Dead Souls MC: Prospects Series Books 1-5

by Savannah Rylan

  But some of the other doctors went to bat for her. They stated that Piper had taken less than two weeks of vacation during the whole of the years she’d been with the hospital in Redding. And that if something had happened so catastrophically in her world that it required the three months of vacation she’d saved up, then the hospital owed it to her to give it to her. After always covering shifts and being there when she didn’t need to be, if anyone deserved that time off, it was Piper.

  And I agreed with them.

  However, it was hard walking around work with all the rumors flying around. Some people thought this was a trial run for a research sabbatical on her part. Some people thought she was sick and didn’t want to be treated at the hospital where she worked. Some people thought her and Rock were having issues. Divorce, maybe. Some people rumored she was even considering switching hospitals.

  I had to sit there and listen to it all, too. Listen to it while I knew the truth about everything.

  I grew worried, though. Six weeks had passed, and not a single person had heard from Piper. I tried to mitigate it as best as I could, saying that she deserved privacy. She deserved this time off because of how hard she worked. That her and Rock were probably cashing in and traveling around the world with their kiddos, making memories they couldn’t create here.

  But those ideas only did so much.

  I dragged myself home from another night shift and pulled myself into my dinky apartment. It was old. Rundown. Up three flights of steps and down a hallway. I shoved myself into my small studio apartment and collapsed in the foyer, closing the door with my hand.

  I was so tired, and the only thing I could think about was Bear.

  I pulled out my phone to see if he had called. To see if anyone had contacted me. But there was nothing. No missed calls. No texts. No emails. On a whim a couple weeks back, I’d called Bear. I mean, I didn’t have his number. But I still carried around the number he had back in high school. Yeah, how pathetic was that? I still had my high school ex’s fucking number in my cell phone. I’d had three phones since high school, and his number made it through to every single one of them.

  “Probably not even his number now,” I murmured.

  He probably had some sort of private number now that he was rolling with a crew that got themselves into wars.

  “Fucking Bear,” I whispered.

  I sat there in the foyer and leaned my head against the wall. Ever since our fight, I’d been numb. Dead inside, practically. I’d been back and forth to the hospital, and not once did another man in black pop up. Not once did anyone reach out. Not Diesel. Not Piper. Not Rock. Not Bear. Not… anyone.

  It was like I hadn’t ever existed to them.

  “Just another cog in the machine,” I murmured.

  I leaned over, placing my head on my purse. And as I laid there in the small entryway of my apartment, tears slipped down my cheeks. While Piper got to go to sleep with Rock every night and take care of Bear, I was forced to wonder about his condition. Wonder if his wounds had healed up all right. Had he contracted an infection? Busted his stitches? Gotten hurt again?

  All I had was the paranoia that caused me to always look over my shoulder.

  “Just a few minutes of rest,” I whispered.

  I kept my windows locked now and the blinds drawn. I had another lock placed on my apartment door after okaying it with the landlord. I couldn’t sleep during the day. The sounds were too loud. Every time a car got too close to my apartment or honked their horn, I snapped awake. Every sound that came close to me, I analyzed. Was it that man in black? Had he come back for me? Was it Bear, maybe?

  Had he finally come back for me?

  “So tired,” I said, whimpering.

  My night shifts at the hospital consisted of me chugging coffee and constantly making rounds. Every once in a while, a decent enough emergency came through those doors. But for the most part, Redding’s E.R. was tame during the wee hours of the morning. Which worked in my favor, because I was stealing more naps than usual on my shifts. Hell, for the first time in my medical career, I was contemplating something other than night classes and night shifts.

  Anything to temper this exhaustion I felt in my bones.

  “Why did you let him do this to you again?” I murmured.

  My eyes slid closed and I turned over onto my stomach. I nuzzled my cheek into my purse as if it were some sort of comfortable pillow, my body giving out. I slipped into the darkness of slumber. But, as always, I danced on the precipice of it. Not quite asleep, but not quite awake.

  It was the most exhausting thing I’d ever experienced.

  “Come on,” I hissed.

  I hated that I let Bear get to me like this. Get under my skin again. Only for him to turn around and to the exact same fucking thing he did that night. I replayed it over and over again. The sweet love-making. The twinkling of the stars in his eyes as the woods covered our nakedness. The smell of the food in the air he’d brought with him when he told me he had a surprise for me.

  The look of hurt in his eyes when I mentioned I’d gotten into Stanford.

  “Stop it, brain,” I whispered.

  I replayed how those words sounded falling from his lips. How the words “I love you” sat against his tongue after he said them for the first time ever. I was the first one to admit my feelings for him. I was the first one to start that train. And it took him months to follow suit. It took him months to finally grace me with those words I knew were already true for him. That night, he had love dripping from his eyes. And I was eager to set up our future. But, instead of professing it back to him like I’d had so many times before, I dove in too quickly. I decided to dive into our future instead of saying those words back. I decided to prioritize what I needed from him instead of what he needed from me.

  And the end result was him walking away. While I was sprawled out on a blanket, naked. With the wilderness chirping around me. Mocking me, for the misstep I’d made.

  “I’m sorry, Bear,” I said, crying softly against my purse.

  I curled up against the floor and sighed. I wanted to call Piper, but I knew it was useless. I hadn’t spoken to her in three weeks. And the times I had spoken to her, she was quick. Brief. Abrupt. She talked quietly into her cell phone, like she wasn’t supposed to be talking with me at all. And whenever someone came around the corner to ask what she was doing, she promptly hung up the call.

  I’d gone from favored within the group to completely banned in a matter of seconds.

  Every time I got her on the phone, I tried bringing up Bear. Ask how his condition was and how he was healing. But she wouldn’t talk about it. Which only worried me more. I tried getting her to talk about Rock. Her kids. How things were going. Anything that would give me any sort of insight into how the guys were. How they were. How the kids were. How things were going with this Lars dude or whatever.

  But she gave me nothing.

  She wanted to talk about work. My residency. What the hospital was saying about her abrupt leave. And I lied to her about it. I told her things were good and that people were happy she was finally taking the time off. No use making her worry about anything else. And if she wasn’t going to tell me things, why the fuck did I have to tell her things?

  It sounded petty, but it was all I had.

  I sighed as I turned over onto my side. I felt more alone than ever before. As I laid there on the floor, debating on what the fuck I was doing with my life, I allowed myself to dream again. Dream of my future, like I’d done that night. Lying beside Bear after giving him my virginity. With only three months left in my accelerated residency due to outside internship hours at a clinic near Stanford, I found myself planning my leave. I found myself running down hospitals I could apply to if I could get a solid recommendation from Piper. My attending doctor I reported to for residency purposes.

  And for the first time in six weeks, I finally drifted off to sleep. I let the darkness consume me as I laid there on the floor, too tired to
get to my bed.

  With thoughts of leaving Redding and never coming back again entertaining the thought processes of my mind.

  15

  Bear

  I stared at myself in the mirror as I placed my palms down into the double vanity. This massive bathroom, and I’d been sharing it with myself for the past six weeks. I stared at my face. My torso. The wounds that had healed. The scars they left behind. And in my mind, I imagined Margot wrapping her arms around my body. Coming up behind me and kissing me against my back before peeking underneath my arm.

  If I had a dollar for every time I envisioned that, I could’ve bought myself a damn island to escape this bullshit from.

  In the last six weeks, my body had healed up fine. Piper was a great doctor, and she made sure I was taken care of. And wonderfully drugged-up during the process. But my chest still ached. There was a hole the size of Margot in my heart, and nothing Piper did stopped that bleeding. Stopped that hurting. Stopped that insane spiral my mind made every night whenever my dreams decided to conjure her.

  Conjure the hurt and pain in her eyes before she stormed out of this place.

  Pushing Margot away was one of the worst things I’d ever done. Even though I told myself it was for her safety, I still regretted it. I still wished I could have gone back and done something different. And yes, she didn’t need to be seen as involved with us after the mafia came back into our lives. She didn’t need to be caught up in this shit.

  But I’d fully caught myself up in her.

  I wonder if she misses me, too.

  “You damn well know she doesn’t,” I murmured to myself.

  I scoffed as I bent down, going through my normal routine. Drag my ass out of bed. Take a shower. Stare at myself in the mirror until I was dry. Brush my teeth. Put on clothes. Go get some coffee. Grimace at how shitty it tastes after brushing my fucking teeth.

  Think about Margot until the sun set, then get up and do it all over again.

  This warehouse was a castled fortress. And while I’d finally memorized the pattern of the winding hallways, I still found things about it I didn’t know. Like the armory rooms, where each of us could hole ourselves up with guns, ammunition, and gear in order to wait out an attack. Or the library with books. Fucking books, from floor to ceiling.

  Who the fuck read that many books?

  “Probably Saint,” I said, chuckling to myself.

  Myself.

  I talked to myself a lot nowadays.

  Because every since Piper had been threatened, things had been eerily quiet. Not just from the mafia and Lars Norden, but from everyone else around me. It was like we were all waiting for the other shoe to drop. For the other bomb to hit our tracks so all of this made sense. And even though six weeks had also healed up Piper’s mark around her neck, Rock hovered over her and the kids in some of the worst ways possible.

  Whenever I passed by their bedroom at night to get a snack, sometimes I heard them arguing. Other times I saw Piper slamming out of the room, heading for the entertainment room with the kids. And other times, I saw Rock slinking out of there with his tail between his legs before his eyes connected with mine.

  We were all in a shit place with all this.

  I mean, we all had our jobs. During the day, Rock dug up information and dirt on the mafia and Lars. Or at least he tried to. Diesel and Grave were on lookout duty on the rooftop of this damn place. Hunkered down behind barricades on the top of the warehouse that looked more like heaps of junk than anything else. I was tasked with cleaning up all the guns and gear we had around the place, since my body couldn't do much of anything else until after it had healed. But once Piper gave me the all-clear about a week ago, I took my place up at the front door. Just in case someone had the balls to storm into this place. The efforts were pretty much fruitless, though.

  I had to admit Diesel did a damn fine job of making this thing still look abandoned. With the junk on the roof and the dusty dirt in the front lawn and the outside crawling with grime and rust around the edges. It helped to conceal us while Rock tried to find something that could help us in this random-ass fight.

  He wasn’t digging up much, though.

  The only thing he could dig up was chatter about some big deal going down about an hour away. Not even on the outskirts of Redding. It was rumored that dirty money was exchanging hands for the purchase of some construction site. One that had been abandoned for years. And according to Rock, after Toxin and Ryker questioned the finance man brokering the deal, he confirmed that the men involved were criminals. From a drug-dealing criminal empire based out of Redding to what the man called a “more snazzy, black-suit wearing kind of criminal empire.”

  Sounded like Lars and his men to us.

  It was the only explanation as to why they hadn’t focused on Sutton and the club for now. But that begged so many other questions. Why a construction site an hour away? What were they doing there? I mean, Rock couldn't even get positive IDs on the men using the mediator to broker the deal in the first place. For all we knew, the assumptions we drew were wrong.

  Deals like that did take a while, though. If people did them right, they sometimes took two to three months. Research had to be done. Excavation had to take place. Movement of equipment had to be timed right.

  And sometimes, those deals took longer if the criminals involved got paranoid. Or creeped out. Or generally felt as if they were about to be wronged.

  So, with that information in hand, I did something Diesel would have looked down upon had he known I was doing it. At night, for the past two weeks, I’d snuck out of the warehouse and walked my bike down the road. I’d strike it up in the shadows and ride toward the hospital, wanting nothing more than a glimpse of Margot. I wanted to make sure she was okay. I wanted to make sure she was happy. Content. At the very least, still getting on with her residency.

  I memorized her schedule. I knew when she took her breaks. Took her lunch. So, I’d go and sit there for two hours. Two fucking hours in the dead of night, concealed by all the cars in the hospital parking lot. And during those two hours, she’d take a small break as well as lunch. On her break, she’d come outside and draw in deep breaths. Sometimes she’d have a nice white coat. Sometimes, she’d be covered in blood. She’d come outside and sit on a bench off in the corner with her lunch, sometimes scarfing it down. Sometimes not touching it at all.

  I was shocked I had the self-control not to approach her on the nights I knew she was struggling.

  I went through the motions of the day, trying to bide my time until the evening. I cleaned up the weapons and made sure they were stocked with ammunition. I glossed up the leather gear and shined up the bulletproof body armor we all had. Then, I took my spot up by the door. I picked up the radio on the door-side table that kept me in contact with Diesel and Grave on the roof. And the hours ticked on without an ounce of trouble heading our way.

  I was dismissed from door duty and Knox took my place. Sleeping through the day, then taking watch at night. Brewer did the same damn thing. Sleeping through the day, then taking his scoped sniper up to the roof with some snacks and kept perched throughout the night.

  The hardest thing was getting past those two assholes with my bike.

  But I found a way to do it.

  I went back to my room and passed the time with movies and television shows. And once one in the morning rolled around, I snuck out of my room. I made my footsteps silent as I headed for the garage door, sneaking my way out of it. I used a back door instead of the main garage door to get my bike out of the garage. I stuck close to the outer perimeter of the building, using the roof overhang as a shade from Brewer on the roof. I walked down the elongated side, until the dip in the rocks allowed me to sink underneath them if I clung tightly enough to the side of the cliff. With rocks above my head and a thin sheet of rock below my feet, I rolled my bike in front of me. I hunched down, steadying it with my hands until the rocks broke more than half a mile later. Then, I slid the bike up the ra
vine, climbed to the surface, wiped the sweat from my brow, and struck my bike up.

  It was a dangerous trek to make. But it was worth it to see Margot.

  It was worth it to make sure she was all right.

  As I rode to the hospital, something felt different. I couldn't really explain it, other than I felt I’d been pegged. I pulled over to the side of the road about four miles from the hospital, then decided to check my phone. Maybe Brewer saw me this time. Or heard something and wanted me to report to Knox. But I didn’t have any messages on my phone. Still, I looked around me. Something felt off. Something felt wrong about what I was doing.

  Was Margot in trouble?

  I pushed myself back onto the road, ready to speed my way to the hospital. But I didn’t even get another mile up the fucking deserted highway before a black SUV came careening out from the shadows. It screeched to a grinding halt, causing me to turn my bike as it skidded to a stop. Burning rubber clouded my view as the door to the SUV opened, and out jumped a man in an all-black suit.

  Holy fuck. They’d been tailing me.

  Did they know where the warehouse was?

  “Well, hello Bear,” the man said.

  I clenched my jaw as I revved the engine of my bike. Just in case one of the guys had tailed me from the warehouse.

  The one time I needed my stealth to not be as fluent as it usually is.

  “You know, I’ve been trying to answer this question for damn near a week. My guys and I have a little bet running, you see,” the man said.

  “Whatever it is, it’s none of your fucking business,” I growled.

  The men surrounded me, drawing their guns as I stood there. With my bike between my legs. Staring this nameless asshole down.