by Zoey Parker
“You can read it after breakfast.” I left her clothes where they were on the nightstand and walked down the hall toward my bed. Her arms wrapped round my neck, and she rested her head against my chest as I carried her off. The little sigh I heard from her made me smile.
***
“Yeah, I got it. Great. Thanks, Bixby.” I clicked off the call and tucked my phone back into my jeans pocket. Lauren slept like the dead up in my bed, and I didn’t want to wake her. After checking her calendar on her phone, I realized she didn’t have a class until after lunch, so I was going to let her sleep in. The garage would have to get along without me for a day, but I knew Tony wouldn’t mind. If Kelly showed up for another oil change, I wouldn’t be there to cock block him.
“Michael, did you see my phone?” Lauren sauntered into the kitchen still wearing only a t-shirt, her hair mussed up around her head, and rubbing her eyes with heel of her palms. The sun in the kitchen could be bright as hell in the morning, and I hadn’t drawn the blinds down.
“It’s on the counter by the coffee, charging.” I walked up to her and slid my hands around her waist, pulling her to me for a kiss. She tried to turn away, declaring she had morning breath, to which I cupped her chin and took the kiss I wanted. “I talked with Bixby. No one is working your accident except for him. Whoever called you isn’t a cop. He’s gonna stop by campus today. He’ll meet us after your class and see who shows up. You aren’t going to talk to the guy, but we want to know who it is.”
She pulled out of my arms and went to the coffee maker, where a pot just finished brewing. I could see the tension in her shoulders and readied myself for another argument. I swore the woman swung from moods like an ape in the jungle. “I want to meet him. Maybe I can find out who sent him, wat they really want.” She opened cabinets until she found the coffee mugs and went to pouring herself a cup of coffee.
“No. Bixby just wants to get a look at him; he’ll talk to him if he thinks it’s necessary, or I will, but you will not go near him.”
Her shoulders slumped as she spooned sugar into her coffee. “I won’t hide.” The spoon clanked against the cup as she shook off the excess coffee.
“You’ll stay a safe distance from him.”
“I didn’t bring any extra clothes. I need to stop at my apartment.” She carried her cup out of the kitchen, right past me, and headed back upstairs. I knew her well enough to know that just because she didn’t argue with me didn’t mean she wasn’t going to do whatever the hell she wanted to do.
Three hours later, Bixby and I stood outside her economics class waiting for the lecture to finish up. The empty hallway felt creepy.
“You know this guy might just walk right up to her and snatch her. He probably doesn’t want to talk at all.”
“I’m aware of that. I told her she’s not to go anywhere after class except right out here to meet us.”
“Oh, you did, did you? You told her what to do?”
I ignored the smirk on his lips and looked at the time on my phone again. Just a few more minutes. “She’ll listen.”
“Yup…I’m sure she will. From what you’ve told me of her, she’s got her own mind. And if she is of the frame of mind to want to know what this guy wants, she may just sneak out that second door as everyone piles out this one and head down to where they are supposed to meet.”
My ears perked up at that suggestion just as the door swung open and students began to file out of the lecture hall. I tried to move through them, to get to the second door, but there were too many. Finally, I shoved my way through just in time to see Lauren ducking down the stairwell at the other end of the hall.
“Couldn’t have tipped me off to that ten minutes ago?” I barked at Bixby as we both made our way down the hall to follow her disobedient ass. Any regret I may have held on to for giving her that belting the night before washed away when I saw her approach a man in the lobby.
The guy wore a long leather coat, and considering the heat outside, it put me even more on edge. From the stairs, I could make out his cropped hair and a jagged scar running down the side of his right cheek.
“There they are!” I started to dart down the stairs faster, but Bixby grabbed me on the landing.
“Wait. She’s talking to him. Just let her finish; if he does anything we’ll go in. There’s a shit load of people in here. I don’t think he wants to attack her. Not here.”
“I’m going to beat her ass,” I promised myself, earning a chuckle from Bixby.
“I’d say she earned it.” He pointed to the guy who looked like he was becoming more agitated was the conversation went on. She shook her head and took a step back from him. The guy’s jaw clenched, as well as his fists, but he didn’t make a move to grab her.
“If we could get closer, we’d be able to hear him. Do you know this guy?” I didn’t move my eyes from the asshole and Lauren.
“No, doesn’t look familiar, but she doesn’t look all that scared of him. Maybe she does.”
She did look calm, annoyed, but not frightened. Her eyes had been full of terror when Matthew attacked her, but this guy, who glared down at her so hard his scar turned white, didn’t seem to be fazing her that much.
After what felt like hours, Lauren finally waved her hand at the guy, dismissing him. She was dismissing him! I watched as the big guy, towering over her by at least two feet, pointed at her and said one more thing before turning around and walking out of the building.
“Aren’t you going to go chase him?” I gave Bixby a shove.
“Nope. She’s going to tell us who he was.” He nodded toward Lauren, who looked around the lobby and finally locked her sight on us. Her usually pale skin paled even more when her eyes met mine. A week. That woman wasn’t going to sit on her ass for a week once I got her alone.
I ran down the rest of the stairs, keeping my eyes on her. She started to back away but I yelled from across the lobby. “Not one step, Lauren. Not a single one!” Ignoring Bixby’s chuckle from behind me, I made my way through the crowd, who now had set their eyes on us.
“Hey, Michael.” She threw on an easy smile, adjusting her bag on her shoulder. She hadn’t dislocated it like the doctor had worried about, but it still gave her some tenderness when she had her damn pack hanging from it. I ignored her wince of pain, she’d be doing a lot more of that by the end of the day.
“Lauren.”
“Hi, Lauren. My name is Detective Bixby.” He put on his brightest smile, the one he reserved for witnesses when he wanted to put them at ease to extract exactly what he needed from them.
“Nice to meet you.” She grinned back at him. “I didn’t see you in the hall. I thought maybe we were supposed to meet down here.” Her eyes settled on Bixby, not looking at me at all, as though that would somehow keep the fact that she was lying from me. When she didn’t suck in that lip of hers, she avoided eye contact. The woman didn’t understand how well I knew her.
“Quite all right.” Bixby nodded. “We saw you talking with someone; was he the man who contacted you?” Bixby stepped in front of me and gestured to a group of seats off to the side of the lobby.
Lauren started walking with him to the lounge area, still keeping me out of her sight. “Uh, yeah.” She settled down in a chair, slipping her bag from her shoulder and keeping it between her feet. “I must have misunderstood him on the phone. He wasn’t a cop. Insurance guy. Needed to ask a few questions to process my claim.”
Except I knew for a damn fact she hadn’t filed a claim. Bixby just nodded. “What sort of questions?”
“How fast was I going, what direction was the other guy going, that sort of stuff. Really, he could have done it over the phone, but I guess he was in the area.”
“Yeah, pretty standard stuff. He looked a little annoyed by what you were telling him; what was that about?”
I let Bixby do his thing, asking her questions, taking in her lies without stepping in, only because he knew what he was doing. I’d been on the other side of this co
nversation, sat where Lauren sat, and knew he’d get what he wanted. My inserting myself would only delay things. Besides, if I called her on her lies, she’d clam up, and I needed to find out why she was laying and what the fuck she was hiding.
I listened as Bixby continued to casually ask questions that weren’t responded to with any honesty on her part. He knew she was lying, but he continued to press her. Finally, I couldn’t stand anymore of it. “I need to get back to the garage, and Lauren’s shift starts soon. I’ll drop her off at the shelter. If you need to ask her anything more, just let me know and I’ll bring her to the station.” Without looking at her, I grabbed her bag and swung it over my shoulder.
“I think I have what I need.” He stood up from the chair he had been lounging in then snapped his fingers. “Oh. I almost forgot! I got a lead on that partial plate Tony gave me. Seems to belong to a Mr. Conrad Mathers, an eighty-two-year-old man. He dropped that car off for repair to a shop the morning of the accident. Apparently, the car was stolen from the lot while the crew had been out to lunch.”
“What shop?”
“Chicago’s Fallen and Auto Repair.” He raised both eyebrows at me. “Sound familiar?”
Sound familiar? They were the club's rivals. Both clubs owned garages, not a big deal, except Chicago’s Fallen moved into the Predator's’ neighborhood to set up shop, taking away business. Mick didn’t take kindly to it, and the two clubs fought off and on over the years. Why the hell would they be out to get Lauren? And, if they were the ones going to my club for help, why the hell didn’t Prez just toss them out on their asses?
“Yeah, rings a bell or two.” I nodded, looking over at Lauren who was suddenly very interested in her cell phone.
“Thought it might.” He winked. “I need to get back to the office, run this agent’s name through the system.” He turned to Lauren, who looked a bit panicked at his statement. “Just to be sure he’s on the up and up, you see. Just standard.” He assured her with a pat on the arm. “I’ll let you get to work. Michael, I’ll be in touch.”
With that, he walked away, giving me a knowing look and a gesture that meant to tell me to go easy on her. Bixby knew everything about me; hell he’d investigated me so goddamn thoroughly, it was no wonder he’d found out so damn much. The one thing about me he said had fallen in his lap that entertained him on his long nights in the office was my personal preferences when it came to my women. He didn’t try to persuade me to go the chocolate and roses route with them; instead he made damn sure I knew to keep things consensual.
“I suppose suggesting you let me take the bus wouldn’t work.” She gave me a flirtatious smile.
“No,” was all I said, and started walking. I didn’t check to see if she was behind me; I didn’t need to; I could feel her. “Remember how to hold on?” I asked her when we reached my bike.
“Yeah. I think I can manage.” She reached for her bag from me, but I held it out to her so she could slip her arms through the straps. Once it was on, I grabbed the extra helmet from my side bag and placed it on her head, tucking her hair back and securing the strap under her chin. She gave me a disgruntled look, but didn’t get in my way.
I had a lot of questions for her, but she needed to get to work, and I needed to calm down before I asked them. If she started lying again, I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t strip her out of those khakis she wore and bend her over my bike for a spanking right there in the parking lot.
I’d get my head on straight. Head over the Fallen’s shop, see what I could find, then I’d pick her up from the shelter. She wasn’t cleaning offices that night, so we could have a nice long conversation about my first expectation.
Chapter 15
Lauren
The afternoon could have gone better. I had hoped to get down the hall and to the lobby before Michael saw me, but, of course, I should have known better. I couldn’t let that detective friend of his talk with Tanner, everything would have fallen apart, and I worked too hard to keep it all together. I just needed to have a quick word with him before Michael came flying down the stairs.
I doubted I had a single word out before he and that detective found me. At least they stayed away. At first when I had gotten the call from the guy pretending to be a cop, I thought it was legit, but when Michael told me about Bixby being the guy on the case, I knew what it was. Tanner heard about the accident and was just trying to get me alone.
Thing about Tanner was he could have just called me himself and said he wanted to talk. I had nothing to hide from him or reason to be frightened. I would have met him. In public, of course. I wasn’t a complete idiot. And not as naïve as Michael still believed me to be.
I hadn’t expected him to show up looking like some character out of The Matrix, but with Tanner you never really knew what form he would be taking. The man changed personas with the wind. One week he was punk rock, the next a tough biker guy. I’d had to break it to him, he’d gotten the biker look all wrong, but he didn’t take my advice.
After Michael went away to juvie and dropped me from his life, I had kept searching. I didn’t care where I went so long as there was a possibility to find Michael. That was how I found Tanner. He had some dangerous contacts, guys who would make my skin crawl when I saw them, but each one of them held their own function in Tanner’s world.
He’d heard about my accident; concerned one of his business associates was gunning for me, he’d reached out. I tried convincing him that wasn’t the case, that it had something to do with my damn internship, but he thought it as stupid as I did. He tried to convince me to let him talk to the cops, to see what info they had so he could do his own digging. I tried to assure him I had it handled, but, just like Michael, he didn’t think I could do it. I reminded him of all the years I worked with him, not once did he have to come to my rescue. That reminder only irritated him more. Tanner never liked to be proven wrong.
It surprised me that Michael didn’t demand answers after his detective friend left us. He knew every word out of my mouth had been a lie, and having just turned my ass raw the night before with the very vocal lecture about honesty and other expectations, I half expected him to haul me over his bike to deliver another spanking. He didn’t. He barely talked to me on the way to the shelter, not that a conversation was easy to keep up with over the rumbling of his motorcycle. When he dropped me off, he didn’t even get off his bike. He just pulled his sunglasses down to the tip of his nose and told me to wait on the steps after my shift. If he weren’t there when I was done, I was to stay on the steps or go back inside.
Glad to not have to fight with him about the meeting with the detective, I agreed easily. I watched him ride away before I went inside, with something feeling off. Maybe guilt over not being totally honest with him? Hiding something from him?
My shift at the shelter flew by. It usually did when I worked with the kids group for the afternoon. A few of the moms told me again I should be getting my degree in education, not architecture. By the time it was time to go home, I was beat. Playing with kids took up a lot of energy, and keeping my patience going when teaching them to read took up the rest.
Walking out onto the steps and seeing Michael sitting on his bike staring at me, put me on edge. He wasn’t smiling. The sun had already dipped behind the buildings, casting a dark shadow over him and his bike.
Taking a deep breath, I walked over to him. “Think you can take me home tonight?” I asked when he scooted up on the bike to give me room, but didn’t say anything. Maybe he was finally done with me. He’d had his fun, but now that he saw I wasn’t the easy going, naïve little girl he knew from the past, he decided to move on. That was fine with me, or so I told myself. I wasn’t going to be anyone’s fuck toy. No matter how good it felt, I was worth a hell of a lot more than that.
“No.” He handed me my helmet without looking at me.
“I want to go home, Michael.” I swung my leg over the bike and settled in behind him. All I wanted to do was take a bath and sleep until
morning. I didn’t have more energy to fight with him.
“Fine.” He revved his engine, and before I could think to question how easily he gave in, he tore out of the lot and headed to my building.
I should have known better than to think I’d gotten my way. Asya is home.” I pointed to the light in my apartment. “I’ll be good from here.”
“Yeah. Right.” He huffed and got off the bike. I let him follow up the steps to the front door and tried again to let him off the hook. “My place, my bed, remember?” He pointed to the door. “If you want to stay here, fine, we’ll stay here.”
“Asya is here, you can’t do anything…you know…like last night,” I warned him, and he laughed.
“Worried about a spanking for all that bullshit you spewed earlier? That’s good.” He took the key from my hand when I still hadn’t opened the door. “There are plenty of other ways to punish you that don’t require my belt. Much quieter ways.”
