed to keep it silent after all. He hadn’t really told me anything.
I might have my secrets, but he had his as well. The more worried I got about betraying his trust, the more absurd it really seemed. My job was supposed to be learning Grant’s secrets. And it wasn’t like he was hiding anything. He told me everything that I ever wanted to know about him. What’s more, he was the bad guy here. I was just trying to do my job. But he was playing me.
I wondered, wildly, if he knew who I was. If that was why he was so interested in me. Maybe he knew I was with the police force and he was just trying to feed me lies.
But I couldn’t even believe that for a second. No, I knew he was just trying to protect the guys that he considered to be his family. I had to respect that.
Ryan was pacing now, though. “Ray Thompson, getting out of the hospital tomorrow,” he said. “And just Grant and Cameron there to help him?”
“I don’t know about that,” I said. “I never said it would be just Grant and Cameron. I’m just thinking that they’ll both be there.”
“It seems odd, doesn’t it?” Ryan continued. “That Braxton hasn’t been there at all? That he doesn’t seem to care about his father’s health?”
“Maybe he thought that would be too much of a red flag?” I suggested. “They have to know that we’re surveilling them. After all, the white vans aren’t exactly subtle. Maybe they’ve realized, and maybe this whole thing is just an attempt to get us where they want us, when they want us there.”
I was grasping at straws. And Ryan could tell it.
He shook his head, looking at me in disbelief. “You don’t like this guy, do you?” he asked.
“Of course not,” I snapped, bristling with indignation. “What makes you think that?”
“I just remember how upset you were when I said that we were going to keep going after them,” Ryan said. “How sure you were that Grant wasn’t going to be an issue for us.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “If you think I should take you off this assignment, you need to let me know. Right now.”
“Don’t take me off the assignment,” I said, even though I wished I could take advantage of that offer. There couldn’t be any dishonor in taking an offer like that, could there? Maybe if I just explained that I was compromised, that would be the end of it. Maybe it didn’t have to be the end of my career.
But I knew that if I told Ryan that I had slept with Grant, it would be the end of my career. Even if in the end it turned out that Grant hadn’t done anything wrong, Ryan would find some reason to hold him accountable. He would see some reason to find me at fault. That would be the end of my undercover work.
I couldn’t do that. So instead, I ducked my head, silent about what I was feeling. “I know I said the wrong things before, but I didn’t mean them to come out that way. I just didn’t have enough experience,” I said. Even that might land me in trouble. Admitting that I had fucked up, that I didn’t know what I was doing. But Ryan smiled graciously at me, as though I had just handed him the ticket out.
“We’ll need to have extra surveillance on the hospital tomorrow,” Ryan mused. “Who knows which of the Red Eyes members could be there, helping out with Ray? And who knows what they might let slip? There must be certain plans in place.” He paused. “I want to know what’s going on with Ray. I want to know what’s wrong with him. You’re sure that Grant hasn’t given you any warning?”
I shook my head. “No warning,” I said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him.”
I wanted to ask more questions, but I quickly realized they were the kinds of questions that Ryan wouldn’t know the answer to. How could this affect Red Eyes? Was this what Grant had been so stressed about lately? The type of thing that had caused him to get up in the middle of having drinks with me and walk out?
If so, why? Why was he so worried about me because Ray was in the hospital? It didn’t make any sense to me, not yet. But Ryan wouldn’t know the answers to those questions, I didn’t think, and I couldn’t exactly ask Grant. Not without admitting that I was following him and that I was trying to learn everything about him. Not without admitting that Ryan had told me more information about Ray than Grant had ever admitted to.
“Well, I’m glad you told me that he’s getting out tomorrow,” Ryan said, even though I could tell that he knew that there was something more to it. “If Grant tells you anything else about him, I know you’ll tell me.”
It was a subtle dig, but one that had my blood boiling nonetheless. I felt guilty enough that I hadn’t immediately asked Grant the questions that I should have asked him. I felt immediately guilty that I hadn’t known that it was Ray in the hospital, even though Grant had so much as told me so himself.
I felt guilty that I had slept with Grant the night before, that I had yelled at Vera when she was only concerned for me, and that I wasn’t giving this job my full attention.
Or rather, I was giving it too much attention. I shouldn’t be thinking about Grant like this. Like I had feelings for him. I should be thinking of him as a terrible guy, as a killer, as someone that I should never so much as talk to. Maybe I had finally cracked.
I hadn’t expected that to happen so soon once I became a member of the police force. But lying there in Grant’s arms that morning, before he realized that I was awake, had felt so incredibly right. In ways that I couldn’t even explain.
I had to admit that it felt like I had done something wrong. I shouldn’t have told Ryan about Ray’s release from the hospital. I still couldn’t shake the feeling that these guys weren’t the bad guys. That they hadn’t done all the terrible things that Ryan was trying to convince us that they had done.
But what did I know really?
I nodded at Ryan, knowing that I needed to get out of there. “I’ll keep working on him,” I said. “I’ll tell you when I find out anything more.”
I hurried out of the safe house, leaving him behind me. But even as I did it, I knew that I hadn’t absolved myself of all guilt. I wished that I could tell Grant what I was up to, that I had fucked up, but I knew that that wasn
’t an option either.
At this point, if I tried to tell him, he was going to look at me like I was even worse. He was going to look at me like I had betrayed him. Because I wasn’t from Montana, and I wasn’t a history major. I wasn’t anything like that. I was from Las Cruces, I had known about Red Eyes before I could even walk, and I had gone to the police academy because I wanted to help people.
Because I wanted to put people like Grant behind bars.
But I was rapidly realizing that people like Grant weren’t the problem. I still didn’t believe that he had done anything wrong. Maybe Ray had, sure. He had been leader of Red Eyes for a long time. Maybe he had killed someone. Maybe Braxton had, even. But I couldn’t believe that Grant was. I still clung to that image that I’d had of him, from back when I had first met him. Believing that I was lost and leading me to the library. All because he “wasn’t good at giving directions.”
He wasn’t the bad guy. I was sure of that. And I didn’t like the idea that Ryan was going to have the hospital under surveillance tomorrow. I didn’t want to believe that something that I had said would put Grant in a bad place. But at the same time, I didn’t know how much damage I had done. And that made me sick with worry.
Vera shouldn’t be worried about my relationship because she was worried about Grant and me. She should be worried because I clearly couldn’t keep my loved ones safe.
I felt a sick feeling in the pit of my gut, remembering how good Grant had been to me the night before. The day before. He had picked up on my unhappiness and tried to show me the best that Las Cruces had to offer. The best that he had to offer. And I appreciated that. Even though it made things all the more difficult.
I had to be there the next day. Just to make sure that Ryan didn’t do anything terrible with the information that I had given him. But at the same time, I wasn’t sure that I could be there. If something terrible happened, I would be no help at all. I didn’t know how to be.
19
Grant
I met Cameron at the diner before heading to the hospital to take Ray home. “We have to be discreet,” Cameron said when I met him, indicating the van that he had rented. “We don’t know what the police are planning. And if they found out that Ray, of all people, was in the hospital? I don’t even know what they would do.”
I stared at him in surprise. “You can’t possibly think that they would come after Ray,” I said. “Or that they would come after Red Eyes just because they thought that Ray was in the hospital?”
“I don’t even know what they would do,” Cameron said grimly. “I’d like to think that they wouldn’t attack us now, just because we were vulnerable. Hell, I’d like to think that they wouldn’t attack us at all, not since they know that we’re just cycling money back into the economy. Back into their hands.”
He paused. “But I think that’s the same as Ray not thinking that Lex and the Unknowns were after us, all because he hoped that they weren’t. Or not hoped…” Cameron trailed off, but I could fill in the blanks.
If the police were after us now, we were screwed. I was the guy that would have to make everything safe again. Ray had told me that I was potentially the next leader of the MC. And I wasn’t ready to take on that responsibility just yet. No, better that the police didn’t know anything. Better that we were disguised in stupid white vans.
The more I thought about those vans, the more I was sure that I had seen them around. Everywhere. It wasn’t like there was anything stealthy about them. They could have been out there in plain view, and I just might have overlooked them.
I didn’t like to think that. But then again, I had a bad feeling about all of this.
Ray had not yet made me leader of Red Eyes, but somehow, I already felt that I had let him down. And the crux of those feelings was Red Eyes. I felt as though somehow, everyone had known what I was up to. Like someone knew about Ray. I didn’t know where those feelings stemmed from, but this just didn’t feel right. And Cameron didn’t seem to understand that.
But this wasn’t my responsibility. I hadn’t told anyone.
Except Holly. I realized that in passing, I had told her about Ray. About the fact that I was getting him out of there that day. But it was just in passing. I hadn’t mentioned Ray by name, I didn’t think, and I hadn’t told her that there was anything wrong with him. She couldn’t know who I was here to get, and she definitely couldn’t trace me back to Ray. She didn’t know that he had cancer.
She couldn’t realize that I was part of Red Eyes. I hadn’t told her about any of that. She thought that I was just some guy she had met at the diner. Our date together had been so perfect. So free from thinking about the MC. She couldn’t know I was here to get Ray from the hospital.
The more I justified it to myself, the worse I felt.
I felt like I must have betrayed him. And Cameron and Red Eyes and Braxton. It felt like I had betrayed all of them. But that was ridiculous. I hadn’t. I hadn’t told anyone about this. I had been so worried that Braxton would find out about his father’s cancer that I hadn’t even told Holly about it. No one could know. Not from me.
I hoped. But the more I hoped about it, the more worried I got.
“Hey, guys,” the doctor said when we went inside. He was a good friend of Ray’s. An old friend of Ray’s. I tried to think if he might have told someone about Ray’s illness. But of course, he wouldn’t have. It was just us and the white vans. Conspicuous for no reason.
I fought the urge to roll my eyes. I just wanted to be over with this whole thing.
“How’s he doing?” Cameron asked the doctor, and he was almost cheerful about it. Like he wasn’t just asking about Ray’s health. Like there was no way there were going to be any complications. But whatever hope I heard, in having Cameron say that, was quickly dashed.
“He needs to slow down on his business, first and foremost,” the doctor said sternly. He paused, glancing back over his shoulder. “He needs to stay away from stress.”
“Until he heals up?” I tried.
There was silence in the hospital, and I could tell that the doctor was trying to figure out how to word things. “Put it this way,” he finally said. “I don’t think we’re ever going to be able to clean up the damage that cancer has done to his lungs. It’s better that you keep him away from stress for an indeterminable future.”
He was trying to be delicate, but all I could focus on was the first part of that last statement. He didn’t think that they were ever going to be able to clean up the damage that cancer had done to his lungs. He didn’t think that Ray would even manage to go into remission. He thought that Ray’s time was limited.
And I knew that it had to be. They were discharging Ray already, no chemo or anything. I didn’t know how much of that was his idea and how much was just the doctors shrugging their shoulders, but I knew the score. I knew where we were at the moment.
It just terrified me, thinking that Ray’s days might be limited. If he was serious about making me the next leader of Red Eyes, it might be soon. It might be before I could sort things out with Holly, that sweet girl from Montana was quickly going to find out what a terrible choice I was.
I couldn’t let myself be sad, though. We had a task that we needed to do.
“All right, I’ll hang out by the van, if you can get him out of here.” Cameron asked, looking seriously at me. “Go ahead and bring him out in a wheelchair, with his IV or oxygen or whatever they have him hooked up to and going home with him. We have the space.”
I nodded at him. “All right,” I said.
I headed into Ray’s room. This whole thing was starting to feel surreal. Ray was already in a wheelchair, over at the window. He glanced back over his shoulder at me. “This whole thing is beginning to make me feel even sicker than I really am,” he said wryly.
I snorted. “That’s honestly good to hear,” I said.
“What did the doctor tell you?” Ray asked, narrowing his eyes at me.
I shrugged. “T
hat you’re supposed to stay away from stress for the foreseeable future.”
Ray laughed incredulously. “Does he know what line of work I’m in?” he asked.
I grinned at him, unable to help it.
“Well, I’m just ready to get back to the MC,” Ray said, shrugging a shoulder. “Even if my doctor thinks it’s bad for my health.”
I paused, thinking about that. With everything that I’d been willing to give up lately, that made me feel even worse. Even on his deathbed, or the equivalent, Ray was ready to give up everything for the MC. I could never hope to be like that, even if I became leader of the club.
I knew it in a moment of crystal clarity. That this was the perfect time to tell Ray that I wasn’t cut out to do this job after him. I might have heart, like he wanted, but that made me the worst possible leader for Red Eyes. Because I cared too much. About the club, about Holly, about everything.
The moment passed. I couldn’t think of the words to explain it to him.
“Well, are you going to help me down to that weird van that Cameron wants to put me in, or am I going to have to wheel myself down there?” Ray asked archly.
“I’ve got you,” I said, springing to action and calling a nurse to escort us out. I led him downstairs, thinking about this confidence that Ray had. Wishing that I could have the same. Ray wasn’t scared or sad. He was ready to get back to the MC. He was still ready to devote his whole life to the MC.
I had never been that sure about any of it. And right now, that felt like a terrible thing.
We were on the drive back to the clubhouse when I noticed Cameron’s white knuckles. “Aren’t we going to take him home?” I asked, glancing back toward Ray.
“We can’t,” Cameron said tersely. “Not only would Belle and Braxton find out about his illness immediately, but we don’t know what the police would do.”
“The police can’t arrest an innocent man,” I protested.