Crash

by Elana Johnson

  With the tension skyrocketing in the room, she took one last look at him and then focused on her task. Her breath came in a little shaky, and she worked to control a whole new set of emotions.

  “You definitely have some bruising here,” she said, lightly touching his ribcage on the right side. She probed further, but Lucas sucked in a tight breath. Easing up, she pulled his shirt back down. “I can’t know for sure without an x-ray, but I think they’re just bruised.”

  “They hurt,” he said again. “I’m so sorry, Julie.” His last words came out in a whisper, and Julie gazed down at him. Was he worth this?

  Does that even matter now? she asked herself. She was here. She couldn’t just leave.

  But she’d now seen what outlaw bikers were like, and while Lucas wasn’t one of them, when she looked at him, she saw the same leather. The same beard. The same tattoos.

  And with just a few steps, he could easily become one of them.

  Though Julie liked Lucas, she didn’t want to live her life like she had last night. Pacing in her room. Wondering if she should call him again. Cowering in the closet while she waited with the emergency operator for the police to arrive.

  “Julie,” he said. “I have to tell you something.”

  Julie glanced at the bikers, the shouting nearly deafening now. She looked back at Lucas. “What is it?”

  “It’s about Lawrence,” he said, but a cough shook his body and sent a grimace across his face.

  Julie’s hopes lifted. “Lawrence?”

  “He—he tormented me as a teenager. I don’t really care if we rescue him or not.”

  Julie’s eyes widened, and she tried to find any hint of untruth in Lucas’s face. There was none. “I…he did?”

  “I hated him,” Lucas said, groaning as he sat up. “I—”

  “You used me.” Julie fell back onto her haunches, and then stood up, her realizations landing like bombs in her head. “To get me to come here with you. Why?”

  Lucas wouldn’t look at her, and Julie couldn’t believe the sting of betrayal as it moved through all of her muscles. She’d never felt like this before, and the world around her swooped. She sat heavily on the couch, a healthy distance from Lucas.

  “They wouldn’t have taken me to him,” Lucas said. “They’ll let you see him, and he’ll give you information on what he’s doing for them.”

  “You don’t know that,” Julie said, her voice numb.

  “You need to make him,” Lucas said, hanging his head and keeping his attention on the ground.

  Julie couldn’t believe this. She’d thought she’d be reunited with Lucas here, and the two of them would take on the Breathers. Now, she didn’t even want to be sitting with him on this couch. He’d lied to her. He’d used her.

  “I didn’t lie,” he said as if he could read her thoughts.

  “What do you call it then?”

  “I just didn’t tell you all of the reasons we needed things to go this way.”

  “I’m really sick of that,” she said. “Do you even know what I’ve been through in the last twenty-four hours? Of course not. You don’t have a phone. I called you three times. I had to hide in my closet after someone tried to break into my house. I had to deal with the police; they drove me to my parents’ house. I had to explain everything to them.”

  The storm that had been brewing in Julie’s soul bubbled and boiled. She stood, unable to contain it any longer. “And now I find out that you needed me along on this crazy plan, to which I don’t know a single step, so I can get my brother to give me information about the dangerous men he’s been working for.”

  “Someone broke into your house?” Lucas finally looked at her, and she acknowledged the concern in his eyes.

  “I don’t believe this.” Julie marched away from him, heading straight for the fray of bikers. “Stop it,” she yelled at them. To her great surprise, they quieted. “I don’t really care what you’re fighting about. I need someone to take me to my brother, and I need it done right now.”

  Fire blinked at her. She didn’t know the names of anyone else in the group, but one of them stepped forward. “I can do that,” he said. “Come with me.”

  She nodded at him, her neck so tight. So tight it ached.

  “Mustang,” Fire called after the man, but he just lifted his hand in a wave and kept on moving. Julie wasted no time hurrying after him, and it took every ounce of willpower she had not to look over her shoulder at Lucas.

  But she did it.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Lucas watched Julie leave, and then he sank back onto the couch. Idiot ran through his mind. But he was tired of keeping secrets from her. Julie deserved to know exactly what was going on, so she could play her part too.

  And she’d already gotten Mustang to take her to her brother. So that was a win, right? Lucas sure did feel like he’d lost, though.

  He wished he had a phone. Some way to get in touch with Maverick and Jordan. He’d spent so much of his life brainstorming with them, and it felt…strange to do anything without them. At the same time, he knew it was time to break from them a little bit. They both had personal lives now that didn’t include him, and he couldn’t help thinking of Jordan, and how he wouldn’t have to hang up a sign that day in order to kiss Felicia on the couch.

  Fire sat down on the loveseat kitty corner from him, and Lucas looked at the man. “What now?” he asked.

  The Vice-President gave Lucas a glare, and he reminded himself he wasn’t in charge here. He wasn’t on the officer board, and he had no rights. He wasn’t a member of this club.

  He was a hostage.

  “Bridge said you can’t stay here.”

  “That’s right,” Lucas said. “Number one, I’m not a member of your club, and I’m not planning to pledge. Number two, I have a job that’s really good, and I can’t lose it.” Surely Mav or Jordan had called Rudy Butler to make sure Lucas wouldn’t get fired. “Number three, we don’t work for you, and Julie’s not staying here for a moment longer than she has to.”

  He glared knives in Fire’s direction, but he knew his weren’t as sharp as some the other man had seen in his life.

  “Her brother works for us,” Fire said. “That means she works for us.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “He could’ve told her something.”

  “When?” Lucas demanded. “They haven’t spoken in months.”

  “He went to her house.”

  Lucas’s brain tried to keep up. “You mean a couple of weeks ago? I was there, Fire. Julie yelled at him for going dark, and she told him to call their mom. Then she closed the door. He was sitting on the stoop when I came out, and then your boys picked him up. He didn’t tell her anything.”

  Fire said nothing, and Lucas didn’t like the calculating look in his eyes.

  “Why’d you take him to the library?” Lucas asked.

  Fire’s eyelids barely moved. A twitch. Barely noticeable—but Lucas noticed it. “We didn’t.”

  “Yes, you did. I saw you on the tapes.”

  Fire didn’t try to hide his surprise this time. “You have tapes?”

  “You’re coming into Forbidden Lake every week,” Lucas said in a no-duh tone of voice. He worked very hard not to say “our town” or “we” or anything that would affiliate him with the Sentinels. He needed Fire to think Lucas had left that life behind. Or at least wanted to. He wouldn’t be able to do it in one day.

  But of course they had tapes. Did Fire and the Breathers think that just because the Sentinels didn’t run drugs that they were stupid?

  “What do you do with them?”

  “It’s so boring,” Lucas said. “We watch you come in. Go to the docks. Exchange very small quantities of stuff. Leave. In and out in an hour. There’s so much speculation.” He rolled his eyes. “I hate the speculating.” He shook his hand. “All night long. What are they doing? What could that be? Maybe it’s heroin. Maybe it’s dirty money. On and on.”

  Lucas
watched him, and Fire seemed to buy the frustration. It honestly wasn’t that hard to sell, because Lucas did hate the speculating. “I wonder, though…did you know Frogger was there last night?”

  That twitch again, but Lucas couldn’t be sure if that meant Fire did know and was surprised Lucas did, or that he didn’t know about his president’s activities.

  “Yeah, at a different dock. We weren’t even watching. He got caught by a local. The guy whose land he was trespassing on.”

  “Who?” Fire asked, and Lucas had his answer. The fissures in this club were more like gaping holes, and all Lucas needed to do was find the biggest one and explode it.

  “I don’t know,” Lucas said, sighing. “I work at the hospital, right? Frogger came in with this guy. They’d gotten in a fight.”

  Fire’s eyebrows went up now, but he said nothing.

  “Some dock in some cherry orchards?” Lucas shrugged like it was no big deal. He even glanced away from Fire for a moment. He leaned back into the couch and sighed. “I’m so tired. Are we doing anything today, or can I sleep?”

  “You can sleep,” Fire said. “I’ll take you to your room.”

  Lucas took his time getting up, really playing up the pain of his injuries. It honestly wasn’t that hard, as a white-hot poker of pain struck him right behind the lungs when he took his first step. “Whoa.” He reached out and put his hand on the armrest of the couch, steadying himself for a moment.

  “Julie will get the same room as me, right?” Lucas asked. “I don’t want her alone here.”

  “I’ll make sure Mustang brings her to you after she visits with Lawrence.”

  Lucas nodded, and he noted that the other bikers had cleared the area. Where they’d gone, he wasn’t sure. Tyson had said most outlaw clubs didn’t come alive until three or four in the afternoon, so perhaps they’d been awakened early and had gone back to bed too.

  “What are you doing with Lawrence anyway?” Lucas asked. “Isn’t he a little too white-collar for you?”

  Fire grunted, and asked, “What does that mean?”

  “It means most motorcycle clubs—even legal ones—don’t have a tax lawyer on the payroll.”

  Fire said nothing as they navigated the halls, and Lucas got the distinct impression they’d put him in the farthest room from everything on purpose. Yeah, he told himself. So you can’t get out.

  Sweet Pea and Empire hadn’t blindfolded him until the roll-up door. They’d walked down long hallways and gone through a door that require a code. And there was a padlock on the roll-up door, with another door just beyond it. The security of this place was wicked strong, and Lucas didn’t think anything short of a bomb would get him and Julie out.

  Ian used to work in the military as an explosive expert, but Lucas sure hoped it didn’t come to TNT to make an escape from this club. That wouldn’t solve the turf war, and Lucas really just wanted everything to be over.

  Everything except him and Julie, of course.

  Fire unlocked his room and held the door for him. “Don’t leave this room without someone from the Breath with you. Deal?”

  “Deal,” Lucas said, heading straight for the bed. “You’ll bring Julie?”

  Fire rolled his eyes. “You really are whipped, aren’t you, Lover Boy?” With that, he closed the door, the click a final punctuation mark on the conversation. No, Fire didn’t answer all the questions in a straight-forward way. But he answered them nonetheless.

  Lucas heard voices coming through the door, and he hurried over to it, hoping to catch what they were saying. He couldn’t, but he did recognize Fire’s voice, and Mustang’s. Yes, Mustang definitely had more power than he let on, and Lucas moved back to the bed.

  The painkillers had definitely started kicking in, because his head and his ribs only throbbed with a dull pain now. He wouldn’t go to sleep until Julie returned though.

  He wouldn’t….

  He could stay awake….

  He could….

  He slipped into unconsciousness, where he swam in dark waters, all of his secrets swirling around in the unrelenting ocean with him.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Lawrence Paige could deal with preparing the documents the Devil’s Breath wanted him to create. That was easy—something he could do in his sleep. He prepped CEOs and managers for a living, and coming up with new identities and papers for people who needed to be someone else hadn’t been that hard.

  He hadn’t even known he was doing it the first few times, as Hostetler & Brown only worked with reputable companies.

  Or so Lawrence had thought.

  But he’d helped a couple of people get the travel documents they needed, and the next thing he knew, a man in a leather jacket had sat down across from his desk and said Lawrence now worked for him.

  He’d originally refused. Mustang had left, but not without a glare that said he’d be back. And he had been, this time with “clients.”

  Days had passed after that. Weeks. A couple of months. Lawrence went running down the streets of Forbidden Lake with Riley, and he tried to find a woman to date that would satisfy his mother.

  If he’d have known the drastic turn his life would take in mid-July, and how much danger he’d put his parents in, as well as Julie and Charlie, Lawrence would’ve skipped town in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again.

  In the end, he’d had to do that anyway.

  He sighed as he looked out the fifth-story window. He’d been living in the tiny hospital room for the past six months, and he hated it. His only consolation was that no one else lived on the fifth floor, and he did have some privacy while the club members had parties or whatever they did on the third floor.

  “And you might not have skipped town, even if you had known,” he muttered to himself. At the time the Devil’s Breath had blown up his life, Lawrence was on top of the world. He had a great job with a six-figure income. He did get a lot of dates, even if none of the women were take-home-to-momma worthy. He had a dog he loved, and a great house, and he could even bear to go to Sunday dinner with his parents.

  Would he have given it all up?

  He wanted to say yes.

  He just didn’t know if he could.

  “Knock, knock,” someone said, and Lawrence jumped out of the make-shift window seat he’d made for himself.

  The sound of Mustang’s voice would forever be ingrained in Lawrence’s eardrums, but at least he’d stopped wiping his hands down the front of his pants every time he saw the biker. And the blonde woman who followed Mustang into Lawrence’s room simultaneously made his heart jump and his breath turn to ice.

  “Julie?” He looked at Mustang. “What is she doing here? You promised me no one else would be involved.” Surprised at his own boldness, he marched past the man and took his sister into a hug. “What are you doing here?”

  She couldn’t be here.

  “We’re offering her asylum,” Mustang said, and Lawrence pulled away from Julie.

  “Asylum? From what?”

  “Number one,” Julie said, plenty of challenge in her voice. “I’m not mentally ill, and asylum means you’re providing protection for someone who is.” She glared at Mustang. “Secondly, I wasn’t in any danger until you claimed me.”

  “You claimed her?” Lawrence stepped in front of her, positioning himself between Julie and Mustang. “Why?”

  “Because you went to her house.”

  “You said I could go visit my family!” Lawrence didn’t care that he was yelling. It was about time to make some noise. Julie couldn’t be here. She couldn’t stay here. If she did, all the horrible things he’d done over the course of the past six months would be for nothing.

  Lawrence couldn’t stand the thought of that.

  Mustang glared at Lawrence, but he simply glared right back. His fingers curled into fists, but he knew better than to attempt a swing at the biker. Mustang had been a boxer before joining the Devil’s Breath, and he could duck and dodge anything Lawrence might
be able to throw at him. Not only that, but he had a wicked jab and hook and choke hold.

  “She wanted to see you,” Mustang said. “I said I’d bring her. You guys can have a few minutes.” With that, he walked out of the room. Lawrence stared after him in shock for a moment, and then he hurried over to the door and locked it.

  He turned back to Julie. “What is going on?”

  “You tell me,” she said, her fiery side just as obnoxious as it always had been. “You live here?” She glanced around the room in disgust, actually reaching out and touching his unmade bed, and then pulling her hand back as if she might get a disease from it.

  “In case you haven’t noticed, it’s not exactly my choice,” Lawrence shot back. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  Julie drew in a big breath, and all of her tough exterior fell away. She started crying, and Lawrence hurried back to her and pulled her into his arms. She wove a tale about dating a Sentinel, and how she’d been claimed because the Devil’s Breath didn’t want anything Lawrence might have said to her to get to them.

  “And he’s here too. We’ve staged this break from his club, and we’re trying to find out what the Breathers are really doing, and how to get you out.” She looked at him with such hope in her bright blue eyes.

  “I can tell you what they’re doing,” Lawrence said. “But Julie, I don’t think I can get out. Honestly. And it’s fine.”

  “Fine?” Julie asked, her voice pitching up. “Lawrence, what you’re doing is not fine. And what happens when you want to stop? What happens when you can’t do what they want you to do anymore?”

  Lawrence sighed and ran his hand up the back of his neck. His hair was too long, and the one time he’d complained about it, Mustang had sent up a woman to cut it for him. She’d butchered the job, and Lawrence had told her to leave the scissors and he’d do it himself next time. He was becoming pretty good at the barbershop thing too, if he did say so himself.