Crash

by Elana Johnson

  “Okay,” Julie said, half expecting to hear shouts or gunshots at any moment. She heard nothing.

  Riley barked again after what felt like a long time, and then the operator said, “You can come out, ma’am. There’s no one in your house but the police officers.”

  “Okay,” she said again, slowly getting to her feet. She took a moment to make sure her legs would support her, and then she opened the closet door. Riley practically galloped out of the closet, barking at the closed and locked bathroom door.

  Julie opened that too, and then the bedroom door, and the dog nearly knocked down the two uniformed officers framed in the hallway.

  “Julie Paige?” one of them barked, and Julie lowered her phone.

  “Yes,” she said as bravely as she could.

  “Come on out, ma’am. There’s no one here right now.”

  She walked down the hall almost on her tiptoes, as if she didn’t want to make any noise someone would hear. A chill filled the air, but Julie wasn’t sure if that was because of shock or because the house was just a little cold. She sometimes had to turn on the fireplace in the winter months to aid the furnace on really cold nights.

  “But it looks like someone was trying to get in,” one of the officers said. “I’m Officer Farraday, and this is Officer Johns.”

  “Hello.” Julie shook both of their hands, then scanned the living room, kitchen, and dining room. She couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. “I swear I heard something.”

  “You did,” Officer Johns said. “Come look.” He led her to the doorway that went into her garage, stepping out onto the small stoop there. “Someone tried to get in this door here. Looks like he used a crowbar or something similar.”

  Julie stared at the blonde wood now showing through the darker, stained, regular façade of the door. The gashes inspired so much fear, she couldn’t remember how to breathe. There had been someone standing there, using a tool, trying to get into her house….

  “And over here,” Officer Farraday said, and Julie blinked, breaking the connection between her and the wounded wood in the door.

  She walked on numb legs over to the front door, realizing why it was so cold in her house. Someone had smashed in the window at the top of the door.

  “This is probably what you heard,” the officer said. “But the perpetrator couldn’t reach the lock by going up and through.” Officer Farraday wore a hard look on his face. “So he probably went to the garage entrance to try that door.”

  Julie nodded as her whole body started to shake. Someone had been here. She hadn’t hallucinated the noise. Lucas had been right about her needing to keep everything locked. She felt tears on her face again, and she swiped at them, suddenly aware that she wasn’t alone.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll get this boarded up, and—”

  “We’ll do that, ma’am,” Officer Johns said. “Tony?”

  “Do you have somewhere else you can stay tonight?” Officer Farraday asked. “Parents, a family member, a friend…?”

  Alarm pulled through Julie again, and she looked up into Officer Farraday’s face. He was older than her by probably a decade, and he seemed so sure of himself. So kind.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “I can go to my parents’ house.”

  “We’ll wait for you to pack a bag,” he said. “I don’t think you should be here alone, in case whoever tried to get in comes back.”

  Julie nodded, somehow able to get herself down the hallway and into the bedroom to pack a bag. She threw things in blindly, hoping she got everything she needed for work.

  “Work.”

  She grabbed her phone from where she’d set it on top of the bureau and called Melinda.

  “Hey, girl,” her friend said. “What’s up?”

  “I need the next few days off,” Julie said in a rush. “Someone tried to break into my house tonight, and the cops aren’t letting me stay here, and—”

  “Whoa, whoa,” Melinda said. “Someone tried to break into your house?”

  “I can’t explain it all now,” Julie said. She still needed to call her mother too, and she couldn’t imagine the number of questions she’d have to answer then. She’d have to tell her mom about Lawrence, the Breathers, the Sentinels, all of it. “I just need the next few days off.”

  “I’ll schedule you off this whole week,” Melinda said. “You’ll call me the moment you have more than ten seconds to talk, okay?”

  “Yes, okay.”

  “I mean it, Julie,” Melinda said. “I’m scared.”

  “Me too.” Julie’s voice broke on the words, and she sucked in a breath. “I have to go.” She hung up and immediately dialed her mother.

  “Mom,” she said. “I’m coming to stay the night for the next few days. I’ll explain everything when I get there.”

  Julie woke the next morning in an unfamiliar place. She couldn’t believe she’d been able to fall asleep, but she obviously had. She’d allowed the police to take her to her parents’ house, leaving her car behind at her place. They’d agreed to keep an eye on the place, hoping that whoever had tried to enter her house would come back, and they could catch him in the act.

  Julie didn’t think whoever it had been would be back. Frogger had claimed her for the Devil’s Breath, and Julie hadn’t heard a word from Jordan, Maverick, or Lucas in almost twenty-four hours.

  Something had happened. Something bad.

  She sat up in bed, hating the pale pink paint on the walls. Why she’d thought that was a good color for her fifteen-year-old self, she wasn’t sure. But her mother hadn’t touched much in the bedroom, except to put away all of Julie’s trinkets and trophies, so guests could enjoy a more neutral space.

  But the same comforter sat on the bed. Same paint. Same curtains. Same furniture, with the light oak finish that was so not fashionable for homes now.

  Her phone buzzed on the nightstand, and Julie practically dove for it. An unfamiliar number sat on the screen, and she swiped open the message.

  Where are you?

  Her thumbs began to fly over the screen instantly, tapping out, I’m at my mom’s house.

  She hesitated before sending the message. This could be anyone asking. She couldn’t assume it was one of Lucas’s friends, not with what had happened last night.

  The same terror she’d felt while huddled in her closet roared through her, and this time, she didn’t have the Daniff to bark at the first sign of trouble. Riley slept in the utility room at her parents’ house, and her dad sure hadn’t been happy to see the huge dog arrive with Julie last night.

  Julie didn’t know what to do. She really needed to talk to Lucas, but he still hadn’t sent her a single stitch of communication.

  She quickly deleted her original text and typed out instead, Who is this?

  Your boyfriend is asking for his nurse.

  The message made her blood turn to ice in her veins.

  Her mind raced, thoughts about everything from how she’d brought danger to her aging parents, to why Lucas would need a nurse, to chastisements about how of course the message wouldn’t be from Lucas’s friends in the Sentinels.

  She’d been claimed.

  They couldn’t help her now even if they wanted to.

  Where can I meet you? she sent.

  Instead of another text, her phone rang, and Julie startled, yelped, and dropped it. The phone bounced slightly on the carpet, and Julie hurried to grab it back up again.

  “Hello?” she asked.

  “I’m coming to get you, sweetheart,” the man on the other end of the line said. “I hope you have a jacket, because the wind is wicked this morning.” His voice was wicked, and Julie could not imagine going anywhere with him. The rumble of a motorcycle engine came through the line, and Julie pressed her lips together.

  “I tried to come by last night,” he said. “But there were all these red and blue lights at your place.”

  “Someone tried to break into my house,” she said, forgetting for just a mome
nt who she was talking to. “Was that you guys?”

  “Of course not,” the man said smoothly. “Number one, we know how to pick locks.”

  Julie’s nerves fired on all cylinders, and she stood up, shaking—with anger. She was tired of feeling weak and afraid. “I don’t want you to come where I am,” she said. “I’ll meet you on the corner of Wagstaff and Boulder.”

  “Ten minutes,” the man said, and the line went dead.

  She didn’t even know the guy’s name.

  “He’ll be the only one on a motorcycle, decked out from head to toe in leather,” she said. “You’ll know him when you see him.”

  She turned to the bag she’d left on her dresser and got dressed quickly. She had brought her leather jacket with her last night, but not her scarf. And not her leather boots she wore when she rode with Lucas.

  This isn’t a joyride, she told herself. Not a date.

  “You’re leaving?”

  She spun toward her mother. “I have to go, Mom.” She stepped into her mother’s arms and hugged her tight, tight, tight. “Where’s Dad?”

  “Eating breakfast.”

  Julie hurried into the kitchen and engulfed her dad in a hug too. “I’m going to find out where Lawrence is, and I’m going to bring him home.” She faced both of her parents, who clung to each other and stared at her with wide eyes. She loved them so much. She couldn’t be the second child of theirs to disappear.

  Please, Dear Lord in Heaven, she prayed silently. Don’t let that happen to them. Then she turned and headed back into the living room. She’d have to hurry to be on the specified corner in time.

  “Julie,” her dad said, but she just grabbed her bag and left through the front door. The winter air nipped at her nose, her throat, her lungs. But she didn’t stop. She carried her bag through the wind the biker had spoken of all the way to the corner of Wagstaff and Boulder.

  Not thirty seconds later, a man wearing exactly what she predicted he would be pulled around the corner a block down and came toward her. He didn’t wear a helmet the way Lucas did, and somehow, his motorcycle seemed twice as big as Lucas’s ever had.

  He pulled up to the curb and looked at her, but she couldn’t see his eyes through the mirrored shades he wore. No words were said.

  She walked the few steps to his motorcycle, climbed on, and balanced her bag on her lap.

  “That can’t stay there,” he said, and Julie turned the bag into a backpack, threading her arms through the handles of the duffle bag as if they were the appropriate straps.

  “Lean with me,” he said only a moment before he accelerated away from the curb. Julie shouted and threw her arms around him to keep from being tossed off the back of his bike.

  His laughter filled the air, and Julie squeezed her eyes shut, imagining that she could grip him tight enough to cut off the smug chuckles coming from his mouth.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Lucas’s head throbbed, but at least the room was dark. He didn’t have his cell phone, and he didn’t know what time it was. His mouth felt like someone had shoved a shovel full of soot into his mouth and left him in unconsciousness.

  He tried to swallow again and again, finally working up enough saliva to do so. Everything hurt, and he could taste the slight tang of blood on his tongue.

  “Hello?” he asked, not sure if he wanted to see someone or if he’d prefer to be left alone. He’d made it back to the clubhouse in the sidecar of someone’s motorcycle, and he hadn’t stopped asking for Julie before Fire finally pushed him into this room and told him to “hold tight.”

  Lucas had held on as long as he’d been able, but his injuries and exhaustion had finally won out, and he’d slept. The heater in the clubhouse obviously worked, and Lucas actually felt too hot.

  He threw his legs over the side of the bed, cringing with the movement. He did need a medical professional, but he wasn’t going to mention it to Fire or anyone else in the Breath. He hadn’t had to truly convince anyone yet that he was done with the Sentinels, but he’d have to do that soon enough. And Tyson had said violence in an outlaw club was almost commonplace, and that Lucas couldn’t act like he was as hurt as he really was.

  Standing up, he took precious seconds to make sure his legs could support his weight. A groan started down in the bottom of his gut, but he kept it silent in the back of his throat. He walked a circuit in the room, quickly working out the rusty spots in his joints and the kinks in his back. He found a light switch by the door, and flipped it, almost blinded by the bright light that flooded down from the ceiling.

  He squinted up at it, noticing there was no cover over the bare bulb. The rest of the room held only the bed and a small table without a chair. The bed held a sheet and a blanket, but it sat right on the floor, no frame to speak of. Nothing in the room could be used to make a very effective weapon at all, and that was probably the point.

  With his strength coming back, his stomach reminded him that he hadn’t eaten in a while. Lucas walked over to the door, ready to put on the show. “Hey.” He pounded on the door, hoping it was really early in the morning and he’d wake someone up. “Open the door!”

  He kept banging until someone came, which only took a few minutes if Lucas could still figure out how much time had passed. The man on the other side of the door didn’t look too happy, and he actually growled at Lucas.

  Lucas had seen him on the surveillance tapes before, but it wasn’t Fire and it wasn’t Frogger. It wasn’t the man who’d come to Ruby’s last November, demanding the Sentinels allow the Breathers to enter Forbidden Lake on Wednesday nights.

  “Come on,” he said. “Don’t talk to anyone.” He turned and walked down the hall, giving Lucas a full view of the back of his cuts, the denim vest that had specialty patches sewn to it. This guy didn’t inspire a great deal of fear in Lucas, but he remembered what Tyson had said.

  Learn who’s in charge. It’s usually not who you think it is.

  “What’s your name?” Lucas asked.

  “What part of don’t talk do you not understand?” He knocked on the door on the right as he passed it, skipped the next door, and rapped on the last one before he turned left. Lucas tried to count the doors—or somehow see through them—but another long hallway stretched before him. He didn’t remember walking all this way last night—or whenever he’d been put in that room—but he must have.

  The biker in front of him turned left again, and a rectangle of natural light filled this passageway. “How big is this place?” he asked.

  “Big,” the guy said. He knocked on two more doors before leading Lucas into a large, open room with a lot of couches. No one sat or laid on them, and the scent of old coffee and sawdust hung in the air. Lucas had been inside the Hawks’ clubhouse exactly one time, and the common room there was about half as big as this one. In his memory, the Hawks also had a long counter and kitchen along one wall, but this place didn’t have that.

  The ceiling wasn’t open either, and this could’ve just been a huge office space the Breath had taken over and converted to living quarters.

  “This him?” a man asked, and Lucas spun around to find four people exiting the same hallway he and the other biker had come down. He glared at Lucas, and a definite hint of fear moved through Lucas at the sight of him.

  “Morning, Mustang,” a woman said, and Lucas’s eyes flew to her. She wore dark leggings with a skin-tight T-shirt, and she too glared at Lucas with the heat of the sun.

  “Which one’s Mustang?” he asked.

  The next guy that walked by hissed at him, saying, “What’s the Sentinel doing here?”

  “He broke rank,” the first man said, bumping shoulders with the woman. Lucas assumed he was Mustang, and his theory was confirmed when he looked at Lucas and said, “I’m Mustang. This is Sweet Pea.” He nodded to the woman. “Bridge and Empire. We’re your welcome team.”

  “Welcome team?” Lucas watched the last man pass him—Empire—and join the others.

  “Bridge,”
Mustang said.

  “We provide a…safe place for you to come ask questions,” Bridge, the man who’d hissed at Lucas, said. He sported a huge beard and a pair of dark eyes Lucas wouldn’t want to encounter in the darkness. He slung his arm around Sweet Pea, who grinned up at him as she dug in her pocket for a stick of gum.

  “Your breath stinks,” she said, handing it to him.

  Lucas almost started laughing. Even these tough, outlaw bikers had bad breath, and Sweet Pea wasn’t afraid to call out a man twice her size. Lucas couldn’t believe it, but he found himself…liking her.

  “Did you really break ranks from the Sentinels?” Empire asked. He was the shortest of the welcome team, with thick thighs that could probably squeeze a man to death. Ink covered both of his arms and extended under his white tank top. He probably snacked on puppies at mid-afternoon, if his scowl was anything to judge by.

  “Yes,” Lucas said simply.

  “Why?” Empire challenged.

  Lucas looked at the other three Breathers, sure they’d all heard this story. “You tell me,” he said, hoping to get some information from them.

  “It was a wo-man,” Sweet Pea said, singing the last word. “Tough biker fell in love. We claimed his girl. He left his club.”

  “So you’re a rat,” Empire said.

  Lucas looked back at him, his anger simmering in his blood. “I’m not a rat,” he said. “A rat would be telling all the Sentinels’ secrets. I’m not doing that. I’m just looking for sanctuary.”

  “And you want the girl,” Sweet Pea said.

  “Isn’t that obvious?” Lucas asked, sending her a glare. He didn’t like her as much anymore, that was for sure.

  “So are you gonna pledge to the Breath?” Empire asked.

  Lucas blinked at him, hoping he looked like he hadn’t even thought about it. Because he hadn’t. No, he couldn’t actually pledge to be part of the Breath. He was aware of the loyalty most clubs possessed, the Sentinels included.