Vice

by Elana Johnson

  He wished he could say he didn’t wish the turmoil on Lawrence, and another dose of guilt filled him.

  “Call Mom.” Julie thrust her phone at her brother. “She’ll come get you.”

  Lawrence took the phone and looked at it, and then Julie. Then she stepped back, right into Lucas, he shifted out of her way, his hand coming up to her waist to steady her so she wouldn’t fall.

  She managed to get the door closed between them and Lawrence, but she was sucking at the air like it was made of cement instead of oxygen. She put one hand on the back of the couch to steady herself, and Lucas reached for her when she swayed.

  “Hey, okay,” he said. “Let’s sit down.” He guided her around the couch, where they both sat. He took both of her hands in his, mostly because he wanted to ground her. Or maybe himself. Everything with Julie was so confusing, and Lucas wanted to stop fighting with himself and just do what came naturally. And holding her hands felt natural.

  He didn’t know what to say. It seemed like they both had some major explaining to do, and he didn’t want to go first.

  If he waited long enough, Julie would say something, he knew. He rather liked how she said what was on her mind, as it was refreshing. Most women didn’t do that, and while it was somewhat jarring, Lucas didn’t hate it.

  “So that was my brother,” she said. “He’s been missing—gone—out of town for about five months. Maybe six.”

  “Missing?” Lucas asked.

  “He came by one day and dropped off his dog.” She reached down and stroked Riley’s head absently. The dog seemed melancholy, and now Lucas knew why. She missed Lawrence, and once again, she’d been separated from him. “He said he had something he needed to take care of, and he’d call me later. He hasn’t called once.”

  “Wow, in five months?”

  “Yep.”

  No wonder she was mad. “Where has he been?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What did he need to do?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “He’s a lawyer, right?”

  “Yes.” Julie squeezed his hand, her eyes wide and frightened now. “As the days went by, I thought he’d probably gotten involved in something illegal, and that he couldn’t come home. He couldn’t call.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I even started to think he might not be alive anymore.”

  “He looked okay to me,” Lucas said.

  “There’s something not quite right with him,” she said. “He had a car when he left. Why doesn’t he have one now? And his hair is too long, and there’s something weird with his voice.”

  That voice would haunt Lucas forever, and sure, maybe Lawrence had changed over the years. But it was the same guy, Lucas knew that.

  “What are you going to do now?” Lucas asked.

  Julie sank back into the couch. “Nothing.”

  “What if your mom doesn’t come?” Lucas wanted to know if he’d have to meet the super-sad Mrs. Paige. Wouldn’t she want her whole family there for the reunion with Lawrence?

  He glanced toward the front door as Julie sighed and closed her eyes. No one came through it, but Lucas felt like he couldn’t leave either.

  He looked at Julie, her beauty striking him like an arrow through the heart. His most vital organ thumped and bumped, the same way it always did when he got near her. Or texted her. Or thought about her.

  He was definitely in trouble when it came to Julie Paige, and he didn’t know how to get out. He didn’t want to get out, and her relationship with Lawrence obviously wasn’t made of rainbows and sunshine.

  A wiggle of doubt clung to the forefront of his mind, and he couldn’t shake it loose no matter how hard he tried.

  “You can go,” Julie said.

  “I’m okay,” he said, meeting her eyes, which were now open.

  “No you’re not,” she said. “And you’re a bad liar.” She gave him a small smile and reached for the blanket on the end of the couch.

  Lucas stood up, because he did want to go, and he didn’t want to lie to her. He took the blanket from her and lay it over her body as she put her feet up and lay down. “You’re going to lay here?”

  “For a few minutes,” she said, looking up at him with soft eyes.

  Oh, she was so dangerous to his blood pressure, and Lucas leaned down and pressed his lips to her forehead. “Call me if you need me,” he whispered. Because he’d come, and he wasn’t sure if that made him a fool or a romantic. What he knew was the taste and feel of her skin had started a fire right behind his lungs that every breath fueled.

  Outside, Lawrence sat on the front steps, and Lucas didn’t see a way past him other than to simply walk by. He did, ignoring the person who’d tormented him as a teenager. He’d just reached his motorcycle in the driveway when Lawrence called, “So that’s your bike.”

  Lucas twisted to look at Lawrence, choosing only to nod. Maybe if he didn’t speak to the man, he could get away without saying or doing something he’d regret later.

  But Lawrence got up and came down the rest of the steps, a look on his face Lucas hadn’t seen in a long, long time. It wasn’t quite calculating, but it wasn’t kind either. “Do you ride with a club?”

  “The Sentinels,” Lucas said, repeating the club’s motto to himself.

  Helping those who can’t help themselves or who just need a hand up.

  He’d helped write the dang thing, thinking he’d never be in a situation where he wouldn’t be able to uphold the sentiment.

  Terror crossed Lawrence’s face, and Lucas cocked his head as if that would help him see inside the man’s head.

  “The Sentinels,” he repeated, but he wasn’t asking.

  Lucas thought Lawrence needed to ask something, but he wasn’t sure what.

  “How long have you been seeing Julie?”

  “I’m not seeing Julie,” Lucas said, delivering the semi-lie without emotion and without blinking. He strapped his helmet on, the night much too dark and far too cold to stand around chatting it up with his nemesis for much longer. He threw his leg over his motorcycle and twisted the key. The comforting engine roared to life, sending Lawrence back a few steps.

  Lucas pulled on his gloves, satisfied Lawrence wouldn’t blitz attack him, and gave the man one long, last look before walking his bike backward and into the street.

  Before he could put it in gear and get out of there, a couple of motorcycles rounded the corner up ahead.

  Lucas shouldn’t have stayed to see who they were. There were plenty of bikers in Forbidden Lake—but recently, the Sentinels had granted access to their town to the Devil’s Breath, a rival club out of Williamsburg. Despite their surveillance, the Sentinels still weren’t sure what the Breathers were doing at the docks or in town.

  They were only allowed within city limits on Wednesdays, and today was Thursday. So these bikers should be friendly, and Lucas would know them.

  They came to a stop right in the middle of the street, blocking his way forward. And they both wore armbands identifying their position in their club, which the Sentinels did not.

  These were not Lucas’s brothers in his motorcycle club. His fingers gripped the handlebars as he waited for someone to say something. Do something. Move. Issue a threat.

  Something.

  He wasn’t expecting that person to be Lawrence, and he wasn’t expecting him to say, “I swear I didn’t know he was here. This is my sister’s house. Please.” Lawrence had come all the way to the sidewalk bordering the quiet, residential street that had somehow turned into a face-off between Lucas and the road captain and the secretary of the Devil’s Breath. Vice and Electron would know their names, but Lucas hadn’t been participating in as much of the surveillance due to his three weeks on the swing shift schedule at the hospital.

  “Please,” Lawrence repeated, though no one had even looked in his direction. “Don’t hurt me. Or my sister. Please.”

  Lucas’s phone rang, a buzzing against his thigh, along with a shrill ringtone. He had s
o many thoughts in his head, he didn’t know which one to address first.

  Why would Lawrence be begging for his safety?

  Who was calling him? There were no Sentinel cameras here, and he was supposed to be at work.

  Why were the Breathers here?

  “Don’t answer that,” the secretary said.

  “You can’t be here,” Lucas said. “It’s not Wednesday.”

  “Extenuating circumstances,” he said. “Fire is talking to Maverick right now.”

  Surprise darted through Lucas, but he didn’t let an ounce of it show on his face.

  The other biker leaned toward the secretary and spoke, but Lucas couldn’t hear him over the three motorcycle engines between them. He watched every move, though, and they both kept their gloved hands where he could see them.

  “Get on, Lawrence,” the secretary said, and Lucas watched another wave of panic cross his face.

  “I...I just need to see my mother for a few minutes.”

  Something strange and sinister was happening here, and Lucas didn’t want to get caught up in it. He’s Julie’s brother, his mind whispered, as it had been for the past seven weeks.

  Lawrence was the reason Lucas had cancelled on her in the first place. Lawrence was the reason Lucas hadn’t tried too hard to find a way to spend time with Julie. Lawrence was the reason Lucas had done a lot of things for many years. Too many.

  Helping those who can’t help themselves or who just need a hand up.

  And Lawrence clearly needed help.

  “You should’ve checked in with us first,” the secretary said. He did not ask Lawrence to get on his bike again, but he was clearly waiting for him to do so.

  Lucas’s phone rang again, and the road captain nodded. He pulled it from his pocket and saw Maverick’s name on the screen. “Yeah,” he said into the phone.

  “There are two Breathers near you. Have you seen them?”

  “Yeah,” Lucas said. “They’re on the street right in front of me.”

  Maverick swore, and Lucas heard Vice ask, “Where is he? Why isn’t he at work?”

  “I’m coming in,” Lucas said, though it was barely time for Vice to be off work either.

  “Let them take what they want. Fire said they needed to talk to an informant.”

  Lucas switched his gaze to Lawrence. He had always been a rat, and Lucas narrowed his eyes at the man as he climbed on the back of the secretary’s bike.

  He leaned out from behind the man and met Lucas’s gaze. His mouth moved, and there was enough light from the streetlamps and the nearby houses for Lucas to read his lips.

  Help me.

  Then the Breathers backed up, turned around, and sped away.

  “They’re gone,” he said to Maverick. “And they took Julie’s brother.”

  Wow, I can’t wait to see what happens with Lucas and how he’ll make things work with Julie…if he can make a relationship work with Julie.

  And what about the Breathers being in town when they shouldn’t be? And what does Lawrence have to do with them?

  Preorder CRASH now, and find out all the answers soon!

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  About Elana

  Elana Johnson is the USA Today bestselling author of dozens of novels, from YA contemporary romance to adult beach romances. Check out her sweet romances in the Hawthorne Harbor Romance series, the Clean Beach Club Billionaire Romance series, the Beaches & Brides Romance series, the Rebels of Forbidden Lake Romance Series (bad boy sweet romance), the Stranded in Paradise Romance Series, the Carter’s Cove Beach Romance Series, (enemies to lovers romance), and the Sentinels MC Rebels Romance Series (bad boy sweet romance).

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  She also writes under the pen name Liz Isaacson, who is the USA Today bestselling author and Kindle All-Star Author of the Three Rivers Ranch Romance series, the #1 bestselling Horseshoe Home Ranch Romance series, the Brush Creek Brides series, the Steeple Ridge Romance series (Buttars Brothers novels), and the Grape Seed Falls Romance series, the Christmas in Coral Canyon Romance series, the Quinn Valley Ranch Romance series, the Last Chance Ranch Romance series, and the Seven Sons in Three Rivers Romance series (Walker Brothers novels)

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  VICE

  Book Two, Sentinels MC Rebels Romance series

  by Elana Johnson

  Copyright © 2019 by AEJ Creative Works Inc, Elana Johnson

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this book can be reproduced in any form or by electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without the express written permission of the author. The only exception is by a reviewer who may quote short excerpts in a review. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in, or encourage, the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Cover by Captiva Publishing

  Interior design by AEJ Creative Works Inc.