“Is this because of Little Ricky?” I cried. “I shouldn’t have done it. I didn’t mean to hurt him, I swear!”
Bear froze. “What’d you do to Rick, Dakota? Where is he?”
I swiped away my tears. “I didn’t mean to… I only wanted to help—”
The gun clicked, and Zane winced as the barrel dug into the base of his skull. “Last chance, what the fuck did you do to Rick?”
“I took some of his hair… and yours. Well, I also took your toothbrush, but I swear that my heart was in the right place. You know when you’re trying—”
“Dakota,” Zane growled out. “Get to the goddamn point!”
“It was a simple test. I saw the picture of you from high school, and I thought it was Little Ricky. I thought he’d be happy to know that you were really his dad, but he and Molly seemed upset, and now he won’t talk to me. And I know you’re mad too—”
The hand holding the gun fell uselessly to his side. “Wait, what the fuck are you sayin’?”
I sighed. “I’m saying that I did a paternity test without anyone’s consent. Little Ricky is your son. I am very ashamed of my actions and the pain I may have caused your family, but please don’t kill my husband because I was only trying to help.”
Bear shoved the gun back into its holster before running his hands over his face with a loud inhale. Zane took the opportunity and moved in front of me.
“That’s impossible, Bear muttered to himself. “I—we used a condom—Jesus, you’re sure?”
I nodded. “It was a solid match. I mean, sometimes accidents happen. Look at me and Zane. Well, that’s not really the best example because we didn’t use protection—”
“Dakota, shut the fuck up and go. As far as anyone is concerned, we never saw each other, and you were never here.”
We quickly agreed and were making our way back to the truck when Bear called my name. I turned back. “Yeah?”
“Tell Celia that the Sons have eyes on her. I haven’t figured out how they’re pullin’ the strings, but they are. Motherfuckers have eyes everywhere. Until then, none of you are safe. Next time it might not be me knockin’ on the window. So, stay the fuck out of it and let me do this my way, okay?”
“Okay. Thank you again, S—Bear. Good luck with your, um, family things.”
“Dakota.” Zane tugged my arm. “We need to get the fuck out of here.”
The radio was still crackling with a staticky Mike, demanding our location. Zane buckled me in before jogging around to his side.
My foot stung from the glass I’d stepped on, and when the dome light overhead kicked on as Zane’s door opened, I made the mistake of lifting it up to inspect the damage.
“Oh,” I said in surprise, watching the bright red blood as it flowed from the cut.
Zane had just managed to retrieve the radio when he realized what was happening. “No, no, no. Don’t look at it!”
I watched him move across the console in slow motion, reaching for me before everything went black.
Chapter Eighteen
Kate
The vinyl on the chair squeaked as I leaned forward to study the computer screen again. My head ached from straining to make sense of the sometimes blurry footage, and my leg bounced restlessly between two men who were seconds away from coming to blows.
My stomach, which had been unsettled all day, tightened into another knot when Jeremy broke the silence.
“So, right here…” He paused the video and reached for my hand, letting his fingers brush against my thigh before lifting it back to the computer. “Do you see anything that seems out of place?”
“You touching my wife,” Nate warned.
I pulled my hand free and moved it back to my lap before shaking my head. I just needed to focus on the task in front of me, and then I could go back to my mother’s to scrub his touch from my skin. “I’ve already told you that I don’t remember seeing anything unusual that night.”
“And I’ve already told you that I saw a lot of fucking things that were unusual, Lucky,” Nate said with a growl, poking fun at Jeremy’s red hair.
Jeremy’s gaze moved between me and Nate, a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. “Hey, Doc? You might wanna watch your step. Be a shame if something were to happen to you because you couldn’t keep your fucking mouth shut.” He clicked the mouse, and the video started again.
A man appeared on the footage from one of the emergency room cameras, and I tapped the screen. “Stop. Right there. I know who that is. From the gym. What did Dakota call him? Um, uh, Doucheface!”
Jeremy’s mouth curved up in a wide smirk. “Is that his given name or just a nickname?”
“I don’t remember his real name. He hit on me at the gym when I went once with Dakota—”
“Kyle Barton,” Nate finished. “I’d recognize that sleazy motherfucker anywhere. Do you remember him being at your sister’s wedding? Drunk off his ass, trying to convince one of the bridesmaids to blow him in the bathroom because he was a detective.”
I grimaced at the thought of any woman being desperate enough to willingly let him put his hands on her body. “Ugh, no.”
“Did it work?” Jeremy asked.
My skin crawled at his sudden interest in the topic, and a flush crept its way onto my face. I tried to swallow, feeling as though something was lodged in my throat. I shoved my chair back and got to my feet. “I just need a min—”
“Hell no!” Nate shifted his chair to the side to let me pass before continuing his conversation. “Instead, he just moved from one seat at the bar to the next. There was even one point where he came stumbling out of the bathroom and ran right into Grey. Like, so sloppy drunk that he was falling all over him.”
I stumbled into the kitchen and grabbed a bottled water from the fridge before pressing it to my forehead. The two men continued laughing over Kyle’s behavior while I stewed in the next room. Suddenly, they were best friends.
I didn’t know what I expected—that Nate would’ve jumped up and offered to come with me? Maybe given me a secret look that meant we were going to sneak out?
So far, all he’d given me was the cold shoulder. Perhaps I’d gotten him to my mother’s under false pretenses, but he’d kept things from me too.
I glanced down at my watch, trying to calculate how many hours of footage we had left to review before it would be considered appropriate to leave.
“You okay?”
I jumped at the sound of Jeremy’s voice, backing myself against the cabinet near the sink. “You can’t touch me like that,” I hissed. “It’s not right.”
Jeremy rolled his eyes and grabbed a beer from inside the refrigerator. “I think you’re overreacting—”
“No,” I whispered, blinking back tears. “You can’t just cross lines like that.”
“Jesus.” He let the fridge close with a soft thud and slowly walked over. “Is this about the other night? Let it go, Kate. We had a few drinks, I thought you wanted me and made my move, but you shot me down. End of fucking story. Nothing happened.”
“But—” I paused, scrambling for a rebuttal. His explanation seemed simple when my feelings on the matter were complicated and confusing.
“But what?” Jeremy asked, reaching around me to open a drawer. He grabbed the bottle opener and popped the top on his beer. “It’s not like we fucked. Trust me, I would’ve remembered that.”
I took a deep breath and held it in as he left the kitchen, hating that his words made sense.
Nothing had happened.
I was so used to looking for loose threads that I’d magnified a simple misunderstanding, blowing the entire night out of proportion.
“Stop being ridiculous,” I chided under my breath. “Just be an adult and do your job so you can go home.”
Nate and Jeremy were studying a still image of the detective when I came back in, neither raising their heads to acknowledge me.
I pushed my wounded pride aside and studied the time stamp on the bottom of
the screen as I sat down. “Wait.” I looked over at Nate. “What time were you called in?”
“Uh…” He thought it over. “Twenty-two hundred hours, give or take. Why?”
I looked at the footage again and pressed play. “Look at the time. It’s just after midnight. You said he was stumbling around at the reception. Does this look like a man who was falling down drunk just a couple of hours before?”
Kyle looked directly at the camera before speaking into his cell phone and moving off-screen. I went to the next camera, but he never appeared.
“Christ,” Jeremy noted before rewinding the footage. “She’s right. He’s as sober as a fucking judge here. Either he metabolizes alcohol better than any human I’ve ever met or—”
“Or he was never really drunk,” I finished for him.
Just two adults having a simple conversation.
“Why fake it?” Nate asked the room. “Surely, that wasn’t his way of picking up women.”
“I can think of more effective ways to get a woman.” Jeremy leaned back in his chair with a stretch. The tattoos on his forearms peeked out from under the sleeves of his dress shirt, and I forced my eyes back to the screen.
I wasn’t the first woman to lose her virginity to a biker, even if he had been wearing a suit and masquerading as a realtor. I remembered being shocked by the multitude of tattoos covering his body. Shocked, and more than a little turned on.
I wasn’t going to let my mind even go there.
Especially not with my husband’s thigh up against mine. I looked to my left, noting the sleeve of tattoos coating both of Nate’s muscular arms.
Obviously, I had a type.
“I mean, the best way to do it is to not even be trying. Maybe you’re thinking about work.” My ears perked up, alerting my brain to the possibility of danger. “Maybe she wants you to stop thinking about the job and just take her home.”
Hadn’t that been how it had happened?
I’d just found out that my boyfriend was cheating on me with another man and had forced myself off the couch to attend the chamber’s after-hours event. The co-worker that had begged me to attend never showed up and Jeremy had approached just as I’d convinced myself to leave.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, he’d been tasked with keeping me safe by my father. I’d been reckless when I pushed the biker to take me home, blissfully unaware of the fact that he was breaking every one of the rules the moment his hands touched my body.
“That happen a lot in your line of work, Carrot Top?” Nate asked, still looking at the cameras. If he’d been looking up, he would’ve seen the smirk as it crossed Jeremy’s face and known immediately where the conversation was headed.
“You know, it’s only happened to me once…”
I clutched my stomach and tried to make myself smaller as nausea reared its ugly head once more.
“When Kate here was down on her knees, begging me to fuck her—”
Nate’s chair fell with a resounding clang against the hardwood floor before he launched his fist into Jeremy’s jaw.
I instinctively turned my torso to protect myself, and Nate shoved my chair to the side before landing a second strike near Jeremy’s mouth, splitting his lip wide open.
I’d thought that was going to be the end of it, but Jeremy managed to catch Nate’s legs with his, sending both of them crashing to the floor in a tangle of limbs.
“What’s the matter, Doc?” Jeremy taunted with a bloody grin, blocking the third blow. “Don’t like knowing that I got there first?”
I stumbled out the chair with a strangled cry, my hair falling across my face in an attempt to shield me from the venom in his words. The tingling in my chest only intensified amid the sounds of fists connecting with flesh, leaving me to wonder what it was about sex that turned men into Neanderthals.
“Guys,” I begged as Jeremy landed a solid hit to Nate’s jaw, sending a spray of blood from between his lips. “Stop! Please stop!”
“Kate,” Jeremy panted as he grabbed a fistful of my husband’s shirt, forcing the back of his head down against the floor with an ominous thud. “Just let it happen.”
Just let it happen…
The heartbeat that had been sluggish only moments ago now raced to the point of exploding.
Just let it happen…
I stared straight ahead, no longer seeing anything but Jeremy’s face looming over mine. The breath burst in and out of my lungs, and I realized why I couldn’t forget.
He’d defiled me with his touch under the assumption that because we’d been together once, it would automatically happen again. He’d twisted his actions until he was the hero and I was nothing more than the frigid bitch who’d led him on.
I’d taken the blame for him.
Muscles and veins I wasn’t even aware I had strained against my skin as I whirled away from the two of them and headed toward the front door, fully prepared to leave them to their schoolyard fight.
Nate could beat Jeremy to death for all I cared before going back to ignoring me, but I refused to stick around and witness it.
“I warned you to keep your fucking hands off my wife.” I looked back over my shoulder as Nate spat a mouthful of blood onto the floor. “That includes talking about her like she’s some fucking trophy you won. Don’t fucking disrespect her like that!”
My hand hovered over the doorknob as Jeremy glanced another blow off Nate’s jaw, stunning him into silence. This was no pissing contest between two jealous males fighting to become the alpha.
This was my husband defending me.
The pounding in my ears drowned out Jeremy’s next words, and I limbered up my shoulders and neck before stalking into the kitchen.
I was tired of cowering.
I was sick of waking up with the image of his smile burned into my mind.
By the time I made it back into the living room, Jeremy had his hands around Nate’s throat, squeezing. A strange sensation flooded my veins, leaving me feeling as if I was invincible.
“Get the fuck away from my husband!” I roared, holding my weapon to the side of Jeremy’s neck just like I’d seen my mother do to Bear.
He released Nate’s throat and rocked back onto his heels with his palms in the air. “Christ, Kate! Calm the fuck down!”
Nate’s left eye was rapidly swelling shut, but his right one was focused entirely on me. Something like confusion came over his face before he drew in a ragged breath.
I continued staring down at Jeremy in an attempt to frighten him, ordering, “Get away from him,” through a clenched jaw.
“You can’t be serious.” He stood up and stumbled back into his chair with a pant before glancing down at Nate with a cruel smirk. “You rely on her to finish all of your fights for you?”
Nate made a sound that might’ve been a growl before moving into a crouch.
“Babe,” I said, no longer feeling like a superhero as tremors wracked my hands, leaving me struggling to hold onto the butcher knife. “We got what we came for. Take me home.”
Please.
Nate placed a thumb on his jaw, working it back and forth, before giving me a slow nod. I stepped across the overturned chair and reached for him, keeping the knife pointed in Jeremy’s direction.
I noted, with more than a little horror, that the knuckles on my husband’s right hand were split open. “Come on, Rocky. I’ll drive,” I stammered before linking my arm through his.
Nate’s nostrils flared as he forced his injured hand into a fist, but he let me lead him out of Jeremy’s house and into the passenger seat of his car.
My knees buckled as I slid behind the wheel, and I let out a huge breath before asking, “Oh my god, what the hell were you thinking? You could’ve broken your hand, and then how would you perform surgery? We need to get some ice on it before it swells.”
He let his head fall back against the headrest with a forced laugh. “What the hell was I thinking? He disrespected you, Katy girl, made it sound as if you were
no better than one of the girls that hangs around their clubhouse. Like you’re just a fucking object!”
“Well, he’s a biker,” I said weakly, realizing that it sounded as if I was making excuses for the things he’d said. Jeremy might not have grown up around bikers, but he’d had no trouble acting like one.
I could’ve told your father, Kate. If I’d just told him, things could’ve been so different for us. Instead, I held onto my pride and kept the truth locked up tight.
“You know what? No, my dad’s a biker. Jeremy’s an asshole. Uh…” I winced, trying to decide how to best approach it. “So, you already know that I left you because of the video.”
He nodded slowly but remained silent.
Tears welled up behind my eyelids, but I blinked until my vision cleared. “It was just that you’d been taking on more shifts and acting so distant. At first, I thought it was because you were giving me time to work through the stuff with my dad, but then it felt like maybe you might’ve changed your mind about us.” I ran the back of my thumb under my eyes, angry at the stray tears that had managed to escape.
“Katy,” Nate said softly, finally turning to look at me.
“Don’t. Just let me finish. When I got that video, it was like things finally clicked. I felt like that was the reason things had felt off between us. I drove to Jeremy’s…” Nate’s jaw tightened, but I forced myself to keep going.
“I showed him the video, thought he might be able to help me make sense of it. We watched it and rewatched it until I could barely keep my eyes open. He told me I could sleep on the bed in his guest room and I didn’t even bother undressing… just collapsed on top of the comforter.”
For the love of all the saints, tell him what happened to you.
Nate’s undamaged hand moved over the console to rest on top of mine. “Babe, what happened?” The worry in his voice only made my tears fall faster.
“I, um, I woke up—” I saw Jeremy’s face in my mind, back-lit by the light from the hallway, his teeth somehow still blindingly white in the dark room. “One hand was under my shirt and the other—” I fought against rising nausea. “The other was between my legs, but still over my clothes.”
Savior: Silent Phoenix MC Series: Book Five Page 22
