by Zoey Parker
“What? Who’s they? Who’s her?”
“The girl! The girl from last night! They went after her.”
I stepped away, seeing him gasp and put a hand to his throat. It didn’t register in my mind, though. I took a step away, then another.
They knew I would come. They knew she would be alone.
I ran outside, pulling out my phone as I did. Axel and the others looked stunned but followed me in getting on their bikes.
“They went after her!” I screamed, starting the engine. The phone at the clubhouse rang and rang. “Where is everybody? Shit!” I wanted to throw the phone on the ground but slid it in my pocket and settled for peeling away from the Wolves’ clubhouse.
It didn’t occur to me to care what my men thought about the way I raced away, after Erica. All that mattered was finding her.
Chapter Thirteen
Erica
I couldn’t help feeling a little shaky when Vince left, though I did my best to hide it. With him no longer there, it was just the rest of the club and me. I felt more comfortable while he was around.
I knew I was safest in the clubhouse. It was the chasm of difference between me and the people who surrounded me that left a bad taste in my mouth. On any given day, I would have crossed the street to avoid these people. While the past twelve hours had been proof of how wrong I was, the feeling of being a fish out of water was hard to shake.
It didn’t help that the men treated me with kid gloves. Was that because Vince told them to leave me alone? Was I…his woman?
I looked at the men as they passed through the lounge, wondering what they were thinking. Did they see me as a new “old lady”? Was that what they called it in real life, or was that just something from TV and the movies? Regardless, did they think that was who I was?
Did I want to be?
It was impossible to separate the man from his club. Granted, I didn’t know him very well. But I wanted to. For now, the line between who he was and what he did was blurred.
I wanted the man. I wanted the way he made me feel. There was an instant spark between us, something I couldn’t deny.
I didn’t want the club. I didn’t want to have anything to do with the world he traveled in. These women, so cheerful and helpful and on top of things. I didn’t want to be them, essentially playing den mother to a bunch of little boys. Den mothers didn’t sleep with their boys, though. That was the key difference. I knew these girls did.
Brett approached with a smile, as though hearing the direction my thoughts were taking. “You doing all right?” she asked, handing me a glass of water. “You look like you’re taking it well.”
I nodded, not wanting to upset her or ruin the delicate sort of friendship we were forming. I felt a strange kinship with her. Maybe it was her approachability. Or maybe it was the feeling that we both cared for Vince. We shared concern for him. Only, in my case, it was my fault he was getting into so much trouble. He tried to convince me otherwise, but deep down I knew it to be true.
I gave her what I hoped was a confident smile. “I’m doing my best, just like everybody else.”
She nodded sagely. “That’s all any of us can do.” She looked around the room, and into the room where the poker game had taken place the night before. Now, a bunch of people were playing Monopoly. I stifled a giggle when I saw how seriously they were taking it. Who would have guessed the big, bad biker dudes would be so into a board game?
Brett saw me looking, and smiled. “It gets pretty intense,” she murmured, nodding in their direction. “They can turn anything into a fight.”
“Monopoly is a pretty intense game,” I agreed, grinning. “And Uno. Ever play that?”
“Oh, Uno’s been banned,” Brett said, shuddering. “I mean it. You wanna see things get ugly? Vince said he never wanted to see a pack of playing cards in here again.”
I laughed at the image of grown men fighting over a silly card game.
She shrugged after a moment. “At times like this, you have to do something to get your mind off of what’s happening.”
“Does this happen all that often? Being locked down, I mean?”
“Nah. It’s not usually this dramatic. Every once in a while there’s a flare-up. I mean, when the explosion happened a week ago, and some of the guys got killed, we were locked in overnight until Vince knew it was safe for us to leave. That was a scary night. I was glad to be here, with everybody.”
That got me thinking. “What happened that night? I heard it was a bad drug deal or something like that.”
Brett shrugged. “I don’t know these things. We’re not really allowed to know. I mean, the less they tell us—the girls and me—the less dangerous it is for us. And for the club, too. Who knows what would happen if another club got a hold of us and tried to get us to talk?”
“I know Vince shared things with you, though.” She shot me a look that fell somewhere between surprise and defensiveness. I held up my hands. “I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that. Believe me. I just know you two are closer than the rest.”
Brett’s eyes turned back to the game. “The other girls…they want a good old man.” Ah, I thought, so they do call it that. “But they’re okay with looking around. They’re not in any hurry to settle down. It doesn’t matter if they bounce around from guy to guy.” She took a deep breath, letting it out in a shaky sigh. “I never wanted anybody else. It never felt right.”
My heart went out to her. I hoped Vince had been careful with her. Some men would have loved having a pretty girl like Brett hanging around them, without thinking of how it could affect their feelings. Vince didn’t seem the type, though. I might not have known him well, but I had a strong feeling about him. If I thought he was the type to hurt her, I wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with him.
She turned to me. “I wanted you to know, because he’s not the type of person to tell you himself.” Then she trailed off, suddenly shy.
“Tell me what himself?”
“Nothing happened between us last night. I don’t know whether it matters to you or what, but if it does, I didn’t want you to hate me or something. You know, thinking I was sleeping with your man.”
I cocked my head to the side. “He’s not my man.”
She smiled, a little sadly. “Isn’t he?”
Just then, a loud noise came from the Monopoly room.
“Told you,” she muttered, hurrying in to break up the fight. I shook my head and laughed at a bunch of grown men getting into a fight over who had ownership of Park Place.
So they thought he was my man. Did he share that opinion? I warmed a little, flattered. I only wished I could be one hundred percent into the idea. His world was so risky.
I was alone in the lounge, still a fish out of water. There wasn’t much for me to do. I wished I at least had a few books with me, or a phone that actually worked. I wondered if there were any emails awaiting my attention, or any texts. My fingers were itching for something to do.
Then, I thought about the laptop in the office. It was still open and, on peering into the empty room, I saw it was unlocked. I wondered if anyone would care if I used it for personal reasons and decided it couldn’t hurt. It was like losing part of my arm, not having tech at my fingertips. I felt disconnected.
Facebook would be the place to go, I decided. A few minutes of checking in with my friends’ feeds, taking a mindless quiz or two, and I felt better. I wondered briefly if I should check in with my mom to let her know I was all right. She might have tried to call, could be worried after not hearing back from me. We talked fairly regularly. I didn’t want her to be worried.
Then again, assuring her I was all right might only worry her more. I tapped my fingers on the desk, wondering what to do. For all she knew, I could have been sleeping in or out with friends. She had no idea how close I’d come to real danger. Why should I upset her? I could just tell her my phone broke and I couldn’t get in touch. That wasn’t really a lie, thanks to the way I lan
ded on it.
Then, she made up my mind for me. A little box popped up at the bottom of the screen. It was Mom. Crap. She’d found me, and just as I was about to log off.
Erica! Where are you?
I squinted at the screen. Where would I be? We talked frequently, but it wasn’t as though we were joined at the hip.
I replied, Sorry, my phone broke, and I have to get it replaced. What’s up?
Almost immediately, Your father’s hurt. He’s at the hospital. I’ve been trying to reach you for hours!
My heart took off at a gallop. What’s wrong with him?
Her reply, Too much to get into. Just get here as fast you can.
Crap! My eyes darted to the open door, and the people outside. Onyx was among them, and he looked in my direction once or twice. No way I was getting past him. No way he would let me go, even with a chaperone. Vince’s rules, after all. Onyx was only there to enforce.
But I had to go! I thought about my poor dad, in the emergency room, hurt. Mom made it sound like a real emergency, too. What if he died and I wasn’t there? I couldn’t live with myself if that were the case.
I glanced out the door again and saw that the action had moved back into the smaller room off the lounge. Tempers seemed to have cooled off—I didn’t hear any more yelling. With one eye still on the open door, I called the cab company I’d used the night before and gave them the address of the clubhouse, which I found on a piece of mail in the drawer.
I then thought better of my plan. I turned in the chair, looking out the window. “There’s a warehouse two blocks from here with an American flag out front. Please have the driver meet me there.” If a cab pulled up in front of the building, everyone would notice. I had to get out before they saw me.
The front door was across from the stairs, just beyond the game room. It seemed like things were going better now. I thought that if I pretended to be on my way upstairs no one would pay attention. It was now or never. I had no time to lose.
I walked casually past the room, hoping no one would notice. Only somebody did.
“Where you goin’?” I turned to find Onyx staring intensely at me. Vince had been right about one thing—it was getting easier to see him and not just the scarring on his face.
“Upstairs,” I said. “Bathroom.” I shrugged like there was nothing out of the ordinary.
He wasn’t so convinced, I could tell, but what could he do? My heart was in my throat. What if he decided to escort me? Or if he demanded I take one of the girls with me? No, there was no reason for that. Still, it was a struggle to keep cool during the long moment in which he fixed me with his stare.
Then he shrugged and went back to the game. He wasn’t playing so much as he was keeping things under control. I let out a sigh of relief.
With his back to me, and his body blocking most of the doorway leading to the game, I thought it was the perfect chance to sneak out. No one around the table would see me. I waited until a loud burst of laughter carried out into the lounge and opened the front door, then slipped out and closed it behind me without so much as a sound. So far, so good.
Then I took off running. I was wearing the clothing I’d been in the night before, and I pulled the sweatshirt’s hood over my head as I went. As I went, all I could think about was my dad. I saw him lying on a gurney, tubes in him, monitors beeping. What could have happened to put him there? He was hurt? How? She hadn’t even said what kind of accident he had, if he fell or was hit by a car or in a car accident. Every thought made me sicker to my stomach.
I reached the building with the flag out front and waited for the cab. If only the driver would hurry! I was shaking with fear and nervous energy, ready to scream. The worst part was feeling so helpless. There was nothing I could do.
I heard a motor approaching, and I stepped out from the shadows so the driver could see me.
Only it wasn’t a cab. It was a black van. And it was slowing.
So many things went through my head at once. I didn’t know the people inside the van, but they looked as though they knew me. They weren’t just driving through. They were looking at me, slowing for me. They were both wearing leather kuttes.
Oh, no.
I turned to flee, realizing too late that they had me trapped. I heard the van door sliding open behind me and a male voice shouting for someone to catch me. My life flashed before my eyes as I ran, for the second time in less than twenty-four hours.
Then, the most beautiful sight I’d ever see came squealing around the corner, heading toward me. A man on a motorcycle. Vince. My heart leaped.
“Get down!” he screamed, and his hand went to the waistband of his jeans. He was going for his gun, I realized. I dove to the side out of sheer instinct, landing in a thick patch of weeds.
The van backed away, its tires squealing, as Vince fired on it. I heard metal hitting metal, but wherever he hit the van wasn’t enough to stop it from escaping.
Vince stopped beside me, a string of obscenities streaming from his mouth. I had the feeling my would-be captors were the least of my problems.
Chapter Fourteen
Vince
When I was a kid, my mom would use the word “conniption.” Like, “You kids are gonna make me have a conniption if you don’t calm down.” I used to wonder what that meant, like what a conniption actually was. What did a person have to be going through to have that happen?
When I saw Erica running from the black van, I knew what Mom had meant. I was about to have a fucking conniption all over the place.
I wanted to disable the van. Actually, what I really wanted was to kill the sons of bitches who thought they could take Erica from me. Killing them wouldn’t help, though. Dead men couldn’t tell me who’d sent them or why. Even though I knew who sent them and I had a pretty good idea as to why. I wanted to hear it from their mouths.
And I wanted them to tell me who in my crew had been a traitor, besides Lance.
I should have just killed them since they got away without a scratch. When I pulled up next to Erica, I saw red. I couldn’t think straight, couldn’t speak except to scream every bit of profanity I knew. I had to do something to let off some of the blinding rage I felt.
And then I looked down at her, and I didn’t feel the same spark I’d felt when I found her on the street the night before. This time, I didn’t feel sorry for her. She brought this on herself.
“Get on the bike,” I growled. I couldn’t look at her, didn’t help her off the ground. I waited until I felt her weight settle in behind me and her arms wrapped around my waist before pulling away and turning back toward the clubhouse.
It was a short ride, and the entire time all I could do was ask myself what I had done to make her run off like that. The first chance she got, she left. They had to be waiting for her, knowing she would sneak off. Of course, why wouldn’t she? I was lower than dirt, wasn’t I? No woman like her would want to be with me out of their own free will. I had to trap them, lock them up. They knew her better than I did. I actually thought for a minute, after the way we kissed that morning, that she wanted to be with me. How stupid could I be?
When we pulled up in front of the building, I called the other guys. “I got her,” I said, panting into the phone to Axel. “Have everybody come back.”
I felt Erica trembling behind me, but I didn’t feel a bit sorry. I wondered if I should even be in the same room as her. I wasn’t sure I could trust myself—not that I would hurt her deliberately, but I might end up saying things I shouldn’t say.
She got off the bike without my asking this time and followed me into the clubhouse. The first pair of eyes I looked for belonged to Onyx. He was standing there, watching a game of Monopoly.
“What the fuck goes on around here when I’m gone?” Every other sound in the building ceased. All eyes were on me, then on Erica. I assumed she cowered behind me.
“What’s happening?” Onyx looked at me, then at Erica. “What are you flipping out about?”
; I looked at Erica just long enough to give her a command. “My room.” Then I motioned for Onyx to follow me into the office. The door was hardly closed before I flipped out.
“She sneaked out! How did you let her? Was she fucking invisible or something?”
He shook his head and shrugged. “I don’t know, she said she was going to the bathroom. What was I supposed to do? Follow her?”
“Yes!” I knew how ridiculous I was acting, but it didn’t matter. I was furious with her, and I had to get rid of some of it before I talked to her.
“Come on. How was I supposed to know? I didn’t even know she left. Really.” He looked upset, and I knew it wasn’t his fault. She was smart, she could have tricked him.
