It was never not strange to hear the word ‘fuck’ come out of Gordon’s mouth. He was in his fifties, and his hair was fully grey. That made him look older than he was. And he always wore a sport coat over a button shirt, like he was on his way to lunch at the club.
“Yeah. I guess.”
He squinted at her. “I’m trying to decide if that’s progress. You’re shifting to your coping mechanisms, and that’s good. But you need better coping mechanisms, smarty. Those are destructive, too. You’re lucky that biker guy wasn’t a son of a bitch. He was right, you know. He did the right thing, bringing you home. Should’ve stayed with you, but it sounds like you made that option pretty unpleasant, and I guess he’s not a saint.”
Sadie blushed and plowed a shrimp through its bed of rice. “I guess.”
“You need to find something that gives you peace and turn your attention to that.”
She dropped her forked and glared across the table at her sponsor. “I’m trying. I tried the whole wellness-meditation-mindfulness stuff in rehab, and I’ve been trying the Wicca-Gaia-elemental-balance stuff lately. The Wicca stuff makes some sense to me, but none of it occurs to me when I need it. It’s all too mellow. I tried to be mindful this afternoon, and I was in the middle of a freaking bizarre situation that I did not want to be fully present in. I don’t know how to be mellow or mindful or…fuck, or just balanced. I’m running and training as much as I can, and that helps, but I can’t run all day long. I got involved with Blake’s crew because you said I needed purpose, and now look where I am. I was supposed to just be informing the public, not running from the police and getting shot. I got shot, Gordon! Twice! It hurts so much! At least when I’m cutting I know when it’s going to stop and start. That feels good. Knowing that.”
Gordon’s voice was low and kind when he said, “You’re a control freak, too, Sade.”
She’d told him everything about her day. Even that. At Gordon’s comment, she laughed. “Well, then, I suck at it.”
“Yeah, you do. You need to find something that gives you focus and keeps you out of harm’s way. Maybe you should think about backing out of that group.”
She shook that idea away. “I can’t just say, ‘Sorry! Shit got too real! Gotta go!’”
“Why not? You didn’t sign up for what happened.”
“Because the fight matters. And it’s not Blake’s fault this happened.”
Gordon picked up another sushi roll with his chopsticks. He asked, “You sure about that?” and plopped the roll in his mouth.
“What do you mean? It was the cops. I was there.”
Still chewing, he replied, “Yes. But so were a lot of other people. A lot of people. You didn’t see who started shooting, did you?”
“No. But cops were the only ones I saw with guns.” The afternoon began to play behind Sadie’s eyes. Had she seen anyone other than people in riot gear with guns? No. She was sure she hadn’t. Or had she? She couldn’t remember.
“The only ones you saw. What if somebody in the crowd started shooting? That might explain—not excuse, but explain—why the cops were so extreme. That’s what the cops are reporting—that they were fired on from the crowd.”
Despite her suspicion about the cops’ take on the day, she supposed that could be true. It was irrelevant, however. “Even so, that’s not on Blake.”
“Maybe not. But the name Fred Blake is cropping up on the news. Looks like he’s been attached to a lot of violent protests. Dr. King the man is not.”
“You’re saying he set this whole thing up. No. No way. He listens to Miles Davis and smokes clove cigarettes. He’s a pacifist.”
Gordon put his hands up as if in surrender. “Okay. I only met the guy the one time, so what do I know. But I am saying that either way, it’s perfectly reasonable for you to step away after what happened this afternoon. Especially with what you’ve got going on in your life.”
“And do what?”
“I don’t know, smarty. What is it they say? Find your bliss? You need to find your bliss.” He picked up his soda and took a loud slurp.
“Don’t ever write a self-help book, Gordo. It’d suck.”
~oOo~
Blake was released the following day, after his ex-wife posted his bail—and with that, Sadie learned that Blake had an ex-wife. He called a meeting for that night, so after her work shift—uneventful, thank God—she washed around her arm, then redressed her wounds, which looked pretty good. Not red or puffy or anything. Sherlock had done a good job. She’d dug up an old sling she’d had from ages ago, when she’d sprained her elbow in gymnastics class, and her arm felt better resting in the sling.
She put actual clothes on for the first time that day and headed over to Blake’s house. She drove a stick, and that turned out to be harder than she’d expected with a bum left arm, but she took her arm out of the sling for the drive and worked it out.
Chloe and Grant were already there, as were a couple of people Sadie didn’t know—a woman in maybe her forties, about Blake’s age, and a boy in his teens. Blake’s face was a swollen mess, and he had a line of stitches across the bridge of his nose, but he was in high spirits.
“Sadie! Hey, girl. I heard you got hurt, too. Let me see.” He grabbed at her sling, and Sadie turned out of his reach. She felt uncomfortable. Gordon’s comments the night before had wormed into her head somewhere.
“I’m okay. Just a scratch. How are you?”
“There’s a reason we call ‘em pigs. But I’m okay. And we’ve got a great result! Chloe did a media analysis today—oh, that’s Yolanda, my w—ex-wife. And Brody, our boy.”
Sadie nodded a greeting at them both, then turned her attention to Blake, who was holding Chloe’s super tablet, which showed a table with several columns of information—media sources, numbers of mention, minutes devoted, slant of item.
“Look at that—an aggregate of nearly six hours over all media sources. Do you understand how huge that is? We got national coverage—international coverage. People are paying attention. What a great day it was!”
Sadie looked up at Blake. She’d known him less than a year, but she liked him a lot. She admired him. He was passionate and committed to his cause. But his enthusiasm for what had happened the day before freaked her out.
“People got hurt, Blake.”
He waved her off, not even bothering to look her way. “Nobody died. Everybody is expected to make a full recovery.”
Why wasn’t he angry that cops had fired on innocent, unarmed civilians? “Did you plan this?”
Now he turned and looked down to meet her eyes. But he blinked before he answered, and there was something sketchy in the ways his eyes moved. “Of course I planned the protest. So did you. And Chloe, and Grant.”
He knew full well what she’d meant and was being intentionally obtuse. “No. Did you plan the riot? Was there somebody in the crowd with a gun, and did you know that?”
He blinked again, and she had her answer. It didn’t matter that he said, “Of course not. What do you take me for, Sadie?”
She had no idea what she took him for, but he wasn’t who she’d thought he was. Thinking about her conversation with Gordon, she smiled brightly. “Okay. Sorry. Shit got too real. I gotta go.”
And she turned and walked out. Blake chased her as far as the door, calling, “Sadie! Sadie, come on! We have work to do!”
~oOo~
Sadie liked to run in the heat. She usually felt cold unless the temperature topped ninety, so she didn’t really like running in the morning, when the desert air carried a chill. Her workdays started on Central Time, since her cohort was based in Dallas, so she took lunch around ten-thirty or eleven in the morning, and she ran then. On weekends, she did her distance running, trying to get ready for the following year’s L.A. marathon. She’d originally thought she’d try for this year’s, but it was in September, and she didn’t think she’d be ready for it. So, new goal.
In the meantime, she’d do some smaller races.
She’d done a 5K already. That had been pretty dull. She needed more challenge. She needed something positive to focus on.
She’d taken a week off after the protest, or the riot, or whatever it was, because her arm hurt too much, and elevating her heart rate made it hurt more. But after three days back on the road, she’d found that she hadn’t lost much ground taking those days off.
So she was feeling good and still moving at a decent clip when she turned the corner onto her street and saw a huge, black and chrome Harley parked near the front of her building.
She pulled up short and stared at it for a minute, trying to be sure it was Sherlock’s. She didn’t know much about bikes, and she honestly hadn’t paid more attention to his than ‘big, black, chrome,’ but she was pretty sure it was his. Then she got up close and saw the decal or whatever on the gas tank: Night Horde.
He wasn’t around, though. She scanned the street in both directions. Nope. Then she headed toward her building.
She lived on the second floor of four. There was an elevator, but she rarely used it; the staircase to the second floor was wide and open and right near the front door. And Sherlock was clomping down it now, his heavy boots—not the Docs he’d been wearing the other day but straight-up combat boots—striking the terrazzo tile.
“Hey,” he said, as if it were totally normal for him to just drop by. And why was he in her building, coming down from her floor? She hadn’t told him exactly where she lived.
“What are you doing here?”
“I came to check on your stitches.”
“How did you know where my apartment was?”
“That’s what I do: know things.”
“Yeah, that’s not creepy at all.”
Instead of addressing her comment, he pointed up the stairs. “I stuck a note in your door. Your neighbor told me you went for a run.”
“Neighbor?”
“Chubby guy? Combover?”
“Burt. Right.” Burt lived across the hall. Retired or independently affluent, or something, he was the building snoop.
Still feeling stung from his rejection of her—whether or not he’d been a gentleman or a hero or a saint about it, it still hurt—she headed up the stairs, meaning to pass him right by. “Okay, well, I have to get back to work.”
He caught her good arm as she passed. “Don’t blow me off, little outlaw. I want to see your arm.”
Twisting her arm from his hold, she huffed, “You don’t get to tell me what to do. Ever. You blew your shot at that. And that’s a dumb thing to call me.” She liked it, actually. She got a tingle every time he said it. Which was what made it dumb.
He smiled, and she couldn’t help but notice the ring through his lip. He had a habit, she’d noticed, of pulling the ball back and forth with his teeth; now the ball was right on his lip. “Did I blow my shot? Really?”
Oh, what an arrogant jerk. “You’re the one who dumped me on the sidewalk and drove away.”
“Little bit of revisionist history going on there, I think.” Still grinning. His teeth were really good. And those eyes, jeez.
His hair had flopped over his forehead the day of the protest. Today, he had it slicked back. She preferred it floppy, she thought. But with it off his face, his eyes seemed even more intense. She wondered what he looked like truly angry. She could practically imagine cold fire shooting from those eyes.
“What do you want, Sherlock? If that’s even your real name.”
“It’s the realest name I have. And I told you—I want to check on your stitches. How’re they feeling?”
“Like I got shot and some weirdo sewed me up in his sewer of a kitchen.”
Now the smile went away, and he turned to face her full on. “I’m being serious, Sadie. You healing okay?”
“Why do you care?”
His expression then was like parental disappointment—and so was his tone. “Sadie. Come on.”
“You want to dip that sentence back into your bucket of condescension? I think you missed a spot.”
She got a hint then of what he would look like angry. He stepped forward and pushed her against the wall. He was standing one step down from her, but he was still at least a whole head taller. He leaned down so they were face to face, so close that his beautiful, lush beard brushed her face as he spoke.
“You bought this attention when you launched yourself onto my bike, little outlaw. I risked heat of my own getting you out of there, and I brought you into my house and fixed you up. You’re pissed because I wouldn’t fuck you when you were gagging for it, but I was trying to take care of you then, too. Now, all I want to do is make sure my handiwork is holding up and see if maybe the stitches are ready to come out. I can take a look right here if you want.”
Sadie was acutely aware of how good he smelled—not heavy enough to be cologne or aftershave. Maybe his shampoo, or whatever he’d put in his hair to slick it back. Enticing, whatever it was. He seemed to be much more conscientious about his personal grooming than he was about his housekeeping.
She was also acutely aware that she’d just run several miles, and she did not smell nearly so great.
She pushed on his shoulders, and he stepped back. “You can come up.”
“Good girl,” was his reply.
CHAPTER SEVEN
When they got to her door, she pulled out the card he’d slid into the frame.
She read the front, then looked up at him with an incredulous cant to her mouth. “Your biker gang has business cards?”
“Motorcycle club. And sure.” He took the card out of her hand. These were different from the Virtuoso Cycles cards that all the Horde who worked there carried. These bore the Night Horde SoCal patch, the bearer’s road name, and the general number and email to the clubhouse.
They’d been Lakota’s idea, shortly after he’d taken over the PR work for the club. He’d suggested it as part of the ‘charm patrol’ that Hoosier often talked about: the idea that the more good work the club did in the community, the more positive their presence among their neighbors, the less those neighbors would care about the other, less-good stuff they did. So they participated in pretty much all the charity events in the county, especially in and near Madrone, and they helped out people who needed help—the club as a whole, and individual members, too.
Lakota thought that it would be a good idea, when a patch pulled off and helped a disabled driver or rider, or just did something helpful and decent, they could hand off a card and say, “give us a call if we can help.” Hoosier had thought it a brilliant idea.
So now they all carried cards.
He flipped it to the back, where he’d handwritten the important part, and returned it to Sadie. “That’s my personal number. That’s how you reach me.”
“Why would I reach you?”
Feeling weary and frustrated, he sighed. Loudly. “Jesus fuck, sweetheart. Put your spikes down. I’m trying to be a good guy here.”
“Why?”
The temptation to throw up his hands and walk back down those stairs and out of this little chick’s life gave a sharp tug. But he liked her. He’d spent a disconcerting amount of the last week and a half thinking about her. He’d been drinking less, too. Correlation didn’t imply causation, but it didn’t preclude it, either.
Not that he had a drinking problem. It was just a personal observation he’d made. It had been nearly a week since he’d woken up with a hangover.
“Because I am a good guy. Because I put those stitches in, and I want to make sure you heal okay.” He smiled with an intent to soften her, and put his hand on her cheek. “Because I like you, little outlaw. Spikes and all.”
Her eyes—not violet in the bright light of the hallway, just a kind of pretty greyish blue—stared into his. He smiled and let his eyes travel down her body. She was a sweaty mess. Her black hair, the streaks a less vivid blue than they’d been, was plastered to her head, and her mesh t-shirt clung wetly to her body. It was July in the Inland Empire, but she wore spandex r
unning pants that went down to her ankles. Her running shoes were hot pink and neon yellow.
“I don’t know what to make of you,” she finally said.
“Have I given you reason to think I’m trouble? I mean, besides not fucking you—which I’d say was also me being a good guy.”
“It was humiliating. And not helpful.”
“Was it wrong, though?”
Again, she stared for a few seconds. She had not yet opened her door. Finally, she slid her hand into a pocket in her waistband and pulled out a key. As she slid it into the lock, she said, “No. It wasn’t.” She opened her door and stepped through. “Come on in.”
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