by A. J. Downey
“How will I know if you’re okay?” I asked and my voice was strained.
“I got you a burner,” he said and at my perplexed look explained, “A prepaid untraceable cell phone.”
“Oh.” I whispered, feeling stupid.
“I’ll text you with updates as best I can.” He promised.
“What happens if something goes wrong?” I asked quietly.
“No.” his voice was solid, bordering on stern, “Don’t even put that out there Baby. Everything is going to be fine.” He stood up abruptly and toed off his boots. He came around the other side of the bed shrugging out of his jacket and cut and hanging it on the hook set in the back of the closet door. He got onto the bed on top of the covers and I tucked myself into his side gratefully.
“I don’t want to tell you too much,” he said, cuddling me close and I nodded against his chest. Laying against him like this wasn’t exactly comfortable with the fresh battering my poor body had taken, but at the same time nothing I did, no matter which way I moved was. I made myself as comfortable and I could and still be near him and I soaked in his body heat, grateful that he held me. Grateful that I was alive so he could.
“Just come back to me safely.” I begged and he kissed my forehead.
“You know it Sunshine.” He said fiercely. I lay against him quietly for a time.
“I thought I was never going to see you again.” I confessed feebly.
“Like to shave twenty years off my life when I heard you through that phone line.” He shared, his breath warm as he spoke against my hair.
More silence.
“He knows how many of you now, doesn’t he?” I asked.
“He thinks he has an idea of how we operate, but he doesn’t. We got a few more tricks up our sleeves.” Ethan assured me.
“I hope so.” I said and the constant roller coaster of emotions, the battering my body had taken, the medicine Doc had given me, just all of it had taken too much out of me. I struggled to stay awake but failed, slipping into the deep and dreamless sleep of the truly exhausted against the warm, hard body of the man I loved.
When I woke, sunlight streamed through the slats of the blinds. I reached out and found the bed beside me cold and empty.
“I’m right here.” He said and his voice quickly soothed me. He sat beside the bed, his tall large frame folded uncomfortably into a battered brown metal folding chair.
“How are you doing?” he asked me. I blushed faintly.
“I really need to pee.” I admitted and he laughed.
“Okay. Let me help you.” He made to pick me up and I waved him off a bit.
“Just help me to stand please?” I asked, explaining, “Its better if I move around on my own as much as possible, I’ll get too stiff otherwise and it’ll be worse.” He nodded, expression grave knowing that this bit of knowledge came from experience. He let me brace against his outstretched forearms and lever myself up off the bed.
I bit back a cry of pain, moving first thing the next morning was always the worst, and gave an experimental shuffling step towards the door. Okay, not so bad. I looked down at myself and for the first time realized I was in Ethan’s blue button down shirt he’d given me. I blinked, wasn’t that at the apartment?
“The apartment.” I groaned. The door had been half off its hinges the frame shattered, anyone could have gone in…
“Taken care of Baby. All our stuff is moved out and in storage. A lot of the club’s Old Ladies saw to it.” I sagged with relief and took one determined shuffling step after the other in the direction of the nearest bathroom.
“I need a hot shower, it will help loosen me up.” I said slipping into the bathroom.
“Okay I’ll get you some towels.” He said softly, he laid a kiss over my left eyebrow and I shut the door. I did my business and when I opened the bathroom door again it was to Ethan standing outside with his knuckles poised to knock. He grinned at me.
“Good timing Babe.” He set the towels on the closed lid of the toilet and slipped past me, bending to crank on the old shower knobs. I admired how his jeans molded to his ass as he bent to do it and smiled to myself, biting my bottom lip.
“Why you blushing?” he asked when he straightened back up, his thick fingers going to the buttons on his shirt.
“Admiring the view.” I said quietly and he smiled and let out a laugh.
“Babe you mean to tell me you’re standing there looking like death warmed over and you were still checking out my ass?” he asked, a teasing twinkle in his eyes.
“What? Not my fault you created a little monster.” I said and we were both smiling. He bent at the waist and placed his lips above mine, a hair’s breadth from touching.
“I like that you check out my ass Ms. Fletcher.” He said softly and touched his lips to mine in a sweet soft kiss that had my muscles turn languid.
Steam started to fill the small bathroom and he drew back. He held out his hands and helped me over the edge of the tub which was a lot harder than under normal circumstances. I stepped under the hot shower spray, and instantly relaxed the rest of the way, the heat finishing what Ethan had started.
“Take your time Baby.” He said and drew the clear shower curtain closed around me. He crossed his arms over his chest and I realized that he had every intention of staying with me for which I was grateful.
I could feel our time together trickling like the last grains of sand through an hour glass. When the sand was gone, our time together would be up and I felt like I would be plunging headlong into the unknown. Ethan had been my rock the last month or so, my strength when I’d had none and now he had to leave for who knew how long to clean up the mess I had gotten myself into and had been in since college.
I felt a sudden molten surge of anger both at Chadwick and at myself for staying with him for so long. I bowed my head beneath the shower spray and let the water run down the back of my head, my long hair guiding it away from my face. I scrubbed at my face with hot water and my hands. I smoothed my hair back and straightened. Washing my self-pity and useless anger down the drain.
I was physically small, my size and stature working against me when it came to any physical altercation with Chadwick, but I had other things to fight back with. Ethan and the brothers of the Sacred Hearts MC didn’t have to go against Chadwick completely blind. I’d lived in that house, been a prisoner of that house for the better part of eight years. I knew everything about it. Where the cameras were, and truth be told, there were few. I also knew all of the combinations and passwords for the alarm company. I may not be able to fight physically but it didn’t take me out of the equation completely.
“Ethan.” I said softly.
“Yeah Babe?” he asked, perking up on the other side of the curtain.
“I think I may be able to help more than I’ve been…” I said.
“How’s that Sunshine?” he asked, curiosity coloring his tone. So I started to tell him, everything. Chadwick was a creature of habit, I told him when he went to bed when he got up, what time he left the house, the route he traditionally took to leave the neighborhood, how he could be expected promptly at what time, and how even if he were going to be late, still I would know what time he would arrive…
“Hold on, hold on, hold on Babe!” he ducked out of the bathroom and shouted down the hallway to someone. A moment later he ducked back into the bathroom and sat down on the closed lid of the toilet with a notepad in his hands. I smiled at the blurry steam obscured image of him furiously scratching away, pad and pen balanced on his knee.
“Go ahead.” He said at last, and I did.
Every last freaking detail.
I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before.
I don’t know what scared me more, the fact that I was helping these men likely plot the murder of my husband, or the fact that helping these men plot the potential murder of my husband didn’t bother me in the slightest. No, I was beyond done with Chadwick and his cruelty and if that meant I needed to
take a different sort of lesson from him, adopt a bit of the coldness I saw in the men around me into myself, then so be it.
I stayed under the hot spray until it began to turn tepid and I was beyond pruned. When I stepped out Ethan was waiting with a large fluffy towel which he laid gently around me. I patted myself dry, carefully over the really tender parts of me and let him carry me back to his room. He set me down gently and truth be told, with my ribs in the shape they were in, it hurt more to have him carry me than it did shuffling at my slow half-pace on my own. I gently told him as much and he looked sorrowful.
“I’m sorry, I wish you had told me I would have put you down.” He looked mournful and I wished I had said nothing I smiled and laid my hand over his heart.
“I love you.” I told him, and the thin veneer of ice caused by all of the stress and negative emotions we were both feeling cracked a bit, and he smiled.
“I love you too Sunshine.” He said and held me carefully and close, “I love you too.”
Chapter 27
Trig…
I let Ashton get dressed, helping only when her body wouldn’t allow her to do it herself. She was a fucking mess. Her entire right side painted a deep purple from her hip almost all the way up to her armpit. Her left cheek had a scrape along her cheekbone under her eye and was puffy and bruised as well. She’d said it was a glancing blow, that the wall had taken most of the impact but still…
I zipped up the back of her dress, I’d needed to hold it to the floor and raise it for her after she’d stepped into it. Bending was proving to be difficult. She’d amazed me when she’d started blurting everything she knew about the house and it’s lay out, surveillance, guard habits and the habits of her husband while she’d showered. We were going to ask her about all of it when she was clean and into some fresh clothes. Before taking her to Hayden’s, but she had been one step ahead of me.
I’d passed the notebook off to Reaver in the hallway. He’d taken it to the chapel where we had Data set up and a virtual tactical war room going. We were still trying to figure out what exactly we were going to do about Chadwick Granger. I mean sure, we were going to end him one way or another but we had to be careful. Plan it meticulously so none of us got hit with any blow back.
Everyone knew he and Ashton were going through an ugly separation. We’d tried fighting it out through the proper channels but when one of the ‘proper channels’ had shown up at the apartment to tell her I’d died as a way to fuck with her head… and later, when the cops had let the two bone heads from the gym go without so much as a single charge being filed even with the video tape of them attacking us. Well, let’s just say the proper channels weren’t so proper anymore. Leastways not for us.
It was time to do it old school, which none of us wanted, but fuck! We felt painted into a corner and we either did something or one of us was going to suffer way more than Ashton already had. That just wasn’t going to happen. That decision had been unanimous in every way. Dray hadn’t so much as blinked and he was usually our only hold out. Consistently voting against the majority just to be a pain in the ass. Ashton sank onto the edge of the bed with a gusty sigh. I knelt in front of her.
“What cha thinkin’?” I asked her. A million different things crossed her pretty little battered face and I could read every single one of them. Which presented another problem all of its own.
Ashton couldn’t lie to save her life and this time, her life really might just depend on it.
“I’m scared for all of you. I want to know what’s going to happen but I know you can’t tell me because I can’t lie and I need to be surprised and if I know too much well...”
Damn, it was uncanny how she could read my mind sometimes. I took her hands in mine.
“All you need to know is that we’re going to hide you. We’re going to protect you and he really is never going to hurt you again.” I kissed the backs of her knuckles and stood slowly, supporting her so she could pull herself up to her feet.
“I believe you.” She said softly and I smiled down at her.
“Good.” I leaned down and kissed her and drew her out to the common room of the club. She moved painfully slow, like a woman three times her age and I let her take her time. Dragon, Dray, Doc and Reaver were standing on the little stage we had for live band performances. A good portion of the MC in attendance. Dragon was giving the rundown.
“We’ve got three panel vans and whatever any other vehicles we can get out hands on out there. We don’t know what kind of surveillance the club may be under but we figure better paranoid than sorry. We set up one of those tent carport things, I don’t know what you call ‘em…” Dray leaned in and mumbled something and Dragon turned to him sharply.
“Eh, whatever you smart ass.” Dragon grumbled and racked his neck to the side. Dray grinned and chewed his gum and looked all too pleased with himself. Those two were always at each other with the barbs and sarcastic comments. Laughter tittered through their audience and I couldn’t say it was a bad thing. Shit was pretty much as serious as it ever got around here with this.
“Anyways, before I was so rudely interrupted, vehicles need to line up, back into the station one by one. We’ll load Ashton into one of them. Everybody keep your trap shut! We’ll pull a train out of here, every other car go left or right, they won’t be able to track us all and it’ll give us a better chance of getting’ her to the undisclosed safe house.” He crossed his arms in that awkward way of his.
“She gets found we’ll know we got a rat.” He intoned. “You all know what we do to rats.” Silence swept through the MC. Yeah, we all knew what happened to rats and it wasn’t pretty. We’d caught one a couple years back. The one responsible for selling out the club, causing Tilly and those two members’ deaths.
He’d been taken apart, one little piece at a time. He’d died screaming in a lot of pain. I palmed the back of my neck and pulled trying to ease some of the sudden tension in my back. While we weren’t all bad men, enough of us had stained our souls with enough black we weren’t at all sure where we’d end up when the reaper came calling, but we would do what we could in the time we had left to make up for it in some small part.
“Right let’s get to it.” Dragon said.
Ashton looked up at me.
“Which van am I going to be in?” she asked softly. I put my finger to my lips. We weren’t at all sure what kind of surveillance we were under. Data, who came by his name honestly as our tech-wizard, had swept the building for bugs and had come up empty which freaked us out more because it pointed to us having some kind of rat.
I picked up her small suitcase and we went out to the temporary carport erected outside the front doors. We were being over the top paranoid which wasn’t paranoid enough as far as I was concerned. Not when it came to Ashton’s safety.
The first van backed in. We made a big tedious show of opening doors, moving around closed it up and it pulled out and down the drive, starting the line. Next came a member’s Durango, same deal. This went on and on until Loyal backed his pickup in. I stashed Ashton’s suitcase in the bed of the truck and shut the lid of his new bed cover. He got out and came around. He smiled at her and nodded and she looked up at me with surprised golden eyes. I took her to the passenger side and we got her situated in the cramped back seat, which wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be with how small her body was.
I kissed her gently once, twice a third time and then I had to let her go. I’d be damned if it was going to be forever. I put my lips against her ear and told her to stay down for the entire ride. She nodded her understanding and when I pulled back her golden eyes were swimming with tears. I backed up and she mouthed at me,
“Be careful.”
I nodded and we closed up the truck. I rapped my knuckles on the roof twice and Derek pulled out to join the line. We went through about ten more cars, vans and trucks and then it was time to open the gates. The long line of vehicles began pulling out, left then right, left then right they went up
either direction of the highway and I tried very hard not to look too long at any one car in particular.
Ashton had the burner phone and was instructed to text me as soon as she was at Hayden’s. Derek was under the same instruction.
We finished loading up the last van while cars pulled out and shut the doors. Data started her up and the rest of us took to our bikes. We left the clubhouse behind, locking things down tight with a couple of brothers and took ourselves to our rendezvous point.
As Dray got off his bike and unchained the gate and pulled it aside, the texts came in from Derek and Ashton one on top of the other.
I’m safe. I love you.
@ The safe house.
Reaver rode through first and was opening up the old corrugated steel door, sliding it aside so we could use the old warehouse building.
“We good?” Dragon asked as Data jumped down from the van.
“Yeah, got some radio traffic, confused the hell out of the guys watching the clubhouse. They went for the Durango. Texted Smalls to let him know.” Data was grinning. He was a hardcore nerd and tactician. He spoke, we listened for the most part. Only ever had to reign him in once or twice. I sighed.
“They’re clear. We clear here?” I asked. Everyone already knew who they were so I didn’t need to explain.
“I think so, yeah.” He said.
“You think so or you know so?” Dray demanded gruffly.
“I know so! They only had one sedan with two guys watching the club. Amateur hour out there.” He had the back of the van open and was pulling out computer crap and some folding tables.
“Help me get his shit set up so we can plan this.” He demanded and we all grimly complied. We all wanted this over.
After about an hour of discussion and Data pecking away at his laptop keyboard we realized we were fairly short on some crucial information.
“So what do we do?” Dragon grunted.
“Observe and report. Simple surveillance. Find a good spot for Trigger to set up camp and go from there…” Data shrugged.
